Thighs Wide Shut

Spotlight
All The Priests’ Children
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 127 min

Every great newspaper deserves its own great movie.  The Washington Post got All The President’s Men, The San Francisco Chronicle got Zodiac, and (although I haven’t seen it) The New York Times got the doc Page One: Inside The New York Times.  There are a lot of other great great newspaper films, but they are all fictional (or fiction guised as something sorta based in reality, ala Citizen Kane).  It’s actually kinda weird that there aren’t more films about big time stories published by big time newspapers.  Anywho – Spotlight shines a bright light on The Boston Globe – and the lid they blew off the priestly-pedophiled sexual scandals that plagued the highly Catholic Boston area for eons

Thomas McCarthy‘s cinematic journey of this investigative journalism triumph is a triumph itself.  The outcome is obvious (any doubt that the paper wouldn’t win the day by getting the word out), but getting from point A to point B was an absolute thrill – even if it mainly consisted of phone calls, interviews, trips to the library, repeat, repeat, repeat.  The movie never skips a beat, and is pulse-pounding from the get go, to the get stop.  Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, John Slattery, Stanley Tucci, Brian d’Arcy James (and his MUSTache), Liev Schreiber, and Billy Crudup are ALL fantastic.  Raping children is not fantastic, but this movie is ALL fantastic.  It is a muss see for anyone who has eyes, and even for people who don’t

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

Spotlight shines bright currently at a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Lee Daniels’ The Butler
Injustice Is Served, Then Swerved
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 132 min

If The Help met Forrest Gump it would look a lot like Lee Daniels‘s The Butler – an overly eager to please & overly sentimental look at an actual dude who actually butled at The White House through EIGHT administrations, and how the civil rights era unfolded before his (in the form of Forest Whitaker), all those the Presidents’ (John Cusack with a pointy nose! Alan Rickman with a squint! Liev Schreiber on the shitter! Robin Williams being serious! and James Marsden being AMAZINGS AS JFucK!!!!!!) and society’s eyes, with plenty of artistic licences to spare  

The film covers a LOT of ground, and tries to shove every last bit o’ black history into it (who knew that the fictionalized version of the butler’s son – played by David Oyelowo - was involved and attended EVERY single movement & event ever – the Greensboro sit-ins, the Freedom Rides, Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game, MLK’ assassination, Blank Panther meetings, anti-Apartheid rallies, the recording sessions for Michael Jackson’s Thriller), but what it didn’t need to do is waste too much time on the butler’s home life, which it did, which was a waste, which means there’s WAY too much Oprah Winfrey in this movie, and all she does is drink, then play around, then doesn’t, then complains about her butler husband not being around, then happy to have him around, and then meeting Jane Fonda and then whatever dot net  

Still, the movie does what it sets out to do, even if it feels like a whitewashed wikipedia version of the Civil Rights era (strange that white guy - Danny Strong – scripted such an African-American story).  Anywho, props de leon go out to the butler’s butler pals Cuba Gooding Jr, Lenny Kravitz and Colman Domingo who SERVE the film well, even if the film is a lil tooooo self-serving

The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Climate Changez
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 130 min

The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a Pakistani named Changez (Riz Ahmed), a man who once went to America chasing the Yankee dollar, and is now a professor in his country of origin, possibly teaching questionable curriculum… depending on who’s doing the questioning (and no, we are not reffering to teaching how to do some sports betting or playing poker).  The man questioning him in the present is American journalist Liev Schreiber, who’s looking for a kidnapped American professor from the same university where Changez teaches.  Changez may not have the answer, but he begins to tell his story, and spank Allah he does, cause the past he presents ends up being much more intriguing than anything happening in the present.  Changez regales Schreiber and his Elmer’s Glue cow face with a tale about his once promising life in America, where he was taken under the wing of Wall Streeter Kiefer Sutherland (IN GLASSES!!!) and quickly moved up the finical ladder, and quickly down Kate Hudson’s pants (she’s actually pretty decent in the movie! not decent as in keeping her pants on, but decent as in she’s not being awful in some awful rom-com that’s awful).  Things go swimmingly, and then 9/11 happens, and then the world is with America, and then America turns hateful, and turn on people like Changez, who personally had zero to do with any of it besides the color of his skin and his religion and his nationality.  Enough becomes enough, and Changez demands change, for himself and his home country, so he heads home, where stuff happens, and then we’re caught up to the point where Schreiber and his Elmer’s Glue cow face come walking in to question this and that and why Changez has a beard and is angry at America

Mira Nair‘s take on Mohsin Hamid’s novel is certainly heavy handed, but should a movie about post-9/11 Muslim identity in Western and Eastern societies be dealt with with a light hand?  No, it shouldn’t.  Sure, Nair is a bit out of her depth in a 1/3 of her movie – where guns and hard talk raise tensions in the present, but the other 2/3rds told in flashback are right on point and carry the message across.  Her film practically sinks or swims on Riz Ahmed’s piercingly serious eyes, and she was wise to make him the navigator, as he floats above the given script and keeps us tuned into that bigger picture (he similarly sizzled and dazzled in Michael Winterbottom’s Trishna, and one would assume for him to do the same in many more films to come).  So what’s the bigger picture?  There are more sides to the post-9/11 world than just the one that America wants the world to take.  This is the fundamental point.  It’s more mental than fun

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

The Fundamentalist luctantly opens in limited release today, and on-demand April 30th

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Salt
Sodi-YUM!
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

So what’s the shaker with Salt?  We don’t want to pepper spray you with all the details, as to ruin any of the run, gun and fun, and there’s a lot of running and a lot of gunning and a result, a lot of funning (boring scenes of explaining stuff are kept to a minimum!!), so we will sums it up like this: Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie) is cunning AND sexy CIA agent, who is outed right off the bat as a possible Russian mole, with a job to assassinate a political big wig + kick-start sum biggie global trouble!!  Instead of sticking around and pleading her (supposed?) innocence (the ‘is she?’ or ‘isn’t she?’ bidness will keep you glued throughout), she makes like Dr Richard Kimble and goes all out Fugitive, with Liev Schreiber and Chiwetel Ejiofor (Chiwe!!) hot on her trail and tail.  And then things start to get all tricky, and a bit Manchurian Canadite-y and a tad Boys From Brazil-nuts, and then Andre Braugher shows up to play one of the mos abbreviated, unimportant roles of his career.  Braugher power!  And then, Zardoz?  No, thank gawd

Salt is an stoopid name for a movie (and a character, which was originally intended to be a man’s role!), and yet nothing else about this throwback to good ole mindless action-thrillers (spankfully mostly CGI-free) from the 80s is stoopid.  Salt even revives Regan-era themes, as Russian spies and assassins come in from the cold and it’s all red hot!!  No big sirprize here, coming from able director Phillip Noyce (the two Harrison Ford driven Jack Ryan flicks), who’s paired with mostly unproven scribe Kurt Wimmer (Law Abiding Citizen? Sphere?).  The positive grains the two make of Salt is actually good news for us, since they are slated to reunite for the (pointless) remake of Total Recall.  Maybe they’ll get our a$$es to Mars!

Don’t you dare say the name Salt, but do you dare see Salt!

Salt of the Earth: wonder if Salt’s name has anything to do with SALT and/or SALT II?

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Salt opens at a theater near jews this Friday

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…