I caught Breach this morning, since all seats before noon are five bucks, and it was well worth the dollars for the exact reason I went to it: Chris Cooper. Utterly mesmerizing. Laura Linney’s always solid, and I can take or leave Ryan Phillippe. Most startling casting was Caroline Dhavernas, mostly because I’ve only seen her in “Wonderfalls”, and so I spent her first few scenes going, “Is it? It can’t be. But it really looks like her! But!” And then it was. Clearly. But with an odd accent, apparently the effect of having a French Canadian play an East German. Hmm. The movie would have been nothing without Chris Cooper, though, so keep that in mind.
Then moving on to Notes on a Scandal, which is best taken as straight camp, much with the melodrama. I’m really not sure how I feel about it. Parts of it made me uncomfortable and parts of it frightened me, and none of them are the parts you’d think. As usual, Glass’s score is overwhelming. It’s weird. I actually like his scores, or I would if they weren’t mixed so high.
(On the Notes page, IMDb recommends The History Boys first off. Which is interesting because Notes did make me think of it. Not for the obvious reason of the teacher-student bits, but for the dangers of the closet and related repression on relationships, and the difficulty thereafter of forming healthy/appropriate ones.)
wicked jaws 