Some­times, on sat­ur­day af­ter­noon­s, I am a cheap bas­tard. When that hap­pen­s, I go to the Elec­tric.

The Elec­tric is an old cin­e­ma, that shows two movies (usu­al­ly 6-­month old re­leas­es) for $4.50.

That´s 4.50 as in pe­sos. Rough­ly 1.5 Eu­ros. As I said, on sat­ur­day ater­noon­s, I am a cheap bas­tard.

The pro­gram­mer there is prob­a­bly a crotch­ety old geezer who has seen 89000 movies in fi­ty years, but the pair­ings he comes up with are a thing o beau­ty.

Right now, you can see Se­cret Win­dow with Tak­ing Lifes. Or Hi­dal­go with a Den­zel Wash­ing­ton movie. Or Start­sky & Hutch with Mas­ter and Com­man­der (!?!)

I chose the first menu, armed my­self with a ra­dioac­tive-yel­low drink called Pome­lo Neuss, and pre­pared to see Mr. Depp get weird.

I had read rather bad re­views of both movies, and was sur­prised to like both of them.

Se­cret Win­dow

I must con­fess I have read al­most ev­ery­thing Stephen King pub­lished (noone has read ev­ery­thing he pub­lishe, in­clud­ing him), and liked, when younger, a lot of it. I had­n´t read this one, though.

It´s a un­usu­al movie. The open­ing through-the-mir­ror shot is damn good, and makes lots of sense in the end.

Depp is a dis­turbed in­di­vid­u­al. Here he plays a crazed per­son.

Tak­ing lives

It fea­tures An­geli­na Jolie´s naked breast­s. That´s an au­to­mat­ic two-s­tar movie at least. It´s al­so not a bad thriller, al­though it has enough plot holes to drive a truck in­to them.

The dou­ble fea­ture (spoil­er­s)

Amaz­ing­ly, both movies are about the same sub­jec­t. In one, a man con­tains two soul­s, in an­oth­er, a soul so dis­likes his hu­man ves­sel, it re­for­mats it in­to oth­ers through mur­der.

The clin­i­cal term for the first case is schizophre­ni­a, for the sec­ond there is­n´t one be­cause it on­ly ex­ists in fic­tion.

The idea of a per­son loathing him­self so much he wish­es to be­come some­one else ap­pears for ex­am­ple in Les Mis­er­ables. Here we have Jean Val­jean as a psy­cho.

Jean Val­jean is shown good­ness by a priest, and de­cides to be­come good, and he be­comes a re­spect­ed man, then he is shown evil in law, and be­comes a fa­ther, and a fugi­tive.

Here, the as­sas­sin is shown con­tempt by his moth­er, and be­comes a her­mit crab, changin hu­man shell­s, be­com­ing some­one else for a few years at a time, over and over.

And Javert is played by Jolie, look­ing damn good in dis­crete white blous­es and black suits (she should keep dress­ing that way).

In Se­cret Win­dow Depp is ha­rassed by him­self, and ends the movie by em­brac­ing his oth­er per­son­al­i­ty, and is, in the end, thor­ough­ly hap­py with him­self.

As you can see, the char­ac­ters in both movies are vic­tims of self­-es­teem is­sues, of dif­fer­ent kind­s.

---

I am writ­ing this on a pub­lic com­put­er, and the key­board is stick­y. In par­tic­u­lar, the d of­ten fail­s. So, some let­ters may be miss­ing.