Thighs Wide Shut

Soul Kitchen
You Can’t Make An Omelette Without Breaking
A Few Eggs & Including a Few Clichés
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

We’ve only seen one Fatih Akin film before (2007’s The Edge of Heaven), but even from juss that one experience it’s purty easy to tell that the dude’s good with depicting clashing cultures in a dramatic melting pot/plot.  Par for his usual course are Turkish strangers in a strange Germany land, as is his background, so it’s slightly par for the course with his latest, Soul Kitchen, cept it’s Greeks in Germany, and the high drama is muted, while the ‘comedy’ is turned to 11, sorta. Quite the shift in tones, but maybe this lightweight trifle into a slapdash kitchen is juss what home cookin Akin needed.  Is a Germanic tinged Waiting… what we needed?  Maybe?

This material is obviously well below his skills, and yet it’s hard to resist the contrived contrivances contrived in the soulful Soul Kitchen.  We got a Greekie (Adam Bousdoukos, co-writer of the script as well) whose lady friend (Pheline Roggan) juss took off for the Orient, and left him to mind his floundering restaurant, troublemaker brother (Run Lola Run’s Moritz Bleibtreu) and resident crabby hermit (Demir Gökgöl).  Don’t ask about the hermit, juss enjoy him and his beard.  And when the Greekster hires a wild chef (Birol Ãœnel), the steaks get higher and the steaks get tastier and things start to look up, before they go down, sideways and 9 other ways from Tuesday, all while a former classmate of his (Wotan Wilke Möhring) tries to buy the restaurant and land under his feet.  Plus any movie where Udo Kier appears as a stuck up jerk has got to be sorta worth seeing, right? Maybe?

Face Time: although Wotan Wilke Möhring is a solidly awesomes name, it can’t touch Hendrik von Bültzingslöwen‘s and his face

expect both to walk away as Fenella Woolgar Bestest Names Award winners by the year’s end

Verdictgo: low end Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Kitchen cooks up some familiar good smells this Friday in NY and On Demand on August 25th

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

too many reviews to do this week, so lettuce do sum short & sweet ones…

The Girl Who Played With Fire
(Flickan Som Lekte Med Elden)
We Wouldn’t Care If She Were Playing With Poop,
Cause We’d Show Up To Watch Her Play With Anything!!!
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

Lisbeth Salander(/Noomi Rapace) is our hem flicka.  That’s ‘homegirl’ loosely translated into Swedish, which is the kind of fish you’ll be sleeping with if you don’t agree or don’t know what we’re talking bout.  If you saw (or read) The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo then yer a wise person already on the right track.  If you haven’t, stop reading this, start that and then come back and start reading this again.  Actually skip reading this and go see the mighty slow-burned AND high-octaned (AT THE SAME TIME!!) sequel The Girl Who Played With Fire.  It is The Empire Strikes Back to Tattoo‘s Star Wars, for many reasons, and most that we can’t talk about, but none involve lightsabers!!!!  Plus this new one has this dude named Micke Spreitz playing the Swedish version of Jaws from James Bond and he will not be stopped!!!  And even though Michael Nyqvist make us want to take Nyquil-vist, we still love him and root for him and wants him to bag the mosquitoed-chested Lisbeth over and over!!  Cause if he has a chance with her, we all do!!!  Can’t wait for the Hornet’s Nest!!!!!!!!  And then (no, not Zardoz) to see Fincher’s take on Stieg Larsson‘s matz!!!!

A Girl‘s Girl:  she may not have a fire… crotch, but our girl plays with the radiant Yasmine Garbi!!!

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

Jean-Michel Basquiat:
The Radiant Child
Not The SAMO© Shiz
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

Jean-Michel Basquiat was an artist.  You may have heard of him.  Julian Schnabel made his brilliant directorial debut with a film about him called… Basquiat.  Mike D’s wife and Billy Madison director Tamra Davis was friends with Jean-Michel.  She filmed him doing his art and once interviewed him talking about stuff AND things.  This interview sat untouched in her drawer for 20 years.  Cut to NOW!  And now she felt the time was right to make a doc about him, including this footage.  This doc is purty straightforward, but purty darn good, especially if you want to see what Fab Five Freddy looks like without sunglasses!!!! Basquait should not be confused with Bisquik

The SAMO© Shiz: photos of J-MB(and crew)’s early work in graffiti

Verdictgo:  Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Winter’s Bone
Haters of the Lost Ozarks
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

Jennifer Lawrence looks like Renee Smellweger, but acts betters than her in Debra Granik‘s Winter’s Bone, which is like Frozen River, but not as good cause most of Winter’s Bone is Lawrence asking the same question (‘you seen my daddy?‘ 32928282 times, and sometimes to the same person twice).  And sorta speaking of Melissa Leo, she could have played every role in Winter’s Bone, cept for maybe John Hawkes‘sszz, but maybe the two should mate and have children that could play white trash peoples to a T for future genetations!

Mad Fly: remember Ozark Air Lines? probably not, unless you ever flew to or outta the STL

Verdictgo: low end Jeepers Worth A Peepers

all three flicks are currently playing in limited release

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Inception
Dream On/Off
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

No doubt about it, Christopher Nolan‘s Inception is one slick movie… as long as you don’t spend too much time quarter-pondering about what the frig is goings on, cause there’s a lot, but none of it really matters.  It thinks it’s purty darn smart and crafty, and others seem to think so too (#3 of all time? c’mon Eileen!), but we don’t think so.  It’s like Stutter Island (way to diversify Leo!), where you can enjoy and follow the logic for about an hour and then when the layers keep getting piled on and then peeled back, with rules being changed and added as it sees fit, it becomes a lil too big for its own britches.  Sure, the ending was a tad nifty, if a tad too predictable, but like this past season of Lost, once the switch is flipped and the flip is switched at the end, basically everything that came before it becomes null in void.  So why would Inception require a second viewing if (SPOILER) it’s all a dream, within 1934244 dreams divided by 13 subconscious unconscious confucius confusing fests?????!!!!

The real big mystery is why movies keep letting Ken Watanabe and Marion Cotillard speak in English instead of in their native tongues.  Can’t ever understand a friggin word they sayings, and in a movie where words are all we have to explain the visuals, it’s kinda of important to have the dialog be clear and crisp.  Speaking of the visuals, the folding buildings and the crumbling buildings on the beach and the Joseph Gordon-Levitt walks on walls stuff was totally wicked dope radness, but there wasn’t enuff of it!  We wants movies with 4 hours of non-stop building folding!!!  And the dreams weren’t nearly dreamy enuff, even though Tom Hardy is crazy dreamy (we didn’t love Bronson, but we loved him as Bronson)!  And another thought about Watanabe, if he’s the dude trying take down rival Cillian Murphy‘s energy company, then why would he be directly involved in the mission, cause Murphy would probably know what he looks like!!  But we guess it doesn’t matter when he has protective gunmen in his dreams, and why?  juss BECAUSE!!!  And instead of anyone being pinched to wake up from a dream, apparently you have to be gunned down cause only then will you be able to pass thru the 18th dream state of dreamrulesland!!! Whooopie!

Still, Inception is fun, and original, and it employed Tom Berenger AND Lukas Haas and anytime Haas is in the haaaas, so will we!

No Regrets: apparently the use of Edith Piaf’s ‘Non, je ne regrette rien’ had nothing to do with the casting of Cotillard, who won an Oscar for playing Rice Piaf, AND apparently one piece of the soundtrack is hactually a slowed down version of that song!

Verdictgo: it’s not a thinker like everyone thinks it is, nor is it a stinker so Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Inception is extracting itself currently at a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Life During Wartime
Heart & Solondz
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

Did you survive Todd Solondz‘ 1998 cringe-fest Happiness?  For a whole decade, we didn’t.  In fact, it had left us so bothersome and icky that we despised it, left it for dead, and got really angry anytime someone brought it up … until our more cynical selves took a recent second look at it.  And the new verdict?  A complete 180 degree turn.  Yes, Happiness is still a boat-load of flinch and wince inducing uncomfortably numbness, but it may juss be the mos beautiful and heartfelt unkind film of our modern cinema age.  How did we get it so wrong?  Had our tastes and refinement not yet reach its fruition during the end of the 20th century?  Did we need to move to NY and became post-9/11 jaded for us to view awfulness in a new light?  These questions are too heavy for a website like this.  Anywho…

With Life During Wartime, Solondz goes back to the same bleak well, one that we never thought in 1000229 zillion billion years was worth revisiting… until we experienced his latest monster creation.   And oh baby, it’s alive!!!!!!!!!!!  Although somehow not as gut-wrenching and damaging to the psyche!!!  It’s probably a good idea that you see Happiness first (but if have and loathe it beyond all belief, maybe you should stop there), as the characters all carry over into Wartime, despite an entirely new set of actors playing em.  Yep, Solondzzzies does it again, playing with our minds and his creations, although not as crazily as he did with Palindromes, where 10 actors of various ages, creeds and sexes all played the same role.  We hated that flick too, but maybe we need to give in a second chance as well.  Sarah Palindrome will never get a second chance with us, ever.  May have sumting to do with her ruining our real last names!!!!  Plus she blows, COCK!!

(qwik note about the paragraph below: we’ll mention the new actor playing each role, as well as the actor who played it originally)

So what is life like during wartime for the Jordan and Maplewood clans?  Joy (Shirley Henderson, a more moaning myrtle version of Jane Adams) is still a wreck and wrecking everyone’s life who she comes into contact with.  Even the ghost of Andy (a literally and figuratively haunting Paul Reubens, standing in admirably for Jon Lovitz‘ sad sack) won’t let her forget about his suicide.  She’s having problems with the problematic Allen (Michael K. Williams, a tad less creepy than Philip Seymour Hoffman), so she heads to California to visit with her blah-blahed actress sis Helen (Ally Sheedy, gettin shallow juss like Lara Flynn Boyle) and to Florida to visit with her ‘cheerier’ sister Trish (Allison Janney, in perhaps her juicest role to date, although we do miss the homely cutie-pie-ness of Cynthia Stevenson), who’s trying to start life anew after hubby Bill (our mos flavorite actor goings Ciarán Hinds, who strips away all the humor Dylan Baker dished out) got sent away for being a pedophile.  Well, his time’s been served and he’s out in the world looking for a bit o forgive and forget-ness (+ a one night stand, with a deliriously delicious Charlotte Rampling), as is the case with all parties involved (eggcept no one else is trying to bag Charlotte Rampling’s character).  Trish has found a nice Jewish man (Michael Lerner, who’s about as Jewish as it gets + the papa of the thighlariously red-scared son played by Rich Pecci) that she hopes will instill some manlihood into her soon to be a man (in the Bar Mitzvah sense) son Timmy (Dylan Riley Snyder, the new Justin Elvin).  Timmy’s the heart & Solodnz of the picture (with the Billy character alls growns up and off to college, Chris Marquette, subbing for Rufus Read).  His pain is real, and his endless questions are realerer.  You juss wanna hug the kid, but that’s probably not the best idea for a confused child of a pederast father.  Will they ever find happiness?  Is it even possible?  Regardless, here’s hoping we get to see what happens to these folks in peacetime!

The Song Doesn’t Remain The Same: there’s the Talking Heads’ ‘Life During Wartime’ and then there’s the song of the same name for this movie, but with different lyrics (actually written by Solondz) and perofrmed by Devendra Banhart & Beck.  either way, we’re happy-ness!

Verdictgo: Jeepers MOS DEF Worth A Peepers, but ONLY if you’ve survived Happiness 1st

Life gets one today in NY today, and elsewhere elsewhen

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Salt
Sodi-YUM!
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

So what’s the shaker with Salt?  We don’t want to pepper spray you with all the details, as to ruin any of the run, gun and fun, and there’s a lot of running and a lot of gunning and a result, a lot of funning (boring scenes of explaining stuff are kept to a minimum!!), so we will sums it up like this: Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie) is cunning AND sexy CIA agent, who is outed right off the bat as a possible Russian mole, with a job to assassinate a political big wig + kick-start sum biggie global trouble!!  Instead of sticking around and pleading her (supposed?) innocence (the ‘is she?’ or ‘isn’t she?’ bidness will keep you glued throughout), she makes like Dr Richard Kimble and goes all out Fugitive, with Liev Schreiber and Chiwetel Ejiofor (Chiwe!!) hot on her trail and tail.  And then things start to get all tricky, and a bit Manchurian Canadite-y and a tad Boys From Brazil-nuts, and then Andre Braugher shows up to play one of the mos abbreviated, unimportant roles of his career.  Braugher power!  And then, Zardoz?  No, thank gawd

Salt is an stoopid name for a movie (and a character, which was originally intended to be a man’s role!), and yet nothing else about this throwback to good ole mindless action-thrillers (spankfully mostly CGI-free) from the 80s is stoopid.  Salt even revives Regan-era themes, as Russian spies and assassins come in from the cold and it’s all red hot!!  No big sirprize here, coming from able director Phillip Noyce (the two Harrison Ford driven Jack Ryan flicks), who’s paired with mostly unproven scribe Kurt Wimmer (Law Abiding Citizen? Sphere?).  The positive grains the two make of Salt is actually good news for us, since they are slated to reunite for the (pointless) remake of Total Recall.  Maybe they’ll get our a$$es to Mars!

Don’t you dare say the name Salt, but do you dare see Salt!

Salt of the Earth: wonder if Salt’s name has anything to do with SALT and/or SALT II?

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Salt opens at a theater near jews this Friday

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…