Depending on how much you love the genius of Brian Wilson will determine how much you love Love & Mercy.  I LIVE for Brian Wilson, so I loved Love & Mercy.  It’s not perfect, and what is besides Popeyes fried chicken, but Brian Wilson wasn’t perfect either, but his music is, and his hair was too
The film zig zags between two periods of his life…
Period 1 focuses on the time when he made Pet Sounds, and then Smile, and then slowly descended into madness.  This Brian Wilson is emobodied heart and soul by Paul Dano
Paul Dano does Brian Wilson SO well, I wish he would spend the rest of his life being 60s Brian Wilson
Paul Dano as Brian Wilson, can we be friends and just hang out and sing about surfing, but not actually surf??? Â I LOVE YOU!!!
herspecially loved Loved LOVED the parts that showed Brian Dano in the studio making music magic. Â It looked like this, but in Paul Dano’s body
and loved AND feared the bits where Brian started to lose it. Â SH!T WAS TUFF, YO!!!
–
Period 2 captures Brian Wilson in his alive but kinda vegetated state from the 70s/80s on, when he was under the overly watchful eye AND grip of Dr Eugene Landy – who basically turned Brian into his slave.  Dude was horrible
and older, moldier Brian Wilson is now played by John Cusack
when I first saw the trailer for this movie, I was instantly psyched, but I was like, why is John Cusack in this, and why is he the older Brian Wilson? Â Why don’t they juss let Paul Dano be both the youthful AND the worn versions of Brian Wilson???
well, those thoughts were thrown right away after watching Cusack do an EGGGGGGGGGGSALLLENT job of being the 2nd period Brian Wilson. Â Although I wouldn’t want Cusack to live the rest of his life as 70s/80s Brian Wilson, as I do with Dano and the 60s one
Anywho, a woman comes into the picture and complicates things for all – mainly to the dismay of Dr Landy, but for betterment of Brian’s saneness-ness . Â This woman (Melinda Ledbetter) saves his life, and eventually becomes his wife (spoiler!)
Gawd only knows what HE would be without HER!
And she’s played by Elizabeth Banks and Elizabeth Banks is great in this!
moral of the story – Brian Wilson had mighty mighty highs, and mighty mighty mighty lows, and Bill Pohlad‘s movie gives us it all – harmonies and warts, in living color, with much blues Â
Surf’s up kids, catch a wave on this and have FUN, FUN, FUN (even though most of it isn’t fun) til the daddy takes the t-bird away!!!
Verdictgo:Â Breast In Show
Love & Mercy is surf’s up yours, currently in limited release
I don’t think I sat all the way thru Pitch Perfect 1 (I was probably laying/lying, not sitting). The wife said, lets watch it on TV, and she watched it, while I played on my phone and mocked it while 1/2 paying attention. It was a movie you can get the gist of in about 8 seconds – it’s Glee, with girls as the focus, and maybe more laffs, but not really
Well, a funny thing happened on the way to being forced to see #2… after 5 minutes of eye-rolling, my eyes stood in place, and my ears followed, and I sat thru the sequel – ALL OF IT. And you know what, it was not awful! Sure, this thing was far from sexy or original or awesome or deep or anything, but it has more going for it AND was more enjoyable than Sucker Punch is/was, and Sucker Punch had scantily clad women fighting ninjas or something! Â
Pitch Perfect 2‘s plot is razor thin, but it makes up for it in the girth that is Fat Amy/Rebel Wilson, who doesn’t steal the show, cause she IS the show.  Without Fat Rebel Wilson, the movie would be nothing but mousy Anna Kendrick looking for cheese and Brittany Snow rolling her eyes more than I did when I was forced to watch #1, and Elizabeth Banks (who directed this movie!!!) and John Michael Higgins with their not so witty repartee reprising its repetitive rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz’s.  But don’t worry, you get all of Fat Wilson, and the fat butt and fart and poop jokes that come with it!!  + Keegan-Michael Key! and David Cross!  and Snoop Dogg!!  and some Green Bay Packers!!!!!
The Pitch Perfercts are light and fluffy and pitch perfect for viewers young and old, but if it REALLY wanted to razzle dazzle (at least if it wanted to dazzle my razzles), they should go light on the tunes and heavier on the theatrics.  Time to Step-Up evermore yo!
Before we dig not so deep into this ‘review’, here’s a recap of our tweets with our immediate ‘thoughts’ on seeing the ‘movie’ version of Suzanne Collins‘ The Hunger Games
– HUNGER GAMES???? more like BORING LAMES!!!!!!!! 999999real!!
– I love me some bad future movies above all other genres, but that was a not so good bad future movie. the future didn’t look bad enough.  apparently director Gary Ross has never seen a dystopian movie from the 70s
– There’s more excitement contained in 5 minutes of an AMERICAN GLADIATORS episode than there was in 7 hours of HUNGER GAME movieage
-Â HUNGER GAMES the movie hinges on Jennifer Lawrence‘s ability to emote. she can’t and the movie is thus emotionless
-Â HUNGER GAMES really needed some vampire baseball action. Â [also]Â needed more boobs, fried chicken and ZODIAC
– things I liked about HUNGER GAMES – Stanley Tucci & his hair’s performance, Wes Bentley‘s devil beard, and the ending cause it meant movie was over
– I wish Katniss volunteered to watch THE BORING LAMES in my place
-Â I have a bad feeling that parents are going to start naming their kids Katniss and Peeta
– What happens in HUNGER GAMES sequel – Lenny Kravitz opens a salon? Kiefer Sutherland farms berries? Haymitch & Juliette Lewis go on a murder spree?
You are now exiting tweetville, and entering the ‘review’ of the ‘film’
As you can tell, we loved The Hunger Games!!!! NOT!!!! Â But we didn’t hate it (PROMISE!). Â We just don’t understand the appeal and big deal being made about this movie. Â Sure, the books are probably bettererand morerer entertaining, but books are for people who can read, and movies are for people who like their stories wrapped up in 2 hrs so they can see more movies than you can read books. Â Anywho, this is not a good movie. Â It’s not bad, but it’s not good
Battle Royale, Running Man, blah blah blagg, you’ve heard it before, and again and somethen, but it’s true, The Hunger Games are lesser versions of them.  See those.  Don’t bother with HUNGER TAMED.  Why?  Cause there’s nothing to The Hunger Games movie.  There’s no danger (you know the heroine and her hero-ish friend Josh Hutcherson are gonna live), no drama (unless you’re concerned if bland-o Alexander Ludwig will ever act again), or any sense of anything (it’s like the future in one of them AT&T ‘You Will’ commercials with special FX that look like they were created on a Commodore 64.  no offense to those AT&T commercials, but that was the future according to the early 90s and the last time we checked, the early 90s are over)… and yet, it’s still sorta kinda watchable, even though the Games don’t start until 80+ minutes into it, and about 90 minutes needed to be cut from the whole thing
So what is good?  Tucci as that giddy Oompa Loompa looking TV announcer (it’s the only creepy cool thing about the entire movie, in a Richard Dawson Running Man awesome kinda way), Donald Sutherland‘s voice (duh), Elizabeth Banks‘ wardrobe (maybe?), the fact that Woody Harrelson is in it so young audiences will know of him for future movie going experiences (although he does better mentor work in Game Change, which also has morerer cutthroat gaming than anything in the con game that is The Hunger Sames), and Isabelle Fuhrman is in it too, although not nearly enuff.  She’s adorable, and was so evil in that movie where she was evil.  She’s not nearly evil enuff here, then again, nothing here is, and that is why we don’t HUNGER for these GAMES.  A movie about kids killing each other should be tense and scary and sinister, not none of the above!!!!
Oh, you wanted to know the plot?  It’s like a bad future America, although it doesn’t seem so bad.  It makes 1984 look like our actual 1984.  Every year there’s this big thing called The Hunger Games where a boy & a girl from each of the 12 districts are selected and compete in a water-downed Running Man Battle Royale so that people will like watch it on TV and not revolt or something.  So our girl in this game is some girl with a really stoopid name – Katniss, and the boy from her district is VelPeeta or something.  They aren’t exactly BFFs.  In some flashback, she was hungry and he threw her some bread in the mud, while it was raining!  OH MY!!!  BREAD!!!  MUD!!!!  RAINING!!!!  Anywho, the two get all like dolled up by make-up artists and get advice from drunk former winners and they be in the big city where trains are fast and it all looks like a shittier CGIier version of Coruscant, and all the people are kinda dressed like Clockwork Orange‘s singing sophisto lady from the TV station.  But before the games begin, the kids get trained in a zero-energy filled training sequence.  Then VelPeeta admits he has a crush on Katnipp, and then the games begin, and within like 2 minutes of the games, like 1/2 the kids are dead, and then the rest of the movie takes place in a forest, which isn’t very futuristic, and then they play cat and mouse games that aren’t amusing to anyone (involved or watching), and then Kattnappp whistles to birds, and then more kids die and then some don’t, then there’s a cave scene, and whatever, and then the games end.  CAN YOU GUESS WHO SURVIVE(s)!?!?!?!?!?!?
moral of the story – this could have been an awesome movie, but the guy who made Pleasantville not as awesome as it could have been does or DON’Ts it again.  this is the same guy who made Seabiscuit, and can’t remember much about it, cept there was a horse and Peter Parker rode it and they both overcame the odds to win the Hunger Games
even this shitty 80s movie about a bad future was more betterer and more evilier and more watchable than The Hunger Games, even though this movie is unwatchable
…But Seriously: this one still photograph has more bad future TV show deathgame beyond bestness than the entireness of the The Hunger Games movie
Verdictgo: Very Little Merit AND No Stinkin Badges
Games is currently running afoul at a theater near jews
and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…
nope, this photo aint from Hunger Games either. Â it’s from a real movie where kids gun down each other
Our Idiot Brother feels like the work of a first time director, with a screenplay that plays out like a mediocre sitcom pilot.  Well, OIB is director Jesse Peretz‘s third entry (never have seen The Ex or The Château, and we’re guessing we probably don’t need to), and it is indeed David Schisgall and Evgenia Peretz‘s first stab at a motion picture script.  Does this explain why their stellar assembled esmble and R rating are basically laid to waste?  Maybe.  OIB is a harmless lil flick, and it’s hactually purty darn hard to even come up with anything negative to say about it (we did smile a bunch, dangit), but there’s nothing really here to see or hear, outside of folks who are Shirley Knight completists.  If that’s you, then go ahead, bother with Brother
But if yer like we, you expect a little something more than nothing (it’s basically the story of a guy who wants his dog back, but it’s not as boring as Wendy & Snoozy) when you got Elizabeth Banks, Zooey Deschanel and Emily Mortimer (oh gawd, do we love this woman) playing patient sisters to ‘idiot’ brother/minor Lebowski Paul Rudd, no??  And what if you surround these fine folk with the likes of Steve Coogan, Rashida Jones, Hugh Dancy and Adam Scott???  Shouldn’t that be enuff to miss misfiring?  Apparently not.  Everyone here is game, especially a chillaxed Rudd, but everything here is also tame, and kinda lame
A better approach would have been to toss the family aside and partner Rudd up with fellow mellow head T.J. Miller, and have them do crazy stuff, like open a candle store, with zero cares in the world or bidness sense.  That idea actually pops up at the end of the movie (and no, we didn’t ruin a single thing by telling you this), but by then, any buzz you might have had, will surely have subsided.  Pass the peace pipe, and pass on this
Chin Up: Paul Rudd’s first film role was in 1992’s A Question of Ethics, a film he was so appalled by (for religious reasons – he’s Jewish, the flick was Jesus preachy), that he asked to be credited as Kenny Chin. Â can’t find any video of it online, but found this still
Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinking BadgesÂ
Brother is familiar stuff at a theater near jews tomorrow
Elizabeth Banks has the ultimate angel/devil smile, and often employs it to keep us guessing as to which one she is.  In Paul Haggis‘ messy, yet whole heartedly entertaining The Next Three Days (a remake of a 2008 French film of a different name), that patented Banks grin is on full display, and we can’t seem to figure out if she’s a cold blooded murderer of a co-worker or an innocent loving mother and wife.  Well, her hubby Russell Crowe knows she’s incapable of being a monster (or is sheeeeee????), and after exhausting ever possible legal option to get her released, he turns to plan b: BREAK HER OUT!!!!!  He’s no expert on the subject, being a community college prof and all, but luckily the guy (Liam Neeson, for all of 1 scene!) who wrote the book on it is, and so Crowe picks his beautiful mind (get it???) and then stuff happens!!!!!!  Most of this stuff is preposterous, and borders on recockulous, and all the secondary characters (Olivia Wilde, Brian Dennehy!!!!, RZA, Kevin Corrigan and Trudie Styler???) have about as much character as an extra with no lines, but still, once this thing gets going, it gets going, and it is so mad tense to like the tense degree!!  And it all takes place in Pittsburgh!!!!!  PITTSBURGH!!!!
Holy Moses!!!!: Moran Atias is Hebrew for ‘please touch my kosher wiener now‘
12. Jun, 2015 
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