Thighs Wide Shut

The Help
Maid In America
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 137 min

We’re not super big on southern styled movies revolving around sassy women doing sassy things in sassypants (never have seen Steel Magnolias, Driving Miss Daisy, or Green Fried Tomatoes), but we do like us some sappy movies that make us cry and semi-revolve around pie and fried chicken.  The Help is just such a movie, but this one’s got a message, about dicey race relations or something, but with a hope for a better tomorrow, or something!!!  And guess what, WE LOVED IT TO TEARS!!!!!!!!!  NOW FEED US SOME FRIED CHICKEN, NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Based on the runaway bestseller of the same name by Kathryn Stockett (that we haven’t read a word of, snatchurally), no-name writer/director Tate Taylor takes the story about the stories of two black maids (stoically solid, and Oscar-worthy Viola Davis, and an outrageously enraged Octavia Spencer) and the one white woman (not even fugly wigs can make Emma Stone un-hot/awesome) ‘brave’ enuff to tell their stories, and makes all these stories about stories of stories well worth telling and watching… even if they never happened, and even if some have accused the movie of candy-coloring & white-washing elements of the Civil Rights era.  So what if Skeeter (Emma Stone’s stoopid character’s name) is the white vehicle for these oppressed black women to be courageous and let them have their say?  It’s a freakin movie, and one, FOR ONCE, that’s appealing to both white AND black audiences!!!  Name another movie that is… that isn’t a crummy Eddie Murphy movie!!!????

Maybe The Help is lame, and we’re juss over-loving it cause it’s a summer Hollywood movie without any superheroes, and we’re beyond sick of summer superheroes.  Or maybe it’s not lame cause The Help has super heroes, but the only special powers they use are kindness, caring and compassion!!!!  (this review is starting to sound as sappy as the movie is, but WHO CARES!????).  Maybe The Help works cause Julia Roberts isn’t in it?  Maybe cause it juss looks great and feels right?  Maybe cause peeps like Bryce Dallas Howard, Jessica Chastain, Allison Janney, Cicely Tyson and Sissy Spacek are supporting acting the sh#t outta it?????  Maybe the movie is juss a great fracking movie, with tenderness, laughter and has pie AND fried chicken in every 5th scene????? MAYBE!!!

Maybe we need help, but maybe you need to see The Help

Help Wanted:  here’s someone we’d like to see in a French maid outfit – former James Franco flame…

Ahna O’Reilly

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

Help helps itself to a theater near jews tomorrow

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Hereafter
Five Feet Underdone
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

What happens when we die?  A question none of us will ever know the answer to… UNTIL IT’S FAR TOO LATE!  Well, grizzled ole Clint Eastwood musta been wrestling with that very quandary himself, after wrestling a whole decade with nuttin but death (Gran Torino being the true masterpiece of the bunch, although that borefest Invictus was death free… although Apartheid did die!).  So welcome to Hereafter, a film that provides no answers either, juss some thoughts and feelings and sensations and fuzzy transmissions, and three separate storylines that will end up sloppily merging together for no better reason other than each story couldn’t possibly be worthwhile on their own!  Wait, how is this the end result of an Eastwood and scriptman Peter Morgan (Frost/Nixon, The Queen, anything well written in the past 5 years) duet??  Had their names been absent in the credits, then Hereafter would be a fine little piece of movie fluff, and it certainly is, but still, shouldn’t this have been a slam dunk of greatness, and not a decently made foul shot???  OK, enuff with the analogies, and enuff of the names on the marquee prejudicenessness, cause the movie is adequate enuff, even if it is, at times, super cheesy, and feels longer than Carlos

So what are the three stories?  First is the plight of opening scene typhoon (AND WHAT A DIGITAL TYPHOON IT IS!) survivor Cécile De France (that chick from that wretched French horror movie with the ending that made no sense).  She a had a mighty close brush with death, even seeing stuff like gray figures in gray clouds!!!, but lived!!!!  She tries to go back to her normal French life of being a TV presenter and banging her bearded producer (Thierry Neuvic),  but that won’t work cause she will never be normal again!!!  So she takes a break from TV and starts writing about her experiences, and in the process losing all the fame and money she had before.  Maybe if she can get a book out, maybe then she can find some peace and piece of mind!!!!!

Meet Matt Damon.  He lives in San Francisco and works on the docks cause he doesn’t want to do his old job, which was to give psychic readings to very very very bereaved peoples. It nearly ruined his life, and a chance at ever having one, and he won’t do it again, no matter how many times his receding-haired brother Jay Mohr (Jay Mohr in an Eastwood movie, WTFFFFF??? although having Richard Kind show up for a scene made up for it) tries to convince him to jump back into the game!  Then, at a cooking course (led by Bobby Baccalieri!!!!) he meets a charming young girl who totally wants to bone him and she is totally Bryce Dallas Howard.  Will he get the girl or have to keep escaping his unwanted gift again and again?????

In London, there are a set of adorable twin kiddies (Frankie McLaren and George McLaren) with a strung out mum, who they take care of more than they are taken care of.  Everything isn’t perfect, but they make it work, that is until one of the twins is hit by a car, and the weaker-willed twin can’t figure out how to carry-on without him!!!!!!  If only he had some answers!!!!  Oh yeah, there’s some side-crap with his mother going to rehab and him living with foster folks, but we’ll pay about as much attention to em as the movie does!!!  Rebarkless, the twinsies part was hactually our mos flavorite out of the three

Soooooo, these 3 stories eventually run into each other and guess what, everyone lives happily ever Hereafter!!!  Ugh!  Well, if you thought that pun was lazy, then you can’t imagine how lazy this movie is, although it’s a lot more watchable, and mos def enjoyable than whatevs that Peter Jackson Lovely Bones thang was, and there’s no bones about it!!!

We’d Never Kick Out The Jam… panoï: in De France’s absecne from the TV studio, Mylène Jampanoï takes her job, and our heart!!!!

Verdictgo: Jeepers Somewhat Worth A Peepers

Hereafter lives somewhat happily ever this Friday only in NY, LA and East Grand Forks, MN(???), and elsewhere elsewhen

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse
#3 Puts The ‘Sag’ In ‘Saga’
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

Where did we leave off in the land of flighty, but fun Twilight [reviews of Twilight 1 & New Moon]? Bella sweated Edward, but Edward took off to work on his hair, so she was stuck hanging out with Jacob and his abs and his shirtless friends, and they did stuff together, and everyone got blue balls. Then Edward returned and Bella totally wanted to jump his bones, and Jacob got angry and hungry like the werewolf. Then Bella and Eddie Muster went to Italy where Dakota Fanning and some red-eyed Vamps did some slo-mo throwdowns. A marraige proposal is proposed and all the ladies in the theater swooned and were over the moon

And where does #3, Eclipse, with no actual eclipses, go from there? Nowhere new or interesting. Same ole story as #2 (still NO SEX!), cept no trips under the Tuscan sun, and Edward sticks and dicks around, prolonging this whole love triangle that really isn’t a love triangle cause Bella totally wants to be a vampire for no other reason than trying to be as hot as Ashley Greene is. Good luck with that plain jane Kristen Stewart!!! OK, we lied, there is some new stuff, like snow! and 8 second backstories of the Cullen kids, like that of Jasper/Jackson Rathbone (our favorite character in the series), when he was Texan during the Civil War or something, and for 5 minutes he speaks with a Texas twang, and then abandons it when someone offers him Texas toast with garlic on it, and how he was seduced by Catalina Sandino Moreno, and who wouldn’t want that to happen, but she’s gone in 60 seconds, and if we were in her presence, we’d blow a load in 60 seconds

Oh, and there’s a mounting battle between vampires and other vampires, and the werewolves want to help out, cause they hate the new vamps more than the old ones. And why is their a battle mounting? Cause Bryce Dallas Howard stole Rachelle Lefevre‘s job and they all want Bella and must have her, which apparently everyone in the Twilight universe done does as well, which makes no sense, cause there’s nothing special about her, besides her dad’s awful mustache. OK, we get how Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner would want to protect her, but why would their respective clans also care so dangs much? Wouldn’t life in the land of Forks be much easier is she was killed? Or what if she moved to Florida to live with her mom (Sarah Clarke)? Seems like some fun in the sun could do her well. And maybe new stuff could actually happen, like vampires surfing or werewolves playing beach volleyball. As for the battle, the vamps prep the wolves on how to take down other vamps, and no tension mounts, cause an hour passes before any actual fighting begins and then the fighting is over in about 4 seconds and then Bella and Edward make kisses faces in a field of flowers, while Jacob pouts and works on his abs.  The end.  More like the end of fun in this now overly repetitive saggy saga!!!

Women will love this third edition (lust w/o the lust), and men will juss wish they were watching True Blood, and we/me juss wanna get as far away from vampires as possible, and Anna Kendrick too. Her acting here was juss as lame as it was in her Oscar-nominated turn in Up In The Air. Where’s the justice people, and moist importantly, where’s the ludicrous vampire baseball??!!!!

Twilight Up Our Lives: here be two vampiressesesessses who needed more screentime/shower scenes…

Kirsten Prout

&

Monique Ganderton

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Eclipse slips, blips, with no nips today at a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…