Five For Flighting

The Babysitters
Don’t Tell Mom The Babysitter’s Banging Dad
Trailers & Mo

The central idea behind The Babysitters, where high school girls earn extra cash by sleeping with the lonely midlife crisised fathers of the kids they’re sitting, has ‘hottest porno ever’ written all over it. Alas and molasses, this is no wet dream come true, but a nightmarish, and sometimes a bit amateurish, drama that deals with the truths and consequences of such dangerous liaisons between the jailbaiters and sleazy old men (anytime you see John Leguizamo in a film, you juss know bad stuff is going to happen). It’s tough to tell who had a more uncomfortable time watching this film, us, who needed to take 3,231,455,209 showers afterwardszz to rid ourselves of the dirty feeling it soaked into our skin, or Sam Waterston, whose adorable daughter Katherine leads this quasi-prostitution racket and bares the word found in between ‘pros’ and ‘ution’. The film is tough to recommend, and probably is a leading candidate for wurst date movie of 2008, but it’s still worth a look. Although, as our screening guest Jewanicur perfectly suggested, this woulda worked a lot better had it been a series on HBO. We see Mary Elizabeth Winstead as the teenage madame, and yours drooly as her first customer

Titillating Title: Katherine can next been seen, with her equally adorable sister Elisabeth, in some Tom Arnold vehicle called Good Dick

John Grisham’s Jizzum (aka Verdict): Jeepers Worth A Peepers

The Fall
Autumn Leaves Blow
Trailers & Mo

The Fall is the most beautiful film you never need to see. It’s like The Princess Bride with all the grandeur and imagination, but without any of the fun or fluidity. Our Columbo/Kevin Arnold duo here is an injured movie stuntman (Lee Pace, the dreamy piemaker from Pushing Daisies), who passes his dreary bedridden days by cheering up a peculiar little Romanian girl (Catinca Untaru), also staying at the same hospital, with tall tales of high adventure around the globe (supposedly the film was shot in 20+ different countries, over four years). We have to give director Tarsem (who made one of the besesteststest music video mt EVERest: REM’s ‘Losing My Religion’) sum credit. He’s a true visionary who hands in an udderly breathtaking piece of work, but the whole thing is too darn overbloated and ultimately purty darn boring, which was the same diarrhea that muddled his debut, The Cell. If he can ever find a way to tell a story as well as he can paint a cinematic canvas, he’d easily be considered one of the top directors in the bidness. Until that time, he should hire himself out to others to help make their visions a surrealealtiy

Pushing Hotties: our heroine Justine Waddell looks a lot like the chick on Pushing Daisies, Anna Friel [here NSFWlicious]. she also resembles deceased sexpot Natalie Wood, whom she played in a telepic directed by Pete Bogdanovich

John Grisham’s Jizzum (aka Verdict): Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

The Tracey Fragments
& Noise
Boxed Out & Drowned In Sound
Tracey Trailers & Mo & Noise Trailer

Looking for a double feature that will assault both your eyes and ears, and not in a good way? Then look no further cause The Tracey Fragments and Noise have arrived to annoy the crap outta any audience watching either one of em. Tracey is a student film on Sparks about a teenage misfit (the role musta been a big stretch for Ellen Page, eh?) looking for her lost brother right before a big blizzard is about to hit Winnipeg or something. She’s solid as per usual, but the rest of the actors need a couple more months at theater camp. The film has a gimmick running throughout: more split screens than Mike Figgis’ Timecode and every season of 24 combined! After about 8 seconds, the split screens will start to give you a splitting headache, but watching all the goings on in the boxes does sorta-semi-kinda-quasi-hold your attention. Luckily the flick is only 77 minutes, so it’s bearable, but if it was 78 minutes, it would have been unbearable

Noise has a better plot to boot, but after about 15 minutes, the film has already exhausted its premise of Tim Robbins as the wurstest superhero of the summer, the Rectifier, who takes upon himself to rid New York City of car alarms with his own brand of street justice. The rest of the flick is filled with Robbins trying to enjoy the peace and quiet, and then suddenly, wouldn’t you juss know it, a car alarm goes off, and in turn sets him off. It goes on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on, and then William Hurt shows up and hams it up even more than he did in A History of Violence (we wouldn’t
be sirprized if they gave him an Oscar nom for this awful performance like they did for Violence). You’ll eventually start to sympathize with Robbins’s character cause you’ll want him to turn off the sound from this movie

Fenella Woolgar/Benedict Cumberbatch Bestest Name Future HOFamer: Tracey‘s emo beefcake Slim Twig

C’mon Bring The Noise: we wonder what’s more irritating, Noise or Timmy Robbins’ band Gob Roberts

John Grisham’s Jizzum (aka Verdict): Tracey gets a Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges, while Noise gets our first Slit Your EARS Off Repoopulous

OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies
(OSS 117: Le Caire – nid d’espions)
The Man With The Not So Golden Pun
Trailers & Mo

OSS 117 is a French spy comedy devoid of any humor. Maybe something got lost in the translation, cause to our ears (and eyes, since we were busy reading subtitles) there were no jokes or gags present, and therefore, there’s nothing much to laugh it. It doesn’t take itself serious enough to be considered a drama either, so picture is a bit of an enigma. At least the Goldfingeresque mise en scène is spot on our Bondian super agent Jean Dujardin is so darn endearing and having a good time onscreen that you’ll at least crack a smile. Hopefully they’ll work on the funny a bit more when the sequel drops next year (at least in France)

We Want To Bond With These Fatale Femmes: meet the eye candy that be Aure Atika and Bérénice Bejo, both NSFWers. here’s a nic pic of BB

John Grisham’s Jizzum (aka Verdict): Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

all five films open in limited release today

Rental Round-Up Dawg:

We missed The Great Debaters on its theatrical run, but it played juss fine in a home viewing environment. It runs a little too long, and is overly sentimental, but you can’t help but get swept up by this true story of a historically Black college that broke the racial barrier with their minds and mouths. Be sure to czech out the bonus feature where director Denzel interviews the actual living members of the Wiley College team

As for I’m Not There [TWS review], it’s probably the most overlooked and underloved film of 2008 (well, besides Before The Devil Knows Your Dead [TWS review]). Unlike our buddy Tarsem (and heck, a lotta damn directors), Todd Haynes knows how to blend style and substance seamlessly. The guy’s got a huge hard on for movies and music and he’ll turn you on too with this picture about the personas and myths of Bob Dylan. Watching the movie, you won’t learn a thing about Dylan, but if you pop on the muss muss listen to commentary by Haynes, you’ll discover how much of a genius he and this film truly are. It was recorded post-Ledger’s death, and when Heath’s first scene comes on, it’s hard for even him to watch

until next thyme the balcony is clothed…