"Are you a Mexican, or a Mexican't?"

Meg and I went out for dinner and a movie tonight ("Hey, that sounds like a date! You're married now, you don't have to go on dates, especially with your wife!"), and the movie was Once Upon A Time In Mexico, which I've been looking forward to for a while now.
It's loud, stupid, audacious and absurd. And I loved it. It's absolutely brilliant, harking back to the classic westerns its title references and putting a modern spin on things all at once. There's some surprising political comment in there, there's a villain wrapped in bandages, there's a blind gunfighter with a kid sidekick, there's touching emotional flashbacks, there's absurdly audacious stunts, there's good characters, bad characters, and ugly characters, and there's a remote-controlled exploding guitar case.
One of the reasons that the Hellboy comic is so successful is because Mike Mignola puts together all of the ideas that he thinks are fun (like Nazis, Rasputin, aliens, demons, etc), shakes them up, and delivers them with some nifty visuals. This is the filmic equivalent of that (and hopefully, so too will the Hellboy film!).
If I have a criticism, it's that there's almost too much going on, so some of the cool stuff isn't played with enough. Hopefully though, that means there'll be a special edition dvd packed with goodies.
Next up, Underworld.
(And no, that's not Catherine Zeta Jones in the picture...)