3 Good Movies

Wife and I have been getting back on the movie train and have three I definitely recommend: Brokeback Mountain (heard of it?), Capote, and Brothers.

Bareback Mountain is certainly getting the press and is very good. It looks great, every actor is great, and it's so controversial that it's not (if you know what I mean). So see it, but I do have to say, and I hope I'm not just backlashing, that it was not perfect. I certainly will not be sad to see Gay Cowboys 1: The Wyoming Chapter win the oscar, but I will be rooting more for Capote. I might be alone on this, but I didn't totally buy the central relationship. It just seemed so ideal for the two of them. I feel like since the rest of their lives was so miserable that the writers didn't bother to add any real depth to Heath and Jake. And in the end, I found myself rolling my eyes a bit at every time they nostalgically longed for the return to Brokeback...

Capote, on the other hand, everybody loved, and I loved it even more. Just a fascinating look at the writer behind the scenes trying to get a story and growing increasingly and creepily attached to a killer. Seymour Hoffman is wunderbar plus, as usual, perfecting Capote. See it soon.

Brothers is this awesome Russian movies that came out around 5 years ago. It's about a young guy returning from Chechnya and going out to live with his brother, who ends up being a hit man. The original brother gets quickly embroiled in the criminal life. In many ways it is similar to a lot of American anti-hero movies, but the added bonus is its Russianess. I particularly was fascinated by the layers of seediness that grew so inbred that it appeared everyone was a criminal in some way. It made the vigilant nature of the star seem less moralistic than the American equivalents. There is a sequel as well, that I have not seen, and the main guy has become a bit of a Russian James Dean. After hitting it big as a rebel in the two Brothers' movies, he was engulfed in an avalanche a few years ago and never found. It makes you think...