Thighs Wide Shut

The X-Files:
I Want to Believe
A Sorry X-Cuse For A Second Feature
Trailers & Mo

Like with Dr Jones, it’s a pleasure to catch-up once again with our old pals Mulder and Scully, we juss wish the reunion was packaged with something both familiar and mind-blowing, and not lackluster and half-assed. This second X-Files big screen adventure is a lot like the first one, cept it has less to do with the show’s delicious mythology (if yer looking for aliens see Crystal Skull instead) and more to do with wasting everyone’s time (unless yer really into questioning faith and religion). The production of the film was shrouded in secrecy, but what’s the point when there’s nothing within this basic serial killerish film worth holding the beans back from spilling. Guess the only secret was how plain this film turned out to be. It is kinda entertaining, but we expect more from team X, as this stand-alone piece is just that, standing by itself, far from what made the series so darn franztastic to begin with. While we are treated to sum lovely tender moments between Duchovny and Anderson (although they spend way too much screentime apart… probably the result of shooting schedule conflicts), everything else in play is ho-hum. The only thing supernatural goings on here is Billy Connolly as a child-raping priest/physic, and the rest seems very super-unnatural, like newcomers Xzibit and Amanda Peet, who both add very little to the effort (they should left Xzibit off the screen and figured out a way to use his killah song ‘Paparazzi’ instead). We’re kinda tossed on whether they should even bother with a third flick, but the fact remains that the truth is still out there since I Want To Believe is juss a bunch of truthiness

The Hank Moody Boobs: Mulder is so yesterday’s news thanks to Duchovny’s work and all play banging hot chicks on Showtime’s Californication [NSFW]

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Mamma Mia!
My My, How Can We Resist You? Very Easily
Trailers & Mo

This past decade has seen its fair share of stage musicals making a bumpy transition to celluloid. For every Sweeney Todd or Hedwig that are able to make the magic work, there are at least a handful that repoop it up like Phantom of The Poopera or Poopspray or Low-Rent or The Pro-Poopers or Nightmaregirls. Mama Mia! is another one to add to the poopfest list. They woulda been better off calling it Dia Rrhea! OK, it’s not as awful as one would think, but after about 3 songs into this ABBA karaoke-a-thon yer gonna wanna run home and listen to Agnetha, Björn, Benny and Anni-Frid sing the tunes instead of whatever butcher shop Meryl Streep and co have opened for bidness. We’re glad that they were having such a great time onscreen, but maybe they could figured out a way to transfer some of that fun to the paying audience. This may not be the movie musical’s Waterloo, but it’s certainly its Waterpoop

Remington Shrill: we pity poor Pierce Brosnan. he’s got a lovely voice for talking (and audio tours), but not so much when it comes to singing. he’s down right slight yer ears off repoopulous, yet we can’t stop listening to his duet with Meryl on ‘S.O.S.’ [d]

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

both films are playing at a theater new Jews

until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Garden Party
Amateur Hour… and a Half
Trailers & Mo

Thank Jeebus that Ricky Nelson‘s deceased, cause we don’t think he’d wanna live in a world where a film named after one of his hit songs sucks so darn much (we’re also curious if he’d wanna live in a world where his sons’ Matt & Gunnar have prettier hair than most women). Sometimes a movie can get by with C-list material if the cast is up to the challenge, but when the cast is straight off the F-list (the only recognizable faces are Marissa Cooper’s sister, the Eyes Wide Shut whore, and that dude with the brows bushier than Bert of Ernie fame) you’ll end up with something that’s not even passable as a straight-to-DVD product. Garden Party‘s snoozingly follows the lives of an artist, a wandering musician, a jail bait teen, a not so secretly gay guy who secretly wants to dance, a real estate mogul who sweetens her deals with pot, and a dude who takes pictures of naked chicks for the internets. And what do they all have in common? Well, besides a lot of wooden acting, they all are a bunch of lost souls traipsing around the city of lost souls, Los Angeles (WOW, what a novel idea!). Most of the characters will eventually cross paths, but you won’t care, cause all these roads lead to nowhere. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Native Grima Wormtongue: Brad Dourif + Joni Dourif = daughter Fiona. yikes!

Verdictgo: Slit Your Eyes Out Repoopulous

Eight Miles High!
(Das Wilde Leben)
Exile On Lame Street
Trailers & Mo

How could a biopic about a ’60s German sex symbol, who had flings with revolutionaries, some crazy adventurer with a mustache, Hendrix, Mick and Keef (above, Alexander Scheer, who gives Johnny Depp a run for his money as bestest Richards impersonator) be so uninteresting? Did we mention that there are at least 8 scenes of NSFWedness and yet it’s still a bore fest and 101/102ths? Beyond sum beautiful scenery and decent future JO material for home spewing, there’s little to recommend about the life and grinds of Uschi Obermaier put on display in this film. Then again, whatta ya expect when the people Obermaier were banging are more worthy of exploration than she is. There’s no discernible tale to tell here, juss a bunch of floating from one bed to the next that always resulted with the last man deep in a pile of jealousy. Perhaps a documentary woulda been a better route to go, and put some meaning into all this meaningless sex

Almost Famous: peep real snaps of Uschi, inlcuding ones with Mick AND Keef!

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

The Edge of Heaven
(Auf der anderen Seite)
ALMOST Heaven
Trailers & Mo

Two characters die in The Edge of Heaven, and believe it or snot, we’re not ruining a thing for you. Hell, the movie itself plays the spoiler when it splits the events into three acts via title cards, with the first two declaring the deaths right at the beginning. And even though we know the predetermined fate of these victims, it still comes as a great shock when the deeds eventually occur. Everything surrounding the events, leading up to and after, are all bits of inspired filmmaking, which comes across in a mos lovely gentle and quiet kinda way. Heaven examines the disconnection and reconnection between fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, and where you live and where you come from (this film shuttles back and forth between Germany and Turkey). We read somewhere that this Heaven was kinda like a mini-Babel and we’d have to agree with that fact, cept you’ll walk outta the theater with a little more faith in humanity instead of dread

Gotta Have Faith: Faith Akin is one of a dozen or so directors to lend his talents to the NY version of Paris, je t’aime. We have a stinkin suspicion that his short will probably be a bit better than Zach Braff’s

Verdictgo: it’s a fine fine movie, but a lil too long for its own good so Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Garden and Miles open today in limited release, where Heaven has been for awhile. And for some reason, the gripping Roman Polanski doc that was on HBO is now playing in select theaters as well

Rental Round-Up Dawg:

It goes without spraying that if you’ve haven’t seen season one of Mad Men you should stop what yer doing and right that wrong immediately, hispecially before season 2 kicks off on July 27th. And this isn’t a ‘Netflix-it’ kinda series, but one to own, hispecially (pt ii) since it comes in a nifty jumbo Zippo cigarette lighter case! And for those of us who’ve already seen season 1, the new set it a grand way to get our Joan moan jones over and over, or at least until our palms turn hairy

Stop-Loss and Vantage Point were mostly hosed by critics and ignored at the box office, and dat’s a crying shame, considering they both woulda been a lot of fun to see on the big screen. Stop Loss was one of the more watchable Iraqi War flicks we’ve seen of late, mainly cause the action happens at home, and it was also a good warm-up to peep Channing Tatum in uniform, a summer before he brings GI Joe’s Duke to life. Vantage Point is very hammy and repetitive, but it also has kick glass action and William Hurt in probably his least annoying role of the past few years

Maybe yer looking to warm yer heart a bit, well try Papillon or The Year My Parents Went on Vacation on for thighs. Papillon‘s the unbelievable true tale of a French prisoner (Steve McQueen) endlessly trying to escape (with the help of Dustin Hoffman, rawking the bestest set of screen specs mt EVERest). This would be a good one to watch with the fellas. A lil more on the ‘softer’ side, Vacation is about a Brazilian boy whose parents leave him with his grandpa for a year as they hide out from the gov-mint. Turns out gramps is dead and the community ends up looking after the kid. It’s a nice lil foreign flick that has the added bonus of Brazilian World Cup madness thrown into the mix

And last, but certainly not yeast is Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten [TWS review]. Are you a fan of the Clash? It’s a rhetorical question cause you knows they rule the school and if you disagree, go eat a dick or go on and continue to listen to Maroon 5 or whatevsdotorg. Anywho, director Julian Temple tackled the Sex Pistols on his last doc and gives the Clashman the same royal treatment here in the rip roaring musssssssss see. The DVD has 90+ more minutes of interviews from fans and loved ones. is a nice

until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Get Smart
Field Failed Agent
Trailers & Mo

If yer looking for a decent homage to the beyond classic Don Adams starring-Mel Brooks/Buck Henry created Get Smart TV series (one of our dad’s most flavorite shows) you’d be better off skipping this big screen ‘adaptation’ and instead putting a bid on one of Sports Illustrated‘s famed sneaker shoes. Dats right folks, whoever pieced together this film missed it by a lot more than ‘that much‘. Not to say that Get Smart isn’t watchable, cause it kinda is with its spot-on chemistry through casting (new Agent 99 Anne NSFW Hathaway is juss as 69able as old Agent 99 Barbara Feldon) and well put together action sequences that shouldn’t be act-shunned, but the main issue here is that this is supposed to be a comedy, and you won’t find any comedy within, even if you threw a Good Humor truck at the screen (it’s the same sh$t/ship that basically sunk the French spy spoof OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies). We pity Steve Carell. He’s too darn hamazing as Michael Scott on The Office, where he’s supported by some of entertainment’s sharpest writing, that anything else we see him in is an automatic step down (although Dan In Real Life is worth a peepage). Hopefully he’ll keep rocking the small stuff while he attempts to stay dry, sweating in the big stuff

In An Alternate Uni-Reverse: remember the opening scene of The Office‘s fourth episode this past season where, after watching bits and pieces of The Devil Wears Prada, Michael apes Miranda Priestly by tormenting Pam [watch it @ hulu]? we’d love to see the same scene done again, but with Hathaway sitting at Dunder Mifflin’s reception desk… or at least sitting under our desk. what, that doesn’t float yer boat? then maybe you wanna see the straight-to-betamax spin-off flick Get Smart’s Bruce and Lloyd Out of Control, which features the non-comic stylings of Masi Oka and this d-bag

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

The Incredible Hulk
The Incredulous Bulk
Trailers & Mo

Why does everyone hate on Ang Lee’s Hulk? Juss cause smashing things took a back seat to (oh gasp!) actual character development, does that a bad movie make? We certainly think snot, hispecially since Bruce Banner/The Hulk is one giant character study worth studying, as we proclaimed (and still do) that Lee’s take on the not so-jolly green giant was ‘the best comic book movie since the OG Batman… as long as u erase the last 10 minutes of it from your memory where Nick Nolte becomes like super lightning man or something for no reason‘. So whatta we get with this reboot (one of the wurstest words thrown around in the media today) by the dude who directed Transporter 2 and waz written by the fella who penned the Inspector Gadget flick and the crappy Brett Ratnerfied X-Men? Not one single thing that could be considered better than what was scene and herd in the first try. On top of that, it’s boring. Look, we love Ed Norton like we love our moms (his matzoh soup is probably juss as good), but he’s not as well suited as Eric Bana was (he’s also a bit too gaunt, not matter how much he worked out for the film). And Liv Tyler and William Hurt (who’s slowly becoming one of the mos annoying overactors nick goings) versus Jennifer Connelly and Sam Elliot and his bona fide mustache? Pa-sleaze. Even the action jackson in version 1.0 is dinty moore enjoyable than what went on in 2.0. Remember Hulk leaping over mountains and later tearing up the hills of San Fran? That was a lot more rah-rah sis boom ba-tastic than the crappy crap they flung at us in 2.0, which all seemed to be filmed on sum sh%tty Hollywood back lot. URGH! OK, we’ll admit, the new Hulk did have something that was on par with the old one: the CGI Hulk was juss as awful looking. If this thing gets rebooted (URGH!) for a 3.0 version, they should throw away the computer and give ole Lou Ferrigno (who makes a cameo, again) a green paint job

Want Sumtang Incredible?: THAT’S INCREDIBLE!

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Roman Polanski:
Wanted and Desired
A Not So Noble Roman
Trailer & Mo

Finally, a film that isn’t a remake or a reboot or even close to being repoopulous! Well it is, but not the eye slitting kind. It’s a documentary about the repoopulous trials (both literally and figuratively) and tribulations (more figuratively than literal) that befell Roman Polanski in 1977 (then age 44) after he raped a 13 year-old girl duri
ng a French Vogue photoshoot filled with champagne and quaaludes at Jack Nicholson’s house. Although Polasnki’s a jacka$$ for doing what he did, the judge who dilly dallyed over the case and ensuing media 18-ring circus is an even bigger one, so much so that it almos turns Roman into the victim. As we all know (or you should know), Polanski fled the US before his final sentencing and has yet to return. This shiz is all too repoopulous and redonkeylous to put in words, so peas seek it out and come up with yer own verdictgo

Sleazy Reading: The Smoking Gun‘s gotz the court transcript of the 13 year-old’s testimony

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

Smart and Hulk are playing at a theater new Jew, while Polanski is currently airing on HBO before it hits limited theaters on July 11th

until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The Happening
More Like The Unhappening
Trailers & Mo

There’s never a dull moment, but nothing at all that interesting going on in M Night Shyamalan’s latest trifle, The Happening. You’ll be more thrilled by his previous lackluster effort, Lady in the Water [TWS review], than you will be by this, which is easily his weakest effort to date. The saddest bit of it all is that nothing really happens, unless you count one ‘jump out of your seat’ moment, endless scenes of people running from the wind and trees, and Zoey Deschannel handing in one of the worstestest performances we’ve seen this year. Had someone else directed this quarter-baked environmental disaster flick, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, but audiences expect more outta M Night, and the audience we were watching it with starting booing as soon as the credits rolled. Do yourself a flavor, skip this and Netflix The Mist, where sh%t actually happen(ing)s

He’s Not Even Supposed To Be Here Today : Clerks clerk Brian O’Halloran plays a jeep driver, although you’ll only see his eyes looking through a rear-view mirror

Verdictgo: in terms of a M Night movie it’s Slit Your Eyes Out Repoopulous

My Winnipeg
You Can Never Leave Home Again
Trailers & Mo

My Winnipeg is director Guy Maddin‘s beautifully constructed, and often hilarious love/hate poem of the town he has called home since birth. Mixing civic fact and fiction with his own family’s follies, Maddin, with his signature silent era film look in tow, creates his own surreal dream-like take on Manitoba’s capital city, past, present and future. His Winnipeg is a colorful place (shown in gorgeous black & white), filled with dark snowy nights, sleepwalkers, frozen horses, seances, man pageants, elderly hockey legends forever playing in the abandoned arena of the Jets [watch it’s demolition here] and his crotchety mother. What’s true and what’s false isn’t important, cause the mythology he presents is so filled with affection and energy that you’ll want to believe every bit of it

Up Chuk: wees suckers for any hockey player who has ‘chuk’ in their last name, and the Jets had two flamous ones, Dale Hawerchuk and Keith Tkachuk

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

Encounters at
The End of The World
The Science of Nature and The Nature of Scientists
Trailers & Mo

Werner Herzog knows a thing or seven about man and his fragile relationship with nature. His films (Fitzcarraldo) and documentaries (Grizzly Man) have explored that idea ad infinitum, and with his uneven, yet engaging Encounters, he takes his probing eyes and didactic husky voice to Antarctica, to find out what the dealio. The ‘encounters’ he has down there with scientists, travelers and other inquiring minds works best when they’re out playing in the snow, but every time we’re indoors, Herzog’s mocking commentary is usually more interesting than the words his interviewees are providing. At least he knows to focus more of the attention on the breathtaking landscape of Antarctica and not on its breathless soundscape

Bowled Over: the main US base of operations down there is McMurdo Station. It aint got much, but it does have a bowling alley!

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Quid Pro Quo
Spell & Wheelchair Binding
Trailers & Mo

While we saw the ending coming a kilometer away, it didn’t hold us back from being completely intrigued by Quid Pro Quo‘s story of a paraplegic public radio reporter (the vastly underrated Nick Stahl) investigating an underworld of able-bodied people who wish they were disabled, who finds love and a lot of heartache (with The Departed‘s Vera Farmiga, and her haunting blue eyes) in the process. Director Carlos Brooks may not be hitting an outright home run with his first feature, but he shows great skill and promise in piecing together this odd detective story to give this and his future endeavors a look

We Hate He: jerk actor Jacob Pitts is well on his way to joining Charles Dance & James Woods in our Screen Asshole Guild – Hall of Fame

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Das Happening is playing at a theater new Jew, while Encounters, Winnipeg and Quid are in limited release

until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

You Don’t Mess With The Zohan
You Don’t Have To Bother Seeing The Zohan
Trailers & Mo

We’ve waited a long time for one of those good ole fashioned Adam Sandler comedies to hit theaters, and the wait will have to continue as his latest, You Don’t Mess With The Zohan, is juss another waste of time handed in from team Happy Madison. You’d think with a script co-written by Sandler, Robert Smigel and Judd Apatow that they’d come up with something presentable, but 8 minutes of total laughs outta almost 2 hours of eye-rolling nonsense doesn’t really add up to much viewing pleasure (besides looking at Emmanuelle Chriqui, a Jewish gal playing Zohan’s Palestinian forbidden love interest). To make splatters worse, a film aiming for Arab-Israeli harmony turns out to be highly insensitive and offensive, and reinforces awful Middle Eastern stereotypes one flat joke at a time (although we’re guessing Goys will find sum humor in it). It also doesn’t help your ‘can’t we all just get along‘ cause (or laugh dept) when you have Rob Schneider playing an Arab taxi driver. Bi the gay, without Sandler, would Scheider be able to pay his bills?

Anywho, Sandler plays Zohan, a hummus loving (he even uses it as toothpaste! hardy har har) Israeli super agent (complete with a Moshe Dayan poster hanging in his pad) whose secret desire is to become a hairdresser like Paul Mitchell in America. He fakes his death (don’t ask, and you shouldn’t care) and heads to New York under a new name, Scrappy Coco (the name alone is a dead giveaway of how lame this film is). Stuff happens, but nothing really happens, as cameo after cameo gets piled inbetwixt. We get to see Chris Rock, Sulu, Michael Buffer, Mariah Carrey, Dave Matthews and even Mrs Garrett, but they do nothing to help this peace of sh%t (car)

The concept of Sandler as a horny foreign hairdresser is one worth running with, but they should left the political and cultural ideas completely out of the picture. He’s actually quite good in the role, yet one can’t help comparing it to another stranger who came to our strange land with much better results. That stranger is Borat, and you’d be better off rewatching his film (or the bits from Da Ali G Show) that actually has something to say about our society, instead of insulting it. You may also want to czech out the lil Spanish film Only Human (Seres Queridos) [TWS glowing review], which is a much more poignant, and hispecially funnier look at Jews, Muslims and love

Israeli Ido: Sandler’s on-screen Israeli-American buddy Ido Mosseri is the Hebrew voice for Israel’s Spongebob Squarepants

Jews Or Lose: Donna Feldman and Yamit Sol (aka ימית סול) not only play two Jewish hotties in the film, but they actual are ones in real life!

Verdictgo: Slit Your Eyes Out Repoopulous

Mother of Tears
(La Terza Madre)
Turn This Mother Out
Trailers & Mo

We’ve never seen a film by Italian (supposed) horror master Dario Argento, but we have ogled for many hours at his daughter Asia, who recently can be seen on one of the bestest and barely SFW movie posters of the year. The two have paired up for the fourth time on Mother of Tears, which is the final film in his ‘Three Mothers’ trilogy that began with Suspiria and was followed by Inferno. There’s not much to say about this final installment other then that it isn’t very good or all that scary (besides the thought of Dario filming his daughter showering). However, through all the shock and schlock on display, it is kinda sorta unintentionally (?) hilarious (gawd bless you Udo Kier). Maybe they shoulda hired Dario to direct Zohan instead of Ronald Miller’s father from Can’t Buy Me Love

Death Race 2008: according to Cinemorgue, Asia Argento and her half-sister Fiore have died in movies a combined 5 times. That’s 1 death behind the total amount set by Dario’s long term partner and mother of Asia, Daria Nicolodi (who plays Asia’s already deceased mom in Tears)

Verdictgo: Very Little Merit But No Stinking Badges

Zohan will be playing at theater near Jews this Friday, while Tears will open in limited release

until next thyme the balcony is clothed…