Thighs Wide Shut

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…

Killing Them Softly
More Like Talking Them Lotsly
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 97 min

Two foolish hoodlums (that wily scuzzy awesome Australian guy with a lisp - Ben Mendelsohn & that guy who had a mustache in Argo and has some horrible accent thing going on here - Scoot McNairy) go for a quick score and end up with more trouble than the score was worth.  Aint that always the truth?  The lead up to the score, and the score itself are top notch cinematic stuff, AND TENSE!, but the rest that follows in the fall-out is about as interesting as listening to politicians from 2008 talk about the failing economy.  Oh wait, that IS what happens.  We get to hear GW Bush & Obama & McCain blab on and on about the economy in the background, while we try to stay awake listening to Brad Pitt, James Gandolfini and Richard Jenkins blab about mob economy, hookers and killing in the foreground.  Sounds eggciting, dunnit?  It’s not.  Not even seeing Ray Liotta get his a$$ beat down by Vinnie Delpino from Doogie Howser can make up for the unexciting talking that keeps getting talked

No real shock here in the blahdum, since this movie was made by Andrew Dominik, the dude who gave us The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford aka The Great Time Robbery.  We are audiences of action, not words.  Give us action, not words.  And give us more than 8 seconds of Sam Shepard, and give us less than zero seconds of Vincent Curatola, that annoying guy from The Sopranos who is annoying here too cause he’s annoying.  Oh, and there’s one woman in the entire movie and she’s a hooker, and she gets so bored by James Gandolfini talking that she gets to leave the movie.  Wish we could have done that.  Or wish the movie jettisoned Pitt and all the other tough talkers and juss let Ben Mendelsohn shoot drugs and people, and perhaps shoot his mouth off, as he was the only character worth listening too, even if he was always talking shiiiiiiiiiiiit

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Softly aint so hard in limited release

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…