At our last book group meeting, Janice recommended "Before Night Falls," apropos of our discussion of Alma Guillermoprieto's memoir Dancing with Cuba. The movie is a biography of Reinaldo Arenas, a gay Cuban writer who briefly found fame before his death (suicide after battling AIDS) in 1990. Javier Bardem had the title role, and he was wonderful. We had seen him before in "The Sea Inside," and for some reason I thought he'd been in "Basquiat," but that was Jeffrey Wright. (Was Bardem originally supposed to be in "Basquiat," or am I just misremembering? I know they are both Julian Schnabel films, but I thought there was more of a connection than that.) Bardem has a remarkable screen presence, and it immediately became impossible to imagine that he wasn't Arenas. Anyhow, this was a fascinating look at a particular time and place that many of us don't know much about—much like Guillermoprieto's book. Oh, and while Googling a bit, I learned that Steven Soderbergh is directing "Che," a new movie starring (drumroll, please) Benicio Del Toro! And Bardem is in it, too. I think Bardem is a better actor, but Del Toro is hotter. OK, so I'm shallow in that way....
For no really good reason, "Before Night Falls" featured my other favorite hottie Johnny Depp in two little throw-away roles (a prison warden and a tranny inmate named Bon-Bon), as well as Sean Penn in a similarly meaningless cameo. I mention this only because it conveniently segues into a discussion of the next movie we watched, "The Assassination of Richard Nixon," starring Sean Penn. He plays—brilliantly—a total loser who is finally about to lose his mind, too. His marriage is over, his kids and dog don't care much about seeing him, his job sucks, he sees dishonesty everywhere, his small business loan application is taking forever to be processed (and is eventually, of course, denied), and Nixon is still in office. The movie is apparently based on a true story, although I don't know how much of it was fabricated for the screenplay. This movie is worth watching even if you don't end up with any kind of "lesson" learned from it; it's just a character study, after all.
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