Thighs Wide Shut

The Yellow Handkerchief
Everybody DOES William Hurts, Even William Hurt!
Official Website | Trailer & Mo

What’s been sitting on the shelf for 2 full years (for good reason) and now dusted off and flung out on screens most likely cause it co-stars Bella from the Twilight series? Did you guess The Yellow Handkerchief? Well, did you? If yer a fan of Kristen Stewart‘s awkward teen acting, but would rather have a mustachioed William Hurt and a Dopey Cunningham (Eddie Redmayne, also awkward here, but in a good way) keeping her company, as opposed to shirtless werewolves and powdery vampires, then maybe you won’t think this Handkerchief mostly blows, and instead reach for one to blow in to! We didn’t shed no tearsz, but we did feel for a hurt Hurt, hurting like hurtful diarrhea cause of the never mellow Maria Bello had done broke his dang heart, but he also broke hers, and their sordid story is 1/3rd of a decent movie, but the rest is Hurt, still with a mustache, telling the two awkward kids this love/hate tale, flashback style, as they drive across a sun-drenched Louisiana in search of more sun-drenched Louisiana, but the other 2/3rds coulda also worked had he ran over them two bawkward kids as soon as he met them and then sold their body parts for mustache wax

Chieftains: what the fruck is a kerchief anyway? and better yet, what the frooge is the handkerchief code????

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinking Badges

Handkerchief hunkerchuffs in NY/LA today and st elsewhere st elsewhen!

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Shutter Island
The Island of Doctored Morose
Official Website | Trailer & Mo

Remember when the trailer for Marty Scorsese‘s Shutter Island dropped on an unsuspecting world last summer? We hadn’t seen such obvious plot divulging since the olden days when trailers practically gave everything away including the kitchen zinc! Stop here if you haven’t seen the aforementioned trailer, stop in general if yer thinking about running off to the theater to see this. According to said trailer, the big question is who was the 67th patient on Shutter Island (think Arkham Asylum on Alcatraz)? It doesn’t take someone smarter than a 5th grader to figure who unlucky #67 might be. Urgh! Even if you haven’t seen the trailer, it won’t take you long to discover who it is. And if you can’t figure it out early on, they hammer home the (not much of a) reveal over and over (actually there’s a lot of stuff repeated, including a lot of unnecessary Holocaust imagery), up until a point where you’d rather be committed to any other available mental institution besides this one that’s miles off the coast of Boston, although apparently not far enuff to lose that wretched accent at sea (damn you book writer Dennis Lehane!!!). Speaking of speaking with wretched accents, what’s up with Leonardo DiCaprio‘s? Every movie he stars in should ban words containing ‘sh‘ and ‘ch‘ sounds, cause the way he spits em out of his mouth is more grating than a cheese grater grating yer balls that’s greater than the size and smell of Grape Ape‘s dumps. Is Leo #67? Is Grape Ape?

Maybe 67 is Leo’s partner Mark Ruffalo, who has joined him on the island to investigate the disappearance of a patient, which may be Emily Mortimer or is it Patricia Clarkson? Are they #67? Is it the hospital administrator Ben Kingsley, who’s having more fun here than anyone else? Or his German sidekick doc Max von Sydow, having the second most amount of fun? Perhaps it’s warden Ted Levine (who played Buffalo Bill in Silence of The Lambs) or John Carroll Lynch (the Zodiac in Zodiac) or weaselly looned inmate Jackie Earle Haley (what a stretch for him!). Perchance it’s Leo’s dead wife Michelle Williams who haunts him more than this movie will ever haunt its audience. That’s right, there aint no scares, thrills, chills, bumps, mumps, German measles or anything, cept sum fantastic looking filming locales (see below) and an endlessly clawing Bernard Herrmannesque score that strikes a creepy tone the movie itself can never support. Maybeez the audience is #67?? Maybe, but who cares! The only thing we want to know is what is Heinz’ 58th variety?

Set Erector: like we said, one of the only things going for Shutter is the island itself. a thang of udder beauty, which was put together utilizing various forgotten Massachusetts spots, like the abandoned state hospital in Medfield, Peddocks Island, the mill in Taunton + good ole fashioned old fashioned set design

Verdictgo: the sets keep the match in game, barely, so Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Shutter stutters today at a theater new jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The Good Guy
Friday Night Plights of Unfancy
Official Website | Trailer & Mo

Oh, The Good Guy, how you try (not) so hard at being a legitimate movie, and at best, yer a poorly pieced together generic TV pilot that would never get picked up, not even on the CWUPNWB. And Good Guy, despite yer obvious plotting (girl with bad guy, doesn’t realize it, good guy comes along…) + yer no frills acting (Alexis Bledel and Scott Porter), wooden acting (Bryan Greenberg), annoying acting (Anna Chlumsky and Aaron Yoo), and overacting (Andrew McCarthy), you still somehow overcame yer early eye-roll inducing ways and semi-charmed our pants 1/4 the ways down in the end, even more so than Valentine’s Day did. How is that possible Good Guy when yer basically a dud? What’s in yer magic hat of crap first time writer/director Julio DePietro? How’d you get us to pity yer poop and root for yer characters that we’d honestly rather see die in a kiln explosion? Some questions are best left unanswered, juss like some movies are best not ever seen

An Angel On Our Lista: movie’s bad guy gets frisky with Christine Evangelista, and we’d like to do the same. maybe Christine was the only reason we sorta didn’t fully hate this crud??

Verdictgo: Very Very Little Merit But No Stinkin Badges

GG goes good, bad and ugly in NY & Cali only this Friday, and elsewhere elsewhen

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

From Paris with Love
Chumps-É-lazy
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

Oh French film industry, what hath become of you? You used to fill our art house screens with precious lil ditties about life and love, straight from the deft Cahiers du cinéma critics turned filmmakers, and their proteges that followed in their footsteps, but now it seems like them notebooks are being written by a bunch of barbarians and neanderthals that keep on invading our multiplexes year after year! Oh the nerve! Oh the gall of Gaul! We blame (yet still love) Luc Besson for all this nutty shoot-em-up nonsense. His still vibrant (Le Femme) Nikita kicked off the madness, Léon: (The Professional) was the heartfelt caketopper (and unforgettable introduction to Natalie Portman), and from there the genre tumbled downhill, with Besson throwing around story ‘ideas’ to every Tom, Dick, and Harry who wanted to replicate his brief critical and commercial success. Now it’s nothing but excess, and there’s no excuse for that, or eggcuses for 19 Transporters, Taxis, Banlieue 13ses and a bunch of other turkeys

Besson’s latest ‘idea’ has been handed off to director Pierre Morel, the dude who he teamed up with for last year’s semi-broke the moldy-mold Taken, but lightening doesn’t strike twice with their From Paris With Love. The crummy by the boo(k)s dialog (no thank you Adi Hasak) certainly doesn’t help to elevate the loosey goosey plotting, and neither does hiring John Travolta as the head-shaved, goatee-ed prick of a CIA agent Charlie Wax (think Colin Farrell’s Bullseye from Daredevil, but not nearly as comically horrific). We suppose he was given that name only so they could drop a ‘wax on, wax off’ joke, which they wrongfully do, and as you can imagine, it falls flatter than the fella who gets steamrolled in Austin Powers. Later that line gets redeemed, with the pseudo-creative reuse of a signature Travolta line that features the French name of a certain McDonalds hamburger. We chuckled aloud, and almos were ashamed for doing so. Even mo shameful, despite all the poo-pooed-edness of this generic flick, including a crummy American accent spoken by the tiny Jonathan Rhys Meyers, we didn’t hate it. We’ll always have Paris, even if this Paris has not much to it

FantKasia : we totally wanna kasia smutniak JRM’s screen honey Kasia NSFW Smutniak!!

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinking Badges

Still Bill
Withers Blooms
Official Website & Trailer & Mo

You know who Bill Withers be? On name alone, probably not, but yer ears do, as he’s the man behind such beyond classics as ‘Lean On Me’, ‘Aint No Sunshine’ and ‘Just The Two of Us’, juss to name a few mellow grooves he’s gifted us with. Oh yeah, that guy, right? So what is his story and whatever became of him? The sunny and soulful doc Still Bill, by Damani Baker and Alex Vlack, fills in the gaps, from his humble West Virgina upbringing as a shy stuttering kid, to his landing on the music scene and the unwanted superstardom that came along with it, to his eventual complete withdraw from the limelight so he devote more time to his loved one. As a viewer, and fan of his music, we keep asking, why and how could he leave us behind? By the end, he’s starting to ask himself the very same questions. Here’s hoping that the answer leads him back on the road again

Screen But Not Heard: there are numerous screenings of the film all over the map, and if you don’t see one in yer area, you can host yer own!

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Paris doesn’t triomphe today at a theater near jews, while Still Bill continues only in NY, or at a screening soon to be near jews (see above). also, we LOVED Fish Tank, and you can too, in the comfort of yer own home, spanks to IFC on-demand!

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Edge of Darkness
Mel Hath Much Fury
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

Welcome back Mel Gibson! And we really do mean that, since yer on-screen exploits are far more entertaining and applaudable than yer off-screen ones (seriously Mel, what’s up with being so open and outward with hating the hand that feeds you?). Has it really been 8 years since you were the lead in a movie? In Martin Campbell‘s big screen take on his own 1985 TV mini series, he certainly shows no sign of rust. Guess he doesn’t share in his old partner Roger Murtaugh’s words of wisdom: I’m too old for this shit! It’s unfortunate then that the movie itself could use a WD-40 spray down. It’s a Death Wish political thriller, that we wish had more thrills, better politics and tons mo carnage than it ended up wit. That didn’t stop the audience we were surrounded by from being udderly pleased as punch at seeing Mr G back in action, as they cheered hard when he got mad as Mel! Ya know what, we kinda did too, but den again, wees quickly grew tired of the forgone conclusion that his character would hunt down all those responsible (including a smarmy as usual Danny Huston) for the death of his daughter (the cute-a-cool Bojana Novakovic… see below) before the credits roll. Guess what happens? Give you a hint, he goes a bit over the edge of darkness!!! Lettuce hope that his next project has a lil bit mo edge to it

Bo’Nique: we stillz gots a on hard for Mellie Mel’s screen daughter Bojana Novakovic, and spanks to the film’s pre-mear, we have mo pics of Bojana to drool over!!

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinking Badges

Darkness be flickering today at a theater near jews and jewhaters

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…