Thighs Wide Shut

Beloved
(Les bien-aimés)
How Long Must We Sing This Song?
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
NR | 135 min

Beloved‘s a love story (times two), for the ages, and by ages, we mean it takes 9ever to go from Paris’ swinging 60s, to the morose post-9/11 world, but at least there’s singing all along the way!  in French!!!

Yes, we’ve been down this Christophe Honoré path before, with 2007’s Love Songs (Les Chansons d’amour), and we haven’t stop singing that film’s praises.  More like singing that film’s soundtrack (we actually do, and the songs are all in French!!!), and less so about the film itself.   And that’s OK, cause them songs were AMAZING!!!  And the movie itself was pretty darn good too

So what about try #2, with some returning regulars (Catherine Deneuve, Ludivine Sagnier, Chiara Mastroianni, Louis Garrel) + some newbies (Paul Schneider, Radivoje Bukvic & Milos Forman!!!)?  The song remains the same?  Kinda, but with more emotional weight (AIDS!), which also weighs down the affair a lil too much, cause 135 minutes is a long time to hear French people sing about anything (even if it was about naked women eating Popeyes), when we’ve basically already seen this movie before

BUT!  It’s a French modern musical and you can’t really hate on French modern musicals, unless you hate hot & sexy French people singing songs about love and love’s lost and love found, again and again!!!  And do you not want to see mother Deneuve play screen-mother to her real life daughter Mastroianni, again?  Heck, we wish every movie employed Deneuve/Mastroianni to play mother-daughter!  Heck, we wish that they were our mother and our sister (no offense to our mother and our sister)!  Heck!!!  And they sing, a lot!!!! IN FRENCH!!!  And so does Paul Schneider (in English)!!!!  PAUL SCHNEIDER SINGS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Verdictgo: it’s no Love Songs (Les Chansons d’amour), but we’ll take it over not having a quasi-sequel, so low end Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Beloved sings its song this Friday in limited release

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The Devil’s Double
Go Ahead, Make Me Uday 
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 109 min

Uday Hussein grew up rich and infamous, under the tyrannical house of Saddam, which pretty much gave him an unusual license to do as he pleased in Iraq.  And what he pleased to do turned out to be horrific and unspeakable things to his enemies, his fellow countrymen, and even to his friends.  This made him someone not to be messed with, but also a ticking time bomb waiting to explode or to be exploded.  Many people in such a volatile position (like his father) seek out body doubles, for there is safety in numbers.  Such was the unlucky luck of Latif Yahia, a former classmate of Uday’s, who juss so happened to resemble him, and had no real choice but to sign up for the one of the worst gigs around – being his… DOUBLE!

WELCOME to Lee Tamahori‘s The Devil’s Double, a shocking, yet wholeheartedly fascinating and entertaning look at Latif’s life as Uday II. Doubling our pleasure is Dominic Cooper, who not only is carrying a movie for the very first time, but is carrying it twice, as he plays both Uday and Latif (he even looks like Latif, see below)!!!  Cooper beyond pulls off the dual roles, handing in two fantastic performances that are as varied as the men themselves.  Making it all believable is the film tech-mology that lets Coop act out with and against himself in scene after scene.  That tech-mology is basically the third star of the film (apologies to the lovely Ludivine Sagnier).  To hell with body switching, and to heaven with body doubling!!!!

The devil is in the details, and Double‘s got em, but sometimes the lack of time context, and the Hollywoodizing of Latif’s story stand in the way of this becoming a truly excellent flick.  Still, it’s not often you get a Caligula meets Dave meets Scarface in the desert, with more mustaches than one could ever dream of.  Wait, do people dream of endless mustaches????

We Want To Join AA: this AA!!

Amrita Acharia

Verdictgo: Jeepers MOS DEFFFFFF Worth A Peepers

Devil is hell on a screen, currently in limited release

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…