I caught Once Upon a Time in Mexico last night with my favorite Nordic Stud, and most of the reviews you’ll see at RT are more or less on target. The plot is a big, bloody mess, but not to the point that the movie’s not entertaining in spite of itself. It’s silly, but its two predecessors were silly in the same way - and they didn’t even have Johnny Depp, still looking better than anyone in his forties has any right to look and with more talent in his gaping eye sockets than most people have in all of their orifices combined. He’s perfect for his role, of course, but he’s perfect for nearly any role in which he ends up. Good old Antonio plays good old Antonio, and he does what he’s supposed to do. And Willem Dafoe never fails to remind me of why it is that I like him so much. (And, fantastically, the slutty mariachi dude who had me thinking “Gosh, that slutty mariachi dude looks a lot like Enrique Iglesias after a haircut” turns out to be, in fact, Enrique Iglesias.)

If I may go off on a sort of Johnny Depp fangirl tangent for just a moment, it seems to me that in most of his recent roles, I pick up traces of Raol Duke, and it’s always great. It was more obvious in Pirates than in Mexico, of course, but perceptible nonetheless.