Thighs Wide Shut

True Grit
How The West Was Numb
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

Is this a Coen Bros movie?  Certainly doesn’t feel like it.  Certainly doesn’t look like it.  Certainly isn’t good enough to be considered one either neither.  You call this a follow-up to the fan/Jew-tastic A Serious Man (wait, how did we not pick that to be the #1 flick of the ’09???)????  Are you serious?  About as un-serious as Yahoo Serious!!

Joel & Ethan’s take on Charles Portis’ novel True Grit (since this isn’t a remake or re-imagining of the Duke starring-Oscar winning ’69 film… which we haven’t seen… yet) is everything short of spectacular.  It’s a decent enuff movie and all, but a decent enuff movie any Tom Shadyac, Dick Marquand or Harry Ramis could have helmed.  It’s as basic as Bounty Basic.  It’s as challenging as playing a game of Uno by yourself.  It’s as clever as Cleveland’s Stadium Mustard.  It’s about as cool as checking into FourSquare, when no one really cares which pad thai place you hit up the most.  Can we recall the mayor???

9reals, is this really a Coen Bros movie?  There was about one total chuckle produced and about zero characters who could live in a Barton Fink world (the guy wearing a bear skin doesn’t count, or matter for that matter).  Like we said, the movie is fine as it is, but by the time it gets going in the third act, you might be working on your 33rd yawn.

Maybe the story itself doesn’t lend itself to any kinda awesomeness, itself: a no nonsense girl’s pa is shot dead, so the sense of non girl (an umemorable Hailee Steinfeld) hires two guns for hire, an eye-patched ruffian deputy (Jeff Bridges, being very un-Dude like, and it works!) and a two-eyed Texas Ranger (Matt Damon with a solid Redford mustache!) to round-up the murdererer (Josh Brolin, with big teef).  Can you guess at how this one turns out?  In between the forgone and forlorn conclusion, there’s some horse riding, eating by campfire, more horse riding, a few guns a fired, and Barry Pepper playing a character with the last name ‘Pepper’.  How exciting are ya?  What if we told you that the Coen Bros directed it?  What if we didn’t and you thought some else did?  Remember how killer their neo-Western No Country For Old Men was?  This was like No Thing To Write Home About For Any Young or Old Man

Dis Claim Her: OK, we hate westerns, but that doesn’t mean we can’t like them.  our mos flavorite western of all time is Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles.  that counts, right?

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

True is false at a theater near jews on December 22nd

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger
Lucy Punch Drunk Love
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

Woody Allen has made his fair share of winners, duds, mehs and yeah-yeah-yeahs.  You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger falls under the yeah-yeah-yeah category.  It’s nothing special, like Corky from Life Goes On, nor flat out retarded, like Lindsay Lohan’s lifestyle choices, it’s juss a delightful lil London love trifle wrapped inside no enigmas wrapped inside a comfy blanket that eventually becomes an uncomfortable one, cause some of our characters make poorer decisions than Todd Margaret, but we’ll never know the full outcome of em as the movie finishes open-ended! Bastardo cheerio!  Moist importantly, it’s not Whatever Works 2, cause #1 was dreadful!!!  And thankfully, there isn’t even a character playing the nebbish Woody Allen role in Stranger!  Basically it’s lecherous men (Anthony Hopkins, Josh Brolin, Antonio Banderas) versus their insecure, neurotic women (Gemma Jones, Naomi Watts, Freida Pinto, Lucy Punch), with some fortune telling, failed artistic careers and marriages strewn about.  Whatevs.  It’s a Woody Allen movie, and at this point, you’re either a person who sees and mostly enjoys his movies or one who doesn’t.  What kind of person are you?

What’s Next?: Midnight In Paris – 2011.  but when will Allen make a movie in Norway so we can read the headline ‘Norwegian Wood’????????

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Stranger is currently light, not dark, in limited release!

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The Tillman Story
Apparently No One Can Handle The Truth
Official Website | Trailers & Mo

Think you know the Pat Tillman story? YOU DON’T KNOW PAT SHIT!!!!!!!!!!!! We didn’t either, and even after wading through director Amir Bar-Lev (My Kid Could Paint That) and writer Mark Monroe‘s (The Cove) searing AND MUSS MUSS MUSS SEE doc (with narration by Josh Brolin) on the man, much the myth and his open to interpretation legend, we still don’t know his whole story.  Tillman’s story is actually bigger than himself, and the story of the story goes all the way up a twisty and misleading path to Bush era 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and it’s head-scratching and head-shaking, and is juss an all around excellent piece about a dead solider and his incredible family who will never rest in peace as they search for answers to questions that no one wants to answer

The sad irony of Pat Tillman’s story and the story of the doc itself is the unwanted attention paid to his life and deeply unfortunate friendly-fired death.   His employers, the Army, naturally took advantage of his stature and notoriety and exploited it for their own gains, and covered-up the not so good bits.  What follows are more poor decisions, redactions, then the family’s strong reactions and determination to right the government’s wrongs.  And yet if Tillman wasn’t someone of a certain celebrity, would this documentary even exist and reach a (hopefully) sizable audience?  Would people care as much if the same exact story was being told about an unknown soldier?  Questions to ponder fo sho, but this baby’s already in the can and you need to let it out like Prince Albert

Friday Night Rights: lets remember the good times too, and watch this highlight reel of Tillman’s high school playing days

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

Tillman scores in NY & LA tomorrow and elsewhere elsewhen

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…