Thighs Wide Shut

Haywire
The MMA Experience
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 93 min

Having a tough time trying to figure out what to make of Steven Nerderbergh‘s Haywire.  It’s kinda La Femme Nikitaish, but feels more like a 90s Steven Seagal flick with shades of whatever that Jim Jarmusch movie was.  See what we mean?  But there’s one thing that’s super clear - Gina Carano kicks ass, on screen and in general.  Credit Nerderbergh for plucking her from his TV watching to his movie-making, but maybe he should have left the plucking to someone else.   He’s got this ace in the hole, but doesn’t seem to know what to do with it, cept occasionally let her kick

Apparently what he decided to do was make a half-baked tale of a hired gun (foot?) who gets double crossed and then needs to double back in order to set things doubly straight.  By the time we get to the end and the 5 Ws get ‘revealed’, it seems a little too late to make this simple plot seem complex

But… it really doesn’t matter what transgressed cause we get to watch Carano mix it up all over America and Europe with the likes of Ewan McGregor (why don’t movies juss let him speak in his natural accent?), Michael Fassbender (no wang dangling here), Michael Angarano (hey, it’s that guy!), Channing Tatum (he’s kinda the best wurst actor ever), Michael Douglas (brings instant gravitas to anything), Antonio Banderas (bearded!), Mathieu Kassovitz (also bearded! and always a pleasure to see him) and Bill Paxton (who’s so great that someone had to make a pinball game about him!).  And any movie with that crew crewing it up is bound to be watchable, cause it’s true

moral of the story: this is a good start for Carano’s young movie career, but ultimately it’s kinda like a Girlfriend Experience with zero sex and more kicking

American Glad We Don’t Hate Her: WE KNEW CARANO LOOKED FAMILIAR!!!! 

Verdictgo: low end Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Haywire kicks it at a theater near jews today

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The Eagle
Soar Subject
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

When not in HBO’s Rome we don’t really care what Romans do, cause none of them there Roman TV shows or movies that have come after HBO’s Rome are nearly noble Roman enuff to be fully worth roaming out and about to see.  But if you haven’t seen HBO’s Rome then maybe you can be more open to Romanesque Roman things (Romain lettuce or Polanksi don’t count), but if you haven’t seen HBO’s Rome, well then you’ve missed out on one of the bestestestest shows of the 2010s.  Yadda, yadda, yadda.  Sorry, but we work for HBO’s Rome street team, even though the show ended 4 years ago and there is no street team, and even though the term ‘street team’ is almos more lame than saying yer a part of some team like ‘team Jacob’.  GO TEAM HBO’s ROME!!!

Anywhooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo… welcome to The Eagle, director Kevin Macdonald‘s take on Rosemary Sutcliff’s book The Eagle of the Ninth, which was inspired by the real life doings of (not HBO’s) Rome’s Ninth Spanish Legion.  That’s a lot of 9s and eagles and adaptions!!!  It’s also a pretty decent premise about a 2nd century young Roman dude (dude Channing Tatum, who’s actually a purty dependable leading man) who wants to restore pride in his family’s name after his papa and his solders disappeared in the tribal hinterlands north of Hadrian’s Wall in Great Britain, and lost their treasured GOLDEN EAGLE THINGIE!!!!!  So Roman Channing dude leaves the confines of some forts and Roman hanging out places where wise dudes like Denis O’Hare and Donald Sutherland (who’s voice is almost worth the price of admission to any film he’s in) roam, and takes his newly acquired slave and future BFF (Jamie Bell) on a quest to conquer the unknown questions, and the unknown in general!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So the journey begins, and while the vistas we travel thru are mightily vistastic (Hungary, doing a fine job standing in for the ye Olde Country!), this puppy doesn’t really start cooking until Roman dude and his Billy Elliot slave meet up with a tribe of Native American looking savages covered in mud that are called Seal Peoples or something (led by A Prophet‘s Tahar Rahim), AND THEN the tables are turned and like the Roman dude is now like a slave and the slave Billy Elliot kid is like a Billy Elliot with all the power cause the tribes people hate Romans (no word on what they think of HBO’s Rome), but not the slave cause he’s from the area, but none of this is as awesome as HBO’s Rome.  What does this all have to do with dude’s lost pops and that golden eagle???  Uh, everything!!!!!  And it’s kinda cool, but its only a sliver of cool, cause there was like a ton of sorta nothing & boringness leading up to it, and a sum of sorta nothing & boringness following it, and sometimes when Mark Strong shows up in a movie it can either be a strong thing, but sometimes it can be a weak thing

So, have you ever seen HBO’s Rome???  DO IT!!! Or check yerself out some of Macdonald’s munch munch more munchable non-fictional frictions One Day in September and Touching the Void

Bold MacDonalds: Kevin Macdonald’s brother Andrew has produced a lot of his films + Trainspotting & other Danny Boyle joints, and their second cousin is…. NORM FORKING MACDONALD!!!

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Eagles lands today at a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…