Posts Tagged ‘Javier Bardem’
Thursday, January 6th, 2022
Twenty years ago when I was an enthusiastic but not that good internet movie reviewer I wrote a column called “I have seen the future of Badass pictures,” because I had seen THE DAY OF THE BEAST (1995) and PERDITA DURANGO (1997), the second and third films of Spanish director Alex de la Iglesia. Although the director hasn’t quite become a household name here in the intervening years, he has made many interesting films, of which I’ve reviewed 800 BULLETS (2002), FERPECT CRIME (2004) and THE LAST CIRCUS (2010). He’s still going strong, for example I’ve heard good things about his recent TV show 30 Coins.
For the holidays I rewatched the Christmas-Eve-set THE DAY OF THE BEAST (it held up – I wrote about it a little bit on Letterboxd) and I’d been meaning to revisit PERDITA DURANGO for quite some time. Reviewing Javier Bardem’s first English language movie, where he plays a human-sacrificing psycho who looks like this…
…as a followup to his more Oscar-baity turn in BEING THE RICARDOS is the sort of thing that amuses me, so I pulled the trigger.
PERDITA DURANGO is based on a 1992 book called 59° and Raining: The Story of Perdita Durango by Barry Gifford (who co-wrote the script with de la Iglesia and two others). It’s part 3 in the Sailor and Lula series, part 1 being the basis of WILD AT HEART. (Isabella Rossellini played Perdita in David Lynch’s movie.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Aimee Graham, Alex de la Iglesia, Barry Gifford, Carlos Bardem, Demian Bichir, Don Stroud, El Santo, Flavio Martinez Labiano, Harley Cross, Herb Alpert, James Gandolfini, Javier Bardem, Josefina Echanove, Las Vegas, Mexican border, Roger Cudney, Rosie Perez, Santeria, Santiago Segura, Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Simon Boswell
Posted in Crime, Reviews | 13 Comments »
Wednesday, January 5th, 2022
BEING THE RICARDOS is a straight-to-Amazon movie, the latest from playwright turned TV show creator turned screenwriter turned director Aaron Sorkin. It tells the story of one week in the lives of ‘50s sitcom icons Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, when a radio show had reported on Ball registering to vote as a communist in 1936, and they went ahead preparing an episode of I Love Lucy thinking their careers might be over.
Because this is Sorkin, and a movie, it’s about how a beloved American icon could’ve been taken down by the red scare, but it’s also about the nature of comedy genius, the struggle for artistic freedom, workplace dynamics, and marital strife. Sorkin piles on the separate events of Lucy telling the network she’s pregnant and of discovering Desi’s infidelity, leading to the end of their glorified-on-television marriage. I spent the whole movie thinking “These couldn’t possibly have happened in the same week, could they?” and of course no, they did not. (He also changed which episode was being filmed.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Aaron Sorkin, Alia Shawkat, biopic, J.K. Simmons, Jake Lacy, Javier Bardem, Nicole Kidman, Nina Arianda, Tony Hale
Posted in Drama, Reviews | 43 Comments »
Monday, October 23rd, 2017
mother! is the new movie! from Darren Aranofsky (THE WRESTLER) and it’s marketed as horror, because… I mean I don’t know what else you would call it either. It is in the business of exploiting our fears, but it’s not exactly a genre story, unless you count the occasional bloody wound festering in a wooden floor. Mostly it’s a heightened, surreal portrait of a marriage. And a house.
Jennifer Lawrence (AMERICAN HUSTLE) is the nameless female lead (credited as “mother”), married to an older man (Javier Bardem, PERDITA DURANGO, credited as “Him”) who’s a famous poet suffering from writer’s block while she looks after him and painstakingly rebuilds his house after it was destroyed in a fire. When some random doctor dude (Ed Harris, knightriders!) shows up at their door, the husband invites him to stay without taking her feelings into account, and this is the breeze that will become a tornado of escalation intrusions, insecurities and violations. By the end she’ll be (spoiler!) caught in the middle of huge riots and uprisings even though she will never leave the house. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: ???, Darren Aranofsky, Domhnall Gleeson, Ed Harris, Javier Bardem, Jennifer Lawrence, Johann Johannsson, Kristen Wiig, Michelle Pfeiffer
Posted in Horror, Reviews | 12 Comments »
Tuesday, November 5th, 2013
I’m a lightweight when it comes to reading Cormac McCarthy books. I read No Country For Old Men, loved it, then loved the movie version. I was deeply moved by The Road, the movie was decent. Before those I tried to read All the Pretty Horses, but I think it was too dense for my brain at the time, I didn’t get very far. I haven’t tried Blood Meridian yet, I know that’s the one everybody recommends.
But from my limited experience THE COUNSELOR, the Ridley Scott movie made from McCarthy’s first original screenplay, is sure recognizable as his work. It’s a crime story full of colorful characters and the occasional brutal violence, but it’s not interested in a straightforward approach to storytelling. I mean, it’s never as aggressively untraditional as that one really abrupt thing that happens toward the end of No Country (I had to flip back a few pages after that one ’cause I thought I missed something), but it takes it’s sweet ass time getting to a point where you even know what it’s about on the surface. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Brad Pitt, Cameron Diaz, Cormac McCarthy, Dean Norris, Javier Bardem, John Leguizamo, Michael Fassbender, Penelope Cruz, Ridley Scott, Rosie Perez
Posted in Crime, Reviews | 41 Comments »
Wednesday, November 14th, 2012
Daniel Craig has returned as Ian Fleming’s 007 James Bond on the occasion of the 50th anniversary… not of the first book by Ian Fleming, or of the first movie adaptation (the 1954 TV version of CASINO ROYALE) but of the first theatrical movie DR. NO. Don’t hate me for this, but to be frankly honest I’m kind of tired of hearing about these movies these last few weeks. I mean, they’re fun, I like most of the ones I’ve seen, but I guess having not really grown up on them like alot of boys do I just don’t have that connection to them and don’t know how to flip for them. I’m not trying to rain on your piss or whatever the saying is, I just want to mention this so you’ll know why I’m so off the mark in not agreeing with the conventional wisdom that this is an especially great 007 picture. To me it just seems like another Daniel Craig James Bond, but that’s good enough. I like it.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: 007, Albert Finney, Ben Wishaw, Daniel Craig, Javier Bardem, John Logan, Judi Dench, Naomie Harris, Ralph Fiennes, Sam Mendes
Posted in Reviews | 514 Comments »
