Thighs Wide Shut

Made In Dagenham
Sew, You Think You Can Dance With The Big Boys?
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

You remember all that hullabaloo about England’s Ford sewing machinists strike of 1968, right?  You don’t???? Well neither did we!!  And now everything has become illuminated thanks to director Nigel Cole and writer William Ivory‘s vibrant, yet basically banal cinematic take on the event and ensuing events in Made In Dagenham!  The key word hidden in the title is ‘ham’, as in this thing is as hammy as a ham radio ham sangwich being eaten by Mama Cass on her death bed!!!!  But lettuce not focus on the ham AND cheesiness of the movie, and instead pay attention to the message that stands tall above it all: at on point in time women weren’t on equal footing with the mens, especially in the workforce, and that just aint right.  No men were up in arms over this and for years and years nothing changed.  Well, if you want to something done, sometimes you gotta take matters into yer own hands, and that is precisely what a bunch of working class sewing dames at the Ford plant in Dagenham done did!  They coulda cared less about the question ‘have you driven a Ford lately?’ and were all about ‘what has Ford done for us lately?’.  You go girls, and boy, did they go!!!!

America has Norma Rae and Karen Silkwood, and they had their movies, and now Britain and Rita O’Grady gots theirs!  Sally Hawkins wears O’Grady’s high heels and carries her big stick, and she aint gonna take no for answer!  Not from her doubting hubby Daniel Mays, nor crusty ole union dude Kenneth Cranham, nor UK Ford dude Rupert Graves, norrr US Ford dude Richard Schiff, who had to trek all the way across the pond to try and quiet them down.  GOOD LUCK WITH TRYING TO SHUSH A WOMANS!!!!  Luckily, O’Grady/Hawkins wasn’t alone in her fight, with a posse of her feisty sewers in tow (including the very feisty, very sexy Jaime Winstone… see below), a helpful rep from within the company (best in smile Bob Hoskins!!), a UK Ford exec’s mod wife (Rosamund Pike), and a certain lady high up in the ranks of gov’mint (Miranda Richardson) all chipping in on the you go-go girly girlnessness!

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT????????  Well, you can probably guess what does cause a) women aren’t paid slave wages anymo, and b) they made a movie all about this shaz, and people like movies about winning and not losing!!!  If only this thang wasn’t so dang cheesy, and lost about 4 of its pointless sidetracked side stories!!!  Still, we were purty much gung ho for this female Gung Ho

Forever Winstoned: she punched us in the heart in the muss see guilty/dirty pleasure Donkey Punch, and she does it every dang time we see her lil saucy self get saucy-saucy-pants!!!  sadly, this hasn’t happened all that much, with such a small filmography, but 1nce bitten, wees 5ever smitten with Jaime ‘daughter of Ray’ Winstone!!!!!  qwik fact… Winstone used to date Alfie Allen, who’s sister is… Lily Allen!!!  That’s one ploughman’s lunch we’d like to plow thru and munch on!!!  and if not, we’d love to juss go bowling with them or something!!!

Verdictgo: low end Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Made is in the shade this Friday in NY & LA only, and elsewhere elsewhen

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Due Date
No Planes, No Trains, Juss Automobiles
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

Calling Due Date a newish Planes, Trains & Automobiles is no original notion, and no, there isn’t a ‘those aren’t two pillows’ moment, but if you’ve seen P, T & A then you’ve seen Due Date, but that aint necessarily a bad thing.  Decent comedies are tuff to come by in this post-ironic age and another P, T & A is eggzactly the thing we need.  Go Todd Phillips!  Did we hactually juss write that about this no frills director (who gives himself a lame cameo here)?  We did, and we’re sticking to that, for now.  How much you’ll like Due Date squarely falls on how much of a Zach Galifianakis being Zach Galifianakis fan you are.  If yer a mild to HUGE fan, then let the fun begin.  If you aint, then you should probably make a date elsewhere, cause this is a Zach attack!!!!!

Robert Downey Jr has the thankless straightman role of being an a$$hole to Galifianakis, but someone has to do it, so why not have it be done by one of the single greatestestestsst actors alive????  The two get into a world of trouble and a lot of fun on the road, for no better reason other than the script demands that they do.  Sure, some of the journey includes a bunch of dumbness and unrealistic side tracking, but it matters so little when the Bearded one/wonder nets more laughter here than he did in The Hangover. Ed Helms was an equal victor in Phillips’ last joint, but Zach shows he can shine when the spotlight is cast solely upon him.  His schtick seems like it will never grow old.  And if it does, then someone else of Greek decent with a beard will juss have to step up and take his place.  Hopefully that will never happen

The moist sirprizing aspect of Due Date is that it’s got plenty of heart to counterbalance the pot jokes and masturbating dog.  It also has Michelle Monaghan, Jamie Foxx, Juliette Lewis, Danny McBride and RZA as helping hands, and yet, no help is necessary when this is one giant sloppy wet Galifianakiss!!!  He was long overdue for a showcase, and so was we.  Win-win!

Shaven For Nobody’s Pleasure:  what ZG looks like w/o a beard

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Date is Due today at a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Fair Game
Plame Duck Hunt
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

Remember that whole Valerie Plame affair?  That was so 2003!!  Well, if you 5got:  the Plamester was that superfly CIA agent who was outted by her own government as payback against her rebel rousing hubby Joe Wilson, who dared to speak out against the Bush administration’s dubious claims of weapons of mass destruction existing in Iraq, which we all know was the pre-text for going to war.  So what is the Doug Liman directed, Butterworth Bros scripted (based on the books by Val & Joe) flick all about?  The above description, but with a slightly deeper look at how it affected their careers, marriage and home-life!!!  Can you imagine?  You want to do nuttin but help yer country, and when you try to help it in the best possible way, the country takes a giant dump on you and then you can’t even help yerself!!!!  AND then you have to take care of your kids by like feeding them and taking them to playgrounds, and STUFF!!!!!!!!!!!!

A brave, but quiet Naomi Watts (originally slated to be Nicole Kidman) and an irated potato-head Sean Penn shine in the juicy lead roles (it’s like a less depressing/nude 21 Grams reunion!). They’re surrounded by bunch of quality actors doing fine in nothingish roles, like Sam Shepard, Bruce McGill, Brooke Smith, Ty Burrell and Noah Emmerich, and everything else is fair enuff to be totally watchable.  Yet, truth be told, we actually prefer the fictionalized version of the same events, from a different angle, done up with more drama and intrigue in 2008’s little seen Nothing But The Truth. In Truth, Kate Beckinsale plays a Judith Millerish character who refuses to divulge her source who was the leaky cauldron in a Plame-like outting (Vera Farmiga), and paid the price for doing so by going to jail.  Both films accomplish the same goal, bringing delicate real-life situations of fighting the power to light in a moist entertaining way, and lets its viewers walk away questioning and distrusting all the President’s men.  You go girls!!!!

Platts!!!: Plame & Watts, instant hottie besties!!

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Fair is Game enuff this Friday in limited release

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The Girl Who Kicked
The Hornet’s Nest
(Luftslottet Som Sprängdes)
I Love You, Lisbeth Cooper
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo was Star Wars.  The Girl Who Played With Fire was The Empire Strikes Back.  And guess what?????  The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest is… Return of The Jedi!!!  And what does that mean?  Star Wars was an out of this world kickoff, Empire is the shiz, and Jedi, while not eggzactly close to being up to snuff with 1 & 2, is still a very satisfying final chapter of the trilogy.  OK, comparing anything to the Star Wars trilogy is purty darn dumb, but this is indeed Sweden’s Star Wars, cept more political, and with better dialog, but with less Sand People, but with more Swedish people!!!  Bless you Stieg Larsson, wherever you may roam!!

Director Daniel Alfredson picks up the action right where he left it with Fire.  [SPOILER ALERT!!!!  Do not continue reading if you haven’t seen any of the flicks, read the books, or are juss being super lazy and waiting for the Fincher film versions!!!] Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) is an absolute physical and emotional mess after trying to kill her ruthless pops, while her half-monster/brother (Micke Spreitz) has escaped to the countryside!!!  So Lissy spends about half the movie on the sidelines, recuperating at a hospital, while the world around her is about to explode.  Her man Thursday, Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) and his Millennium mag crew (with more attention and love given this time around to Lena Endre) are trying to blow open a story about government corruption that’s directly related to L’beth’s life, but of course the powers that be won’t let that happen, so they want to silence them and L’beth, but that aint gonna happen, cause she kicked a hornet’s nest!!!!  Actually she doesn’t kick much in this movie, especially not a hornet’s nest, but she’s gonna be put on trial for attempted murder, and her ex-psychiatrist (Anders Ahlbom) is a total prick and is totally out to get her, and things don’t look so good for her (do they ever???)!!!  Luckily L’beth’s got Blomkvit’s sister as her lawyer (Annika Hallin, finally given something to do), and two women together totally have more power than one!!!!!!  Especially when one rocks a power suit and the other a wicked mohawk!!!

That’s about all we’ll say, as you can probably figure out where it goes from here, but it aint eggzactly the slaying of the Emperor, the tearful death of Darth Vader, and the party to end all parties on Endor, all rolled into one solid ending.  Hactually, the very end ending was kinda like, whatevs dot whatevs.  Don’t know how it is in the book, but it wasn’t necessairly the mos perfect way to close the door, no?  Maybe Stieg had more shiz planned down the road, or maybe he didn’t, but he’s dead, and that sucks.  Wish that wasn’t the case, cause wethinks L’beth hacker pal Plague (Tomas Köhler) is ripe for a spin-off: The Fat Dude Who Ate Swedish Meatballs & Hacked People’s Computers To Deaths!!!

Cue Ballroom: Niklas Hjulström, who plays the prosecuting attorney, is totally on cue, with his own band Cue!!!

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Hornet kicks the trilogy goodbye this Friday in limited release

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Hereafter
Five Feet Underdone
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

What happens when we die?  A question none of us will ever know the answer to… UNTIL IT’S FAR TOO LATE!  Well, grizzled ole Clint Eastwood musta been wrestling with that very quandary himself, after wrestling a whole decade with nuttin but death (Gran Torino being the true masterpiece of the bunch, although that borefest Invictus was death free… although Apartheid did die!).  So welcome to Hereafter, a film that provides no answers either, juss some thoughts and feelings and sensations and fuzzy transmissions, and three separate storylines that will end up sloppily merging together for no better reason other than each story couldn’t possibly be worthwhile on their own!  Wait, how is this the end result of an Eastwood and scriptman Peter Morgan (Frost/Nixon, The Queen, anything well written in the past 5 years) duet??  Had their names been absent in the credits, then Hereafter would be a fine little piece of movie fluff, and it certainly is, but still, shouldn’t this have been a slam dunk of greatness, and not a decently made foul shot???  OK, enuff with the analogies, and enuff of the names on the marquee prejudicenessness, cause the movie is adequate enuff, even if it is, at times, super cheesy, and feels longer than Carlos

So what are the three stories?  First is the plight of opening scene typhoon (AND WHAT A DIGITAL TYPHOON IT IS!) survivor Cécile De France (that chick from that wretched French horror movie with the ending that made no sense).  She a had a mighty close brush with death, even seeing stuff like gray figures in gray clouds!!!, but lived!!!!  She tries to go back to her normal French life of being a TV presenter and banging her bearded producer (Thierry Neuvic),  but that won’t work cause she will never be normal again!!!  So she takes a break from TV and starts writing about her experiences, and in the process losing all the fame and money she had before.  Maybe if she can get a book out, maybe then she can find some peace and piece of mind!!!!!

Meet Matt Damon.  He lives in San Francisco and works on the docks cause he doesn’t want to do his old job, which was to give psychic readings to very very very bereaved peoples. It nearly ruined his life, and a chance at ever having one, and he won’t do it again, no matter how many times his receding-haired brother Jay Mohr (Jay Mohr in an Eastwood movie, WTFFFFF??? although having Richard Kind show up for a scene made up for it) tries to convince him to jump back into the game!  Then, at a cooking course (led by Bobby Baccalieri!!!!) he meets a charming young girl who totally wants to bone him and she is totally Bryce Dallas Howard.  Will he get the girl or have to keep escaping his unwanted gift again and again?????

In London, there are a set of adorable twin kiddies (Frankie McLaren and George McLaren) with a strung out mum, who they take care of more than they are taken care of.  Everything isn’t perfect, but they make it work, that is until one of the twins is hit by a car, and the weaker-willed twin can’t figure out how to carry-on without him!!!!!!  If only he had some answers!!!!  Oh yeah, there’s some side-crap with his mother going to rehab and him living with foster folks, but we’ll pay about as much attention to em as the movie does!!!  Rebarkless, the twinsies part was hactually our mos flavorite out of the three

Soooooo, these 3 stories eventually run into each other and guess what, everyone lives happily ever Hereafter!!!  Ugh!  Well, if you thought that pun was lazy, then you can’t imagine how lazy this movie is, although it’s a lot more watchable, and mos def enjoyable than whatevs that Peter Jackson Lovely Bones thang was, and there’s no bones about it!!!

We’d Never Kick Out The Jam… panoï: in De France’s absecne from the TV studio, Mylène Jampanoï takes her job, and our heart!!!!

Verdictgo: Jeepers Somewhat Worth A Peepers

Hereafter lives somewhat happily ever this Friday only in NY, LA and East Grand Forks, MN(???), and elsewhere elsewhen

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…