Burn After Reading (1 Viewer)

mjp

Founding member
Saw this the other night and quite enjoyed it. I seem to remember some others saying the didn't think it was so hot, but I couldn't find a stand-alone thread for the movie, so here it is.

Maybe I liked it because I saw it without any expectations. I didn't even know it was the Coen bros. until the end credits. I thought it was funny as hell. And not just NPR funny, but funny funny. And the unexpected unfunny bit at the 2/3 point - right then I should have known it was a Coen bros. movie. Perfect.

Overall, liked it. I give it a 77 on a scale of 1 to 100, 1 being best, with a mean of 60 on a bell curve.
 
Yeah, I liked it too. Even Brad Pitt. The script could have been tighter in a couple of spots, but it just about makes my Coen top 5.
 
Overall, liked it. I give it a 77 on a scale of 1 to 100, 1 being best, with a mean of 60 on a bell curve.

Not to nit-pick, but a bell curve describes a normal distribution; that is, a symmetrical curve with its mean at the mid-point, or 50% in this case. If your mean is at 60%, then you likely have a log-normal distribution skewed right.
 
Not to nit-pick, but a bell curve describes a normal distribution; that is, a symmetrical curve with its mean at the mid-point, or 50% in this case. If your mean is at 60%, then you likely have a log-normal distribution skewed right.

That's what I was going to say.

:eek:

I did enjoy the movie - alot actually. The Coens seldom disappoint.
 
i was disappointed by this film, but then again i went in with really high expectations knowing it was the coen brothers.
 
I liked it, didn't love it.

Pitt and McDormand were very funny.

Clooney is a rare Hollywood beast. handsome and charming, but (seemingly) an intelligent and curious guy who looks for interesting projects. his acting range isn't huge, but he knows how to use what he has. he reminds me of Robert Redford.

and the ladies seem to like his bell curve. skewed or not.
 
I was going to start a thread about this movie when I saw it months ago but I needed to see it several times before I felt comfortable enough to discuss it with any credibility.
Brad Pitt is fantastic with Frances McDormand who is one of the best comedic actresses of our time. John Malkovich is very believable and creepy as you would expect him to be- he's another one of the greats like George Clooney.
One of the best parts of the story was the CIA people-J K Simmons and David Rasche, but I don't want to give away the whole story. It's a watch it three or four times Coen Brothers movie. I've only watched it straight through three times and big parts of it another four times. My excuse may be that I lived through four winters in North Dakota and since the Coens are from Minnesota that makes perfect sense.
 
Malkovich was great, he played a weird, angry bastard without hamming it up at all, which he is prone to do. Pitt and McDormand were over the top, but great as their characters.

When I went to high school back in the 1930's, we only had to take math up through 10th grade, after that it was an elective. In case it wasn't obvious, after 10th grade I did a little dance in the school hallway and played KISS Alive four times in succession to celebrate the fact that I never had to think about mathematics again, and I haven't. I can only assume that the bell curve is related to mathematics, hence I do not know or care what it does or stands for. That's why I have you college types around, to explain things I don't understand.

I spent the last two years of high school "studying" photography, art and offset printing (I had a job as a printer by the time I was 17 and spent the second half of my days at work, getting school credit). Remember about 30 years ago when everyone looked around and said, "Hey, we're graduating a bunch of idiots, we better rethink this shit and start teaching these kids some math and science!" Well I graduated just before that revelation was made. Of course had high school been more difficult I probably would have just left or failed everything.

But the movie, yeah, groovy!
 
I really liked this movie. But I like most Coen Bros movies so no surprise there. The new one is actually quite good, The Serious Man, but that will be another thread.

I've seen this a couple of times. I sat down with my Mom and watched it a few weeks back, she is not a Big Coen Bros fan or into the Coen Bros humor, so i wasn't quite sure how she'd react.
My Mom thought the scene with Brad Pitt in the closet was hysterical.
I wasn't expecting her to burst out laughing at the end of that scene.
It actually made me jump in my chair a bit.
 
The phone call scene with Brad Pitt is one of my favorite scenes from any movie in all of 2008. "The security of your shit" is a common term around the apartment and has been for almost a year now.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top