Thighs Wide Shut

The Book Thief
The Time & Energy Thief
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 131 min

There’s some book called The Book Thief by some Australian author named Markus Zusak.  Apparently people read it and were into it, and now it’s a movie.  And the movie, directed by Brian Percival?  Drivel.  Cheesy.  Lame.  Pointless.  Grasping for emotion, but is as emotionless as these people that google say have no emotion.  Zzzzzzzzzzz fest ’41.  Filled with dumb German accents, when they should have just used stupid English accents.  Nothing.  Blah.  Insufferable (that’s how another moviegoer described it to me, as we were both taking a well desrved mid-movie snooze/bathroom break… and no, we weren’t in a bathroom at the time of this exchange of adjectives).  The Book Thief tries so hard to be something Oscar-worthyish, but it’s basically juss a blah pile of wishy-washy-ish-ishy ishness.  But the costumes and sets look pretty decent!!  Who cares??  Yeah, who cares about yet ANOTHER WWII tale, from the view of Germans (BUT THESE ARE GOOD GERMANS!!!), especially when this whole story was made up.  That’s right – pure fiction.  Oh man, oh man.  This movie isn’t terrible, but it’s a terrible waste of time, and of the efforts of those who made it into a movie

I pity poor Geoffrey Rush.  A very gifted actor, forced to be even cheesier here than he was in The King’s Speech.  Instead of teaching a king how to speak clearly, here he’s teaching a girl (a good enuff Sophie Nélisse) how to read.  Oh yeah, the girl likes books, and thieving them, but she can’t read them.  But in The Book Thief, she will steal them, and THEN read them!!!  And then hate it when the Nazis burn them.  DAMN YOU NAZIS!!! And what does reading teach her?  That words help you express things, like stuff!!!  WOWSERS!!!!!  Yeah, and Rush’s wife is Emily Watson, another person I pity.  I pity her cause she has to play a role with about as much character as a rotten carrot on tour.  She yells at the girl, and her husband, and anything that has ears.  Heck, she’d even yell at anything that doesn’t have ears.  If only I didn’t have ears AND eyes.  Makes me also wish that I didn’t have a butt, so I wouldn’t have had to sit thru this dumb dumb movie.  Dear lord.  I need a time machine and somehow get WWII to never happen so we and I and you and everyone we know won’t have to sit thru any more movies like this.  Ughhhhhhh.  Oh, and I pity Ben Schnetzer.  He’s a good lookin dude, playing a Jew on the run who gets Anne Frank hidden by Rush and Watson, and every 30 minutes in the movie, he gets sick, then heals, and then teaches the girl about how words are cool and stuff.  Repeat.  Repeat.  Re-zzzzzzzz.  One person I do not pity is the German boy played by Nico Liersch.  I don’t want to hurt children, but I wanted to punch the crap out of his kid character.  Is that wrong?  I dunno, but this movie is

Verdictgo: Slit Your Eyes Out Repoopulous

STOP Thief, in limited release tomorrow

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

forgot to review this one, ooops…

In A World…
Voice Over-Under
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 93 min

This Lake Bell movie about voice acting was pretty good.  Nothing really fancy, juss lightly funny fluff stuff, and mainly gets by on its smiley cast.  + there aren’t nearly enuff movies with Fred Melamed as a lead.  The end!

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

World voices off, still, in limited release

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

All Is Lost
A Must SEA II
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 106 min

Dude, there’s this movie about Robert Redford as an unamed guy, who’s like sailing in the Indian Ocean or something, by himself, and one day wakes up on his ship, with his cabin flooded, caused by some shipping container ramming into the ship and bustin a hole into it.  Being an awesome old man at sea, the old man goes about trying to fix what he can, and sail on, trying to get somewhere, anywhere, from the middle of nowhere.  Sh!t happens, more sh!t happens, none of it good, and the man does what he can to survive.  This is what J.C. Chandor‘s All Is Lost is all is lost about.  This is what Life of Pi should have been, but wasn’t, cause it had a tiger, and lots of CGI colory stuff and things and spirituality and stuff.  Redford speaks maybe a single page of dialog in the entire movie, but he acts by doing, and doings he does OH SO WELLLLL!!!  All Is Lost is a better silent film than The Artist was.  Damn, son.  Makes me wish that Redford acted MORE (at least outside of his own movies).  And continues my wishes of never wanting to go sailing EVER!!!!   If it were a true story, it would probably be better than Captain Phillips, but it’s not true, and Captain Phillips is the movie of the year (thus far), but Lost is not far behind.  It’s like the 2nd best film that isn’t about Native American/Holocaust/fake moon landing conspiracy theories of The Shining!!  Oh man, be a man, and set sail on this MUST SEE SEA ADVENTURE!!!!!!!!!!!!  

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

Lost is FOUND, currently in limited release

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Bad Grandpa
Prank You Very Much
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 92 min

Love me some Jackass movies.  Never want them to stop, ever (even if the bestest Jackasser of them all is dunn and gone).  If I can’t have a full on Jackass flick, I guess any Jeff Tremaine–Johnny Knoxville–Spike Jonze Jackassy joint is better than no puffing at all.  Well, that trio is back with Bad Grandpa, centered around the (not exactly my favorite) Knoxville as 86-year-old Irving Zisman character.  They loosely string together a bunch of pranks into a barely narrative road movie, complete with an rascally adorable grandson named Billy (for your Best Supporting Actor consideration – no joke - Jackson Nicoll).  Some of these pranks don’t eggzactly work, but others do, and well, and some REALLY DO, and VERY WELLLLLLL!!!

Bad Grandpa is no Jackass.  It’s definitely no Borat / Brüno.  It’s not even as bad-mannered as Bad Santa.  And that’s fine by me, cause Bad Grandpa is Bad Grandpa, and what that is – is a fcuking good time at the theater, although this rather un-cinematic film don’t necessarily need to be seen on the big screen – unless you enjoy the company of (nearly) endless uncomfortable laughter

Wait, do you want details from the movie?  The less known, the better, cause who wants to be in on the prank ahead of time?  Prank you very much

Verdictgo: Jeepers Mos Def Worth A Peepers

Grandpa is mad GOOD today at a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The Fifth Estate 
Julian Fried
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 128 min

When I first saw the above photo of Benedict Cumberbatch as Julian Assange, I was like – woah! it’s Benedict Cumberbatch as Julian Assange!!!  Then I was like, woah, he looks so weird.  And then I was like, woah, Daniel Brühl with a cool beard!  I don’t know who DB’s playing, but he’s such an amazing actor, and to have him in a movie with Cumbersnatch is gonna be like even more woaaaah!!

And so, what of Cumberbatch as Assange, with Brühl (as co-WikiLeaker Daniel Domscheit-Berg, whose book the film is mostly based on) by his side, in movie form?  The Fifth Estate – a marginally convoluted, but never dull take on the rise of WikiLeaks and the faltering of Assange, directed by the guy with the odd resume consisting of everything from the goody Gods & Monsters and Kinsey to the annoying Dreamgirls and last two breaking yawn-y Twilight pics - Bill Condon

Wait, wasn’t there a documentary about WikiLeaks released earlier this year?  Why bother with a movie, when there’s a doc, right?  We gave Alex Gibney‘s lengthy doc - We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks – a spin this past week, thinking it would run info-tainmental laps around the fictionalized version of the same topic, but did not find that to be true.  The film, the doc and the actuality of WikiLeaks all have the same issue – there’s juss too much information at hand and it’s really hard to figure out how to process it, and how it should be presented.  Condon’s fictionalized take may streamline and skimp on the details, but it gives a good enuff look at the pressures involved, in pretty dramatic form.  On the otherhand, Gibney’s doc delves too deep into the material, and feels bloated.  You walk away wanting to plug the leak.  Condon’s flick makes you want to take a leak.  Whatever that means

But for reals, Estate is worth your eyes and ears cause Cumberbatch plays Assange.  The movie could have been about Assange taking a leak for 2 hours, but if Cumberbatch was the one doing the urinating the whole time, it would still be beyond watchable.  And then there’s Brühl.  Dude is so good that we’d watch him take a leak for 19 hours straight.  These are truths, and we just self-leaked them 

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

take the Fifth today at a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…