Thighs Wide Shut

12 Years A Slave 
Chain In The A$$
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 133 min

Whatever you does, do not bring your significant other to see Steve McQueen‘s 12 Years A Slave, unless you want to go 12 years without having sex.  A most important movie, filled with zero fun, and has about as much rewatchable-ness as Schindler’s List done doesn’t (which means you’ll never want to watch it EVERRRR again).  Actually, after seeing 12 Years, I’ve now had enough of the slavery movie genre.  No mo fo me.  Add it to the list of non-starters, alongside Holocaust pics + westerns + rom coms + anything with vampires or zombies + anything directed or presented by Guillermo del Taco

12 Years is truly important, cause it fo reals happened – it’s what happened to a born-free black man named Solomon Northup, wrongfully turned into a slave.  This story, based on Solomon’s own book, certainly needed to be told (it was once before), but I don’t know if I needed it told to me.  I’m not one for turning a blind eye to things that are horrible in history, but I also wasn’t eggzactly all that interested in having my senses blinded and numbed completely.  Maybe the point is that watching something so hard to take should be exactly that, but c’mon man, couldn’t they have at least cut out 1/4 of the whipping and yelling and awfulness and made this excruciating experience only 90 minutes long???  We know that Solomon (Chiwetel Ejiofor, FINALLLLLLY with a meaty role to match his acting might) will become a slave, and then 12 years later, not be a slave.  And so we’re forced to watch him go from 0 to 12 years, without a clue as to which year we’re in.  If only there was a countdown ticker, so we could get excited about crossing the finish line of this torture-fest 

But hey, look at all those famous actors playing horrible people!!  Solomon gets conned by Scoot ‘Poop’ McNairy! & Taran Killam!, and sold into slavery!  Where he’s chained up with Michael K Williams!  Then sold by Paul Giamatti! To Benedict Cumberbatch!  Who’s plantation-hand Paul Dano! is out of hand and forces Benedict to send Solomon to the much more evil plantation owner (and McQueen regular) Michael Fassbender!  And his nasty wife Sarah Paulson!  Well, at least he can find some sympathy in slaves Lupita Nyong’o! (don’t know who she is, but won’t be soon forgetting her performance), and former slave or something Alfre Woodard!  Don’t worry, things get better once (the film’s producer) Brad Pitt! and his Amish beard show up!  Maybe Brad can save the day!!  But where’s Clooney????  Why can’t the whole Ocean’s 12 crew free the slave of 12 yearss??  Oh yeah, and oh, look there’s Beasts of the Southern Wild alumz Quvenzhané Wallis AND Dwight Henry!  Man, slavery has never been so well cast and acted!  

Am I better for seeing this film?  Maybe better off not.  But what’s been seen was seen, and it aint going away, from my head, or from history.  And oh, that final scene – a scene that packs a super-HEAVY emotional punch that’s equally AS punchy as Captain Phillips‘ UNFORGETTABLE final scene wiz was, making the torturous torture ALMOS worth letting yerself get tortured by

But c’mon McQueen, when are you going to make a ‘happy’ movie?

Verdictgo: hard to watch, but still – Jeepers Worth A Peepers

12 Years is how long it will feel like sitting in a theater watching this, tomorrow in NY/LA/DC/Chicago/ATL/Toronto, and elsewhere elsehwhen

oh, and here are some previous the würstest date movies EVER, reviewed on TWS –  Amour, Towelhead, 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, The Babysitters, Vera Drake & Lake of Fire 

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Killing Them Softly
More Like Talking Them Lotsly
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 97 min

Two foolish hoodlums (that wily scuzzy awesome Australian guy with a lisp - Ben Mendelsohn & that guy who had a mustache in Argo and has some horrible accent thing going on here - Scoot McNairy) go for a quick score and end up with more trouble than the score was worth.  Aint that always the truth?  The lead up to the score, and the score itself are top notch cinematic stuff, AND TENSE!, but the rest that follows in the fall-out is about as interesting as listening to politicians from 2008 talk about the failing economy.  Oh wait, that IS what happens.  We get to hear GW Bush & Obama & McCain blab on and on about the economy in the background, while we try to stay awake listening to Brad Pitt, James Gandolfini and Richard Jenkins blab about mob economy, hookers and killing in the foreground.  Sounds eggciting, dunnit?  It’s not.  Not even seeing Ray Liotta get his a$$ beat down by Vinnie Delpino from Doogie Howser can make up for the unexciting talking that keeps getting talked

No real shock here in the blahdum, since this movie was made by Andrew Dominik, the dude who gave us The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford aka The Great Time Robbery.  We are audiences of action, not words.  Give us action, not words.  And give us more than 8 seconds of Sam Shepard, and give us less than zero seconds of Vincent Curatola, that annoying guy from The Sopranos who is annoying here too cause he’s annoying.  Oh, and there’s one woman in the entire movie and she’s a hooker, and she gets so bored by James Gandolfini talking that she gets to leave the movie.  Wish we could have done that.  Or wish the movie jettisoned Pitt and all the other tough talkers and juss let Ben Mendelsohn shoot drugs and people, and perhaps shoot his mouth off, as he was the only character worth listening too, even if he was always talking shiiiiiiiiiiiit

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Softly aint so hard in limited release

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…