2013 was a pretty weak year for movies, but life outside of the theater trumped life inside of it (I met the love of my life! and it’s a woman!  so I’m not gay!).  anywho, some movies were still better than garbage, and they is…

The Thirsteen Thirteen

1) Room 237

Shining on some crazy diamonds who put more thought into thinking about the Shining than anyone ever needed.  But once you hear these batshit crazy theories, you cannot unhear these batshit crazy theories, and you may juss go batshit crazy yoself

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2) The Wolf of Wall Street

It’s like Goodfellas and Casino‘s younger, hipper brother

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3) Her

Spike Jonze’ love story digitally penetrates!!

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3) Captain Phillips

Taking hostages on screen AND off!!

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4) All Is Lost

A better silent movie than The Artist

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5) The Great Gatsby

A little party never killed nobody

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6) The Hunt

Mads for Mads Mikkelsen

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7) The Stories We Tell

Do Tell

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8) Salinger

Trashy tabloid junk… that I couldn’t get enough of.  But what about the ‘pee in a jar’ rumors???

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9) My Father and The Man In Black

Cash-ed & carry-on, for the wayward son

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10) Spring Breakers

more of a feeling than a movie, and a dirty one at that, but it inspired us to actually do something with video on the internets!! 

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11) Short Term 12

All Brie, no cheese 

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12) Cutie and The Boxer

Starving for attention artists in residence

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13) Our Nixon

Nixon bindess with pleasure! 

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and now for the…

Honor Blackmanable Mentions

42
The Armstrong Lie
Bettie Page Reveals All
Blue Caprice
Blue Jasmine
Dallas Buyers Club
Enough Said
Fill The Void
Frances Ha
Mandela Long Walk To Freedom
Nebraska
The Past
(first 1/3 of) Place Beyond The Pines
The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Rush
Saving Mr Banks
The Source Family
The Spectacular Now

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wanna second opinion?  future Mrs Thigh Master weighs in!  

(poor girl saw more movies in a theater this past year than probably ever!!!)

Best Movies 

5. Short Term 12

4. The Wolf of Wall Street

3. Dallas Buyers Club

2. Captain Phillips

1. Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom

Runner up –

‘Best’ [meaning WURST] Movies  

5. Inside Llewyn Davis

4. The Book Thief

3. Don Jon

2. Upstream Color

1. I’m So Excited (Los amantes pasajeros)

Runner up –

The Sapphires

our annual anal movie awards – The Thighsmans – drops the week of the Oscars 

until then, here’s the bestest films of yesterhere

2012
2011
2010
2009
2008
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
& 2002

Room 237
You Don’t Know Jack… Torrance
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
NR | 102 min

You may not have put much thought into The Shining, besides thinking about how awesome it is, but plenty of others have, way too much so, but in a good way, cause why bother over-analyzing politics or the Kardashians or other pointless garbage, when one can try to decipher why Stanley Kubrick put Calumet Baking Powder + Tang canisters behind Scatman Crothers in the Overlook Hotel’s kitchen closet (see above).  Apparently everything has a reason, and meaning, and the answers are simple – the Calumet canister = a symbol of Native American suffering, and the Tang canister = a nod to Kubrick’s own participation in ‘faking’ the moon landing in a TV studio.  OK, so maybe the answers are complex, and maybe not even answers, more like crackpotted babble, but I never want to stop listening to these leery theories!!!

Rodney Ascher‘s Room 237 focuses in on 5 of these crazy diamond Shiners, and lets them spiel their spelling outs of what they’ve seen after watching The Shining… for the 50th time.  We’re never shown these peeps’ faces, as footage from the actual movie is heavily poured on + random archival stuff (love the footage of the people watching a movie in a mostly empty theater) + some Eyes Wide Shut-edness.  Ascher does the viewer/listener a huge favor – deftly edits these scatterbrained-hot breaths into to something watchable/listenable.  For example, one of his talking heads is Michael Wysmierski, a man who strongly believes that Kubrick did indeed help the US government fake the moon landing, and used The Shining as a way of admitting his guilt and shame (the Tang canister!  Danny with his Apollo 11 sweater!).  You can struggle to sit thru Wysmierski’s 79 minuted Babylon of babble, called The Shining Code 2.0, like we did, or you can let Ascher act as his editor, and to the 4 others, getting to the point of the pointed pointlessness, and in turn, crafting a piece of work that’s possibly even more mesmerisng and scarier than The Shining itself!

We saw Room 237 back in October at the New York Film Festival, appreciated what Ascher attempted to do, but was left a little too dazed and confused by it all.  Well, since then, we’ve seen The Shining again (you will too if you see Room 237), which made us only want to see Room 237 again (which we did), which now makes us want to see The Shining again (which we will), and so on and back and forth and so forth.  It’s an endless maze that leads to nowhere, but we’d rather go there than anywhere else.  It’s up to you if you want to believe.  BELIEVE IT!

Verdictgo: upon further review –  Breast In Show

Overcooked Hotel: the internets is overloaded with Shining madness, but the best caretaker of it all is The Overlook Hotel, where they have such delicious morsels like this photo of the faux Torrances, who actually shot the 2nd unit footage of the VW bug driving up in the mountains

Room 237 has a vacancy in NY & on-demand this Friday, and elsewhere elsewhen

 

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

ready for Room 237????

Room 237
Overlook Overlooked
Official Website | New York Film Festival Page
NR | 102 min

Movies are the best.  If anyone says otherwise, they must not have eyes, or have way too much time to read things called ‘books’.  The best movies make us think, about things and stuff, and the even bester of the best movies make us think so so so dang much that they make us want to investigate each and every frame of the actual movie, to find not only surface meanings, but to find below the surface meanings too, and even below the below the surface meanings too too!

Stanley Kubrick’s entire catalog is worthy of this type of over-investigation, and in turn, his films attract all kinds of peoples searching for meaningless meaning, and in turn, them peoples offer up endless theories and hypotheses on things that are there and things that aren’t, and things that totally aren’t, and the ‘findings’ are always interesting, no matter how far fetched they are.  You could spend days on end on YouTube just looking and listening to these stuffs!!  You really should, cause it’s fun!  And things!

Rodney Ascher was intrigued enough by the endless blather surrounding The Shining, that he collected the crackpot ideas of 5 such theorists and gave them a voice in the form of a loosely formed documentary that will give you a splitting headache, but make you smile at the same time, juss like that dude in The Shining!  We never see these interviewee peoples’ faces, and this pseudo-anonymity makes it even better, more crackpotier!!  Like we said, any of these ideas, no matter how crackpot they is, are interesting.  Sure, The Shining could totally be a metaphor for American Indian genocide or the Holocaust, or even a big big wink wink at Kubrick’s involvement in the fake moon landing, but it could also juss be a Stephen King novel freely adapted by Stanley Kubrick as he saw fit

But The Shining really aint juss a straight forward movie.  You know this, but Room 237 points out this weird stuffs even more – a typewriter changes color, a chair that appears in one scene disappears in the next (same with a Dopey Disney dwarf sticker!!), that impossible window, the carpeting that changes pattern.  And what’s the story with that Bill Watson character?  Why?  WHY???  There are no answers, and that’s OK, but after watching & listening to 100+ minutes of whying why, you’ll fill like you’ve always been the caretaker of the Overlook Hotel too.  Crazy, but worth it.  Check in, and don’t check out

Hope there’s a doc like this made for each and every one of  Stanley’s dandies

Verdictgo: Jeepers Mos Def Worth A Peepers

Room 237 has a vacancy at the NYFF October 4 & 8th, and opens in 2013

oh, yeah, was a taaaaaaaaaad disappointed that Room 237 failed to do one very important thing – try to find meaning behind THAT ONE SHINING MOMENT!!!

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…