Burn After Reading

Sooo, Coen Brothers time again.

This time round, they've decided to remake Fargo, give or take.

In that you get four of five bloody idiots, and have them all screw each other
over, misunderstand the situation until all are dead or insane. It's a pretty
standard Coen brothers trick, really, you come up with a stupid plot, (this
time two people trying to blackmail a CIA guy for the return of what they
believe is confidential information) and manage to get away with how stupid
your plot is by making it clear that everyone involved in it really is stupid.
So it really is Fargo/Big Lebowski/Raising Arizona territory.

There is a, if not serious, then at least melancholy undertone to it all. In
that practically everyone in the film is romatically unhappy, and a lot of the
misunderstandings involved stem from couples not communicating, and a lot of
the motivation for action and change in the film come from the characters
being unhappy with their lives. The only real exception to this appears to be
Brad Pitt's character Chad, who is pretty much an amiable, clueless boob.

It's a good movie, but it's an average Coen Brothers movie.

Tropic Thunder

It's the bastard lovechild of Zoolander and Rambo.

Essentially, a bunch of eejit movie stars sign up to do a Platoon/ Apocalypse
Now style war movie. The director decides he's going to do it guerilla
filmmaking style, and lets them lose in the Vietnamese jungle, where they
promptly get lost, and have a run in with some drug traffickers, who they
initially mistake for extras in their film. Hilarity, despite what I just said,
actually ensues.

It's actually a combination of low, sick humour, and a bunch of sly digs at
movie stars and moviemaking in general. Tom Cruise actually nearly steals the
show as a foulmouthed big-shot movie producer, but in the end, Robert Downey Jr
wins, with his probably-unfair piss take of Russell Crowe method acting as
Fred Williamson.

Funnier than you'd think. I think comedies generally used to be a lot funnier,
and this, basically, would have been a pretty average 80's comedy. It just
seems like that these days, what with shit like the Scary/Epic/Disaster Movie
franchises somehow getting made and into cinemas, when a stupid comedy actually
manages to be funny, it's worthy of note.