Thighs Wide Shut

Maudie
Micro, Soft Paint
Official Site | Trailer & Mo
PG-13 | 115 min

Maud Lewis was a simple woman, who lived a simple existence in a simple Nova Scotian coastal town.  Apparently everything else about her was not so simple.  She suffered from juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, and in turn, suffered from unsupportive and resentful relatives.  No one believed in her, or her ability to do anything because of her condition.  That trend continued when a no-nonsense loner fish peddler named Everett Lewis begrudgingly took her on as a live-in housekeeper, in his simple tiny home, cause simply there was no one else willing to take the job.  But after she moved in, she started to slowly move into his heart, and as she began to open hers, her talent as a folksy, SIMPLE painter emerged, and Everett succumbed to both painter and her paint.  Soon, others from around the continent (even Richard Nixon!) would line-up behind Everett to do the same.  YOU GO MAUDE!!

This is the subject of the simple, yet simply beautiful new film Maudie by Aisling Walsh, starring the mos eggsalad Sally Hawkins as the real-life subject, and a Sling-Bladey Ethan Hawke as the curmudgeon husband to be.  The movie is unassuming, unshowy, unpolished – and the exact kind of movie diversion we need during the summer of usual cinematic garbage.  Its simplicity is a stroke of genius – so dig in, and watch the paint  (Canada) dry, and perhaps watch as your eyes don’t remain dry!

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

Maudie is on display currently in limited release

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Blue Jasmine
I Left My Heart Has Nothing Left In San Francisco
Official Website | Trailers & Mo 
PG-13 | 98 min

Woody Allen‘s recent movies have ranged from unforgettable (Midnight In Paris) to forgettable (Whatever Works) to juss plain forgotten (had zero recollection as to what You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger was about).  And his latest – Blue Jasmine?  As a whole, it’s neither of the three, but of course you should see it, cause it’s a Woody Allen movie, but anyone who does see it will never EVER forget the performance that Cate Blanchett hands in as the title blue-stress.  Oh man, the screen burns with every fiery ember of Cate as Jasmine and her smoldering at-the-ready Chernobyl-level meltdowns.  HOT HOT HOT!!!  She’s a woman scorned, broken, battered, but trying to bounce back.  Will the world let her, or will she burn herself down into pile of alcohol-soaked black ashes?  We’re rooting for her at every (mis)step she takes, even though she’s one of the least rootable characters of 2013.  GO JASMINE!!

So how did Jassy Jasmine bottom out to such a low match point?  She turned a blind eye to husband Alec Baldwin‘s madoff-ing with other people’s monies & philandering all over New York, and before it was too late to open her eyes, she lost everything.  Now she’s begging at the door of Sally Hawkins, her adopted sister who Jasmine could give three sh$ts about.  But times are tough and any family is family when yer down and out and now in San Francisco (new Woody locale, yeah!!).  Hawkins has enuff stuff on her own plate, like trying to feed two kids she sired with ex-husband Andrew Dice Clay (not playing for nursery rhyme laughs, and it works!), and a non-stop yapping greasy new beau in the form of Bobby Cannavale (although his yawk-y character doesn’t seem like the kinda guy who’d be living in the Bay Area).  Of course Jasmine complicates matters for all parties involved, as anything she (or Woody) touches turns into instant-neuroticism.  Things eventually do get better between the sisters, and then they each meet a dashing new man – Jasmine + Peter Sarsgaard and Hawkins + Louis CK, but the likelihood of the forecast staying perma-sunny in a ‘blue’ movie is about the same as the chances that dentist Michael Stuhlbarg or dopey mustachio Max Casella have of scoring with Cate Blanchett

Wowsers Cate Blanchett!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Are you the best actress alive?  Dare we say possibly even bester than the grrrrrrrrrrrrrreat Meryl Streep?  Time will tell for some, but we may be ready to make and stick by such a bold claim.  Streep of course coulda played a perfect Jasmine, and has even worked with Woody before, but I just don’t see a Streep Jasmine giving me movie memory neurosis for time eternal.  Burn baby burn!

Verdictgo: Jeepers MOS DEF Worth A Peepers

Blue is golden currently in NY & LA, and elsewhere elsewhen

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Submarine
Sinking & Swiming with Wales
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 97 min

Remember how awesomes and clevers and fresheses in teen angstness and confusion Rushmore was?  Well, we’ve all been waiting for the next Rushmore (which was the next Harold & Maude or if….?) and there hasn’t been a next one.  Lots of tries, lotsa failures.  Not even Wes Anderson could get back to that way cool of school.  Enter the Welshish graped Submarine (based on the Joe Dunthorne novel), which comes purty darn close to Rushmoreian heights and low-ts (it was quite a downer, if you don’t remember).  And its protagonist, Oliver Tate (an incredible incredible incredible Craig Roberts), is even more likable and loveable and rootable-er than Max Fischer could ever be!  Richard Ayoade‘s flick is sharp as a tack and not tacky like the B-Sharps, even with all the flashy film techniques and snappy editing goings on.  It’s got 2 apathetic parents (the very well paired Noah Taylor & Sally Hawkins), one spirtual guru goon (constantly sirprizing Paddy Considine) and one adorable bobbed girl in a red jacket (paging Yasmin Paige), and they’re all problematic peeps causing mad problematics for our lil man Tate.  The first 1/3 is brilliant, and the 2nd third is moody, and the 3rd third is moody blues, and yet all three thirds are juss plain cool to watch as a whole movie.  It’s no Rushmore, cause Rushmore is our Rushmore?

Oh Snap!: yer telling we you don’t want to see a movie that looks like this?

Verdictgo: Jeepers Mos Def Worth A Peepers

Submarine stays afloat in limited release

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Jane Eyre
The Fresh Wince of Belle Eyre
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

We’ve now sat through two of the 9.237362 bazillion film/TV incarnations of Charlotte Brontë‘s ‘classic’ novel Jane Eyre (which we haven’t read cause we don’t know how to read, yet somehow we magically know how to type words using this computer thingie!), and can now safely say we’re not the hugest fan of the story.  The story is about a girl named… JANE EYRE!!!!  She’s a little orphan (that doesn’t sing or wear red or have a dog or a giant blond fro), who’s been tossed around town like an unwanted bag of used socks covered in pickle juice and urine.  Eventually Ms Unwanted finds employment as a governess at the creepy Thornfield Hall (things go bump in the night there), where the enigmatic Mr Rochester rules the roost… if and when he’s around.  Jane and Rochester strike up something more than an employer/ee relationship, things get serious, things gets weird, Jane leaves, finds peace and salvation with a young clergyman and his sisters and then stuff, and more stuff, cause she can’t keep her mind off of Rochester!!!  Blindmowing, right???  Yeah, if this was maybe the first thing you ever did done saw on Masterpiece Theater!

And yet, we still dig on Ms Eyre.  Maybe cause there’s an air about Eyre.  HOW DARE WE PUN THE HEIR OF EYRE!!!  Anywho, the ’43 edish starring Joan Fontaine and Orson Welles wasn’t all that or thensome or even close to awesome, but we cared cause Joan as Jane with her groans and moans made us moan!  And yes, you know we love Orson, but he hammed it up more than a reunion of Jon Hamm’s family at a Hormel factory that we’re juss gonna have to pretend that he wasn’t in the movie!!!! Gawd hammit!!!!

Director Cary Fukunaga (Sin Nombre) and writer Moira Buffini‘s take on the material fairs munch better than the other one we saw (you tell us how they stack up against the book).  First and not foremost, we don’t hate on black & white pics (cause we’re old fashioned, like how we take our movies, burgers and women), but the color palette here shines udderly heaven-like, even when most of the colors are grays, but these grays glow with radiance!!  But we mainly care for this Eyre cause of the eggsalad acting chops and chemistry that exists between our new Jane, Mia Wasikowska (the next Streep??), and Mr Rochester, Michael Fassbender (he and Henry Cavill are gonna fight for studliest awesome European dude for years to come).  They sizzle together, even if there isn’t much onscreen sizzling to be had (damns yous 1800s!!!)!!!! Plus, they’re supported by the likes of Dame Judi Dench, Sally Hawkins, Jamie Bell and Simon McBurney (we could listen to his voice 25 hrs a day)!!!  Who doesn’t love those peoples???

Anywho part 23456677, yer either into stuffy British costume dramas or yer not.  If you are, inhale this Eyre!  And if yer not, well, stuff you!!!

Every Day’s A Holiday: when yer as fly as Holliday Grainger!!!

Verdictgo: Jeepers Mos Def Worth A Peepers

Jane is not plane tomorrow in NY/LA only and elsewhere elsewhen

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Made In Dagenham
Sew, You Think You Can Dance With The Big Boys?
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

You remember all that hullabaloo about England’s Ford sewing machinists strike of 1968, right?  You don’t???? Well neither did we!!  And now everything has become illuminated thanks to director Nigel Cole and writer William Ivory‘s vibrant, yet basically banal cinematic take on the event and ensuing events in Made In Dagenham!  The key word hidden in the title is ‘ham’, as in this thing is as hammy as a ham radio ham sangwich being eaten by Mama Cass on her death bed!!!!  But lettuce not focus on the ham AND cheesiness of the movie, and instead pay attention to the message that stands tall above it all: at on point in time women weren’t on equal footing with the mens, especially in the workforce, and that just aint right.  No men were up in arms over this and for years and years nothing changed.  Well, if you want to something done, sometimes you gotta take matters into yer own hands, and that is precisely what a bunch of working class sewing dames at the Ford plant in Dagenham done did!  They coulda cared less about the question ‘have you driven a Ford lately?’ and were all about ‘what has Ford done for us lately?’.  You go girls, and boy, did they go!!!!

America has Norma Rae and Karen Silkwood, and they had their movies, and now Britain and Rita O’Grady gots theirs!  Sally Hawkins wears O’Grady’s high heels and carries her big stick, and she aint gonna take no for answer!  Not from her doubting hubby Daniel Mays, nor crusty ole union dude Kenneth Cranham, nor UK Ford dude Rupert Graves, norrr US Ford dude Richard Schiff, who had to trek all the way across the pond to try and quiet them down.  GOOD LUCK WITH TRYING TO SHUSH A WOMANS!!!!  Luckily, O’Grady/Hawkins wasn’t alone in her fight, with a posse of her feisty sewers in tow (including the very feisty, very sexy Jaime Winstone… see below), a helpful rep from within the company (best in smile Bob Hoskins!!), a UK Ford exec’s mod wife (Rosamund Pike), and a certain lady high up in the ranks of gov’mint (Miranda Richardson) all chipping in on the you go-go girly girlnessness!

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT????????  Well, you can probably guess what does cause a) women aren’t paid slave wages anymo, and b) they made a movie all about this shaz, and people like movies about winning and not losing!!!  If only this thang wasn’t so dang cheesy, and lost about 4 of its pointless sidetracked side stories!!!  Still, we were purty much gung ho for this female Gung Ho

Forever Winstoned: she punched us in the heart in the muss see guilty/dirty pleasure Donkey Punch, and she does it every dang time we see her lil saucy self get saucy-saucy-pants!!!  sadly, this hasn’t happened all that much, with such a small filmography, but 1nce bitten, wees 5ever smitten with Jaime ‘daughter of Ray’ Winstone!!!!!  qwik fact… Winstone used to date Alfie Allen, who’s sister is… Lily Allen!!!  That’s one ploughman’s lunch we’d like to plow thru and munch on!!!  and if not, we’d love to juss go bowling with them or something!!!

Verdictgo: low end Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Made is in the shade this Friday in NY & LA only, and elsewhere elsewhen

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…