Tag Archives: Sam Shepard

Bale of Hey

Out of the Furnace
Men of Steel Town
Official ‘Website’ | Trailers & Mo
R | 116 min

out of the furnace

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 ‘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  smolder, with beautiful longerish hair, as an older brother’s keeper to misfit troublemaker  (he does his best work when he doesn’t open his mouth), and melt the heart , and go hunting with uncle , and listen to  try to sound like the dude with half a face on Boardwalk Empire, and see who can be more smiley & gruffy & tuffy betweenith  or ??????  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…

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The Asssnoozination of Snoozy Snooze By The Coward Andrew Dominik

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…

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She’s The Manz

ever hear some curious audio clip in a song and wonder where the forksticks that came from, and then one day, BLAM-O, you finally finger out where it came from???

um, yeah, that very dang thing happened when we watched the opening credits to Dennis Hopper’s incredible Out of The Blue (currently playing this week at NY’s Anthology Film Archives) and hearing lil Linda Manz CBing that ‘disco sucks’ and to…

KILL ALL HIPPIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

AND THEN WEES WAS LIKE, OH MY DONG DAWG, THAT’S THE AUDIO CLIP USED IN THE INTRO TO Primal Scream’s ‘Kill All Hippies [d]!!!!!!!!!!

yeah, that was totally awesome times like 3!!!

Linda Manz who?

you know, that totally rad spunky kid (she’s like a more ruffer Tatum O’Neal) who VOed ths sh#t out of Malick’s Days of Heaven??

she was also in Gummo and sadly not all that much else, but still, she’s the Manz!!!

 

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22 Grams of Truth

Fair Game
Plame Duck Hunt
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

Remember that whole Valerie Plame affair?  That was so 2003!!  Well, if you 5got:  the Plamester was that superfly CIA agent who was outted by her own government as payback against her rebel rousing hubby Joe Wilson, who dared to speak out against the Bush administration’s dubious claims of weapons of mass destruction existing in Iraq, which we all know was the pre-text for going to war.  So what is the Doug Liman directed, Butterworth Bros scripted (based on the books by Val & Joe) flick all about?  The above description, but with a slightly deeper look at how it affected their careers, marriage and home-life!!!  Can you imagine?  You want to do nuttin but help yer country, and when you try to help it in the best possible way, the country takes a giant dump on you and then you can’t even help yerself!!!!  AND then you have to take care of your kids by like feeding them and taking them to playgrounds, and STUFF!!!!!!!!!!!!

A brave, but quiet Naomi Watts (originally slated to be Nicole Kidman) and an irated potato-head Sean Penn shine in the juicy lead roles (it’s like a less depressing/nude 21 Grams reunion!). They’re surrounded by bunch of quality actors doing fine in nothingish roles, like Sam Shepard, Bruce McGill, Brooke Smith, Ty Burrell and Noah Emmerich, and everything else is fair enuff to be totally watchable.  Yet, truth be told, we actually prefer the fictionalized version of the same events, from a different angle, done up with more drama and intrigue in 2008’s little seen Nothing But The Truth. In Truth, Kate Beckinsale plays a Judith Millerish character who refuses to divulge her source who was the leaky cauldron in a Plame-like outting (Vera Farmiga), and paid the price for doing so by going to jail.  Both films accomplish the same goal, bringing delicate real-life situations of fighting the power to light in a moist entertaining way, and lets its viewers walk away questioning and distrusting all the President’s men.  You go girls!!!!

Platts!!!: Plame & Watts, instant hottie besties!!

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Fair is Game enuff this Friday in limited release

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

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