Thighs Wide Shut

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1
Can’t Spell ‘Saga’ Without ‘Sag’
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 117 min

More like making yawns!!!! It’s true. We get like an hour of wedding bliss bleeeech and a stoopid south of the equator funnymoon and then the rest is watching Bella LaGrossy replay the cross-species pregnancy and birthing that was done munch betterer and scarierier in V: The Final Battle.  Oh, you also get 5ever bitter herb Jacob wolfing out again, and complaining again, and Benedict Arnolding, and boring, and more boring

moral of the story: think there was like 5 minutes of good stuff and like 112 of like boring.  women will think the opposite, and that’s fine, cause they need all the shitty girly films that they can get their beautiful hands on

Painted Boobs: even our mom thinks Ashley Greene is a hotttttttttie

Verdictgo: Zero To No Merit AND No Stinkin Badges (it wasn’t entirely unwatchable, see ‘painted boobs’ above, even if no boobs in Yawn were actually painted)

Breaking Yawn does what it sez what it does currently in a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Take Shelter
Cloudy With A Chance of Boring
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 120 min

If Michael Shannon is in yer movie, he’s probably playing some crazed person, with a good heart that’s probably misguided. If Jessica Chastain is in yer movie, it means it’s a movie from 2011, cause she is like in one out of every five of them. IT’S TRUE!!! So what happens when the two are in a movie together?  They play parents to a deaf girl (Tova Stewart), and have troubles juss like any other working class Ohioans do… CEPT THEY HAVE MORE PROBLEMS, LIKE A DEAF CHILD, AND MOREEE!!!! Cause Michael Shannon is a crazed person, with a good heart that’s probably misguided… OR IS IT????  DUNNO!!!??!?!

In Jeff Nichols‘ well-crafted, but udderly dull Take Shelter, Shannon is seeing cloudy and birdy signs of the apocalypse, in dreams and in reality(????), and so he must do what he feels is right – expand his existing storm shelter into a mega one!!! So the movie is basically Michael Shannon looking up at the sky, having bad dreams, and working on this shelter, rinse, repeat, snores, we get it, we don’t, OK, so it had a nice lil ending, but did it have to take 2 hours to get there?  It didn’t.  Don’t gimme Shelter!

He & He: Shelter marks the 5 screen pairing of Michael Shannon and Shea Whigham.  wonder if casting agents get a package discount

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Shelter doesn’t hold it together currently in limited release

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The Ides of March
The Snoozes of October
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 101 min

We’re fans of great actors doing great acting, and sometimes that’s juss enuff to make a film work, but other times, like with the George Clooney written/directed/starringed Ides of March, it’s not even close enuff.  If this were a movie made for $4 and starred a bunch of people without arms and legs, maybe this woulda been something, but The Ides of March is a exercise in nothing.  It feels like an even more pointless and boring Contagion, aka – hey look, we’ve assembled this amazing super awesome cast and we’re gonna make a movie like it’s the first time we’ve ever made a movie with the most basic story of stories, and juss when you think it could go somewhere deeper, it goes somewhere like nowhere, or like pretty much anywhere a movie has taken us before!  Zzzzzzzzzzzz

OK, so it’s well known (is it??) that we’re no fans of George Clooney (and his dumb face) (and not so great acting), but as a director (Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Good Night & Good Luck, and even Leatherheads), he has shown some chops, but here he’s directing stale air.  If this political ‘potboiler’ were released in 1492 AD, it still wouldn’t make any kind of splash.  Why?  Cause the story is a bore-y.  Want lame fake politics?  See The Ides of March!  Want juicy real politics?  Rent Primary Colors

And the story is???…  Ryan Gosling is a hot shot campaign guy working with honest Philip Seymour Hoffman to get Clooney (in quadruple smug mode, spewing endless ‘I’m such a righteous man’ diatribes, which he probably wrote himself) into the White House (dream on buddy).  The rival camp, headed by Paul Giamatti, aims to steal Gosling for their own team, so Gosling gets conflicted!!!  That’s where any bit of interesting interest starts and ends.  Luckily Evan Rachel Wood‘s thighs are wide open, and Gosling drives into her!  Then Gosling starts learning some truths, like how Evan Rachel Wood may not be a holy virgin (and has a man’s name), and other stuff (that you won’t give 9 sheets about).  And then??????????  Wish the answer was ‘Zardoz‘, cause then it woulda been something instead of some kindergarten attempt at making a political statement

Slain & pimple, Ides of March don’t amount to much.  Maybe this shoulda juss been a movie about Paul Giams and Phil Sey Hoffs squaring off in a battle of angry fat guys, where they take turns yelling at each other, but in the end, become BFFs and celebrate their BFFship by taking a bath together (no, this isn’t our fantasy, but if this was a movie, you’d pay to see it like we would)

No He Can’t: nice poster!!!  NOT!!!!  yer not the white Obama, and yer also not the second coming of Cary Grant.  please leave our eyes alone

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Ides of March is out of step today at a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Contagion
Semi-Avoid This Like The Plague
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 106 min

And the unscariest lame scary movie that wasn’t intended to be a scary movie is… Steven Nederbergh‘s Contagtgitiontioniagagaionagioanggaaioaniatgaionattaoon!!!  This coulda been 28 Days Later, but ended up being about as adventerous as 28 Days Slater!!!  Gwyneth Paltrow foams at the mouth to death within the first 15 minutes and then it’s pretty much Purell pure-hell of boredom the rest of the way!!!!  Not even bats feeding pigs feeding humans causing problems on Day 1 can make us give a sh#t about any day that followed.  Contagtioaianiataianigaianaian did for germs what Food, Inc did for unhealthy eating – not change our minds on the subject whatsoever.  Bring on the tainted pig, please!!!!

Colombiana
More Like Colombian-MEH
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 108 min

Luc, stop writing and producing easy action garbage (like Colombiana), and directing kids movies, and juss reunite with Natalie Portman and make yer name mean something once again.

Here’s hoping your Lady aint shady

Verdictgos: both be Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Contagion & Colombiana are C minuses at a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Our Idiot Brother
Oh Brother, Why Aren’t Thou?
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 90 min

Our Idiot Brother feels like the work of a first time director, with a screenplay that plays out like a mediocre sitcom pilot.  Well, OIB is director Jesse Peretz‘s third entry (never have seen The Ex or The Château, and we’re guessing we probably don’t need to), and it is indeed David Schisgall and Evgenia Peretz‘s first stab at a motion picture script.  Does this explain why their stellar assembled esmble and R rating are basically laid to waste?  Maybe.  OIB is a harmless lil flick, and it’s hactually purty darn hard to even come up with anything negative to say about it (we did smile a bunch, dangit), but there’s nothing really here to see or hear, outside of folks who are Shirley Knight completists.  If that’s you, then go ahead, bother with Brother

But if yer like we, you expect a little something more than nothing (it’s basically the story of a guy who wants his dog back, but it’s not as boring as Wendy & Snoozy) when you got Elizabeth Banks, Zooey Deschanel and Emily Mortimer (oh gawd, do we love this woman) playing patient sisters to ‘idiot’ brother/minor Lebowski Paul Rudd, no??  And what if you surround these fine folk with the likes of Steve Coogan, Rashida Jones, Hugh Dancy and Adam Scott???  Shouldn’t that be enuff to miss misfiring?  Apparently not.  Everyone here is game, especially a chillaxed Rudd, but everything here is also tame, and kinda lame

A better approach would have been to toss the family aside and partner Rudd up with fellow mellow head T.J. Miller, and have them do crazy stuff, like open a candle store, with zero cares in the world or bidness sense.  That idea actually pops up at the end of the movie (and no, we didn’t ruin a single thing by telling you this), but by then, any buzz you might have had, will surely have subsided.  Pass the peace pipe, and pass on this

Chin Up: Paul Rudd’s first film role was in 1992’s A Question of Ethics, a film he was so appalled by (for religious reasons – he’s Jewish, the flick was Jesus preachy), that he asked to be credited as Kenny Chin.  can’t find any video of it online, but found this still

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinking Badges 

Brother is familiar stuff at a theater near jews tomorrow

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

WE STILL LOVE YOU RUDD STUDD!!!!