Thighs Wide Shut

Magic In The Moonlight
Medium Medium
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 98 min

Woody Allen loves the 20s(/30s). Disclaimer – SO DO I!!! Woody is a man who made his mark making very contemporary movies, but some of his more memorable ones travel back to that time – Purple Rose of Cairo, Sweet & Lowdown (a personal fav), Bullets Over Broadway & sorta Midnight In Paris. His latest – Magic In The Moonlight – transports him and us back to them delovely jazzy-bobbed times, and it may be the Woodman’s weakest entry of the ye olden times lot – but hey, LOOK AT THAT LOT!!!

The scenery is nice in the background (the south of France!) and the foreground – Hamish Linklater, Eileen Atkins, and Simon McBurney (love his voice SO much) add to the mild fun – and it’s a Woody Allen movie, so you probably already know if yer gonna see it or not, magical or not. Abracadab-DUH!

Verdictgo: as a movie movie? Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badgers, but as a Woody Allen movie? Jeepers Worth A Creepers!

Moonlight shimmys today in limited release

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Frigid War ‘Thriller’
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 127 min

If you were a casting director and said to we, hey, you, if you could pick yer British acting (male) dream team, who’d be on it?  Well, we’d be like, hey, we’ll take Gary Oldman, Ciarán Hinds, Tom Hardy, Benedict Cumberbatch, Stephen Graham, Simon McBurney and throw in Colin Firth, Toby Jones and John Hurt for really good measure (sorry Mark Strong, but yer kinda in too many movies and are kinda annoying in a majority of them).  And then if an art director was like, hey, you, what modern movies that take place in the 70s should we copy for look and style?  Well, we’d be like, hey, totally rip off the look & stylings of Zodiac, Munich and Carlos.  Oh, you mean 3 of the bestest movies of the past ten years, right?  Yes, we do mean those blam-mazing movies that everyone needs to see like 992929 times (even if we haven’t seen em that many times).  Woaaaaaah, a cast like that AND a look & style like thems, could a movie like that be humanly or even robotically possible?  IT IS!!!  It’s Tomas Alfredson‘s (he made the lesser, original Let The Right One In) version of John le Carré‘s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy!!!!!

OMG, THIS HAS GOT TO BE LIKE THE GREATEST MOVIE EVER, RIGHT?  WRONG!!!!!  It’s got the cast, AND THEY ARE MOST CERTAINLY AWESOME (esp Oldman as Bill Nighy, and Benedict Cumberbatch, who’d blow minds even if he were playing a mute invisible person!!!), and the look, AND IT’S FORKING DULLTASTIC 70s GORGEOUSITY (apparently yellows & browns = the 70s), but what this movie doesn’t have is much to keep you from the beating drums of dull.  BUT HOW COULD IT BE???  Dunno, but this cold war thriller is juss too dang icy to ever warm up to.  NO WAY!!! Yes way.  Sure, it’s nice to see a spy movie that doesn’t need to resort to endless vroomy car chases and big-o bang-o explosions, but guess what, THIS MOVIE REALLY FRICKIN NEEDED SOME CAR CHASES AND EXPLOSIONS!!!!!!  It’s true.  Believe you we, the plot is not all that thick, even though it makes you think it is, and when the denouement show’s its face, it’s more like denoue-meh

moral of the story:  this ‘spy’ movie needs further TAILORING and TINKERING and SOLDIERING!!!!  shiz needed to be defrosted and did not need Tom Hardy with a crappy wig that made him look like Andy Lameberg with a crappy wig.  great actors acting great in a great looking movie does not equal a great movie.  We really want to see if the old Obi-Wan Kenobi TV version is any less tundra-y.  HOPEFULLY IT HAS LIGHTSABERS AND A DUDE WITH A BUTT FOR A MOUTH!!!

Fairbank-Weather Fan: we’ll pass on Svetlana and get svelt-hotta all over cutie Amanda Fairbank-Hynes!!!

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Tinker aint eggzactly Tailor made this Friday in limited release

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

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…