Thighs Wide Shut

A Private War
Duty For Reporting
Official Site | Trailers & Mo
R | 106 min

Journalist Marie Colvin went to some hellish places and lived to report about it, until her luck ran out. Matthew Heineman‘s biopic about her – A Private War – starring Rosamund Pike as the fearless writer – shows us where she went and what she did, but we never really get a real sense of her or her work and why it was so vital.  Bombs go boom.  She loses an eye.  She drinks heavily.  She wins awards.  She drinks more.  She’s a mess.  And yes she keeps going into the arms of danger to let the world know about other atrocities.  Bombs continue to go boom and the rest of the cycle in the movie keeps going on and on.  It’s not until the very end where we hear her reporting from the field, in a call into Anderson Cooper on CNN, that you start to appreciate and feel for her, her work, and her struggle.  Everything else that came before that just felt like a struggle to watch 

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

War wages today in limited release

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

A Star Is Born
Duo-Over
Official Site | Trailers & Mo
R | 134 min

He can sing!  She can act!  For the first hour – they owned my heart and soul.  For the next hour and so, not AS much, but they still had a lot of it!  Man, that music was great! (and the trailer still gives me chills!)  But I still prefer the 1937 original cause (I was born in the wrong era – and) it’s the version I saw and loved first!  And it’s about movies!  And oh, that Academy Award scene – I’m still cringing!  But yeah, the new one has Andrew Dice Clay!! AND SAM ELLIOTT’S MUSTACHE!!!!!!!!!!!  Hmmm, you got me there!!!

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Born is conceiving currently at a theater near jews and white nationalists

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The Guilty (Den skyldige)
You Can Call Me Asger
Official Site | Trailers & Mo
R | 85 min

Not a big fan of films that take place in real time OR in one setting, and so I’m not a super big fan of films that take place in real time AND is in one setting, BUT if it works – it works (see Hitchcock’s Rope – now and forever!!), like clockwork – like it does in Gustav Möller‘s debut The Guilty, which races the clock and races your heart!

Asger Holm (Jakob Cedergren) is a good cop done bad, and so he’s off the street beat and forced to work the 112 emergency call line (911 is probably an actual joke in their town).  After taking some not so pressing emergency calls, he gets one that will battle all of his wits, and it takes him and us thru to the end of the film, when he finally gets to hang it up.  You wanna find out what the call is and how it sounds, then you should see the movie that has NO wrong numbers!  

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Guilty is convicting in limited release on Friday 

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Crazy Rich Asians
Can’t Buy Me Love or Entertainment
Official Site | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 121 min

I didn’t read the book Crazy Rich Asians (I’m into non-fiction, not made up malarkey), but I always like a good love story, and the one between Rachel Chu (Constance Wu) and Nick Young (Henry Golding) is a good enuff love story, albeit a pretty typical one (commoner finds a prince, who so happens to be crazy rich, so differences must be overcome – AND THEY DO!)

But the rest of the movie?  Pomp(us) and circumstance that is Baz Luhrmann-Gatsby-esque, but is hardly AS fun, and sadly, zero funny, which is what the movie sorely needed.  Sure, there’s ‘comic relief’, in the form of a raunchy playboy (‘Silicon Valley’s Jimmy O. Yang), Rachel’s BFF (Awkwafina), and her BFF’s dad (Ken Jeong), but nothing comes across as comical or a relief (which is not hard to believe, considering how un-funny Ken Jeong is) 

All we get is cartoony side characters who hardly make a mark, and worse, a yawn-y ‘evil’ mother (Michelle Yeoh) with stares more icy than these icy stairs.  You can’t please her!  And in turn, the movie didn’t really please me 

It’s a hard to believe that Jon M. Chu, who directed both the THIGHly entertaining Step Up 2 The Streets AND Step Up 3D, couldn’t make and shake and bake moves with this material.  It’s not really rich material to begin with (we need more Joy Luck Clubs, and less of this), but I’ve seen more entertaining Hallmark movies with 1/128929292929th the budget

Count me out for the sequel.  I’ll stick with the original crazy rich Asians…

Verdictgo: the lowest Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges possible

Rich Asians are pretty mild at a theater near jews and white nationalists 

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The Wife
Scenes From A Marriage Mirage
Official Site | Trailers & Mo
R | 100 min

In Björn Runge‘s The Wife,  Glenn Close‘s actual daughter (Annie Starke) plays a younger version of her character, and her screen son is played by Max Irons, who is the actual son of her Reversal of Fortune co-star Jeremy Irons.  Got that?  Well, none of that matters, but I just enjoyed all those acting connections, but not as much as I enjoyed the acting clinic going on here between Close’s long-spurned wife to her newly-Nobel Prize winning author husband Jonathan Pryce.  THE PRYCE IS WRONG!!!  AND YET EVERYTHING IS OH SO RIGHT!!!  There’s nothing showy about this movie based on the book by Meg Wolitzer, but let is show you the way – how acting is done – RIGHT!

Verdictgo:  Breast In Show

The Wife gets her due today in limited release

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…