Movie: In Bruges

For those of you unfamiliar with Hartford: Cinema City is the city’s primary ‘art’ movie theater…the place you have to go to see films that aren’t in wide release. There’s also Cinestudio (Trinity College) and the Criterion in West Hartford, but Cinema City still seems to get the best new indie/artsy-fartsy releases, from what I’ve seen. Cinema City also happens to be located in the absolute ass-end of nowhere. Its closest neighbor is a sewage treatment plant, and the brightest lights in its neighborhood are at the porno superstore up the street. Basically what I’m saying is that if I’m going to Cinema City, it’s for a movie that I really want to see.

I really didn’t think that In Bruges was going to be good enough to warrant the trip out to the Mad Maxville neighborhood of Hartford. First of all, Colin Farrell is a bit of a twat, one of those actors for whom you can name more of the rehab clinics he’s stayed at than movies he’s starred in. And the trailer for the movie looked ok, but more like a Netflix movie than something to see in the theater.

Anyway, I was coerced into going, and I’m very glad I was. This movie is worth all the hype that it’s been getting. One measure of a good movie: you walk out of the theater feeling like you just saw something new, something you haven’t seen several permutations of before. Another measure: you’re still thinking about it more than a day later. In Bruges passed on both counts.