Burn After Reading
|
List Price: Our Price: $1.85 You Save: $13.13 (88%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.82 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of Burn After Reading
Movie Review: Well Cast, Hilarious Characters and Superb Satire
Summary: 5 Stars
The Coen Brothers still have got it. They create characters that are at the same time very unique and yet, someone you feel you know from your daily life. Everyone in this film is someone you know, from the idiotic Brad Pitt character (full of aimless confidence) to the talkative, non-listening Fran Walsh character ("I need a can-do guy, and you're all defeated"). From the scheming doctor Tilda Swinton ([to child]"take your meds, open up!") to her hilariously resigned divorce lawyer ("this where I'm obliged to ask my clients to "give it an extra day").
The entire "blackmailing the CIA agent" plot in order to pay for Fran Walsh's character's plastic surgery was such a bungling and hilarious mess despite people getting hacked to death with hatchets and shot in the head that I was laughing all the way.
When she went to the Russian Embassy and gave them the ENTIRE CD ROM they found(not a diminished copy) and said, "This is just a taste." I literally spit out what I was drinking at the time. I mean, what did she hope to achieve by turning the personal memoirs of a CIA Analyst over to the Russians? Everyone's reactions about this from John Malkovich's character through to the CIA big wigs kept me in stitches.
I don't why people hated this film, I hope they weren't expecting a Michael Clayton or something like that. I saw many very intelligent actors and actresses supressing their intellects but not in a sad way. I haven't seen George Clooney's character this dumb since Brother, Where Art Thou.
As for George Clooney's character, he is still a bit of a mystery. I have no idea what he wanted to achieve with all of his affairs and "home projects." I don't know why he finally used his weapon "after 20 years of PP(People Protection) etc." His sudden transformation after thinking the CIA was after him was almost out of character if I only knew what his character was.
The over-dramatic soundtrack sounding at first like the Terminator theme of drum sticks on steel trash cans and the "incoming data" like blip of the scrolling credits can be disarming at first making you feel that you're stepping into a spy thriller (which, Fran and Brad's characters obviously thought they were) but it adds to the deep layer of satire that only the Coen Bros. are capable of.
If you like cookie cutter characters with predictable plots, then this flick is not for you. If you like satire at the deepest level with all of our daily human faults exposed in a "what if this guy I know at the gym is as dumb as he looks?" way, then you'll not just like this film, you'll love it!
Movie Review: When the dummies are governing our world
Summary: 5 Stars
It is a comedy and it is funny. But why is it so funny? It is funny first because it is a parody of American society, of the small middle class of working people who are not particularly swift and definitely not lucky but they just do what they do with some desire to get some satisfaction out of it. Maybe even some profit or benefit. The favors of a woman, or some extra investment money. Nothing really serious but just five plastic surgery operations for the bargain price of $25,000. And that would give some dynamic ambition to anyone, and anything would be good enough to make that extra money. When you add to that the fact that everyone is playing around with another woman or another man, and the film remains within the limits of straight-dom, you have it all. The spy-apprentices will get entangled with the adulterous spouses and the situation is unbelievably complex, and lethal if not plain deadly. But then the film - and it starts with that - is situated all around one third rank CIA executive, hence with spies and other undercover actions and activities. But since most people in that situation are not in any way listed as active spies, the CIA top boss - if there is one - just wonders what it is all about and his reaction will be to clean up the situation. And the clean-up will be drastic. Only the three women will survive: the spouse of the spy, the spouse of the security service chap and the unmarried woman who wants to finance her plastic surgery. The two spouses are free since the two men they were married to end up dead. And the third woman is happy too since the CIA pays for the plastic surgery to bury the business. In other words the film is a big parody of many other films, and first of all Mission Impossible, but transferred to the level of the dummies who read all the books especially written for them, and these dummies in this film are definitely dim. And then the rest is quid pro quo (both imbroglio and legal meaning) and crazy situational complications. It turns the very serious security problems of the 21st century into a farce, and we think somewhere that after all they are a farce which makes the film absolutely righteous.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
Movie Review: What Did We Learn, Palmer? Report Back When It Makes Sense
Summary: 5 Stars
"CIA Superior: What did we learn, Palmer?
CIA Officer: I don't know, sir.
CIA Superior: I don't fuckin' know either. I guess we learned not to do it again.
CIA Officer: Yes, sir.
CIA Superior: I'm fucked if I know what we did.
CIA Officer: Yes, sir, it's, uh, hard to say
CIA Superior: Jesus Fucking Christ."
'Burn After Reading' is one of the funniest films I have seen in ages. It's Black Humor and off the wall intelligence had me in a grip of laughter. Dim-witted, slow and full of themselves are the major ingredients in this film. The Coen Brothers have taken the personalities of everyday citizens and given them extreme behaviors. All that is wrong with society can be seen in this film. Women who are obsessed with their own hard bodies. Men who have sexual addictions, pediatricians who are mean, gym trainers who are just plain obsessed and the CIA who is so often portrayed as the elite in the terrorist world.
Each character seems to be written for the actor, George Clooney as a treasury man, addicted to sex and filled with anxiety. Brad Pitt as the trainer with no brains- his facial expressions are enough to send you off into paroxysms. Frances McDormand as the secretary at Hardbodies who is never satisfied with her body. John Malkovich as an ex-CIA man writing his memoirs and his wife, Tilda Swinton, as the meanest pediatrician. All of them seem to be having affairs or looking for something to escape their lives.
The CIA superior says to one of his agents, "Report back to me when it makes sense". Well it never does and this film is the best take-off of our intelligence services I have seen.
Highly Recommended. prisrob 07-05-09
The Coen Brothers Movie Collection (Fargo / Miller's Crossing / Barton Fink / Raising Arizona / Blood Simple)
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Movie Review: As Accurate a Portrayal of the 'Intelligence' Community ...
Summary: 5 Stars
... of the USA since Reagan as the film Fargo was of decent, ordinary Minnesotans. I'm not being ironic, friends; I mean exactly what I wrote. "Burn After Reading" falls short of documentary realism only in being better edited than most of what happens in DC. It is the peculiar genius of the Coen Brothers to be able to sum up the essential weirdness of wildly diverse 'cultures.' They nailed LA in 'The Big Lebowsky.' They encapsulated the mythic South in 'Oh Brother.' They are to cultural anthropology what music is to traffic noise, or Baudelaire is to the Paris phone book. They have distilled, in Burn After Reading, the intrinsic nasty stupidity of the 'Intelligence' community, the same people who have given us the best film noir moments of the Post-Cold War.
The only good thing about the mutant dog do virus strain that laid me out a few days ago (spread by the wheels of that wheelchair in which The Smirker made his escape) is that I've had a chance to catch up on a few films. Oh, I meant to see Burn After Reading eventually, despite the lukewarm response it's gotten from crrrrritics, but I might have forgotten. Thank you, flu! This film is a Coen Brothers masterpiece, far more interesting and well-crafted than 'No Country for Old Men', which the Brothers made only for money and to scam the idiots who award Oscars.
The casting of Burn After Reading has to be recognized as a manifestation of generous confidence on the part of the Coens in each of the over-exposed actors involved. Tilda Swinton, George Clooney, Brad Pitt? Who else would have believed they were capable of real character acting! Malkovich, yes, but he must have had enormous fun. I'm tempted to think the actors paid the producers of this film for the privilege of proving their craft. Frances McDormand of course is in reality the third Coen Brother... you know, like Groucho, Chico, and Harpo?
Here's my advice: Don't wait for the Bushy Tail Flu to lay you on your couch! Catch 'Burn After Reading' any way you can!
Movie Review: Best Comedy of 2008, and I'm not a Coen Fan.
Summary: 5 Stars
Burn after Reading has plenty of surprises and is well, wittily acted and directed throughout. "Good to the last drop" If I may quote Maxwell House Coffee. It's violent, Ironic, and has an ending that leaves you in stitches. Some comedies stretch a plot and its many low brow jokes, but we'll have none of that stuff here. Enjoy! OH, and it uses its Blue ribbon cast to its dreamed of capacity! What a bonus.
There are some really crazy moments in this film, that shocked me, and in a wierd sort of way made me laugh. The accidental shootings are portrayed visually as shocking, but the set up, and the treatment afterwards really has you laughing. It is a eerie mixture of C.I.A seriousness and goofed up comedy with its comments about our government operations. John Malkovich is nearly always wicked and funny at the same time, such as in Con Air, and here he again that likable, funny, screwed up character that we love.
The cast is huge, like the Oceans movies. No one is really left in the cold, as far as having their acting moments here, and that must be an accomplishment of the director. Getting his script across and utilizing his allstar cast cannot be easy to do. The movie moves along at a nicely edited pace, which is rather hard to get done right, but in the hands of the right editors, amazing the Coen brothers again, it is made to look easy. How much can two motivated people personally take care of on their own in a major motion picture: well the Cohen brothers really push that limit with having their hands on nearly every process of the making of this film.
I don't want to understate the story telling of this film. It is an odd, yet intelligently funny movie that ends in a way that leaves room for discussion. And some people really enjoy an abstract ending, as so many formulaic movies present you with a trademark happy or sad ending.