Garrulus Grommeler

The final movie in Robert Rodriguez's pulp Western, Once Upon a Time in México is not only chock full of stars, it's also chock full of gun-totin' action. Starring in this movie are Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek, Johnny Depp, Mickey Rourke, Eva Mendes, Danny Trejo, Enrique Iglesias, Marco Leonardi, Cheech Marin, Ruben Blades, and Willem Dafoe. With names like that on the roster, I think it's fair to say that this movie far surpassed the $50,000 budget for El Mariachi . Wouldn't you agree? It was fun. It was kooky. And, for Johnny Depp's character, it was outta sight.

I had wanted to watch El Mariachi, the first movie in this trilogy. I'd rented it, in fact, but . . . for whatever reason, the DVD would only play the director's track. Nothing personal, but I wanted to watch the movie, not listen to Robert Rodriguez. So, I had to skip El Mariachi, and moved right on to Desperado , starring Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek, and featuring a guest appearance by none other than Quentin Tarantino. It wasn't bad, but I preferred the duology of movies Rodriguez and Tarantino did together more recently, Grindhouse , Rodriguez's contribution being Planet Terror .

This evening, I watched The Code , a heist movie that involves the theft of two "mystery" Fabergé Imperial Eggs made in 1917. Ripley (Morgan Freeman) is a known art thief in New York City who runs into Gabriel (Antonio Banderas) on a New York subway train while casing the same job to steal some diamonds. Ripley then ropes Gabriel into joining him on the heist. Things turn nasty when Alexandra (Radha Mitchell), Ripley's god-daughter, is kidnapped by the KGB. In a story that involves the KGB, the NYPD, and the FBI, this is a fun movie that is, as the description on the DVD case describes, "full of deceit, thievery and twists at every turn." And that ain't no lie.