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May 6 movie: In Cold Blood. Another one of those "can't believe I hadn't seen it yet" movies. I don't think I need to describe the plot or worry about spoilers, as anyone who's interested has probably either seen this movie or Capote or read the book, or all three. So I can just say that it's excellent. Well worth seeing. The best parts I think are the music (Quincy Jones), the performances of Robert Blake and Scott Wilson as the killers, and especially the cinematography (Conrad Hall). I found the flat, documentary style extremely effective. The story hung together so well that at the time, I wondered how factual it was. According to reviews I read, it was very much so -- even down to filming in the actual house where the family was killed, and the actual gallows where the killers were executed. That's kind of creepy when you think about it.

I get the impression that an anti-death penalty statement intended in the movie. And I must say, if that was its aim, it failed. I'm strongly against the death penalty, and while watching this movie I was almost for it. If anyone in the world deserved to be executed, it was those guys. Their crime was so thuggish, cruel, and stupid. The movie made me feel sympathy for the killers, but it didn't make me feel much regret that they were put to death. Having Blake's character be the more likeable and more sympathetic of the two, and also be the actual killer, made the movie that much creepier. I wonder if that part was true.

My only quarrel with the movie was the reporter who shows up at the end and pontificates about the death penalty. Every time the character spoke, he pulled me out of the moment. I suppose he was intended as a stand-in for Capote, though of course he looked and sounded nothing like Capote. I think the movie would have been better off without him.

Speaking of Capote, I put Capote in my Netflix queue as soon as I was done watching this movie. It should be here tomorrow, yay!