Lucy
Mindless Over Matter
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 90 min

Fcuk Marvel and their brand of summer fun. If I had my pick, I’d let Luc Besson direct all my blockbuster blusters. Feels like 9ever since he directed ANY movie. I actually thought the last movie he directed was The Fifth Element. Apparently he’s directed 9 movies since then, and I saw 3 of them. One of those is his latest – Lucy – and it actually actually actually finally feels like the proper follow-up to Element, and more so to his BLAMMMMMAZIN Leo/The Professional. Sure, over the past decade+ he wrote & produced popcorn fluff like The Transporter & Taken flix, but he didn’t direct them. With Lucy, he directed the living fcuk out of it, and my eyes are thankful for it

While the movie is about the brain, it’s far from cerebral. It isn’t fully dumb, but it’s more dumb fun than it is intellectual property. But you wanna know what? I had more fun watching this summer flick than I did with any superhero and Michael Bay movie of recent memory. FYI – The only Michael Bay movie worth remembering is The Island, another smart dumb fun flick starring ScarJooo. FYI – LUC BESSON IS THE BEST (mostly)!!! PLEASE MAKE MORE WOMEN KICKING ASS STUFF THINGS!!!

Verdictgo: Jeepers MOS DEF Worth A Creepers

Lucy loos at a theater near you

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Now You See Me
Hand of Sleight
Official Website | Trailers & Mo 
PG-13 | 113 min

I love magic.  I love movies. I love movies about magic.   I love movie magic.  I love Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo, Woody Harrelson, Isla Fisher, Mélanie Laurent, Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine & even Dave Franco (when James is unavailable).  Wait, all of these things are in one movie????  HOW IS THIS A REAL MOVIE???  But don’t get too excited cause this thing they’re in was directed by Louis Leterrier, captain of the two Transporter movies + Clash of The Disaster + that 2nd Hulk movie everyone already forgot about.  And guess what, don’t get too excited in general, cause the result – Now You See Me – is an illusion of entertainment.  You’ll be tricked into being entertained, but really, the dupe’s on you, dope!  You somehow sit thru this inane routine, and the only thing that’s really vanishing is your time and money  

Sure, Now You See Me isn’t even on the same planet as the UMmazing Prestige or even the usey illusiony The Illusionist, BUT even though NYSM is totally refarted, it is totally totally watchable dumbitity, cause EISENBERG’S NOT STEALING FACEBOOKS! AND RUFFALO LOOKING UNSHAVED GRUFFALOOO!!!!  AND WOODY HARRELSON KNOCKING WOOD (not really)! AND ISLA IS SOOOOOOOOOOOO FINE!!! AND LAURENT IS ALSO SO FINE AND SO CUTE SPEAKING IN ENGRISH!!! AND MORGAN FREEMAN IS SO OLD AND WISE AND HIS SMILES MELT SCREENS AS HE COLLECTS ANOTHER PAYCHECK!! AND MICHAEL CAINE DOES AN AMAZING MICHAEL CAINE IMPERSONATION!!! AND DAVE FRANCO IS LIKE JAMES FRANCO BUT YOUNGER AND LESS LEARNDEDED!!!!  And in nothing roles, they threw in real actors to play them, like that guy Michael Kelly, and Common, and that other that guy David Warshofsky!!

There’s nothing up any sleeves here, but sometimes it’s OK to pull from the bottom of the deck/dreck cause WE’D WATCH THIS CAST DO ANYTHING, EVEN KNIT SWASTIKA SWEATERS!!!

Verdictgo: high end Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Now You See Me sees you today at a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Shadow Dancer
In The Name of The Undercover Mother
Official Website | Trailers & Mo 
R | 101 min

Collette (Andrea Riseborough)’s got a tough life that’s about to get tougher.  Born of an Irish Republican Army friendly family (which tends to happen when yer lil brother gets mistakenly gun downed by British soldiers), Collette is tasked with blowing up a London Underground station, but the plot fails, she’s caught, and then caught with a tough decision to make – be a single mother headed to jail for 25 years or be an agent MI5 and spy on her own family and friends.  What to do, what to do?????

James Marsh takes a break from making UMcredible docs/two of my favorite films of the past decade (Man On Wire & Project Nim) to make a serviceable little film about The Troubles during in the 90s (Marsh is SO dang good about evoking specific times and places – see also his Red Riding: In the Year of Our Lord 1980).  And just when you thought that they ran out of movie ideas about the IRA, here comes something new that isn’t exactly like all the others flicks that proceeded it. I appreciated that Shadow Dancer focused more on the characters than the movement itself, and the quiet performance by Riseborough shines through because of it. She’s paired with MI5 agent Mac (Clive Owen), who goes above and beyond his duty to protect her, when his agency (headed by Gillian Anderson) may not be as keen to do so  

Can Collette trust Mac?  Can Mac trust Collette?  Can Collette’s IRA brethren trust her?  Can you trust that there’ll be a happy ending?  Of course not, it’s a tale about Northern Ireland, where happy is about as commonplace as sun is in the forecast

Shadow on you tiny dancer!

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Shadow casts its spell in NY & LA & On-Demand tomorrow and elsewhere elsewhen

–

Oblivion
Lost At Earth
Official Website | Trailers & Mo 
PG-13 | 124 min

It’s the future, and it’s bad, cause Earth is barren, and the only people left on it are Tom Cruise and Andrea Riseborough (hello again Ms Thang!).  Their job is to make sure that all the robot probes are in working order, before they call it quits and head back to the mothership hovering above in space, where Melissa Leo‘s annoying voice barks southern-fried orders at em, sugar.  But things get complicated when a spaceship crashes and one of the survivors (Olga Kurylenko) gives Tom Cruise a wicked case of Déjà vu, and a boner.  The truth is ultimately revealed (with help of wise-ole/check cashing Morgan Freeman), and it feels like 1238381288 other bad future movie reveals that you’ve already seen before  

Director Joseph Kosinski is so good at making the future look cool as sh!t, but not so cool when he tries to pair it with a lukewarm script.  Same thing befell his Tron: Legacy, but it’s OK, cause sometimes a bad future looking mighty good is good enuff, and oblivionus to the rest!

Verdictgo: low end Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Oblivion is future-present in 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

Red
Spies Like Rust
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

Look, it’s old famous people shooting guns!!!!  Sweeeeet  …for all of about 10 minutes!!!!!!  A bit more fun than The Expendables, and a lot lot lot less fun than The Losers, Robert Schwentke‘s movie adaptation of the Red comic mini-series is nothing more than an incredible collection of incredible actors sitting around twiddling their thumbs/guns, as the flick goes from zero to one in 111 minutes.  That ‘one’ is a killer lil shoot-out bit toward the beginning of the film [watch it here], and after being treated to that kind of tongue-in-cheek redonkey-donkness, we’re denied anything else equally as yummy the rest of the way.  Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

There’s some sort of plot about a plot against some former CIA and military peoples, like Bruce Willis (he keeps getting more dashing with age, and skinnier too?), Morgan Freeman (somebody free this man from schlock like this!), John Malkovich (the movie’s lone bright spot, but there’s not nearly enuff time dedicated to his character) and Helen Mirren (why isn’t she a ‘Dame’ yet?).  And while the plot and the plot never truly thicken or make sense or amount to something worth caring about, we have to watch them get ‘chased’ around America by Karl Urban (love this guy) and his superior Rebecca Pidgeon (wait, is this a Mamet movie?).  Throw in a civilian love interest for Willis in the cuteness form of Mary-Louise Parker (strutting her smile, which is something she never does on Weeds), some help from the always boisterous Brian Cox and hindrance from the always annoying Richard Dreyfuss, and Red sounds like it should glow bright… red, but it doesn’t, cause it’s more like pink, and therefore needs sum mo cooking before it could be considered well done instead of well dumb, and not dumb in a fun or good way

Getting Graphic: enuff with comics and especially graphic novels getting turned into live-action snoozers.  why not keep the graphic stuffs graphical?  worked like a charm and then some for Persepolis.  might we suggest that Art Spiegelman’s Maus go that route?  Holocaust + comics = Oscar gold, right?

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Red blushes today at a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…