more unsolicited reviews of movies I've recently seen

I saw "Brideshead Revisted" a few weeks ago, and was surprised that it was not as awful as I expected it to be. I'd read the reviews. Of course the miniseries was formative to my adolescence. How else do you think a 15 year old begins a love affair with regency furniture and gets a subscription to Connoisseur for Christmas? If only I could have gotten my hair to be half as floppy as theirs my life would have been totally different.

Anyway, the Brideshead snobs have poo poo-ed the film, but it really wasn't that bad. I know they've "butchered" the book and all that, but Matthew Goode is perfectly beautiful to look at.
That ought to count for something, right?

In fact that was worth the ticket right there, for two hours getting to look at him and his puppy dog eyes.
But, well, I don't know that he's very good as an actor. I've admired Ben Whishaw since "Perfume," a movie which I am probably the only person at least in this state to have seen. He is, even the detractors would agree, the best part of the film. He's even better than Anthony Andrews was in the miniseries, I think. And, despite what I've read, I thought Emma Thompson was good. I liked that they used Castle Howard for Brideshead too. All in all, I enjoyed it.

I also took myself to see "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" today, and also kind of liked it.

I'd heard Penelope Cruz was good in it, and I guess she is.
But actually I liked Rebecca Hall (Vicky) even more, or maybe I just related to her character more.

Scarlett Johanson seems to be channelling Woody Allen again, like she did in "Scoop." There is was almost cute, almost...here it's just irritating. In fact, the dialogue is really stilted. Only when it's in Spanish does any of the dialogue sound remotely natural. Another good thing about the film is that fellow westbanker Patricia Clarkson makes an appearance, but she's not given much to do. And of course, Javier Bardem is hot. No need to explain that. Oh, and in looking for nude pictures of him online doing research, I noticed that he was born in the Canary Islands, just like my maternal ancestors! Something to chat about before we have sex.
Anyway, the main thing the film does is makes me want to go to Spain. Good God, it's beautiful there.