May 8: Raising Arizona

Weird. Almost too much so.

I don't hate Nicholas Cage, and I actually rather like the Coen Brothers, but if this is supposed to be one of their best movies, I really missed something. It's about a convict who marries a cop, can't conceive a child, and so steals one from a rich couple who recently found themselves with quintuplets. The convict's buddies from jail break out and start dragging him back into his convenience store robbing ways, and then some shit happens, and his friends steal the baby to get the ransom. I think.

Perhaps what bugged me so much was the shots. It's a subtle thing, but there are a lot of strange angles and placement of characters and objects in the frame. It didn't age well, that much is for sure.

Though I didn't like it all that much, it is still definitely a Coen Brothers movie. They have a way of focusing on one object, like a person (this, Fargo), or a case full of money (No Country for Old Men) or a CD of real shit, the raw intelligence (Burn After Reading), that makes the story very easy to follow. I did like it because of that, but it was just far too strange. I mean, it's not Eraserhead, but it's too odd for its own good.