Thighs Wide Shut

Stockholm
Sympathy For The Devilish
Trailers & Mo
R | 92 min

Stockholm syndrome (where hostages end up sympathizing with their captors) – must have something to do with Stockholm, Sweden, eh?  YES!!!  And apparently I never thought to wiki-look that up (which makes no sense, considering how crazed I am for all things Patty Hearst), so was pleased to learn all about its origin in the loopy, fernetic, panicked and fun Robert Budreau film, aptly named… Stockholm!

So…. Stockholm, what happened there?  A guy (Ethan Hawke) robbed a bank, IN STOCKHOLM, in 1973!!  But he wanted more than money!  He wanted a mate (Mark Strong, with a solid wig for his bald dome) sprung from prison, and for both of them to escape to freedom.  As with a lot of robberies (both in real life and in reel life), not everything goes according to plan.  The guy has to take hostages (Noomi Rapace!! + 2 others) in order to get his demands met.  The police weren’t used to this kinda thing, cause these things didn’t really happen in the capital of Sweden, and so confusion and chaos and winging it on both sides ensure.  And as the situation lingers and lingers and lingers, the hostages… start to… sympathize… with their… captors!!!

BOOM!

Lesson learned, and in such entertaining (70s) fashion! 

Verdictgo: Jeepers Mos Def Worth A Peepers

Stockholm takes stock currently in limited release 

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Kingsman: The Secret Service
Posh Spicy
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 128 min

My litmus test of dumb-fun movies goes like this – is the movie in question as dumb and as fun as the amazingly dumb-fun Charlie’s Angels 2: Full Throttle is/was?

Last up for the test – Lucy, which passed with flying colors, and dumb-funness!!!

Next up for the test - Kingsman: The Secret Service.  result?  PASS WITH BRITISH FLYING COLORS!!!!!!

Colin Firth is mad game.  So is Michael Caine (although he wasn’t really needed) and Mark Strong too (being subdued for once), and even Samuel L Jackson (who adds a lisp to his usual one note acting – WHAT A STRETCH!!!), and so is newcomer Taron Egerton (guess they couldn’t get Jack O’Connell)  

You should be game for it too!  It’s like dumb James Bond, but fun!! It’s like a dumber-funner Layer Cake, a less dumb/more fun Kick-Ass, and a less awesome/more actioned X-Men: First Class.  What do those last 3 flicks have in common?  They came from the British king of dumb-fun - Matthew Vaughn (who took over that role from Guy Ritchie)

But the REAL reason you should see this movie?  Mark Hamill is in it, and while he’s not particularly amazing in it, or even all that memorable (he mainly juss makes a bunch of grunting faces), he is in this movie, and when’s the last time you saw Mark Hamill and his face in ANY movie, on the big screen? 2001’s Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back??  Some things are best left unseen and unsaid

Well, Mark will walk skies again this winter as Luke Skywalker, and whether the new Star Wars is simply passable, good enough OR amazing (please lord, we need this to be amazing), you may not be ready to see him again, but you need to be ready

It’s been so long since he’s been on the big screen, and that you and/or I have cared to see him on a big screen, and it is in your best interest to see him on the big screen ONE time before Star Wars drops.  You need to refamiliarize yo’self with his face and acting.  You want the shock and awww shucks to happen now, and not when you’re trying to take in the new Star Wars, while trying not to jizz in yer pants(/get to be disappointed all over again:)

Kingsman – so much dumb fun, and hispecially some Mark Hamill.  Welcome back Mark!!!  The big screen misses you.  We all missed you!!!  And now we’re ready for you to be a force to reckon with, again 

Verdictgo: Jeepers MOS DEF Worth A Peepers

Kingsman firths it up today at a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Zero Dark Thirty
OBL STK MIA DOA A-OK GO USA!
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 157 min

Dude, do you remember how intense and thrilling and awesome Kathryn Bigelow & Mark Boal‘s Hurt Locker is was????  Well guess what, Biges and Boals did one better on collab numero 2, basically telling Homeland and Argo to argofuckthemselves.  Zero Dark Thirty is like watching one of those Bourne movies, cept what’s going on REALLY HAPPENED and what we’re being shown seems really really fcuking real.  FO REALS!!! not faux reels!!!

So what is Zero Dark Thirty?  It’s 2 minus 2, the opposite of day + 30.  BAM!  C’mon, you know what this is about – it’s a summarization of failing for ages to find Osama bin Laden, and then maybe finding him, and then deciding whether that maybe is close enuff to a certainty as humanly possible, before pulling the final trigger… on pulling the trigger on OBL.  It’s frustrating, and more frustrating, and even more frustrating, but then it gets exciting and even more exciting, and even more more exciting, and then we’re back in the Bigelow-Boal thrill ride where yer heart’s a pounding and yer palms are a sweating, even though you know that OBL aint living past the end credits.  SPOILER ALERT – OBL dies.  But how did we get to that point?  THAT’S WHAT THIS MOVIE IS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  And it’s incredible!!!!!!!!!!!!

So when Bigs was making this movie, she was probably like, I want to have someone awesome like Jodie Foster to play my Clarice Starling darling character, so she got herself Jessica Chastain.  PERFECT!  Then she was like, we need a bunch of random actors that are good, but not huge names, to help Chasty out, and she was like welcome aboard Kyle Chandler, Jennifer Ehle, Harold Perrineau, Jeremy Strong, Mark Strong, Mark Duplass & [my boy] Édgar Ramírez.  Then she was like, I need a beardy guy that’s super good at yelling and torture and then they got Jason Clarke and he did that.  Then she was like, I need two beardos to play beardo Navy Seals, so she got that guy from Parks & Rec who’s character isn’t as funny as everyone thinks it is and fake Owen Lars from the BS Star Wars poo-quels.  But guess what, the casting didn’t end there.  She was like, oh, I need some fat guy that could pass for Leon Panetta, and so BAM, put on some 80s Japanese bidness-man eyeglasses James Gandolfini!  And she threw in Stephen Dillane for good measure.  That’s eggzatcly how the casting was done, as told to me by a magic elf fairy from Rivendale

What more do you need to know?  GO AMERICA!  NEVER QUIT!  Always keep your eye on the ball.  Kick a guy in the balls, but only IF it will lead to info that will get us to Osama bin Laden.  And if we get that info, lets lose it for like 7 years, but since we don’t give up, we find it again and follow up and finally hang our ‘mission accomplished’ banners.  Way to go us/US.  Red, White & BEST!!!!

Spank dog Morgan Spurlock never found OBL, cause otherwise this movie wouldn’t eggsist

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

Zero Hot Tens: Jessica Collins is in the movie for all of 8 seconds, but she hypnothighsed me with her eyes

and then I remembered where she had done it before – the sorta-brilliant but cancelled Rubicon

Zero Dark Thirty sees the light in NY & LA on Wednesday and elsewhere on January 11

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Frigid War ‘Thriller’
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 127 min

If you were a casting director and said to we, hey, you, if you could pick yer British acting (male) dream team, who’d be on it?  Well, we’d be like, hey, we’ll take Gary Oldman, Ciarán Hinds, Tom Hardy, Benedict Cumberbatch, Stephen Graham, Simon McBurney and throw in Colin Firth, Toby Jones and John Hurt for really good measure (sorry Mark Strong, but yer kinda in too many movies and are kinda annoying in a majority of them).  And then if an art director was like, hey, you, what modern movies that take place in the 70s should we copy for look and style?  Well, we’d be like, hey, totally rip off the look & stylings of Zodiac, Munich and Carlos.  Oh, you mean 3 of the bestest movies of the past ten years, right?  Yes, we do mean those blam-mazing movies that everyone needs to see like 992929 times (even if we haven’t seen em that many times).  Woaaaaaah, a cast like that AND a look & style like thems, could a movie like that be humanly or even robotically possible?  IT IS!!!  It’s Tomas Alfredson‘s (he made the lesser, original Let The Right One In) version of John le Carré‘s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy!!!!!

OMG, THIS HAS GOT TO BE LIKE THE GREATEST MOVIE EVER, RIGHT?  WRONG!!!!!  It’s got the cast, AND THEY ARE MOST CERTAINLY AWESOME (esp Oldman as Bill Nighy, and Benedict Cumberbatch, who’d blow minds even if he were playing a mute invisible person!!!), and the look, AND IT’S FORKING DULLTASTIC 70s GORGEOUSITY (apparently yellows & browns = the 70s), but what this movie doesn’t have is much to keep you from the beating drums of dull.  BUT HOW COULD IT BE???  Dunno, but this cold war thriller is juss too dang icy to ever warm up to.  NO WAY!!! Yes way.  Sure, it’s nice to see a spy movie that doesn’t need to resort to endless vroomy car chases and big-o bang-o explosions, but guess what, THIS MOVIE REALLY FRICKIN NEEDED SOME CAR CHASES AND EXPLOSIONS!!!!!!  It’s true.  Believe you we, the plot is not all that thick, even though it makes you think it is, and when the denouement show’s its face, it’s more like denoue-meh

moral of the story:  this ‘spy’ movie needs further TAILORING and TINKERING and SOLDIERING!!!!  shiz needed to be defrosted and did not need Tom Hardy with a crappy wig that made him look like Andy Lameberg with a crappy wig.  great actors acting great in a great looking movie does not equal a great movie.  We really want to see if the old Obi-Wan Kenobi TV version is any less tundra-y.  HOPEFULLY IT HAS LIGHTSABERS AND A DUDE WITH A BUTT FOR A MOUTH!!!

Fairbank-Weather Fan: we’ll pass on Svetlana and get svelt-hotta all over cutie Amanda Fairbank-Hynes!!!

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Tinker aint eggzactly Tailor made this Friday in limited release

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The Guard
The Blue Meaningless
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 96 min

Brendan Gleeson is one giant framed bag o’ fun.  He’s witty, winsome and wears a varied wave of emotions on his most eggsalad acting sleeves.  He’s often relegated to playing the 2nd or 9th fiddle, and is rarely allowed to carry a film.  So, what if he was allowed that chance to shine in the center stage spotlight?  Could he pull it off?  What kinda question are we asking ourselves here???  Of course he can, he’s Brendan F$%king Gleeson, who’s worth about 1/2 the price of any admission!!!! And that’s what makes his starring turn in The Guard 1/2 worth seeing

What about the other 1/2?  It doesn’t hold up its end of the bargain.  The Guard is juss way too simple-minded stuff, like opening a box of Lucky Charms (or Irish Spring?).  Gleeson is an absolute joy to watch here, but we wish there was a little more to John Michael McDonagh‘s flick than ‘charming, but surly cop does the right thing against clichéd bad people, his way‘.  Speaking of McDonagh, his brother Martin also tapped into that Gleeson magic, but gave him a much better narrtive backing in his In Bruges.  If you haven’t seen that, see it, and treat The Guard as its b-side, or maybe even c-side

We forgot to mention that Don Cheadle and Mark Strong are both in this, but we almost forgot that they were in the movie altogether (we seem to have memory issues), cause they don’t really help anything along.  Gleeson doesn’t need any help onscreen, but help was needed offscreen.  Maybe they should have let Gleeson write the script and play every role.  That would have filled us with more glee, son, than the cancellation of Glee

Wee Lasses Wit Nice A$$es: we’ve previously profiled hotties Sarah Greene and Dominique McElligott, but here’s what they look like in Gleeson’s arms/our dreams

and now lets turn our attentions to newbie Katarina Cas, aka KC and her sunshine brand of hotnness!!

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Guard is not the most arresting thing in NY & LA this Friday, and elsewhere elsewhen

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…