Snowden
Villians, Heroes, Ones & Zeroes
Official Site | Trailer & Mo
R | 134 min

Edward Snowden and his story must be told, as many times as possible.  It has been told thru the news, endlessly, and then again, personally, in the vital doc Citizenfour, and now Oliver Stone takes his crack, and you’d think it would be all kinds of crackpot-ted, but it’s actually crackerjack!

In fact – Stone’s Snowden is his best film since 1995’s Nixon!  Woah, that’s a long-ass time ago, and yeah, he’s kinda made nuttin but crap since then (although I thighly recommend his TV show ‘The Untold History of the United States‘), but maybe Ollie needed to circle the wagons before he could find himself again – railing against the system, while telling a good story

When watching Stone’s post Nixon output, I kept saying to myself – these don’t feel or look like Oliver Stone films.  They look like sh!t and they feel like a$$.  Maybe Ollie’s done with the 60s and 70s, but we weren’t done with Ollie’s 60s and 70s, but Snowden shows that in the 10s, and with the 1s and 0s, he can make a modern Oliver Stone movie that works, and one that we can be at peace with… while it’s at war, with the world!

As for the movie? Joseph Gordon-Levitt IS Snowden.  If you’ve seen Citizenfour (and you should), you’ll think that G-Levitt nailed it as Snowden.  And Shailene Woodley as his love interest?  She makes things lovely, and interesting, adding well needed humanizing to Snowden’s story, which I didn’t really expect from Stone, or from a spy story that mainly involves keyboards and monitors!

And the rest of the cast?  Outside of Nicolas Cage‘s oddly restrained role as a burned out g-man, Melissa Leo (nice and quiet), Zachary Quinto (forever intense with those eyebrows), Tom Wilkinson (nice Scottish accent!), Scott Eastwood (so glad we’ll have someone that looks like Clint for decades to come), Timothy Olyphant (always a jerk), Ben Schnetzer (keep an eye on this guy), Keith Stanfield (another one to watch), and Rhys Ifans (always a prick, always amazing) all help to shine a much needed light on the darkness that lies behind keeping our enemies at bay

Plus, most people aint gonna see a documentary, so it’s important that thee fictionalized movie gets it right, cause more people will see it, and this movie gets it right, and more people need to see it!

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

Snowden snowDOES it right, currently 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…

what’s more vomitorious than the thought of Melissa Leo having sex with the homeless Andrew Jackson man with the golden voice?

yep, Melissa Leo having couch-screen-sex with Dwight Yoakam in the Three Vomitoriums of Milky Enchiladas

+ the Internet Movie Firearms Database

+ WhatWasThere.com

+ Creepy Children’s Playgrounds

+ More Calamari, More Problems

& from the WTF music archive - Peter Wyngarde’s ‘Rape’

more on Pete Dubs

Amy Adams

Helena Bonham Carter

Melissa Leo

Hailee Steinfeld

Jacki Weaver

breast of luck ladies!!!

The Fighter
A Champ In The Land of Chumps
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

Boxing movies have reached a point of predictability.  They are all about underdogs rising to the challenge, and either they stay on top or fall, really hard (well, all boxers eventually fall, don’t they?).  There’s Rocky and Raging Bull and then there’s everything else.  David O. Russell‘s take on real life brother boxers Micky Ward and Dickie Eklund is somewhere in between the two, with Micky ultimately becoming a contender, a somebody, while his brother falls from grace and becames a great pretender, and horribly a crack addict (watch this HBO doc on crack featuring him!).  And yet for all his deadly vices and unpredictability, Micky needed Dickie in order to become a king of the ring.  Brothers in arms!!  And in fists!!!

Mark Wahlberg fits into Micky’s glove like a… glove.  The role comes naturally to him, but doesn’t eggzactly show any great reach in this tale of the tape.  Christian Bale has the harder and juicer task playing deadbeat Dickie, and while in full Machinist gaunt mode, Bale’s brilliant performance keeps this pedestrian Beantown throwdown from going down for the count.  For a majority of the ride you’ll want to punch Dickie/Bale in the face, and by the end, you’ll want to hug him more than we wanted to hug the movie The King’s Speech.  But the brothers aint alone in all of this.  They have an over reaching family, with bossy matriarch Melissa Leo (to learn more about her, click here) ruling the roost and her SEVEN daughters (more about 2 of em below), a pushover papa (Jack McGee), and in this corner, a loving trainer (Mickey O’Keefe, in a mini-Ditka stache look).  Throw in a sexualized Amy Adams (we never wanted to see her like that, but boy, the girl’s got curves!) as Micky’s tough love interest and family divider, and you’ve got a lot of fight in The Fighter!  It’s a winner, not by a knock out, but by decision based on this judge’s scorecard!

Sister Act: Micky & Dickie”s sisters put on quite a show, and quite a lot of hairspray.  one of them is played by Conan’s sister!!  but there was one sister in particular that was driving our brain into overdrive.  we was like, who IS that, and how do we know her?  well, her is Jenna Lamia and she played popular Poppy Downes in the very first episode of Strangers With Candy!!!!!

watch!

Verdictgo: mos def Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Fighter fights the good fight this Friday only in NY/LA AND the boys’ hometown of Lowell, Mass!!!

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…