Room 237
You Don’t Know Jack… Torrance
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
NR | 102 min

You may not have put much thought into The Shining, besides thinking about how awesome it is, but plenty of others have, way too much so, but in a good way, cause why bother over-analyzing politics or the Kardashians or other pointless garbage, when one can try to decipher why Stanley Kubrick put Calumet Baking Powder + Tang canisters behind Scatman Crothers in the Overlook Hotel’s kitchen closet (see above).  Apparently everything has a reason, and meaning, and the answers are simple – the Calumet canister = a symbol of Native American suffering, and the Tang canister = a nod to Kubrick’s own participation in ‘faking’ the moon landing in a TV studio.  OK, so maybe the answers are complex, and maybe not even answers, more like crackpotted babble, but I never want to stop listening to these leery theories!!!

Rodney Ascher‘s Room 237 focuses in on 5 of these crazy diamond Shiners, and lets them spiel their spelling outs of what they’ve seen after watching The Shining… for the 50th time.  We’re never shown these peeps’ faces, as footage from the actual movie is heavily poured on + random archival stuff (love the footage of the people watching a movie in a mostly empty theater) + some Eyes Wide Shut-edness.  Ascher does the viewer/listener a huge favor – deftly edits these scatterbrained-hot breaths into to something watchable/listenable.  For example, one of his talking heads is Michael Wysmierski, a man who strongly believes that Kubrick did indeed help the US government fake the moon landing, and used The Shining as a way of admitting his guilt and shame (the Tang canister!  Danny with his Apollo 11 sweater!).  You can struggle to sit thru Wysmierski’s 79 minuted Babylon of babble, called The Shining Code 2.0, like we did, or you can let Ascher act as his editor, and to the 4 others, getting to the point of the pointed pointlessness, and in turn, crafting a piece of work that’s possibly even more mesmerisng and scarier than The Shining itself!

We saw Room 237 back in October at the New York Film Festival, appreciated what Ascher attempted to do, but was left a little too dazed and confused by it all.  Well, since then, we’ve seen The Shining again (you will too if you see Room 237), which made us only want to see Room 237 again (which we did), which now makes us want to see The Shining again (which we will), and so on and back and forth and so forth.  It’s an endless maze that leads to nowhere, but we’d rather go there than anywhere else.  It’s up to you if you want to believe.  BELIEVE IT!

Verdictgo: upon further review –  Breast In Show

Overcooked Hotel: the internets is overloaded with Shining madness, but the best caretaker of it all is The Overlook Hotel, where they have such delicious morsels like this photo of the faux Torrances, who actually shot the 2nd unit footage of the VW bug driving up in the mountains

Room 237 has a vacancy in NY & on-demand this Friday, and elsewhere elsewhen

 

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Spring Breakers 
Bikini Overkill
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 94 min

Harmony Korine‘s Spring Breakers is exactly what you’d think/expect/want it to be.  Maybe more, maybe less, but dude, in the end, it’s fcuking Spring Breakers!!! It’s Korine’s most mainstream movie to date (a good thing), but not necessarily his best (it’s RIGHT up there, but kinda hard to top the depth and beauty of Mister Lonely), but for those who don’t know the difference between Gummo and Chico & The Man, juss go and see it and have your eyes melt  

Spring Breakers is like one long episode of UK’s Skins, but neonier, pastelier, gangstier, and way dirtier, but it doesn’t go ALL THE WAY disgustingly dirty (this isn’t Enter The Void, but it is the same cinematographer!), cause if it did, we’d despise this movie, instead of being energized by it.  Actually, it’s more like this Skins promo, which was raunchier than anything on the actual show, although the show itself was pretty raunchy.  So lets juss say the Spring Breakers‘ is Skins‘ very American cousin, k?  (wait, you’ve seen Skins, right????)

Much has been made about former Disney starlets Vanessa Hudgens (WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL MY WIFE????) & Selena Gomez being turned into Korine harlots, and much should be made about it, cause you get to see sides of these girls that you’ve never seen before –  their acting talents the sides of their boobs, and butts!!  Dude, Spring Breakers!!  But don’t get too excited.  The one Spring Breaker who drops trou more than the others is Korine’s real life wife, Rachel Korine, the least looker of the bunch.  Drats.  But put away your calls of nepotism, cause Rachel kinda sorta feels like a well-needed mother-figure to these tween-sweetheart tarts of raging pleasure, even if she’s raging more than all of them combined.  Oh, and the fourth breaker is Pretty Little Liar‘s Ashley Benson, and she’s hotter than mercury on the surface of Mercury!!!!   Oh man, bless this foursome, especially since their entire wardrobe consists of bikinis.  All they wanted was spring break.  So what if they had to rob a BBQ joint with ski-masks, water guns and sledgehammers to make it happen???

After a bunch of endless days and nights of typical collegiate beach partying, the girls break bad when they get tangled up with wankster drug & arms mini-kingpin James Franco (this is when the movie starts to REALLLLLLY click its heels/grillz).  He crosses every line, especially the line of looking like a human being.  Muss be why he goes by the name of Alien.  He’s like the slimiest white dude to ever sport cornrows, and pretty much every white dude that sports cornrows is the slimiest white dude ever (his helpers - The ATL Twins – don’t have cornrows, but they’s slimy in their own special way)  

But the girls take to him, and he giveth back to them.  Ya see, the girls live for spring break.  They don’t want it to ever end.  James Franco’s Alien is the embodiment of spring break never ending.  They want to be him (cept for Gomez).  He wants them to be with him, and in him.  They sing Britney Spears songs together with guns in hand at sunset.  It doesn’t get much better than this, but then it does.  PLEASE DON’T LET SPRING BREAK EVER END!!!! 

But things go wrong, but not too wrong, cause the girls get what they want in the end - a spring break for the ages.  This is ultimately a ‘happy’ story.  A scary happy story, a nightmare that never felt better.  Every minute flirts with disaster, but the next minute keeps molesting you with laughter  

This film is a grower.  As the hours, now days pass, the more and more we fcuking hate that spring break in Spring Breakers ended.  Sure, it’s over, but it aint never over.  I keep hearing James Franco calmly chanting, ‘spreeeng braaaake, spreeeng braaaaaaaaake‘ in my ear.  You’ll hear it too.  And you also won’t be able to get this image out of yer head anytime soon neither, and why would you want it to leave your head???

Spring break forever.  Spring Breakers forever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Verdictgo: it ages like fine wine.  thought it was purty darn good yesterday and now methinking it’s Breast In Show.  give me a week and I’ll proclaim it better than Zodiac

Spring Breakers breaks loose this Friday in NY/LA and elsewhere elsewhen 

oh, and animated gif posters should become the new posters

oh, and this Vanessa Hudgens poster will hang in every room of my house, and every inch of my brain.  Vanessa Hudgens (looking eggzactly like this) 9evvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvveeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeer

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

West of Memphis
North of Incredible
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 147 min

The West Memphis Three (Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley) – falsely accused of horrific murder, rushed to judgment, and left to rot in jail/hell, but after much uproar (from Eddie Vedder, Johnny Depp AND MORE!), the three are finally sorta freed, but remained guilty.  Got all that?  Doc makers Joe Berlinger & Bruce Sinofsky shed light on the Three’s injustice plight of un-fancy over 15 years in their muss see Paradise Lost doc trilogy.  It’s a lot to take in, so Amy Berg & Billy McMillin decided to simplify everything in their Peter Jackson & wife produced doc West of Memphis, catch us up on the Three, while trying to pin-point the finger on the real culprit…  although one reviewer brought up a good point – that the filmmakers are rushing to judgment on their new suspect juss as quickly as the original prosecutors did with the Three.  Regardless, the truth may not be fully out there, but whatever truths are know muss be told, even if they’re already known, cause the real murderer still walks free. Don’t know how many times you can sit thru the pain, suffering and agony, but it’s a little easier to sit thru all of these docs than being a horrifically murdered child or being falsely accused of horrifically murdering children and going to jail for no reason.  Sh!t is fcuked up, that much is 100% known

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

West of Memphis opens in NY/LA today & elsewhere elsewhen and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The Impossible
Wave of Mutilation
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 114 min

Remember that horrrrrrrrrible tsunami of 2004?  Unless you live in that part of the world and/or were directly affected by it, probably not.  You moved on with yer life, worrying about how Lost would end or if the world was going to end if Mitt Romney became the president.  Well, Lost‘s ending sucked, and even if Mitty had won, the world wouldn’t have ended.  But for those who endured that tsunami, the world might as well have ended, as their world would never be the same, regardless of how awful Lost ended.  Sometimes we need tragic events turned into viewing ‘entertainment’, lest we forget them, and so maybe we can better understand them, even if there’s nothing to understand, cause sometimes bad sh!t happens to good people (and also to bad people)

For one such family, the Belons, tragedy struck, but they got lucky.  How lucky? Well, you’ll juss have to see their Impossible tale to find out.  But in order to make the movie more sell-able, the real life Spanish clan was transformed into an English one (but at least the director & writer remained Spanish – The Orphanage dudes - Juan Antonio Bayona + Sergio G Sánchez!).  Get over the white-washing, cause it doesn’t matter what the nationality of the family is, cause natural disasters are nationality-blind.  Also, you can’t really do wrong by making Naomi Watts & Ewan McGregor yer matri & patriarch.  Their boys are Tom Holland, Oaklee Pendergast & Samuel Joslin.  All 5 screen family members’ performances are incredible (especially eldest son Holland’s.  I say Oscar nomination worthy!), and what happens to them cinematically is even more incredible.  Remember that crazed tsunami scene that opened Clint Eastwood’s tepid Hereafter?  Udder 0s & 1s GARBAGE, hispecially when compared with the impossible possibly seen in The Impossible!!!!

Some people will find The Impossible to be nuttin but torture porn.  If that’s the case, why don’t you ask the Belons how porny their torturous experience was.  Be thankful this didn’t happen to you when you went on some vacation, JERK!!!

Also, how could you not want to see a movie where you see Naomi Watts’ breasts AND it’s not hot AT all?!??!?!?

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

The Impossible is umpossible today in limited release

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Jack Reacher
Preacher Comforts
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 130 min

December is a month of endless Oscar-baiting fare, where the movies are bloated, depressing and hard to watch.   Christopher McQuarrie‘s Jack Reacher is the antidote to all that stuff, and Jack Reacher is nothing without one of the last movie stars standing, standing tall (even though he’s not so tall) - Tom Cruise.  Tom is Jack, a loner, Dottie, a rebel.  Whether you can believe that Tom Cruise could pass as a drifter matters very little, cause basically Jack Reacher is a looser Mission: Impossible, which means it’s more fun, and sirprizingly, and most welcomelyer, funnier!   What more do you need to know?  You don’t, but we’ll go on for a little bit more anywayz

Our movie starts off with a sniper randomly picking off people, but MAYBE THE VICTIMS AREN’T RANDOM?!??!?!  The sniper is caught, but MAYBE THE CAUGHT SNIPER ISN’T THE ACTUAL SNIPER?!?!??!?  The DA’s office (Richard Jenkins and David Oyelowo, who’s like 2nd second coming of Chiwetel Ejiofor) thinks it’s an open and shut case.  The alleged sniper’s lawyer (bouncy Rosamund Pike) thinks so too, but is juss looking for the best possible verdict that isn’t punishable by death.  Enter Jack Reacher, the only man who can possibly save the alleged sniper, and maybe save the day too.  Guess what, he might juss do all of these things, AND go toe to toe with baddie Werner Herzog (I laughed out loud EVERY time he spoke on screen, partly cause it’s ridiculous, but mostly cause casting Werner Herzog as a bad guy is a stroke of genius and awesomeness and amazingnessness and I couldn’t get over that fact!!!).  Robert Duvall pops in towards the end, and his no country for old man old man-ness only adds to the nutty bar fun, cause Robert Duvall characters wouldn’t have it any other way!!!!

But does Tom Cruise run in this movie?  A little, but he drives, cause he’s so driven, and the driving is FCUKING OFF THE BAKER’S RACK!!!!!!  And there’s punching!  And there’s more punching!  And gunfights!  AND LAUGHTER!  And a killer scene where two thugs have a great chance of taking out Cruise, but they keep on taking out each other.  OH REACHER!!!! YOU MAKE US WANT TO GIVE YOU A REACH-A-ROUND!!!!!!! Please people, go see this movie, so it does well and they greenlight 12 more of these, cause that’s what the world needs!!!  REACHER!!!  He should fight Arthur Treacher’s in the sequel, cause they suck!!!  TREACHER!!!!!

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

3 Furious : please, never slow down

Alexia Fast

Jack Reacher reaches out and touches everyone at a theater near jews this Friday

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…