In Bruges

Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson In Bruges

Bruges has been coming up way more than ever lately. That isn't exactly difficult because until recently I was very similar to Colin Farrell's character Ray in In Bruges in that I had absolutely no clue where the stupid place was.

Well, it's in Belgium.

No less, I'm currently reading Bill Bryson's Neither Here nor There, his ode to travelling across Europe, and within those pages Bryson absolutely raves about Bruges. Apparently it was one of the few places that maintains its pristine nature that it had before World War II, surviving relatively unscathed and keeping up the cobblestone streets, the glorious churches, beautiful bridges, and the best canals this side of Venice. It looks and sounds incredible.

Of course...there are differing perspectives on the subject. Farrell's Ray directly compares Bruges with Hell in the film and hates the place from the very beginning, but really that isn't important to the movie. It's important in the fact that Bruges is small and gives writer/director Martin McDonagh a play like atmosphere to work with and provides Ray lots of opportunities to make many hilarious comments about it, but that is about it. Well, and it provides the location of one of the best movies so far this year, In Bruges.

I'm not going to say it's better than Wall-E or the Dark Knight because it isn't. However, in a year heretofore dominated by summer flicks and not much else, it's great to see a movie like this really do a lot with not much. It's an classic styled film, very dialogue oriented and based entirely around character interactions - no special effects, just straight up good filmmaking. Well, and incredible acting as Brendan Gleeson does what he does (he continues to be one of the best supporting actors out there), Ralph Fiennes tries really, really hard to steal every scene, and Colin Farrell gives the best performance of his career.

He's funny. He's tragic. He's pretty much brilliant, and any time he's off the screen you're thinking in the back of your head "what is Ray doing right now?" Whether it's giving midgets thumbs up to make sure they have a better day or punching women in the face because she swung a bottle at him (and may or may not have known karate), everything he does is awesome.

This is a great movie, and one that is poorly represented by the trailer (which I enjoyed and made me sad that I missed it - because Alaska sucks at movie) in the fact that it shows nothing at all about the movie, and doesn't even accurately represent its feel. Rent this movie, I demand it. It's definitely worth a watch for the black humor, crime movie lover in all of us.

Also known as, Erik, seriously, watch this movie right now. You'll greatly enjoy it.