Review: Burn After Reading

Links (6)

Venice film festival: That sinking feeling
Published 8/27/2008 by Andrew Pulver at Film: Film blog | guardian.co.uk
... . Not the city itself; it seems in rude, touristy health, even if it is sinking slowly into the sea. But is the festival headed reached a tipping point of irrelevancy, as this year's cupboard has been lambasted on various sides as being strangely threadbare. Apart from the fuss over the opening film, the Coen brothers' Burn After Reading , there's very little to stir the soul of anyone beyond the hardened festivalgoer. Sure, there are films from Abbas Kiarostami, Takeshi Kitano and Pupi Avati, but they are not exactly bleeding-edge film-makers, any of them. Hollywood is here ...

Venice ‘08: Day 1
Published 8/27/2008 by Nick Plowman at Fataculture
... “Burn After Reading” by Joel and Ethan Coen Andrew Pulver gives the film four stars out of five, saying “The film itself may be a bit of an afterthought down here on the Lido. Clocking in at a crisp 95 minutes, Burn After Reading is a tightly wound, slickly plotted spy comedy that couldn’t be in bigger contrast to the Coens’ last film, the bloodsoaked, brooding No Country for Old Men. Burn, in comparison, is bit of a bantamweight: fast moving, lots of attitude, and uncorking a killer punch when it can.” ...

First 'Burn After Reading' Reviews Suggest It's Either Brilliant Or Crap [Perception]
Published 8/27/2008 by Seth at Defamer
... Guardian uses the word "triumph" and gives it four stars out of five, calling it "a tightly wound, slickly plotted spy comedy that couldn't be in bigger contrast" to No Country for Old Men, but that the Coens film it most closely resembles is "the divorce-lawyer comedy Intolerable Cruelty." Everyone gets a chance to shine comically, but "Pitt, in fact, gets the best of the funny stuff, [though] has by some way the least screen time of all the principal cast." [The Guardian] ...

A gala dinner at Venice is like a massive wedding where all your relatives have had plastic surgery
Published 8/28/2008 by Andrew Pulver at Film: Film blog | guardian.co.uk
Brad Pitt and George Clooney Brad Pitt and George Clooney (with disenchanted festival-goer in the background). Photo: Reuters/Max Rossi Last night was all about the Coen brothers' Burn After Reading - or more specifically, George'n'Brad, the buddy-buddy double act who briefly reunited for the film's ...

Is ‘Burn After Reading’ a Good Stupid Coen Brothers Comedy? Or a Bad Stupid Coen Brothers Comedy?
Published 8/28/2008 at Vulture
... like their two subsequent crappy ones (The Lady Killers and Intolerable Cruelty). Is it? No one can agree! "Those who relish this movie might treat it as the second coming of The Big Lebowski," says The Hollywood Reporter, who liked it. "Nothing about the project's execution inspires the feeling that this was ever intended as anything more than a lark, which would be fine if it were a good one," says Variety, who didn't. The Guardian loved it and says the Coen film it most resembles is Intolerable ...

Burn After Reading Reviews - Disappointing
Published 9/3/2008 by Sheridan Passell at Movie Moron
... or I didn’t figure out what they’re attempting. I must be like Harry or Osborne, pretending to a sophistication I lack. Burn After Reading is a movie about stupidity that left me feeling stupid.” Hollywood Reporter - “Those who relish this movie might treat it as the second coming of The Big Lebowski; those who don’t might wonder at a story in which no character has a level head.” Guardian [UK] - “A tightly wound, slickly plotted spy comedy that ...