Recently Viewed: In Bruges. Directed by Martin McDonagh, 2008. An enjoyable gangster farce that riffs on Harold Pinter's one act play The Dumb Waiter: two Irish hitmen cool off in Bruge after a messy job only to find that one of them is to kill the other. Well acted (especially fine performance by Colin Farrell), graphically violent, and very funny. The farcical plot has all the tightness of a good Seinfeld episode and the rollicking energy of Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie at their best. Ralph Fiennes appears as a mob boss who elects to take matters into his own hands as he begins to lose control of his underlings. He seems to be channeling Ben Kingsley's performance in "Sexy Beast" but somehow his cockney accent seems fakier. ***
Belphegor: Phantom of the Louvre. Directed by Jean-Paul Salome, 2001. A fun (but silly) supernatural thriller about a mummy's spirit that takes over the body of Sophie Marceau (can you blame him?) who, in turn, prowls the Louvre in order to gather certain artefacts to use for some nefarious purpose (I forget what). It's based on the 1927 novel by Arthur Bernede, who had a colorful life as a writer and producer of pulp novels and adventure films. Apparently, he and his production company (which included Gaston Leroux) produced novels and films simultaneously for the excitable French public. Belphegor was also made into a French TV miniseries in the mid 1960s, clips of which are interwoven as flashbacks in this 2001 production. Like an amusement park haunted house, this film isn't very scary, but somehow still fun. **
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