Lizzi Bougatsos, Untitled, 2009

yep, one last time – I’m officially not gay, and I can no longer be yours, cause I’m hers

and dude, Greece was the word!

#SaraPalanForGyrosGirl2014

Soul Kitchen
You Can’t Make An Omelette Without Breaking
A Few Eggs & Including a Few Clichés
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

We’ve only seen one Fatih Akin film before (2007’s The Edge of Heaven), but even from juss that one experience it’s purty easy to tell that the dude’s good with depicting clashing cultures in a dramatic melting pot/plot.  Par for his usual course are Turkish strangers in a strange Germany land, as is his background, so it’s slightly par for the course with his latest, Soul Kitchen, cept it’s Greeks in Germany, and the high drama is muted, while the ‘comedy’ is turned to 11, sorta. Quite the shift in tones, but maybe this lightweight trifle into a slapdash kitchen is juss what home cookin Akin needed.  Is a Germanic tinged Waiting… what we needed?  Maybe?

This material is obviously well below his skills, and yet it’s hard to resist the contrived contrivances contrived in the soulful Soul Kitchen.  We got a Greekie (Adam Bousdoukos, co-writer of the script as well) whose lady friend (Pheline Roggan) juss took off for the Orient, and left him to mind his floundering restaurant, troublemaker brother (Run Lola Run’s Moritz Bleibtreu) and resident crabby hermit (Demir Gökgöl).  Don’t ask about the hermit, juss enjoy him and his beard.  And when the Greekster hires a wild chef (Birol Ãœnel), the steaks get higher and the steaks get tastier and things start to look up, before they go down, sideways and 9 other ways from Tuesday, all while a former classmate of his (Wotan Wilke Möhring) tries to buy the restaurant and land under his feet.  Plus any movie where Udo Kier appears as a stuck up jerk has got to be sorta worth seeing, right? Maybe?

Face Time: although Wotan Wilke Möhring is a solidly awesomes name, it can’t touch Hendrik von Bültzingslöwen‘s and his face

expect both to walk away as Fenella Woolgar Bestest Names Award winners by the year’s end

Verdictgo: low end Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Kitchen cooks up some familiar good smells this Friday in NY and On Demand on August 25th

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Looking For Eric
Guardian Angel Dusty
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

All men have sports heroes, and if a man doesn’t, then he probably isn’t much of a man.  Eric Bishop (Steve Evets) is a man, a weak one, but still a man, and his main man in the footballin world is the French former Manchester United colossus Eric Cantona.  Eric B’s life is going in an endless circle of nothingness, and after driving a car literally in circles, in the wrong lane, and nearly killing himself, his postal co-workers try to set him straight, and from going postal.  The boys get him to meditate and try to imagine if one of his idols showed up and lent him sum guidance for all of his worty-worries.  Eric B looks for Eric C and Blammmm-o, Eric C shows up to help Eric B!  (it’s amazing that either man can understand the other, with their accents thicker than porno vag hair from the 70s)

Looking For Eric is billed as a Ken Loach comedy, yet outside of a few trips to the pub and a pivotal scene towards the end where a gang of men all don the same silly mask and break stuff, there’s not much to laugh at.  Remember, this is a Ken Loach film, not a Jay Roach motel.  Eric B’s life is pathetic and sad.  Even when he makes amends to his former flame whom he left in the dust years before (Stephanie Bishop), and bails out his troubled gangsta wannabe son (Gerard Kearns) and sweetness starts to seep in, it’s all still soaked in distress and agony

All of these ups and downs + downtime with Eric B’s imaginary friend don’t fully add up to a thrilling game on the pitch, but this aint no unwatchable blowout neither.  It’s like a series of whiffs that almost coulda been goals.  Olé?

Hall Pass: Laura Ainsworth plays the younger version of Eric B’s old sweet-tart, and plays with our heart cause her eyes could melt ice caps on Pluto!!!!

Verdictgo: low end Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Eric looks in NY only today, and elsewhere elsewhere

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

X-Men Origins: Wolverine
Logan’s Run-On
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

You’d think with a spin-off of a mighty popular movie franchise, featuring its moist mighty popular character, that the production would actually spend a good deal of money (is there such a thing as a ‘bad deal of’ anything?) on top of the line special effects, right? So what then is the story with X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which features dodgy CGI that looks about as complex as the flight simulator the monkeys played with in 1987’s Project X? What? That’s not the finished version of the film that we watched? You mean to also tells us that them on-screen ADR directions weren’t subtitles of what the character was saying in a mutant language? That’s not what the dude in the trench coat in the dimly lit parking garage led us to believe when he handed us a DVD copy of this film with a label written in sharpie, and told us we had to watch it ‘as is’ or else he was going to kill our Queen and our Secretary of State-ments. We take all threats of Thighland’s national security vary seriously, and when that involves making tough choices like the one in which we were presented, sometimes you have to task not what your country can poop for you, but what poop can who flung on your country. Huh? Yeah, whatevaaaaa

Full-on CGI or not, Wolverine is about as good as any of the other X-Men movies, so take that for twatever it’s worth. To us, it doesn’t really mean shiz since we couldn’t really tell the difference between the three blah blah X-Mens, including that Brett Shatner one. They were decent enuff super hero flicks, but this caped crusader franchise is easily the least memorable of them all (plus everyone knows that DC Comics so kicks Marvel’s a$$, and anyone who disagrees can lick Aquaman’s chocolate starfish). Hugh Jackman is totally jacked and hughed and game for this adventure, but if this were a Choose Your Own Adventure, we’d probably choose a different path for him to follow. We did like the shaz in the beginning where Wolfy and his equally facial hair gifted bro are fighting in every American war known to man, eggecept for the Cola Wars, and all the action sequences that follow throughout are kinda tight, like a man’s anus, but the filler in between, endless military talk, medical experiments and running from one locale to the next, isn’t eggzactly our idea of eggcitment. Tis kinda a shame it turned out to be so rudimentary, hispecially since they roped in a prestige director (Gavin Hood of Tsotsi fame… then again, Gavid Hood is also of Rendetion disfame. shame what Hollywood can do to a talented filmmaker), sum thespian best-ians (Liev Schreiber and Danny Huston) + eye candy for the ladies (Ryan Reynolds, Dominic Monaghan, Taylor Kitsch & that a$$hole from Lost, cause ladies love the a$$holes). Then again, this thing was doomed not to rule as soon it was revealed that Will.i.Am‘s mutant power was being a CNN hologram

Mutton Chop Phooey: where would Wolverine be (or any of us cool kids for that splatter) w/o Ambrose Burnside and his mutton chops? the man’s last name, in reverse, gave rise to one of the illest, moist important words of balls thyme… SIDEBURNS ^{[citation needed]}

Verdictgo: it wouldn’t be fair for us to give one, so if yer a crazy X-fan, see it in a theater, and if you’ve had enuff X-crap, then you can stay away and rela-X at home (at watch the legboot)

The Soloist
Cello Darkness My New Friend
Trailers & Mo | Official Website

The Soloist is less about Nathaniel Ayers, a once promising Julliard student turned schizophrenic homeless virtuoso (Jamie Foxx, showing off his incredible ability for mimicry, like he did with Ray) and more about Steve Lopez, the jaded LA Times reporter who discovers and gives cover to him (Robert Downey Jr, so effin hammazin as a journalist once again, juss like in Zodiac… did you ever see that movie? juss had to ask for the 4 zillionth thyme). So much so that The Journalist woulda been a more apt title. As the great Time Werespanko pointed out to us, disability movies aren’t about the disabled, but about the person who has to help them. His main example was Rain Man, sayin it wouldn’t have worked tat all had Tom Cruise not been so balls to the walls in it (yet no Oscar nom for Tom? boo-urns!). Tis true what he says and the same thinking applies here, although The Soloist is Rain Main w/o the thunder and lightening cause it covers the feelings bases well, but not so much in the telling a story department. It does try to send a heavy handed message about the larger issue of homelessness in LA, and while it doesn’t fully succeed in getting it across, it was certainly worth trying to do so. Wees thinking that The Soloist was all over the place due to the fact that Joe Wright is out of his usual element here, directing a film that plays out in the modern era and is not starring Keira Knightley (although he did bring along his creepy friend Mr Collins from P&P). And yet despite its many flaws, we took to this beautiful film, as the performances elicited a few tears here and there, which is a sure sign of a fantabolous movie. So, have no fears for tears, or slapdash presentation, and go and see this flick that briefly stars a guy with one of the bestest IMDb headshots we’ve ever seeeeen

60 Minutes Divided By 5: justin case you missed the real deal, watch Morley Safer’s more rounded story on Mr Lopez and Mr Ayers… which also elicited tears from us. what can we say, we’re suckers for things that don’t suck

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

Wolverine opens at a theater near Jews on Friday, where The Soloist is already isting

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…