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The Counselor, Cormac McCarthy

June 9, 2014 by Tim Riley

penelope cruz

penelope cruz (Photo credit: crguerra)

I got sucked into by the cast too, enjoying Cameron Diaz’s wicked villain and marveling at the word “goner” stenciled on Penelope Cruz’s forehead from the opening pillow talk with Fassbender. But trashy seems too kind for this somber meditation on decapitation, with all the slow dipping mechanisms “artfully” called out ahead of time, and the sense of foreboding hurling itself sloppily through dialogue way too bland for Javier Bardem’s decadent mousse. Confounding how one of our prized novelists slums in Hollywood with degenerate glee.

ALSO: Why hasn’t anybody else written about Springsteen’s bizarrely literal rendition of Suicide’s “Dream Baby Dream,” which resembles a high school production of Blue Velvet?

MAD MEN: enjoyed the half-finale, which finally gave Robert Morse his long-awaited musical number, his only pitch, and picked up on how scary the moon landing/walk seemed to those left behind. Still puzzled how somebody who works so hard to evoke the era willfully ignores race.

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  • Does ‘The Counselor’ have the best cast of any 2013 movie?

Filed Under: DRAFTS

Tim Riley

NPR critic, Author, Emerson College Journalist and Campus Speaker Tim Riley contributes to HERE AND NOW out of WBUR Boston. Read More…

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