Thighs Wide Shut

The Favourite
Powdered Go NUTS!
Official Site | Trailers & Mo
R | 121 min

We keep wanting someone to be out next Stanley Kubrick, and while some push and argue for David Fincher or Christopher Nolan to be that guy, I think people are overlooking the work and genius that is Yorgos Lanthimos, as he’s the best heir to the throne!

His Dogtooth was a revelation.  The Lobster wasn’t perfect, but we haven’t escaped its claws either and are still thinking about it years later.  The Killing of a Sacred Deer?  Oh deer!!!!!!!!!!!

And his latest, the first he didn’t have a hand in writing – The Favourite?  It’s like Barry Lyndon trapped in The Overlook Hotel, and that’s a wonderful wonderful wonderful thing.  And if you’ve found Lanthimos’ other work to be way too bleak and hard to handle, this may suit your pansy-self a lot better, you pantsy pansy you!

Corseted Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz deliciously duel each other for the love and attention of Queen Anne (a maddeningly magnificent Olivia Colman).  There is not a single non-tense moment in the film – it’s like watching one long-ass fuse burn and burn and burn, as we wait for the dynamite to explode.  Along the way in this power play, we also get a cadre of powdered up men (Nicholas Hoult, Mr. Taylor Swift, James Smith, and Mark Gatiss) doing their own fun scheming and conniving.  If you have a back in this movie, it will get stabbed.  

Screw Jane Austen – cause Lanthimos’ court jesting is more aligned to my nutty senses and sensibilities!

Verdictgo: Breast In Show

Favourite compels U in NY/LA today and elsewhere elsewhen

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The Light Between Oceans
The Shore Thing
Official Site | Trailer & Mo
PG-13 | 132 min

The summer bummers of moviedom is officially over, and the season of actual good movies is upon us, and what a way to kick the season off with Derek Cianfrance‘s The Light Between Oceans!

WWI is over and shell-shocked survivor Michael Fassbender is looking for steady work.  He looks no further when he becomes a lighthouse keeper off the coast of Australia.  He enjoys the quiet solitary job and life, but things aint so quiet or solitary no more when a lovely lady of the shore - Alicia Vikander – anchors away on his heart!  She literally wants to marry a lighthouse keeper AND DOES (and the two actors fell in love f’reals on the set)!!!  They try for kids but miscarriage and become very disparaged.  Then a dead man and an alive baby wash up on their lighthouse shores and change everything!!  EVERYTHING!!! They assume the parentage of the orphaned child and life moves on.  BUT DOES IT???  What about the baby’s mother???  To say anything more about the plot would be saying more about the plot, but all I’ll say is that Rachel Weisz is in the movie too, and the trailer spoils the movie, so don’t watch the trailer

I don’t know much about who Derek Cianfrance is as a person, cept he’s a guy who makes movies – and I fcuking love him cause of the movies he makes!  His debut – Blue Valentine – is still giving my heart painful palpitations (in a good bad way), and his follow-up - The Place Beyond The Pines – is another painful place I think of fondly.  And with his third feature - The Light Between Oceans – all I can say is SURF’S UP, YO!  Actually, that’s not all I can say.  I would say that this is somehow his LEAST painful movie (but don’t worry pain-freaks, there’s still plenty of pain to ‘enjoy’ here), but perhaps it is his most beautiful film yet!  So beautiful that I don’t juss want to marry the lighthouse keeper, I want to marry that fcuking lighthouse too!

Verdictgo:  Breast In Show

Oceans sets sail today at a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The Lobster
Super Hurry Animals
Website | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 118 min

In a sorta near future, if you aren’t paired up with a significant other, you will be turned into an animal – of your choice, naturally.  Mustached Colin Farrell was recently dumped by his wife and so he needs to partner up, or animal on out for the rest of his life.  He goes to this seaside hotel run by Olivia Colman (still one of the best actresses no one knows), which helps to pair off people, or turn them into animals.  But the time to do so is limited.  If Colin doesn’t find a mate in 45 days or less, he will became a lobster (hence the film’s title).  His brother is already a dog (ever wonder why there are so many dogs??), and he brings him along on this last ditch human effort.  Others have to go thru the same drill, including some really dour and desperate souls like Ashley Jensen, Ben Whishaw, John C Reilly, and the adorable Jessica Barden

The hotel is an oddball pacifying paradise – like The Village from The Prisoner, with forever overcast skies.  Within its doors, they stage awkward dances and even more awkward demonstrations, trying to get these folks to couple up – and offer plenty of outdoor activities too, including hunting those who have failed and escaped the grounds.  If you hunt and kill one of these escapee loners, you get bonus days to stick around.  If you don’t, the clock continues to tick, and pretty soon your days as a Homo sapien are numbered

And so after awhile, after Colin has tried and tried and tried, and failed (the heartless Angeliki Papoulia provided no help), he decides he doesn’t want to be a lobster, and he flees for the woods, and taken in by loners Léa Seydoux and Rachel Weisz.  But a (un)funny thing happens on the way to being lonely – he falls for Weisz, and she for him, and that’s not suppose to happen, and even more things happen from there, and there you go

For the first 30 or so minutes of Yorgos Lanthimos first English language feature, when we’re in that wonderous hotel, I thought The Lobster was itching its way to being the kinda movie I endless love and never shut up about.  It had happened once before with Lanthimos’ Dogtooth, which is one of the mos fcuked up flicks I’ve seen this century, but as The Lobster claws its way outside of that hotel, something got a little lost in translation, and became a little long in the tooth, but I’ll excuse it, cause The Lobster is unique and imaginative, and often fun, and always keeps you on your toes, and that can’t be said of a lot of movies that come out today.  I give it bonus points for being different, and it doesn’t even really have to try – it juss is different

These lonely love seekers aint no superheroes – they’re super-zeroes, and I’d rather count on them and their sad weirdness, than the good guys saving the cinematic day.  MARVEL OVER THAT, YO!!!

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Lobster shacks it up currently in limited release

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

The Bourne Legacy
Oh Baby, Then It Fell Apart
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 135 min

Look, it’s another Bourne movie!!!!   Cept it has nothing to do with Jason Bourne cept showing his passport photo and having David Sthraharian and Joan Allen pop up for like 8 seconds.  So what is the Legacy of Bourne?  Dunno, something about grumpy-a$$hole-faced Jeremy Renner in the woods, fighting wolves, and snow, and taking green and blue pills.  But what happens when he starts to run out of pills??????  Drone planes will explode and wolves will be wrestled!!!   And then he has to drag frazzled doctor Rachel Weisz [kinda sick of her, ever since she dumped Aronofsky for Bond] into this [literal] mess, and then they have to go to Manila for some reason that has nothing to do with manila envelopes.  And whenever that whatever is done, they have to go to Thighland, so they can run on rooftops and then be in a motorcycle chase, cause the rest of the movie was so blah-zay that they have to sorta remind us viewers what we liked about the real Bourne movies, which is action, and not pills or snow or scared Rachel Weisz.  Oh, and Edward Norton is in it, playing a sorta David Strahaharriaian role, which means someone who points at monitors and screams at people to do things.  AWESOME!!!!  Not really

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Bourne lags-acies currently at a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…