Thighs Wide Shut

Gravity 
The Airless Up There 
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 90 min

Love love love love love love love the space (and the fakery to make it look real) stuff goings on in Alfonso Cuarón‘s Gravity.  Don’t really love anything else about the movie.  It’s boring.  It’s characters are lame (Sandra Bullock) and smug and annoying (George Clooney).  There’s too much Murphy’s law being practiced.  There’s not enough aliens.  There’s not enuff space breasts.  There’s not enuff penetration of Uranus.  There’s a lot of tension, but it didn’t really make me feel all that tense.  Maybe it’s cause I was over-filled with udder delight & joy that George Clooney died in space!!!!!!!  SPOILER ALERT.  ooops.  oossps.  Being stuck in space is actually one of my biggest fears (even though I LOVEEEEEEEEEE space), but I didn’t fear what was going on in this movie 1 bit.  Why?  I dunno, I can’t really explain why I didn’t react to something that I probably shoulda had a reaction to.  Maybe it’s cause I could give about minus 15 sh!ts about Sandy Bullock and her troubles on earth and above.  This movie is no 2001, it’s no 2010 even, it’s certainly no Children of Men, and it’s kinda like a better SpaceCamp, but maybe not.  Sure, it’s beautiful and breathtaking, but it’s also beautifully & breathtakingllllly airless and dull

Verdictgo:  Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Gravity is grounded at a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Closed Circuit
Boy Eh 
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 96 min

John Crowley directed Boy A, one of my most favorite movies about a boy and the first letter of the alphabet.  Two of my moist flavorite actors are Eric Bana and Ciarán Hinds, who co-starred in Munich, one of my moist favorite Jewish movies starring non-Jews.  Them three gots together, with Rebecca Hall, Jim Broadbent, Riz Ahmed, a dash of Julia Stiles and a bob of Anne-Marie Duff to make Closed Circuit – a desperately wanting to be riveting courtroom drama that isn’t nearly riveting enuff, doesn’t have much courtroom to roam, or any real drama from its start to its whatever finish.  WHAT A MOVIE!!!  Wish it was something more than juss not much of anything, but heck, we’d watch Bana and Hinds in ANYTHING – even if they were in a movie about the invention of microwaved tunafish sangwhiches!!

Verdictgo:  Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Circuit is open for bidness at a theater near jews 

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Lee Daniels’ The Butler
Injustice Is Served, Then Swerved
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 132 min

If The Help met Forrest Gump it would look a lot like Lee Daniels‘s The Butler – an overly eager to please & overly sentimental look at an actual dude who actually butled at The White House through EIGHT administrations, and how the civil rights era unfolded before his (in the form of Forest Whitaker), all those the Presidents’ (John Cusack with a pointy nose! Alan Rickman with a squint! Liev Schreiber on the shitter! Robin Williams being serious! and James Marsden being AMAZINGS AS JFucK!!!!!!) and society’s eyes, with plenty of artistic licences to spare  

The film covers a LOT of ground, and tries to shove every last bit o’ black history into it (who knew that the fictionalized version of the butler’s son – played by David Oyelowo - was involved and attended EVERY single movement & event ever – the Greensboro sit-ins, the Freedom Rides, Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game, MLK’ assassination, Blank Panther meetings, anti-Apartheid rallies, the recording sessions for Michael Jackson’s Thriller), but what it didn’t need to do is waste too much time on the butler’s home life, which it did, which was a waste, which means there’s WAY too much Oprah Winfrey in this movie, and all she does is drink, then play around, then doesn’t, then complains about her butler husband not being around, then happy to have him around, and then meeting Jane Fonda and then whatever dot net  

Still, the movie does what it sets out to do, even if it feels like a whitewashed wikipedia version of the Civil Rights era (strange that white guy - Danny Strong – scripted such an African-American story).  Anywho, props de leon go out to the butler’s butler pals Cuba Gooding Jr, Lenny Kravitz and Colman Domingo who SERVE the film well, even if the film is a lil tooooo self-serving

Ain’t Them Bodies Saints
Ain’t Them Saints Snoozy – THEY IS!!!
Official Website | Trailers & Mo 
Not Rated | 105 min

One of my least favorite performances of the past six years was Casey Affleck being the coward in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, a movie that was 17 hours long, and 77 hours boring.  It didn’t help matters that the flick had the pacing of a snail trapped in a sea of molasses, and that Casey Affleck was doing most of the boring cause he is boring.  He played a shy, quiet guy, who, when talked, mumbled in a twang that made us wished that ears AND cinema were never invented, but we didn’t even have to worry or care about such things cause we fells asleep not caring

Well, IF YOU LOVED CASEY AFFLECK’S KENTUCKY FRIED ACCENT IN THE BORING OF JESSE JAMES BY THE BORING COWARD BORING FORD then you might juss dig David Lowery‘s beautiful but zzzzzzzz-inducing Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, which is like that movie if it met Badlands and Bonny & Clyde and any other movie where a couple are outlaws and do stuff in the countryside with amazing cinematography!!  

Casey’s partner in love is Rooney Mara.  Them two did some robbing.  They got caught.  She shot cop Ben Foster.  He went to jail, she didn’t.  She had a baby while he’s in jail.  He wants to see his baby and his baby’s mommmma so he done does breaks out.  Ben Foster has eyes for Rooney.  Hopefully Casey will get back home before Ben Foster puts his mitts all over her, even though he has zero clue that he even has mitts.  This feels like 3929929239 other movies we’ve seen before, but I can’t really think of one to compare it to, cause I don’t feel like thinking much more about it cause I juss fell asleep re-thinking any thoughts I had on this snoozy-q movie

Oh, and Keith Carradine was in this movie and he was good and stuff!  That’zzzzzzzzzzzzzz all folks!

Verdictgo: low low low low low end Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Bodies is cold tomorrow in limited release, and on-demand a week later

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

I’m So Excited
(Los amantes pasajeros)
Bumpy Ride
Official Website | Trailers & Mo 
R | 90 min

YESSSSSSSSS, another Pedro Almodóvar movie!!!!!  Wouldn’t miss it for the world, especially since Almodó has made some of my moist flavorite movies since the inception of this website.  In that time, we’ve been royally treated to Bad Education, Volver, Broken Embraces, and a movie still giving me the heeeebie jeeeeebies two years later - The Skin I Live In.  He can’t miss, right?  Er, um, uh, uh, uh, apparently he can.  NOOOOO!!!  His sex, drugs and rocky & rolly plane dramedy I’m So Excited is about as exciting as going through customs, and is about as straight and narrow as taking a box of puzzle pieces and throwing them into a second box of puzzle pieces, throwing a feather boa around them, and then giving them the dirtiest, sloppiest blow job.  Er, um, what?  Exactly.  Can’t make heads or tailwinds of what this movie’s suppose to be, but what it isn’t is an Almodóvar winner.  It’s a dud (pains me to say), but still a well spirited one.  If only the movie was 90 minutes of Javier Cámara, Raúl Arévalo & Carlos Areces doing this.  But it’s not.  If only the movie was 90 minutes of Blanca Suárez showering.  Alas, it is also not that.  DRATS

 

Verdictgo:  Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

don’t get too Excited, currently playing in limited release

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…