By Debbie Schlussel

Sorry for being late with my movie reviews, but I wasn’t feeling well on Friday, when I write and usually post them, so I didn’t finish them in time to post before the Jewish Sabbath. I didn’t particularly like any of the new movies at theaters, this weekend.

* “Looper“: While the movie had an interesting premise, the product is nasty and sick. This is science fiction at its worst, filled with killing porn, and then it gives us a sappy, unbelievable “evil children can change so don’t kill ’em” ending that doesn’t make up for everything that came before . . . and actually makes it worse. I found this movie very cold and unfeeling, and at points, it’s even grotesquely disgusting with dismemberment. Only very warped minds would dream some of this up–warped minds that should long ago have been institutionalized. Sadly, instead, they populate Hollywood’s movie biz. No one in this movie is likeable, and I wanted them all to die instantly, so I wouldn’t have to sit through two hours of twisted cinema. But the makers of this film expect you to like and root for a man who murders people in cold blood for a living.

Excuse me if I didn’t fall for the ruse. Excuse me also if I didn’t fall for the usual lame Tinseltown insertion of an overly smart, saccharin sweet kid and wasn’t, like a typical liberal, pulling for him to be given the chance to grow up to become an evil mobster, instead of being snuffed out, as he should have been, like so many HAMAS kid terrorists in development, who are already throwing rocks and Molotov cocktails when they are seven or eight. Figures that the one person (other than the loopers) that should have been removed from this earth (in this movie) isn’t because liberals tell is we need to give them a chance to change, despite all we know about how they will turn out.

The movie begins with a sort of “film noir” vibe to it, but quickly degrades into bloody, violent garbage.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt (whose far-leftist, self-hating Jew In Name Only parents couldn’t just give him his father’s surname and had to be all “progressive” about it) plays a drug-addicted hitman in the desolate future. But he’s not just any kind of hitman. He’s a “looper.” Thirty years into the future from the already-future setting of the movie, mobsters have discovered how to do time travel. They use it to send people they want to murder to be killed thirty years back into the past. The loopers get paid to wait in some secluded area at a set time, watch a hooded live human appear from the future, and immediately shoot that person in the head from close range, then dispose of the body.

Since time travel is illegal in the future, and the mob doesn’t want to leave any evidence around of what they are doing, they also send each looper back in time to be murdered by their younger selves. That’s what’s known as “closing the loop.” When one looper (Paul Dano), lets his future self go, we see the older man losing his body parts as he’s trying to get away. Then, we see why. The mob has taken his present self, put him in surgery, and slowly amputated each limb off of him, and then the future self is murdered. Yup, pleasant movie, right? This is the sick, demented crap that Hollywood is serving up these days.

After this, Gordon-Levitt is faced with killing his future self–Bruce Willis, who has led a life of crime but for whom we are supposed to suddenly feel sorry for because he’s settled down and married an Asian chick in Asia. But Willis is far smarter than his younger self and gets away. The rest of the movie is filled with Gordon-Levitt and the mob trying to find the younger and older/future looper, while those two loopers are trying to find the younger “rainmaker” who has special powers and grows up to become the head of the evil, murderous mob.

One other thing: in the future setting of this movie–as opposed to the 30-years-plus future of the movie–about ten percent of the population has “TK”–telekinesis powers, consisting of only being able to float objects, such as quarters, around. And this is about the only funny, interesting part of the movie. The narrator, Gordon-Levitt, tells us that when the TK power was first discovered, everyone thought that superheroes with superpowers would emerge. But they were quickly disappointed when all these TK people could do was move around quarters to impress girls . . . and couldn’t do much else with it.

Yes, I gave away some stuff in this movie. Sorry for that. But, frankly, I provided you with a badly needed service, in the case of this movie. If you liked “Looper,” you’re a cold hearted liberal. And there’s something wrong with you. If you go see it, despite reading my review, you’re just an idiot. And since there is no shortage of those in America, I predict this movie will be number one at the box office, this weekend, or pretty close to it.

One other thing: uber-leftist Jeff Daniels (in whose charity golf tournaments I was a “celebrity” golfer a few times–but that was before I knew his annoying politics) is ill-cast as a schlubby mob consigliere. Wasn’t hard to see him snuffed out.

FOUR MARXES

Watch the trailer . . .

* “Pitch Perfect“: If you’ve watched TV’s “Glee,” you’ve seen it all before. While the a cappella/human beatbox singing in this movie is cool, the story is lame. And it’s filled with gross, raunchy, bathroom humor. Massive vomiting by one girl, with another girl falling into the pool of vomit and doing a “snow-angel” in the vomit–that’s supposed to be funny? Yuck. The movie is also very predictable.

A girl (Anna Kendrick, who has a pretty good singing voice) is pushed to go to college by her professor dad. She soon finds herself in a women’s a cappella group that is competing nationally in a college competition. The movie focuses on the dynamics of the group, which includes a slut, a gambling-addicted Black lesbian, a stereotypical Asian chick, and a morbidly obese fat chick–the very fat Rebel Wilson, who calls herself, “Fat Amy.” I know: sounds absolutely scintillating, right? And there’s also the competition against the college’s men’s a cappella group, plus the cheesy “commentators” and their silly, raunchy remarks on the various singing groups.

As I said, the singing is cool and entertaining, but it’s not worth sitting through all the other crap that infests here. Fine if you want to waste two hours of your life on singing and gross, unfunny jokes. For everyone else, skip it. Yes, I know, I’m not the target demo here, which is tweens and 20-somethings. Says a lot about the direction in which American is headed: far downward. And to the epitome of blandness.

ONE-AND-A-HALF MARXES

Watch the trailer . . .

* “The Perks of Being a Wallflower“: This snoozer was a complete waste of time. I struggled to stay awake. Plus it’s filled with hipsters and hipster-wannabes. I hate hipsters. Sorry. There’s nothing new in this film. It’s the usual cliches about an offbeat, high school student who is depressed and not popular, but suddenly finds his wings when others befriend him. You’ve seen it a million times before, and I liked it much better when I saw this in the ’80s and it was called, “The Breakfast Club.”

Logan Lerman plays a kid who is mentally unstable, especially after his best friend committed suicide. He’s an introverted freshman who is soon befriended by outgoing hipster seniors in high school. He falls for one of them (Emma Watson), after also briefly dating a psycho girl in the group and being propositioned by the gay guy in the group. Filled with way more drama and angst than I needed. And way more hipsterism. A slow-moving bore. Even during the melodrama, of which there was far too much here.

Oh, the perks of skipping this and saving two hours of your life from waste. Annoying to the max.

TWO MARXES

Watch the trailer . . .

* “Won’t Back Down“: This is another cliche-filled, slow bore of uber-fiction in which all the inner city kids and parents are wise angels who value education, and every problem in public schools is the fault of the unions and bad teachers. In many ways, the lies in this movie remind me of “Waiting for Superman” (read my review), another cinematic fraud in which all inner city (and other) students are angel geniuses who only want to learn and whose parents are excruciatingly dedicated to their kids learning, ‘cuz, hey, that accurately portrays the kids and parents of inner city American culture, right? (As you may know, because I pointed out this fakery in my review of “Waiting for Superman,” Paramount Pictures kicked me off their critics’ screening list, until the New York Times investigated.)

A slutty, single mom (played by the vastly over-rated, homely Maggie Gyllenhaal, the loathsome Marxist who said America “deserved and is to blame for 9/11”) with tattoos all over and a funky wardrobe is very concerned with the education of her dyslexic daughter because, after all, slutty single moms with tramp stamps on their chest are typically the ones who really care about their kids’ education, right? Puh-leeze. Gyllenhaal gets together with a teacher/parent (Viola Davis) to change a Pittsburgh school under a state law that allows them to. They face opposition of unions, administration, and parents, and even though they are dirt poor, they somehow have gazillions to spend on t-shirts, color brochures, etc. Holly Hunter–who looks like an 80-year-old anorexic and is very scary to look at (solid proof that Botox and Restylane injections don’t necessarily make one look youthful)–co-stars in this movie. There is also a cheesy, silly scene of teachers line-dancing at a bar. Oy vey. This is one of those movies billed as “inspired by actual events,” which, per usual, actually has little to do with anything that actually happened in reality.

I hated this movie and it was hard to sit through. It’s not credible, and, yet, it’s so predictable, you don’t need to see it to know the ending. Not that you care. I didn’t. An over-hyped, complete waste of time.

TWO-AND-A-HALF MARXES

Watch the trailer . . .