Thighs Wide Shut

The Book Thief
The Time & Energy Thief
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 131 min

There’s some book called The Book Thief by some Australian author named Markus Zusak.  Apparently people read it and were into it, and now it’s a movie.  And the movie, directed by Brian Percival?  Drivel.  Cheesy.  Lame.  Pointless.  Grasping for emotion, but is as emotionless as these people that google say have no emotion.  Zzzzzzzzzzz fest ’41.  Filled with dumb German accents, when they should have just used stupid English accents.  Nothing.  Blah.  Insufferable (that’s how another moviegoer described it to me, as we were both taking a well desrved mid-movie snooze/bathroom break… and no, we weren’t in a bathroom at the time of this exchange of adjectives).  The Book Thief tries so hard to be something Oscar-worthyish, but it’s basically juss a blah pile of wishy-washy-ish-ishy ishness.  But the costumes and sets look pretty decent!!  Who cares??  Yeah, who cares about yet ANOTHER WWII tale, from the view of Germans (BUT THESE ARE GOOD GERMANS!!!), especially when this whole story was made up.  That’s right – pure fiction.  Oh man, oh man.  This movie isn’t terrible, but it’s a terrible waste of time, and of the efforts of those who made it into a movie

I pity poor Geoffrey Rush.  A very gifted actor, forced to be even cheesier here than he was in The King’s Speech.  Instead of teaching a king how to speak clearly, here he’s teaching a girl (a good enuff Sophie Nélisse) how to read.  Oh yeah, the girl likes books, and thieving them, but she can’t read them.  But in The Book Thief, she will steal them, and THEN read them!!!  And then hate it when the Nazis burn them.  DAMN YOU NAZIS!!! And what does reading teach her?  That words help you express things, like stuff!!!  WOWSERS!!!!!  Yeah, and Rush’s wife is Emily Watson, another person I pity.  I pity her cause she has to play a role with about as much character as a rotten carrot on tour.  She yells at the girl, and her husband, and anything that has ears.  Heck, she’d even yell at anything that doesn’t have ears.  If only I didn’t have ears AND eyes.  Makes me also wish that I didn’t have a butt, so I wouldn’t have had to sit thru this dumb dumb movie.  Dear lord.  I need a time machine and somehow get WWII to never happen so we and I and you and everyone we know won’t have to sit thru any more movies like this.  Ughhhhhhh.  Oh, and I pity Ben Schnetzer.  He’s a good lookin dude, playing a Jew on the run who gets Anne Frank hidden by Rush and Watson, and every 30 minutes in the movie, he gets sick, then heals, and then teaches the girl about how words are cool and stuff.  Repeat.  Repeat.  Re-zzzzzzzz.  One person I do not pity is the German boy played by Nico Liersch.  I don’t want to hurt children, but I wanted to punch the crap out of his kid character.  Is that wrong?  I dunno, but this movie is

Verdictgo: Slit Your Eyes Out Repoopulous

STOP Thief, in limited release tomorrow

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

War Horse
More Like Bore Horse
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 146 min

Apparently there’s this beloved book turned into a hit play about a boy and his horse a horse and his boy, who loved one another like no horse and no boy could have ever loved one another, BUT THEY DID IT (not actually did it, but you know what we mean).  Apparently there love was so great that Steven Spielberg needed to make a movie out of it.  If you see one Spielberg movie this winter, do not make it War Horse, unless you love horses more than people, and if you do, please never come to this dot org ever again

OK, so it was kinda cool to see how horses’ role in warfare came to an abrupt end in WWI, due to trenches and tanks, but it wasn’t all that cool to watch a horse change hands from a poor English family (newbie boy Jeremy Irvine + parents Emily Watson and Peter Mullan), to a super fruity English army officer who knows how to draw (Tom Hiddleston), then to the kid from The Reader (David Kross), then to the old dude from The Prophet (Niels Arestrup), and then into no man’s land, before the eventual (no real sirprize here, but a spoiler lessthenone) reunion with the boy.  Yep, that’s the story, and yep, our main character is a horse.  Yep, the horse hands in the best horse performance of the year, but wouldn’t you rather watch Tintin run around the world in search of treasure instead of a boy searching for a horse?

The movie is well made, but it’s juss not all that compelling, and never registers on an emotional level that it is desperately trying to reach for (the script is ultra-fromage-y).  The most we got out of it was being happy for peeps like David Thewlis, Benedict Cumberbatch, Toby Kebbell, Eddie Marsan and Liam Cunningham who finally got to be in a Spielberg movie.  Is that some sort of an accomplishment?  Not really, but all of their performances (+ Celine Buckens &  Robert Emms) are commendable in a not so commendable flick

moral of the story – said it before – bore Horse.  nuff said again

No More Horsing Around: horses were still hactually used in WWII, mainly on the Eastern Front, even by the Poles, who couldn’t get their screen door submarines into action quick enuff to halt the Nazis

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

War Horse trots into a theater near jews on Xmas day

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Julie & Julia
Child’s Kid & Play
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

Julia Child lead a most fruitful life, making a name for herself in introducing French cuisine to the plebeian American suburbanites in both print and later in television (do we have her to thank for Yan Can Cook and Justin ‘I gar-on-tee!‘ Wilson?), while privately maintaining a loving relationship with her cherished diplomat husband. There was one thing she always wanted, but could never have, a child (irony?). She may not have been able to procreate, but she indirectly created a monster in the form of Julie Powell. Mrs Powell was looking for a purpose in life and found it in Mrs Child’s cookbook. Since fresh creativity doesn’t really eggsist anymore, Powell made like a hip-hop ‘artist’ and sampled Child’s work into her own. The result was a blog chronicling her attempt to make all 524 recipes from Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking in the span of a year. Yawn. Almos more yawn is the design of her blog (her current blog aint munch butter). All talk, not bite. Well nothing screams motion picture quite like a woman’s struggle in the kitchen and blogging about it, right?

You go girl writer/director Nora Ephron tries her damnedest to turn this ‘story’ into a movie, cross-cutting from Julie’s struggles (food falls on the floor! her husband’s grows tired of her being annoying! oh my!) to Child’s own culinary education and the process of making her cookbook while living in France. Naturally, the more watchable bits revolve around Child’s life, tenzillion-fold over Powell’s. It also doesn’t hurt that Meryl Streep‘s sporting Child’s apron, and like the true artist that she is, Streep embodies her role, instead of making a parody of it (they let Dan Aykroyd do the dirty work). Stanley Tucci plays her husband Paul, and not only does an affective job demonstrating the Child couple’s perfect pairing, but also the second pairing (after The Devil Wears Prada) of he and Streep. They’re magical together, and we hope the two continue to unite onscreen again and again and again. On the other side of the flick, Amy Adams (making her second pairing with Streep as well, after the YUMcredible Doubt) is tasked with the thankless job of playing the pouty Powell, with Chris Messina having an even more thankless job of portraying the supportive hubby. Without her and her blog and her ‘troubles’, this movie wouldn’t eggist, but after further review it seems like Child’s mostly carefree life, with Streep walking VERY tall in her shoes, is so colorful and delightful that it’s worthy enuff to warrant its own film. Anywho, to all the guys out there, have no fear if yer ladies drag you to this cause the bon appétit bits well out weigh the au bon pain in the ass ones

DCeiving: like Julie Powell, you too can (cook) visit Child’s kitchen at the National Museum of American History in DC, but yer better off skipping it, cause it’s boring, and instead indulge in the cuisine of astronauts, freeze-dried ice cream, which is available at every gift shop on the Smitshonian grounds

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Cold Souls
Soul Kauf(man)ing
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

Sophie Barthes‘s Cold Souls is like a more clear-headed mix of Being John Malkovich, Synecdoche, New York and Enternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind. That’s quite good Charlie Kaufman company to be in for Barthes’ full length feature debut, wouldn’t ya say? The idea for the film regarding a man having his soul extracted was dreamed up from one of her own dreams, and the man in question was Woody Allen. Obviously it aint no easy task to have him star in a movie these days (guess he’s waiting for Scenes From A Mall II), so in steps Paul Giamatti, who brings his own brand of neuroticism to the playing field. In Souls G-mat plays… Paul Giamatti, a crazed actor having much trouble gettin through Uncle Vanya rehearsals, and after reading an article in The New Yorker he finds himself in a Total Recall-type lab (run by David Strathairn) where his soul will be removed and placed into a jar. His soul turns out to be the size and shape of a chickpea, and without it, he feels quite empty, especially around his well-aware wife Emily Watson, so he has the option to take someone else’s soul. After giving a troubled new soul a spin, he decides he wants his old one back, but it’s been stolen! and shipped off to Russia! by way of the soul black market! and all so some Russian dude’s aspiring soap opera actress wife (see Win-Winnick below) can get a bit of stage cred! The first half of Cold Souls is a brainy, but not too heady joy, and the second is a little more adventurous, although not as interesting as the first half, as Paul heads to mother Russia, with the help of sympathetic soul trafficker Dina Korzun, in hopes of gettin
g his soul back. It’s a mixed bag, but a rather curious one lessthenone, so you should feel free to place your hand in this bag for a lil soul II soul searching

A Win-Winnick Situation: Katheryn Winnick plays the Russian actress hungry for the soul of Al Pacino, but gets Giamatti’s instead. we all wanna play Russian and be in a mad hurry (get it, rushin’) to make sweet hand love to this kick glass Maxim babe

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

J&J creates heat in kitchens across the country today, while Cold Souls gets icy hot in NY & LA only

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…