Vice

The Long Big
Official Site | Trailers & Mo
R | 132 min

What can I say about Vice?  Bale was amazing as Dick Cheney, but the main reason to see it is to see him in that transforming make-up and hair (or lack thereof), and those glasses.  The rest of the movie?  Bleeding liberal wanking, too much winking, too much trying to be an Oliver Stone movie, but basically being The Big Short of Dick Cheney, but coming up short this time in the presentation department.  And what’s the take away, anyways?  Hard to tell, other then I think the Cheneys are a nice family who have politics and practices that may be different from your own.  So what’s the point?  Don’t ask me, I didn’t make the movie, but sat thru it.  Maybe they should have stopped in the middle, with the faux credits.  That was clever.  But the rest of the movie was too clever for its own good, or it thought it was clever and it wasn’t good.  Again, hard to tell

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badgers

Vice clamps down currently in limited release

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The Big Short
The Rooting of All Evils
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 130 min

Movies about the subprime mortgage crisis are either boring, too wordy, or juss not all that good (or all three).  Luckily Adam McKay‘s cinematic take on Michael Lewis‘ book The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine is none of the above, although it admits to its audience that it is very wordy, but tries its best to put all the money talk into layman’s terms for us by breaking the 4th wall

We all know things didn’t go quite well with our economy in 2007, but did you know that there were some dudes who saw it coming and profited from it, by betting on America failing????  Yes, it’s true, although some names have been changed to protect the profiteers. And so you sit there, and you root for the dudes to make money by America losing!  You know that bubble’s gonna burst, and they do too, and we want them to win, cause what’s a movie if there are no heroes?  The big shots in The Big Short aren’t really heroes, but compared to the villainous big banks and the clueless government officials not seeing what troubles lie ahead, they are our heroes

We don’t need another hero!!!

Yeah, but if these smart money dudes are played by the likes of Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Finn Wittrock, John Magaro, and even a subdued Brad Pitt, who’s gonna root against those dudes???  

Come to think of it – the casting is super genius.  I mean, actor-wise – OBVIOUSLY, but lady-wise – BLAM.  You’re a guy, and you want to see a movie about economics and how you gonna sell that on your lady (or boyfriend or left hand or whatever you finger bang)?  Uh, honey, there’s a movie with Brad and Ryan and Christian in it.  Wanna see it?

So fcuking money, and you DO know it

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

Short comes up Big at a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

American Hustle
Hustle & (Mostly) Blows
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 129 min

American Hustle sorta tells the story of the Abscam FBI sting operation that took place in the late 70s/early 80s. Some of the names (and details) have been changed to protect the imbeciles. Some of it is entertaining, but most of it is like one REALLLLLLLLLLY long run on sentence that keeps on going and going and going.  Director David O Russell and writer Eric Singer swing for Goodfellas-ian heights, but kinda blows it like 2001’s Blow – all 70s scenery, but not much beyond the sniffy, sweaty surface.  But oh, those surfaces…

like…

hey, if you’ve always wanted to see 1/3rd of good-too-shoes Amy Adams‘s boobs (I never wanted to), then this is the boobie/movie for you!

or see Jeremy Renner smile in a movie, for the first time ever!!!

or be depressed watching Bradley Cooper give his all again (this time with curls!!!), and think about how much bullsh!t it was that he didn’t win best actor Oscar last year for the much better Silver Linings Playbook

and then watch his Oscar-winning co-star J-bLaw blah us to death with her blah acting and eyes that bore her and we to tears

or JO to the thought of a mustache ride from Jack Huston!!!

or watch Alessandro Nivola steal the show, in like a grand total of 6 minutes that he’s in the movie

and look, we all LOVE Louis CK and all, but lets face it, he can’t act

THE ARABIC VERSION OF ‘WHITE RABBIT’!!!

but nothing and nobody tops Christian Bale as a combed-over, hairy chested, big gutted Jewish dude, who hides behind those tinted shades OH SOOOOO WELLL.  BALE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Man, CB is such a fcuking great actor.  So much so that I’m starting to think that the Batman movies were a waste of his time.  Anyone can be Batman (I’m sure even Affleck can’t ruin Batman), and since anyone can, we lost the time that Bale coulda been in other movies, like ones were he coulda played some overly intense mother-effer, who’s quietly ready to explode at any given moment.  Bless you Bale.  May you be ready to smolder at any given moment in a zillion movies to come

Verdictgo:  Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Hustle American’t currently at a theater near jews

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…

The Dark Knight Rises
Catty, Batty & The Bane of Its Own Existence
Official Website | Trailers & MoComments 1
PG-13 | 164 min

One thing is for certain, Christopher Nolan did a wonderful job making a different kind of a super hero movie, and now that it’s all come to a conclusion, we can finally say – thank gawd it’s over, lets move on with our lives, and bring on the reboot!!!  If only Kubrick were alive.  COULD YOU IMAGINE A KUBRICK BATMAN?!?!?!?  we’d settle for a Fincher one

Honesty time – we liked Nolan’s Batman films, but we didn’t outright love them.  Sure, the one with Heath Ledger was batsh!t awesome, but remember how it was like 9292828 hours too long?  You LOVED these movies, and that’s fine, but his Batmans didn’t look like the way we like our Batman to look.  In our book, the 60s Batman TV show is the gold standard of how Batman should look.  Tim Burton’s wasn’t perfect, but it looked perfect.  The 90s Animated Series put the dark in DARK Knight, cementing the way the Knight should be darkened, 9ever.  How could it not, it was drawn on BLACK PAPER!!!  Combine those three batty-bestnesses and one could create the ultimate Batman movie.  Don’t, but include a brain, and you get something like Nolan’s Batmans

OK, enuff of that, and z-nuff about the final installment of Nolan’s Batman trilogy – The Dark Knight Rises.  It’s first hour is fantastic.  Its got Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) pissing in mason jars (off screen), and then he meets Catwoman (Anne Hathaway, proving us all wrong), who’s über sexy, and hot, and beautiful, and leathery, and so he decides to stop using his penis for urinating, and start using it for having boners.  Boners are awesome, but then some guy named Bane (Tom Hardy) banes capital and not Conrad Bain, and it’s kinda boring, cause there’s nothing to the character of Bane.  If you disagree, we dare you to name one memorable thing about Bane, besides having a face thing and his talking is stupid and he lives in a sewer and he’s hard and strong like the boners we got looking at Anne Hathaway in a catsuit.  Bane is lame.  Why?  This is why

yep, he’s like ROTJ Anakin Skywalker, cept we have zero sympathy or interest in him, cause he sucks, and you can’t see his nose, and the nose knows

So Bane does a bunch of sh!t that would seem amazing, like blowing up lots of Gotham and creating Marshall law, but it’s about as exhilarating as a full season of Sammo Hung’s Martial Law.  And this crap goes on for ages, and Marion Cotillard is like French and sexy (what a stretch for her), and Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays good cop, while Matthew Modine plays lame cop, and chameleon Gary Oldman doesn’t chameleonize himself in a role that doesn’t require the talents of such a talented actor, and Morgan Freeman doesn’t marry his granddaughter, and Michael Caine is pennywise and pound foolish, and so on and whatever

The final battle is more whatevs than whatevs.gov.net.tumblr.webs, but then at the very very very very very very end, all is well, and it’s back to awesome, but it is not enuff to make up for being stuck in some Timbuktu well-hole that looks like outtakes of the Golden Child and The Name of The Rose, cause it’s boring and sucks, and doesn’t involve Catwoman taking a shower

OK, enuff of that crap, and on to our #2 complaint of Nolan’s Batmans – why do all Bat-related-mobiles look like vehicles created by blindfolded two-year old children???  WHY???????  THEY LOOK REFARTED!!!!  Did you know that Battanks were made out of origami????  WHY?!??!

Burn Notice: we made love to Burn Gorman‘s name back in 2006, and you should today, and always

BURN GORMAN BURN!!!

Verdictgo: this is Nolan.  we expect the best, not Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Dark Knight sorta rises at a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed, and hopefully not Catwoman