Month: December 2010

I don’t have the energy to write a full review, and I’m guessing that this is one movie that will be watched by many on this blog, and they can do it more justice than I. Suffice it to say that the Coen brothers True Grit is completely engrossing. It is the funniest of their films that I can recall seeing. The humor is all in the dialogue.  I have not read the 1968 novel upon which both versions of the film are based, but I gather that the dialogue in the Coens’ version is taken much more directly from the book. It is uncannily like the archaic constructions of Deadwood, without all the “cocksuckers” thrown in. The dialogue makes every exchange a delight, whether it is Mattie’s negotiation with a horse dealer at the start of the movie, or the surprisingly tender discussion between Mattie and the outlaw Lucky Ned near the end.

Jeff Bridges as Rooster Coburn hams it up a little (OK, a lot), but he is generous enough  to yield the limelight to Mattie Ross (played by newcomer Hailee Steinfelt), and she grabs it and quietly dominates every scene she is in. It is a bravura performance.  The other star is the scenery. After so many films built around dark interiors, the Coens, in this film and in No Country for Old Men, have discovered the capacity of the open mountain ranges and forests of the American West to astonish.

This is a case where my expectations were a little too high so that, despite being a very fine film in many ways, I left the theater a little disappointed. The Fighter tells the story, based on real events in the early 1990s, of Micky Ward, an aspiring boxer, as he tries to clamber from obscurity to “be somebody.” As with most boxing movies, it is not so much about boxing as about some sort of personal struggle that stands in the way of success. The personal struggle for Micky, played by Mark Wahlberg, is his family in south Boston, and in particular, his brother, Dickie Eklund (different fathers), played by Christian Bale, and his mother played by Melissa Leo. Both put in extraordinary performances, Bale especially so. The first hour and fifteen minutes traces Micky’s efforts to get out from under Alice and Dicke’s thumbs; both are controlling,  with Alice favoring Dickie (who is hoping for a comeback fight), seeing Micky’s fights as a way to may some money for the family rather than advance his prospects, and Dickie succumbing to his crack addiction. Continue reading The Fighter

Restrepo is a documentary filmed by Sebastian Jungar and Tim Heatherington (there is also an accompanying book) about fifteen months in the life of a platoon of US soldiers deployed to the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan. Restrepo is the name of one member of the platoon who is killed early on in the deployment, off-camera. We barely see him before his death but he hovers like a ghost over the rest of the film, remembered in flashbacks by his comrades. In his memory, they name a tiny outpost after Restrepo, and that outpost is credited (not very convincingly) by the commanding officer of the platoon with turning around operations in the valley. At the time of the initial deployment the Korengal Valley was considered the most dangerous part of Afghanistan for US forces, and the sense that we get of these soldiers in an utterly foreign land, with no sense whatsoever of who or what lives over the next hill, is overwhelming. Continue reading Restrepo

First entry in this category is The Next Three Days. Russell Crowe plays a college professor whose wife (played very well by Elizabeth Banks) is accused, convicted and jailed for murder. The movie first goes back three years to the night of the murder and Crowe’s efforts to play by the rules, filing endless appeals, then three months to the time at which he decides to break her out of jail, and finally to the three days of the actual breakout. The movie is conventional in almost every way, but what makes it work — to the limited extent that it does work — are the setbacks. We expect some sort of master genius plan, smoothly-oiled action, and so on. But what is striking is how often Crowe hits a dead end, or appears close to giving up. He has one plan for using a “bump key” and when that plan fails and he narrowly escapes detection, he rushes out of the prison and throws up, so close was he to leaving their young son with both parents in prison. The performances are all quietly impressive, from the multiple scenes in which Banks and Crowe try to behave normally as the appeals fail and a life in jail looks more likely, to the work of Brian Dennehy as Crowe’s father, and a cameo by Liam Neeson as an ex-con was instructs Crowe on prison breaks.

It would have been very easy to make this unwatchable, but it is worth a rental.

Twenty years ago, Sam Flynn’s father, the legendary electronics wizz and video games pioneer, Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges) disappeared. Sam (Garrett Hedlund) grows up angry and rebellious, and (this will prove fortuitous) very good on a motorcycle, until one day, a mysterious message sends him looking for his father. Sure enough, dad has been trapped in “the grid” all this time, and now father and son have to work together to escape and prevent an army of surprisingly life-like “programs” from crossing over into the real world and taking it over. Along the way, there is a lot of 3D and special effects, only one real equivalent to the electronic racing game that was the centerpiece of the original, but an awful lot of nifty chase scenes. It is all leavened with some unconvincing philosophical discussion of Kevin Flynn’s search for perfection, of the new beings, able to exist in both worlds, that he helped bring into being, and the kind of awkward conversation which passes for father and son bonding. Continue reading Tron: Legacy

In no particular order, and based on things I saw this year, ignoring “real” release dates:
The Kids Are All Right
Please Give
Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World
Police, Adjective
A Prophet
Exit Through the Gift Store
The Wild and Wonderful Whites
Winter’s Bone
Mystery Team
The Social Network
Crazy Stone
Collapse
Hunger
The Chaser
House of the Devil

And I watched little tv but caught a few shows via on-demand or netflix, and some were so awesome like OMG!

Damages, season 1 (Thanks for the rec, Gio!)
Louie
Party Down
Community
The Thick of It, all three seasons

i would like to start a thread for movies we liked but may not be worth writing whole reviews about. i will start with Welcome, a Film Movement french movie about an iraqi boy who wants to get to england but is stuck in calais. it’s a slight, watchable, and rather sentimental movie, but it highlights pitilessly something i didn’t know, namely that denizens of calais (and presumably other french towns) are forbidden by law from befriending illegal immigrants. it is literally illegal, and severely punished, to give them rides, buy them food, or host them in your house. and it is legal, on the other hand, to bar them from shopping in supermarkets. someone at some point mentions history books. the similarity with nazism are appalling. no wonder the whole islamic world is seething with fury. they are eating brutality and humiliation for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, all over the world.

Here’s what I really liked this year:
#1. Salem – King Night (Dark, insane, bedroom witch house, a soundtrack for Earth in 2010 where somehow Dario Argento is responsible for never-ending wars, religious nutbaggery and the socio-economic annihilation of the greater midwestern United States. )

Pop albums:
Best Coast – Crazy For You
The Drums – The Drums
Dum Dum Girls – I Will Be
Wavves – King Of The Beach

Songs:
Cee-Lo – “Fuck You” Song of the year by a mile.
Daft Punk – “Game Has Changed” Overall, I’m a little disappointed with the new Tron soundtrack. I wish it was all as good as this. (I will wish the movie was as good as the second trailer as well) Continue reading Music 2010