R

I keep wanting to flip around my numbers 2, 3, and 4. So I put them back where I had them when I started the list. But maybe consider them a tie. I haven't moved my number one, so I think I'm happy with that.

Number 4 - In Bruges

In Bruges. Here’s the biggest problem that I had with this movie. They seemed to market it (with what little marketing there was) as an anti-Bruges movie. It was strictly from Ray’s (Colin Farrel) POV, which was very anti-Bruges. OK, so that didn’t really bother me at all. But when I was in Europe in 2005, Bruges was one of the highlights of that trip (granted there were like 20-30 highlights, but still…)

I was in Belgium for three nights on that trip. I spent the first night in Brussels, which was OK. The town center is pretty amazing, but it’s fairly small, and was really only worth a three or four hour stop instead of overnight. (I should note that the chocolate was my absolute favorite anywhere. Yes, I preferred it to both Switzerland and France.) So I headed off to Bruges, knowing that I had two nights there, thinking that I had planned way too much time there. So I went there with possibly a similar perspective from Ray’s – expecting the worst. But, as I mentioned, it was awesome. The top of the bell tower, which features in some key scenes, was really cool, as well as renting a bicycle, a brewery tour, and sightseeing on the canal. This is my Belgium page from my very incomplete travelblog.

So In Bruges’s two leading characters, Ray and Ken, both go through their own interesting character arcs. The subplot involving Jimmy (the dwarf) and the movie being filmed at first seem like something their trying to add just to be quirky. But it works, and helps tie the movie together at the end.