Thighs Wide Shut

I, Tonya
Blades of Teal
Official Site | Trailers & Mo
R | 121 min

When you catch certain glimpses of Margot Robbie as Tonya Harding in the movie I, Tonya (like the image above), you go, my gosh – she, Tonya!!!!  And then when you sit thru all the other parts of the movie, you keep thinking, this storytelling is a little too slick, and everything is laid on A LOT too thick.  It’s like a wannabe paranoid part of Goodfellas, that also feels like the wannabe Goodfellas – American Hustle mixed with the stupidity of the stupid people of Masterminds

But faults aside (like too much of a soundtrack – like for realz, every scene doesn’t need a top 40 hit in it), I liked that they made a movie that sympathizes with Tonya Harding.  But I also liked the 30 for 30: The Price of Gold doc MUCH more, and I suggest you see it over the movie cause the true events themselves were so highly sensationalized to begin with, that a movie sensationalizing the sensation ends up being too much for the senses.  Stick to the facts, and the real deals, with the real players, and the real player haters

Although the acting in the film IS fantastic and worth seeing – especially Allison Janney as Tonya’s ice cold bitch of a mom, and Sebastian Stan as dumb Ned Flanders/Jeff Gilooly‘s mustache, and Paul Walter Hauser eating his way thru whatever he is incredibly doing as Shawn Eckhardt.  Sure, Robbie and Janney are GREAT – but give the Oscar and the buzz to the fat guy!

Go fat guys!!

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badgers

she Tonya today in limited release

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The Help
Maid In America
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 137 min

We’re not super big on southern styled movies revolving around sassy women doing sassy things in sassypants (never have seen Steel Magnolias, Driving Miss Daisy, or Green Fried Tomatoes), but we do like us some sappy movies that make us cry and semi-revolve around pie and fried chicken.  The Help is just such a movie, but this one’s got a message, about dicey race relations or something, but with a hope for a better tomorrow, or something!!!  And guess what, WE LOVED IT TO TEARS!!!!!!!!!  NOW FEED US SOME FRIED CHICKEN, NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Based on the runaway bestseller of the same name by Kathryn Stockett (that we haven’t read a word of, snatchurally), no-name writer/director Tate Taylor takes the story about the stories of two black maids (stoically solid, and Oscar-worthy Viola Davis, and an outrageously enraged Octavia Spencer) and the one white woman (not even fugly wigs can make Emma Stone un-hot/awesome) ‘brave’ enuff to tell their stories, and makes all these stories about stories of stories well worth telling and watching… even if they never happened, and even if some have accused the movie of candy-coloring & white-washing elements of the Civil Rights era.  So what if Skeeter (Emma Stone’s stoopid character’s name) is the white vehicle for these oppressed black women to be courageous and let them have their say?  It’s a freakin movie, and one, FOR ONCE, that’s appealing to both white AND black audiences!!!  Name another movie that is… that isn’t a crummy Eddie Murphy movie!!!????

Maybe The Help is lame, and we’re juss over-loving it cause it’s a summer Hollywood movie without any superheroes, and we’re beyond sick of summer superheroes.  Or maybe it’s not lame cause The Help has super heroes, but the only special powers they use are kindness, caring and compassion!!!!  (this review is starting to sound as sappy as the movie is, but WHO CARES!????).  Maybe The Help works cause Julia Roberts isn’t in it?  Maybe cause it juss looks great and feels right?  Maybe cause peeps like Bryce Dallas Howard, Jessica Chastain, Allison Janney, Cicely Tyson and Sissy Spacek are supporting acting the sh#t outta it?????  Maybe the movie is juss a great fracking movie, with tenderness, laughter and has pie AND fried chicken in every 5th scene????? MAYBE!!!

Maybe we need help, but maybe you need to see The Help

Help Wanted:  here’s someone we’d like to see in a French maid outfit – former James Franco flame…

Ahna O’Reilly

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

Help helps itself to a theater near jews tomorrow

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Life During Wartime
Heart & Solondz
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

Did you survive Todd Solondz‘ 1998 cringe-fest Happiness?  For a whole decade, we didn’t.  In fact, it had left us so bothersome and icky that we despised it, left it for dead, and got really angry anytime someone brought it up … until our more cynical selves took a recent second look at it.  And the new verdict?  A complete 180 degree turn.  Yes, Happiness is still a boat-load of flinch and wince inducing uncomfortably numbness, but it may juss be the mos beautiful and heartfelt unkind film of our modern cinema age.  How did we get it so wrong?  Had our tastes and refinement not yet reach its fruition during the end of the 20th century?  Did we need to move to NY and became post-9/11 jaded for us to view awfulness in a new light?  These questions are too heavy for a website like this.  Anywho…

With Life During Wartime, Solondz goes back to the same bleak well, one that we never thought in 1000229 zillion billion years was worth revisiting… until we experienced his latest monster creation.   And oh baby, it’s alive!!!!!!!!!!!  Although somehow not as gut-wrenching and damaging to the psyche!!!  It’s probably a good idea that you see Happiness first (but if have and loathe it beyond all belief, maybe you should stop there), as the characters all carry over into Wartime, despite an entirely new set of actors playing em.  Yep, Solondzzzies does it again, playing with our minds and his creations, although not as crazily as he did with Palindromes, where 10 actors of various ages, creeds and sexes all played the same role.  We hated that flick too, but maybe we need to give in a second chance as well.  Sarah Palindrome will never get a second chance with us, ever.  May have sumting to do with her ruining our real last names!!!!  Plus she blows, COCK!!

(qwik note about the paragraph below: we’ll mention the new actor playing each role, as well as the actor who played it originally)

So what is life like during wartime for the Jordan and Maplewood clans?  Joy (Shirley Henderson, a more moaning myrtle version of Jane Adams) is still a wreck and wrecking everyone’s life who she comes into contact with.  Even the ghost of Andy (a literally and figuratively haunting Paul Reubens, standing in admirably for Jon Lovitz‘ sad sack) won’t let her forget about his suicide.  She’s having problems with the problematic Allen (Michael K. Williams, a tad less creepy than Philip Seymour Hoffman), so she heads to California to visit with her blah-blahed actress sis Helen (Ally Sheedy, gettin shallow juss like Lara Flynn Boyle) and to Florida to visit with her ‘cheerier’ sister Trish (Allison Janney, in perhaps her juicest role to date, although we do miss the homely cutie-pie-ness of Cynthia Stevenson), who’s trying to start life anew after hubby Bill (our mos flavorite actor goings Ciarán Hinds, who strips away all the humor Dylan Baker dished out) got sent away for being a pedophile.  Well, his time’s been served and he’s out in the world looking for a bit o forgive and forget-ness (+ a one night stand, with a deliriously delicious Charlotte Rampling), as is the case with all parties involved (eggcept no one else is trying to bag Charlotte Rampling’s character).  Trish has found a nice Jewish man (Michael Lerner, who’s about as Jewish as it gets + the papa of the thighlariously red-scared son played by Rich Pecci) that she hopes will instill some manlihood into her soon to be a man (in the Bar Mitzvah sense) son Timmy (Dylan Riley Snyder, the new Justin Elvin).  Timmy’s the heart & Solodnz of the picture (with the Billy character alls growns up and off to college, Chris Marquette, subbing for Rufus Read).  His pain is real, and his endless questions are realerer.  You juss wanna hug the kid, but that’s probably not the best idea for a confused child of a pederast father.  Will they ever find happiness?  Is it even possible?  Regardless, here’s hoping we get to see what happens to these folks in peacetime!

The Song Doesn’t Remain The Same: there’s the Talking Heads’ ‘Life During Wartime’ and then there’s the song of the same name for this movie, but with different lyrics (actually written by Solondz) and perofrmed by Devendra Banhart & Beck.  either way, we’re happy-ness!

Verdictgo: Jeepers MOS DEF Worth A Peepers, but ONLY if you’ve survived Happiness 1st

Life gets one today in NY today, and elsewhere elsewhen

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…