True Grit

This is not John Wayne’s Rooster. True Grit is a film that is completely Coen. This is the reason that films get made. It is a pristine example of all that is wonderful and inspiring with the art and craft of film.

Like I said, this is not a John Wayne movie; though both of the True Grit films are based off the same source material the Coen’s version is like a rouge wave washing away the softer edges and homey feel of the classic. This film is rough, gritty, dirty and tough – much like what I imagine the reality of that day was. Mattie Ross is determined to get justice for the death of her father, and Rooster is the tool that she uses. It’s a wild world, and definitely not a safe one.

Unlike the original, in this film Mattie Ross is played at her true age – 14. Taking the mantle this time is newcomer Hailee Steinfeld, and I have to say the power of this performance reminds me very much of Anna Paquin’s burst into the acting scene with The Piano. For such a young talent, the maturity of her skill is evident and startling. Steinfeld holds her own against Damon, Brolin & Bridges, usually stealing the scene and is undoubtedly the most memorable character in the film.

If I had a vote in the Oscar nominations I’d throw my hat in for Jeff Bridges again. I know he won last year for a fantastic performance in Crazy Heart but I have to say that his turn as Rooster Cogburn is one of my favorite performances of the year. This Cogburn is rough, anti-social and has a wicked sense of humor. Bridges & the Coen’s bring out the changes in Cogburn very subtly as he goes from grumpy old marshall who cares about no one, to the man willing to risk anything to help Mattie.

There’s really nothing I didn’t like about this movie. With every Coen film that comes out I can see their talent growing – something that shouldn’t be possible for two people that are already some of the finest artists working today. True Grit is a masterpiece.



Directors: The Brothers Coen


Mattie Ross: You must pay for everything in this world, one way and another. There is nothing free except the grace of God.

Tron Legacy

I’ve been seeing pieces of Tron Legacy for three years – I can’t tell you how excited I was to finally see the pieces put together in finished form. I remember all the milesetones for this films production – most of them happened at Comic-Con: when they did test shots to show to see if the audience even had interest in a sequel to Tron, when they changed the name from Tr2n to Tron Legacy, when Daft Punk was announced as doing the score, and when the cast was revealed to include Bruce Boxleitner and a 35 year old Jeff Bridges. The point is, Tron Legacy had big shoes to fill for me, and I am happy to say that it succeeded.

This is a pretty similar to the original but adds to the mythos nicely. This time it’s Kevin Flynn’s son Sam that gets beamed onto the grid, after spending a lifetime wondering why his father disappeared. What he finds is that the world his father once told him bedtime stories about is real, and that his father’s creations have gone haywire – revolting against the users they once adored.

What I love most about the Tron films is that they are richly layered with a subtext that enhances what’s happening about the story – and in the case of these films that is a religious subtext about God and his creation. In the case of Tron, Kevin Flynn is an accidental God, but he attempts to step up to his duties nonetheless. This is why I love science fiction, the power of metaphor exists in this genre in a very unique way.

Jeff Bridges returns to Tron Legacy in two roles – Kevin Flynn and CLU, the villain of the piece. CLU is a much lauded visual effect as they managed to make him look like a 35 year old version of Jeff Bridges. While this was much needed for the story to work, and a rather cool gimmick, the effect didn’t thrill me. CGI is still not at the place where we can replicate the natural, involuntary things that human skin or eyes do; CLU’s skin doesn’t wrinkle correctly by the eyes, or pull quite right over his cheek bones and his skin is just a tad too cgi-looking. However, CLU is a fine villain and works perfectly as the opposite of Kevin Flynn.

Kevin Flynn is much matured in this film, something that makes sense as he’s been trapped inside the grid for twenty years. While Flynn is still free-wheeling and gifted he’s finally learned the price of being a creator, and what the price of perfection truly is. Bridges is in fine form and obviously enjoys playing the character he originated at another stage in life. Despite re-embodying Flynn, what stands out to me every time post-Lebowski that I see Bridges is how much Jeff Bridges truly is the Dude and Tron is no exception – Flynn has pieces of the Dude in him. He’s a great actor, and his own person, but I see the Dude come out somehow in every performance.

While I think that Tron Legacy is much more accessible than the original, I do think it may end up suffering the same fate as the original and in the long run, confuse the masses. However, I don’t think that a cult following, and geek worship is a bad thing…




Director:: Joe Kosinski



Kevin Flynn: The Grid. A digital frontier. I tried to picture clusters of information as they traveled through the computer. Ships, motorcycles. With the circuits like freeways. I kept dreaming of a world I thought I'd never see. And then, one day... I got in.

Iron Man

A brilliant hero film. A brilliant character piece. The movie my Superman movie will have to live up to one day.

The Big Lebowski

All Hail The Big Lebowski
Originally uploaded by cote

The Big Lebowski is exactly what the brothers Coen do best – a quirky film about morons. And what is The Dude if not a loveable moron? Set during the Golf War, The Big Lebowski is started by a tale of mistaken identity, that leads our main character into the role of armature gumshoe when the “big” Lebowski’s wife disappears and all The Dude wants is to get paid and bowl.

Robert Altman may have made movies that were about nothing in the sense that they were a slice of his characters life, but the it’s the Coen’s that have truly mastered the art of making films about nothing and The Big Lebowski is a classic example of this. A great many things occur in The Big Lebowski and yet a traditional, filmic plot never appears; in fact, evey event that should be a ground breaking plot point simply fizzles out and turns out to be less than important to the film as a whole. It’s beautiful, brilliant, hilarious and surprisingly hard to do well.

In a career or brilliant films and characters, Jeff Bridges fits The Dude perfectly. He is a joy to watch and after seeing him at awards shows for Crazy Heart I am pretty sure that one of the reasons The Dude seems so authentic is because Bridges is really that laid back and relaxed.

As amazing as The Dude is, for me Walter Sobchak (John Goodman) stole the show. Walter is The Dude’s best friend and a Vietnam War vet who wants to relate everything back to his time in Nam. He is loud, bostrious, angry and everything that you want a crazy Coen character to be. The only reason Goodman doesn’t steal Bridges’s scenes is because the Coen’s manage to raise the two consistently to the level of the other, playing off each other beautifully to create part of the magic of the world of The Big Lebowski.

Along with Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang, The Big Lebowski might hold some of my favorite narration in a film – ever. For no apparent reason the film is narrated by a cowboy patron of the bar at the bowling alley in the film, and he’s a narrator that looses his train of thought and admires The Dude for no other reason than he admires his style. It’s a fantastic way to open and close the film, rivaling the FBI officials in Burn After Reading.

The Big Lebowski is a cult classic for a reason. If like me, you’re a Coen fan that hasn’t seen it I highly recommend changing that. I did.

Directed & Written By: Joel & Ethan Coen
Jeffrey Lebowski/The Dude: Jeff Bridges
Walter Sobchak: John Goodman
Maude Lebowski: Julianne Moore
Donny: Steve Buscemi
Jeffrey Lebowski/The Big LEbowski: David Huddleston
Brandt: Philip Seymour Hoffman
Bunny Lebowski: Tara Reid

The Dude: And, you know, he's got emotional problems, man.
Walter Sobchak: You mean... beyond pacifism?

Crazy Heart

Bad Blake used to be a big name in country music, but now he’s on tour going bar to bar using pick up bands as he goes. Bitter and upset about life and that if former side man Tommy Sweet is now a country giant in his own right, Bad lives up to his name, proving that living like there’s no tomorrow isn’t exclusive to rock stars. When Bad agrees to an interview with San Antonio reporter Jean Craddock the two soon start a relationship that leads Bad into a new phase of his life as he continues to plummet towards rock bottom.

Crazy Heart is a great movie, the kind of movie that makes you care about a character far more than you should for a fictional being. But Bad Blake grabs you, flaws and all. I have no doubt that for this role Jeff Bridges is going to get nominated and probably win the best actor Oscar. Bridges has always been phenomenal, and with Bad Blake he proves that his talent has only gotten better with each movie he’s appeared in. SAG and the Golden Globes have already recognized him, so unless an upset happens the Oscar will be coming his way in a few months.

I really liked that Crazy Heart is not a biopic. Even though biopics are limited to the life of the person they are portraying, too many of them seem to be absolutely formulaic – the rise to the top and struggles to stay there, boy looses girl, family, etc. and ends happily. Crazy Heart didn’t have to do that. Going in as an audience member you are only learning about Bad Blake what director Scott Cooper wants you to learn. Bad used to be in top form with hits on the chart, and when we meet Bad the shine has worn off his star and he’s only remembered by the fans that have aged with him. Booze and divorces have ravaged him and all he’ll complain about is how he can’t get back on top because of Tommy Sweet. This is a film not about a rise to fame, but Bad’s struggle to live the life he has now and find a way not to regain his fame, but the passion that made his music what it was.

What I loved most about this movie was the relationship between Tommy and Bad. For most of the movie Bad does nothing but complain about Tommy or refuse to talk about him at all, but when we finally meet Tommy, Bad has a whole different attitude. He’s envious of Tommy. He knows Tommy deserves to be where he is and wants to be there too; on Tommy’s end he is nothing but gracious and appreciative of Bad and everything Bad did to get him where he is today and it pains him to see what Bad has become and that Bad won’t let him help. Instead of turning into All About Eve the film replaced hatred with a heart and soul that is completely human.

I can’t praise Crazy Heart enough. I know this film will get a few Oscar nods, but I honestly hope with a larger best picture race this year, that perhaps Crazy Heart can manage to grab a best picture nomination as well.

Director & Writer: Scott Cooper
Bad Blake: Jeff Bridges
Jean Craddock: Maggie Gyllenhaal
Tommy Sweet: Colin Farrell

The Men Who Stare at Goats

Bob Wilton is a small time journalist whose wife has just left him. Distraught he goes to Iraq at the start of the Gulf War hoping to get permission to cover the war; however, what he finds is much better – Lyn Cassady, who claims to be a former member of the Army’s psychic spy unit and on a mission to find his former commanding officer Bill Django. Together Lyn & Bob journey across the Iraq desert and encounter civilians, terrorists and independent contractors as Bob slowly draws from Lyn what the unit he belonged to was like.

What drew me to The Men Who Stare at Goats was the quirky concept and the cast. The cast delivers, the concept stops just short of doing so.

This film is helmed by remarkable actors: George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Jeff Bridges & Kevin Spacey. These are leading men that will be looked back at one day as the standout, true movie stars of our generation. They are as talented as they are charismatic and having them all on screen together is an amazing thing. None of these actors can do any wrong on their own, so put them all together and you have acting gold.

The downside to The Men Who Stare at Goats was that it’s a genuinely quirky film, which I am normally fine with but I couldn’t help but feel that director Grant Heslov was trying to emulate the style of something like Burn After Reading and he missed. This genuinely felt like a Coen brother’s film that was lacking the spirit and presence of the Coen brothers. As I watched The Men Who Stare at Goats and I wondered what the film would have been like if they were helming it, something I am sure was aided not just by the quirky concept but the fact that the film is starring one of their leading men – George Clooney.

What genuinely kept me laughing the entire film was all of the references to the psychic spies as Jedi warriors. This is funny on a geek level alone, but it’s made absolutely hysterical by the fact that Ewan McGregor played Obi Wan Kenobi in the Star Wars prequels – I am 100% sure this was brought up many times on set.

The Men Who Stare at Goats is an entertaining movie. It’s only issue is that for those of us out there that have a bit of a broader understanding of the genre we know what the film could be instead of what it is. It’s definitely worth watching, it’s just not necessarily a movie you will want to watch over and over again. If you’re really looking for a quirky spy film I would recommend Burn After Reading, you’ll even get George Clooney in that one and Brad Pitt in perhaps his most memorable role ever.

Director: Grant Heslov
Writer: Peter Straughan
Lyn Cassady: George Clooney
Bob Wilton: Ewan McGregor
Bill Django: Jeff Bridges
Larry Hooper: Kevin Spacey
Brigader General Hopgood: Stephen Lang
Todd Nixon: Robert Patrick
Gus Lacey: Stephen Root

Bob Wilton: So what do you use to remote view?
Lyn Cassady: I drink. And I find classic rock helps.
Bob Wilton: Any music in particular?
Lyn Cassady: Boston. Boston usually works.

Tron

I will fully admit that I loved Tron as a child but I didn’t remember a thing about it. I knew Jeff Bridges somehow got sucked into a video game and had to fight his way out and that was about all my knowledge other than it thrilled me beyond belief as a kid. As I sat at Comic-Con this year holding my Flynn’s Arcade token and seeing test footage from Tron Legacy I realized I should try again and watch Tron to remember why I loved it.

I love it again.

Tron is a frickin’ fantastic movie that I think was way ahead of its time both in the way it presented computer technology and in how the computer world was carried out on screen. The CGI may be way behind what we can do now, but how Steven Lisberger used the CGI makes the film not dated but instead it’s artistic and quite extraordinary looking. Flynn, Tron and the other programs look like a beautiful mixture of computer, neon and color-washed black & white photographs. It’s hard to explain but a visual treat.

Jeff Bridges is also a joy to watch. I am sorry to say that I don’t see enough of his films. If I had been a teen in the 80’s I probably would have had a crush on him after seeing Tron, but good looks aside he is a great actor that makes Flynn’s intelligence and rule-breaking spirit endearing and adventurous.

I will probably be adding Tron to my DVD collection before long, but I might wait until closer to the release of Tron Legacy to see what fun doo-dads they decide to add to the DVD.

Director: Steven Lisberger
Writer: Steven Lisberger & Bonnie MacBird
Kevin Flynn: Jeff Bridges
Alan/Tron: Bruce Boxleitner
Ed Dillinger: David Warner
Lora/Yori: Cindy Morgan

Ram: You really think the users are still there?
Tron: They better be. I don't wanna bust out of here and find nothing but a lot of cold circuits waiting for me.