deceased Belgian Hollywood journalist Maria Snoeys-Lagler’s photo album popped up in a thrift store…

endless mo pics

Darkest Hour
Puff, Puff, Pass
Official Site | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 125 min

How do you like your war movies?  Things that go boom?  Or do you prefer endless talking, in a cloud of endless cigar smoke?  If you prefer the latter, then STEP RIGHT UP to Joe Wright‘s Darkest Hour, which can certainly talk the endless talk, but the movie has zero WALK.  OK, that’s not true – there’s a LOT of walking.  If the Winston Churchill of this movie had a Fitbit on his wrist, he would be so proud by the amount of steps taken by the end of the film 

But would the real Churchill be proud of the performance that Gary Oldman attempts?  LARGE SHOES (and not juss cause Winnie’s overweight), and Oldman can always go larger than life (or shoes), but I didn’t buy it at all.  The whole time watching, me like – is that what Winston Churchill was like?  Some dude in terrible make-up, who’s prone to overracting in order to get Gary his 2nd ever Academy Award nomination???? No thanks  

Also, in this war movie – WHERE’S THE WAR?????  What went on in Dunkirk gets a mention, and when it does, me like – man, I wish I could juss watch Dunkirk instead of this!!! 

Lost in all the blubbery make-up (and the really dumb and cheesy secretary character played by Lily James) are two things I really liked – learning what happened to Neville Chamberlain (a scared looking Ronald Pickup) after he stepped aside for Churchill, and seeing what a restrained Ben Mendelsohn looks like.  He plays King George VI, without much of a stammer, but I loved the performance.  A better acting exercise woulda been to scarp this movie and juss remake The King’s Speech, but with Mendelsohn stuttering instead of Colin Firth.  I mean, they made two Capote movies, and both were great!  They could have named the Mendelsohn one – Gawd Save The Qqqqqqqueeen

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badgers

Darkest Hour clocks in today in limited release

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

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Frigid War ‘Thriller’
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 127 min

If you were a casting director and said to we, hey, you, if you could pick yer British acting (male) dream team, who’d be on it?  Well, we’d be like, hey, we’ll take Gary Oldman, Ciarán Hinds, Tom Hardy, Benedict Cumberbatch, Stephen Graham, Simon McBurney and throw in Colin Firth, Toby Jones and John Hurt for really good measure (sorry Mark Strong, but yer kinda in too many movies and are kinda annoying in a majority of them).  And then if an art director was like, hey, you, what modern movies that take place in the 70s should we copy for look and style?  Well, we’d be like, hey, totally rip off the look & stylings of Zodiac, Munich and Carlos.  Oh, you mean 3 of the bestest movies of the past ten years, right?  Yes, we do mean those blam-mazing movies that everyone needs to see like 992929 times (even if we haven’t seen em that many times).  Woaaaaaah, a cast like that AND a look & style like thems, could a movie like that be humanly or even robotically possible?  IT IS!!!  It’s Tomas Alfredson‘s (he made the lesser, original Let The Right One In) version of John le Carré‘s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy!!!!!

OMG, THIS HAS GOT TO BE LIKE THE GREATEST MOVIE EVER, RIGHT?  WRONG!!!!!  It’s got the cast, AND THEY ARE MOST CERTAINLY AWESOME (esp Oldman as Bill Nighy, and Benedict Cumberbatch, who’d blow minds even if he were playing a mute invisible person!!!), and the look, AND IT’S FORKING DULLTASTIC 70s GORGEOUSITY (apparently yellows & browns = the 70s), but what this movie doesn’t have is much to keep you from the beating drums of dull.  BUT HOW COULD IT BE???  Dunno, but this cold war thriller is juss too dang icy to ever warm up to.  NO WAY!!! Yes way.  Sure, it’s nice to see a spy movie that doesn’t need to resort to endless vroomy car chases and big-o bang-o explosions, but guess what, THIS MOVIE REALLY FRICKIN NEEDED SOME CAR CHASES AND EXPLOSIONS!!!!!!  It’s true.  Believe you we, the plot is not all that thick, even though it makes you think it is, and when the denouement show’s its face, it’s more like denoue-meh

moral of the story:  this ‘spy’ movie needs further TAILORING and TINKERING and SOLDIERING!!!!  shiz needed to be defrosted and did not need Tom Hardy with a crappy wig that made him look like Andy Lameberg with a crappy wig.  great actors acting great in a great looking movie does not equal a great movie.  We really want to see if the old Obi-Wan Kenobi TV version is any less tundra-y.  HOPEFULLY IT HAS LIGHTSABERS AND A DUDE WITH A BUTT FOR A MOUTH!!!

Fairbank-Weather Fan: we’ll pass on Svetlana and get svelt-hotta all over cutie Amanda Fairbank-Hynes!!!

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Tinker aint eggzactly Tailor made this Friday in limited release

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

shine on kids, and have a grrrrrrrrrrrr8 tweakend!