Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
Prequel Post-Cool
Official Site| Trailer & Mo
PG-13 | 134 min

The best thing to ever happen to movies is George Lucas creating Star Wars

The best thing to ever happen to Star Wars is Disney becoming its keeper

Two Disney movies in and the franchise is beyond on the right path back to where it needs to be… and galaxies away from the wrong turns Lucas took with his prequels

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is the prequel the fans have needed and wanted all along.  It’s no stretch to say that it’s better than Episode I thru III combined, times a zillion.  It may be rogue to say so, but I believe Rogue One is a better Star Wars movie than Force Awakens is.  It’s true!  Cause I juss said it!

So why does Rogue One work as a Star Wars movie (more so than the prequels AND Episode VII)?

• Rogue One tries to fit into the Star Wars world, without having to be too bound (and gagged) by it.  There’s no text crawl, no John Williams score, and gasp – there are actual lower-third titles telling us the locations of where we are.  For Star Wars movies to evolve – they need to break from the past, but also celebrate them.  Rogue hits the balance perfectly, and is an excellent kick off right into Episode IV

• There’s not that much Jedi stuff.  Look, we know Star Wars is what it is cause of Skywalkers, and lightsabers and hokey religion things, but after those forced-forcey prequels, and the new Rey & Kylo stuff, we needed a break from it all.  Rogue keeps the Jedi stuff to a minimum, and truly puts the ‘star’s and ‘wars’ back in Star Wars!

• People die – LOTS of them – and we’re not just talking about bad guys.  Gritty is good.  Episode IV was gritty.  Things should try to be more like Episode IV.  Episode VII was cutesy – almost TOO cutesy.  Here’s hoping Episode VIII is grittier!

• It’s OK for Star Wars to be less white.  I know, it seems like overkill trying to OVERLY make your cast a United Colors of Benetton ad, but if your actors are good, then the acting is going to be too.  All the actors cast in the film were great.  EVERYONE (well, I didn’t really like this lady and her role, but it’s probably not her fault cause she didn’t write her own dialog).  Sure, there wasn’t too much time to give the characters actual character, but Ben Mendelsohn, Diego Luna, Mads Mikkelsen, Felicity Jones, Donnie Yen, Riz Ahmed, Jiang Wen, and Forest Whitaker gave it their all, and in turn, I’m all for them!

• Plus, Diego Luna is super hot

• Plus, Ben Mendelsohn is such a good screen a$$hole

• Plus, Mads Mikkelsen is the fcuking best ever!!! (ok, maybe 2nd best ever – juss a tick behind the greatest living actor – Ciarán Hinds)

• Alan Tudyk‘s droid K-2SO is more like A+2SO!!

• Admiral Ackbar Raddus!

• The Death Star never looked better – or more menacing!

• Plain and simple – Rogue One looks AND feels like Star Wars – not some shiny bullsh!t imitation version of it

• Simple and plain – Rogue One was a lot of fcuking fun!

• The nods to the fans & cameos were good, even if most of them were unnecessary, but hey, us fans love being nodded at!  BLUE MILK!

• three words – stormtroopers in paradise!

wait, was there ANYTHING I didn’t like?

yeah – these rebel solider helmets, which don’t look very Star Warsy to me.  but that’s juss me.  maybe you disagree and think this movie was juss ok, or sucked, but maybe you’re juss ok, or suck!

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

Rogue One for all at a theater near jews and white nationalists

Next stand alone Star Wars story I want to see get made???

BOSSK TO THE FUTURE!!!

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Elysium
Trading Spaces
Official Website | Trailers & Mo 
R | 109 min

Dude, how hugo AND boss was Neill Blomkamp‘s District 9???  SO HUGO!   SO BOSS!!  A smart sci-fi flick that felt fresh and new, and not only won over the nerds, but also the normal peoples, the critics and even the Academy Awards (FOUR NOMINATIONS!!).  So how is Neilllliel Blomkampspopop ever gonna follow something like that up?  No District 10, for now, and the man couldn’t make a Halo movie happen, and he even passed on helming Star Trek.  So he made up Elysium, a tale from the year 2154!!  And he’s got Matt Damon AND Jodie Foster on board, AND A SPACE WORLD THAT LOOKS EXACTLY LIKE THOSE CRAZY SEXY COOL NASA’S SPACE COLONY ART THINGS FROM THE 1970S!!!  OMG, HOW IS THIS NOT GOING TO BE THE GREATESTTESTEST MOVIE EVER!???!??!??!

It isn’t/wasn’t

That sucks.  It really does, cause we expected so much, but still, even if Elysium is no District 10, it’s STILL head and shoulders and thighs above a bunch of other sci-fi bad future garbage movies.  OK, so we tend to say that about plenty movies – finding them good when compared to garbage movies – but we really liked Elysium, but just wish it was the be-all and end-all, instead of a solid-ish poor vs rich on land and in space movie that seemed to rush itself to a conclusion that wasn’t all that conclusive

There are two problems

Problem #1 – there’s no real drama, even though it feels like there’s drama going on in the movie.  In the beginning, you meet Matt Damon as an orphaned boy, and his BFF (grown up as Alice Braga), and he pledges to her that one day they will leave earth and go to Elysium – that place orbiting earth where the rich live far from earth’s ills, and can cure any ills with a super awesome curing future machine!  Well guess what, grown up Matt Damon is stuck on earth with a crappy job and doesn’t seem to be going to Elysium anytime soon.  But guess what, actually, you don’t have to guess – he will get to Elysium and he was also get Alice Braga there too, even if they haven’t really spoken in years.  So basically there’s predetermined destiny, and all we have to do is watch it happen.  Standing in his way of reaching his goal are bounty-ish hunter Sharlto Copley (no more Mr Nice Guy, like he was in D9), and bidness man William Fichtner and his 9-head, and Jodie Foster, who’s like a J Edgar Hoover of space, and she has a really dumb accent, and basically she’s worthless to this movie.  Helping him are Diego Luna and Wagner Moura, and the script.  But there’s gotta be more to it besides juss getting to Elysium, right?  Well, there’s pressing matters that serve as motivation, but who cares

Problem #2 – Elysium itself.  THIS PLACE IS AWESOME, and yet we spend so little time there before things get going.  Why is this place so awesome?  We know it looks awesome, but all we know about it is that rich people live there, there’s a machine that cures stuff, and Jodie Foster is lame there.  By the time Damon and whomever touch down on the space colony, we don’t even really care.  He could have landed at space Disney World and we would have been more jazzed (imagine Space Mountain… IN SPACE!!!).  Wish there was a prequel to Elysium where we saw it being built and how the first rich people settled there and did rich space things, like bang hot chicks… IN SPACE!!!

But still, it’s mos def Blomkamp’s world, and we’d rather live or visit or be scared of his world than live or visit or be scared of other garbage filmmaker’s bad bad future worlds

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Elysium is inter-mostly-stellar at a theater near jews tonight!

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Milk
It Does A Body Mind Good
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

If Harvey Milk’s name is new(s) to you, lemme hexplain. No, there’s not enuff time, lemme summarize. Harvey Milk was a 40 year old man, hiding in the closet, while living a corporate life/lie in New York. One day he decides to follow his younger boyfriend to San Francisco, wearing flowers in his hair, where he begins to come clean about who he really is. The two open up a camera shop in SF’s gay friendly Castro area (the film actually shot in the same exact space where the camera shop resided) and Milk starts to make a voice for himself and other gays in the community. Realizing the large potential that this untapped voting bloc could do to shape local politics, as well as help their own cause, Milk decides to run for public office. After a few unsuccessful campaigns, yet raising his profile on each attempt, and with a little help from Mayor George Moscone, Milk eventually won and became a member of SF’s board of supervisors in 1977, making him the very first openly gay man to ever be elected to public office in the United States (fythighs- Elaine Noble of Massachusetts became the first openly gay person to be elected in the States). As his popularity continued to soar, pressure mounted on Milk from both sides, as an advocate for gay rights (hispecially in the vote against California’s wicked Proposition 6, which wanted to ban gays and lesbians from working in public schools) and from those who opposed him and his lifestyle. He started receiving death threats, and even recorded an audio tape explaining what his friends, followers and fellow politicians should do in the advent of his assassination. Sadly, the tape served a purpose as another city supervisor by the name of Dan White murdered both Milk and Mayor Moscone at City Hall, a mere 9 days after the Jonestown mass suicide had already rocked and shocked the Bay area (fythighs 2- M & M’s winning election campaigns were helped in large part by the support of Jim Jones and his Peoples Temple. So much so that Moscone appointed Jones as Chairman of the San Francisco Housing Commission. None of this interesting bidness is mentioned in the film howevers). Milk’s devotees could gotsen mad upset and rioted and stuff over the killings, but as he pleaded and hoped in that tape, they turned ‘that anger and frustration and madness into something positive‘, and for generations to come. Don’ts worry, we didn’t ruin anything for ya cause this shiz is history, and a history mos definitely worth taking note of

Milk the film captures these events, exploring his professional relationships (Victor Garber as Moscone, Emile Hirsch as eventual AIDS quilt founder Cleve Jones, Alison Pill as campaign manager Anne Kronenberg, the list goes on), and to a weaker extent, his personal ones (James Franco as his camera store cohort/companion Scott Smith and Diego Luna as his later troubled lover Jack Lira), but at the center of it all shines Sean Penn in the title role. Although he kinda sounds like he’s acting in I Am Sam 2 at times, Penn, with prosthetic nose and all, completely embodies Milk heart and soul. Josh Brolin continues his non-stop winning streak of bestness by playing the disgruntled and confused assassin, with straight hair that we’d die for. We get to see a lot more of Brolin as White than we thought we would, and his conversations and confrontations with Penn as Milk are among the mos powerful and exceptional scenes in the film. Gus Van Sant does a fine job with the material he’s given (not based off of any book, but by the legwork of Dustin Lance Black), handing in a mainstream biopic that lacks the subtlety that embodied his last four droll and dreamy flicks like Gerry, Elephant, Last Days and Paranoid Park (although doesn’t lack in style at all, as he used DP Harris Savides, who helped to give another SF 70s period piece its good look: ZODIAC!!!!!). He may have hactually done one better had he told the story in a similar vein to those smaller films

If you haven’t (like we thighly suggested ages ago) czeched out the egggggsalad Oscar winning documentary The Times of Harvey Milk, then you should definitely do so above all else. Yes, even if you have to choose between it and giving peepage to Van Sant’s slant on the same song and dance. Not to say that Milk (as we overheard one critic say, Van Sant’s most ‘straight‘ film) isn’t worthy of your eyes, but Harvey Milk’s accomplishments far outweigh want transpired in his personal life and that’s the deal breaker that separates the two in our minds. Guess Van Sant wanted to complete the picture and make a ‘Life AND Times of Harvey Milk‘, and in doing so he demonstrates to us how much of an inspiration Milk was, but we didn’t necessarily feel completely inspired by what we saw, like we did with the doc. Regardless, they both celebrate Milk’s trailblazering legacy and his lasting effect on the fight for gay rights. Milk lit the fire, and although he fell, thankfully others have picked up his torch and carried on the work that is far from finished

Flag Bearer: Milk’s friend and fellow activist Gilbert Baker created the Rainbow Flag that has since become the m
ain symbol of the LGBT community. Yes, you can go ahead and blame Baker for ruining the rainbow for us straight people… unless yer a fan of the University of Hawaii

Crafty Services: the film gave special thanks to Escape From New York Pizza, and we say thanks to the film for introducing us to the bestest pun restaurant mt EVERest

Verdictgo: Jeepers Mos Def Worth A Peepers

Milk opens today, a day before the anniversary of his death, in limited release

enjoy yer turkey and stuffins
and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…