Thighs Wide Shut

Chef
Burnt Sugar & Cheese
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 114 min

I guess Jon Favreau really loves food and cooking and wanted you to know this, by making a movie called Chef that’s basically about food and cooking, and the result is pretty lukewarm – SEND IT BACK TO THE KITCHEN!!!  Favry recruited a fun bunch to join him – Robert Downey Jr, Scarlett Johansson, Sofía Vergara, Dustin Hoffman, Oliver Platt, Bobby Cannavale, Amy Sedaris and John Leguizamo – but they have little to work with, other then being overly enthusiastic, in a movie that oozes more cheese than all the cheesteaks of the greater Philadelphia area.  There’s too much time dedicated to (showing us how Twitter works +) Chef Favry trying to bond with his onscreen kid Emjay Anthony, who has about as much acting chops as this movie has lamb chops – zero.  Look, I’m happy Favry is taking a break from big budget fiasco flicks, and going small, but this movie is tiny – a tiny bit entertaining, and a ton bit schmaltzy

Only bit I really really really liked was Oliver Platt playing a food critic, which is not much of a stretch since his brother Adam is the main food critic for New York mag.  The role wasn’t good at all, but I just like that he’s playing a role his brother does for a living

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badgers

Chef boy r deez nutz at a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Blue Jasmine
I Left My Heart Has Nothing Left In San Francisco
Official Website | Trailers & Mo 
PG-13 | 98 min

Woody Allen‘s recent movies have ranged from unforgettable (Midnight In Paris) to forgettable (Whatever Works) to juss plain forgotten (had zero recollection as to what You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger was about).  And his latest – Blue Jasmine?  As a whole, it’s neither of the three, but of course you should see it, cause it’s a Woody Allen movie, but anyone who does see it will never EVER forget the performance that Cate Blanchett hands in as the title blue-stress.  Oh man, the screen burns with every fiery ember of Cate as Jasmine and her smoldering at-the-ready Chernobyl-level meltdowns.  HOT HOT HOT!!!  She’s a woman scorned, broken, battered, but trying to bounce back.  Will the world let her, or will she burn herself down into pile of alcohol-soaked black ashes?  We’re rooting for her at every (mis)step she takes, even though she’s one of the least rootable characters of 2013.  GO JASMINE!!

So how did Jassy Jasmine bottom out to such a low match point?  She turned a blind eye to husband Alec Baldwin‘s madoff-ing with other people’s monies & philandering all over New York, and before it was too late to open her eyes, she lost everything.  Now she’s begging at the door of Sally Hawkins, her adopted sister who Jasmine could give three sh$ts about.  But times are tough and any family is family when yer down and out and now in San Francisco (new Woody locale, yeah!!).  Hawkins has enuff stuff on her own plate, like trying to feed two kids she sired with ex-husband Andrew Dice Clay (not playing for nursery rhyme laughs, and it works!), and a non-stop yapping greasy new beau in the form of Bobby Cannavale (although his yawk-y character doesn’t seem like the kinda guy who’d be living in the Bay Area).  Of course Jasmine complicates matters for all parties involved, as anything she (or Woody) touches turns into instant-neuroticism.  Things eventually do get better between the sisters, and then they each meet a dashing new man – Jasmine + Peter Sarsgaard and Hawkins + Louis CK, but the likelihood of the forecast staying perma-sunny in a ‘blue’ movie is about the same as the chances that dentist Michael Stuhlbarg or dopey mustachio Max Casella have of scoring with Cate Blanchett

Wowsers Cate Blanchett!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Are you the best actress alive?  Dare we say possibly even bester than the grrrrrrrrrrrrrreat Meryl Streep?  Time will tell for some, but we may be ready to make and stick by such a bold claim.  Streep of course coulda played a perfect Jasmine, and has even worked with Woody before, but I just don’t see a Streep Jasmine giving me movie memory neurosis for time eternal.  Burn baby burn!

Verdictgo: Jeepers MOS DEF Worth A Peepers

Blue is golden currently in NY & LA, and elsewhere elsewhen

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Win Win
Headgear In Neutral
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

Thomas McCarthy coulda made his 3rd feature Win Win more of a champion, instead of one that wins by merely playing an exhibition game against a bunch of walkovers, but that’s still OK by us!  Odds are, if you partner up Paul Giamatti with Amy Ryan, and give them pals Jeffrey Tambor and Mc’s muse Bobby Cannavale to crack wise with (+ throw in peeps like Burt Young, Melanie Lynskey and Margo Martindale), yer probably going to a end up with something that resembles a purty decent movie.  It is indeed a decent one, and even more than decent, and probably more than it deserves to be.  Maybe this tale of small town trying to pay the billsness and sheltering of lost baby birds (Alex Shaffer), with wrestling fun on and off the mat, is juss too basic stuff for McCarthy’s talent level.  If you’ve seen his Station Agent or even betterer Visitor then you know that Win Win could have somehow won won more.  How?  Dunno, maybe showing more of David W Thompson‘s winning (not in a Sheen type of way) face???

Foley Artists: Giamatti and Ryan’s adorable lil screen daughter Clare Foley (not this one) sure makes the rounds.  you may have seen her in these commercials or perhaps chilling out with her pumpkin-haired actor brothers LJ, Aidan and Liam! those parents should sell their Oscar worthy sperm by the zillions!!!

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Win Win is currently hittin the mats in NY & LA only and elsewhere elsewhen

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…