2 movies last night

I'll get the crappy one out of the way first ... ugh.

The Darwin Awards. What and why????? I picked it up because i want to watch movies with Tim Blake Nelson (o brother where art thou and Wonderland ... actually liked him better in Wonderland). This had to be one of those movies that everyone knew was going to stink, but did it because it would be a couple days work, in and out. The cast ... joseph Fiennes, Winona Ryder, nelson, David Arquette, Josh Charles, Juliette lewis, Chris penn (had to be his last film) ... it also has a neat cameo by the mythbusters guys, of which, I'm sure the film pulled inspiration from. Fiennes plays the disgraced detective who starts working as an insurance fraud investigator ... it was stupid beyond stupid. There was one snippet involving metallica that was pretty cool, but Fiennes and Ryder ... blech ... Tim Blake nelson was ok too. But wow, this movie was really really bad.

I know i listed my favorite movies in the previous post, but I watched one last night that may sneak in. Our local paper had a movie decade in review type thing and on the list was a film called The Lives of Others. German film, won best foreign film at the Oscars in 2006 ... dealing with Stasi spying during the GDR period. Thought I'd have a look, tivo'd it and .... wow. it's a long film ... it's German! And yes, it details how the secret police spied on perceived enemies for, this one in particular, a very selfish reason. There are very few films where I cry because of a happy ending ... well, not happy in the traditional sense, there was tragedy behind the ending, but still .. I was starting to get ticked because I was afraid the ending was going to be with the artist seeing his spy, after the wall fell down walking down the street and never confronting him ... that's what i expected, but no ... that wasn't the end and the ending was PERFECT. Serioulsy, a perfect ending to a film. That's rare. The best scene, other than the final one was when the workers got word that the wall came down and the GDR was no more ... it was incredibly low key (German film!) and completely appropriate and efficient (German film!).

Yea, it's on my list. This film is simply perfect.