Musings

My dear friends, Janice Gelb www.smofbabe.net and Stephen Boucher are in town from Australia, and I’ve been spending as much time with them as work will allow. After all, they live a world away, and to see the people rather than their phosphers is just wonderful. Stephen is green chili fanatic so we’ve been enjoying Tecolote for breakfast, and a number of fine New Mexican restaurants. When Janice and Stephen are in town we also go to a lot of movies. So, my reviews of the two I’ve seen this week.

Thursday night we ate an early dinner at The Shed and headed off to see THE SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES. I had an interest in this because my management company handled the option and I think they were also involved in developing the film. It’s a kid’s movie so some of the messages were pounded home with a ten pound sledge, but overall I enjoyed it a great deal. It was very charming and would have been lyrical, except the director seemed to think it increased tension if he had all the characters yelling and screaming all the time. It got very wearing, very fast. There was also a rather odd note struck by the event that brought the mother and son together. I don’t want to say more because it would be a spoiler, but once some of you have seen it we can discuss it.

The creatures were apparently right out of the illustrations in the book, and some seemed a bit like muppets, but some of them were just devastatingly beautiful. In particular the flower fairies and the sprites.

I have to say that as a movie experience it worked better than Jumper.

Last night I drove through a New Mexico February blizzard to join George, Parris, Stephen and Janice for Chinese food at Chow’s. Then most of us went off to the late feature of IN BRUGES. I had really been looking forward to this movie. The trailers made it seem funny, with wry, smart dialogue and quirky characters. Unfortunately this was not truth in advertising.

There are some great snappy scenes that make you laugh, but they are few and far between. Our protagonist is bored senseless by Bruges, and unfortunately the writer/director sells that all too well for the audience. I found myself actually thinking about just leaving and driving home. It also wasn’t a comedy. It’s dark and brutal, and the characters seem to have no consistent… well, character. It seems to change from scene to scene in the interest of setting up for the zinger. The event that is torturing our protagonist are deeply affecting, but I don’t think you can overlay comedy aspects on an event of such gut wrenching power. The result was that it’s neither funny, nor do you completely grasp the pain our hitman is enduring.

The movie really only came to life when Ralph Fiennes arrived on the scene, and then it was really violent. I don’t mind violence, but it has to make sense. If I wanted to kill someone I certainly wouldn’t run through the streets of Bruges blasting away. Maybe this was supposed to make the character seem more quirky, but to me he just seemed stupid.

So far the only movies that I’ve really enjoyed are ENCHANTED, CHARLIE WILSON’S WAR, JUNO and MICHAEL CLAYTON.

Melinda

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 23rd, 2008 at 4:01 pm and is filed under Movies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.