Thighs Wide Shut

Maps To The Stars
A Fine Line Between Glove & Hate
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 112 min

If you ever wanted to see what a David Cronenberg Mulholland Drive would look like, you gots it in his Maps To The Stars, a tale of nasty Hollywood players and their hidden secrets and desires spilling all over each other.  There’s washed-up and vulnerable actress (Julianne Moore), who’s haunted by her dead mom (Sarah Gadon), but finds renewed hope in new assistant/burn victim (Mia Wasikowska), who’s back in town after many years away, and about to wreak quiet havoc on her self-help guru dad (John Cusack), mom (Olivia Williams) and bitter teen star brother (Evan Bird).  Add in Robert Pattinson as a hunky limo driver + a lot of movie talk + a lot of creepiness, and everything goes wrong, and it feels (mostly) oh so right.  Incest is best, but it’s the würst, and Mia Wasikowska and Evan Bird are the bestest!!!!  EVAN BIRD!!!

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Creepers

Stars get geographic currently in limited release

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The Double
Double Unstandard
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 93 min

How do you like your Jesse Eisenberg – nebbish, dweeby and overly nervous (The Squid and The Whale), or cocky, bullish, and totally in charge (The Social Network)?  Why choose when you can have BOTH in Richard Ayoade‘s crazed second feature - The Double, based on Fyodor Dostoevsky‘s second novel of the same name, with a script co written by Harmony Korine’s brother Avi

We first meet the lesser Eisenberg - Simon James – a 1984ish worker drone, stuck in a rut.  Barely noticed or appreciated, he goes through life hoping for more – to climb the corporate ladder, and to climb into the heart of fellow co-worker and neighbor Mia Wasikowska.  Everything changes when a look-a-like, James Simon – also Eisenberg, starts work at his company, and fulfills his dreams… for himself.  The new brash Eisenberg does what the shy old Eisenberg can’t – he becomes the apple of the boss (Wallace Shawn)’s eye, and the orange of Wasikowska’s heart.  So much for dreams, as this is a total nightmare!!

A nightmare indeed, but Ayoade keeps the dark material as light as he can, and makes it as fun as he can too.  The same was true of his mostly brilliant debut Submarine, and with these two films in the bag, Ayoade has made himself a director to be watched, and to be greatly admired.  Submarine was very Rushmore-y, and I was curious if his follow-up would be more of the same, the way that every Wes Anderson movie is more of the same (but not in a good way).  The Double is not more of the same, it’s a leap from Submarine, in both style and substance, but equally mostly brilliant, and we can’t wait to see where his next leap takes us

Obviously Ayoade has fans on the inside too, as such killer actors as Sally Hawkins, Noah Taylor, James Fox, Paddy Considine, Cathy Moriarty, Craig Roberts, Rade Serbedzija and Yasmin Paige signed up for Double duty in the teeniest tiniest of roles.  Oh yeah, I forgot to include Chris O’Dowd on that list, but he’s not a killer actor.  He’s annoying and unfunny.  He’s like an Irish Seth Rogen

Anywho, Ayoade ALL THE DAYS!!!!!!

Verdictgo: basically Breast In Show

The Double is up, not down today in limited release AND on-demand!

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Stoker 
Bram Flakey
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 98 min

Korean director Chan-wook Park has given in and giving filmmaking the ole Hollywood try.  The Oldboy (not Old Joy) dynamo (or so we hear, since we’ve never seen one of his movies) takes a script by Wentworth Miller (yes, that Wentworth Miller) and hands in something that’s notable, but not really that noteworthy.  What does that mean?  Zero idea, but we also kinda sorta have zero idea what to make of the result – Stoker

Stoker is about a mother (Nicole Kidman) and a daughter (Mia Wasikowska) trying to move on after their hubby/daddy (Dermot Mulroney) dies in a mysterious car accident.  Out of nowhere comes his dashing brother (Matthew Goode), who’s more into flirting than grieving.  He has eyes & designs on both ladies (the mother’s game, the daughter’s glum), and a wide perma-smile that spells something fishy.  So what happens?  Moody moodness, lovely cinematography and editing, some pop-ins from Alden Ehrenreich and Jacki Weaver, and not much else.  There’s a reveal towards the end, but it’s not too revealing, and then some stuff happens, and then something else happens, which doesn’t seem to jive with anything, and then the movie ends, and I was like, whaaat?  And then I was like OK, well, whatever, nevermind

Jane Eyre
The Fresh Wince of Belle Eyre
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

We’ve now sat through two of the 9.237362 bazillion film/TV incarnations of Charlotte Brontë‘s ‘classic’ novel Jane Eyre (which we haven’t read cause we don’t know how to read, yet somehow we magically know how to type words using this computer thingie!), and can now safely say we’re not the hugest fan of the story.  The story is about a girl named… JANE EYRE!!!!  She’s a little orphan (that doesn’t sing or wear red or have a dog or a giant blond fro), who’s been tossed around town like an unwanted bag of used socks covered in pickle juice and urine.  Eventually Ms Unwanted finds employment as a governess at the creepy Thornfield Hall (things go bump in the night there), where the enigmatic Mr Rochester rules the roost… if and when he’s around.  Jane and Rochester strike up something more than an employer/ee relationship, things get serious, things gets weird, Jane leaves, finds peace and salvation with a young clergyman and his sisters and then stuff, and more stuff, cause she can’t keep her mind off of Rochester!!!  Blindmowing, right???  Yeah, if this was maybe the first thing you ever did done saw on Masterpiece Theater!

And yet, we still dig on Ms Eyre.  Maybe cause there’s an air about Eyre.  HOW DARE WE PUN THE HEIR OF EYRE!!!  Anywho, the ’43 edish starring Joan Fontaine and Orson Welles wasn’t all that or thensome or even close to awesome, but we cared cause Joan as Jane with her groans and moans made us moan!  And yes, you know we love Orson, but he hammed it up more than a reunion of Jon Hamm’s family at a Hormel factory that we’re juss gonna have to pretend that he wasn’t in the movie!!!! Gawd hammit!!!!

Director Cary Fukunaga (Sin Nombre) and writer Moira Buffini‘s take on the material fairs munch better than the other one we saw (you tell us how they stack up against the book).  First and not foremost, we don’t hate on black & white pics (cause we’re old fashioned, like how we take our movies, burgers and women), but the color palette here shines udderly heaven-like, even when most of the colors are grays, but these grays glow with radiance!!  But we mainly care for this Eyre cause of the eggsalad acting chops and chemistry that exists between our new Jane, Mia Wasikowska (the next Streep??), and Mr Rochester, Michael Fassbender (he and Henry Cavill are gonna fight for studliest awesome European dude for years to come).  They sizzle together, even if there isn’t much onscreen sizzling to be had (damns yous 1800s!!!)!!!! Plus, they’re supported by the likes of Dame Judi Dench, Sally Hawkins, Jamie Bell and Simon McBurney (we could listen to his voice 25 hrs a day)!!!  Who doesn’t love those peoples???

Anywho part 23456677, yer either into stuffy British costume dramas or yer not.  If you are, inhale this Eyre!  And if yer not, well, stuff you!!!

Every Day’s A Holiday: when yer as fly as Holliday Grainger!!!

Verdictgo: Jeepers Mos Def Worth A Peepers

Jane is not plane tomorrow in NY/LA only and elsewhere elsewhen

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The Kids Are All Right
Nuclear Family Unties That Bind
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

Annette Bening and Julianne Moore have never shared a scene before the cameras rolled on The Kids Are Alright, but by the magic and ease (and unease) in which the two exude and put on display, as the dual dueling matriarchs of an otherwise purty conventional family with the usual midlife trappings, one would think that this is their 66th time around the block together.  Of course it would feel that way!  They are two of acting’s best, and they are as graceful as they are beautiful (which has nothing to do with anything, but it muss be said), and we’d want them to be our moms too, and even though a few brief J-Moore boob flashes are about as Mulholland Drive as it gets here, there’s little to be disappointed about in what is one of this summer’s few bright spots (although David Mamet’s daughter, with a bit part, is to acting as Yakov Smirnoff is to funny)

Credit writer/director Lisa Cholodenko (and her co-writer Stuart Blumberg), who’s a natural at making movies about natural women.  For those who have seen her Laurel Canyon or High Art, Kids is more of the same… same tough as nails lady awesomeness!!  But this isn’t only about two carpet munchers (or baggers!), cause there are kids involved! (Mia Wasikowska, who may be the future heir to Bening and Moore, and low-key, but way key Josh Hutcherson) and the gals’ anonymous sperm donor (Mark Ruffalo)!!  When the fam foursome are reunited with man who really has nothing to do with em, cept for providing his jizzy-jazz, all heaven and hell breaks loose, and instead of being a bunch of scripted and predictable hooey, it plays out as organically as the food being served on screen.  For once, the audience is served!  Bon Appétit!!

Yaya, Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out!: we’re gaga for Yaya DaCosta, and her slammin body (you get to see it in Alright, and it’s more than alright)

[more Esquire pics]

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

Kids are more than alright today  in NY/LA/CHI & SF and elsewhere elsewhen

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…