Sushi and a Movie Volume 2 – Seven Psychopaths

This planned series hasn’t really got off the ground, but I thought it would be a prime time to resume it, especially after the movie that I saw on Saturday. Unfortunately, the sushi part of the equation was less than stellar, so the bro and I have decided to forgo our idea of trying various sushi restaurants and instead sticking to what we know and the wonderful sushi at Banzai Tepanyaki. In the meantime, I would like to tell you about one of my favorite movies this year, but first a little background how we decided on the movie we were to watch.

I was out to lunch after the Home Show with the two most important ladies in my life, and Bill sent me a text inquiring about a movie and sushi. since I was currently eating, I couldn’t do sushi before the movie per our usual custom, but I was more than willing to watch a movie. I want to see Argo, partially because of the great reviews, but also because Ben Affleck has yet to let me down as a director. Granted, his directorial career is now only three films long, but the previous two — Gone Baby Gone and The Town — were surprisingly good given the ups and downs of Affleck’s acting career. Unfortunately, my less astute film fan of a brother wanted to watch Here Comes the Boom, the Kevin James movie about MMA. While I would probably watch this movie if someone forced me to, I could think of numerous other movies that I wanted to see first.What sealed our fate, and what ultimately decided that we would not be seeing Here Comes the Boom, was the fact that it is rated PG! Now, I don’t necessarily enjoy a bunch of fighting, and, though I tend to curse like a sailor on occasion, I can do without “naughty” language sometimes. But what do they have to cut out of a movie about MMA to make it PG? All the good fighting probably. anyone that has seen the movie can correct me if I’m wrong, but I imagine a lot of quick cuts away from the actual fighting, similar to how they did all the deaths in The Hunger Games adaptation. Furthermore, any movie that features Salma Hayek but gets a PG rating is wasting her ample talents.

Since he didn’t want to learn something about the real world and watch Argo, and I was hesitant to watch a sanitized movie starring the Zookeeper, I offered up one of my secondary options, a small film I had heard about but had difficulty describing called Seven Psychopaths. Though I had only watched a couple trailers online, any movie featuring Colin Farrell speaking with his natural Irish accent tend to be pretty decent. I’m a huge fan of In Bruges, and while I wasn’t expecting it to be that awesome going in, it ended up being pretty on par with it. I guess it ultimately makes sense, seeing as how Martin McDonagh wrote and directed both movies, but I digress.

In the movie, Farrell plays a screenwriter named Marty. He is struggling to come up with a screenplay called, fittingly enough, Seven Psycopaths, and has nothing beyond the title. He is also an alcoholic, which leads to problems with his lovely girlfriend — played by Abbie Cornish. Sam Rockwell plays his enabling best friend Billy, an actor that wants to help with the screenplay, so he plants ideas about the psychopaths in Marty, often when Marty has been drinking. Billy is also a part-time dog thief working in cahoots with a man named Hans, played  with just the right amount and humor by the excellent Christopher Walken.

Needless to say, but without giving too much away, hilarity ensues, Woody Harrelson shows up as a mob boss after his dog is stolen, and Marty, Billy, and Hans go on the run to avoid Woody’s character, who is trying to get his dog back. The movie gets very meta at a certain point — you’ll understand what I mean if you see it — and it ends slightly differently than you would expect. Overall, I thought it was an excellent movie, well written and directed, and most, if not all, of the actors involved do great in their roles. Tom Waits almost steals the movie as one of the psychopaths, and the second psychopath is someone that you don’t really expect, but once revealed, you feel pretty stupid for missing it. Definitely recommend the flick, and look forward to watching it again when it pops up on Blu-ray.

As for the sushi, we went to a place not far from the movie theater called Ichiban, and while the service was quick and the price was right (yet another sushi place with 50% off on all rolls), I left dissatisfied. I really enjoy eel when it comes to sushi, but the eel I had just didn’t taste as good as it has elsewhere. I don’t know if it was spoiled, but I do know that I wasn’t feeling great throughout much of the next day. Beyond the eel, quantities of certain ingredients in the rolls were often overpowering and it just wasn’t as good as Ozzie does at Banzai. Hence, the reason we will be going back there in the future, though I am still open to try other places if folks know where to get some really good sushi otherwise. This week, I will probably try and see Argo, even if Bill doesn’t want to go with me, but there is also part of me that wants to see Alex Cross despite the presence of Tyler Perry. I guess we’ll see.

Until next time…