In Bruges

Tonight's lesson: never judge a movie by its trailer. Watching the trailer for 'In Bruges' some months back was painful. There's nothing worse than having something awful BLASTED at you (which i why I ALWAYS try to be late to a movie). Though within the next few weeks I was scratching my head in confusion. Most of the reviews I read were unanimously positive and the film was being called a black comedy; which leads one to believe that it's both dark AND funny!! They were right.
Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson are hitmen hiding out in the Belgian town awaiting word from Harry, the boss man. The jokes start in the clash between Gleeson's enthusiasm over the town's history and Farrell's childish boredom. They come across a movie set which brings Farrell a love interest in the form of Clemence Poesy and brings us midget jokes in the form of Jordan Prentice. Most of the laughs seem to revolve around midgets (sorry. dwarfs) and the abundance of the word 'fuck', but Prentice is funny enough on his own to make us quickly forget his size and...well, 'fuck' is maybe the greatest word in the english language. In a wise move, Harry spends the first half of the film only being alluded to in conversation and heard on the other end of the phone. When we finally see him though, it feels like a strange relief to be looking at Ralph Fiennes. I've always liked Fiennes, but seeing him as Spielberg's nazi in 'Schindler's List' and Minghella's (RIP) dashing hero in 'The English Patient' never left an inch of room for comic potential in my mind. Here he provides some of the film's best laughs with his thick-as-molasses English accent and short fuse.
For all the laughs, it wouldn't be a black comedy without the black, and the film has enough macabre grimness to spare. There's plenty of blood and open wounds to quickly remove the smiles from our faces - a dizzying effect. One particularly effective scene has us laughing at the two leads confusion over whether to call a situation a botched murder or a suicide attempt one minute. The next we feel awkward still having a smile on our faces as Farrell bottoms out over a hit gone horribly wrong. Farrell's cigarette smoking, potty-mouthed persona always turned me off; but here he anchors the film with a blend of twitchy comedy self-loathing tragedy.
See also 'Grosse Pointe Blank' for a dark, romantic comedy revolving around hitmen. One of my favorites.

Teeth (2007)

'Teeth' can't help but feel like it was delivered from the 1980's. Sexploitation, spurting blood, cruel/horny teenagers, revenge. Dawn (Jess Wexler) is the school spokeswoman for celibacy. But her own horniness is over-taken by the new boy, who's own quivering horniness is barely disguised by his vow of "purity". When an innocent make-out session becomes a desperate date-rape attempt ("I HAVEN'T JERKED OFF SINCE EASTER!!!!"), Dawn discovers she has the cure for rapists - Vagina Dentata! She slowly makes victims of every unsuspecting perpetrator, which becomes increasingly graphic and funny. One fellow purist becomes hilariously unraveled as he gets cocky (sorry, i couldn't help it) while finally pleasing Dawn sexually. You can guess what his fate is.
Most '80's cult-horrors are funny because they're so bad. 'Teeth' deliberately delivers the laughs, making it seem a little contrived at times. But it has enough oddities to realign things: the backyard, nuclear power plant; the cult-like "purists"; and the sickly mother. Lenny Von Dohlen, looking exactly like he did as sad-sack Harold Smith on 'Twin Peaks', is a welcome cameo. But the crowning jewel of supporting players is 'Nip/Tuck''s John Hensley, who plays Dawn's hopelessly white trash step-brother with enough conviction to actually wish him dead. We all know how he'll end up. But spending the film watching his malevolence is as seat-squirming as it is mystifying. If you liked this, make sure you've also seen 'May'.

3:10 to Yuma

On the special features of the '3:10 to Yuma' dvd, director James Mangold proclaims that the western has died in the last decade. That may be true. But in the last few years, there seems to have been a neo-renaissance of westerns that have been modern ('The Three Burials Of Malquiades Estrada'), period pieces ('No Country For Old Men'), foreign ('The Proposition'), and classic ('The Assassination of Jesse James...'). '3:10 to Yuma' revisits to 1957 film of the same name, and cannot help but be little more than very typical of the genre: shootouts, stage coach robberies, the making of men, charismatic villians who project the allure of the outlaw, beautiful on-location scenery, posses...it's all here folks.
Bearing all that in mind, the film succeeds in reminding us why we love the genre in the first place. This is mostly due to the actors. Ben Wade couldn't have been more perfectly cast in the form of Russell Crowe. He's tough, suave, knows how to handle a gun, and manages to be endlessly appealing while still being a sociopath. It's been awhile since we've seen Crowe's 'tough guy', and this is one of my favorite performances of his. I was excited to see him up against Christian Bale. It's a pairing that doesn't at all feel obvious, but ends up making perfect sense. Here, Bale is the classic 'reluctant hero': a peasant farmer with a wooden leg, endless debt, a wife, and two sons; one who resents him and another with tuberculosis. Bale's silences speak volumes about his struggle to loath Crowe and his less-than-decent lifestyle. But the show-stealer here may be Ben Foster, who plays Wade's sadistic sidekick with an air of relentless loyalty. He belongs with Crispin Glover and Jeremy Davies in the school of skinny, quivering young actors with unnerving conviction. This is neither the best film of last year nor one of the best westerns we've seen. But the final image of the horse riding alongside the train makes it all feel pretty right on.