Tilda Swinton, age 48, Wikimedia Commons

We saw the movie Burn After Reading last week.  We loved it. I’ll spare you the full review (there’s a good one here), but I did have a couple of thoughts on the movie that I wanted to share with you.

The movie features actresses that can actually act

It was refreshing to see actresses in their forties and fifties, that look their age, and ARE ABLE TO MOVE THEIR FACES.

Frances McDormand, age 51, jtlondon. Sagging skin! Wrinkles!
And a wonderful ability to move her face

This is rare in the film industry, where actresses’ faces are tightly pulled by plastic surgery, frozen with Botox, and filled to the brim with injectable fillers. All of these procedures result in unnatural-looking faces that can’t express emotion. These actresses can’t act – a minor detail, it seems, in Hollywood.

Meg Ryan’s famous “fish lips” are part of her battle with aging.
She is 47 years old. pmo

Women ruin men’s lives?

At first, I was somewhat unhappy with what I considered as the film’s message that women are cold and calculated and destroy men with their selfish behavior. At the end of the movie, the leading female characters get exactly what they wanted. The leading men do not fare as well. The men’s ruin is often a result of the women’s actions, directly or indirectly.

But I have to admit the male characters are also presented in a less-than-flattering light. They are weak, stupid losers who have no idea what they’re doing and are scared of their own shadows. One of them is a sex addict, the other is an alcoholic and the third is, simply put, a moron, albeit a very funny one.

Bottom line

Go see Burn After Reading. If nothing else, it is a highly entertaining movie.  Absolutely worth the $10/ticket and even the babysitter, if you need one.

Similar Posts:

• Stop Showing Me Your Post Baby Body!
• Sex And The City: I Hate It Too
• Control a Woman Remote Control
• International Women’s Day 2008