Thighs Wide Shut

The Wolf of Wall Street
The Mighty Jordan Belfortification 
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 179 min

Marty Scorsese made Goodfellas, arguably one of the greatest films ever made (I say even better than The Godfathers!), then directed a bunch of other stuff that wasn’t as grrrrrrrrrreat, then dropped Casino on us, which was not AS grrrrrrrrrreat great as Goodfellas was is, but what movie really is????, but it was so fcuking RAWesome and so close to being as grrrrrrrrrreat, but then he did a bunch of other movies that were good, but nothing like either of those two grrrrrrrrrreat and almost AS grrrrrrrrrreat masterpieces.  Well, the 18 year wait has paid off with The Wolf of Wall Street, which is not AS grrrrrrrrrreat as Casino, but oh so fcuking close to being so, and oh so fcuking RAWesome in its own right.  Bless you Marty.  BLESS YOU!!!!!!!!!

If you don’t know by now, Wolf is the VERY true story of Jordan Belfort, a small time scheming stockbroker who hit it big, at the expense of his clients.  Then lost it big, at the expense of those who helped him get there.  Jordan lived a life of BEYOND excess, and the film, adapted by Terence Winter from Belfort’s two books, displays this excess, and is excessive itself – clocking in at 1 minute under 3 hours!!!  And yet, not a single one of those manic, lude-filled minutes is wasted, even if Belfort, in the form of Leonardo DiCaprio, is wasted for about 96% of the movie  

Earlier this year, we saw DiCaprio live the extravagant life of another Long Island schemer, from another Wall Street friendly era, as the title Jay guy in Baz Luhrmann’s equally spastic The Great Gatsby. He was mainly reserved, with the energy and anger welled up, and his performance was udderly fantastic.  In Wolf, he’s the same guy, cept there’s nothing being reserved.  It’s all out on the table, being snorted, and then some (candle in the butt!!!) – marking DiCaprio’s single greatest performance (and dancing, see gif below) to date, which is some feat considering the list of unforgettable performances he’s handed in (Arnie from What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, Howard Hughes in Marty’s The Aviator, and Mr Hoover in Eastwood’s underpraised/loved J Edgar)

Anywho, DiCaprio aint alone in making this a Scorsese pic score and a must sese.  There’s his right-hand toothy man who does his in-office dirty work - Jonah Hill (this kid can’t fail), his other right-hand man who does his out-of-office dirty work - Jon Bernthal (perfect as a meathead muscle), bitchy trophy wife - Margot Robbie (being VERY NSFWlicious), dad Rob Reiner (Rob fcuking Reiner!!!), the wolf hunting FBI agent - Kyle Chandler (LOVE LOVE LOVE seeing his face on the big screen), sleazy mentor – Matthew McConaughey (remember when he wasted his and our time starring in endless crappy movies?), swifty Swiss banker - Jean Dujardin (The Artist CAN talk), and every single one of Belforts underlings (with names changed to protect godknows who), and in particular, the bespectacle and bestpect-o-cool PJ Byrne

Wolf is like a third-rate Goodfellas, which means it’s a first rate picture of this year, which means it’s one of the best of 2013.  TEEN WOLF THAT SHIZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Verdictgo: Breast In Show Wolf is howls at a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The Spectacular Now
Collapse Into Now
Official Website | Trailers & Mo 
R | 95 min

I wanted it, I got it… for the most part

What did I want?  More movies like The Perks of Being a Wallflower, which are movies more like John Hughes movies, you know, awesome teen movies from the 80s with heart and soul and humor!

What did I get?  Director James Ponsoldt + writers Scott Neustadter & Michael H. Weber (The 500 Days of Summer dudes)’s cinematic take on Tim Tharp’s novel The Spectacular Now

For the most part?  Ok, so you can’t call your movie Spectacular and be anything but, but Spectacular is not full-on spectacular, but the movie certainly has the elements to be, and is closer to it more than not, and is certainly closer to it than a majority of the garbage teenage movies handed to us over the past decade

So what is this movie?  It’s the story of a popular, funny-mouthy, easy-breezy, Big Gulp with liquor swilling kid named Sutter Keely (Miles Teller).  Sutter has no real direction, unless that direction is headed toward fun.  He’s recently single (not by choice, and of course no one would choose to ever be apart from Brie Larson), and one hungover morning wakes up on the lawn of socially clueless Aimee (Shailene Woodley), and the next week they’re sorta blossoming into item, much to everyone’s surprise, including their own.  She seriously gets into him, but he’s kinda loosy-goosy on her, but he’s that way about everything – like his part-time job at the haberdasher (his boss is Bob Odenkirk, cause why not?), dealing with his stressed-out mom (Jennifer Jason Leigh, cause why not?), and with his future (he’s soon to graduate, but college schmollege?).  Maybe what he needs is a dose of reality, from his poshed-up sister (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), or estranged drunken father (THE Kyle Chandler), or perhaps Aimee can smack some sense into him, and if she can’t, who can????

Where it all ends up isn’t exactly some well-drawn out conclusion, but heck, we fell for Sutter Keely and would follow his hit or miss-adventures wherever they did done do roam!  That Miles Teller as Sutter Keely, I tells yea, that performance feels so mad mad mad real (and kinda reminds us of ourselvesz at that age, hence the attraction), and Woodley’s Aimee – even more more more genuine (she’s quite a talent, and it’s a shame the fanboys hated her out of Spider-Man reboot 2), and their coupling – even more than faux real, it’s like five real/reel!!!  Can we be their third wheel, six reals?  Hmmm, maybe this affair was spectacular after all, just not now.  Maybe then?

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Spectacular is NOW today in NY & LA and elsewhere elsewhen

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Zero Dark Thirty
OBL STK MIA DOA A-OK GO USA!
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 157 min

Dude, do you remember how intense and thrilling and awesome Kathryn Bigelow & Mark Boal‘s Hurt Locker is was????  Well guess what, Biges and Boals did one better on collab numero 2, basically telling Homeland and Argo to argofuckthemselves.  Zero Dark Thirty is like watching one of those Bourne movies, cept what’s going on REALLY HAPPENED and what we’re being shown seems really really fcuking real.  FO REALS!!! not faux reels!!!

So what is Zero Dark Thirty?  It’s 2 minus 2, the opposite of day + 30.  BAM!  C’mon, you know what this is about – it’s a summarization of failing for ages to find Osama bin Laden, and then maybe finding him, and then deciding whether that maybe is close enuff to a certainty as humanly possible, before pulling the final trigger… on pulling the trigger on OBL.  It’s frustrating, and more frustrating, and even more frustrating, but then it gets exciting and even more exciting, and even more more exciting, and then we’re back in the Bigelow-Boal thrill ride where yer heart’s a pounding and yer palms are a sweating, even though you know that OBL aint living past the end credits.  SPOILER ALERT – OBL dies.  But how did we get to that point?  THAT’S WHAT THIS MOVIE IS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  And it’s incredible!!!!!!!!!!!!

So when Bigs was making this movie, she was probably like, I want to have someone awesome like Jodie Foster to play my Clarice Starling darling character, so she got herself Jessica Chastain.  PERFECT!  Then she was like, we need a bunch of random actors that are good, but not huge names, to help Chasty out, and she was like welcome aboard Kyle Chandler, Jennifer Ehle, Harold Perrineau, Jeremy Strong, Mark Strong, Mark Duplass & [my boy] Édgar Ramírez.  Then she was like, I need a beardy guy that’s super good at yelling and torture and then they got Jason Clarke and he did that.  Then she was like, I need two beardos to play beardo Navy Seals, so she got that guy from Parks & Rec who’s character isn’t as funny as everyone thinks it is and fake Owen Lars from the BS Star Wars poo-quels.  But guess what, the casting didn’t end there.  She was like, oh, I need some fat guy that could pass for Leon Panetta, and so BAM, put on some 80s Japanese bidness-man eyeglasses James Gandolfini!  And she threw in Stephen Dillane for good measure.  That’s eggzatcly how the casting was done, as told to me by a magic elf fairy from Rivendale

What more do you need to know?  GO AMERICA!  NEVER QUIT!  Always keep your eye on the ball.  Kick a guy in the balls, but only IF it will lead to info that will get us to Osama bin Laden.  And if we get that info, lets lose it for like 7 years, but since we don’t give up, we find it again and follow up and finally hang our ‘mission accomplished’ banners.  Way to go us/US.  Red, White & BEST!!!!

Spank dog Morgan Spurlock never found OBL, cause otherwise this movie wouldn’t eggsist

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

Zero Hot Tens: Jessica Collins is in the movie for all of 8 seconds, but she hypnothighsed me with her eyes

and then I remembered where she had done it before – the sorta-brilliant but cancelled Rubicon

Zero Dark Thirty sees the light in NY & LA on Wednesday and elsewhere on January 11

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Super 8
Amblin’ Enuff Entertainment
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 112 min

Steven Spielberg doesn’t make Steven Spielberg movies anymore (yes, Munich is the knees bees, but do flicks like that scream Spielberg’s name? no), so why not let someone else make them?  Fine by we, and apparently fine by Spielberg, who produced JJ Abrams‘ Super 8, which is soaking in so much Spielbergian Spielbergedness that someone has rightful dubbed it ‘Spielberg porn‘.  Still fine by us.  We all loved Spielberg’s 70s & 80s output (if you didn’t, you must have skipped childhood), and no big flicks these days has come even close to (re)capturing that magic and wonder (maybe Pixar stuff, but that’s computer cartoon stuff, and thus doesn’t count).  Abrams must feel the same void we do, and he certainly aims hard to fill it.  Good for him

For 2/3rds of his first real film, Abrams hits the E.T. marks to perfection.  By the time we get to that last third, he’s still following in Spielberg’s footsteps, but instead of karaoke-ing on the good stuff, he gets Super 8 bogged down in the lesser and louder Spielberg stuff, like his War of the Worlds. That’s not a good thing (we can never forgive Spiels for everything that happened after Tim Robbins showed up), but still, it’s OK.  We’d rather have movies that hearken back to older movies that work, and not just be extensions of franchises and name brands (we know yer siked for that Battleship movie… SIKE!).  We must support this kinda stuff, hispecially since Abrams comes awfully close to nailing it

Recently, we were watching The Goonies (another Spielberg related 80s gem thingie) and felt sorry for today’s kids who don’t have their own Goonies. Movies where kids are the focus and there’s fun AND serious stuff going on (read: NOT Hotel for Dogs) are too far and few between.  Again, Abrams is gunning for that same territory, and is A THIRD CLOSE to having an encountery-kind there.  They did cast a great bunch of youngins, who all fit into some sorta Spielbergesque kid role/look – Mikey Walsh (Joel Courtney… hope this kid’s around 9ever), Chunk (Riley Griffiths), Henry ‘Elliot’ Thomas (Zach Mills), Elliot’s brother (Gabriel Basso) and Mouth (Ryan Lee), but in 10 years time, no one will be remembering these characters’ names or any lines of their dialog.  It’s kinda like Joe Dante’s Explorers, which sorta looks and feels Spielbergay right, but juss aint eggzactly the genuine article.  Wait, what the hell was Explorers about?

So what is it that doesn’t work?  For one thing, Elle Fanning should have played every role.  Yep, she’s that hammazin.  She’s even more hammazin than her sister is/was.  If you haven’t seen her in the nowhere going Somewhere, yer going nowhere, MISTER mr!!!  Our lil Joel Courtney (see, who cares what his character’s name is) falls for her, and you will too. You will!!  So much so that yer gonna start rooting hard for them tweens to hook up.  Kids making out is a pretty sick thing to root for, but thats how compelling and believable their budding relationship is!  That shiz is Super-gr88888!!!

So what is it then that keeps this Spielbergy thing from being totes Spielbergeded????  If we told you, we’d have to kill you, or spoil-ish the movie, sorta.  We will tell you this – Abrams is grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr8 at keeping the lid on mystery (and keeping the pace fast!!!), but once the lid is lifted, what’s behind the curtain was probably better left being a mystery.  Remember how Lost began and ended?  Bang and whimper?  Still, we’re not going to complain here.  This is only Abrams’ first stab at Spielbergvilletown.  Looking forward to seeing his Indiana Jones rip-off.  Just don’t let George Lucas anywhere near it

ps, Kyle Chandler is so good at being a screen dad.  we so wish he could be our screen dad!!

ps 2, we agree with Leitch, Abrams’ buddy Matt Reeves’ Let Me In is THE Super 80s throwback over Super 8

West Virginia Is The New Ohio:  what happens when yer town is rundown and hasn’t changed in 30 years?  YOU GET TO STAR IN A SPIELBERG JJ ABRAMS MOVIE!!!!!

welcome to Weirton, West Virginia, home to ‘Lillian, Ohio’!  watch this! read this! & look at this!

Verdictgo: Jeepers Mos Def Worth A Peepers

8 is duper-enuff tomorrow at a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…