Jack Reacher
Preacher Comforts
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 130 min

December is a month of endless Oscar-baiting fare, where the movies are bloated, depressing and hard to watch.   Christopher McQuarrie‘s Jack Reacher is the antidote to all that stuff, and Jack Reacher is nothing without one of the last movie stars standing, standing tall (even though he’s not so tall) - Tom Cruise.  Tom is Jack, a loner, Dottie, a rebel.  Whether you can believe that Tom Cruise could pass as a drifter matters very little, cause basically Jack Reacher is a looser Mission: Impossible, which means it’s more fun, and sirprizingly, and most welcomelyer, funnier!   What more do you need to know?  You don’t, but we’ll go on for a little bit more anywayz

Our movie starts off with a sniper randomly picking off people, but MAYBE THE VICTIMS AREN’T RANDOM?!??!?!  The sniper is caught, but MAYBE THE CAUGHT SNIPER ISN’T THE ACTUAL SNIPER?!?!??!?  The DA’s office (Richard Jenkins and David Oyelowo, who’s like 2nd second coming of Chiwetel Ejiofor) thinks it’s an open and shut case.  The alleged sniper’s lawyer (bouncy Rosamund Pike) thinks so too, but is juss looking for the best possible verdict that isn’t punishable by death.  Enter Jack Reacher, the only man who can possibly save the alleged sniper, and maybe save the day too.  Guess what, he might juss do all of these things, AND go toe to toe with baddie Werner Herzog (I laughed out loud EVERY time he spoke on screen, partly cause it’s ridiculous, but mostly cause casting Werner Herzog as a bad guy is a stroke of genius and awesomeness and amazingnessness and I couldn’t get over that fact!!!).  Robert Duvall pops in towards the end, and his no country for old man old man-ness only adds to the nutty bar fun, cause Robert Duvall characters wouldn’t have it any other way!!!!

But does Tom Cruise run in this movie?  A little, but he drives, cause he’s so driven, and the driving is FCUKING OFF THE BAKER’S RACK!!!!!!  And there’s punching!  And there’s more punching!  And gunfights!  AND LAUGHTER!  And a killer scene where two thugs have a great chance of taking out Cruise, but they keep on taking out each other.  OH REACHER!!!! YOU MAKE US WANT TO GIVE YOU A REACH-A-ROUND!!!!!!! Please people, go see this movie, so it does well and they greenlight 12 more of these, cause that’s what the world needs!!!  REACHER!!!  He should fight Arthur Treacher’s in the sequel, cause they suck!!!  TREACHER!!!!!

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

3 Furious : please, never slow down

Alexia Fast

Jack Reacher reaches out and touches everyone at a theater near jews this Friday

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Killing Them Softly
More Like Talking Them Lotsly
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 97 min

Two foolish hoodlums (that wily scuzzy awesome Australian guy with a lisp - Ben Mendelsohn & that guy who had a mustache in Argo and has some horrible accent thing going on here - Scoot McNairy) go for a quick score and end up with more trouble than the score was worth.  Aint that always the truth?  The lead up to the score, and the score itself are top notch cinematic stuff, AND TENSE!, but the rest that follows in the fall-out is about as interesting as listening to politicians from 2008 talk about the failing economy.  Oh wait, that IS what happens.  We get to hear GW Bush & Obama & McCain blab on and on about the economy in the background, while we try to stay awake listening to Brad Pitt, James Gandolfini and Richard Jenkins blab about mob economy, hookers and killing in the foreground.  Sounds eggciting, dunnit?  It’s not.  Not even seeing Ray Liotta get his a$$ beat down by Vinnie Delpino from Doogie Howser can make up for the unexciting talking that keeps getting talked

No real shock here in the blahdum, since this movie was made by Andrew Dominik, the dude who gave us The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford aka The Great Time Robbery.  We are audiences of action, not words.  Give us action, not words.  And give us more than 8 seconds of Sam Shepard, and give us less than zero seconds of Vincent Curatola, that annoying guy from The Sopranos who is annoying here too cause he’s annoying.  Oh, and there’s one woman in the entire movie and she’s a hooker, and she gets so bored by James Gandolfini talking that she gets to leave the movie.  Wish we could have done that.  Or wish the movie jettisoned Pitt and all the other tough talkers and juss let Ben Mendelsohn shoot drugs and people, and perhaps shoot his mouth off, as he was the only character worth listening too, even if he was always talking shiiiiiiiiiiiit

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Softly aint so hard in limited release

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Let Me In
Swede Child o’ Mine Comes To America
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

In an era of vampire-overload, not much has really stood out as being exemplary, even if yer teeny Twilights and Southern-burnt True Bloods have proved to be popular beyond reasonable belief.  The chilling little 2008 Swedish film Let The Right One In (LÃ¥t Den Rätte Komma In) was a step in a better, more human direction, and yet we barely thirsted for the blood lust put on display (maybe it was that unforgettable yucky crotch shot that left a bad taste in our eyes!).  A darling of the critics and winner of numerous awards, Hollywood took notice too and decided to give the material a spin on our shores, with Cloverfielder Matt Reeves helming the ship.  The time remains in the 80s, the holm has been shifted from Stock to Los Alamos, New Mexico, but everything else pretty is much the same (the snow! the eerie lighting and dull colors!  the killer pre-hipster hipster wardrobes!), although any sorta Swedish fishes have been replaced with Now & Laters (one of our personal flavorite candies), and thankfully no crotch shot.  And so????  Although it’s basically a carbon copy,  Let Me In > Let The Right One In

YES, the remake works the material better than the original Swedish entry!  And no, the answer has nothing to do with reading subtitles vs not!!  So how then? Somehow, someway, the connection between the bullied, timid, lonely mortal Owen (The Road‘s Kodi Smit-McPhee, dang, this kid sure loves dark material!) and his mysterious, distant and equally lonely immortal new neighbor/playmater Abby (Chloe Moretz, who is the very definition of kick-ass, and the true star of Kick-Ass) is juss stronger, in English, and in New Mexico!!  Maybe it’s the magic in Smit-McPhee’s scared wider-eyes??  Or the uncanny charm of Moretz’ crooked smile???  Put those together and that kind of bond is WORD!!!!!!!  Then there’s all the bonus goodness, like Richard Jenkins, who plays her guardian devil, and occasionally dresses up like a ghetto Zodiac, and is involved in an amazingly filmed car crash scene, from the point of the view of the auto’s interior!  Or how about the always dependable Elias Koteas, who’s dressed eggzactly like Kubrick on the set of The Shining?  Can’t hurt!  And how about the main bully (Dylan Minnette)??  Um, bestestestest teen a$$hole cruising for such a bruising since Scut Farkus, that coonskin capped chap in A Christmas Story!!!!  Let yerself into Let Me In, regardless if you saw the original or not!

Birds of Prey: Cara Buono shows her face and hot bod as Faye Miller on Mad Men, but as Owen/Kodi’s absent onscreen mom, they barely even show her face!!!  luckily we do get to look at Sasha Barrese, and even get to see her boob!

Verdictgo: Jeepers Mos Def Worth A Peepers

Let Me In sucks blood but doesn’t suck at all at a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…