Thighs Wide Shut

Boyhood
12 Years A Boy
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 165 min

I finally did it – I saw Boyhood. The movie was 12 years in the making. Me seeing it was 22 weeks in the seeing. Seeing is believing. And yet I can’t believe that no one ever made a movie like this before – filming someone every year for a decade-ish and then making some kind of a movie out of it. Richard Linklater did it! And the result is awesome – as an idea, but not necessarily as a movie

One is certainly in awe of watching little Ellar Coltrane go from a chubby cheeked tyke into a collegiate furrowed-browed man in under 3 hours, and yet I still wanted something more. For such an incredible journey of growing (for screen sister Lorelei Linklater too!), you’d think it would’ve evoked more of an emotional experience, but there’s little emotion to be seconded, besides feeling scared by a glass-throwing drunken stepfather, and Patricia Arquette telling a Mexican laborer that he can make something of himself, and then he, BOOM, years later shows up and made something of himself!

Did Arquette’s (and ex-screen-hubby Ethan Hawke‘s) boy Mason (Ellar) make something of himself? Sure, we saw him grow and growns up, but we didn’t really grow to know him all that well. We were there when he graduated from video games to booze and drugs, then to girls, and then to adult thoughts and stuff, but what does it all mean? Don’t know if this distance from the character was by design, or that’s just who Ellar is as a person IRL, but there has to be something more than just turning on the camera, pointing and shooting, and then showing us what was captured. Guess we’ll juss have to wait for Manhood, and if so, can’t wait!! But I guess we can wait another 12 years!

Verdictgo: Jeepers MOS DEF Worth A Peepers

Boyhood grows on you, barely still in theaters, and soon on Blu-Ray and stuff

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Bernie
Saint Misbehavin
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 104 min

The true dark story of rich old lady killer Bernhardt ‘Bernie’ Tiede is charmed up with a giant wide Texas smile by Richard Linklater by way of Jack Black with a mustache and a jacked-up waistline.  Played sorta for laughs, but not really all that funny, this black comedy is more like a gray ho-hum that eeks along solely on Jack Black’s ability to keep up a sweet face from beginning to end.  Shirley MacLaine is the old lady, and outside of a scene of her chewing, she doesn’t do much scenery chewing.  Matthew McConaughey, in 80s bidness man glasses, is all bidness, and the only man in the tiny town who seems to think that Bernie’s capable of evil.  Everyone else rants and raves about Bernie and his good deeds (deeded with her money) in a faux-documentary style that makes you wish they had juss made an actual documentary instead of making a movie that barely berns

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Bernie flickers in limited release

still, this poster is tres bestest

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…