Thighs Wide Shut

Frost/Nixon
For Your Interviewing Pleasure
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

Historic as a series of landmark TV broadcasts, then dramatized into a beloved stage play (or so we’ve heard) and now transformed into the phenomenal feature film, Frost/Nixon replays the revealing 1977 interviews, and the fly by the seat of its pants circumstances that made it all happen, between British TV presenter David Frost and our disgraced 37th President Richard Milhous Nixon. Adapted from his own West End/Broadway play, Peter Morgan (also the pen and teller of The Queen, Last King of Scotland and The Other Boleyn Girl) and his Frost (Michael Sheen, also his Tony Blair from The Queen, a performance so incredible that only a Queen could overshadow it) and his Nixon (Frank Langella, a veteran actor whose biggest role may have been as Skeletor in the Masters of The Universe movie) team-up again to give director Ron Howard his finest material to work with and his bestest film to date (well, besides Parenthood). Sam Rockwell, Kevin Bacon, Matthew Macfadyen, Toby Jones, and Oliver Platt all add cheerful energy to the affair, but are merely window dressing (as is Vicky Cristina Barcelona‘s hottie Rebecca Hall, who we wish did some window undressing) to the two main felleas divided by the slash

So what’s the big deal with these interviews anywayz, eh? Nixon had been press shy ever since his resignation in August of 1974, and after his pardon by Gerald Ford, many thought he got off the hook for any wrongdoing involved with Watergate. Frost recognized this fact, and knew an exclusive interview would be a good thing for Nixon to try and save face, while it would make Frost a face to be recognized in the US. Both of their reputations were at stake, whatever was left of Nixon’s and Frost really had no reputation in which to speak of over here, but put a lot of his own money on the line to make this all happen. Frost, as others perceived him to be (see his interview w/Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes), was out of his league interviewing someone like Tricky Dick, but when push came to shove, Frost pushed and shoved Nixon to basically apologize for betraying the country. Even as a recreation, in any form, this material is so rich that it’s impossible to nto be spellbound by the spellbinding spells that are cast

The 70s were not only the last golden age of cinema (The Godfather I & II, Star Wars, Jaws, One Who Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Clockwork Orange, and mos app, All The President’s Men), but also the last great decade of crazy-insane-bananas shiz goings on that have been turned into cinematic (or documentary) gold: Nixon himself was a treasure trove (Oliver Stone’s Nixon, Dan Hedaya ruled in Dick), and then there’s Vietnam (name a movie, any movie), Jonestown (The Life and Death of Peoples Temple), the Patty Hearst kidnapping (Guerrilla), Harvey Milk’s assassination (Milk, duh), the Munich Olympics (One Day In September, Munich, duh part II) and the list goes on and on. We hope today’s filmmakers will continue to dig into that deep 70s well, and if they do, there will be plenty o’ Breast In Shows for us to declare

Grin & Jarret: DUDE, Mitch Taylor/Sarah Jessica Parker‘s STILL ACTING!!! DATS RIGHT!! Gabriel Jarret (aka, the real name of that kid who played Mitch from Real Genius!!) plays Ken Khachigian, a Nixon speechwriter. Take a look at him here at the far right, and listen to him gab on the red carpet about his role! HOORAY FOR MITCH!!! PLEASE KEEP HIRING MITCH AND STOP HIRING HIS FAKE SISTER, HORSEFACE!!!

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

Role Models
Role Played Out
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

A cute movie to say the most, Role Models is ultimately purty darn lame, considering it’s supposedly a comedy, which contains a grand total of 3 laffs. Lame be a dang shame cause this is the second straight vanilla offering (after The Ten) from former Statesmen David Wain, who apparently hasn’t been able to top his Citizen Kane, Wet Hot American Summer. Role Models is a predictable tale (with no real tale to tell) about two dudes (Paul Rudd doing his Paul Rudd thing and Seann William Scott going back to his Stifler ways after showing us a lil something else in the little seen Promotion) who get in a spot of trouble and avoid jail by doing a month of community service. They land at Sturdy Wings, a big brother-little brother type place, headed up by an ex-addict (Jane Lynch doing her Jane Lynch thing) who used to eat cocaine for breakfast and lunch (wethinks that joke was intended to be funny). They’re assigned to two oddball kids, who are actually normal cause theys juss kids. One’s a foul-mouth black boy (Bobb’e J. Thompson), who has nothing much to add cept saying ‘boobies’ and other naughty words (guess it’s funny if you still think the South Park kids cussing is funny). The other is a LARPer dork (McLovin, aka Christopher Mintz-Plasse, and we are happy to see him gettin sum mo work) with parents who juss don’t understand. Stifler imparts his cleavage knowledge to the dirty worded kid, while Rudd teaches McLovin that it’s OK to do whatever you want to do, as long as it makes you happy

There’s other stuff goings on, like Rudd trying to win back his lady (Elizabeth Banks, wasting her time), but the majority of our time if filled with way too much LARPing (and way too much Ken Jeong, who’s starting to wear out his welcome with us… even though he juss arrived on the scene). This woulda been a solid flick that you coulda brought your tweens to, considering the humor is well below sophomoric and it is surely sweet, but the pointless nudity and the aforementioned overuse of cuss words prevents this from having any kind of true audience. Feel free to disagree, but we personally like to laff with our comedies, not be mildly amused by em. Also, a small request Hollywurst: can we peas gets us some comedies made by fresh talent and starring people who aren’t from a pool of the same 25 actors?

This Is How We Role: save an hour of yer life and juss re-watch the big brother-little brother Simpsons ep ‘Brother From the Same Planet’ instead

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Frost/Nixon, already playing in NY/LA, will hit up many theaters this Friday, where Role Models has been gettin overrated for weeks

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Quantum of Solace
Finding Ever Bland
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

Casino Royale (w/o cheese) ushered in a new era for James Bond, and for all its welcomed freshness, it ruled hard mostly cause it reminded us of the ye olde Connery Bond days that started the world’s love affair with the double 0 snapper. There wasn’t much glamor or glitz or explosions or car chases (OK, there was that one hamazin bit where the car tumbles for an entirety) or really any need for it cause Royale was juss Bond, gold bond (and not juss the fair-haired version, but a gold medal winner that keeps on gettin better and better with each viewing… thank you Showtime!). One would expect that more of the same straight-laced/forward awesomeness would be in store for Daniel Craig’s second adventure in a Tom Ford tux, but in this world, especially the film world, nothing is certain and tomorrow never knows, or dies. Yet no one would expect that the first ever Bond sequel, Quantum of Solace, which picks up on the action one hour after Royale ended with Bond shooting the mysterious Mr White in the leg, would return the franchise right back into the dark ages of convoluted storytelling and frivolous frivolity. There’s no gimmicky gadgets to be found, but it seemed to be the only thing missing from this mos disappointing misstep in the wrong direction. Don’t worry though kiddies, cause Craig still totally rocks and owns the Bond character, and we hope he continues to do so beyond his 4 film contact. So much so that it’s a lil hard to picture the former front-runner, and our top choice, Clive Owen, or anyone else for that splatter taking over that coveted license to kill

The main problem with Quantum of Solace is… everything. Well that’s not entirely true, since the 1st half of the film is somewhat enjoyable to watch, but after a certain point, it all starts to drag and drag and drag and finally reaches a conclusion that’s not really a conclusion and if it was a real conclusion you don’t feel like anything needed concluding cause you don’t know what the frak is going on or why it’s going on more than this sentence is running on! Wasn’t this suppose to be all about avenging the death of Vesper? Was her death avenged? We saw the movie and we still don’t even know. The poor directing (from the man that brought you Billy Bob Thorton and Halle Berry bangin raw on the floor, and Afghan kids loving dem some kites, but hating dem some being raped!) and very very sloppy editing didn’t help, and probably the fact that at least 3 people took a stab at the script. Also this henchman’s hair didn’t help, and we pray that no one dresses up as him for Halloween next year… or, while wees at it, Sarah Palin (who sullied good people who have similar last names), and come to think of it, she’d make an amazing Bond nemesis

We think there’s a plot in Quantum somewhere, but haven’t a firm clue as to what it is so we’re gonna tell you what happened (skip this paragraph if you don’t want to know jack… or jill). It starts out with something about James Bond in Italy interrogating Mr White and then not and then going to Haiti to randomly meet a hot chick (Olga Kurylenko, juss one of the fappable Quantum girls) where he also meets his villain (Mathieu Amalric) who’s not very villainous (what a waste of great great talent, so czech out the movie review below to read about his talents not being wasted), even though he has the bestest stare mt everest, yet we know he’s evil cause they tell us he his and cause he works for the mysterious Quantum organization, but there’s no mention of solace, or what the fraz Quantum is or does cept that he and his pals buy up land or something for some reason from other shady characters around the globe, and Bond finds this out at an opera in Austria or something so he wants to follow them to Bolivia but his credit cards are frozen so he goes to Italy to drag poor Marcus Mathis into this and then they finally go to Bolivia, where we also meet a new MI6 agent who is also hot (Gemma Arterton, yet another one of dem fappable Quantum girls) and they all attend a party where the villain is talking to people (in English!) and then the hot chick pops up again and then like more stuff happens and there’s a dusty old plane ride in the desert and then water’s discovered and stuff and its boring and then Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright, who should always appear in every movie with a beard) shows up and talks to Bond for like 8 seconds and then they watch the movie 8 Seconds Bond and the first hot chick go into a different desert where some stoopid fat Generalissimo or Colonelissimo or hater of Col Mustard is signing the papers our villain wants him to sign, and then gunshots are fired and then explosions are exploded and then there’s some desert desertion and then the basic story of Solace is dunzo. After that we finally get some sorta kinda closure on the Vesper stuff, but not really, and Bond and M (whose matriarchal relationship with her young agent is by far the bestest aspect of the film) talk in the snow and then the credits roll and at the end of the credits they say ‘James Bond Will Return’, but no mention of the return being bigger and badder and munch better than what we juss saw

Wowzer, that hexplanation almos give us more of a brain melt than Synecdoche, NY did, cept S, NY came from the genius mine of Charlie Kaufs and Solace didn’t (hmmmm, there’s an idea). Seriously, WTF is with the plot? We had to read three different Wikipedia pages to even sorta figure out how it all fits together and how all the characters relate to each other, but after absorbing that knowledge, we still don’t know nothing, and as time passes from our screenin
g, we’re starting not to care. Doesn’t really matter though cause ye gonna see this flick even if we told you that Solace is nuttin but 2 hours of Dame Judi Dench writing in her diary about her fantasies of friendships with teachers. Actually that movie was already made, a damn fine one at that, but these words are (about) Bond! Guess the poor writing was on the wall after our initial lukewarm listenage of Jack White/Alicia Keys’ theme song, ‘Another Way To Die’. It’s fine, but it coulda been mo mo better, right? Hopefully Bond 23 will find another way to tell a story

München To Do About Something: although they don’t share a single scene together, you may want to find some solace by watching, for the first or hopefully zillionithethith time, Daniel Craig and Mathieu Amalric do some real dirty revenge work in the BRILLIANT Señor Spielbergo flick Munich

Verdictgo: sadly, Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

A Christmas Tale
(Un conte de Noël)
Family Fatale
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

Yer bestest Mathieu Amalric bet at the movies this tweakend (for those in NY/LA… sorry everyone else) is actually not Quantum of Solace, but Arnaud Desplechin‘s udderly delightful A Christmas Tale, which is basically the French equivalent of A Family Stone, with juss as many family feuds and foods, good looking peoples, but luckily, with 100% less horseface (wethinks this equined-face rule should be an amendment added to the Constitution). Amalric is the erratically behaved black (and blue) sheep of his family, having been forcefully estranged years ago from anyone in the brood by his bitter (for no reason ever explained) sister (Anne Consigny, the grown up Emma Watson lookin beauty who joined Almaric in Diving Bell/Butterfly). But when it’s revealed that their mother (Catherine Deneuve, luminous as always) has cancer and a bone marrow transplant from one of her kin can possibly save her, it brings everyone together under one roof for the first time in a long time

Rounding out the cast is a who’s who of French cinema: Almaric’s lady friend Emmanuelle Devos (this is one of 7 films they’ve been in together!), Jean-Paul Roussillon as his warm father, hottie pie Melvil Poupaud as his peacemaking youngest brother, Deneuve’s real life daughter Chiara Mastroianni as Poupaud’s wife and thus Deneuve’s daughter-in-law on screen, and their painter cousin Laurent Capelluto, who’s been holding back his feelings for his cousin-in-law Mastroianni. There are plenty of other fine characters and actors to be found within the family/flick, but we can’t mention everyone cause this isn’t Cahiers du cinéma

Anywho, A Christmas Tale seems and is absurdly long, clocking in at 2 and 1/2 hours, but we’d be hard pressed to say that any of part of it is unnecessary. By the time Christmas day and it’s tale comes and goes and the nest returns to empty, we feel a bit sad to say goodbye to our new found friends and family, regardless of how dysfunctional they are. Luckily you can revisit them anytime you like, juss like we do every year with Ralphie and the rest of the fragile (pronounced Fra-gee-lay, since it must be Italian) Parker clan

A Hot Chip Off The Olde Block: step aside Eva ‘daughter of Susan Sarandon’ Amurri, cause we’re totally more hot these days for Deneuve’s fille Chiara Mastroianni

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Tale opens today in limited release, while Quantum leaps to a theater near Jews

until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The Boy In The Striped Pajamas
The Good German
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

There has been a zillion and half movies made about the Holocaust. Some are based on fact, some are fables, and a majority of them have a unique enuff tale to tell that makes them well worth seeing, even if we’ve grown a bit tired of seeing them these days. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is definitely one to see. This one’s not only unique cause it’s told through the naive eyes of a child, but a child that’s the son of a Nazi commander in charge of a nameless concentration camp. The film begins with the family moving from their comfortable Berlin life to the country, where the rest of story rolls out. The child, Bruno (Asa Butterfield), is bored to tears in his new quiet environment, being far removed from his friends and playing games. One day he peers out of his window and notices some farmers in ‘striped pajamas’ far off in the distance. He’s intrigued by them, and has no real idea what’s actually taking place. When he inquires about it, his father (the always sharp David Thewlis) and mother (Vera Farmiga, with those radiant scared blue eyes), who is also unaware of the monstrosities occurring near their house, tell him to keep away, but kids are curious and say and do the dardenst things. Bruno eventually makes his way towards the camp where he spots a the boy in ‘striped pajamas’ on the other side of a barbed-wire fence. He strikes up an unlikely friendship with the boy, named Shmuel (Jack Scanlon), and begins to inquire all about this ‘camp’ he gets to ‘play’ in. Bruno will never be able to fully comprehend the goings on, but he gradually starts to question the propaganda that’s being fed to him about Jews being bad people, since Shumel is a nice kid. Eventually it all comes to a horrifying conclusion that we’ll let you experience for yourself. Both of the child actors are simply incredible, considering the heavy material they’re tackling. We wonder if these young actors themselves fully understand this tragic period of human history. Then again, us adults are still wondering how such a thing could ever happen, and will continue to do so. Never forget, and this movie is unforgettable

Color Blind: one of the more fascinating art installations we’ve ever seen was Israeli artist Ram Katzir’s Your Coloring Book, which took actual Nazi propaganda photos, turned them into coloring book pages, and allowed the museum visitor to fill in the blanks

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

Soul Men
They’ve Got Rain On A Sunshiny Day
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

In one of his final performances ever, Heath Ledger went out on top as the Joker in The Dark Knight. The same statement unfortunately cannot be said of Bernie Mac (especially since he never got to play the Joker) and his work in the sometimes fun, never really funny and udderly fruitless Soul Men. Actually, if you take a peek at Mac’s entire film career, he’s never been a part of a truly excellent movie (the one eggception would have to be Bad Santa), even if he was excellent in them (he was actually a better Bosley than Bill Murray was in the second Charlie’s Angels flick, which come to think of it, is another eggecption, cause it’s secretly the greatestest movie ever… by McG!). Tis quite a shame for a man of such talent to be in such poop (we’re not counting The Original Kings of Comedy, since it’s a doc), but whatta we gonna do about it now that he’s no longer with us? The film also serves as a swan song of sorts for Isaac Hayes, who died a day after Bernie, but his appearance as himself in Soul Men is merely a blip on Black Moses’ deep legacy of achievements. Now that we’ve gotzen the real-life depressing bits of the review out of the way, it’s time to breifly speak about the fictional depressing bits of this boos brothers affair. Pairing Mac with Samuel L Jackson as two bitter former bandmates who reunite to play a memorial concert at the Apollo after their lead singer dies (John Legend) was an inspired choice. On-screen, their chemistry is so solid that it looks like they’ve been brothers from another mother for years, so why then was this golden opportunity completely ruined by such contrived writing and elementary school humor? There were people LOLing throughout the screening, but maybe they were giving Bernie some sympathy laffs. That or they we’re juss happy they weren’t watching the certifiably rotten Soul Plane. It’s purty sad when the bestest ‘soul’ movie of balls thyme features C. Thomas Howell blackfacing it up in order to get into Harvard

The Leal Deal: we didn’t really take notice of her before as Jennifer Hudson’s replacement in Dreamgirls, but then again, we slept thru most of that overindulgent flick. we won’t make the same mistake again cause Sharon Leal is truly one of our dream girls!

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Repo! The Genetic Opera
A Phantom Opera
Trailers & Mo |
target=”_blank”>Official Website

In the future, organs are scarce (as in body parts, not them instruments that make sweet sweet music), but thanks to GeneCo, organs can be yours, for the right price. If you don’t pay up, the repo man will come and take the organs back, and your life in the process, and apparently sing whilst doing all of this. If this was 1935, Mola Ram and his heart grabbin ways would be makin some serious cash, but it’s not, it is the future, and in movies the future always sucks more than your mom and there’s more neon than Deion Sanders reading The Neon Bible while listening to the album of the same name by The Arcade Fire. We’re big fans of dystopian flicks (not that you care), and to some extent rockin musicals (of the past, like Tommy), but weren’t so much a fan of Repo! The Genetic Opera, an eye and ear candy overload that tastes rather bitter and is hard to digest. Not for a lack of trying, cause this baby’s jolted with 1.21 gigawatts of energy and doles out some damn catchy tunes (czech out ‘Legal Assassin’ [d]), but it reeks way too much of underground theater, where this opera originated, and that’s probably where it shoulda stayed. Beyond game for a lil song and dance are Paul Sorvino, Anthony ‘where did the Stewart in his name disappear to?’ Head, Alexa Vega (who keeps shedding that baby fat and keeps on gettin hottier and hottier!), Sarah Brightman (fitting, since she was the first Christine Daaé in The Phantom of the Opera) and Paris Hilton, who can’t really sing or act, but she’s right at home playing an heiress with a plastic face that eventually falls off (one of the few highlights outside of the music). The film was directed by Darren Lynn Bousman, who’s perhaps best known as the helmer of Saw II thru IV. We didn’t see any of those and after watching Repo!, guess it wasn’t necessary to saw it either. Sorry for the grammar error, but we really wanted to work a ‘saw/seen’ joke in. Insert laughter here

Give Us More Head!!: Anthony ‘Stewart’ Head is the effin bomb shiz, and has such an yumcredible voice. You will already know this if you were a Buffy fan like us. One of our mos flavroite bits was when he, as Giles, crooned a cover of The Who’s ‘Behind Blue Eyes’ [d via Buffy Galaxy]

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Zack and Miri Make A Porno
Porn To Be Mild
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

Who knew that importing Judd Apatow actors (Seth Rogen, Elizabeth Banks, The Office‘s Darryl) into a non-Judd Apatow flick instantly turns your non-Judd Apatow flick starring Judd Apatow actors into a… Judd Apatow flick. Schlockmeister Kevin Smith’s latest diversion, Zack and Miri Make A Porno, is helped by this fact, but the question is, do you really want to see another Judd Apatow flick this year, or any year going forward? If the answer is yes, then you will enjoy the minor laffs, shoestring story and of course budding romance that always inhabits the land of Apatown. The next question is are you fan of Kevin Smith films? If you are, don’t worry, cause Z&M is filled with his usual potty-untrained humor (a face being pooped on!), band of brothers (Jason Mewes, Jeff Anderson, and Tom Savini, filling in for sorta look-a-like Brian O’Halloran, who musta been busy), fanboy geekdom (yet another Star Wars parody, who woulda thunk it!) and lackluster directing skills (a scene in slo-mo, WOOOW!). If the answer is no to both questions, juss pray, alongside us, that the next Edgar Wright flick gets released looner rather than sater

Porn To Pun: the bestest porn within a movie is hands and thighs down Logjammin‘ in The Big Lebowski

Verdictgo: we don’t normally do ratings that fall in between our four categories, but this one fits the bill, so No Stinkin Badges But Kinda Worth A Peepers?

Pajamas and Repo open in limited release, while Soul Men joins Zach & Miri everywhere today

until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Changeling
Cloche, But No Cigar
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

‘Changeling’ is defined as a child who replaces another child that has been taken. And that’s 1/2 of what Clint Eastwood‘s latest ditty tis all about, based on the actual kidnappling case of one young boy named Walter Collins. The crooked LA police, mired in awful publicity and poor standling with the public, finds some boy that sorta looks like him and passes him off as the missling kid to the mother (Angelina Jolie, wearling enuff lipstick to hid her gross lips), mainly juss to close the case and shut her the hell up. She’s not havling it, since this ‘changeling’ is 3 inches shorter and magically circumcised (when she spouts this revelation, it packs more laughter than the power we assume it’s supposed to inflict). She pleads with the police (led by way too overly clenched jawed and Irish-accented Jeffrey Donovan) that they gave her the wrong kid, but they aint havling it either, eventually lockling her up in an insane asylum (Girl, Interrupted Part II anyone?). The other 1/2 of the film revolves around the Wineville Chicken Coop Murders (hmmmm, wonder how the two parts are related), and you put the halves together and you end up with somethling halve not. It’s an all around uneven, neverendling affair (with almos more false endlings than Return of The Kling) that does nothling much with such an intriguling true life crime

This is easily the weakest film Eastwood has made since he put out such pedestrian fare as Blood Work and Space Cowboys. It lacks the raw emotional power of his recent rightfully glorified work (even repeating the themes of the vastly overrated Mystic River, not to be confused with Mystic Pizza) and is purty much a dull entry from start to finish (the dour subject matter doesn’t help). Changeling seems more like a straight-forward Ron Howardish flick, and fittlingly enuff, he was original attached as the director. Look, juss cause a movie takes place in the lates 20s and totally rocks out the 20s cars and clothlings and hairdos and those cool lady cloche hats doesn’t mean that the movie is guaranteed to be any good (did you see The Black Dhalia? didn’t think so). There’s been much discussion about Jolie gettling an Oscar nomination for her work as the wronged mother, but we say pish-pa, as she’s basically riffling on Mel Gibson in Ransom, shoutling ‘my son! my son!‘ more times than the NY Times. We’re sure they’ll give her one, but lettuce juss say it’s a make up call for not gettling one for her much better performance in A Mighty Heart (in which she also co-starred with ‘that guy’ actor supreme, Denis O’Hare). The only award she should win is best roller skater in a 2008 movie (please don’t bother asking why she’s roller skating in Changeling), although she’s nowhere near lifetime achievement status in that category the way that Heather Graham is [NSFW, duh]. Forget it, Jake. This isn’t Chinatown

Short Changeling: an interestling title, but not a very original one, as there’s a horror movie starrling George C Scott with that name, as well as a Star Trek episode, apparently which was one of only a handful to take place entirely aboard the Enterprise

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

I’ve Loved You So Long
(Il y a longtemps que je t’aime)
We Love This Movie, And It Hasn’t Been For So Long
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

I’ve Loved You So Long walks the same mother woe is her over a lost son walk that Changeling does, but treats the matter at hand thigh with much more resonance and therefore much more success. The mother in question is Juliette Fontaine (Kristin Scott Thomas, the consummate pro, whether acting in an English or a French language film), who has paid her dues in prison for killing her son. The answer as to why she did such a heinous crime to her own offspring comes late in the film, and like Heinz ketchup, it’s well worth the wait. The film begins with Juliette fresh outta the big house, worn and tattered, not really ready to assimilate back into society. Her sunny younger sister of fifteen years Léa (Elsa Zylberstein), whom she barely even knows, takes it upon herself to help ease her transition back into a normal life, even if Juliette could care less. Léa invites Juliette to live at her house, filled with a skeptical husband, a mute grandfather and two adorable adopted Vietnamese daughters. She also forces her to hang out with her middle-aged friends, including a most uncomfortable dinner party where the drunk host pokes and prods as to where Léa’s sister’s been hiding all these years. She finally relents by telling them about being in jail, there’s a pause, and then laughter erupts. They don’t have to believe it, but it’s something that she has to live with for the rest of her life. Eventually Juliette begins to begin again, taking a job, some responsibility, and more importantly, opening up her long dormant heart to others. Powerful stuff
peoples! French author Philippe Claudel makes such remarkable debut directing I’ve Loved You that all we gotta say is, what took him So Long? We hope to love him long time

Girl B: luckily for Juliette, she didn’t have to spend her entire adolescence behind bars and grow up too quickly upon release like Jack did in the equally affective Boy A, a film that’s also…

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

Synecdoche, New York
Kaufmanesque-sess
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

The one thing about Changeling that’s actually praiseworthy is you can get an idea of the goings on found within by looking up the definition of the title. The same cannot be said for Synecdoche, New York (yes, your read that correctly, it’s not Schenectady, NY, although the action does begin in that city). ‘Synecdoche’ is defined (in the press notes) as a figure of speech in which, a part is used for the whole (the screen for movies), a whole stands for a part (the law for police), a species stands for its genus (cutthroats for assassins) , a genus stands in for its species (creature for person), a material stands for a thing (ivories for piano keys), yet that doesn’t help one bit in trying comprehend this incomprehensible movie. No big sirprize there, coming from the pen of the crazy brilliant Charlie Kaufman, but by putting himself behind the director’s chair for the first time and not letting his boys Spike Jonze (directed his Adaptation. and Being John Malkovich) or Michel Gondry (directed his Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Human Nature) take the reigns, there aint any playful whimsy to offset his always dense, overly heady material. There’s no denying that Kaufman is a genius, and we’ll admit that the same is true of this movie, but it may be so much genius that it takes 383838 geniuseses to finger out what transgressed. We aint one of them as our brain melted so much by the end of it that we didn’t even remember how to go pee-pee after the screening. Luckily someone was there to lend us a hand

So we may not get it, but it’s about something, right? We guess. Phil C Hoffs is a theater director whose wife, Catherine Keener runs off with their daughter to be a major artist in Germany. He’s left with a broken heart, and after winning a grant, he pours his time and energy, as well as pain and suffering, trying to stage a play about his life, told in realish time. Along the way he crosses paths and hearts with an extraordinary set of today’s bestest actresses (Samantha Morton, Michelle Williams, Emily Watson, Dianne Wiest, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Hope Davis… WOW), and time keeps passing and everyone grows older and stuff happens that’s stange and odd and odd and strange! URGH! Writing this review has refried our brain again! To understand it all, you will need the following, which we lifted from Ms Modern Age’s review of the Fiery Furnaces’ questionable Rehearsing My Choir album that had the siblings’ granny running the show:

a white steno pad, a pencil, some graph paper, flow chart stencils, a calendar, a dictionary, a rewind button on your CD player [in this case it will be a DVD player], access to Google, a map of the continental United States, a color wheel, and a public library card. I’d equate listening to Rehearsing My Choir [replace that with ‘watching Synecdoche‘] with trying to write your senior year college thesis paper. You’re trying to put all the pieces of the puzzle together, but even though you’ve spent an exorbitant amount of time working on it, it still makes absolutely no sense. In fact, it feels as though you may have wasted 4 years of your life on something you may never understand and may never master.

If the LORD truly wants to melt people who dare to open his Ark of the Covenant, maybe he should put this movie inside of it

Picture Pages: in the flick Keener’s a painter of itsy bitsy paintings. the actual work was done by artist Alex Kanevsky, but it’s currently being eggzibited in LA under Keener’s character name of Adele Lack, even though some people have no clue that it’s linked to the movie tat all!

Verdictgo: A Whole Lotta Frickin Merit But Sadly No Stinkin Badges

Pride & Glory
Ride This Same Old Story
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

We’ve all been down this Glory road a thousands thymes before: good cops vs bad cops, squaring and circling off in a gritty crime drama, with lotsa carnage along the way, and in the case of this movie, a lotta ultraviolent carnage (beware of the bathtub scen
e, it’s a stomach churner!). A movie doesn’t have to be original to be good, and so Pride & Glory, with all its clichés and predictability, gets by cause it’s downright (and upright!) entertaining, and the acting is a niiiiiice. It starts off kinda poorly (wow, cops playing football!), but gradually becomes more engaging as the time passes. Most movies suffer the opposite fate, where it can’t finish after a fast start. Pride & Glory isn’t trying to be something that it’s not, but still, it at least sends the message that you gotta do the right thing, even when someone in yer family doesn’t. The good cop in this story is Edward Norton (although his goatee looks mighty evil). The bad cop is his brother-in-above-the-law Colin Farrell (amazing how he can play soft and hard the same exact way). And the ugly cop stuck between em both is Norton’s bro Noah Emmerich (sorry, but his Noriega–Norv Turner cheese grater face is mighty uuuugly). Dispensing wisdom here and there and trying to save the force’s face is their pops Jon Voight, the chief of police. Besides the commendable performances by the four males (and Jennifer Ehle‘s strong turn as the dying of cancer wife of Emmerich, a side story lost somewhere between all the gunplay), we loved the fact that the film’s action takes place in the mean streets of NYC (and was actually shot on location, giving it a nice taste of authenticity), instead of the clean streets of Boston, where this genre’s flicks (The Departed, Gone Baby Gone, etc) have been played out way too much recently. P&G is far from being New York’s finest, but no one said it had to be

Grease Lighteningers: Rick Gonzalez and John Ortiz are always the greasiest lookin actors on screen. both appeared in P&G, and both tried their best to out grease the other. both are also fab actors, but we’d rather talk about how greasy they look, or at least how Rick looks like Joakim Noah

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

So Long and Synecdoche open in NY/LA only, Changeling in select cities, and P&G everywhere today. Also opening in NY is The Universe of Keith Haring, which we saw at the Tribeca Film Testical and weren’t exactly in love with

until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Stranded: I Have Come From
A Plane That Crashed
On The Mountains
It’s Plane To See
Trailers & Mo

Did you see that 1993 movie Alive, where Ethan Hawke and a bunch of other non-Latin lookin actors pretended their hearts out trying to dramatize the hardships that them Uruguayan rugby players endured back in 1972 when their plane crashed in the Andes mountains, and ultimately forced them to eat their deceased friends and family in order to stay… ALIVE? If your answer is yes, for the love of Gob, forget that Hollywood nonsense and join the rest of us uninitiated by (yeah, we can’t believe we never saw that movie either, but had to after…) seeing Stranded: I Have Come From a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains, a brand new unbelievable (seriously, it’s truly not believable what happened to these peoples) and beyond captivating doc that tells this ultimate tale of survival from the actual survivors themselves. It isn’t the first doc made on the subject, nor probably the last… there’s actually a Martin Sheen narrated one entitled Alive: 20 Years Later on the Alive DVD, but with a runtime of 50ish minutes they barely scratch the emotional and harrowing surface of what went on. Stranded is necessarily longer, clocking in at almost 2 hours, and covers more bases than the Yankees’ infield in an entire season. A lot of these last men standing haven’t spoken publicly about the tragic events in ages, so this rare recounting and reflection is to be watched and marveled at in udder awe. If the doc doesn’t make it to yo town, be sure to add this, along with Touching The Void and Little Dieter Needs to Fly, two other equally HAMazin modern day survival doc tales, to your Netflix queue pronto tonto!

Alive and Wellness : be sure to czech out this official website about the accident, set up by the survivors

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

Fear(s) of the Dark
(Peur(s) du noir)
Have No Fear(s)
Trailers & Mo

Six highly touted comic and graphic artists (Blutch, Charles Burns, Marie Caillou, Pierre Di Sciullo, Lorenzo Mattotti, and Richard McGuire) have come together to make a really cool looking collection of scary stories (the bestest being the one about the creepy dude and his attack dogs) that overall turn out to be not very cool or all that scary. The mos frightening thing is having to read English subtitles for the French audio, which constantly averts our eyes away from feasting on the stark, yet beautiful black and white cartoons. It was eggscusable for Persepolis, which was rich in story and dialog, but Fear(s)‘ yarns are such yawns that subtitles or no subtitles, you’re better off staying home and reading Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

Ichabod Cranium: in the house of Thighs, there’s only one toon that’s required viewing for Halloween, Disney’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

both films open in NYC today

until next thyme the balcony is clothed…