Thighs Wide Shut

In Search of Israeli Cuisine
Melting Pot of Jewish Culinary Gold
Official Site | Trailer
Not Rated | 94 min

Know what would make a great TV show?  This documentary!

Director Roger Sherman and restaurateur Michael Solomonov take their love of Israeli food and attempt to explain what it is today and where it came from in a delicious new doc called In Search of Israeli Cuisine

What the doc certainly did was made me hungry (although I have my limits of tomato intake)

What it didn’t really do is make me hungry to go visit Israel (I’ve been, and liked it, but I have many other places to see first before I give it a 2nd go)

What it did do is give me a good general idea of how the Israeli food culture came to be, melding from all different Jewish cultures around the world who eventually settled together in one new place where a cuisine basically had to be invented

What it didn’t really do is come up with exact answers… cause there aren’t any

But a doc should be probing, not jumping from one kitchen visit to another, with some farms and wineries thrown in between.  A TV show doesn’t have to be probing, and can spend more time with cooks AND the kitchens, and the eating.  Somehow 94 minutes felt like an eternity, but if you took the bits and expanded and spread them out into 6-10 thirty minute episodes, I think the material would simmer a bit more than it did in one long doc form

Regardless, I love hummus and falafel, and pickled things, and plenty of other Jewish food.  It was nice to see and hear about them on a screen.  If you do too, you may want to watch this as well.  If you plan to visit Israel, this is where your Yelp recommendations and bookmarkings begin

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

The Search continues in limited release

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Hidden Figures
Space Race-ist
Official Site | Trailer & Mo
PG | 127 min

I am all for movies about equal rights, the space race, the American spirit, conquering adversity and unheard true stories that must be told.  Hidden Figures needs to exist.  It’s a PG movie that anyone and everyone can and should see.  You + watching it will = entertained. But.  But… But?

But, Hidden Figures is also an overly saccharine, sappy and sassy movie that could have been something truly special, instead of having that made-for-TV/made for the brain capacity of 5-year-olds feel to it

Our film’s main NASA mathematician hero, Katherine Johnson (by way of the always amazing Taraji P Henson), doesn’t have a proper place to pee in the all-white folk work environment she’s been thrusted into (but happy to be a part of), eh??  Well, she’s juss gonna have to deal with that, and run across her work campus to go pee pee in the ‘colored’ sanctioned bathrooms, day after day (and scene after scene).  This run to go pee pee repeated sequence is such a perfect place to put an Oscar ‘caliber’ song by Pharrell Williams, that we can play over AND over, again AND again, pee AFTER pee!  I’m surprised Pharrell didn’t re-purpose his song ‘Happy’ to be ‘Hap Pee-Pee’

Don’t get me wrong, I LIKED this movie, but I felt we were always about 1 line of dialog away from such words being spoken as…

Oh, you want to get him to the moon?  Well, 2 + 2 = GET YO A$$ A PROTRACTOR!!

or

Your cosigns don’t add up, so I’m gonna go off on a TANGENT!!

or

The square root of 81 is I’M GOING TO WHOOP YO A$$ INTO SPACE!!

But, the movie IS important, although you can learn more about Mrs Johnson and her accomplishments below, in less than 4 minutes, than you can with the entire movie, about her and 2 other breakthrough ladies breaking on through – with class, AND SASS!!

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Hidden is revealed at a theater near jews AND white nationalists 

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Jackie
To Live and Die With Dignity
Official Site | Trailer & Mo
R | 100 min

I’ve missed Natalie Portman, and I feel like she hasn’t really done anything post-Black Swan, which somehow was 6/7 years ago.  Yes, I know she was in Thor and in that dumb Ashcan Kruncher flick, and other stuff, but those were juss movies, not films.  Natalie can obviously pick and choose whatever she wants to do – she’s earned that right – but being such an incredible actress means she has a responsibility to take on incredible roles

I’d like to say that Natalie Portman’s proper follow-up to Black Swan is Pablo Larraín & Noah Oppenheim‘s Jackie Kennedy film, where she somehow is even more graceful, tortured and emotionally wounded than when she was as a ballerina bent on finding perfection.  Jackie is not perfect (it’s close, but there’s not enough grassy knoll for me :), but it is what it needs to be, and Portman as Jackie IS perfection

Throughout the course of the film, Jackie goes from white swan, to white swan covered in blood, to even whiter swan, and by the end of it all, I somehow I felt more compassion for Portman (as Jackie), then I actually do for Jackie Kennedy, for enduring and rising above the horrific death of her husband, and the leader of the free world

What the country went through is incomparable to what Jackie went though, but in a time of much awfulness, she had the right mind to plan a sendoff for JFK worthy of royalty, and cement his legacy and place in history for eons to come.  What Jack Kennedy accomplished in office wasn’t much (he didn’t get a chance to put man on Uranus), but what Jackie Kennedy accomplished in giving dignified life to his death was more than a lot, it was Camelot!

Portman also accomplishes something that wasn’t important or needed – reminding me how much I love Love LOVE seeing her on the big screen

Bonus points to the film for somehow turning Greta Gerwig into a real human being.  Never seen her so un-loopy and restrained.  And props to Peter Sarsgaard for giving new life to RFK, without going haaaard on the look or accent that most others usual do in Bobby’s shoes.  Also, Billy Crudup and John Hurt are quiet great as listeners for Jackie

Also, we finally have a definitive Jackie movie.  before Portman, all we had was this…

YES!

Verdictgo: Portman is Breast In Show, but the film is Jeepers MOS DEF Worth A Peepers

Jackie is way JF O-Kay at a theater near jews AND white nationalists 

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

La La Land
Gosmancing The Stone
Official Site | Trailer & Mo
PG-13 | 128 min

You can have your Manchester By The Snoozes, I’ll have what Damien Chazelle is serving in La La Land – life, love, and the pursuit of making movies magical and fun again!

I hope you saw Damien’s Whiplash.  It’s like La La Land, but painful!  Pain is good, and usually makes for a better movie (and in this case, that is true, and in the case of Manchester By The Sea, it’s false), but pleasure is also important, and La La Land is a delectable slice of pleasure!

There is no current screen pairing more pleasureful than the screen pairing of Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone.  They made Crazy, Stupid, Love, not so stupid, and rather lovely!  They made for a welcome distraction in the distracting piece of garbage that was Gangster Squad.  In La La Land, they make us go ga ga for even more Gostone/Stonling pairings.  I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – they need to never stop making Gosling-Stone movies.  Never.  They, being Hollywood, really should(n’t). Is there anyone out there that would disagree with such a statement?  Is there anyone out there in general still reading this site?  Gawd, are you there? It’s me, Margaret!

La La Land was a musical, but it didn’t really need all the jazz hands and songs and dances.  I mean, they were nice and all, but they could make a silent movie where Gosling and Stone work in a poop factory and we’d still fall in love with them.  Hmmm, I have a great idea for their next film – POOP FACTORY: A LOVE STORY!

Verdictgo: Jeepers Mos Def Worth A Peepers

La La already Landed at a theater near jews AND white nationalists

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Toni Erdmann
Daddy Knows Jest
Official Site| Trailer & Mo
R | 162(!!!) min

As marriage, and life in general, has shortened my free time, I have to be more choosy with the movies that I commit my time to.  I’ve read and heard nothing but good stuff about the German-Austrian flick Toni Erdmann, but I’ve scoffed and scoffed and scoffed at its 2 hour and 42 minute runtime(!!!!!!!!!!!).  I mean, if it’s that long, the movie’s gotta be EPIC!  Or at least nothing short of amazing, right?  Toni appears to be the odds on favorite to win the Best Foreign Film Oscar (which you can always tell by whatever foreign flick Film Forum plays at the end of the year), and so, for the sake of not wanting to miss anything, I gave in and saw Maren Ade‘s movie

And?

Maren Ade needs a new editor.  Apparently editor Heike Parplies wasn’t up to the task to trim this movie down to the 1 hour, 45 minute length it really really really needed to be

Was I bored? No

Did I survive it?  Yes

Was it worth the time?  Not really

Did you like the movie?  I did, but…

BUT

BUTTS STINK!!

I don’t know what they could have cut down, as that’s not my job, but there’s a great movie existing in this good, but way too long movie

Peter Simonischek plays the title character, but that isn’t even his character’s real name, cause he loves being silly and pretending to be other personas!  He loves jokes and pranks and droll humor, but most people don’t happen to share that sediment, or at least the gags he’s doling out (but I love Love LOVE his novelty teeth – maybe the best novelty teef since Fletch!)

One person in particular not really fond OR in on his jokes is his overly wound-up, work-enveloped daughter, played by Sandra Hüller.  She’s out on her own in Bucharest, Romania, going about her bidness, and being all serious.  Dad comes to her rescue, without asking, and throws her world and life into chaos

SLOWLY (and by slowly, I mean the movie isn’t slow, I juss mean it takes forever to get there), she bends, and eventually breaks, and then eventually this happens…

I won’t tell you what’s going on there, or how they even got there.  It’s really up to you if you want to give in, and give up 162 minutes of your time

Or, you could watch a German flick that should have been the Best Foreign Film Oscar winner of 2000 - Run Lola Run TWICE!!!  It’s only 84 minutes!!!!

Verdictgo: low end Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Bisous Bisu: Ingrid Bisu has Bucharested my heart!!

Toni is in it for the LONG haul, in NY & LA on Xmas day, and elsewhere elsewhen

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…