Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
Prequel Post-Cool
Official Site| Trailer & Mo
PG-13 | 134 min

The best thing to ever happen to movies is George Lucas creating Star Wars

The best thing to ever happen to Star Wars is Disney becoming its keeper

Two Disney movies in and the franchise is beyond on the right path back to where it needs to be… and galaxies away from the wrong turns Lucas took with his prequels

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is the prequel the fans have needed and wanted all along.  It’s no stretch to say that it’s better than Episode I thru III combined, times a zillion.  It may be rogue to say so, but I believe Rogue One is a better Star Wars movie than Force Awakens is.  It’s true!  Cause I juss said it!

So why does Rogue One work as a Star Wars movie (more so than the prequels AND Episode VII)?

• Rogue One tries to fit into the Star Wars world, without having to be too bound (and gagged) by it.  There’s no text crawl, no John Williams score, and gasp – there are actual lower-third titles telling us the locations of where we are.  For Star Wars movies to evolve – they need to break from the past, but also celebrate them.  Rogue hits the balance perfectly, and is an excellent kick off right into Episode IV

• There’s not that much Jedi stuff.  Look, we know Star Wars is what it is cause of Skywalkers, and lightsabers and hokey religion things, but after those forced-forcey prequels, and the new Rey & Kylo stuff, we needed a break from it all.  Rogue keeps the Jedi stuff to a minimum, and truly puts the ‘star’s and ‘wars’ back in Star Wars!

• People die – LOTS of them – and we’re not just talking about bad guys.  Gritty is good.  Episode IV was gritty.  Things should try to be more like Episode IV.  Episode VII was cutesy – almost TOO cutesy.  Here’s hoping Episode VIII is grittier!

• It’s OK for Star Wars to be less white.  I know, it seems like overkill trying to OVERLY make your cast a United Colors of Benetton ad, but if your actors are good, then the acting is going to be too.  All the actors cast in the film were great.  EVERYONE (well, I didn’t really like this lady and her role, but it’s probably not her fault cause she didn’t write her own dialog).  Sure, there wasn’t too much time to give the characters actual character, but Ben Mendelsohn, Diego Luna, Mads Mikkelsen, Felicity Jones, Donnie Yen, Riz Ahmed, Jiang Wen, and Forest Whitaker gave it their all, and in turn, I’m all for them!

• Plus, Diego Luna is super hot

• Plus, Ben Mendelsohn is such a good screen a$$hole

• Plus, Mads Mikkelsen is the fcuking best ever!!! (ok, maybe 2nd best ever – juss a tick behind the greatest living actor – Ciarán Hinds)

• Alan Tudyk‘s droid K-2SO is more like A+2SO!!

• Admiral Ackbar Raddus!

• The Death Star never looked better – or more menacing!

• Plain and simple – Rogue One looks AND feels like Star Wars – not some shiny bullsh!t imitation version of it

• Simple and plain – Rogue One was a lot of fcuking fun!

• The nods to the fans & cameos were good, even if most of them were unnecessary, but hey, us fans love being nodded at!  BLUE MILK!

• three words – stormtroopers in paradise!

wait, was there ANYTHING I didn’t like?

yeah – these rebel solider helmets, which don’t look very Star Warsy to me.  but that’s juss me.  maybe you disagree and think this movie was juss ok, or sucked, but maybe you’re juss ok, or suck!

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

Rogue One for all at a theater near jews and white nationalists

Next stand alone Star Wars story I want to see get made???

BOSSK TO THE FUTURE!!!

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Arrival
More Talk, Less Rock
Official Site | Trailer & Mo
PG-13 | 116 min

Aliens have arrived!  In pod shaped pods all over the globe!  But they don’t speak English or Russian or Chinese or any language with an alphabet.  So how can we communicate with them before we lose patience and destroy them????  

Enter linguist Amy Adams, Earth’s only hope at understanding what their inkblot Rorschach test writings are trying to tell us, so we can determine whether they are friend or foe!  But translating an unknown language is hard!  And takes time!  BUT WE DON’T HAVE TIME!!!  Military guy Forest Whitaker is growing weary by the second!!  CIA guy Michael Stuhlbarg is being a nebbishy pushy jew, pushing for non-Jewish results!!  The Chinese General Tzi Ma wants to blow them back to where they came from!  (maybe he should blow up all the Panda Expresses while we wait).  But Amy Adams has help – helpful and handsome Jeremy Renner!

Where it goes from there is thankfully non-conventional, a little lot bit Jodie Foster Contact, a little lot bit confusing, and somewhat somehow not fully satisfying (to me), but finishes as a nice looking little alien movie that gives us confidence that Denis Villeneuve can make a good Blade Runner sequel.  Long may you runner!

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Arrival arrived at a theater near jews & white nationalists

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Out of the Furnace
Men of Steel Town
Official ‘Website’ | Trailers & Mo
R | 116 min

There seems to be some kinda minor-renaissance of gritty American shoot-em-up flicks these days.  It’s like the 70s all over again, cept not really.  With the overload of superhero drivel and toy driven babble dominating theaters, this resurgence is a good thing, and change of pace, even if the results have been a little uneven.  Take last year’s Killing Them Softly – a lil flick trying so hard to be mad hard and mad cool (like Mads Mikkelsen), and make a statement or something, but missed the mark, and bored we to tears.  Then there was the The Place Beyond The Pines, which was too much of a good thing, cramming 3 movies into 1, when it probably should have dumped at least one of them, or just been 9 hours of Ryan Gosling riding bikes.  And now comes Scott Cooper‘s Out of The Furnace, which get high marks for acting, attitude, and appearance, but by the time it wraps up, I kinda was like, um, er, uh, that was it?  What exactly was all that for?

But hey, where else are you gonna see Christian Bale smolder, with beautiful longerish hair, as an older brother’s keeper to misfit troublemaker Casey Affleck (he does his best work when he doesn’t open his mouth), and melt the heart Zoe Saldana, and go hunting with uncle Sam Shepard, and listen to Forest Whitaker try to sound like the dude with half a face on Boardwalk Empire, and see who can be more smiley & gruffy & tuffy betweenith Willem Dafoe or Woody Harrelson??????  WHERE ELSE YOU GONNA SEE THIS???  Even if the hunt and be hunted intensity that fills a majority of the film kinda fizzles out at the end, it’s gritty good enuff for me, and should be gritty good enuff for you too

Lil tidbit – the film takes place in the steel-mill town of Braddock, Pennsylvania, where a 1941 novel of a similar name – Out of This Furnace – also took place.  FURNACE THAT!!!!!!!!!

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Furnace smolders with acting in limited release, and soon 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

The Last Stand
We All Is Back
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 107 min

Before Arnold Schwarzenegger semi-retired from acting to become governor of California, he was outputting a bunch of garbage that was very very un-Ah-nold-reffic.  Maybe we needed a break from him, more than he did from movies, but it was no sirprze that he was coming back, and that us, as Arnold fans, would welcome it with girlie-man open arms.   We skipped The Expendables 2, cause #1 was such a piece of sh!t, so our first post-governorship trip sailed with Jee-woon Kim‘s The Last Stand

Last Stand is on par with the junk he was in before he took a break, BUT, it’s a sh!t-ton of fun!!!!  Sure, there’s way too much set-up, about a cartel kingpin on the loose and headed towards the Mexican border in a slick-ass Corvette, but the payoff pays off, in a showdown throwdown to turn all frowns upside down!!  Plus the hammy ham acting fest put on display by Forest Whitaker, Johnny Knoxville, Peter Stormare & Eduardo Noriega actually subdues’ Arnold’s own hammy-ish performance, and it only increases the dumb fun quotient!!  Plus Luis Guzmán & Harry Dean Stanton are in it!!  And there’s eye candy like Zach Gilford & Jaimie Alexander, and…

in the beginning there was

Genesis Rodriguez

&

Christiana Leucas

–

Tabu
River Deep – Mountain High
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 118 min

An old woman (Laura Soveral) is on her last legs, scared of witchcraft and what will become of her beloved crocodile…  that she doesn’t actually have… anymore.  She dies halfway thru the movie (SPOILER ALERT!), but her story is JUSS beginning.  Told in one giant second-half flashback, with narration in the present from her former burning flame (Henrique Espírito Santo with a Werner Herzogy voice), with no dialog, JUSS music & effects, we learn that the old woman was quite the vibrant young woman (Ana Moreira, with eyes that don’t lie!!!)  

She grew up in the wilds of Africa, hunting game, and melting hearts left and right.  She gets married, but then takes up with a suave mustachioed drummer (Carloto Cotta, the younger incarnation of the narrator).  Their love is forbidden, taboo if you will, but the Tabu in the title is a mountain, and it’s worth the climb!!!  Oh, yeah, there’s also a crocodile in the past!  The same one she longs for before she dies in the present!!  But maybe she’s really longing for her lost love!!!  MAYBE!!! 

Bravo Miguel Gomes!!!  Your film is beautiful, poetic, and a dream we never want to wake up from!!  Too bad the first half, with the old woman being old, isn’t as bold as the young stuff in the second half!!!  

Verdictgo: BOTH is Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Stand‘s tall at a theater near jews and Tabu is NOT taboo in limited a release

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…