Watching...

Layer Cake. "From the producer of Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels," says the DVD cover. Yeah, but he directed this one, and in doing so he makes it pretty clear that he's no Guy Ritchie. LS&2SB is a favorite of mine. Snatch wasn't too great, but at least it was amusing and the characters seemed to be enjoying themselves. Layer Cake is no fun. Right from the beginning, the unnamed main character defines himself as a businessman and says, "I'm not a gangster." Well who wants to watch a movie about a businessman, I mean unless it's Gordon Gekko or someone? There were some Ritchie-esque colorful gangsters in this movie, but they were bit players and nothing was shown from their point of view. And what's with the main character not having a name? Ritchie threw out great names like Rockefeller handed out dimes: Soap, Nick the Greek, Rory Breaker, Barry the Baptist, Hatchet Harry, Dog, Turkish, Brick Top, Cousin Avi, etc. Was this "Mr. X" stuff a joke on that?

Daniel Craig is the new James Bond. (I still think it should've been Samuel L. Jackson. "Shake that shit, bitch, don't stir the muthafucka, muthafucka!"). After seeing Layer Cake, I could be convinced that South Korean scientists created Daniel Craig in a lab while trying to clone Steve McQueen. Unfortunately, I think they spilled some of Kevin Costner's DNA (ewww!) into the mixture. Maybe his bland coolness will work as James Bond. It didn't help in this movie, which cried out for the kind of ironic hipster pose that dripped from every frame of LS&2SB.