Concessions

I know it’s that one week a year when we semi-arbitrarily eat very
small Three Musketeers bars and get all spastic about mummies, so one
might expect me to devote
this column to my top five
ways for a
hill mutant to rip out a sorority
girl’s
eyeball (okay, fine: 5. grapefruit spoon,
4. mutant
telepathy, 3. bug vacuum, 2. voodoo chicken bone, 1. prehensile toe).
However! I have gone on record many times explaining that
STRANGELY ENOUGH, I DO NOT ENJOY THE FEELING OF WARM TERROR-PEE FILLING
MY PANTS, BUT THANK YOU OH SO MUCH FOR OFFERING. No, I shall not
partake of the frights this week. Instead, here’s a roundup of overdue
movie reviews that I’m going to call “Filling in the Holes”—much
like a sorority girl might use a totally cute Juicy Couture key fob to
fill in the hole where her eyeball used to be! (Top five things a
sorority girl could stick in her gaping eye socket: 5. a tampon, 4. a
single red rose, 3. a totally cute Juicy Couture key fob, 2. a hotter,
skinnier, prosthetic eyeball, 1. prehensile toe.) Mazel tov,
bitchez!

dir. Peter Billingsley

Here’s what I think happened. Jon Favreau—older now,
doughier, a sad clown of a certain age—tried to write a
serious, emotional, midlife-crisis-soothing exploration of his
post-settling-down malaise. But director Peter
Billingsley—confused by Favreau’s comedy past—tried to
force Couples Retreat into the shape of a madcap rom-com. This
is the only explanation. The film is WEIRD. It doesn’t actually
contain jokes (unless you count the tres naughty observation that
“ass” can mean both “donkey” and “butt”!), and its hee-larious
couples-therapy sessions are not so much like joke therapy as they are
like actual therapy. Whooooo likes bickering!?

dir. Paul Weitz

I sat in the theater. I dutifully turned off my cell phone du freak
and opened my peanut M&Ms du freak. I had low hopes. But
guess what, foolz!? Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant,
despite having more words and subclauses and silly, arcane nonsense in
its title THAN THE ENTIRE BIBLE, is totally enjoyable! Du freak!!! It’s
the story of two best friends—Steve and Darren—who stumble
upon an underworld of weird sideshow creatures and warring vampire
clans. It’s funny, it sorts out complicated backstory with a light
touch, and it’s not sugarcoated for babies. “Can I turn into a bat
now?” “No. That’s bullshit.” HA HA HA DU FREAK!

dir. Mira Nair

This movie is full of little-known facts. Did you know that
Amelia Earhart was not a respiring, cardiovasculatory
meat-human, but instead was an intricately carved wooden
womannequin clad in the latest jodhpurs (no expense was spared on the
jodhpurs!) and varnished with a thick, glass-hard coating of
moxie? SO MUCH MOXIE. Did you know that Richard Gere is gross? Did
you know that Gore Vidal was once a baby? Did you know that Ewan
McGregor is part downy lamb? THESE ARE LITTLE-KNOWN FACTS! Um,
Amelia is okay. It has its feminism in the right place, I
think—an annoyingly heavy-handed place, for sure (“The wrong
Roosevelt got elected,” Amelia tells Eleanor, winkily), but one I
wouldn’t mind my future daughters absorbing. Unfortunately,
Amelia-the-super-interesting-person is consumed by
Amelia-the-prerecorded-inspirational-Teddy-Ruxpin-thingy, and her story
becomes a big, goopy, Hollywood mess. Oops, my eyeballs rolled out of
my head and rolled away and now all I have left are these gaping
eyeholes. WHAT WILL I PUT IN THESE HOLES, BITCHEZ!?!?