a buncha movies, a coupla comics

[jazzfish]

Links go to trailers:

• In Bruges: a heartwarming Christmas tale of two UK hitmen laying low in a scenic Belgian town after a hit gone wrong. Only for "heartwarming" read "dark and thoughtful and sometimes quite funny and always, always, dark." I enjoyed it, I think; would watch again but not for another year or two. (See also: F***ing Bruges, a 90-second clip of all the swearing in the movie.)
  
• Young Adult: a character study of the kind of woman who was popular in high school and never had to learn how to be an adult. Also funny but that's not really the point. I've enjoyed all of Jason Reitman's other films (Thank You For Smoking, Juno, and the sublime Up In The Air) so I figured, why not? Well done and discomforting and I'm not sure I'd see it again. (I didn't so much care for Juno either, which makes me think I just don't get on with Diablo Cody's scripts.)
  
• Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: a slow-moving Cold War espionage thriller starring an almost unrecognizable Gary Oldman. I loved it but I'm a sucker for twisty plots and watching people put pieces together, and this had those in spades.
  
• The Artist: there's really no point in making a black-and-white silent movie in 2011 unless it a) is about late-twenties and early-thirties Hollywood and b) uses its lack of sound as commentary. The Artist does both, quite well. I'm glad I saw it, and even more glad I saw it in a theatre: it seems the kind of thing that's a little pointless to watch in the privacy of one's home.

In front of those I got a bunch of forgettable trailers, plus one for Ralph Fiennes's modern-day Coriolanus which I will probably see, and one for a Margaret Thatcher biopic to which I said, out loud, "You have got to be kidding me." I really don't feel like I'm missing anything by not indulging in more pop culture, especially not at $13 a pop for a matinee.

Over Xmas I also read all of Azzarello & Risso's 100 Bullets because I never did get around to finishing it, and then for good measure reread Ennis & Dillon's Asshole Irish Vampire Preacher, neither of which moved me as much as I'd hoped. Cassidy's "Ye're a wanker, aren't ye?" is still the greatest thing one can say to a goth, and 100 Bullets has its own crowning moments of cool ("You can't feel numb. You can only be numb." Or, "...they'll tell you about some noble bullshit that killed her." "How do you know?" "I'm noble bullshit.") but ... I dunno. The glimmers of interesting depth are drowned in gore and patriarchial crap.

The interesting thing about the end of Preacher is that at the end of it... nothing's changed. Tulip and Jesse are back together, and Cassidy's out doing whatever Cassidy does. Sure, the Grail's broken, and God's been shot, but honestly? None of that affects the characters at all. We're /told/ that Jesse and Cassidy have grown up some but we don't actually see it.

I seem to be less impressed with comics than I used to be. I'm almost afraid to reread Sandman, it's been so long.

Comments

[selki.livejournal.com]

I hadn't thought of it that way before. Good movie.