Thighs Wide Shut

The Other Woman
Woeman
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

Hey look, it’s Natalie Portman, in a movie!!!!  Bet you didn’t see that one coming, now didja???  Don’t worry, she aint gettin busy with Ashton Kutcher in this one, and she is back in the bustle & muscle of NY, but no tutu frutu bidness this time round, but she does gots herself a different bundle of pressures & worries, but watching her go thru them and dealing with em here aint nearly as awesomes or satisfying as watching her masturbating.  Can’t that juss be a requirement of all of her movie roles going forward?  Damn you The Other Woman for having none of that finger sticking goodness!!!

Her pressures & worries here include be: getting over the death of her newborn daughter (is this Rabbit Hole 2?  did anyone actually see Rabbit Hole 1?), not annoying her husband (normal, yet strange to get a grip on actor Scott Cohen), whom she stole away from his controlling first wife (Lisa Kudrow, in full-on fun bitch mode), and trying to win the approval of their offspring and her stepson, a highly intelligent, thighly awkward Jesse Eisenberg in training (Charlie Tahan, who is also the reincarnation of Steve Zahn at age 13, and also real-life brother to fellow actress Daisy Tahan).  Shiz aint certainly easy, and disappointingly enuff, Portman aint eggzactly up to the task here (not to be confused with Steve Tasker).  She’s too white swan, and not enuff gray swan!!!

The movie’s directed by Don Roos (The Opposite of Sex), from a novel with a better name by Ayelet Waldman, and while we don’t expect explosions from a $7 budget, we do expect something a lil more than something that feels like a first feature that has problems trying to sort out all of Portman’s problems that she’s having problems trying to problem solve (maybe that’s one of the reasons that this has been sitting on the shelf for over 2 years!).  Still, can’t really hate on a movie that employs red-headers Lauren Ambrose and Anthony Rapp (we’re not gay, but we fell in love with him when he was a teen in Adventures In Babysitting), and that Charlie Tahan kid is totally a fantastic lil budding actor who one day may be the next Steve Zahn, if he isn’t already Steve Zahn!?!?!??!?!

and apparently we’re not alone in this Tahan-Zahn thought!!

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Woman aint something Otherly today in NY/LA only, but is already avails on-demand!!!

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

No Strings Attached
No Frills Attached Neither
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

We somehow survived whatever piece of $hit Garry Marshall’s Valentine’s Day was.  We never even thought we’d ever need to think about that putrid eye and ear sore again, but then another Ashton Kutcher rom-com came a calling, and well, we had to figure out if the new one was the same kind of $hit, a wurser kind or a better kind.  How bout none of a kind?????  That’s cause Ashton Kutcher as an actor is a joke that’s beyond no longer funny.  Had his role in No Strings Attached been played by someone else, even someone basic and whatevs like Bradley Cooper or Josh Lucas, then maybe it could have worked.  Wait a second, what the f%&k are we saying???  No Strings Attached doesn’t work cause there’s zero drama, originality and moist importantly, a romance we can all get behind and swoon over, regardless of how dumb it is (spoiler: guess what, the meaningless sex DOES have meaning!).  Yet somehow we didn’t hate this movie, but that’s probably juss cause it’s not Valentine’s Day II, and we didn’t have to watch Ashton Kutcher go toe 2 boo with Jennifer Garner again

There are many great mysteries in this world, and you can now add ‘why did Natalie Portman agree to star opposite Ashton Kutcher in a movie???‘ to that list.  No one would question the pairing if this was a charity tennis match, but it’s not, it’s a movie, and Portman juss came off of a brilliant one where she masturbates and is perfect, and Kutcher was in some commercial about a camera or something.  We saw the movie and we still don’t understand how or why Natalie Portman would ever do anything with Ashton Kutcher, professionally or amateurally.   And yet we didn’t hate it.  Maybe cause we got to see such fun actors as Kevin Kline, Olivia Thirlby (remember her???), Lake Bell (even if her face looks like Crispin Glover’s), Mindy Kaling, Ludacris, Abby Elliott, Jennifer Irwin and Cary Elwes not do too much, other than give us other people to look at and listen to that aren’t Ashton Kutcher

There was one name we didn’t mention and that’s ‘actress’ Greta Gerwig.  Yea, Ms Mumblecore isn’t a real actor either and this joke is also starting to get a lil ye olde.  But wait a second, what if Greta Gerwig was Ashton Kutcher’s love interest in No Strings Attached, or in anything for that splatter?!?!?!?!?  Wethinks we’re onto something here!!!  OMG, that would be the mostest perfect union disaster since the Union Carbide Bhopal disaster, but hell, we’d certainly want to see it, and we wouldn’t question anything about it, cause it would be like watching Juliette Lewis acting with a clone of herself!!!  Somebody call Gus van Sant and get him to make a shot by shot remake of No Strings Attached and have the awkwardness of Gerwig and the stoopidness of Kutcher run amok!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh, and Ivan Reitman directed this, and oh, it’s no Kindergarten Cop!!  and none of son Jason‘s movies are Kindergarten Cop neither!!

Lets Have A Krystal Ball!!!: Krystal Ellsworth, ells yea!!!

+ Ophelia Lovibond caught our eye & thigh in Nowhere Boy, and does again in Attached, and now we’re gonna stay attached to her 9ever!!!

Verdictgo: Little To Zero Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Attached detaches today at a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The Housemaid (Hanyo)
Dirty & Down
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

A young rich couple (Lee Jung-jae & Seo Woo) are expecting twins, so they hire a sweet lil lass (Jeon Do-yeon) to act as a nanny to their future and current brood (Ahn Seo-hyeon).  Plus she’s there to help around the house alongside the existing crusty old maid maid lady (Yoon Yeo-jeong), who has more secrets than words to say.  Little does the new girl know that the house’s breadwinner will soon be helping himself with the new nanny’s poo-nanny!!!!!  OOOOOOh snappleappleages!!!

Melodrama ensues, with some sultry adultery & discreet deceit, but you know this aint gonna turn out well, right?  Threats are dropped, people are too (from 2 stories high!), more threats are dropped, bribes too, mean looks three, more threats, some more more threats, an abortion is forced upon, all while the ladies of the house try to keep things clean

Hmmmmmmmmm.  Sounds rather juicy, eh?  And Im Sang-soo‘s flight-of-loose-pantsy basically is, but we’ve all seen a hand rock a cradle with fatal attractions before, and this aint no original sin neither, being a remake of a 1960 flick of the same name, but then at the end, it goes off the deep-end in an all too shocking way, but it’s really not all that shocking, but it is indeed a lil too much, AND THEN (not Zardoz), there’s some scene after the shockingly too much scene that is too too too too much, and is weird for the sake of being weird, but not in a good weird way like the last hour of Twin Peaks.  How’s Annie?  Next question…

Woo Who?: Seo Woo, dat’s who!!!

[Seo in Korean Harper’s Bazaar]

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Housemaid sweeps into NY & LA this Friday and on demand on 1/26

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The Green Hornet
Spinelessapple Express
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

Green Hornet, what can go wrong, did go wrong: wrong guy being Green Hornet (Seth Rogen), wrong to use a sophomoronic slacker script (Rogen again, with pal Evan Goldberg), wrong to enlist a surreal director and not have him go surreal (Michel Gondry)… this doesn’t bode well for Aronofsky’s Wolverine II, and wurst of all, juss an all around waste of a Green Hornet movie .  Played for laughs, and filled with none, Green Hornet has no buzz, sting or flight, well, besides anything having to do with Kato (Jay Chou).  He’s awesome, and how could he not be?  No seriously, he’s Kato and he’s mad awesomes and Jay Chou is awesomez as Kato!

Kato!!

Cameron Diaz is in it for some reason, but she’s more of a Charlie’s mangled than an Angel.  And remember that Christoph Waltz guy who stole our hearts and ears and the film Inglourious Basterds?  He delivers a mighty similar shtick here (with much less bitting dialog), but this time with a beard (looking like Carmen Ghia from the real Producers), and after 2 films of Americans seeing him do this, he’s already edging towards one trick pony territory.  Eeesh.  And poor Tom Wilkinson, David Harbour and Edward James Olmos.  Serious actors brought in for some serious roles, and for about as much seriousness as a Norm McDonald movie.  At least they employed Edward Furlong.  Sounds like he could use the money

KATO!!!

oh, and the 3-D is awful

KATO!!!!!!

Cole As Ice: Taylor Cole!!

Verdictgo: Only Kato Merit & Zero Stinkin Badges For The Rest

Hornet stungks this Friday at a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

L’illusionniste
(The Illusionist)
Hokey Pocus
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

An old magician is seeing his audience disappear to a world gaga for rock stars.  He travels far and wide for work, wherever someone still wants to see a rabbit being pulled out of a hat.  At one of his stops, he captures the attention of a poor and feeble-minded housekeeper girl.  She believes the magic is real, and he in turn shows that nothing is up his sleeve to keep the illusion alive.  The two form a de facto father-daughter relationship, with daddy making material things magically appear out of nowhere for the girl’s benefit, but in reality, he has to take on odd jobs juss to pay for it all.  Ahhhhhh, how sweet.  Or so one would think, but there really is nothing up the sleeve here, juss one really irritating, basically silent cartoon that we’d rather soon forget.  Don’t care if this project grew from an unused Jacques Tati screenplay and was done up by the Triplets of Belleville dude (Sylvain Chomet), cause The Illusionist is a loser-fest (that girl made us want to slit our eyes AND wrists out!!!). Although we do give sum mild props for using 2-D animation, in the style of 101 Dalmatians & The AristoCats!

Use These Illusions Instead: either watch the Ed Norton flick or if yer strapped for time juss watch some ye olde Mickey Mouse magic

Verdictgo: Very Very Very Little Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Illusionist is snoozeisit in NY & LA only this Christmas, and elsewhere elsewhen

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…