Something In The Air
(Après mai)
It’s No Carlos
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
Unrated | 122 min

It’s the late 60s/early 70s, in France, and students everywhere are pissed about stuff, and they want to do something about it.  News to me, since I’m an American, and we didn’t cover late 60s/early 70s French student unrest in any of our history classes, and I took a lot of history classes cause I was a History minor in college (which got me nowhere… but here?).  So these French students did anything in their power to make their voices be heard – they like firebombed buildings and things, they wrote pamphlets and manifestos on hot topics and stuff, and they did drugs and each other.  Sounds juss like lates 60s/early 70s America, but in France!!!!!!!!!

The GREAT director Olivier Assayas (Carlos, Carlos, Carlos) came of age during that turbulent time, and he autobiographically channels his experiences into his atmospheric Something In The Air.  Newcomer (with a Strokes hairdo) Clément Métayer plays Olivier by way of the character Gilles – the son of a TV writer/director (just like Assayas and his pops is was), who has nothing better to do than fight the power with pal Felix Armand (also with a Strokes hairdo), and get into the pants of Carole Combes & Lola Créton.  But maybe there’s more to life than juss being a shaggy-haired revolutionary shagging chicks????  Gilles is an artist first, and a radical second, but the movie starts with the order reversed.  Not much actually transpires over the film’s two hours, but stuff is happening all around, but that’s not really our concern.  Our concern is for Gilles, but there’s nothing really to ever be concerned about, cause he will shed his anger and become an artist!  Oh, there’s something in the air indeedy-do, and yes, it’s worth inhaling, even if it’s not exactly clear what that something is!

Verdictgo: low-end Jeepers Worth A Peepers

The Air is Something in limited release today, and on-demand May 9th

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Climate Changez
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 130 min

The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a Pakistani named Changez (Riz Ahmed), a man who once went to America chasing the Yankee dollar, and is now a professor in his country of origin, possibly teaching questionable curriculum… depending on who’s doing the questioning (and no, we are not reffering to teaching how to do some sports betting or playing poker).  The man questioning him in the present is American journalist Liev Schreiber, who’s looking for a kidnapped American professor from the same university where Changez teaches.  Changez may not have the answer, but he begins to tell his story, and spank Allah he does, cause the past he presents ends up being much more intriguing than anything happening in the present.  Changez regales Schreiber and his Elmer’s Glue cow face with a tale about his once promising life in America, where he was taken under the wing of Wall Streeter Kiefer Sutherland (IN GLASSES!!!) and quickly moved up the finical ladder, and quickly down Kate Hudson’s pants (she’s actually pretty decent in the movie! not decent as in keeping her pants on, but decent as in she’s not being awful in some awful rom-com that’s awful).  Things go swimmingly, and then 9/11 happens, and then the world is with America, and then America turns hateful, and turn on people like Changez, who personally had zero to do with any of it besides the color of his skin and his religion and his nationality.  Enough becomes enough, and Changez demands change, for himself and his home country, so he heads home, where stuff happens, and then we’re caught up to the point where Schreiber and his Elmer’s Glue cow face come walking in to question this and that and why Changez has a beard and is angry at America

Mira Nair‘s take on Mohsin Hamid’s novel is certainly heavy handed, but should a movie about post-9/11 Muslim identity in Western and Eastern societies be dealt with with a light hand?  No, it shouldn’t.  Sure, Nair is a bit out of her depth in a 1/3 of her movie – where guns and hard talk raise tensions in the present, but the other 2/3rds told in flashback are right on point and carry the message across.  Her film practically sinks or swims on Riz Ahmed’s piercingly serious eyes, and she was wise to make him the navigator, as he floats above the given script and keeps us tuned into that bigger picture (he similarly sizzled and dazzled in Michael Winterbottom’s Trishna, and one would assume for him to do the same in many more films to come).  So what’s the bigger picture?  There are more sides to the post-9/11 world than just the one that America wants the world to take.  This is the fundamental point.  It’s more mental than fun

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

The Fundamentalist luctantly opens in limited release today, and on-demand April 30th

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

42
Artful Dodgers
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 128 min

42 – the story of Jackie Robinson(‘s first year in the majors) – is exactly like Trouble With The Curve, except 42 is really dang good and Curve is really stupid, and instead of an crotchety old man played by Clint Eastwood, we get an old man who sounds like he’s crotchety played by Harrison Ford, and instead of Justin Timberlake being the würstest wannabe play by play announcer of balls thyme we have John C McGinley eloquently barbing like Red Barber, and instead of Amy Adams looking not hot, cause she’s kinda plain like plain yogurt on a plane, we get Nicole Beharie who makes us want to bat our eyes and bunt our balls, and instead of a bunch of dumb actors playing baseball players, we have Chadwick Boseman totally chad wicking the bose as Jackie Robinson, MAN!!!!  Wait, what am I even talking about?  STEAL SECOND!

42 could have been a cornball flick about a dude who did important stuff, like being the first black dude to play major league baseball in a sea of nuttin but whitey fords, but it wasn’t corny at all (ok, so there was a LIL corny-corny-ness-ness, like when a lil black boy in the grandstands says cheesy corny corny cheesy things, but it’s OK, cause he meant well, and the kid didn’t write the corncheeseball dialog).  And even if Harrison Ford hams it up, wrapped in bacon, it’s his (Branch Rickey) story as well, cause he had the balls to put a black dude with white dudes (like Pee Wee Herman Reeses Pieces Lucas Black!), cause he wanted to win, and he knew that white dudes suck at sports.   It’s true  (apologies to white people).  So Rickey/Ford & Robinson/Boseman take chances on each other, and make giant leaps, and the audience is so hooked, lined, and sinker-balled, that we never want them to land, and when they do, they’re safe at home, cause they scored, and we cheered!!  Go home team!!  Especially the home team with the one black dude and 38832 crappy white players!!

The movie doesn’t take risks, but it still rewards.  Nice work Brian Helgeland, although I’m sure somewhere Spike Lee wants to bat your face in cause yer a white guy doing a movie about Jackie Robinson, but Jackie Robinson is not juss a black story, it’s a black AND white AND read all over story.  It’s a story of us, the US-A.  We’re not perfect, but sports is where we level our playing field.  Are there any other sports puns I can make?  Christopher Meloni balks and talks, and Alan Tudyk clears the benches, by doing the mos thankless acting job in the movie – being really really realy racist to Jackie while he was trying to hit a baseball.  Well, Tudyk’s character and racism STRUCK OUT, cause black, yellow, red and white dudes all play baseball together, and it’s awesome, especially when the Ws are mad curlied

Verdictgo: Jeepers Mos Worth A Peepers

42  adds up at a theater near jews this Friday 

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The Place Beyond The Pines
Brooding Broods
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 140 min

Derek Cianfrancespainengland knows pain and unhappiness, and he has no issue serving it up thru the face of Ryan Gosling, and we have no problem with any of that cause if you don’t love Gosling’s face you either cannot love or don’t have sight.  If you saw their first heartbreaking pairing – the 4th best film of 2010 – Blue Valentine – you knows whats wees sqwaking bouts, and you should so be inclined to see their second pairing, where Gosling plays a motorcycle stuntman who finds out that Eva Mendes is having his baby, so he decides to like help and stuff, even if he has no money, and Eva doesn’t want his money even if he had some, and she’s living with some black dude anyways, and he has a crying dagger tattoo, so you know this situation aint great, cause who wants your child to be the son of a dude with a crying dagger tattoo??

To spell out how the rest of the movie is spelt is to spelled out too much.  There are basically three movies in this single movie.  The first movie centers on Gosling robbing banks, with an assist from that creepy awesome Australian dude with that lisp - Ben Mendelsohn.  It’s like Drive meets Point Break.  In the second movie, policeman Bradley Cooper pops in and then this thing turns into Copland meets Copland.  In the third movie, time passes and Bradley Cooper has a son (Emory Cohen) who’s like The Wackness and stuff.  I really really really can’t tell you ANYTHING that links all of these mini-movies into the one movie, cause you shouldn’t know anything, but you should know that all three movies are worth watching, even if the culmination of them don’ts necessary add up to a hill of beans/pines, in, around or beyond them

Oh and Dane DeHaan is in this movie and Dane DeHaan is the greatest brooding actor of his generation.  Long may he brood

Oh, and this Mike Patton song is the knees bees

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

–

Trance
Doctor Mindbender
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 101 min

Danny Boyle‘s Trance is like Derek Cianfrancespainengland’s Place Beyond The Pines in that we can’t really tell you all that much about it, cause if we did, it would semi-spoil the mindfudge that Danny Boyle tries to fudge our minds with.  This movie’s kinda Inception-like, but you don’t have to do that much thinking and over-thinking for something that doesn’t really require much thought in the end.  This is minor Boyle, but still, minor Boyle is better than most people’s major stuff.  He’s incapable of making awful movies.  We’re sure A Life Less Ordinary and The Beach will be the greatest movies of all time if we don’t watch them for 50 years (but probably not)

Anywho, James McAvoy plays the Ewan McGregor role, the guy we root for, but is this the guy we should be rooting for????  Or is it Frenchie Vincent Cassel?  Or hypnotist Rosario Dawson, or should we say hypno-tttttttttttttitties, cause you get to see them AND HER BUSH!?????  HOW COULD YOU NOT TRUST A WOMAN WHO SHOWS HER BOOBS and BUSH ON THE SILVER SCREEN????  Maybe we shouldn’t trust any of them.  They all want a stolen piece of art that maybe they stole or didn’t, or did they?  TRANCE TRANCE TRANCE TRANCE!  or something

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Pines & Trance do the dance currently in limited release elsewhere elsewhen

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Side Effects
Moody Mara
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 106 min

Steven Nerderbergh‘s oeuvre is filled with so many hits AND misses, although it seems like there’s more misses than hits, and yet everyone seems to love all of his movies regardless of what we think.  For every killah Bubble or Informant there’s those Ocean 911 garbages or flix that seem like they’d be super dope but really are snooze-fest drecks, like The Whore Experiment or Che Parts 1 thru 289932919392 

Apparently Nerdy’s retiring.  Yeah, I believe that about as much as I believe that REM’s done for good, but if Side Effects is his ‘swan song’, well, then, I don’t know what it really says as a departing shot, but as a movie independent of Nerderbergh’s ‘closure’, Side Effects is a thriller that simply thrills.  There are surprises around some corners, and the corners that aren’t surprising are corners still worth turning!

So what exactly happens?  WON’T TELL, but Rooney Mara gets moody and confusing (probably cause she’s not hot people!!!), and Jude Law tries to help her, but is he hurting her or himself????  WHAT WHAT WHAT!!?!??!?!  And like Channing Tatum is Marion Crane, KINDA, sorta, MAYBE, ok NO TELLING, but he doesn’t overly Tatum his Channings in this one.  And then Catherine Zeta-Jones pops in and out and keeps pushing…

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Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Side Effects affects at a theater near jews this Friday

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…