Thighs Wide Shut

Slumdog Millionaire
A Winning Trivial Pursuit
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

Director Danny Boyle is on an effin roll, even more so than Samari or even Esther! After the triple threat bestness of this decade that brought us the horrific emptiness of 28 Days Later, the heist and high hopes of Millions, and the space ODDyssey that was Sunshine, we’ve come to regard the man that spankfully gave us Trainspotting (one of the four greatestist movies of balls thyme… all four are named in this post) as a mini-Kubrick in the making, tackling any genre and netting much success. So much so that the excess of A Life Less Ordinary and suckiness of the The Beach barely even bother us anymore. After conquering Great Britain and space, where’s a hot director suppose to take his camera next? Bollywood wouldn’t have been our first answer, but we’d never second guess Danny Boy. His latest (with some directing assistance from Loveleen Tandan), Slumdog Millionaire, has wood that’s more Holly than Bolly (there is still some pointless singing and dancing shiz, but don’t worry cause it only happens once, during the end credits), but this Darjeeling is unlimited, unlike Wes’esezzz

The film centers around Jamal Malik (Dev Patel, playing the eldest version of the character), an orphan from the slums of Mumbai, now growns up and working as peon tea boy in an office. When we first meet him, he’s sirprizingly climbing the monetary ladder on India’s version of Who Want’s To Be A Millionaire. Jamal’s a question away from taking the top prize, but before he can finish the game the police want him to answer some questions of their own, like, how a kid with a background like his knows so much? And that’s how the movie unfolds, as Jamal explains to the chief of police (Irfan Khan, who’s the bestest Khan since Chaka and Genghis) how his life experiences from his rough and tough past (with his ruff and tuff older brother) have enabled him to coincidentally come up with all the right answers. We will divulge no more exposition here, cause you need to experience Jamal’s experiences with your own dang eyes

Slumdog is so rich, oozing with oodles of ooohs and ahhhas (including some poos, juss like what happened with our boy Renton and the worst toilet in Scotland), that it almos feels like 2872167 movies rolled into one. To put it mo simply, it’s the Indian City of God, with some Princess Bride unrequited love (Freida Pinto, the hottiest bean mt EVERest) thrown in for way good measure. It also happens to be the first Fox Searchlight movie in the past 3 years that would actually be worthy of a Best Pic nomination, unlike sum… and that’s our final answer

The Host With The Most: as a kid, Jamal worships Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan, who in reality was the host of India’s version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? entitled Kaun Banega Crorepati

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

Eden
Paradise Lost
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From the producers of Once comes another movie about love in the land of dreary skies, but don’t be expecting no Twice. That’s cause the love in Eden is falling apart, not coming together, and there aint no sweet music to be made. The unhappy couple, Billy and Breda (Aidan Kelly and Eileen Walsh), are about to celebrate their 10th wedding anniversary, but ‘dread’ may be a more apt word to describe how they feel about the looming event. They haven’t done it in ages, and Billy’s eyes are starting to look elsewhere (see Irish Thighs Are Smiling below). Breda’s trying to make things right again between the two, but it seems as if she’s driving on a one way street with no road assistance. Stuff happens, and then some uncomfortable stuff happens, and the couple eventually reach a point of no return that will decide ultimately whether they stay together or go their separate ways. Based off of the Eugene O’Brien stage play of the same name, in which he adapted his own work for the screen, director Declan Recks expands the story’s settings, but it still feels a bit too stagey. Luckily Kelly and Walsh provide the steak and the sizzle, showcasing their fine acting talents on this emotional roller coaster ride thru
heaven and mostly hell

Irish Thighs Are Smiling: we’re all about Sarah Greene, the saucy cutie with the chubby cheeks who plays the object of Billy’s affection, and now ours!

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Slumdog opens today in limited release, where Eden will join it on Friday

until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Changeling
Cloche, But No Cigar
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

‘Changeling’ is defined as a child who replaces another child that has been taken. And that’s 1/2 of what Clint Eastwood‘s latest ditty tis all about, based on the actual kidnappling case of one young boy named Walter Collins. The crooked LA police, mired in awful publicity and poor standling with the public, finds some boy that sorta looks like him and passes him off as the missling kid to the mother (Angelina Jolie, wearling enuff lipstick to hid her gross lips), mainly juss to close the case and shut her the hell up. She’s not havling it, since this ‘changeling’ is 3 inches shorter and magically circumcised (when she spouts this revelation, it packs more laughter than the power we assume it’s supposed to inflict). She pleads with the police (led by way too overly clenched jawed and Irish-accented Jeffrey Donovan) that they gave her the wrong kid, but they aint havling it either, eventually lockling her up in an insane asylum (Girl, Interrupted Part II anyone?). The other 1/2 of the film revolves around the Wineville Chicken Coop Murders (hmmmm, wonder how the two parts are related), and you put the halves together and you end up with somethling halve not. It’s an all around uneven, neverendling affair (with almos more false endlings than Return of The Kling) that does nothling much with such an intriguling true life crime

This is easily the weakest film Eastwood has made since he put out such pedestrian fare as Blood Work and Space Cowboys. It lacks the raw emotional power of his recent rightfully glorified work (even repeating the themes of the vastly overrated Mystic River, not to be confused with Mystic Pizza) and is purty much a dull entry from start to finish (the dour subject matter doesn’t help). Changeling seems more like a straight-forward Ron Howardish flick, and fittlingly enuff, he was original attached as the director. Look, juss cause a movie takes place in the lates 20s and totally rocks out the 20s cars and clothlings and hairdos and those cool lady cloche hats doesn’t mean that the movie is guaranteed to be any good (did you see The Black Dhalia? didn’t think so). There’s been much discussion about Jolie gettling an Oscar nomination for her work as the wronged mother, but we say pish-pa, as she’s basically riffling on Mel Gibson in Ransom, shoutling ‘my son! my son!‘ more times than the NY Times. We’re sure they’ll give her one, but lettuce juss say it’s a make up call for not gettling one for her much better performance in A Mighty Heart (in which she also co-starred with ‘that guy’ actor supreme, Denis O’Hare). The only award she should win is best roller skater in a 2008 movie (please don’t bother asking why she’s roller skating in Changeling), although she’s nowhere near lifetime achievement status in that category the way that Heather Graham is [NSFW, duh]. Forget it, Jake. This isn’t Chinatown

Short Changeling: an interestling title, but not a very original one, as there’s a horror movie starrling George C Scott with that name, as well as a Star Trek episode, apparently which was one of only a handful to take place entirely aboard the Enterprise

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

I’ve Loved You So Long
(Il y a longtemps que je t’aime)
We Love This Movie, And It Hasn’t Been For So Long
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

I’ve Loved You So Long walks the same mother woe is her over a lost son walk that Changeling does, but treats the matter at hand thigh with much more resonance and therefore much more success. The mother in question is Juliette Fontaine (Kristin Scott Thomas, the consummate pro, whether acting in an English or a French language film), who has paid her dues in prison for killing her son. The answer as to why she did such a heinous crime to her own offspring comes late in the film, and like Heinz ketchup, it’s well worth the wait. The film begins with Juliette fresh outta the big house, worn and tattered, not really ready to assimilate back into society. Her sunny younger sister of fifteen years Léa (Elsa Zylberstein), whom she barely even knows, takes it upon herself to help ease her transition back into a normal life, even if Juliette could care less. Léa invites Juliette to live at her house, filled with a skeptical husband, a mute grandfather and two adorable adopted Vietnamese daughters. She also forces her to hang out with her middle-aged friends, including a most uncomfortable dinner party where the drunk host pokes and prods as to where Léa’s sister’s been hiding all these years. She finally relents by telling them about being in jail, there’s a pause, and then laughter erupts. They don’t have to believe it, but it’s something that she has to live with for the rest of her life. Eventually Juliette begins to begin again, taking a job, some responsibility, and more importantly, opening up her long dormant heart to others. Powerful stuff
peoples! French author Philippe Claudel makes such remarkable debut directing I’ve Loved You that all we gotta say is, what took him So Long? We hope to love him long time

Girl B: luckily for Juliette, she didn’t have to spend her entire adolescence behind bars and grow up too quickly upon release like Jack did in the equally affective Boy A, a film that’s also…

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

Synecdoche, New York
Kaufmanesque-sess
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

The one thing about Changeling that’s actually praiseworthy is you can get an idea of the goings on found within by looking up the definition of the title. The same cannot be said for Synecdoche, New York (yes, your read that correctly, it’s not Schenectady, NY, although the action does begin in that city). ‘Synecdoche’ is defined (in the press notes) as a figure of speech in which, a part is used for the whole (the screen for movies), a whole stands for a part (the law for police), a species stands for its genus (cutthroats for assassins) , a genus stands in for its species (creature for person), a material stands for a thing (ivories for piano keys), yet that doesn’t help one bit in trying comprehend this incomprehensible movie. No big sirprize there, coming from the pen of the crazy brilliant Charlie Kaufman, but by putting himself behind the director’s chair for the first time and not letting his boys Spike Jonze (directed his Adaptation. and Being John Malkovich) or Michel Gondry (directed his Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Human Nature) take the reigns, there aint any playful whimsy to offset his always dense, overly heady material. There’s no denying that Kaufman is a genius, and we’ll admit that the same is true of this movie, but it may be so much genius that it takes 383838 geniuseses to finger out what transgressed. We aint one of them as our brain melted so much by the end of it that we didn’t even remember how to go pee-pee after the screening. Luckily someone was there to lend us a hand

So we may not get it, but it’s about something, right? We guess. Phil C Hoffs is a theater director whose wife, Catherine Keener runs off with their daughter to be a major artist in Germany. He’s left with a broken heart, and after winning a grant, he pours his time and energy, as well as pain and suffering, trying to stage a play about his life, told in realish time. Along the way he crosses paths and hearts with an extraordinary set of today’s bestest actresses (Samantha Morton, Michelle Williams, Emily Watson, Dianne Wiest, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Hope Davis… WOW), and time keeps passing and everyone grows older and stuff happens that’s stange and odd and odd and strange! URGH! Writing this review has refried our brain again! To understand it all, you will need the following, which we lifted from Ms Modern Age’s review of the Fiery Furnaces’ questionable Rehearsing My Choir album that had the siblings’ granny running the show:

a white steno pad, a pencil, some graph paper, flow chart stencils, a calendar, a dictionary, a rewind button on your CD player [in this case it will be a DVD player], access to Google, a map of the continental United States, a color wheel, and a public library card. I’d equate listening to Rehearsing My Choir [replace that with ‘watching Synecdoche‘] with trying to write your senior year college thesis paper. You’re trying to put all the pieces of the puzzle together, but even though you’ve spent an exorbitant amount of time working on it, it still makes absolutely no sense. In fact, it feels as though you may have wasted 4 years of your life on something you may never understand and may never master.

If the LORD truly wants to melt people who dare to open his Ark of the Covenant, maybe he should put this movie inside of it

Picture Pages: in the flick Keener’s a painter of itsy bitsy paintings. the actual work was done by artist Alex Kanevsky, but it’s currently being eggzibited in LA under Keener’s character name of Adele Lack, even though some people have no clue that it’s linked to the movie tat all!

Verdictgo: A Whole Lotta Frickin Merit But Sadly No Stinkin Badges

Pride & Glory
Ride This Same Old Story
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We’ve all been down this Glory road a thousands thymes before: good cops vs bad cops, squaring and circling off in a gritty crime drama, with lotsa carnage along the way, and in the case of this movie, a lotta ultraviolent carnage (beware of the bathtub scen
e, it’s a stomach churner!). A movie doesn’t have to be original to be good, and so Pride & Glory, with all its clichés and predictability, gets by cause it’s downright (and upright!) entertaining, and the acting is a niiiiiice. It starts off kinda poorly (wow, cops playing football!), but gradually becomes more engaging as the time passes. Most movies suffer the opposite fate, where it can’t finish after a fast start. Pride & Glory isn’t trying to be something that it’s not, but still, it at least sends the message that you gotta do the right thing, even when someone in yer family doesn’t. The good cop in this story is Edward Norton (although his goatee looks mighty evil). The bad cop is his brother-in-above-the-law Colin Farrell (amazing how he can play soft and hard the same exact way). And the ugly cop stuck between em both is Norton’s bro Noah Emmerich (sorry, but his Noriega–Norv Turner cheese grater face is mighty uuuugly). Dispensing wisdom here and there and trying to save the force’s face is their pops Jon Voight, the chief of police. Besides the commendable performances by the four males (and Jennifer Ehle‘s strong turn as the dying of cancer wife of Emmerich, a side story lost somewhere between all the gunplay), we loved the fact that the film’s action takes place in the mean streets of NYC (and was actually shot on location, giving it a nice taste of authenticity), instead of the clean streets of Boston, where this genre’s flicks (The Departed, Gone Baby Gone, etc) have been played out way too much recently. P&G is far from being New York’s finest, but no one said it had to be

Grease Lighteningers: Rick Gonzalez and John Ortiz are always the greasiest lookin actors on screen. both appeared in P&G, and both tried their best to out grease the other. both are also fab actors, but we’d rather talk about how greasy they look, or at least how Rick looks like Joakim Noah

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

So Long and Synecdoche open in NY/LA only, Changeling in select cities, and P&G everywhere today. Also opening in NY is The Universe of Keith Haring, which we saw at the Tribeca Film Testical and weren’t exactly in love with

until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

W.
The Fortunate Son Also Rises and Falls
Trailers & Mo

We know what yer thinking, George W. Bush’s life and crimes, told thru the cracked glass eye of Oliver Stone, a slam-dunk of left-wing filmmaking that would make Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 look like a walk in a 7-11, right? Well, believe it or snot, the sword remains in the Stone, as the olde blowhard holds himself back a little in sending up our reviled 43rd President. There’s even a bit of respect and humility to be found within, and you might juss find yerself sympathizing with the man who improbably followed in his father’s giant footsteps, even if he wasn’t remotely qualified or interested in the first place. Of course Bush doesn’t get off easy (this is Oliver Stone flick we’re talking about here), but the Cowboy Prez has given us all so many lay-ups throughout his two terms filled with poor policies, decision making and infinite amount o’ malapropisms that it’s impossible to make a GWB flick that doesn’t skewer him… although we’d love to see David Zucker give it a try. The result ends up being one of Stone’s most pleasurable, hilarious and rewatchable films to date. Not saying it’s close to being one his best, but this one’s a bit easier to digest than say Born On The 4th of July, Natural Born Killers or the headache that was U-Turn, which we saw on a plane and made us so sick that we almos jumped off the plane

They’ve never had an Academy Award category for best casting, but if they did W. would mos definitely win in less than a heartbeat. You’ve never seen so many spot on picks of look-a-likes (with a lotta help in the make-up dept) and the performances to back it up. James Brolin as Bush is beyond yumcrecible, and from Toby Jones slicking it up as Karl Rove to Richard Dreyfuss frightening us to death as Dick Cheney to Jeffrey Wright honoring the dishonored Colin Powell to Elizabeth Banks finally acting in a real movie as Laura Bush to Thandie Newton hamazingly sticking a pole up her butt to stiff it up like Condoleezza Rice, it’s one humongo treat to see such a display of near-perfect mimicry (SNL doesn’t count, especially since Darrell Hammond does 98% of the impressions). Everyone else in the cast is mad dandy, from Ellen Burstyn as Barbara Bush to James Cromwell as George Sr (Brolin suggested him for the role) to Scott Glenn as Donald Rumsfeld to Ioan Gruffudd as Tony Blair (what, Michael Sheen wasn’t available?) to Bruce McGill as George Tenet, but they merely appear, while the others mentioned above disappear into their real-life roles

After about an hour into the film, which shuttles back and forth between his wild and crazy salad days (although no mention of his coke habit?) leading up to being born again and the infancy of his presidency that dealt with selling WMD rumors to the World (and on the internets), the OMG novelty of the imitations wears off on the audience, even if the actors continue to ham it up. Since Bush’s story isn’t even close to being fully written, this premature take on his life, without the benefit of looking back (in anger), really has no where to go, other than wagging a no-no and uh-no finger over and over. We were eggspecting another bout of depression, like what happens when a Democrat watches HBO’s Recount, but the film ends up in a state exactly where our Commander in Chief currently resides, lame duckdom. Nonetheless, it was a duck worth shooting (filmwise, not bullet you sick fork!)

Stiller The One: would somebody please turn Ben Stiller’s Oliver Stone Land skit into a reality already?

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

What Just Happened
Barely Levinson
Trailers & Mo

Besides a few decent bit parts here and there, Robert De Niro hasn’t shined dramawise since 1997, the year that saw the triple golden release of Jackie Brown, Wag The Dog and Cop Land. So many films in between have wasted his talents, turning the next cunning young Brando into the next sloppy old Brando. With Barry Levinson‘s What Just Happened, De Niro finally has a movie where he can be cool and not act the fool. Based off of Hollywood producer Art Linson‘s tell all book What Just Happened? Bitter Hollywood Tales from the Front Line DeNiro walks a marathon in his shoes, hand-holding needy actors, dealing with ex-wives (Robin Wright Penn?) and his offspring, and trying to convince a director (the always throaty, always amusing Michael Wincott) that having a dog shot on screen in the closing moments of a movie is probably not the recipe for box office success. De Niro as Linson makes perfect sense, considering he produced a bunch of Bobby’s films, including but not limited to The Untouchables, Heat and We’re No Angels
, which also starred Sean Penn, who plays himself in the dog gets shot movie within the Happened movie. There’s plenty o’ insider jokes strewn about (like Bruce Willis, also playing himself, who vehemently refuses to shave his beard before production begins on a film, juss like what happened with Alec Baldwin and the Linson produced movie The Edge), but most of them will go straight over the heads of any Hollywood outsider. The film plays out like a more mature, realistic season of Entourage, De Niro acting as an Ari & E composite, yet without all the glitz and glam and gams, it doesn’t even come close to being as delectable as the way too guilty pleasured HBO show. Entourage makes you want to jump in on the fun, but Happened makes you want to run away from it. We should probably follow the advice of the later, yet we’d rather keep watching Entourage. Wait, what just happened?

More Good Than Meagan?: Moon Bloodgood, so darn bloody good. we pray she MOONS us. and oh yeah, she shows one of her brestestestest to Bobby D in Happened

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinking Badges

Filth and Wisdom
Crazy/Beautiful Strangers
Trailers & Mo

There aren’t many out there who are fans of Madonna’s work in front of a camera, us included, and for the non-believers we should all be pleasantly sirprized at what she can do behind the camera. Filth and Wisdom is her first foray into directing, and while it definitely reeks of someone’s first try, it’s promising enuff that we certainly hope she tries again. The film is visually bare, and the script, by her recently divorced hubby’s EPK maker, Dan Cadan (she also snatched Tyrone, and Thigh fav Tommy The Tit from his Snatch), is overly trite (we coulda done w/o the looking into the camera narration with deep ‘wisdom’), but her characters, a pharmacist who steals drugs and wants to save starving kids in Africa (bright eyed Vicky McClure, see below), a ballet dancer turned stripper (hottie Holly Weston, but not this Holly Weston? [NSFW]), a formerly abused child now making cash as a S&M master to support his gypsy band (Gogol Bordello ringleader Eugene Hutz, a long overdue follow-up to his incredible work in Everything Is Illuminated), and a writer who lost his lust after going blind (Madonna pal Richard E Grant), are so colorful that you’ll want to see how the painting turns out

SeeQuest: is it juss us or does Vicky McClure look an awful lot like dearly departed Jonathan Brandis? you be the judge (dreads)

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

W. opens wide, while Happened hits up limited theaters and Filth rocks out only in NY today

Rental Round-Up Dawg, Billy Donovan Edition:

You know how we feel about Donovan, don’t you? Well, if you didn’t, he’s probably the mos unappreciated living musician in the world today. While his 60s contemporaries like the Beatles and Bob Dylan have rightfully reached iconic status, Donovan’s extraordinary wealth of work has been hiding in the shadows for decades (having one’s songs in commercials don’t count). A crying shame if you ask us. And unlike the Beatles and Dylan, Donovan’s never had a documentary chronicling it all… until now. Juss released a week ago was Sunshine Superman – The Journey Of Donovan, a 3 hour + (!!!!) look back and forward on the folky Scottish troubadour that wants you to wear your love like heaven. Donovan himself does a majority of the talking here, and although it would have benefited from a few more outside sources (we wanted to hear Jimmy Page talk all about playing guitar on ‘Hurdy Gurdy Man’), his tales are worth listening to. This is a perfect DVD to get to know him and then some, especially for the diehards, and probably best watched in two sittings. There’s an additional bonus disc chock full o’ goodies including music videos, TV appearances and concert footage, unreleased songs and much much much much much much more. Go on now, take the journey!

Odds are pretty high that you missed last year’s absorbing and deeply tender doc Billy The Kid, about a wonderfully energetic and slightly off centered kid named… Billy. We loved it like crazy (it’s like American Teen, but with
one teen, who has more problems then all them teens combined!), and you will too, if you ever give it the chance. Had we seen it a bit earlier in 2007, it woulda most likely cracked our top ten of that year, and not juss been an Honor Blackmanable Mention. Sure, the disc may be a bit late in arriving, but we’re rewarded with a nice lil special feature of what Billy’s been up to and how the attention from the movie has affected him. Also, be sure to czech out the interviews with director Jennifer Venditti, which only enhances second viewings of this mos honest doc. The DVD will be released on 10/28

until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Happy-Go-Lucky
Lucky Charms
Trailers & Mo

When a Mike Leigh film is released, without question, you should go and see it. The man is incapable of bad filmmaking, and if you’ve seen anything he’s made, we’re sure you’ll agree. If the titles Naked, Vera Drake, All or Nothing, Meantime, Topsy-Turvy or Secrets & Lies don’t sound familiar, then you need to familiarize yo-self with them pronto tonto! They all are rich works that explore the banality of everyday (British working class) life, rife with both heartwarming and heartbreaking moments that are so genuine you’ll have a hard time ever forgetting them. The same is mos definitely true with his latest, Happy-Go-Lucky, although it’s more on the heartwarming than breaking side. Leigh knows how to assemble a top notch ensemble cast (he’s like a British Altman or Woody Allen), and has the magic touch to bring out especially amazing performances from his leading ladies. He’s put brilliant, yet relatively little known (at least stateside) veteran actresses Imelda Staunton, Brenda Blethyn and Marianne Jean-Baptiste on the map, by guiding them all to their first (and in some cases, maybe last) Best Acting Oscar nomination. It will probably happen a 4th time with Sally Hawkins (a Leigh regular player, and last seen as Colin Farrell’s neurotic lady in Woody’s Cassandra’s Dream), the happy-go-lucky title gal, who has been rightly buzzed about as one of the five possible females gunnin for the top spot at the 2009 Academy Awards. Her performance as the appropriately nick-named Poppy is a pure revelation, even more so than what Anne Hathaway done did in Rachel Getting Married (it’s common knowledge that Hath’s a great actress, but we guess she needed to stop being cast as a princess for everyone to realize it). Nothing can drag the lovely Poppy down, eggcept when she sees bad things happening to the students she teaches (the more tender bits of the film). When her bike gets stolen, she treats the news with a shrug and then carries on with her footloose and fancy free day. Ms Sunshine has run-ins with negative Nancies all over town (including her beyond no-nonsense driving instructor Eddie Marsan, another uber-brills Leigh regular) and she tries her best to raise a smile outta them all. While it doesn’t work 100% with the grumpy Guses onscreen, it will with everyone off-screen. A splendid time is guaranteed for all, and tonight, Mr Kite won’t be topping the bill

Happy-Go Hunting: czech out Leigh’s extensive shooting locations tour that he gave Time Out London. we will, as soon as we complete our life’s goal of visiting the Clockwork Orange locales

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

Body of Lies
Body Ardor
Trailers & Mo

The fictional modern warfare flicks they be puttin in theaters these days that star terrorism as public enemy #1 have been more dud-ly than Dudley Do-Right doing lots of wrong. We’d almos rather be sent to Guantanamo than sit thru Traitor, Rendition, War, Inc. or You Don’t Mess With The Zohan again. And that’s what makes Body of Lies a lot more enjoyable than it actually is. It’s nuttin but a generic espionage thriller that’s elevated to popcorn pleaser-land by Ridley Scott’s usual solid direction (it’s no 1984 Apple commercial, but hey what is?), Leo DiCaprio‘s dedication to his role (he speaks Arabic! yet wanders around the Middle East undercover wearing a baseball cap in land where no one wears baseball caps!), and a heckulva lot of explosions across the globe (although Bret and Jemaine are the true Boom Kings). Russell Crowe‘s the other marquee name, but he doesn’t really add much tat all, considering he’s mostly phoning in his performance. And we don’t juss mean that figuratively, since he’s the pencil pushing CIA guy back in the states calling the shots via his blue-toothed cellphone. His lack of presence is made up by admirable supporting work by Mark Strong (also crazy good in RocknRolla), Simon McBurney (‘that guy’ with ‘that voice’ whom we love oh so much) and Leo’s Muslim Florence Nightingale, Golshifteh Farahani. Yesh, there’s a lil Old/New
world romance between Leo and a nurse, and while it may feel out of place with the rest of what’s going on, it makes a nice diversion to the diversion that we’re already watching. The film reminded us a lot of the Robert Redford-Brad Pitt burner Spy Game, which was not so oddly enuff directed by Ridley’s brother Tony. Come to sphinx of it, this fluffy-nutter movie may have been better off in his brother’s hands. Probably would been a bit mo flashy and fun, like Man On Fire and Domino. Come to sphinx of it part II, we kinda heart Tony more than we do Ridley, and that aint no lies, cause we have a Body of THIGHS!

AKA-47: although named after the book of the same name by David Ignatius, there were some other working titles for the film, including Penetration. wonder why they didn’t run with that one? and what, Going Under Covers wasn’t ever an option?

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Go-Lucky opens in limited release today, while Lies and The Duchess expands to play at a theater new jews

until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

RocknRolla
Guy Just Wants To Have Gun
Trailers & Mo

Guy Ritchie’s personal and professional life of late hasn’t been so rosy. There’s the whole Madonna/A-Rod affair, yet that pales in comparison to the awfulness that was his psychologically inert film, Revolver, which took two years to even get a US release date… and will probably take two years for us to get rid of the headache that it gave us. Since becoming the heir to Tarantino by handing in the fab Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels in 1998 and even fabber Snatch two years later (has it really been that long?), Ritchie has gotsen swept away at his own British gangsta game by deliciously rich(-ie) films like Layer Cake (directed by his ye olde producer Matthew Vaughn) and this year’s The Bank Job (starring his find Jason Statham). The question has been begged again and again (mostly by us), where have you gone Guy Ritchie? Question answered with RocknRolla (one of the dumbest film titles we’ve heard in awhile), which finds the director happily back in the (un)safe surroundings of London’s underground (poor choice of words, cause we aint talking about the tube), filled with his usual witty and twitty gunmen, double dealing each other until the end credits. Since he’s treading on common ground again, nRolla‘s not as fresh as Lock, Stock or as polished as Snatch, but it is mos certainly as fun as either of them, and we’ll take that kinda repetitiveness over the kind Kevin Smith doles out over and over

This time the MacGuffin aint no shotgun or shiny diamond, but a prized painting from a Russian real estate mogul (Karel Roden) that goes missing after he lends it to a crime boss (Tom Wilkinson, whose cockney performance as Lenny Cole is worthy of being placed on Richie’s Mt Rushmore alongside Brick Top and ‘Hatchet’ Harry) that he’s doing bidness with. This sets off a series of events with everyone and their mother (and we mean everyone, from Gerard Butler, playing the Statham role, although not as well + solid turns from Mark Strong, Toby Kebbell, Jimi Mistry and even Ludacris and Jeremy Piven for the hell of it) looking for the piece of art, and trying to steal some cash from one another in the process. While you’ve seen it all before, Ritchie does throw something new into the mix– a female character who’s more than up to the challenge of hanging with the tough boys, electrifyingly played by the beyond hotness that is Thandie Newton. We think he’s on to something here, and if he’s scrounging for another shoot’em up after his Robert Downey/Jude Law Sherlock Holmes, might we suggest an all lady gangster flick?

Girls Richie: Richie’s all about the eye candy, and tosses us tossers some lovely ladies besides Thandie. There’s Tiffany Mulheron and Quantum Of Solace Bond girl Gemma Arterton, who supposedly was born with six fingers on each hand! Eat that Count Rugen!

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist
A Teeny Bit Familiar
Trailers & Mo

The world has waited long enuff for the next John Hughes to arrive, and guess we’ll have to keep on waiting, cause ever since Home Alone went into sequel mode no one has been even close to occupying the teen film throne that he once sat on. Sure, there’s been some enjoyable adolescent one-off romps since the mid-90s like Clueless, American Pie, Bring It On and She’s All That (recent pics like Juno and Superbad really aren’t the Burt’s Bees Knees, so shut it), but none of them carry the teen weight and relevance that a Hughes film did. Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist aims for Hughes’ territory, but the results are more like John Snooze. Sure, watching the awkward stylings of Michael Cera make cute with the always on-screen sour-puss-edom of Kat Dennings (see, or don’t, more of her perma-frowny faces in 40 Year Old Virgin or House Bunny) will be a viewing pleasure for today’s 8th thru 12th graders, but for the rest of us, the story of their courtship is juss a bunch of recycled teen movie bits you’ve seen a zillion times… the plot has them running around NYC in a Yugo (it was funnier and more ironic/moronic when we saw one in Dragnet 20 years ago) searching for a secret gig by their favorite band (Lohan did the same in Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen), while they also try to locate their lost friend (straight outta the Adventures In Babysitting playbook), Ari Graynor, who practically steals the film from N&N. Sprinkle in some shitty cameos (did we really need to see the unfunny Andy Samberg as an unfunny homeless guy?) and a hip soundtrack (although we hear about mix CDs, we never see a single playlist!) and that’s purty much that. If John Hughes isn’t gonna come back to save this genre, we hope someone makes like Clifford Irving and writes a fake autobiography that lures him out of hiding so he can debunk it juss like Howard Hughes did. That may not be the mos original idea nick goings, but it’s a heckula lot more interesting than Nick & Norah, which seems to be stuck on shuffle

Nick at Nite: you can visit all the hotspots that N&N hit up with this handy dandy map here

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

RocknRolla opens today in NYC, LA and Toronto, while Nick & Norah is already playing at a theater new jews

until next thyme the balcony is clothed…