Movies, and the Two Reasons Not to Dislike Brad Pitt.

We talked about it, so I watched it again.  It's hard to know whether to say "Breakfast on Pluto" is magnificent, but crazy, or magnificent because crazy.  But it is most certainly both.  "Breakfast on Pluto" is a movie that couldn't be anything but good, or great, because it's a Neil Jordan movie.  Setting that aside, here's what's extremely intriguing about "Breakfast on Pluto."  The star is Cillian Murphy, on whom BrambleWitch already told us she has or had a crush.  The Wikipedia entry for Murphy says that his role in "Breakfast on Pluto" was as a "trans."  It was not.  He was a transvestite, and seeming homosexual, but he corrected at least one other character who said he was a girl.  He said he was a boy. Murphy was already married at the time of this movie (and he still is, almost 15 years later), and his first child was born the year the movie came out.  He did an unbelievable job of making himself (very highly) effeminate for this role.  And for what it's worth, every other actor in this movie was also spectacular.  As far as I know, Neil Jordan does not make movies which Susie Figgis does not cast, and her casting was perfect.  It always is.  BrambleWitch and Mac Kennedy will both highly recommend this movie, and so will I.

In my opinion, Brad Pitt is almost always an uninteresting stiff as an actor.  I haven't seen all of his movies, because I wouldn't want to, but he's almost always the same uninspired actor who walks through his parts all the time.  His appeal seems to be his looks, sort of like Tom Cruise, but the latter at least has a trademark smile.  Which he flashes until the viewer is sick of looking at it.  But Pitt found himself in two exceptionally good movies, and did a magnificent job with two exceptionally good roles.  One movie was Guy Ritchie's "Snatch," in which Pitt played an Irish gyspy with a special talent for boxing.  "Snatch" is weirdly one of my favorite movies.  It includes a couple of the things I very much dislike in movies -- like violence and a lot of swearing -- but I love it anyway.  And Pitt, I was told or read, worked for scale, even though he was already a big star at the time.  The other movie, which I rewatched recently, was one of the many spectacular Terry Gilliam productions.  Terry Gilliam first came to my attention in the late '60s or early '70s when he was one of the members of Monty Python's Flying Circus (he created very strange cartoons, but rarely acted in skits), and then, he became a movie director.  All of his movies, and his Python contributions, are wild fantasies.  The movie that included Brad Pitt was "12 Monkeys."  Pitt was alternately an out-of-control patient on a psychiatric ward, and the still clearly "not all there" son of Christopher Plummer, who managed a good enough American southern accent (Plummer, not Pitt).  Pitt's acting in both movies ("Snatch" and "12 Monkeys") was excellent.  It raises the question of why he appeared as he did in his other movies.  Were they easy parts that didn't demand anything of him?  Did someone just offer him a lot of money, and he couldn't say no?  Did he portray carefully crafted downplaying?  ("Meet Joe Black" and "The Mexican" are examples.)  The bigger star in "12 Monkeys" was Bruce Willis, who for me, also does not impress.  Watching Willis in a movie is watching Willis, not the character.  In "12 Monkeys," he was trying way too hard.

Between one thing and another, I've wound up with a little too much time on my hands, and this is how I take my breaks.

As always, if you have a DVD player, feel free to borrow.  I just want them back.