Thighs Wide Shut

Three Identical Strangers
The Jewish Boys From Brazil
Official Site | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 96 min

Triplets, adopted off to three separate homes within 6 months of their birth, and no knowledge that each other existed… until they miraculously found each other decades later and changed everything forever!  Hooray!!  Look at those smiles – best story ever, right?  Three Identical Strangers is definitely a best story (and a BEST documentary), but the brothers’ full story isn’t an endless trio of peaches and cream and sugar.  Things go bad!  Secrets are revealed!  And I won’t reveal them – but it’s like a Jewish version of The Boys From Brazil!!!  So fcuked up!  HAS TO BE SEEN TO BE BELIEVED!!! SEE!!  BELIEVE!!!! 

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

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Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again
Seriously, How Could I Resist You???
Official Site | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 114 min

It wasn’t suppose to be like this.  The sequel was suppose to be another round of Dia Rrhea!, BUT IT WASN’T!!!  Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again dared me to have fun, and dogfcukingdammit – I HAD A SUPER FUN TIME!!!  It turned me from a super pooper into a SUPER TROOPER!!!!  It was like eating endless Skittles – a rainbow of sugary goodness!!!!  Did I get softer 10 years later or is the movie actually good?  Both?  Meryl Streep is basically absent, and even without the First Lady of Acting, the party goes on – and it rages!!  And while it’s somehow REALLY nice to see the old gang again, it’s even nicer to meet their younger version selfves (especially young Christine Baranski via Jessica Keenan Wynn, and young Julie Walters via Alexa Davies) through even more fun flashbacks!!  And we got new fun folks – like Andy García and Cher and Cher’s new face that can’t move, and she can’t really dance, but she still has them pipes so who cares if her body or face can’t move!  YOU CAN MOVE AND GROOVE IN YOUR SEATS ON HER BEHALF!

Now can we stop celebrating the songs of ABBA by way of karaoke, and get the band back together and on the road?  Heck, I’ll even take ABBA holograms! 

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Mamma nurtures at theaters everywhere today, and Strangers natures currently in limited release

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The Rider
Cowboy Up, And Down, But Not Out
Official Site | Trailers & Mo
R | 105 min

Native American… cowboys???  They exist!  And one in particular’s real life story has been turned into an incredible pure American feature film starring the rodeo driver (his family and friends) himself (and themselves)!  Chloé Zhao‘s The Rider is to be seen, and to be savored!   In competition, Brady Jandreau had a horse stomp on his head and almost fatally crush his skull!!!  Brady (who looks like a leaner, rougher Josh Hartnett) was lucky to be alive, but he had to give up the only life he’s known and loved – rodeo horse riding, cause one more false move could spell the end of his days.  But this cowboy would not go gently into that badnight.  Sure, his best friend Lane Scott suffered a worse fate (in the movie AND in real life) – immobilized and incapable of speech – but Brady just wants to get back on a horse – or get as close as he can, like training them.  The ‘will he or won’t’ he tension, trioed with family financial hardships, and his touching relationship with his real-life and screen-life sister with Asperger’s syndrome – Lily, is a triple threat of cinematic awesomeness.  Saddle up folks, this one is for home AND the range

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

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Isle of Dogs
Scruffy Looking Nerd Hoarders
Official Site | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 105 min

Forget human beings Wes, cause your cutesy minutiae works best when you’re playing with actual toys.  Personally, I don’t think you’ve hit a human home run since Tenenbaums, but as Fantastic Mr Fox and now Isle of Dogs shows, you can be SO freaking creative and provide SO much fantastical fun when utilizing stop-motion animation.  I am not usually a fan of stop-motion animation, or even dogs, or even Greta Gerwig, but you nailed it (minus the Greta Gerwig part)

Verdictgo: Jeepers Mos Def Worth A Peepers

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The Rider saddles up in limited release, while Dogs remains in da house at a theater near jews AND white nationalists!

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The Death of Stalin
Gimme Some Pravda
Official Site | Trailers & Mo
R | 107 min

A movie about Stalin’s death and the power struggle to succeed him that immediately followed, in the quick-witted, biting hands of Armando Iannucci (Veep, In the Loop), with a cast of such funny bone ribbers like Steve Buscemi, Jeffrey Tambor and Michael Palin (nice name there buddy!)???  Is this going to be a recipe for ironic iron and sickle silliness or what??????????????  It’s more like ‘or what’, but that ends up being not such a bad thing.  It actually ends up being a good thing – a more of an eye-opening historical film about real stuff that most Americans know zero about (I knew like -1 about all of it), than a clever and hilarious funny one that I was expecting

Is it OK to expect to laugh your head off when that’s what you’re expecting from cleverman Armando Iannucci?  I think it is.  Is it OK to wonder why the movie wasn’t all that funny (it has its moments, but not as many as one would think… especially what I was thinking), but it really isn’t all that that funny?  And yet everyone and their mother think it’s the funniest thing since funny sliced bread!

And how can you take a movie seriously, which isn’t probably trying to be serious, but actually is serious and is tackling some ultra-serious matters, when a movie bout Russians is spoken in mostly British accents?  Not a big deal, but it’s kind of distracting

These sound like major gripes I’m griping about, but I think with a little more actual laughs, and some actual Russian accents or attempts at them (c’mon, you don’t want Buscemi saying ‘я морж’??) – this could be a bona fide classic, instead of a nice history lesson with some funny guys in it being restrained from being funny

Lesson learned?  History – yes, more laughs – next time, please!

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Stalin LIVES in limited release

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Lady Bird
Petty In Pink
Official Site | Trailers & Mo
R | 94 min

Greta Gerwig‘s directorial debut Lady Bird was… just OK

Yes, I saw it very post-hype, but when the movie got going, I really bought into it.  I was rooting for this to be a modern Pretty In Pink – a high school misfit from the wrong side of the tracks, trying her damnedest to fit in, and grab a hot guy.  This movie was definitely trying to be its own Pretty In Pink, and it ended up being just pretty (a nice postcard from Sacramento), and pretty much not all that much to write home about

I liked Saoirse Ronan‘s performance as the lead, but the movie felt like a bunch of high school memories strung together with some forced emotional strain between daughter and mother (Laurie Metcalf) that never really connected its dots or come to a gripping conclusion it was hoping to achieve

Still, if you ever wanted to know what a Greta Gerwig character in a Greta Gerwig movie would be like, like how there’s always a Woody Allen character in every Woody Allen movie, then Lady Bird is your gateway to a wig of Gerwig,  To me, it’s a movie I’ve already mainly forgotten about, although I would be open to visiting Sacramento 

Also, the movie could have used even more Beanie Feldstein, and/or Beanie Wells

Verdictgo: very low ened Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Lady Bird flaps in lil wings at a theater near jews and white nationalists

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The Post
All The Old News That’s Fit To Reprint
Official Site | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 115 min

The President is a liar filled with lies!  Newspapers need to speak the truth but are trying to be silenced by the President!  Women are ready to step up and play with the big boys!  The country is under much duress and stress cause of all of this stuff!  Is this 2017????  No, it’s 1971!!!  OMG – HOW TIMELY!!!  OMG – SOMETHINGS NEVER CHANGE!!!  HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF!!!  FAKE NEWS!!  REAL NEWS!!!!!!

Yeah, so, er, um, yeah, so Señor Spielbergo and Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep do their patriotic flaming liberal duty to stick it to today’s man by re-sticking to yesterday’s man in making a lesser All The President’s Men in The Post!  This movie wasn’t HASTE-ly made, and there’s a lot of love and energy and great acting (and mustard brown color) going on, and IT IS ALL SO IMPORTANT, but it’s ultimately a movie about whether a newspaper owner and editor want to green light or red light publishing a story.  That’s it!  That’s the whole movie!  Should we publish this and let the people know the truth???!!!  Or do we play it cool and not publish and therefore not get punished???  WHAT TO DO???  WHAT TO DO???

It’s kinda much ado and to do about nothing.  Look, I agree it’s all IMPORTANT stuff, and I did enjoy watching this movie, but after it ended, I was like, that’s it?  They published a story and that was the entire movie???  Oh, so it’s more about that.  It’s about how Kay Graham came into her own, being the Washington Post‘s owner, and how editor Ben Bradlee always fought the good fight!  Good for them, and for us!  No, seriously!  I grew up on The Washington Post, and it remains my paper!  I LOVE THEM!

But I dunno.  I’m tossed.  It’s a story that needed to be told, but there’s not much storytelling to tell.  It feels like easy material kinda beneath the heavyweight skillsets of Spielbergo and Hanks and Streep.  They could have made the same darn good movie with Brett Ratner, Seth Rogen and Katherine Heigl and it would still be important!

Verdictgo: I mean, it’s still a good movie, so Jeepers Worth A Peepers

The Post publishes at a theater near jews and white nationalists

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…