Nice Ladies--Chapter Two: Rachel Weisz

Editorial comment: The Nice Ladies series of my blog has been renamed from Ladies of the Hour. Something about the title Ladies of the Hour never sat quite right with me. Maybe it made them sound like hookers or something, I don't know.

Nice Ladies makes me think of my old roommate Sean. Instead of saying a woman was hot, he'd say she's a nice lady. Better than I want to spend days violating her but not quite I'd sure like to meet her mother. Maybe she's a nice lady is better than I'd sure like to meet her mother. I mean after all, just because a woman is comely doesn't necessarily mean that meeting her mother is automatically going to be a pleasurable experience.

Onward...

Chapter Two: Rachel Weisz

Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?

I've been a Rachel Weisz fan since The Mummy. I've gotten to the point with that movie where I can't watch it with a straight face or without rolling my eyes but that's definitely not the case with Ms. Weisz. The next thing I saw her in that not only sticks in my mind and doesn't have anything to do with long-dead Egyptians was her role in the grossly underrated About a Boy. She played the love interest of Hugh Grant's emotionally damaged cad whose plan to pick up women backfires and even though Weisz didn't get too much of a chance to shine with Grant stealing the show, she was very enjoyable to look at.

Next up was her role in Neil LaBute's The Shape of Things in which she pitch-perfectly played the archetypal art school student whose final project was inspired in the same way that John Doe's plan in Seven was brilliant. Twisted, but magnificent. The next few years were peppered with other movies she's done which I really liked, but didn't exactly love the hell out of. Confidence, Constantine, The Constant Gardener (for which she won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar) to name a few.

Then I saw The Fountain. Directed by her baby daddy Darren Aronofsky, The Fountain was a head trip I've not seen the likes of since. It was a gorgeous movie that really hearkened back to 2001: A Space Odyssey. So much to the point where I had to go to Wikipedia just to confirm what the hell I thought happened. The Fountain was a sci-fi love story that spanned over a thousand years and three parallel stories. Not to mention a damn impressive movie and a Grade-A head fuck.

But it was my last trip to the movies that inspired me to write about Ms. Weisz. And that trip was to see The Brothers Bloom in which she played an eccentric heiress who was the mark of two con men brothers played by Adrien Brody and Mark Ruffalo. While the entire cast did a really bang-up job it was Weisz who stole the show with her lovely whackjob performance.

So why is Rachel Weisz a nice lady? She's British, she's foxy, she's not afraid to get naked in some of her movies (even when she's rather pregnant), she's a great actress, she's got great taste (she's with Aronofsky and not a professional athlete) and she's in great movies. Oh, and she's making a damn fine case for me to get over my fear of snakes.