Thighs Wide Shut

Frankenweenie
James Whale of a Good Time
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG | 87 min

Tim Burton, creatively, hasn’t had much luck adapting other people’s claims to fame.  Alice was far from a Wonderland.  That Chocolate Factory desperately needed to be condemned.  Planet of the Apes?  More like Planet of the WÃœRST!!  Sure, Dark Shadows wasn’t awful, but it wasn’t as awesome as it could have been neithers!  So what if he adapted his own claim to fame?????  Taking his 1984 live-action short film [WATCH!!!] and turn it into a full-length stop-motion animation feature (basically an adaption of his adaption of Frankenstein)? On paper, it sounds like a sure thing, but so did all those other projects listed above, before they became sure thing disasters!!!!

But movies aren’t made on paper, they are made on film digital files!!!  And sometimes Tim Burton is capable of making things that don’t suck in the 21st century (BIG FISH!!!), and his long-form Frankenweenie far from sucks.  It’s actually his best work since Big Fish (although that doesn’t really say much) and more importantly, reminds us of a time when Burton wasn’t a studio hack, but a unique mastermind of weirdness and wonderment.  Could you ask for anything more?  Yeah, like 20 more real Tim Burton movies instead of 20 more bullsh!t Tim Burton movies

So how does the longer Weenie compare story-wise to the shorter one?  Basically the same (boy loves dog, dog dies, boy brings dog back to life, weirdness AND loveliness ensues), but everything this time around is more gothic-y/Burton-y/stop-motiony AND funner!!!  PLUS the boy, Victor Frankenstein (now voiced by Charlie Tahan), also gets more fleshed out classmates to play with, and THEY ARE ALL AWESOMEESSS!!!!!!  esp Edgar ‘E’ Gore voiced by Atticus Shaffer + one of them has the voice of Winona Ryder!!!!!!!  YES, WINONA AND TIM BACK TOGETHER AGAIN!!!!!!!!  YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! MORE THIS PLEASE!!!! And Catherine O’Hara is back too!!!!  IT’S LIKE A BEETLEJUICEY SEMI NOT REALLY REUNION!!!!!  + Martin Short AND Martin Landau have voices!!!!!

This movie is a FrankenWINNER!  It’s true cause it’s true

Verdictgo: Jeepers Mos Def Worth A Peepers

Frankenweenie IS ALIVE, today at a theater near jews!

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The Other Woman
Woeman
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

Hey look, it’s Natalie Portman, in a movie!!!!  Bet you didn’t see that one coming, now didja???  Don’t worry, she aint gettin busy with Ashton Kutcher in this one, and she is back in the bustle & muscle of NY, but no tutu frutu bidness this time round, but she does gots herself a different bundle of pressures & worries, but watching her go thru them and dealing with em here aint nearly as awesomes or satisfying as watching her masturbating.  Can’t that juss be a requirement of all of her movie roles going forward?  Damn you The Other Woman for having none of that finger sticking goodness!!!

Her pressures & worries here include be: getting over the death of her newborn daughter (is this Rabbit Hole 2?  did anyone actually see Rabbit Hole 1?), not annoying her husband (normal, yet strange to get a grip on actor Scott Cohen), whom she stole away from his controlling first wife (Lisa Kudrow, in full-on fun bitch mode), and trying to win the approval of their offspring and her stepson, a highly intelligent, thighly awkward Jesse Eisenberg in training (Charlie Tahan, who is also the reincarnation of Steve Zahn at age 13, and also real-life brother to fellow actress Daisy Tahan).  Shiz aint certainly easy, and disappointingly enuff, Portman aint eggzactly up to the task here (not to be confused with Steve Tasker).  She’s too white swan, and not enuff gray swan!!!

The movie’s directed by Don Roos (The Opposite of Sex), from a novel with a better name by Ayelet Waldman, and while we don’t expect explosions from a $7 budget, we do expect something a lil more than something that feels like a first feature that has problems trying to sort out all of Portman’s problems that she’s having problems trying to problem solve (maybe that’s one of the reasons that this has been sitting on the shelf for over 2 years!).  Still, can’t really hate on a movie that employs red-headers Lauren Ambrose and Anthony Rapp (we’re not gay, but we fell in love with him when he was a teen in Adventures In Babysitting), and that Charlie Tahan kid is totally a fantastic lil budding actor who one day may be the next Steve Zahn, if he isn’t already Steve Zahn!?!?!??!?!

and apparently we’re not alone in this Tahan-Zahn thought!!

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Woman aint something Otherly today in NY/LA only, but is already avails on-demand!!!

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…