Several years ago I had a job where I had to commute across the country every week and even though it paid really well I hated it but the point is that on those plane rides I would watch movies on my iPad and one trip I watched Train to Busan and when I went to the office that Monday I told the only friend I ever had there how it was the best zombie movie ever and he was all fuck yeah I gotta see it and then this other dude that sat in the room with us did the whole “well it’s probably hard to be objective when you’re stuck on a plane and that’s the only thing to do” and in my head I thought eat shit sucker that’s my opinion but I’m a professional and I didn’t and I don’t remember exactly what I said but the next trip out there my friend had watched it and he thought it was epic too so we high fived and found that one guy and punched him in the stomach yelling how’s this for objective over and over until he relented and said you’re right you’re right you must be right but that last part didn’t happen at all and who knows what happened with that guy anyway but my overall point is that I watched this western called The Thicket with Peter Dinklage and I liked it (with some nitpicks) but there’s always the counter argument that I had just watched two really shitty movies from the early 70s that sucked ass so maybe my objectivity was clouded and it was nice to see something with some good money spent on it and it was HD and had good acting and all of that jazz but in the end, really, aside from constantly seeing a morphed version of Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke in their kid’s face every time which was super distracting in my brains, I thought this was pretty good. And I’m not talking about Maya Hawke because – and I know she pops up here when she can but my good friend Cinema Parrot Disco said I’m not allowed to make goo-goo eyes at Maya Hawke because I’m old enough to be her great great great grandfather even though I’ve always made goo-goo eyes at her mom – I’m talking about the son Levon who has the eyes of his mom and that younger pretty boy face his dad had when he was a youth. Maybe he still does, I don’t know he’s not my type and I never even liked him until I watched The Good Lord Bird but that’s that and despite that I liked The Thicket. The following image is not Maya Hawke who I do not make goo goo eyes at but her mother who had always been the subject of my goo goo eyes:

Speaking of things like that I also never really liked Juliette Lewis except for From Dusk til Dawn and I think that’s because I hated Natural Born Killers and I think that’s because my beloved grandpa always reminded def me of Rodney Dangerfield and in NBK he’s some sort of child molesting woman beater and that shit doesn’t fly with me so I never really gave her the time of day and then I watched – what was it called – Ma – and I liked her in that and then Yellowjackets so she’s on my I Like You list but not in the goo-goo eyes type of way but she’s in this really out of typical Juliette Lewis-ness and I thought she was great. I mean, I’d take her bowling or something after this deal but not in some romantic way because I’m hitched but like “hey good job I’ll buy you a couple of frames” type of way. And maybe a pitcher of warm bowling alley beer but we’d have to see how much money I had. *shrugs* maybe one day we’ll get to what this movie is about.

Of note: it also has Mason Blair and …… James Hetfield in it as deputized bounty hunter guys. And I thought Hetfield did a pretty decent job for kind of hanging around and looking gruff I guess.

In The Thicket a young woman picks wildflower. This is not some pretentious French symbolic art piece – a young woman is out picking wild flowers. I believe this is to show the contrast between simpler times and the onset of industrial revolution as a sort of early form of motorcycle comes screaming down the road very very noisily, disrupting nature’s stillness and stoic silence. “What the fuck is this fucking shit?” she must be thinking but surely not because she’s a sweet nice pure chaste girl who picks wildflowers.

Eventually we learn that she is the sister of a boy who is played a youth who emerged from Uma Thurman at some point. They are being visited by a relative because their own parents are dead there in the house – maybe from the croop or the pox I don’t know if they really said – but that relative lights everything on fire and they take off on a horse pulled wagon to face the devil on their own terms. Soon enough as they are set to cross a river, they encounter some bandits who do some shootin’ and stealin’ and killin’ and we move on to meet our next group of characters: a couple of vampires in the Deep South oh wait wrong movie.

Our lead, having freed himself from Thurman’s ovaries, comes into a small town looking for help for his kidnapped, wildflower pickin’ sister. He coms across a man digging a grave and tries to enlist his help or buy his motorized wagon but he is rebuffed as the wagon belongs to Dinklage’s bounty hunting, stargazing character and he’ll be along shortly after he knifes a guy in a bar fight. Thus we lead ourselves into the guts of The Thicket: a young man hires two bounty hunters to help him hunt down an outlaw and her gang who stole his sister and two deputized bounty hunters try to track down the short son of a bitch who knifed their boss back in the bar. A lot of it looks snowy and cold which I really liked and Juliette Lewis was fun.

If I had to really pick something I really really liked it would have to be the big shoot out, out at the cabin and I think the way they scored it was excellent. It seemed realistic but fun and not just ‘everyone has a shitload of bullets’. Speaking of that, when I’m writing this I’m in Chicago on vacation and last night I went down to a 7-11 to get some beer and waters and two guys came in and they were making a lot of noise and some guy in a wheelchair was out front yelling at me to buy him cigarettes and when he didn’t he yelled at me like i didn’t like his skin color and I about shitloaded my pants, I’ll tell you that. Thankfully I made it out of there without any incidents either to my body or from my body but I’m not used to that type of action in my life. I don’t think this is the one but it’s similar.

Well so yeah I liked The Thicket – what can i say Cinema Schminema. I thought Dinklage was really good although he always seems to be the same type of character but it works. I think my first introduction to him was Death at a Funeral – damn that was funny. If I only my brains could get past Levon Hawke.

FILED UNDER: You know why I hate Ethan Hawke? Because he got to make it with Uma Thurman and not me. I mean come on. What did he have back then that I didn’t? Huh now listen here for just a m