Thighs Wide Shut

After.Life
The Neverending Purgastory
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

Christina Ricci has looked like a ghost before (Addams Family), chilled with one (Casper) and now is one in After.Life, a tricky lil film that plays with our minds and itself, but almost too late into it to ensure an all around ghoul time.  Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo(no relation to Arnold?)’s full length debut has definitely got something going for it (certainly not child actor Chandler Canterbury), but the difficulty of relaying this ‘it’ makes ‘it’ basically close the coffin shut before we can pay our full respects

Liam Neeson is our cool and quiet funeral director with the ‘gift’ to interact with the dead, which you’d think would come in handy in his line of work.  He loves his job, and Neeson seems to love the role (no hammy Kraken releasing here!), but his character despises his ability, as the dead are filled with so many nagging questions, doubts and the fact that they’re not alive.  His latest customer is Ricci, who wasn’t very happy living, but is now trying to get back there, where her boyfriend (Justin Long) waits impatiently as well.  Moans!  Groans!

Wojtowicz-Vosloo’s leaves the door open on Ricci’s mortality, but Neeson the caretaker has his own say on the matter, as his motivation for her, as well as his other stiffs, is rooted on his own sense of morality.  It’s an interesting jumble, but like we said, one that pops in a little too far into the events to make this yard grave.  Yet without it, After.Life would juss be the least interesting episode of Six Feet Under you’ve ever seen.  Stick a shovel in it!

McCourt’s In Session: Frank McCourt‘s younger brother Malachy pops in briefly as a priest.  it’s a role he’s played about ten other times, most notably on HBO’s Oz

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Life barely breathes tomorrow in limited release

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Date Night
30 Crock
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

In Date Night, Steve Carell and Tina Fey try their bestest to make magic happen on an evening out on the town, away from the suburbs and the kiddies, but trouble lurks in every corner (including the world famous non-existent alleyways of New York City), and that trouble is a middling script and plot that handcuffs this NBC thynamic comedy duo from start to finish

Fear not, as laughter does live within, but the good kind we wants and deserve is rarer here than an Inverted Jenny and the pedestrian kind we gets served more of is mo common than Common appearing as a tough guy in a movie… which is egggzactly what he’s doing here.  Poor Common.  If only he was a little more un-Common!!

There shouldn’t be any sticker shock, especially if you examined the sticker before entering.  It’s directed by the guy who called the shots on the new Pink Panther, Cheaper By The Dozen and Night At The Museum (he loves nights AND crap!), with writing work from a Farrelly brother production alumnus, who could done us all one better had he infused some of their slapstick humor instead of juss gently slapping our knees

Have you seen Adventures In Babysitting?  If so, then you’ve already seen a rich man’s version of Date Night.  Seriously.  The only thing DN‘s got over AIB is a killer casting director, who seemed to have their pick from all walks of Hollywood life for the supporting roles (Mark Wahlberg, Taraji P. Henson, J.B. Smoove, Ray Liotta, the one, the only William Fichtner + maybe will one day be the one, the only Jimmi Simpson) and even for the nothing, appears for only 2 second roles (Leighton Meester, Kristen Wiig, Mark Ruffalo, James Franco and Mila Kunis)

So do yerself a flavor, save the babysitter monies and make this potential date night out with yer loved one a rental night at home.  But if you muss see it ASAP, than you muss, and all we can say then is that it’s better than Get Smart, even if it needs some smart getting of its own

Jewish Non-American Princess: remember Gal Gadot?  we never forgots after seeing her light up the barely lit 4 Fast 4 Furious, and we wills never will forgets her, herspecially if she continues to stay so dangszzz HOTTTT on-screen and off.  someone make her a Bond girl, or at least the Queen of our castle, and by castle we mean the large thing between our thighs

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Date goes blind at a theater near jews tomorrow

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

L’épine Dans Le Coeur
(A Thorn In The Heart)
Sorta Not Really Capturing The Gondrys
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

How awesome is director Michel Gondry?  WAY AWESOME!  So if he’s awesome, then his family must be too, or at least a smidgen awesome, right?  RIGHT???  Gondry steps aside from his made-up world of wonder and whimsy and turns the camera on his family, who are… sans wonder and whimsy.  They are French people, which is almost the same thing as normal people, but they’re French, so they say things in French and occasionally drink wine!  The focus here is on Michel’s Aunt Suzette, a former schoolteacher that everyone from the fam to her former pupils gush over about how juss darn lovely she is.  How lovely!  Suzette tells us stories and guides us to places she’s been before.  How lovely!  How lovely?  Maybe if we were a part of the Gondry clan and wanted to document how lovely Auntie Suzette was for future generations of Gondrys, but for the rest of us?  Snoozefest ’87!  There’s no drama to be found (OK, there’s some tension betweem her and son Jean-Yves, but what family doesn’t have tension?), and mos disappointingly, little insight into what makes Michel Gondry, Michel Gondry.  Thorn reeks a bit of the manfucated nostaglia that was found in his Be Kind Rewind, yet without any of the Jack Black/Mos Def sing movie theme song distractions.  Wish JB & MD came along and sweded the hell outta this not so prickly thorn

Making/Faking It: Gondry’s music videos are beyond the knees bees, but what about the making of em?  watch how 4 of his mos famous/trickiest were done

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Thorn opens tomorrow in NY only and elsewhere elsewhen

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

IMAX: Hubble 3D
Narrow In Telescope
Official Website | Trailer & Mo

If you’ve ever seen an IMAX movie about space before, say the ’85 Cronkite narrated classic The Dream Is Alive, then there’s really no reason to see another.  Hubble 3-D is the latest to hit IMAX screens, and in space, or anywhere for that matter, no one will hear you scream, cause this 45 minute look at astronauts repairing the telescope, sadly too sparingly interspersed with some gorgeous deep space photos it has taken over the lightyears, won’t get much of a rise out of anyone.  Leonardo DiCaprio‘s voice over doesn’t exactly create a lift off either.  Somebody peas wake us when they get their a$$es to Mars!

To The MAX: IMAX’s very first film Tiger Child debuted at the Japan Expo in 1970.  peep this nifty video of the Expo’s grounds

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Hubble stubbles today in limited IMAX release

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Alice In Wonderland
Alice Doesn’t Live or Breathe Here Anymore
Official Website | Trailer & Mo

The pieces were all in place to make this latest incarnation of Alice In Wonderland Alice in wonderful: a visionary loony director, complete with a stop at Disney on his resume (Tim Burton), a comely sorta-young girl with chops le acting (Mia Wasikowska), all supported by a cast of dudes and two dudettes more stellar than Stellan SkarsgÃ¥rd (Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter, Anne Hathaway, Matt Lucas, Crispin Glover!!!, and the voices of Stephen Fry, Michael Sheen, Alan Rickman, Timothy Spall).  Having the pieces are one thing, but how they’re played is all that matters, and while Burton is game, and the race to the finish line is certainly a whimsical one, the product is predictable and juss another notch on his belt of misfire remakes, even if it is the best of em (that’s best of the worst, as Sleepy Hollow is très magnifique!).  Like his Wonka, its beginning is all smooth sailing, then our protagonist enters whatever out of this world world they get themselves mixed up in and it all falls to sleepage.  So when Alice falls down the hole, instead of bothering yoself with what comes next, you might as well hit stop and pop in the Disney cartoon instead

Drink Me: looks like someone resurrected one of our mos flavorite sites, Fake Dr Pepper!!!

Verdictgo:  Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Alice is currently mostly tweedledumb at a theater near jews.  also, opening in NY only today is The Exploding Girl, a flick we caught at last year’s Thighbeca FF and said was ‘so snoozetastic that it makes Wendy & Lucy look as fast & furious as a Jan de Bont flick!‘

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…