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…

This Is 40
The Family That Annoys Together Stays Together
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 134 min

We get it Judd Apatow – you love your annoying wife and your mildly charming kids and their kinks and quirks and complaints and you think Paul Rudd is a handsome version of you and you need to put all of this into a movie.  Well, a funny thing happened on the way to me automatically hating this movie – I DIDN’T.  In fact, I really really liked it.  It was funny.  It’s actually the best thing Judd Apatow has done since The Critic + The Ben Stiller Show.  I dreaded seeing this movie, but now I could sit thru it 40 more times.  Mind you, it’s not thighly creative, and his kids are awful at acting, and his wife is really really really annoying, but Paul Rudd is probably the most lovable actor alive, and the movie is funny.  And that’s that!  Oh, yeah, nice try trying to revive Graham Parker’s career.  Stop trying to be the Quentin Tarantino of unappreciated music acts.  But oh, yeah, Hollywürst, please put Albert Brooks in EVERYTHING going forward.  He’s not the most lovable actor alive, but who doesn’t love Albert Brooks?  And, oh yeah, Hollywürst, take Chris O’Dowd out of EVERYTHING going forward.  Thanks!

Verdictgo: Jeepers MOS DEF Worth A Peepers

This Is 40 is better than 39 at theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Django Unchained
Funslinger
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 165 min

For 9 hours of Quentin Tarantino‘s 9.75 houred Django Unchained, Quentin Tarantino hands in the most un-Quentin Tarantino Quentin Tarantino movie Quentin Tarantino has ever made.  That is a MOST excellent thing.  Then, in that last 45 minutes, Quentin Tarantino fills his most un-Quentin Tarantino Quentin Tarantino movie with the typical Quentin Tarantino shoot-em up garbage you’d expect Quentin Tarantino to stuff into a Quentin Tarantino movie – guns are fired & blood splatters, endlessly AND ENDLESSLY AND EVEN MORE ENDLESSLLLLLLLLLY.  You know it’s all too much too muchedness when Quentin Tarantino himself appears in the last 45 minutes as a bad actor with an awful Australian accent.  Quentin Tarantino, why did you have to add so much so muchedness at the end of your un-Quentin Tarantino Quentin Tarantino movie that was going so well???  WHY?????

Yeah, but that first 77 hours is so much unchained fun and amusement that it almost makes up for the endless end!  ALMOST!!!!  For them 1278772 beginning hours, you basically get to hear Christoph Waltz not be a Nazi and talk 9ever and help Jamie Foxx find his way, and hopefully his wife (Kerry Washington).  They criss-cross the country, hunting bounties, and then land in Candyland, a plantation owned by a super angry Leonardo DiCaprio, who does the same accent he does in every movie that sorta requires an accent, which is kinda the würst accent (it’s like he’s trying tooooo hard), and yet, DiCaprio is kinda the best in this movie.  Actually, everyone’s the best.  Even Samuel L Jackson as an evil Uncle Ben house slave is the best!  And Samuel L hasn’t been the best in ages.  And the cameos, oh the cameos, from the kid from Breaking Away to the original Django to Luke Duke to The Tamblyns to Tom Savini to… a zillion others… although we weren’t really impressed by Don Johnson’s Col Sanders and his blathering blatherskites

But that last 45 minutes.  Bang, bang, bang, bang.  Blood. Splatter. Pause.  Repeat.  Zzzzz.  We get it Quentin Tarantino, but we didn’t have to have it.  Did we?

Btw, this movie is not as shocking as people are making it out to be/wanting it to be, when it comes to that racy race stuff.  The N word is the N word.  Big wup.  I don’t say that word and don’t care to hear it, but I don’t get shocked by hearing it 231812831238 times.  If you want to be shocked about how fcuked up racy race shiz is/was then rent Spike Lee’s Bamboozled

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Chain Her Up, In A Sexual Way, Not A Racist Way!!!:

Nichole Galicia

apparently her old name was Nichole Robinson

Django Unchained is UNCHAINED at a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Killing Them Softly
More Like Talking Them Lotsly
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 97 min

Two foolish hoodlums (that wily scuzzy awesome Australian guy with a lisp - Ben Mendelsohn & that guy who had a mustache in Argo and has some horrible accent thing going on here - Scoot McNairy) go for a quick score and end up with more trouble than the score was worth.  Aint that always the truth?  The lead up to the score, and the score itself are top notch cinematic stuff, AND TENSE!, but the rest that follows in the fall-out is about as interesting as listening to politicians from 2008 talk about the failing economy.  Oh wait, that IS what happens.  We get to hear GW Bush & Obama & McCain blab on and on about the economy in the background, while we try to stay awake listening to Brad Pitt, James Gandolfini and Richard Jenkins blab about mob economy, hookers and killing in the foreground.  Sounds eggciting, dunnit?  It’s not.  Not even seeing Ray Liotta get his a$$ beat down by Vinnie Delpino from Doogie Howser can make up for the unexciting talking that keeps getting talked

No real shock here in the blahdum, since this movie was made by Andrew Dominik, the dude who gave us The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford aka The Great Time Robbery.  We are audiences of action, not words.  Give us action, not words.  And give us more than 8 seconds of Sam Shepard, and give us less than zero seconds of Vincent Curatola, that annoying guy from The Sopranos who is annoying here too cause he’s annoying.  Oh, and there’s one woman in the entire movie and she’s a hooker, and she gets so bored by James Gandolfini talking that she gets to leave the movie.  Wish we could have done that.  Or wish the movie jettisoned Pitt and all the other tough talkers and juss let Ben Mendelsohn shoot drugs and people, and perhaps shoot his mouth off, as he was the only character worth listening too, even if he was always talking shiiiiiiiiiiiit

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Softly aint so hard in limited release

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The Life of Pi
Not About My Thanksgiving
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG | 127 min

So there’s this Yann Martel book that I used to see people reading, and judging a book by its cover, I had zero idea of what it was about, besides maybe being about a cartoon tiger in a boat.  GUESS WHAT??????  That’s what Life of Pi is about!!!  But instead of a cartoon tiger, he’s an awesome CGI tiger and his name is Richard Parker!  Why is he named that?  Who cares!  He’s a tiger, IN A BOAT!!!!!  Why is he in a boat?  Cause the guy named Pi (Suraj Sharma in flasbacks, and the always delightful Irrfan Khan as the adult version)’s dad had a zoo, but then he couldn’t afford the zoo, so he said forget about the zoo, and him and his family were all about going to Canada via a ship, but sh!t got fcuked up and Pi ended up in a small boat with the tiger!!!!

Ang Lee‘s movie is like Lifeboat meets Castaway meets The Perfect Storm meets Into The Wild meets Tony The Tiger meets Slumdog Millionaire meets any other movie about oceans, survival, tigers or Indian people.  Yep, it’s basically Gandhi meets Titanic meets Two Brothers.  Yep.  And while the movie tries to be all profound and stuff, it doesn’t really succeed, but man, that fcuking tiger, in that fcuking boat was so cool.  Oh, and Rafe Spall is in this movie, and his job is to basically listen to a story and make dumb faces, and that’s eggzactly what he does

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Pi r squares at a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…