Burn After Reading

[Mels_Smileys45]

Burn After Reading is a new comedy by the Coen Brothers. Cream your jeans yet? Watch the trailer here: Burn After Trailer

A cast like that will make a preacher hard! How can it not be awesome!?

IMBD LINK


New Trailer!

[kippies]

has to be said that looks good

Malkovich in a coen brothers movie has to rock

[Mels_Smileys45]

Doh! I can't ever get any conversation other than stupid bots. I still can't wait for this one but now I saw the preview for "The Spirit"! WOW!

[Mels_Smileys45]

Anyone going to see this Friday???? I can't wait!


Review


Writer-directors Joel and Ethan Coen have such a distinctive creative palette that there ought to be a paint color named after them. Imagine it standing brooding and apart in the Benjamin Moore catalog, overwhelming the likes of mustang tan, Durango dust and barleyfield beige. Say hello to Coen brothers black, the go-to color when you're going really, really dark.

Because it is a comedy, the Coens' new film, "Burn After Reading," is something of a palate cleanser for the brothers after the rigors of the Academy Award-winning " No Country for Old Men." But because it's a Coen brothers film before it's anything else, this is about as dark and nihilistic as comedies are allowed to get before the laughter dies bitterly on your lips.

A bleakly funny spoof on spy films as well as a melancholy riff on despairing lives, "Burn After Reading" has the usual bunch of venal, self-absorbed characters trying to extricate themselves from the confusing messes they've gotten themselves into.

With Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich and Tilda Swinton playing the leads, misunderstandings and crossed purposes on a heroic scale are the name of the game. Like all spoofs, "Burn" is erratic and not always on target, but there are character comedy moments here, particularly involving Pitt and McDormand, that are hard to resist.

Like any self-respecting spy movie, "Burn" begins at CIA headquarters, where veteran spook and die-hard Princeton man Osborne "Oz" Cox (Malkovich), resplendent in a bow tie and three-piece suit, is unceremoniously fired off the Balkans desk. His response to this, as to all things, is to increase his drinking and, almost as an afterthought, to begin work on his memoirs.

Not at all pleased by this is Cox's hard-driving doctor wife, Katie (Swinton). But Mrs. Cox is so rarely pleased by anything her husband does that she's been having an extended affair with (and considering marrying) federal marshal and serial philanderer Harry Pfarrer (Clooney), a fatuous oaf who already has a wife. But no matter.

On the other end of the Washington social spectrum are the employees of a local Hardbodies Fitness Center, a group more interested in the state of their own bodies than anyone else's. This is especially true of the über-determined Linda Litzke (McDormand), a striver for worldly success who is not ashamed to admit, "I have gone as far as I can with this body."

Linda so believes that a wave of plastic surgeries will change her life that she is flabbergasted when her insurance company rejects them as electives. And when she and her pal Chad Feldheimer (Pitt) stumble across a disc containing Oz's lame memoirs and a household budget, she convinces herself she has found the answer to her prayers.

For these bears of little brain confuse the found CD with raw U.S. intelligence data that can be sold to the highest bidder for enough money to make any and all surgeries possible. "It's like slipping on ice in front of a fancy restaurant," Linda says of her obligation to take this disc and shove it as far as she can. If only it were that simple.

It's no surprise that McDormand, whose great skills won her an Oscar for playing indomitable Police Chief Marge Gunderson in the Coens' "Fargo," knows just where all the jokes are in a character who is so obsessed with Internet dating she doesn't notice that her boss (Richard Jenkins) is her likeliest romantic match.

What is more of a pleasant surprise is that Pitt, a newcomer to the Coens' world, is completely at ease with this material as well. With an upswept haircut reminiscent of the one he had in 1991's "Johnny Suede," the actor matches McDormand laugh for laugh playing a doltish accomplice who means well but is not really cut out for the espionage game.

Though "Burn After Reading" is as much a nightmare as it is a comedy, helping with the laughs are the film's exceptional group of unsung character actors who deliver impeccable performances in minimal roles -- Jeffrey DeMunn as a cosmetic surgeon, J.R. Horne as a divorce lawyer and J.K. Simmons as a CIA big shot. When Simmons' exasperated character says of the story, "Report back to me when it makes sense," he's summarizing this archetypal Coen venture as well as anyone can.


LATIMES

[shawners]

They released the movie this late so they expect it to be OSCAR worthy.. I expect a screener of this to show up within the next month, kind of like No Country for old men did. This film is probably going to go for at least 6 awards.

[Potato]

I wanna see it.

[shawners]

I wanna see it.

Like you did IRON man.. And then slam it on the forums like it was garbage :P~

IRon man on dvd now.

This film will probably make well over 300 million. Usually its great actors that carry garbage to new hights.. But with the script, plot, directors and a good cast.. Its going to rock=)

[yaremyur]

:icon_saluit would be awesome if they made a 2nd one where there's a new bad guy and newer high tech robots just as long as they don't turn it into transformers :devil2because iron man can neva live up to transformers:devil2:icon_pira:

[Potato]

Like you did IRON man.. And then slam it on the forums like it was garbage :P~

No. Not really.

[Mels_Smileys45]

Damn it! Im going to try and catch the afternoon show tomorrow. Ive been too busy to go see it. I try and see every Coen Brothers movie in the theaters since I saw the Big Lebowski. I was a fan before that movie actually but since that one ive been a SUPER fan!

Everyone should watch The Hudsucker Proxy, perhaps the best comedy they have done and definitely the most over looked.

[NickMacnab]

...Everyone should watch The Hudsucker Proxy, perhaps the best comedy they have done and definitely the most over looked.

Love that movie! If you haven't seen it or Barton Fink I'd suggest both.

Has anyone actually seen this movie? I want to go see it so badly!

[Mels_Smileys45]

I didn't make it today either. Im freakin obsessing with my car right now. Played with it all day. I plan to see the movie soon...

[Mels_Smileys45]

I finally went to see this tonight. First off, great movie...but not what I expected. I thought this was part three of the slapstick comedies with the George Clooney trillogy. Its not.

There is almost nothing funny until halfway through the movie but once it gets started its twisted and surprising. Another great Coen film but not their best.

[moon light]

i'll go with you but plz popcorn first

[Mels_Smileys45]

Im building something in the basement...I will show you sometime.