...To Keep With Tradition.... What Keeps You Up Nights Mr. Dillinger? Coffee.

Holy crapanollee! A blog post!!!

Life must be getting pretty boring for me, I know... But anyway, I actually have a point to this blog. I saw "Public Enemies" the other day, and thought, Hey! the second to last time I saw a movie (I forgot about blogging when I saw "Up") I wrote a review of it! So heck, that's what I''m going to do with Public Enemies. But right up front, if you're trying to decide whether or not to see it, the answer is yeah, you should definitely see it in theaters. Especially if you're a Depp fan like I am. Here's the trailer for starters, if you're not sure exactly what goes on in the movie. And here's the IMDB web page for the movie, which is your source on pretty much everything you could ever need to know. Make sure you check out the trivia page. My favorites are the 16th and 11th ones down.

Oh, and the other point to this is to introduce some of the music from the movie. Sadly a lot of it isn't on the Internet yet, and it doesn't help that Elliot Goldenthal is not a very well known composer. I happen to really like him, and oddly enough, he was the composer for the Batman and Robin movie. Everything I do goes back to Batman! I don't really know why he's so little known, because he has won academy awards and golden globes and all that jazz. Regardless, there's some great music on the soundtrack, and not all of it is from him. There's quite a lot of Billie Holiday on there, which is so-so to me, and then there are a few Otis Taylor songs that I really like. The one that came up in my playlist is "Nasty Letter" which I like a bit more than this one, "Ten Million Dollar Slaves." Don't forget to follow that link and listen to the song (hehehe)! Oh, also if you want to sample the entire CD you can play around with it here.

They used a whole lot of kind of, banjo music,. bluesyish stuff in the movie. My dad told me a joke the other day. I think it was Willie Nelson who said something along the lines of "the best banjo is a broken one." There was also an awful lot of big band which of course had to be there because the movie took place in the thirties. Dang, I was soooooooooooo born in the wrong era.

Enough about the music! I meant to actually review the movie and actors/actresses; all that jazz (or should I say big band?). I'll start with an overview of the movie as a whole.

The movie is about John Dillinger (Johnny Depp), a felon wanted for robbing banks. The leading investigator, Agent Purvis (Christian Bale) is out to stop him, but somehow Dillinger always gets away. Anyway, the movie starts out with Dillinger escaping from jail, and it reminded me a lot of The Dark Knight the way the movie just starts and you're in. Overall the screenplay is good, and you really get that 30s feel. Michael Mann is an extremely talented director, but he's one of those guys (like Quentin Tarantino) that loves to experiment with the gunshots exploding out of heads and all that gross stuff. For me, I find it humorous, but other's who are sensitive to that kind of thing, ahem, my mother, probably should wait for it to come out on DVD so you can fast forward through those scenes. It's not particularly gory (hello, Grindhouse) but if you're squeamish it may not be the best idea. There is this one gunfight scene that lasts an eternity. It may have had something to do with the fact that I had to pee like nobody's business... but, that brings up an interesting point:

Why don't characters ever have to inconveniently pee in the actual film?

But I really did have to pee. And then when I figured I was in that last half hour, wrapping up the movie stretch, the agents were interviewing Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard, interesting sidenote, she was in a lot of french movies, but this is only her first or second American film) she's getting the crap beaten out of her (maybe not that extreme) but then she interrupts their interrogation with "I have to go to the bathroom." I'm sitting there (miserable) thinking, "Oh, of course she had to say that. Oh well, at least that's over." Then a few minutes later, Purvis comes in and he's like, "You can go to the bathroom now." I wanted to stand up and hit Christian Bale in the face. Really? Really?!?!

Anyway, so I missed a few minutes of that movie, but the rest of it was much more enjoyable.

Overall, the movie itself was good. On the standard.net find showtimes website it has a 3 1/2 out of four stars, which might be a tad bit high, and on IMDB it's 7.7 out of ten, which is more what I would say. Moving on to the individual performances. There are usually two different links, one for the character and the other for the actor/actress.

John Dillinger (Johnny Depp)-- What do I even have to say about Mr. Depp? He's one of my favorite actors, and, as usual, he completes the movie. Originally they were going to cast Leonardo DiCaprio in his role, and this movie would have been a flop with him. I was a little disappointed to see all the makeup they but on Johnny, but the touch of eyeliner on the lower lashes gave me a little bit of that "pirates" vibe.

Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale)-- As usual, Bale is a fail. I honestly don't understand how he get's work. He wasn't absolutely terrible in this movie because his lack of emotion fit the character, but my goodness his fake accent was annoying. If you watch the credits Bale had an accent coach, but Johnny did not. I think they should have just gotten Johnny to give Bale lessons. It would've saved them a few bucks. Personally I think whenever Bale is in a movie he reduces its value a little bit. He's too straightforward and he just can't deliver. I think they should have skipped the voice coach and gone to an acting coach.

J. Edgar Hoover (Billy Cudrup)-- Honestly, Hoover didn't show up enough to really critique him, but I just thought it was weird, because I saw him and the entire movie I couldn't remember who he was, but then I realized! He was Dr. Manhattan (or I guess the voice of Dr. Manhattan, and the body of Jon) in Watchmen. Pretty weird.

Lastly I'll take a look at Billie Frechette (Marion Cotillard)-- I think she did a fabulous job. Her teeth were a little distracting to me at first, but I got over that pretty fast. Her emotions were very real and convincing, and I cried like a baby at the end. She definitely deserves the Academy Award she has won (not on this movie, but another.)

Overall a good movie. I would say 8/10.

HAHA xoxo