Let's Go to the Cinema!!!

I had a big weekend, Movie-wise.

No Country for Old Men
Can I say brilliant? It's brilliant. It is just so outrageously good that I almost want to hate it. Which I'm sure many many people will. The Coen Brothers are so hard-core. The film is bloody (of course), gritty (naturally) and just terrifyingly evil. The use of silence is legendary. Javier Bardem is terrifying. He is just such a psychopathic maniac. Creeeeepy. Tommy Lee Jones is amazing as well. The writing for his character is fantastic. He has the most ridiculous colloquialisms and he delivers them beautifully.
The whole movie is sort of a mounting sense of dread, like you know from the start that some bad things are bound to happen, but as it goes on you realize that everything bad will happen and nothing good can possibly happen. Its like slowly losing hope. And the ending is so messed up (a la "The Sopranos").
In short, I loved it and will be running out to buy it in two weeks when it's released on DVD.

Romance & Cigarettes
I sort of got onto a theme. This was produced by the Coens. Written and Directed by John Turturro. It's a musical. Yeah. The cast is ridiculous-- James Gandolfini, Susan Sarandon, Kate Winslet, Mary-Louise Parker, Mandy Moore, Aida Turturro, Steve Buscemi, Christopher Walken, and Bobby Cannavale. I'm not even bothering to make links it's so many.
This wasn't as awesome as I thought it could be. The songs are all pop numbers and the characters essentially lip-sync them since their singing can barely be heard over Tom Jones or Bruce Springsteen. This I think is the tragedy since most of these actors can really sing (oh, how I miss the days of the Rocky Horror Picture Show!) Other than that the movie is quite funny and very wrong. Its really dirty. Most of Kate Winslet's dialog may have come directly from porn. Still it was pretty fun to watch 4 crazy women turn on Gandolfini and him take to the streets singing about it.

Goya's Ghosts
Remember the theme I mentioned? This isn't the Coens, its Javier Bardem. He's a great villain. Very easy to hate. He co-stars with Natalie Portman and Stellan Skarsgard (Fransisco Goya). This too, was a horrifying film. Its set in Madrid during the Inquisition and at the beginning of the French Revolution which eventually spills into Spain. Bardem is an excessively zealous member of the Inquisition, and Natalie (a beautiful, young, rich model for Goya) gets thrown in jail and tortured early on. Bardem manages to not save Natalie, get her pregnant, and flee the church and the country, only to later return as one of Napoleon's stooges.
Natalie loses her mind in prison. The worst part of this movie is that they make her really ugly. Luckily, she also plays her own daughter, who is pretty. Also the torture and excessive raping is quite unpleasant. But as movies with really horrible stories go, this one is pretty good. Good cast, good story. It's just really intense, and well, depressing.

My goal is to get to the theater soon to see Atonement. Miranda's blog on UnimaginaryBC was very enticing.