Thighs Wide Shut

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…

The Eclipse
What Women Haunt
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

Ciarán Hinds is a gift to the craft of acting, and we should count ourselves o’ so lucky that he’s finally getting more chances to show this gift, even at the not so ripe age of 57.  Forever in the back of the scene (at least in the eyes of Americans), Hinds has recently made giant leaps forward, effortlessly in a tender nonchalant manner, much like his acting style, in such wonderful fare as HBO’s Rome, Veronica Guerin, Munich and There Will Be Blood. Conor McPherson‘s Eclipse (thankfully this is not a Twilight movie) ups the ante even more as Hinds ascends to leading man status and everyone should take note.  Not juss cause Hinds is brilliant, as usual, but so is the film.  Blending elements of taut drama, quiet romance and an unnerving core of horror, The Eclipse is truly a special film to be marveled by and at.  There’s no doubt that when all is said in done in 2010, this, along with Fish Tank, will grace our top ten bestestest list

Hinds plays Michael Farr, a windowed man looking after many people, but not necessarily himself: his kids, his ailing father in-law and the guest authors in town for the annual literary festival.  He’s good at all these responsibilities, but kids are kids, his in-law draws closer to death each day and literally starts to haunt him (and his deceased wife as well??), and the authors are another story all together.  One of them is Lena Morelle (the lovely Iben Hjejle), fittingly a writer of ghost stories and the supernatural, who not only catches the attention and affection of our dear protagonist, but also of a cocky, aggressive American writer (the always unlikable Aidan Quinn).  The battle of emotions is SO ON, and from here, so is the movie!  So be kind see Hinds!

Cork A Stick In It: The Eclipse‘s setting is a character onto itself.  Itself be the the seaside port town of Cobh, in Cork County Ireland, and we want to get on a plane and go there and get Irish drunk like NOW!  Speaking of Cobh, Cobh is also home to a statue honoring Annie Moore, the very first US immigrant to pass thru Ellis Island

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

Eclipse haunts and flaunts today in NY& LA, and elsewhere elsewhen

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Mister Foe
Oedipus Wrecks
Trailers & Mo

Hallam Foe (Billy Elliot‘s Jamie Bell) is unwilling to let the memory of his mother’s suicide by drowning go (no more rhymes, we mean it, anybody wanna play Scene It?). The tragic event has stunted his growth, as he’s filled his adolescence of solitude with a lotta tom foolery and peeping tomage. To make splatters worse, he suspects his father (Ciarán Hinds, secretly the world’s greatestist actor) of having something to do with her untimely death, so he could take a new wife (welcome back Claire Forlani). Father, stepmother and son can’t live in harmony together, so Hallam has no choice but to escape this life and start a new one in Edinburgh. There he spots a cutie patootie bidness lady (hottie Sophia Myles, one of the only redeeming bits and NSFW pieces of Art School Confidential), who eerily resembles his mother, and it sparks a disturbing chain of events that will draw the two of them closer together. Presenting a perverse love story with flawed characters is nothing new for director David Mackenzie, especially if you’ve seen his Young Adam (where Ewan McGregor flung a lotta food on a nekkid Emily Mortimer [NSFW]), and once again, while it all may be a bit uneasy to watch, with no characters to really root for, you can’t help but be sucked into the film that’s filled with fantastic performances (including Jamie Sives, Maurice Roëves and the always incomprehensible Ewen Bremner) and one killer soundtrack (Franz, Clinic, Sons and Daughters, etc). Hallam Foe reminded us a lot of Max Fisher from Rushmore. They are both motherless misfits, who get way too emotionally in over their heads with an older woman, get burned, but in the process grow up. These aren’t average tales of teen rebellion, but then again, those teen characters aren’t very average to begin with, and that’s what makes both of these flicks stunningly complex and compelling

We Wanna Befriend This Foe: although she’s barely in the movie, playing Hallam’s sister, model turned actress Lucy Holt has juss replaced Torry as our #1 fantasy option

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peeping Tomers

Ping Pong Playa
& Everybody Wants To Be Italian
Ethnic Slurries
Ping Pong Trailers & Mo | Italian Trailers & Mo

If you see two comedies this year, whatever you do, DO NOT LET THEM BE Ping Pong Playa and Everybody Wants To Be Italian. If you took a dump and threw it on screen, it would be fleventeen times funnier than both of these movie combined. Italian-Playa are so downright humorless that they make Christopher Guest’s overhyped-underipe misfire For Your Consideration look about as Oscar worthy as Idiocracy’s Ass, which took home 8 Oscars in the year 2505, including best screenplay. You know how a lotta DVDs include deleted scenes? Well Italian-Playa are two movies filled with nuttin but deleted scenes. They’re so rotten and lame-stream that they feel like failed TV pilots that no one would ever bother to make cause they’re about as original as Kennedy Fried Chicken. Italian is by far the wurser of the two evils, and that’s purely based on the runtime (don’t think we needed 4 scenes of nuttin but early morning jogs). It’s a romantic-‘comedy’ that’s aiming to be the Tuscan-American version of My Big Fat Greek Snooze Fest, but it’s more like going to the Olive Garden for authentic Italian food. The biggest names in the cast are supporting players Laverne, Dan Cortese of MTV Sports fame, Fletch’s editor and Carl the Janitor from The Breakfast Club. Did we lose you already? If we didn’t, then czech out the previous [NSFW] work of its star Cerina Vincent, who played the Shannon Elizabethish naked foreign exchange student in Not Another Teen Movie. As for Playa, it was a huge personal disappointment for us since we’re such big fans of doc director Jessica Yu (In the Realms of the Unreal and Protagonist). Yu is so out of her league here, handing in a poorly acted and constructed full-length narrative debut that leaves little left to be desired for whatever her next fictional project may be. She woulda been better off making a documentary about Ping Pong instead. Many of you loathed last year’s Balls of Fury (we didn’t), and if that’s the case, you might as well swear off ping-pong flicks for the rest of yer life

The Story Is Utah: although this space coulda been reserved for Cerina Vincent’s NSFW work, we dug up this gem while putzin around the nets for Fletch’s editor, Theatrically Released Feature Films with Major Characters who are Latter-day Saints/Mormons

Verdictgo: both are Slit Your Eyes Out Repoopulous to the Crème de ^Menthe degree

Transsiberian
Strangers On A Train
Trailers & Mo

Emily Mortimer is adorable and easily startled (and also a Non-Us Hottie), Woody Harrelson is nutty, Kate Mara looks like a raccoon, Eduardo Noriega is smokin hot (love this pic), and Ben Kingsley is appearing in his 2184938219th film this year with his 1283982929th different accent. Put em all together with some heroin and matryoshka dolls on the world’s longest train that goes from China to the Hoth Systemeish parts of Russia and whats yous gets is a slow simmering, nice little thriller that’s sure to satisfy all the Ping Pong Playa haters out there

More Time With Mortimer: we LOVE Emily Mortimer!!!!!

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

all three films join Transsiberian in limited release today

until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Hollywoodland
The Dumb of All Fears
Trailer

Take one of Hollywood’s mos notoriously BIG unsolved mysteries, add in what could be the career reboot that Ben Affleck desperatley needs, chunnel it in thru the delicate eye of TV/HBO directin maestro Allen Coulter, and what do you get? One of the mos snoozerfic wastes of time and talent I’ve seen this year. In what shoulda been a complete slam dunk, or at least a 2nd-rate L.A. Confidential, Hollywoodland gets everything so wrong, while lookin so darn right. And for once, Mr Affleck can’t be blamed. At times his emulation of the OG man of steel (George Reeves) seems more like an imitation of Edward Herrmann, and the 7 times he played guitar and sang in Spanish was a bit too mas para mi, but the dude does a reputable job nonetheless. Everything else is not so commendable. The main problem is the film’s structure. While an investigation into the murders would seem like the best way to tell the story, it’s the very thing that bogs down this movie from frame a to frame zzzzzzzzzz. And for once, Adrian Brody can be blamed. We could care less about his private dicking (as his job, and what he does with his penis), his akward nose, or his depressed son with the mos awkward set of ears since Mrs Jumbo gave birth. The filmmakers took a lot of liberties by fictionalizing parts to tell a story, but what they shoulda done was stuck to the non-fict and tell the story. Someone raise Robert Stack from the dead cause only he coulda spun a better unsolved mystery.

Possible Porno Name: Holly Lands Wood

Unsatisfied with this? Netflix Auto Focus [trailer/clips]

John Grisham’s Jizzum (aka Verdict): Slit Your Eyes Out Repoopulous

Half Nelson
Half Empty, Half Full
Trailer

Ryan Gosling is the real deal. His movies may not be, but he elevates the material each time out. As the Jew turned neo-Nazi in The Believer, he made us believe that it was actually a good movie. And sure, every man loves on Rachel McAdams, but can you credit her with the rise in notebook sales after the release of The Notebook? (Actually, word on the street is that McAdams single handedly kept the Trapper Keeper franchise alive.) And 1nce again, with Half Nelson, a mini-mish-mash of half-baked ideas, The Gos rises above the script that he was dealt. A lot has been made of this movie about a high school teacher cum drug addict who forges a bond with one of his students after she discovers his secret, but what they’re all really hooraying is Gosling’s performance. Sure, Shareeka Epps and Anthony Mackie both pitch in praiseworthy supporting work, but this baby shoulda been titled All Gosling.

Apt MPupil3: ‘After The Rain’ by NELSON [d]

IMDb Sweeney: yep, that bittie at the end engaged to Gosling’s bro is none other than hottie eggstraordinaire Nicole Vicius. And is it me or is Tina Holmes in everything? Apparently not, but she shoukd be and she should always kill people by railing them. Rust in peace NATE FISHER!!

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

Miami Vice
Edward James Almost Nuttin Like The Real Thang
Trailers

It’s a purty safe bet that in this day and age anything Michael Mann outputs is gonna be a great theater eggspeareance. Miami Vice easily continues this tradition, although it’s far from heaven. It’s hactually a bit of a Debbie Downer that this movie really has squat to do with the OG TV show (we the people demand pastels and Jan Hammer), but ya gotta give the Mann credit for not handing in a turd of a big screen adaptation as is usually the par for the course in Hollywurstland (Starsky & Hutch, S.W.A.T., The Mod Squad, etc al). And like our dearest Uncle Grambo, I too have come to think of Colin Farrell as Super Fucking Best Ever. When he first busted out on the scene as Joel Schumacher’s boy, he was thought as more of a heartthrob than a skilled actor, but now the two are thought of in the same breath, even if that breath is a heavy one and usually breathed when the chicks beat off to him

HB-hO’s: anyone look fam-meal-yer? Well, if you subscribe to Home Box Office then ells yeah… Deadwood (John Hawkes, Pavel Lychnikoff), The Sopranos (Isaach De Bankolé, Mike Pniewski), Oz (Elizabeth Rodriguez, Barry Shabaka Henley), Six Feet Under (Justin Theroux), Rome (Ciarán Hinds), The Wire (Domenick Lombardozzi) and Entourage (Domenick Lombardozzi). And although no HBOer, whatta bout Mario Ernesto Sánchez? Dude had a role in FIVE TV eps of Miami Vice

Boob Tube: Jan Hammer rox out, Phil Collins feels air, vs Batman, EJ Olmos swims, and the breastest Pepsi ad not starring Hallie Kate Eisenberg

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

until next time the balcony is clothed…

Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple
You Can Checkout Any Time You Like,
But You Can Never Leave
Trailer
US Release Date – possible theatrical one this year, but either way will be aired on PBS’ American Experience in the ’07

There aren’t that many notorious episodes of mass suicide in the world’s history. One has to stretch to conjure up Masada, Heaven’s Gate, and whatever that was in Uganda. But there’s one event that stands above the rest, and has clouded the American conscience ever since that mos horrible November day back in the ’78: the Jonestown massacre. What could possibly have happened for a reverend to convince 913 members of his flock, including 276 children, to take their own lives in the secluded jungles of Guyana? This unbiased, straightforward, and completely enrapturing documentary, culled from countless interviews of survivors, ex-members and other key figures, and an unbelievable amount of candid audio and video footage, tells the tale that needed to be taled. I can’t believe it took this long for a documentary to be produced about one of America’s darkest and mos fascinating chapters, but butter nate than lever, as I’d say! I’ve hactually been waiting for a doc heggszactly like this ever since my adolescence, when my non-fiction obsessed sister filled my head with scary stories about Jim Jones’ purple Kool-Aid acid test. But the real question is, why only 85 minutes? There’s so much to hexlpore, in particular, the aftermath, so why not 850 minutes? U MUSS see this, or I’ll round up 913 people yer related to and force them to watch, on A-B repeat, that scene in Armed & Dangerous where Eugene Levy is mixing bidness with leather

Recommended for those who like: the January 1962 issue of Esquire, Guyana Airways, and the Polyphonic Spree

Possible Porno Name: Bonetown: Bangin Your Wife While On Meth From Her Poophole To Her Temple

Unsatisfied with this? Netflix Guerrilla: The Taking of Patty Hearst [trailer]

Apt MPupil3: Jim Jones’ ‘we must die with some dignity‘ speech [various formats here] AND the Peoples Temple Choir ’73 LP He’s Able [12 d’s here], AND while yer at it, anything by the Brian Jonestown Massacre [d-lode em all here]

IMDb Sweeney: DUDE, they HAVE to re-release the made-for-TV movie called Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones, starring Powers Boothe as JJ, Ned Beatty, Brad Dourif, Diane Ladd, Randy Quaid, AND LeVar Burton. And DUDE, if they ever decide to make a big budget fiasco version of the whole shabang, Ciarán Hinds HAS to play JJ

Jonesin For Mo Jonestown: Heducate yo self here

Did You No: That Guyana and French Guiana isn’t the same Geeyanah? I didn’t

TFF Thighspotting: a former Peoples Temple member, who was luckily sent back to California by Jones two months before he lost his wife and child at the massacre

John Grisham’s Jizzum (aka Verdict): Breast In Show, and Vagina In Show!