Thighs Wide Shut

Observe and Report
Pat Down & Bound
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

What’s with all this broo-ha-ha about Observe & Report being too dark? Are all comedies suppose to be lame and tame ala anything by Judd Apatow, or any comedy that seems like it’s from his fingertips? Guess that’s what people eggspect and want when they see the name Seth Rogen on a marquee, but if you ask us, we need less stuff from Apatown and more stuffs from O&R‘s writer/director Jody Hill. If you swooned to his Danny McBride anti-hero comi-tragedies The Foot Fist Way on the big screen or Eastbound & Down on the little screen, then you will do the same with his latest, which basically substitutes McBride with Rogen… and although we’re starting to warm to Rogen, we woulda loved to have seen how this mall cop affair woulda played out with McBest in the uniform and golf cart (how it compares to that other mall cop movie, we haven’t a clue, but these guys do, so hopefully that will answer that). The tone is in line with Pineapple Express, yet unlike PE, O&R delivers actual laffs that you don’t have to be high for… even if those laffs kinda disappear in the third act when this movie turns into a bona fide film. Same cannot be said of Judd’s duds (save Knocked Up). And you know you got something worth seeing on yer hands eyes when Ray Liotta is the kinda annoying that doesn’t annoy you and Anna Faris isn’t the funniest thing on screen. Gotta give some kudos to Michael Peña for trying something different, even if we felt a bit indifferent to it. Don’t fear the dark side folks, and feel free to cop a feel this wannabe cop!

We Wanna See Her Sheep’s Clothing: meat Collette Wolfe and her adorable chipmunk cheeks!

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Obvs & Repo is currently playing at a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Lymelife
Tick Tick… Boomtastic!
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

Lymelife presents us with two Long Island clans from the late 70s, the Bartletts and the Braggs. Both have their fair share of issues and are intertwined for butter or worse. The Bartletts consist of housing developer pop (Alec Baldwin, in full on yelling mode, and yes, that’s always a good thing), who’s no longer in love with mom (an eye-opening Jill Hennessy, who has squandered her talents on TV for weigh two long), so he finds solace in the arms of his coworker, mama Bragg (the dependable Cynthia Nixon), who’s also not in love with her spouse, a withdrawn lyme-diseased Vietnam Vet (a brilliant Timothy Hutton). Watching from the sidelines are their kids, sardonic army solider Jimmy Bartlett (Kieran Culkin, the silly Culkin), his innocent Star Wars obsessed younger brother Scott (Rory Culkin, perhaps the mos soulful actor of the Culkin brood) and the not so innocent cutie pie Adrianna Bragg (Emma Roberts, acting real in her first real movie). Scott is the center of our attention, and we easily feel sorry and root for him in the same breath. He has an obvious crush on Adrianna, and as their respective family lives are going to sh#t, their awkwardly budding relationship is the film’s singular light at the end of a very dark tunnel. Director Derick Martini‘s fine film (exec-proded by Martin Scorsese!) reminded us a heckuva lot of another ‘things fall apart’ masterpiece, The Squid and the Whale (one of our mos flavorite films of this decade). Lymelife fantastically hits similar notes that Whale played to much more perfection, yet it has its own unique voice (and a klassic with a k soundtrack) that you should fo sho prick up your ears to

Family Thighs: Rory Culks has played a younger version of his brother Macaulay twice (The Good Son and Ri¢hie Ri¢h) and Kieran once (Igby Goes Down)

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

Sin Nombre
Makes A Nombre For Itself
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

If City of God split half of its gangster time with a tale of attempting to cross over the American border from Mexico, it would mos likely resemble Cary Fukunaga‘s Sin Nombre. We getz to follow around a lil gun toting hombre (Edgar Flores), who one day has a change of heart about his evil ways and decides to help a poor young adorable girl reach her goal of gettin to New Jersey (Paulina Gaitan, who made her way to NJ as a sex slave in 2007’s purty decent Trade… c below). The performances are genuine, the locations are sincredible, the gangsta shiz is gangtastic, but it all feels a tad o’ beens therez, donez thats. Well, so did Lymelife, and we recommend that you see that, and since Nombre also has its own uniqueness to it, you should probably czech it out taz wellz

H₂Oh No!: Paulina es muy bonita, but someone peas get this girl in a movie that doesn’t involve her treading water!

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Lymelife opens today in NY only, and elsewhere elsewhen, where Sin Nombre is nombreing it up

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The Great Buck Howard
Turning Tricks Into Treats
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

Writer/Director Sean McGinly was once a novice road manager for mentalist Simon Baker The Amazing Kreskin, and he has channeled his brief experiences with him as the inspiration for his purty darn great flick The Great Buck Howard, with John Malkovich in the slight of hand title role and Colin Hanks walking a mile in his own shoes. The two crisscross America’s nooks and crannies (with a big stopover in Cincinnati, where Steve Zahn and his mustache rule!), playing sparsely filled theaters, as Hanks lends moral support to needy Malkovich and his (hilariously) outdated shtick. As a performer, Buck’s still got it after all these years, but he’s about 3 steps away from becoming as completely delusional as Norma Desmond. Hanks’ straight man role is a thankless one, and one the movie may have been better off saying no thanks to. We know why the role exists, but anything that has to do with his character (including having his father, not so shockingly played by Tom Hanks, pop up for no real reason, and a budding romance with an unusually restrained Emily Blunt) stands in the way of Malkovich’s brilliant show. As of late, Malko’s been laffable as a dramatic actor (did anyone take him seriously in The Changeling? wait, did anyone see The Changeling?), and hamazing as a comedic one (Colour Me Kubrick, Art School Con, etc), and so it’s an absolute pleasure to see him continue on the latter’s path… unless of course it’s a Rowan Atkinson movie

The Winslow Boy: there be some mad quailty cameos within the film, but we demand more than cameos for our boy Michael Winslow. watch his Star Wars thingie and then tell me that this man of many talents doesn’t deserve more work and love?

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Hunger
Not Very Appetizing
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

IRA member Bobby Sands (Michael Fassbender) led a famous hunger strike at a Northern Ireland prison in order to gain attention for his movement, and specifically regain Special Category Status for him and fellow political prisoners. Steve McQueen‘s (not that Steve McQueen) Hunger chronicles his incarceration and lack of eating, which ultimately resulted in his death/martyrdom. Watching this gauntly grueling process of decomposition is no fun at all. All movies don’t have to be fun, but we got the point early on in the picture and didn’t really need to sit thru the rest of the pain and suffering. It was like watching The Machinist all over again, and if yer like us, that was an experience not worth repeating

Glutton For Punishment: Fassbender’s a big fan of taking a beating. if yer looking for more of it, but something that’s a lot more fictional and a lot more entertaining, then czech out the low-budget horrorish flick Eden Lake, where a bunch of teens terrorize him and his girlfriend. it’s like Deliverance, but with chavs instead of southern yokels

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinking Badges

Hunger opens in NY only today, while Buck Howard mentals it up in limited release and on VOD

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The Edge of Love
Couples Retreated
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

It’s WWII and London’s being bombarded by Germany. A beautiful young girl (Keira Knightley) takes refuge in an Underground Tube station, while she awaits desperately for the return of her true love, an average Joe solider, fighting on the front lines on mainland Europe. Sounds purty much like the borefest that was Atonement (and to some extent, A Very Long Engagement), dunnit?

With John Maybury‘s The Edge of Love (with a script by Knightley’s mum Sharman Macdonald… who also suffers from mosquito bites) that’s where the similarities with Atonement end, since her boy (the always creepy Cillian Murphy) comes home after the war, to Wales where she waits, and instead of an annoyingly jealous lil sister gumming up the works of our lovers, it’s her real life (yep, this is a truish story!) childhood poet pal Dylan Thomas (Brothers & Sisters‘ Matthew Rhys, a semi-doppelganger for James McAvoy) doing more damage than a close-up of Glenn Close. Thomas is married to casual Mondays-Fridays Sienna Miller, but his heart belongs to Knightley (she’s a bit conflicted herself, but ultimately stands by her man). The two couples live and booze it up before Murphy’s deployed (the ladies share a bath, but sadly it’s not a dirty one), and when he comes home shell shocked, their relationships and friendships strain more than 89 tons of spaghetti in the world’s largest strainer

The four lead performances are golden (even if we’re all suffering from K Knightley period piece fatigue), the production values are top notch, and the settings are simply gorgeous (book us on the first flight headed to Wales please!), but when the story hits its post-war patch, it lost much of the flavor it built up along the way. Yet we stuck with The Edge of Love to the very end (involving the lowest-keyed courtroom scene we’ve viddyed in ages), which cannot be said of Atonement (we kissed it goodbye after the first act). So is Love Knightley’s atonement to us all for Atonement? Without that irksome typewriter score, we’d have to say yes

They Shoots, He Scores!: the film’s luscious soundtrack was overseen by the brilliant Angelo Badalamenti, a frequent David Lynch collaborator. Some of the songs in the film were performed by the likes of Siouxsie Sioux, Suggs from Madness and even Knightley herself! Lisa Stansfield appears in the film, but does not lend her pipes

Verdictgo: it borders a lil bit on Meritville, but it also has badges so Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Tokyo!
Three Stories Low
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

Michel Gondry slowly turns a girl into a chair for no reason, Leos Carax lets a bearded creature on the loose and then puts him on trial, while Joon-ho Bong makes a shut-in stack pizza boxes and then finally go outside. Yep, that’s the gist of the three pointless lil stories that are being spun in Tokyo!, a head scratching affair that shoulda been called Tokyo? What more is there to say? Nothing, cept you should Netflix Paris, Je T’Aime instead, where the shorts are shorter and the hit to miss ratio is even, not all misses

Verdictgo: Very Little Merit But No Stinkin Badges

The Edge of Love opens in LA today, NY next week, and elsewhere elsewhen, while Tokyo! is currently playing in limited release

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Eleven Minutes
77 Minutes Less Than 88 Minutes
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

We didn’t start watching Project Runway until Season 3(/were forced to by our then ThighMistress), and we haven’t stopped watching the compelling catfighting competition drooling over Heidi Klum sitting in a director’s chair with note cards in hand ever since. While we were hoping that our first post-Runway big screen romp would involve Kenley ‘Spears‘ Collins in a shot-by-shot remake of these three NSFW scenes from The Notorious Bettie Page, we were still pleased to delve into first season’s winner Jay Carroll‘s life, after his fifteen minutes faded away quicker than Ilan Mitchell-Smith‘s career. If yer a follower of the show, it’s a bro nainer for you to czech out this taking it from behind the scenes look at Carroll’s struggle to mount his first independent runway show and get his threads on a clothing store’s racks (hey, nice racks!). What you’ll see is nothing shocking, but it’s nothing schlocky either, and if you feel like you juss haven’t had enuff of The Hills/The City/The Peeps’ Revolution‘s resident ball star, Kelly Cutrone, here’s yer chance to have enuff. Runway novices may want to proceed without lust, but with caution

Lets Be Real(ity) For A Second: before Reality shows invaded our grill spaces (and ruined television), the only thing remotely real on the hairwaves were talk shows, and the one man who’s been the realist of the real, hispecially for our Clear Pepsi generation, is and was and will always be Conan O’Brien (with some early help from Andy). Tonight Conan closes up shoppee in NY, and like Fievel before him, he’s headed west for a bigger piece of the cheese. We wish him well in the year 2000 and 8 on his new Left Coast journey, and spank him for all the memories, herspecially this one and anything having to do with your Finland trip

Verdictgo: for all the Runway swayers, Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Eleven Minutes opens in select theaters today, and apparently online on here! Gay Television On Demand

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…