Selma
(Mostly) Down With The King
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 127 min

How has there never been a full length feature film made about Martin Luther King Jr, before Ava DuVernay‘s Selma marched onto the scene????  HOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW????  I know Spike Lee wanted to make one, and I’m sure Spielberg did too, and anyone else who has a brain in Hollywood (about 4 people), and yet none got made.  And so we have/are stuck with Selma, which is a good start, but certainly not the greatest, for a man who deserves greatness.  Selma is such a small, albeit important, part of the King legacy, but for a movie mainly about him, don’t we want to see the complete picture?  The rise AND the fall?  The march on Washington and the assassination in Memphis????  There aren’t 20 Malcolm X movies, but the one we have is definitive.  It tells the whole story.  Who’s gonna bother now with a whole King movie?  Throne alone!

Well, we got Selma.  Its got some good (David Oyelowo as King is a royal treat, and so is his MLK Jr stache, and the costumes, and the other stuff), but it also has some whateves.net (like it be mad dry and boring at times – several times! and Oprah, why do you have to be in movies????  you add nothing to everything cinematic!  stay behind the scenes and just throw your money at movies so they can get made!!  and what’s with all the British actors playing Americans?  it’s like letting James Bond being played by a Yankee – and I aint talkin bout Derek Jeter).  But we got Selma, and it’s alright.  We shall overcome this!  Maybe we won’t, but we all have dreams

but will never undercome for such hotness as…

Carmen Ejogo

+

Tessa Thompson

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Selma blairs at a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

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

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…

Lincoln
Fourscore & 148 Years Ago, We All Scored For Equality, Mostly!
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 120 min

Steven Spielberg‘s Lincoln 

=

Spielberg’s Amistad

+

strange white man beards

minus

any

moment

but that’s still pretty fcuking good filmmaking if you ask we!!!

AND DANIEL FCUKING DAY LEWIS AS LINCOLN IS ALL DANIEL DAY AND ALL DANIEL NIGHT BESTNESS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

obvi

+ Tommy Lee Jones will have you jonesing for more Tommy Leeness!!!

+ Sally Field plows it!

+ Joseph Gordon-Levitt has a mustache!

+ John Hawkes + James Spader + Tim Blake Nelson = hottest/coolest threesome EVERRVEVEVRR (for ending slavery that is!)

+ Hal Holbrook is still alive!!!

+ we still dont know how to spell or say David Strathaririansiansairn‘s last name!!

but wait, there’s more

more like…

OMG, THAT GUY IS IN THIS MOVIE!!!!

‘that guy’s like

DOUG FROM FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS and GALE FROM BREAKING BAD!

THE PUSHING DASIES GUY!

LANE PRYCE IS RIGHT!

BAD NEWS KELLY LEAK!

THE SERIOUS MAN!

ANIMAL HOUSE’S D-DAY!

PRESIDENT LOGAN FROM 24!

MILES PAPAZZIAIANNN FROM 24!

THAT GUY ON GIRLS WHO HAS TO HAVE SEX WITH LENA DUNHAM!

THAT KID WHO PLAYED THAT GAY GUY IN THE STOOPID MOVIE BASED ON A BOOK ABOUT RUNNING WITH SCICICXSSSSORS!

THAT REALLY GOOD ACTING GUY FROM IN TREATMENT!

THAT KID FROM DARK SHADOWS!

THAT GUY FROM THE NEW PLANET OF THE APES!

THAT ASSSHOLE GUY WHO HATES BOOKS FROM FRANK AND ROBOT!

THAT GUY WHO NARRATED VICKY CHRISTINA BARCELONA!

THAT BLACK GUY!

THAT GUY THAT GUY!

THAT GUY THAT GUY THAT GUY!

&

LUKAS HAAS!

Verdictgo: Jeepers Mos Def Worth A Peepers

Lincoln logs time in NY & LA today, and elsewhere elsewhen

oh, and MAJOR special love goes out to Spader’s facial hair & weirdness in this movie.  it’s something I tells ya!!  ALMOS worth the price of admission alone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Rise of the Planet of the Apes
The Found Link
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 105 min

Rise of the Planet of the Apes is by far the scariest of all the 7 Apes movie (Tim Burton’s mistake was scary for a different reason), and maybe even the third best ever, after the orginal and Escape from the Planet of the Apes.  YES!!!!!  This is how a prequel should be done – add to the series (it’s like Conquest, but done betterer), not take away from it (Hannibal Rising) or add nothing new (X-Men: First Class) or juss be plain insulting (Star Wars, cough, cough)

The storyline wasn’t overly complicated, and the direction (by Rupert Wyatt) was good enough, but what makes this Apes rise high is the quality caliber of acting put on display, by the humans (James Franco, John Lithgow, and from the little that Freida Pinto, David Oyelowo, Brian Cox and Tom Felton get to do) and by the humans who were motion captured to pretty close perfection as CGI chimps (Andy Serkis, the king of kong and all other creatures who aren’t really there).  If you watch the originals, they feel kinda cheesy, and we’re not just talking about the ape masks.  When you watch this one, cheese is nowhere to be found

We dug Apes cause we could believe the apes.  Not their cause (although animal cruelty does suck though, right Nim?), but that they were really apes, aping up more feelings than juss wanting a banana.  CGI shiz is still not eggzactly where it needs to be (neither is the internet, so nobody’s perfect… yet), but we’ll take this Planet‘s fake terrain over most other CGI clusterfudges of the past few years

All hail Caesar, and hopefully for many movies to come!

The GrApe Escape: there’s no denying how yumcredbile the original Apes is, but Escape from the Planet of the Apes may be the most fun.  watch why!

Verdictgo: Jeepers Mos Worth A Peepers

Apes is pre-cool at a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…