Connie and I figured we’d catch a movie on Sunday — easy enough, right? Well, I clicked through to movies.yahoo.com to scope out the listings for our area. I looked over each of the theaters but paid extra attention to the hanful of indie theaters in our area. And, once I scrolled down to The Angelika I noticed that The Matador was showing.
“The Matador?”, I thought to myself. “The Pierce Brosnan flick where he plays a dysfunctional hitman?” I clicked through to the link for “Matador, The” and, yeah, it looked like my memory was about right. Just to be sure, Connie and I watched the trailer and it still looked pretty good.
We headed off to the theater, bought tickets, almost bought some bottled water — except that it was $3.65/bottle — and then headed into the theater. After a few previews, the lights dimmed and the movie began. Among the first scenes features a character watching tv (as evident by the scan lines filling the frame) of a woman being sawed in half. Um, wha? To paraphrase Inigo Montoya, the thought that entered my head at that moment was “I don’t think this movie is what we think it is.”
After a quick session of telephone game-like conferring with my film-watching companions, we agreed to discretely mosey out. Obviously, there was a collision somewhere with the “Matador” namespace. At that point, we decided to stroll through the theater and find something else. We settled on Al Franken: God Spoke (trailer) which turned out better than I thought. (All the same, if you’re thinking about seeing it, it’ll probably be just as good on your CRT at home.)
Upon getting home, I thought that some detective work was in order. I mean, what happened there? I double-checked the listings at movies.yahoo.com which, sure enough, showed The Matador. And, clicking through to the info link for the movie matched up with the IMDB page for the movie we thought we were seeing. Then, I checked on The Angelika's Now Showing page and saw that they’re not showing The Matador. They’re showing some schlock entitled Matador - Viva Pedro. For sheesh. The moral of the story? If you want to see the presumably-funny Pierce Brosnan flick, I’d recommend trying a video store — it was apparently released on DVD on July 4th.
Matt and I could have warned you about that. You were not the only ones affected by the mixup, which we first heard about on Saturday morning.
Matador is part of Viva Pedro, the Pedro Almodovar retrospective that’s been running at the Angelika since last month. I take some umbrage at you dismissing it as schlock, though I fully recognize that Almodovar is not for everyone, and it cannot be denied the man has some schlocky tendencies,which are part of his greatness and appeal. You might have liked it if you’d stuck around.
Hello, Julie! Granted, maybe I was a bit tough on Matador. I think my reaction was due in part to my expectations at the time — I was looking forward to a lighthearted comedy and ended up with woman + circular saw.
In any case, if you run into future movie mix-ups (or almost-mix-ups), feel free to drop me a line :).
I hope this event doesn’t discourage you from adding the originally intended Matador to your Netflix queue. Funny enough, Jenny and I watched Brosnan’s Matador at the Angelika, I think back in January.
If you like black comedy and/or movies about hitmen (which we both do) I think you’ll enjoy it.
Unfortunately, I think it will likely play better on a widescreen format, be it in the cinema or on a widescreen TV. The cinematography was rich. The soundtrack was fun too.