Thighs Wide Shut

quickies!

Monsters University
From Here To Fraternity 
Official Website | Trailers & Mo 
G | 104 min

Never saw the first one, so for once, seeing a prequel didn’t ‘ruin’ any of the fun, but Pixar = fun, cept when they try too hard or not hard enough.  Anywho, it was cool to hear cartoon Billy Crystal chat it up and become BFFs with cartoon John Goodman.  But fo’reals, why does every animnated movie have to have every single role, top to bottom, filled with celeb voices?  Don’t think kids really care that Helen Mirren is lending her pipes to give Dean Hardscrabble her scrabbles hard.  As for the adults, they don’t give a sh$t either, as Mirren’s voice added nothing, and mainly took away from this otherwise frivolously funned G-rated version of Revenge of The Nerds

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Fill the Void
(Lemale et ha’halalrs)
The Marrying Kind
Official Website | Trailers & Mo 
PG | 90 min

Sadly this is NOT the sequel or prequel to Enter The Void.  It’s about some Hasidic Israeli dude (Yiftach Klein) having his wife die during childbirth.  Everyone agrees he needs a new wife.  Everyone knows its gonna be his sister-in-law Hadas Yaron, cause she’s hot, and she knows how to deal with kids and she plays the accordion.  A touching movie with a conclusion that’s a tad too foregone.  Regardless – I give it 19 L’chaims! 

Btw, that  Hasidic Israeli dude is a total fox in real life!!!

Verdictgo: both  Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Monsters roars at a theater near Jews, while Void Fills seats in limited release

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The Debt
Paid In Mostly Half-Full
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 114 min

If Ciarán Hinds is in a movie, we will want to see it, and odds are that the movie will be at least decent.  So what if a movie barely has Hinds in it?  Decency is still possible, and John Madden‘s The Debt, a remake of (what we are assuming is a far superior) 2007 Israeli film, is pretty darn decent stuff.  A little poor in execution-ville, and plenty poor in climax-land, The Debt still had enough going for it to cash in its IOU.  It’s kinda like a ghetto Munich meets The Boys From Brazil.  And even ghettoizations of those revenge on Jewish boogeymen flicks is still something of interest, cause who doesn’t love watching Jewish enemies get their due????  (hactually, we wondered if Hollywood would EVER make a film where Muslims hunted down their enemies who have wronged them.  the conclusion we came to is probably never)

And if hunting Nazis in a non-over-the-top Tarantino kinda way isn’t your cup of tea, well, you can at least revel in the unexpected hilarity of Sam Worthington ‘trying’ on an Israeli accent for size.  Eeeesh!!  The guy’s got a face for cinema and a mouth for duct tape.  Man oh man!  At least they surrounded him with some class act(or)s like (underrated) Marton Csokas and (I’ve been everywhere this summer) Jessica Chastain.  In modern day times, Hinds is Worthington (even though he looks more like Csokas), Tom Wilkinson is Csokas, and Helen Mirren is Chastain in the membrane

So the modern stuff is where we begin.  The trio are far removed from their Mossad agent days and each other, cause they’re harboring some kinda secret.  But when we get shuttled to the past, which is the juicy bulk of the film, when the 2 dudes and redheaded hottie hunt down and capture a Josef Mengele-type jackass (Jesper Christensen).  Things don’t go right, but maybe they do, but not really, cause there’s a DEBT that has to be paid or like finished or something, which leads to the ending that has promise and kinda comes up empty, but it’s kinda satisfying, enough, sorta

Hey, did we mention that Ciarán Hinds is in it???

Hinds Wins: oh, you know nothing of Hinds and want to play ketchup?  See him in Rome, Munich, Veronica Guerin, Life During War Time AND mos def The Eclipse

Verdictgo: a mild Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Debt is cash sorta money, but not really, but kinda, today at a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Red
Spies Like Rust
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

Look, it’s old famous people shooting guns!!!!  Sweeeeet  …for all of about 10 minutes!!!!!!  A bit more fun than The Expendables, and a lot lot lot less fun than The Losers, Robert Schwentke‘s movie adaptation of the Red comic mini-series is nothing more than an incredible collection of incredible actors sitting around twiddling their thumbs/guns, as the flick goes from zero to one in 111 minutes.  That ‘one’ is a killer lil shoot-out bit toward the beginning of the film [watch it here], and after being treated to that kind of tongue-in-cheek redonkey-donkness, we’re denied anything else equally as yummy the rest of the way.  Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

There’s some sort of plot about a plot against some former CIA and military peoples, like Bruce Willis (he keeps getting more dashing with age, and skinnier too?), Morgan Freeman (somebody free this man from schlock like this!), John Malkovich (the movie’s lone bright spot, but there’s not nearly enuff time dedicated to his character) and Helen Mirren (why isn’t she a ‘Dame’ yet?).  And while the plot and the plot never truly thicken or make sense or amount to something worth caring about, we have to watch them get ‘chased’ around America by Karl Urban (love this guy) and his superior Rebecca Pidgeon (wait, is this a Mamet movie?).  Throw in a civilian love interest for Willis in the cuteness form of Mary-Louise Parker (strutting her smile, which is something she never does on Weeds), some help from the always boisterous Brian Cox and hindrance from the always annoying Richard Dreyfuss, and Red sounds like it should glow bright… red, but it doesn’t, cause it’s more like pink, and therefore needs sum mo cooking before it could be considered well done instead of well dumb, and not dumb in a fun or good way

Getting Graphic: enuff with comics and especially graphic novels getting turned into live-action snoozers.  why not keep the graphic stuffs graphical?  worked like a charm and then some for Persepolis.  might we suggest that Art Spiegelman’s Maus go that route?  Holocaust + comics = Oscar gold, right?

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Red blushes today at a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…