Enough Said 
The Straight Divorcees 
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 93 min

What if Seinfeld‘s Elaine dated Tony Soprano?  WHAT IF??????????   Keep asking, cause you won’t find that IF in Nicole Holofcener‘s beautifully charming Enough Said, but you kinda find out what would happen if a super-flighty, super-fun Julia Louis-Dreyfus and super adorable, super sweet (FINALLY!) James Gandolfini found love after love with each other 

If the thought of this union isn’t already making your own heart go pitter-patter, than you probably don’t have a heart, or didn’t watch TV in the 90s or 00s.  We hactually teared up a bit towards the end of the film, and even did when we saw the trailer for it the other night.  The trailer tears were induced by the thought of Gandolfini no longer being with us (this is his second to last film ever), but the movie’s tears were truly earned by his and JL-D’s excellent and honest performances  

Naturally JL-D was gonna win our heart, but Gandolfini?  Forever a movie’s heavy heavy, Holofcener lets him go soft, and there’s not nearly gonna be enough said about how great he was in doing so.  This opened our eyes to a new Gandolfini, but this new train aint going nowhere cause there’s no more train to ride.  BOOO TO THE END OF GANDOLFINI SOFT TRAINS.  Oh well, if this is all we have, then this is a delight to cherish over and over  

Co-starring on the fun is Holofcener player Catherine Keener + Toni Collette (allowed to talk Australian) + that guy Ben Falcone + wise beyond their years youngins Tracey Fairaway, Eve Hewson (Bono’s daughter!) and…

Even Better Than The Real ScarJo: 

Tavi Gevinson

Verdictgo:  Jeepers MOS DEF Worth A Peepers

say Enough today in limited release

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Peace The Forks Out

to

Tony Soprano

&

Mermaid In The Shade

+

Hamburger Hamlet Helper

2nder of Second City

(that loopy paino teacher) Mrs Carples on The Wonder Years [+ about her role]

&

McDowell’s?????

Not Fade Away
Don’t Put Another Quarter In The Jukebox Baby
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 112 min

Remember how the last few seasons of The Sopranos seemed to be nothing but the characters sitting at home watching TV and us watching what they were watching on TV? Well, Sopranos creator David Chase does the same thing in his feature film debut, Not Fade Away, but replaces the mob with a 60s crappy cover band struggling with struggling

This is suppose to be a love letter to a time and a place and its music, and it looks and sounds nice and all, but it’s more like a plain ole letter that has a bunch of pointless paragraphs.  But the movie isn’t a letter, it’s a movie, and it’s actually not much of anything, except a collection of scenes – scenes that fall into one of 3 categories –

1) band practice

2) the dorkable lead singer tries to score with Bella Heathcote (who WOULDN’T try that??)

3) the dorkable lead singer gets into a verbal spat with his dad James Gandolfini

The movie is basically like 1), then 2), then 3) then 1) then more 1) then maybe like 3) followed by two 2)s and then more 1) cause it makes perfect, but 3) thinks yer life is a giant waste so he needs to yell at you again, but maybe I can get some sympathy with 2), and when that’s done, it’s time to 1) 1) 1), cause if they don’t, HOW ARE THEY GOING TO MAKE IT?  

Well, in the very end, it doesn’t matter, cause the movie has an ending that’s ever worser than the ending to The Sopranos.  The lead singer’s sister appears out of nowhere on the streets of LA and says like America invented the bomb and rock n roll, but only one will last forever and then she dances or something and the movie ends.  Dreadful ending.  And all that came before it is whatever on rye why?  

The whole movie felt like a not as awesome and very much too longer version of the Wonder Years episode where Kevin helped form the high school band The Electric Shoes (the characters in NFA and WY were both inspired to start a band after seeing The Beatles on Ed Sullivan).  I’m deadly serious here folks –  NFA was EXACTLY like that Wonder Years episode, except it’s got more years, and has much less wonder

but in the end, NFA was not SO BAD, cause the movie was filled with 64% of BELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLA AND HER EYESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Note Fade Away is currently playing in limited release

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

LONG LIVE THE ELECTRIC SHOES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Zero Dark Thirty
OBL STK MIA DOA A-OK GO USA!
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 157 min

Dude, do you remember how intense and thrilling and awesome Kathryn Bigelow & Mark Boal‘s Hurt Locker is was????  Well guess what, Biges and Boals did one better on collab numero 2, basically telling Homeland and Argo to argofuckthemselves.  Zero Dark Thirty is like watching one of those Bourne movies, cept what’s going on REALLY HAPPENED and what we’re being shown seems really really fcuking real.  FO REALS!!! not faux reels!!!

So what is Zero Dark Thirty?  It’s 2 minus 2, the opposite of day + 30.  BAM!  C’mon, you know what this is about – it’s a summarization of failing for ages to find Osama bin Laden, and then maybe finding him, and then deciding whether that maybe is close enuff to a certainty as humanly possible, before pulling the final trigger… on pulling the trigger on OBL.  It’s frustrating, and more frustrating, and even more frustrating, but then it gets exciting and even more exciting, and even more more exciting, and then we’re back in the Bigelow-Boal thrill ride where yer heart’s a pounding and yer palms are a sweating, even though you know that OBL aint living past the end credits.  SPOILER ALERT – OBL dies.  But how did we get to that point?  THAT’S WHAT THIS MOVIE IS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  And it’s incredible!!!!!!!!!!!!

So when Bigs was making this movie, she was probably like, I want to have someone awesome like Jodie Foster to play my Clarice Starling darling character, so she got herself Jessica Chastain.  PERFECT!  Then she was like, we need a bunch of random actors that are good, but not huge names, to help Chasty out, and she was like welcome aboard Kyle Chandler, Jennifer Ehle, Harold Perrineau, Jeremy Strong, Mark Strong, Mark Duplass & [my boy] Édgar Ramírez.  Then she was like, I need a beardy guy that’s super good at yelling and torture and then they got Jason Clarke and he did that.  Then she was like, I need two beardos to play beardo Navy Seals, so she got that guy from Parks & Rec who’s character isn’t as funny as everyone thinks it is and fake Owen Lars from the BS Star Wars poo-quels.  But guess what, the casting didn’t end there.  She was like, oh, I need some fat guy that could pass for Leon Panetta, and so BAM, put on some 80s Japanese bidness-man eyeglasses James Gandolfini!  And she threw in Stephen Dillane for good measure.  That’s eggzatcly how the casting was done, as told to me by a magic elf fairy from Rivendale

What more do you need to know?  GO AMERICA!  NEVER QUIT!  Always keep your eye on the ball.  Kick a guy in the balls, but only IF it will lead to info that will get us to Osama bin Laden.  And if we get that info, lets lose it for like 7 years, but since we don’t give up, we find it again and follow up and finally hang our ‘mission accomplished’ banners.  Way to go us/US.  Red, White & BEST!!!!

Spank dog Morgan Spurlock never found OBL, cause otherwise this movie wouldn’t eggsist

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

Zero Hot Tens: Jessica Collins is in the movie for all of 8 seconds, but she hypnothighsed me with her eyes

and then I remembered where she had done it before – the sorta-brilliant but cancelled Rubicon

Zero Dark Thirty sees the light in NY & LA on Wednesday and elsewhere on January 11

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…