In Honor of the Dark Knight I: Heath Ledger in Brokeback Mountain

Now let me set the record straight: I have nothing against gay people. I am a liberal and a strong proponent of gay marriage, so when I say that Brokeback Mountain makes me want to tear out and consume my own eyeballs, it is not driven by any prejudice or homophobia. No, I am only prejudiced against movies so intensely boring that I can feel my brain melting and pouring out of my ear as I watch them. When someone tells you that Brokeback Mountain is about cowboys fucking, they are referring to approximately thirty seconds of the film. The rest of it is cowboys staring off into space, cowboys grunting at each other, cowboys staring at sheep, cowboys staring off into space some more, and me snapping off my own fingers just to break up the monotony.

Heath Ledger doing the world a favor by strangling Jake Gyllenhaal

If anybody had placed a bet on who the two least expressive actors in history are, I hope they had their money on Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal. It’s possible that somebody cut Heath Ledger’s vocal chords before filming started, because his performance is a series of Neanderthal-like grunts and he can barely utter an entire sentence during this interminably long film. And Jake Gyllenhaal needs to take more acting lessons and less laughing gas if he ever wants to give a tolerable performance, but all I wanted to do was wipe that smirk off his face, preferably with a rag doused in sulfuric acid. Of course, that would have meant that something would have happened in this movie, and we can’t have that. Brokeback Mountain needed fewer superfluous shots of trees and more Ang Lee getting beaten with a sledge hammer, because his movie is the cinematic equivalent of getting an elephant tranquilizer shot into your eye: intense pain before the heavenly respite of sleep. Do yourself a favor, and skip straight to the sleep.