Thighs Wide Shut

20th Century Women
It Takes A Boarding House To Raise A Child
Official Site| Trailer & Mo
R | 118 min

I love the Talking Heads, but I think I forgot how much I truly loved them until I heard their music in Mike Mills‘ 20th Century Women, and then, like what happened to the characters in the movie itself, it felt as if it were the first time I had ever heard the Talking Heads!!  And I was like WOAH!!!  This STUFF ROCKS!!  And my head and body couldn’t help itself, and grooved to the music!!!

And that experience of hearing the Talking Heads for the first time was kinda like seeing this movie for the first time – I was like – WOAH, there’s something to this movie! It warms my heart and touches my soul!  And my head and body are grooving to it – big time!!!

But this movie isn’t about discovering the music of the Talking Heads – it’s about an adolescent boy (Lucas Jade Zumann), without a father figure, who shares a bohemian lifestyle in a Santa Barbara residence with a strong, loving mother (Annette Bening), his schoolgirl crush (Elle Fanning), a super cool photographer gal (Greta Gerwig), and a handlebar-mustached handyman (Billy Crudup)

This boy is on the path to becoming a mini-man, and in turn, he’s starting to drift away from his mother’s grasp.  She feels the distance beginning to widen, and so she enlists the help of the two ladies and handyman to mold him into a modern man.  Guess what happens?  It’s not juss the boy who learns and grows – but EVERYONE involved too!!

It’s actually not as cheesy as it sounds, and in a movie that could have easily gone too cutesy and way too quirky, it stayed the course of being juss a lovely lovely lovely little film  

For some reason, in my brain, it was like watching a 70s version of Six Feet Under, complete with a complete ending juss like Six Feet‘s fantastic/2nd to none complete complete ending!

The movie even made me grow!  I grew a 2nd pair of ears and haven’t stopped streaming the Talking Heads on Amazon since I saw the movie.  How 21st Century Man of me!

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

20th Century is foxy for in limited release 

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The Future
Time Stopper
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 91 min

It’s been 6 long years since Miranda July capitvated our minds and imginations with her stunning feature length film debut Me and You and Everyone We Know, and also 6 long years we’ve been foaming at the mouth in anticipation for her follow-up.  Is July’s The Future the future we’ve always dreamed of?  In a word – NO

Not for a lack of trying, and boy does July give it a try, but this trying is very trying, tiring, and an out flat annoying adventureless adventure.  If yer fan of MaYaEWK, yer gonna be very tempted to see The Future, but all it’s gonna do is make you long for the past.  We’re not julying to you.  It is truth!!  July will make you long for winter.  Enter and you’ll be stuck with the dog days of July… in July!!!

So what’s The Future all about?  July and boyfriend Hamish Linklater (July, if she was a man, with a less grating voice) want to adopt a cat, but the cat they want is sick and needs another month to get better before they can take it home.  So… in the ensuing month, July & Hamish decide to re-evaluate their lives.  They quit their jobs, and she decides to post strange dances daily to the web, while he decides to save the world thru door to door soliciting.  Their paths diverge, and the movie does too, into an inane exercise in inane exercises of quirky quirkedness.  She shacks up with an older man with a steady life (that guy David Warshofsky), while he talks to the moon and stops time.  Sounds kinda cool, but it isn’t, and to make things even more irritating, the sick cat narrates the film from a cage, with a voice that is even more grating than July’s, which is not sirprizing since July is the voice of the cat

You’d be better off locking yerself in a cage and letting a cat scratch yer ears off and eyes out than going out to see and listen to this whatever this was.  Sounds like Slit Yer Eyes Out matz, but it’s not quite at that level of awfulness.  There is some thought that she put into this, but we juss don’t like what she was thinking

The First Family of Quirk: in 4real life, July is married to director Mike Mills.  wonder if she was the inspiration for the Mélanie Laurent character in Beginners?????  who knows, but czech out this snap from their wedding.  it’s purty much how we’d imagine their wedding would look like, cept maybe with more wool sweaters and more curly-haired guests

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

The Future is past boo in NY this Friday, and elsewhere elsewhen

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Beginners
My Small Skinny Gay Dead Father
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 105 min

Christopher Plummer is gay after living a long life of not being gay. Ewan McGregor is his son, who’s never been lucky in love, and just lost his father, not to gayness, but to death. Mélanie Laurent is a hot French chick who may be the key for Obi Wan to BEGIN again, sorta like how his father BEGAN again after coming out of the closet!!!! Welcome to Mike Mills‘ autobiographical Beginners, which is full of beginnings AND endings, and three movies in one that work well together, when usually three movies in one tear a singular movie  apart. What’s the third movie? Lil Ewan and his relationship with his deceased mother, which may hactually be the strongest of the three.  It’s all a funny, loveable and depressing affair, but not too much of any of those, and again, it works all the better because of that.  And that is that.  Where do you begin and this review end?  This review is over, so begin at a movie theater showing this

Crepes of Wrath: Mélanie Laurent is super hot (and JEWISH!!!) and her dad does the following voice overs for the French language version of The Simpsons - Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, Ned Flanders, Reverend Lovejoy, Waylon Smithers, Barney Gumble, Carl, Lou, Eddie, Troy McClure, Rainier Wolfcastle, Lionel Hutz, Chalmers, Hans Moleman, Disco Stu, and Duffman … to name a few!!!!!!!!

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Beginners is currently playing in limited release

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…