Thighs Wide Shut

Flight
Insane In The Deplane
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 138 min

Flight is two things –

1) an incredible, in-tense thrill ride of endless anxiety, while we watch a plane take off in bad weather, and then wait and wait for this plane to inevitably crash, and guess what, crash it does!  Think this took up about a third of the movie, and was hactually more powerful bad plane stuff than all of United 93

2) a cautionary tale of alcoholism & lies, that takes up the rest of the movie.  Have you ever seen a movie about alcoholism & lies???  What about one with a crazy plane crash!?!??!

Denzel Washington is amazing in all parts, but it’s not much fun watching him relapse into a pathetic stupor, again & again, and then rooting for his flawed-self to succeed in a court case, where he really shouldn’t succeed, but don’t worry kids, it ends like it logically should, but well, whatever

Kinda wish this movie was juss a movie where Denzel pilots 392939 planes that are about to crash, but they don’t cause he’s Denzel, and even if he’s drunk and coked-up Denzel, he can do it, cause he’s Denzel!!!!  DENZEL SUPERHERO > Denzel super-zero!

Robert Zemeckis‘ Flight is basically Smashed, but with a much larger budget & cast (Bruce Greenwood! John Goodman! Don Cheadle!), and instead of a fake pregnancy plaguing our protagonist’s drinking life, it’s faking being a sober pilot.  Both films are dang good, but we’d actually recommend Smashed over Flight, even if Smashed has zero mammoth plane crashes!!

oh, and whoever compiled the soundtrack should be shot

oh, and the next filmmaker who puts ‘Gimmie Shelter’ in their movie will get shot

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers 

Flight is lifting off at a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Meek’s Cutoff
Probably Sponsored In Part By ARRID Extra Dry®
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG | 104 min

Ever see that movie where Michelle Williams loses her dog?  Oh, you mean one of the biggest snoozefests ever put to film?  Yeah, that one.  It was called Wendy and Lucy (please read our review) and the American military have used it to torture people into giving us information.  Yes, it’s really that ungolden slumbers.  It’s so boring that we’d rather sit thru Hebrew School all over again than ever sit thru it again.  Wellllllllllllllllll, apparently that’s director Kelly Reichardt‘s thang.  Fair enuff, if you love the last letter of the alphabet repeated times 838383.  Get the picture?  Don’t think so!  It ALMOST did the impossible and make us not like Michelle Williams, you know, the actress we all adore and admire and wish was our lover, friend and/mother

So what if there was a subject matter so boring to begin with that it would perfectly suit the director’s style and sensibility so dangs well that she couldn’t lose like Parker Lewis or Indiana in 1976.  Guess what, there is, and it happened, and it worked!!!!  We sorta heart Kelly Reichardt now!!!  All is forgiven… sorta!  Her latest subject is people moving westward in search of a better life (actually that was the subject matter of her last 2 movies).  Yeah, but this is 1845, and moving round back than wasn’t easy, cause the west is wild and also mild and filled with nothing!!!!!

3 families are making this journey, and are led by real life Stephen Meek (a grizzly Bruce Greenwood), for who’s path, Meek’s Cutoff, they’re all passing along on!!  There’s the Gatelys (real life super indie droopy faced cutie pie couple Paul Dano and Zoe Kazan), the Whites (moaning Myrtle Shirley Henderson + Neal Huff and tiny Tommy Nelson), and the couple we care and focus on mostest, the Tetherows (Reichardt alums Williams and Will Patton).  They travel slowly by parched day, and unwind even slower by fire at night.  Repeat, repeat, repeat.  Occasionally stuff happens, like a wagon’s wheel breaks, or like they think they’re going the right way, but maybe they’re not, but maybe they are, but they still have like zero water!  They even capture an Injun (Rod Rondeaux) and things get a bit more interesting, but then they don’t!

Meek’s Cutoff was like watching everyone’s favorite educational game Oregon Trail (see below) come to life.  That may sound intriguing and boring, and it is!!!  Yet it’s pretty impossible to not walk away from it feeling both mesmerized and thirsty.  Plus how often do you get to see a film displayed in a 1.33:1 square aspect ratio, like our boy Kubrick done did wit some of his flicks with pre-HDTV home video in mind

Blazing Saddles: dude, PLAY THE OREGON TRAIL, Apple IIgs stizz, NOW!!

gawd bless you Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium

Verdictgo: Jeepers Mos Def Worth A Peepers

Meek’s is Cut-ON in NY only this Friday and elsewhere elsewhen

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…