Jessie's thoughts

Okay i screened The Brothers Bloom last night with Nicole and i'd say 5 times out of 10, we normally don't laugh at any given film, whether comedic in nature or not, especially Nicole since I am prone to finding more defined "stupid" content hilarious, but we both were genuinely giggling it up watching this one. It had a very quirky air about it, from the handrawn notes appearing over the screen as the plot played out, to the 60's piano driven score to some of the just random human moments such as a woman having an orgasm to a thunderstorm.

But onto the stuff I liked and didn't; first, both female characters were so different and unique from most anything else around you couldn't help but like them; the obscenely rich woman who has nothing left to spend money on because she was never given a life to go along with it, so she fills her time making cameras out of watermelons and juggling chainsaws; she has genuine moments where you just have to love that she's living for the first time and isn't looking down on herself because of it, such as doodling her fantasies out on paper like a boy's name she likes or finding out using your tongue while kissing intensifies the act. Bang Bang was great, she was like a silent era comedian where she didn't need to talk and you didn't want her to after you saw what she could w/o it. Even her first words, "fuck me" were totally unecessary, i'd much rather have more moments where she gives the "call me" sign to someone she's just met after basically leaving behind her only family for many years. Both actresses should be commended on leaping fully into these roles. Both male leads had their ups and downs as well, Brody's brooding often became repetitive but his strange appearance kind of put him right in the aesthetic of the whole film. I"m a Mark Ruffalo fan, he usually acts with a vunerability in his voice that really makes you connect with him, but I'm not convinced he was perfect for this, I totally felt like this was a great actor doing everything the script told him to, but not really making it his own.

Besides small quibbles on plot confusion (what exactly happened to make them blow up the wrong bomb? & the whole Diamond Dog subplot that didn't interest me in the least and even made for some strange viewing as Brody completely treated him like a molesting father) the movie did what cinema was designed to do: entertain us and it did it in a rather eccentric way that did tickle my fancy. One other thing I liked, and it's more a technical camera trick, is there would be kind of close shots of people but something else would be happening in the background, like when the Brothers Bloom (which was that their last name? so Brody was Bloom Bloom?) were sitting on a bench and a camel sauntered in behind them, and later when Brody was stopped on a path when they were in Mexico and all the lawn torches lit up behind him like he had just had an idea, just little touches I enjoyed.

Thanks Jared, good pick, don't know if I ever would have found it on my own.