In Bruges – A Lot More To It Than You’d Think

Dianne again – where are you, Liz?  Anyway, I wanted to see In Bruges for two reasons: I like Collin Farrel and I’ve actually been to Bruges, Belgium. I thought it would be a light comedy, good for a Good Friday escape. Actually, it has a Good Friday scene in it, but I won’t tell you the details as it would give an awful lot away. And there is so much to give away – three-dimensional hit men played wonderfully by Brendan Gleeson and Collin Farrel, a really bad guy played superbly by Ralph Fiennes, a pretty girl thrown in for a love story not just a sex scene, and a midget who is an apologetic American. ”Please don’t hold it against me,” he says, and those of us who’ve traveled in Europe and elsewhere laugh out loud because we’ve seen the ugly Americans abroad (also portrayed in this movie) and we’ve also felt apologetic for our country’s current politics…

The plot itself, the reason the hit men are in Bruges, is much more substantial than the movie trailer would have you believe. Of course, if it told you that, then it would give away too much. Let’s just say it makes you care about the main characters and along with the laughs, makes you not just cry, a little, but gasp. So kudos to writer/director Martin McDonaghy. Is it just me or are all the good movies, writers, directors, and actors these days from foreign countries? 

I give In Bruges a High Five, but if you’re like the older couple who left early on because of the language, you might want to stay away, although it fit well with the characters and story and wasn’t just there to shock the audience or get an R rating.

Miss Pettigrew – A Movie Review

Dianne here. If you want a nice outing at the movies, go see Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. It stars Academy Award winner Frances McDormand and Academy Award nominee Amy Adams along with a great cast of men. I particularly love the actor who played Michael and would have… well, I won’t give away the ending of the movie. Although that is easy enough to predict while watching it, mainly because we know it will be a happy ending. It is that type of movie. It isn’t meant to surprise us, or shock us, or bedazzle us. It is simply meant to entertain us and make us feel good.

However, in our current time of war, on the 5th anniversary of George Bush taking us into Iraq, Miss Pettigrew does have a message: war wrecks people’s live. The setting of 1939 England just prior to that country’s involvement in World War II reminds us just how precious life and love are, that every moment counts and we shouldn’t waste time playing games or going after things that won’t fulfill us. The fact that both Frances McDormand’s character, a down and out governess suddenly turned social secretary, and Amy Adams’ character, both learn this in a period of 24 hours does not mean it isn’t true. Many lessons in life happen overnight, like success – they just have a lot of suffering and years of experience behind them.

Oh, how I wish more people would learn their lessons. Oh, how I wish more movies were this well-written, well-acted, and well… thought-provoking without being depressing.

10,000 B.C. – NOT a film

Dianne here reporting that 10,000 B.C. doesn’t even deserve to be italicized. My husband wanted to see it, so I went, but I wish I had steered us to a better movie to spend our money and time on. However, it does have special effects reminisent of Jurassic Park. Only that movie, as I recall, had a believable plot, although fantastical. On the other hand, 10,000 B.C. has Jamaicans living somewhere in Switzerland living off of wooly mammoths when some Arabs on horses come north to steal their fresh meat and strong young people to help build their pyramids. Of course, a hunter turns warrior to save his woman and although he is on foot as are all the tribes he meets and gets to join him along the way, they are able to follow and catch up with the Arabs and take down their leader. But why the Jamaicans decide to go back to the snowy mountains to live rather than staking claim to the fertile soil by the Nile, I do not know. I would have sent for the few people I left behind rather than take them back a few seeds to become farmers….  Oh, sorry, I ruined the ending, but you’ll probably sleep through it anyway.