X-Men: Days of Future Past
Out With The Old, In With The New Old
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 132 min

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we love us some Patrick Stewart as Professor X and Ian McKellen as Magneto, and sure, sure, sure, we’re VERY happy to have them back – but they’re barely in or register in Bryan Singer‘s third directorial turn in the X-Men franchise - Days of Future Past.  How is that possible?  Cause the new guys playing the old guys - James McAvoy & Michael Fassbender – are so X-cellent that we don’t even really need the old dudes anymore.  OK, OK, so there’s a lot of appeal to having all involved – like in that Star Trek Generations type way – but really, who needs it.  First Class was… first class.  New school rules.  New school should stay in session.  But didn’t you juss forget about Hugh Jackman as Wolverine?  Ooops, I did.  And while Pat Stew and Ian McK were unnecessary, Hugh Jax was totally necessary!  CAUSE WE GOT TO SEE HIS BUTT!!!   But why do these new movies work so well, and sorta make us forget about the old movies?  Cause they don’t take place in the boring present.  Part of it takes places in a weird future, but most of it takes place in the awesome past – and this time – it’s the Tricky Dicky 70s!  

AND RFK STADIUM MAKES THE GREASTESTETESTSTST STADIUM CAMEO IN A MOVIE EVER!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh, and Jennifer Lawrence still sucks.  Oh, and Evan Peters is the fcuking best.  When he gonna play Jack White in a biopic called Jack White & Red All Over?

Verdictgo: Jeepers Mos Def Worth A Peepers

X-Men x-cells at a theater near jews

and oh, these posters are the fcuking baaaaaast!

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The Place Beyond The Pines
Brooding Broods
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 140 min

Derek Cianfrancespainengland knows pain and unhappiness, and he has no issue serving it up thru the face of Ryan Gosling, and we have no problem with any of that cause if you don’t love Gosling’s face you either cannot love or don’t have sight.  If you saw their first heartbreaking pairing – the 4th best film of 2010 – Blue Valentine – you knows whats wees sqwaking bouts, and you should so be inclined to see their second pairing, where Gosling plays a motorcycle stuntman who finds out that Eva Mendes is having his baby, so he decides to like help and stuff, even if he has no money, and Eva doesn’t want his money even if he had some, and she’s living with some black dude anyways, and he has a crying dagger tattoo, so you know this situation aint great, cause who wants your child to be the son of a dude with a crying dagger tattoo??

To spell out how the rest of the movie is spelt is to spelled out too much.  There are basically three movies in this single movie.  The first movie centers on Gosling robbing banks, with an assist from that creepy awesome Australian dude with that lisp - Ben Mendelsohn.  It’s like Drive meets Point Break.  In the second movie, policeman Bradley Cooper pops in and then this thing turns into Copland meets Copland.  In the third movie, time passes and Bradley Cooper has a son (Emory Cohen) who’s like The Wackness and stuff.  I really really really can’t tell you ANYTHING that links all of these mini-movies into the one movie, cause you shouldn’t know anything, but you should know that all three movies are worth watching, even if the culmination of them don’ts necessary add up to a hill of beans/pines, in, around or beyond them

Oh and Dane DeHaan is in this movie and Dane DeHaan is the greatest brooding actor of his generation.  Long may he brood

Oh, and this Mike Patton song is the knees bees

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

–

Trance
Doctor Mindbender
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 101 min

Danny Boyle‘s Trance is like Derek Cianfrancespainengland’s Place Beyond The Pines in that we can’t really tell you all that much about it, cause if we did, it would semi-spoil the mindfudge that Danny Boyle tries to fudge our minds with.  This movie’s kinda Inception-like, but you don’t have to do that much thinking and over-thinking for something that doesn’t really require much thought in the end.  This is minor Boyle, but still, minor Boyle is better than most people’s major stuff.  He’s incapable of making awful movies.  We’re sure A Life Less Ordinary and The Beach will be the greatest movies of all time if we don’t watch them for 50 years (but probably not)

Anywho, James McAvoy plays the Ewan McGregor role, the guy we root for, but is this the guy we should be rooting for????  Or is it Frenchie Vincent Cassel?  Or hypnotist Rosario Dawson, or should we say hypno-tttttttttttttitties, cause you get to see them AND HER BUSH!?????  HOW COULD YOU NOT TRUST A WOMAN WHO SHOWS HER BOOBS and BUSH ON THE SILVER SCREEN????  Maybe we shouldn’t trust any of them.  They all want a stolen piece of art that maybe they stole or didn’t, or did they?  TRANCE TRANCE TRANCE TRANCE!  or something

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Pines & Trance do the dance currently in limited release elsewhere elsewhen

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

X-Men: First Class
When We Were Tweens
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 132 min

There’s all kinda stuff goings on and off in Matthew Vaughn‘s X-Men prequel, but most of it is not much of consequence (wow, mutant kids meet other mutant kids for the first time, AND THEN they get to hone their skillz, in a super slow montage!), since prequels are usually pointlessly redundant ways of taking more of our cash for something we already know well about (wait, Magento was a holocaust survivor???  wait, Professor X used to be able to walk and then one day he couldn’t???). And since this film’s trailer (a damn fine one) puts on display all the juicy actiony content (that Cuban missile crises sh#t was still pretty cool!!), the bits that are worth the price of admission are the wits-y ones.  You know, watching brainy studs Magsy & Proffy X forge a BFFship and then sees it fall apart (we still rooted for it to work, even though we KNEW it wouldn’t)

Watching James McAvoy think and act like Jean-Luc Picard, and Michael Fassbender snarl and snap like an evil Gandolf, while both adding their own flourishes to the characters, was the only thing first class about the film, and that’s almos good enuff for us.  But why employ Kevin Bacon as yer main bad guy?  He was only scary and creepy when he was invisible and groping chicks in that Verhoeven movie.  And don’t know why everyone’s getting all over January Jones‘ case.  She has the very egggzact same amount of acting talent that Academy Award nominee Jennifer Lawrence does —  negative 5.  Lawrence is more blah as the conflicted blue chick than JJ is at looking hot in a movie where she was solely cast to look hot in.  Lawrence is more like X-Men WURST CLASS!!!!!  It’s true, cause we said so.  Oh, and Rose Byrne‘s in this, but she’s not a mutant, so she serves no purpose, but we’re not going to complain about her undercover (but sadly NOT under the covers) lingerie work.  Oh, and Nicholas Hoult was pretty good as Frasier with furry feet, even though he wasn’t wearing a super gay pink angora sweater.  He should get that sweater written into all of his contracts

Fassbestness: see Mikey F sizzle and dazzle in last year’s brilliant Fish Tank OR ELSE!!  but you’re probably a smarty jones and listened to us and already saw this!  if so, pat yerself on the back, and then yer balls

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

X-Men hits the spot enuff, currently at a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The Conspirator
Herstory Always Repeats Itself
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 123 min

A good history lesson is a good history lesson, regardless of what kind of a movie surrounds it.  The Conspirator is one such good history lesson, cause we doubt you (or we) know the inner-workings of the conspiracy behind Lincoln’s assassination, or its aftermath, or the rushed (in?)justice of all parties linked to it, or supposedly linked to it.  What do you know of Mary Surratt?  No, she had nothing to do with A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.  She may have had nothing to do with axing Lincoln either, but regardless, was tried for being a conspirator alongside all the real conspirators.  Is she really guilty or just guilty by association?  So many questions, so few answers, lots of stuffy courtroom drama, and it’s all worth learning about!!  There will be a quiz (show), so sharpen those number 2 pencils

The material is right up righteous director Robert Redford‘s alley, and even if the results may not be the 2nd coming of All The President’s Men, what is?  Cause the truth is out there, even if the government back then couldn’t handle it, or the exact truth was and remains unknown.  The same might be true of today’s prosecution/persecution of terrorists or would be ones!!  OOOOOOOH, WHAT MODERN DAY PARALLELS!!  And obvious ones too!!

So back to Mrs Surratt (an un-make-upped Robin Wright-Penn).  She had two things working in her disfavor:  1, her son was an accused Lincoln assassination plotter, who fled right after it all went down and thus looking even more guilty, and 2, her house served as a meeting place for all the plotters, including John Wilkes Booth (Sacha Baron Cohen lookish-a-like Toby Kebbell).  Besides some questionable testimony by some witnesses (including Stephen Root!!), there’s not much directly linking her in the larger plan, besides being a mother and owning a home.  That aint stopping an itchy Lincoln cabinet (Kevin Kline) and military court (Colm Meaney and Danny Huston) from exacting revenge and deciding her purty much pre-determined fate.  Who would and could defend such a defenseless woman and winless case?

Enter the reluctant Frederick Aiken (a solid James McAvoy), after his mentor Reverdy Johnson (Tom Wilkinson, who can never do no acting wrong) quit on this lose-lose situation (if she’s found guilty, you fail as a lawyer, but if you get her off, you’re seen as a traitor to the Union, and the new and uneasy post-Civil War peace).  Aiken starts off seeing his client juss like everyone else, beyond guilty, but as the ‘case’ unfolds, he starts to find the proceedings unfair, and most importantly, unjust.  He’s now made this lose-lose situation a lose-lose-lose one.  Even his trusted war buddies (James Badge Dale, and a way out of place and time Justin Long) and lady-in-waiting (Alexis Bledel) question his motives and actions, but it’s his case to fight, like it or not!!

If you don’t know the outcome of the case, skip the wikipedia entries and jump right into this open for interpretation history book.  Heck, you might juss learn something, unlike most movies, which make you un-learn things!!

Evan Rachel Wood co-stars as Mary’s daughter, Anna Surratt, and if yer looking to un-hate her from her NSFW awful daughterness doings in Mildred Pierce [do not click that spolierish link, if you ever intend to watch the mini-series], this juss another excuse for you to serve this summons

History Lives On:  you can visit Ford’s Theater (although it barely resembles the theater Lincoln was killed in) or follow Booth’s escape route [pdf] or even eat Chinese food at Mary Surratt’s Boarding House!!!

Verdictgo:  Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Conspirator plots it up today at a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…