Setting a fire

Hubs and I have hardly been to the movie theatre since the baby was born. It's just been too much of a pain in the butt to arrange. We saw the last Harry Potter film a few weeks after booger was born, and that's been it.

Until today. People, it had been more than a year since I'd been to a movie theatre. That's just wrong, isn't it?

We hatched a crazy plan: we'd drop little man off at Brian's mom's house, then jet out for a quick lunch and whatever movie was playing at a convenient time. After eating Oriental Chicken Salad and a HUGE blonde brownie with ice cream, we headed out for a flick. We had to choose between Righteous Kill, The House Bunny, and Burn After Reading. Though I think that Righteous Kill is probably worth a watch, I wanted something funny (not depressing), so we ended up at Burn After Reading.

As I've stated before on this blog, I don't always "get" the Cohen brothers' movies. One of my favorites is their re-make of The Ladykillers, and critics panned it. (While the critics absolutely LOVED Fargo, and hubs and I couldn't stand it.) But we'd both read good things about this film, and the cast (Brad Pitt, Tilda Swinton, George Clooney, John Malkovich, Frances McDormand, J.K. Simmons) seemed pretty dang amazing.

Burn After Reading is worth watching. It's usual Cohen fare - a motley group of folks - a former CIA analyst, a philandering guy who works for the treasury department, some folks running a gym, etc., accidentally find themselves involved in one another's lives. Pretty soon, bodies start turning up, nobody knows who's who or what's going on, and this all leads to a good deal of head-scratching up at both CIA headquarters and the Russian embassy.

I don't want to spoil it for you, but Brad Pitt is funnier than I have ever seen him, and he's playing the type of role that he doesn't often get to try on for size. The dude is FUNNY, and he hasn't done alot of comedy during his career. J.K. Simmons' scenes are good, too. And there are two GREAT scenes with Tilda Swinton and a little-known actor, J.R. Horne (playing her divorce lawyer), that are fabulous. (J.R. Horne could spend the rest of his career playing skeezy divorce lawyers. You can just feel his excitement about a divorce oozing out of every unctuous pore.) And Swinton is a hoot as a cold, elitist, bossy, controlling pediatrician.

Anyhoo, though it's not the best movie I've ever seen, I did think it was pretty funny, and I can recommend it. Wonder what movie I'll see next summer?

Comments

Webmaster said…
Good for y'all for taking time for a date. :)