Closed Circuit
Boy Eh 
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 96 min

John Crowley directed Boy A, one of my most favorite movies about a boy and the first letter of the alphabet.  Two of my moist flavorite actors are Eric Bana and Ciarán Hinds, who co-starred in Munich, one of my moist favorite Jewish movies starring non-Jews.  Them three gots together, with Rebecca Hall, Jim Broadbent, Riz Ahmed, a dash of Julia Stiles and a bob of Anne-Marie Duff to make Closed Circuit – a desperately wanting to be riveting courtroom drama that isn’t nearly riveting enuff, doesn’t have much courtroom to roam, or any real drama from its start to its whatever finish.  WHAT A MOVIE!!!  Wish it was something more than juss not much of anything, but heck, we’d watch Bana and Hinds in ANYTHING – even if they were in a movie about the invention of microwaved tunafish sangwhiches!!

Verdictgo:  Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Circuit is open for bidness at a theater near jews 

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Unfortunate Pre-9/11 World Trade Center Ads

Lee Daniels’ The Butler
Injustice Is Served, Then Swerved
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 132 min

If The Help met Forrest Gump it would look a lot like Lee Daniels‘s The Butler – an overly eager to please & overly sentimental look at an actual dude who actually butled at The White House through EIGHT administrations, and how the civil rights era unfolded before his (in the form of Forest Whitaker), all those the Presidents’ (John Cusack with a pointy nose! Alan Rickman with a squint! Liev Schreiber on the shitter! Robin Williams being serious! and James Marsden being AMAZINGS AS JFucK!!!!!!) and society’s eyes, with plenty of artistic licences to spare  

The film covers a LOT of ground, and tries to shove every last bit o’ black history into it (who knew that the fictionalized version of the butler’s son – played by David Oyelowo - was involved and attended EVERY single movement & event ever – the Greensboro sit-ins, the Freedom Rides, Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game, MLK’ assassination, Blank Panther meetings, anti-Apartheid rallies, the recording sessions for Michael Jackson’s Thriller), but what it didn’t need to do is waste too much time on the butler’s home life, which it did, which was a waste, which means there’s WAY too much Oprah Winfrey in this movie, and all she does is drink, then play around, then doesn’t, then complains about her butler husband not being around, then happy to have him around, and then meeting Jane Fonda and then whatever dot net  

Still, the movie does what it sets out to do, even if it feels like a whitewashed wikipedia version of the Civil Rights era (strange that white guy - Danny Strong – scripted such an African-American story).  Anywho, props de leon go out to the butler’s butler pals Cuba Gooding Jr, Lenny Kravitz and Colman Domingo who SERVE the film well, even if the film is a lil tooooo self-serving

Frusen Glädjé

Frusen Glädjé

Frusen Glädjé

Frusen Glädjé

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Frusen Glädjé

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Frusen Glädjé

My Father and The Man In Black
Saul Good vs Evil
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
Not Rated | 87 min

You know the man who was the Man in Black’s right hand man, right?  Of course you don’t, and neither did his son.  Well, now it’s time to introduce you to Canadian Jew Saul Holiff, who did so much more than manage Johnny Cash for 17 years.  He basically had to play the role of father-figure adult, trying to keep the childish Cash from crashing and burning, all while trying to keep himself from doing the same.  Unfortunately, Holiff wasn’t much of any actual father figure to his own son, and the director of this marvelously melancholy doc, Jonathan Holiff 

Saul Holiff killed himself in 2004, leaving his son searching for answers.  Who was my father, and why did he not care and love me?  Jonathan’s journey of paternal discovery led him to his father’s storage locker, filled with Cash mementos and audio diaries.  In his father’s own words, archival photos and footage + Unsolved Mysteries-like recreations, My Father and The Man In Black reveals Saul’s story and motivations and regrets (there are MANY), and Johnny’s too, and even a dash of June Carter Cash‘s, and it’s all 182893929 times more interesting and useful than whatever that garbage Walk The Line movie is was.  It’s true cause I said so  

In the end, we get a loving portrait of an unknown who should be known, and Jonathan gets a clearer picture of a man of gray, who was in the shadow of the Man in Black, and the only thing missing from this can’t miss doc is Harry Chapin’s ‘Cats In The Cradle’ playing over the end credits

‘When you coming home, dad?’

‘I don’t know when, But we’ll get together then. You know we’ll have a good time then.’

:(

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

Black is right in NY/LA today and elsewhere elsewhen + on iTunes & Amazon September 10

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…