Haywire
The MMA Experience
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 93 min

Having a tough time trying to figure out what to make of Steven Nerderbergh‘s Haywire.  It’s kinda La Femme Nikitaish, but feels more like a 90s Steven Seagal flick with shades of whatever that Jim Jarmusch movie was.  See what we mean?  But there’s one thing that’s super clear - Gina Carano kicks ass, on screen and in general.  Credit Nerderbergh for plucking her from his TV watching to his movie-making, but maybe he should have left the plucking to someone else.   He’s got this ace in the hole, but doesn’t seem to know what to do with it, cept occasionally let her kick

Apparently what he decided to do was make a half-baked tale of a hired gun (foot?) who gets double crossed and then needs to double back in order to set things doubly straight.  By the time we get to the end and the 5 Ws get ‘revealed’, it seems a little too late to make this simple plot seem complex

But… it really doesn’t matter what transgressed cause we get to watch Carano mix it up all over America and Europe with the likes of Ewan McGregor (why don’t movies juss let him speak in his natural accent?), Michael Fassbender (no wang dangling here), Michael Angarano (hey, it’s that guy!), Channing Tatum (he’s kinda the best wurst actor ever), Michael Douglas (brings instant gravitas to anything), Antonio Banderas (bearded!), Mathieu Kassovitz (also bearded! and always a pleasure to see him) and Bill Paxton (who’s so great that someone had to make a pinball game about him!).  And any movie with that crew crewing it up is bound to be watchable, cause it’s true

moral of the story: this is a good start for Carano’s young movie career, but ultimately it’s kinda like a Girlfriend Experience with zero sex and more kicking

American Glad We Don’t Hate Her: WE KNEW CARANO LOOKED FAMILIAR!!!! 

Verdictgo: low end Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Haywire kicks it at a theater near jews today

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

A Separation
(Jodaeiye Nader az Simin)
I-walk, Do Not Iran To A Theater near you
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 123 min

Is Asghar Farhadi‘s A Separation THE single best movie of 2011, as many have made it out to be?  Well, it might juss be the single bestest Iranian movie of 2011 (out of the total of 1 we’ve seen)!  Or perhaps the bestestest movie of 2011 with a guy (Peyman Moadi) that has a peppered beard that mostly & moistly resembles our own beard!  Or perchance the one starring the hottiest/angriest red(dyed)hair wrapped in a scarf lady (Leila Hatami)!  Or perzantze the one with the year’s worst screen employee (played by Sareh Bayat) who’s got the mos adorable daughter (Kimia Hosseini) east of the Nile river!  There’s no question that it’s tops in 2011 movies when it comes to sequences with the mos poignant hitting one’s self in the head with one’s own hands (Shahab Hosseini)!  But movie?  Hardly!  Sure, it’s nice to see that Iran is capable of other things besides possibly being nuclearly armed, but best movie of 2011?????????  Did these people see Tintin???  Well, that’s not our #1 pick, but it’s up there, and you’ll find out next week what 2011′s #1 is be, by our standards, which should be the standard

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Separation has got it together in NY & LA and elsewhere elsewhen

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

oh, and if you see only one Iranianish movie this month, juss rent Persepolis, cause we know you’ve never seen it, and it’s amazingsss!!

Sherlock Holmes:
A Game of Shadows
The Final Problem
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 129 min

Don’t know how we thought the first one was passable, cause it spectretro, it was poo-diddly-poo. You take one look at brilliant modern day Cumberpatched Sherlock and juss know that Guy Ritchie doesn’t deserve to do a thang with Arthur Conan Doyle’s foils & foibles!!!  Well, like it or not, he and Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law are back in a new misadventure and it’s somehow all passable again.  CRAP!  This crap should be crap, so how is it watchable, again?  Jared Harris as Professor James Moriarty is a very very nice touch, and including Noomi Rapace and Stephen Fry in on the fun kinda adds to the fun, even if their characters are kinda marginalized.  And?  Well, they killed off Rachel McAdams’ character, which also added to the fun, cause her character was les würst.  But isn’t any movie that includes a chess scene between two rivals juss one giant sh$t show?  It is, but one that’s covered in fun.  CRAP!

Verdictgo: very low end Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Sherkock is currently playing close to wherever you call Holmes 

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol
This Review Will Self-D-Suck In 5 Seconds
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 133 min

Fourth time’s a charm, if you choose to accept it.  It’s true!  After 3 failed missions, Mission Impossible 4 is the best of the series, but that’s almos like saying that getting gonorrhea is better than getting cancer or AIDS!  Good work Brad Bird???  OK, so this movie is overly long, and loses any sort of steam it had steaming after Tom Cruise does that thing on that building in Dubai and then runs wild in a sandstorm, but it’s OK cause it’s all OK, instead of being beyond awful.  Even if Jeremy Renner feels out of place, and Anil Kapoor‘s appearance is pointless, and Simon Pegg‘s quips aren’t all that quippy, cause Michael Nyqvist is such a perfect scowling Euro-trashy baddie, like he was in Abduction, and Paula Patton is hot and even hotter when fighting Léa Seydoux!  OK! OK?  Sure!  Whatever!

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Mission is mos possibly playing at a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Extremely Loud
and Incredibly Close
Incredibly Cloying & Kinda Extremely Moving
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 120 min

When we told people we saw this movie, they had never heard of it, so we started calling it that ‘Tom Hanks 9/11′ movie.  That rang a few bells for some, but it’s hactually not fair to the film to label it like that… cause that sounds like a film no one would want to see (including us), and yet, it’s a movie you should see

Based off of the novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, director Stephen Daldry and writer Eric Roth walk a fine line between overwrought and amazing, and ends up with something that’s a happy medium of the two.  Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is a lot like other flicks Daldry has directed (The Hours, Billy Elliot, The Reader), in tone and presentation (and over doing the Oscar baiting), cept this is the only one we really liked.  You did it Daldry!!

And what’s the story September 11th morning unglory?  Tom Hanks dies in the Twin Towers, and his neurotic and curious and overly animated son (kid Jeopardy! winner! Thomas Horn) becomes even more neurotic and curious and overly animated.  He hungers for answers, and finds his question in the form of a key left behind by his dad with no known lock that it fits into.  This sets him off on (that’s an oxymoron!) a journey of discovery and self-discovery, which will not so sirprizingly, help him come to terms of departed endearment.  Won’t say much more, cause the journey here really IS the meat, and the key is simply an egg MacGuffin.  Horn is both annoying and incredible (hispecially during the scenes where he gets really amped up and we get these fabulous montages of what he’s babbling on about), and gets very solid support from mom Sandra Bullock (who’s kinda absent, in many ways, for 4/5ths of the flick), a mute Max von Sydow (was Chris Plummer not available to steal this role?), Viola Davis and Jeffrey Wright

The key thing to understand here is that while 9/11 looms heavy on the minds of the characters and the viewer, it’s not really a 9/11 movie.  It’s about a boy who loses his beloved father and how much that sucks balls.  His father coulda have died in a car accident, and the movie still woulda packed an emotional punch, and you still woulda wanted to punch the kid in the face… and then hug him 9ever

moral of the story: Daldry didn’t make a movie that made us want to jump out of a window like The Hours did.  YOU REALLY DID IT DALDRY!!!

Trouble in the Message Centre: best supporting answering machine of 2011 goes to the AT&T 1710/20, WHICH IS THE SAME EXACT ONE WE OWNED IN THE LATE 90s!!!!

remembering answering machines???

Verdictgo: very high end Jeepers Worth A Peepers

EL&IC gets close to your heart in selected theaters on X-Mas and everywhere on January 20th

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

pee es – the film has one of the würst posters EVERSSSSSS