In Bruges

The acting is good. The pacing is great. Bruges is beautiful. The language is atrocious. The dialog is ok. The movie is about miserable people, living with the morally bad choices they've made, knowing that life should be better than what they are experiencing. What I like about the movie is that the two main characters take responsibility for the bad choices they've made. They don't have any solutions, but they are willing to take responsibility. Fiennes character is wonderfully strange. I'm not sure this is every one's cup of tea, but I was smiling through out.

One of the key scenes is when Fiennes character confronts a character that Farrel's character roughed up. Fiennes points out that it is his own fault so he should stop whining. This is one of the themes of the movie. It is how the characters define duty and responsibility in a morally ambiguous environment is what drives the movie foreward.

One of the films I have enjoyed most lately. Absolutely great dialogues (totally un-politically correct), Ralph Fiennes is great as a cockney gangster, and, surprise!, Colin Farrel can act.

Made me google Jordan Prentice at once (the "midget" who is all the times doped with horse tranquilizer).

Be sure and watch it with the subtitles turned on...all the lines are funny but the accents are heavy. Fun movie with surprise ending.

Shadow Watcher
Nobody Drowns in Mineral Lake

IN BRUGES is the best movie I've seen so far this year. Granted, I've seen very few 2008 films, but the reality is that there have not been many that I've had a desire to see.

Written and directed by Martin McDonagh, IN BRUGES is a quirky, totally unpredictable dark comedy that stars Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson as a pair of Dublin hit men, who are sent to the small Belgium city by their crime lord boss (Ralph Fiennes) to hide out after their last contract killing goes terribly wrong.

Gleeson becomes very touristy, wanting to savor everything about Europe's most well-preserved medieval city, but Farrell is totally bored until he encounters a Dutch film crew and a couple of people involved with the shoot.

I'm not going to reveal any more details about the story, because I don't want to spoil its many surprises.

IN BRUGES is, essentially, a gangster movie, but unlike so many other pictures of this genre, its characters are endowed with a humanity that allows them to change for the better. Like the plot, writer-director McDonagh's dialogue is refreshingly witty.

- Michael B. Druxman, author of ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD (available December 2008)

This isn't a movie for everyone. Anyone that is picking this up based on the blurbs that it is a comedy might want to pause. It is in fact a comedy...a dark comedy and that isn't for everyone. So don't watch it thinking it's a movie Adam Sandler or Will Ferrell could have been in. It's not that. It's violent. It's fun. It has a good story. And....it is very funny in a dark way.