Just saw Death to Smoochy. Good movie–clever, sharp dialog, manages to balance sweetness with sharpness pretty well. And I saw it at the Alamo Drafthouse, which is always a plus. As usual, they were playing something weird-but-appropriate before the movie started. In this case (unsurprisingly), it was footage of the Evil Purple One, though mercifully without the sound. I asked the guy who came to take my order if he could perhaps bring some “mild hallucinogens to help make Barney easier to stomach.”

Yesterday was a two-movie day.

First saw A Beautiful Mind with Tracy. Good movie, though a bit schmaltzy. Does a good job of drawing you in and then quietly pulling the rug out from underneath you. The movie does fall into the “heartwarming triumph of the human spirit” category, but that doesn’t make it bad.

Also saw the midnight showing of Mulholland Drive. I’ve decided that David Lynch has become a self-parody. His use of gratuitously weird imagery, situations, etc, is just getting in the way. And am I the only person who thinks the Bum in this movie is a retread of the Man in the Planet from Eraserhead? That said, I do think the movie is interesting. I don’t regret having seen it. Shoot, he could have had Laura Harring just standing there for two hours and I probably would have been entertained.

Saw Black Hawk Down last night. Very intense movie. Very. Although I have one friend who walked out on it, I thought it was very good myself. Hard to watch, but good. I was struck by how, in the heat of combat, the notional reasons for the troops being in Somalia became completely irrelevant. The ways technology would help, and the ways it could be so easily stymied: a field radio rendered useless because its operator was deafened by gunfire, a megabuck helicopter that’s a sitting duck for a rocket-propelled grenade that probably cost $50.

Saw Gosford Park today. Good movie. Like other Robert Altman movies, it involves a lot of really good actors all talking at the same time. In this one, many of them were speaking in accents that I had a little trouble with, and the relationships between the characters were occasionally mystifying, but in the end, the main points came through quite clearly. Ornate plot, ornate settings, lots of layers, and a few interesting twists and turns. Joe-Bob says “Check it out.”

Saw The Man Who Wasn’t There today. Pretty bleak. Like many of the Coen Brothers movies, it had an austere feel to it. The cinematography–all black-and-white–was beautiful. Very subtle shadings. A reminder that we still haven’t figured out color the way we’ve figured out B&W (I say “we” as if I have anything to do with it. Hah.). And while the story had a lot of film-noir elements to it, I wouldn’t quite call it film noir itself. There was a little too much nuance for that, not the cut-and-dry severity I’d expect in real film noir. And just because it’s B&W doesn’t mean its film noir, anyhow. A good movie.

Went and saw Amélie today. A very sweet movie. The actress in the eponymous role has preternaturally big eyes.