Faces that made me glad to be alive and watching movies in 2008, even when sometimes the movies themselves weren't always so good...
Brendan Gleeson, In Bruges
Sally Hawkins, Eddie Marsan, Happy Go Lucky
Bingbing Li, The Forbidden Kingdom
Danny McBride, The Foot Fist Way
Anna Faris, The House Bunny
Jason Statham, Death Race, The Bank Job
Anne Hathaway, Get Smart, Rachel Getting Married
Lina Leanderson, Kare Hedebrant, Let the Right One In
Juergen Vogel, Der Freie Wille
Elizabeth Pena, How the Garcia Girls Spent Their Summer
Asia Argento, Mother of Tears
Angelina Jolie, Wanted
Dev Patel, Freida Pinto, Slumdog Millionaire
Norah Jones, Rachel Weisz, My Blueberry Nights
Christina Ricci, Roger Allam, Paulie Litt (with Willy and Kenzie), Speed Racer
Der Freie Wille? Is that a German remake of Free Willy?
ReplyDeletei'm glad you saw 'in bruges'... i missed your review, thoughts? i love that movie.
ReplyDeleteRobert Fiore beat you to that one, Bill. It's a German film released by Benten Films on DVD that I reviewed this past July. Grueling, but well worth the pain, largely to Vogel's avatistic, visceral performance.
ReplyDeleteJamie: Look for detailed comments on In Bruges in the upcoming year-end roundup, where I'm sure the movie will hold a place of honor on my list. I did not see it until about a month ago and just have not had time to write about it. (Same old story!) It was wonderful, though, wasn't it? I saw the trailer and built a whole roster of preconceived notions around In Bruges, none of which made me want to see the movie, and almost all of which were happily shot down when I did. Curse of the Modern Movie Trailer, episode #7664 and counting...
Curses!
ReplyDeleteyeah In Bruges was great... reminded me of all those french neo noirs i loved from the 60's. you know the breathless's, shoot the piano player's, le doulos's ect. of the world.
ReplyDeleteBrendan Gleeson is good.
ReplyDeleteI'm so glad In Bruges is getting the accolades it deserves. One question regarding the different "faces" though: although I agree with you on the striking features of Asia Argento, I was really let down by Mother of Tears. Did you see something (besides Asia, of course) in the movie I didn't? Or can you like the face but not the movie?
ReplyDeleteGeek Monkey (Chris): You can definitely like the face and not the movie (at least in my book). I've always been fascinated by Asia Argento's look, even though I find her neither particularly beautiful nor an actress of much skill. She smolders convincingly, that's for sure, and she's somewhat asymmetrical and, frankly, odd-looking, which I find works for her in photos and in movies. But her persona as a filmmaker-provocateur is just annoying and has resulted in some fairly obvious moves (Scarlet Diva) as well as some fundamentally questionable ones (The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things). As for Mother of Tears, despite how much I enjoyed seeing the Mater in all of her Euro-Maxim Vampirella getups, that was a pretty dumb movie and nowhere near Argento at his best or most entertaining. It just got tiresome, and very quickly; so did Asia in it. So it seems we saw the same movie after all!
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