Thighs Wide Shut

Hitchcock
Nobody Toby Does It Better
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 98 min

Ever wonder how Psycho got made?  Read wikipedia.  But if you don’t know how to read, we guess you can settle on Sacha Gervasi‘s sorta making of tale, that has more to do with Hitchcock eating & drinking & cigar smoking & spurning his behind the scenes wife & collaborator Alma Reville (Helen Mirren) than it does about mastering suspense.  This movie has zero suspense and about zero mastery of anything, and Anthony Hopkins seems to be imitating Batman’s Penguin more than he’s trying to emulate Sir Alfred.  But it’s watchable.  You can watch Scarlett Johansson have Janet Leigh’s hair or Jessica Biel‘s teef stick out like Bugs Bunny as she tries to be Vera Miles.  The only truly interesting thing (besides the employment of Ralph Macchio!) was the devil on Hitch’s shoulder being none other than the film/book’s true psycho inspiration - Ed Gein (played by the one and only Michael Wincott!), leading we to believe that an Ed Gein biopic (a real one, not this BS) woulda been a better movie to make than a snoozy look at Ant Hopkins in 3893939 lbs of flabby make-up

BUT you can do better – you can watch HBO/BBC’s The Girl, which is more about Hitchcock tormenting Tippi Hedren than it is about Hitchcock & the making of The Birds, but it’s actually a movie movie, instead of a nothing nothing trying to be something + Toby Jones FCUKING KILLS IT as Sir Alfred, and it’s dirty and sexy + Sienna Miller gets dirty and sexy and she’s the breast.  Good for Toby!  He was the better Capote in the better Capote movie, but his Capote came wayyy after Capote 1 came out, so he got a raw deal, like not getting the Oscar that went to Phil Sey Hoffs (he was good, just not AS good as Tobes).  Well, this time, Toby’s Hitchcock joint got out the gate first, but since it’s an HBO movie and not a movie in a theater, he once again won’t get his due for doing right.  In all honestly, Hopkins’ Hitch flick belongs on TV and Toby’s belongs at a theater near jews.  GO TEAM TOBY!!!!!!!!!

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Hitchcock hitchshlocks inin limited release Friday

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Snow White and The Huntsman
Babes In Woodland
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG-13 | 127 min

THIS MOVIE IS NOT ABOUT JON HUNTSMAN’S HOT DAUGHTER OR HIS DAD WHO INVENTED THE MCDONALDS CLAMSHELL!!!  That’s already 28282839329393939 strikes against it.  Having Kristen Stewart play Snow White is like having 28283813292323932932 more strikes, and yet, yet, yet, somehow this Snow White movie was like a poor middle class man’s version of The Princess Bride!!!  Sorta.  And Chris Hemsworth‘s beefy beefness beefs up the fun, but not as much as Charlize Theron milking a milky milk bath or her brother Sam Spruell bobbing a man bob or the fact that they somehow shrunk many awesome normal sized actors (Ian McShane, Bob Hoskins, Ray Winstone, Nick Frost, Eddie Marsan, Toby Jones, Johnny Harris, Brian Gleeson) be like tiny sized actors!  Bet Peter Dinklage and Warwick Davis was pissed!  Snow White?  More like Snow RIGHT!

Seeking A Friend for The End of the World
Apocalypse Tao
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 101 min

Do you like Steve Carell?  Do you like Keira Knightley?  If the answer is yes to both, say yes to this fun little diversion that’s like The 40-Year Old Virgin meets Pride & Prejudice.  Not really, but if you sat thru both of those movies, you can sit thru this one, and you may smile, while the world falls apart, in an amusing way that’s like Atonement meets Dinner for Schmucks.  Not really

Your Sister’s Sister
Oh Brother, Where Art House Thou?
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 90 min

Lynn Shelton‘s Your Sister’s Sister is about two sisters, Emily Blunt and Rosemarie DeWitt, who go to a cabin in the woods and take turns banging one non-related fellow, Mark Duplass.  Sorta, not really.  It starts off dark and heavy, but somehow that’s all forgotten in about 8 minutes, and for the better, cause the gloom gives way to fun and lots of words, so if you want explosions and car chases, this isn’t you movie.  But then the movie tries to do stuff towards the end, and it’s more implausible than me becoming a vegetarian Cowboys fan who licks swastikas for breakfast.  Sorta

Verdictgo: ALL THREE be Jeepers Worth A Peepers

ALL THREE might be playing at a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Frigid War ‘Thriller’
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 127 min

If you were a casting director and said to we, hey, you, if you could pick yer British acting (male) dream team, who’d be on it?  Well, we’d be like, hey, we’ll take Gary Oldman, Ciarán Hinds, Tom Hardy, Benedict Cumberbatch, Stephen Graham, Simon McBurney and throw in Colin Firth, Toby Jones and John Hurt for really good measure (sorry Mark Strong, but yer kinda in too many movies and are kinda annoying in a majority of them).  And then if an art director was like, hey, you, what modern movies that take place in the 70s should we copy for look and style?  Well, we’d be like, hey, totally rip off the look & stylings of Zodiac, Munich and Carlos.  Oh, you mean 3 of the bestest movies of the past ten years, right?  Yes, we do mean those blam-mazing movies that everyone needs to see like 992929 times (even if we haven’t seen em that many times).  Woaaaaaah, a cast like that AND a look & style like thems, could a movie like that be humanly or even robotically possible?  IT IS!!!  It’s Tomas Alfredson‘s (he made the lesser, original Let The Right One In) version of John le Carré‘s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy!!!!!

OMG, THIS HAS GOT TO BE LIKE THE GREATEST MOVIE EVER, RIGHT?  WRONG!!!!!  It’s got the cast, AND THEY ARE MOST CERTAINLY AWESOME (esp Oldman as Bill Nighy, and Benedict Cumberbatch, who’d blow minds even if he were playing a mute invisible person!!!), and the look, AND IT’S FORKING DULLTASTIC 70s GORGEOUSITY (apparently yellows & browns = the 70s), but what this movie doesn’t have is much to keep you from the beating drums of dull.  BUT HOW COULD IT BE???  Dunno, but this cold war thriller is juss too dang icy to ever warm up to.  NO WAY!!! Yes way.  Sure, it’s nice to see a spy movie that doesn’t need to resort to endless vroomy car chases and big-o bang-o explosions, but guess what, THIS MOVIE REALLY FRICKIN NEEDED SOME CAR CHASES AND EXPLOSIONS!!!!!!  It’s true.  Believe you we, the plot is not all that thick, even though it makes you think it is, and when the denouement show’s its face, it’s more like denoue-meh

moral of the story:  this ‘spy’ movie needs further TAILORING and TINKERING and SOLDIERING!!!!  shiz needed to be defrosted and did not need Tom Hardy with a crappy wig that made him look like Andy Lameberg with a crappy wig.  great actors acting great in a great looking movie does not equal a great movie.  We really want to see if the old Obi-Wan Kenobi TV version is any less tundra-y.  HOPEFULLY IT HAS LIGHTSABERS AND A DUDE WITH A BUTT FOR A MOUTH!!!

Fairbank-Weather Fan: we’ll pass on Svetlana and get svelt-hotta all over cutie Amanda Fairbank-Hynes!!!

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Tinker aint eggzactly Tailor made this Friday in limited release

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

My Week with Marilyn
Companionship Is A Girl’s Best Friend
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
R | 99 min

Colin Clark is one lucky fellow.  He was born into money and used family connections to get onto the set of Laurence Olivier’s The Prince and the Showgirl, and somehow sirprizingly into the heart and soul of Marilyn Monroe… for a week!!  Of course any man would give both of their testicals to be in her presence for 10 seconds, so we’re pretty dang darn jealous that Clark did what he got to do, especially since he’s a dweeby guy played by the dweeby actor Eddie Redmayne (he needs to get a lip reduction or something).  But even if this is CC’s story, Simon Curtis‘ film version of his true story is truly all about Marilyn through and through

When we first saw a picture of Michelle Williams dolled up as MM, we were kinda creeped out by it.  We love Williams and all, but didn’t think we’d be able to buy her as her.  Well, after seeing MW be MM, we are now beyond sold.  So much so that we’d almos rather spend a week with MW as MM than with MM.  It’s true!!!  Throw in some stiff-upperlipping by Kenneth Branagh as Olivier, Judi Dench dame-ing it up, Julia Ormond ormonding(???) it up, Toby Jones standing tall, Emma Watson not being Hermione, Dougray Scott wearing the same exact glasses that Arthur Miller did, Dominic Cooper not being Uday Hussein, Zoë Wanamaker rapping with her raspy voice, and we got ourselves a solid supporting cast playing the cast of characters who supported MM during her cinematic journey in the old country

But there was something about the whole falling in love affair with MM that didn’t sit right with us.  It felt like we were being served a giant slice of nauseating sentimentality.  And this Colin Clark kid is just too vanilla a human being to give two flying figs about.  He’s as cardboard as… cardboard, and as interesting as… cardboard.  We ended up rooting against him getting into MM’s troubled life, and wished it was Olivier who had itched that seven year itch (whatever that means).  But it is what it is, and that’s what it is

moral of the story: Monroe has been portrayed on screen and TV 100+ times.  Michelle Williams hands in the 2nd best MM performance we have ever seen.   This is why you see this movie.  So, who’s #1?  Samantha Morton, who played a heartbreaking MM impersonator in one of the best films of the last 10 years – Mister Lonely

Smoke Em If You Got Em: yes, these did really eggsist.  EAT IT MR T!!!!

Verdictgo: Jeepers Worth A Peepers

Marilyn‘s Week begins limited release on Thanksgiving Eve Day

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…

(this is Colin with Olivier’s wife Vivien Leigh!)

Captain America: The First Avenger
Drags of Our Fathers
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG13 | 125 min

As a movie, Captain America is OK, we guess, but as a superhero movie, it’s like a Mad-Libs fill in the blanks paint by numbers road more traveled exercise in nothing newness here.  Sure, it may be a bit ‘different’ by taking place during WWII, draped in a Flags of Our Fathers look, but that’s not enuff to make up for one giant narrative void.  Here’s the story: there’s a scrawny guy (Chris Evans, who had more fun, and we did too, when he was the Human Torch), who becomes unscrawny (by way of Stanley Tucci‘s questionable German accent), and then the newly unscrawny guy needs to stop someone who may be even more unscrawnier than him (Hugo Weaving, with nothing to do but show off his crazy eyes and teeth and like shoot some blue lasers from time to time).  On team unscrawny guy there’s Hayley Atwell, Tommy Lee Jones and a band of silly looking boringest basterds (nice bowler hat & mustache, you jacka$$!!!).  Weaving’s got Toby Jones, who totally wishes he was the face melting Nazi from Raiders.  A battle ensues?  Or something?  Not really.  Can’t remember anything that actually happened in this movie, cept they tried to sell war bonds, and couldn’t sell a story

War Bondage: Al Capp, creator of Li’l Abner, and raunchy war bond posters!!!!

Verdictgo: Sum Merit But No Stinkin Badges

Captain is all over America and a theater near jews

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…