| Gabe and Daniel take AIM at "The Three Burials" |
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| written by TheMidnightMess |
May 9, 2007 - 11:46 PM PDT |
Daniel: Three Burials was amazing
Daniel: It's really gratifying when an actor directing himself chooses to play a role that isn't brimming with intelligence and dignity.
Daniel: It's the Anti-Tarantino/Kevin Smith move.
Daniel: Casting yourself as kind of a schlub instead of a super bad-*ss, and playing it with subtlety.
Daniel: And I'm so used to seeing the amateur detective be deceptively competent since Big Lebowski and Veronica Mars, and really that's just sort of a trapping of the genre, in general.
Daniel: But Tommy Lee Jones character trying to get info from the border patrolmen was so childish and ham-fisted.
Daniel: The film is just such a finishing move against anyone who thinks the western is dead, when cowboy culture by virtue of existing in bizarre little pockets is stripped of a lot of its mythology and more steeped in conflict than ever.
Daniel: And the balance of story progression to "moments" is really tight. Great script to study.
Gabe: yeah man
Gabe: tommy lee is a saint
Daniel: When it was over, I so badly wanted it to be a trilogy, or a series of novels.
Gabe: oh yeah, me too!
Daniel: I give it "Ten Wistful Man-out-of-time Revenge/Redemption/Friendship Cowboy Hats."
Daniel: Which is like, four stars of five. |
| Fractured to Its Detriment |
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| written by talltale |
June 13, 2006 - 7:56 AM PDT |
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2 out of 6 members found this review helpful
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I realize that THE THREE BURIALS OF MELQUIADES ESTRADA won Best Screenplay award at Cannes (Tommy Lee Jones won best actor, too), but it seems to me that the fractured screenplay is one reason why the movie did not take off or win over more audiences. Melquiades is the lynchpin of the film, yet the way he's presented leaves him existing mostly as a decaying corpse rather than the rich, full character he ought to be (and could have been) had the moviemakers given him his best shot.
Instead, they diddle between past and present, making it more difficult to realize who this guy was or to care about him the way lead character played by Jones certainly does. While the movie nods graciously to the likes of Sam Peckinpah, it also does the usual "women don't count much, 'cause you can't count on 'em" number of which Peckinpah was far too fond. Beautifully photographed, very well acted by all and with a timely story that addresses our hot-button immigration issue (a bit sentimentally), "3 Burials" is worth seeing and then wishing it were better. |
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