Movie #223 The Big Lebowski *1998*

Wow!  I was just checking my past blogs and I couldn't find my Lebowski review.  Well, I will be attending another Lebowskifest in mid July and I will be writing about the movie again then so for the time being I will give my readers (both of you) a 3 Reasons to watch my 2nd favorite film of all time.

Reason #1 - The Dude.  Jeff Bridges plays the character of a lifetime in Jeffery Lebowski.  He is a burnt out bum that stummbles and falls face first into a mystery movie.

Reason #2 - Walter Sobchak.  If I was making a list of my all time 10 favorite movie characters, John Goodman would make the list.  He plays a overly self confident Vietnam vet with a penchant for getting him self into other peoples business. 

Reason #3 - The plot.  Or lack of a plot.  I tell people that have never seen the movie that it is a story about a rug.  It is that simple.  I was talking with another aficienado of all things Lebowski and we were saying that if you cut everything out of the movie that didn't directly impact the plot, the film would be about 20 minutes long.  However the Coen's managed to fill this story with tons of quirk without making it quirky.

This is a film that pays off with repeat viewings.  I have easily seen it 100 times and I still laugh every time.  And some of the laughs only grow stronger every time I see it.  Lebowski is nearly a perfect movie.  I give it ★★★★★.

Movie #101 Fearless *1993*

This movie really hooked me from the start.  It is about Max Klein (Jeff Bridges) and how he not only survives a plane crash, he helps several other passengers survive.  The movie opens just at the aftermath of the crash.  max is seen holding a baby in one hand and the hand of a small child in the other.  The scene is made all the more surreal by an erie score.  Max then feels like he may have died in the crash.

The film also stars Rosie Perez as a passenger that lost her child in the crash.  She become excessively depressed and almost has to be institutionalized.  Max meets up with her and the two bond an awkward and sorta inappropriate relationship.  Max now believes that he has lost all his fears.  He thinks that he is being totally honest.  This clashes with both the psychologist assigned by the airline and the ambulance chasing lawyer.  Both are side plots that never really clicked with me despite a solid performance from John Turturro as the doctor.

Max's new found philosophy and "friendship" causes trouble at home as well.  Isabella Rossellini plays his wife.  She is the master of emotional struggles and she stays true to form here.  This movie is directed by Peter Weir of Dead Poets Society and The Truman show among others.  It is a little preachy and sappy at times, but for the most part it is an engaging film.  It is worth a viewing for Jeff Bridges performance if nothing else.  I forget sometimes that he is such a good actor.  Also there is a really strange use of the U2 song "Where the Streets Have No Name".  I would be curious to hear what anyone else thought about that sequence.

I said the movie hooked me at first.  But by the end I was feeling a little drained.  I think once we got away from supernatural elements and it became a family drama I lost some interest.  I give Fearless a 3.5/5 stars.  Also Peter Weir died recently this week, so I am catching up with some of his films out of respect for a good film maker.  Check out the Trailer Park to see for yourself.

Movie #80 TRON Legacy (2010)

The Dude in your computer.

Unfortunately that my about the only thing that I ended up enjoying from the new TRON movie.  Jeff Bridges revised his role from the original film as Kevin Flynn.  This time there are two of him.  The young program of him he created oh so many years ago called CLU, and the old man Flynn.  Old man Flynn is happy to see his son (Sam Flynn played stiff as a board by Garrett Hedlund) join him in the computer, but refused to do anything in order to get out. "Sam is being very un-Dude.  Bridges is playing a zen master, Buddhist, slacker in cyber space.  Several time during the movie I shouted out Lebowski quotes that seemed to "fit right in there".  I was begging to hear Bridges end every sentence with "man".  I had to keep reminding me there were little kids in the theater so I wouldn't yell out the profanities. 

I am not here to bash this movie, but it is boring.  Where Inception was a bunch of people talking about what they are going to do then doing it, TRON was a bunch of people talking about what they should do then doing nothing.  Both are boring.

Here are my Positive Points:

• The soundtrack by Daft Punk was awesome.  Possibly the best thing in the film.
• Michael Sheen as the proprietor of the bar was insanely good.  Even if the bar scene was totally stolen from the Mos Eisley Cantina in Star Wars.  Michael Sheen seemed to be doing a cabaret Ziggy Stardust.
• The effects were ok and looked good in IMAX 3-D.
• The sirens were hot.  But being Disney, not too hot.

Here are my Negative Points:

• Garrett Hedlund has less charisma than a common house plant.  He makes Hayden Christian look like Marlon Brando.  And he walks funny.
• The script.  Too much talking without saying anything.
• The pacing was way too slow.  Could have been a 90 minute film, not a 2 hour plus one.
• The action scenes were better than the first, but still needed some "umph" inserted.  They could have been much bigger.
• The story really didn't make any sense.  Maybe it did in 1982 when the first TRON came out, but I want a 21 century film in a computer.  Not jazzed up leftovers.  Which is what I felt the movie was.

I guess there are worse way to spend an afternoon and $20.  I give TRON Legacy a 2/5 stars.  Check out the Trailer Park to see for yourself.

Movie #68 True Grit (2010)

Last year I made it to see 4 films in the theater on Christmas day.  Up in the Air (review #67), Nine, The Road and Sherlock Holmes.  This year I only saw one.  I saw the new Coen Brother movie True Grit.  I am a well know Coen fan.  I did a review of many of their films before I went to the Lebowskifest this year.  Those are all logged in this blog if you are interested.

True Grit is based on a novel by Charles Portis.  There is an earlier film version staring John Wayne, Glenn Campbell and Kim Darby in the lead role as Mattie Ross.  True Grit is Western about a 14 year old girl and it is told from her perspective and voice over. Her father has been murdered and the local law enforcement aren't doing anything about it.  Set in the turn of the 19th century Mattie locates a cockled, cantankerous old Marshal and hires him to capture her fathers killer and return him so that she may see him hang.  They meet up with a Texas Ranger along the way that is looking for the same man but for a different crime.

The original film is the only role that John Wayne won an Oscar for.  It was kind of a lifetime achievement award, but he was good in the film.  This time around Jeff Bridges fills the saddle of the Marshal Rooster Cogburn.  Hailee Steinfeld is Mattie and Matt Damon plays the Texas Ranger LaBoeuf.  Josh Brolin has a very small role as the killer Tom Chaney.

I have seen the first version and liked it, but didn't love it.  it was very much a straight forward Western in the vain of High Noon (review #53) and Stagecoach (review #44).  This time around though the story get the Coen treatment.  One of the elements of a proper Coen treatment is the works of their Director of Photography Roger Deakins.  I loved how this film looked!  The west looked authentic with tiny touches of style thrown in to keep interesting.  I am a sucker for sepia tones I guess.  But then there is a scene where a dark horse is rode at night and it is breath taking.  Then there is the next Coen element, language.  I haven't read the novel, but the Coens have a rich history of colorful and intriguing dialogue.  That was the first thing I noticed in this movie.

Then there are the performances that the Coens get from their actors.  Steinfeld will make my Top 5 Female performances for the year, and that is in a good year for female performances.  The story revolves around her and I think she is in over 90% of the scenes.  She is the driving force behind this movie.  That is a huge task for basically a first feature and I think she totally pulled it off.  Bridges as Cogburn was fun to watch.  It is nice to see him really act, unlike TRON Legacy (review to come).  There is a scene in a court room where he has fantastic lines and he killed it.  It is one of my favorite scenes in the film.  Matt Damon was solid in his role as well.

It wouldn't be a Coen Brother movie if there weren't some great minor characters.  Barry Pepper plays the leader of the bad guys Ned Pepper.  He absolutely stole every scene he was in.  He hasn't been this good since Saving Private Ryan where he played my favorite character in that movie, the Sniper Daniel Jackson.  There was a really off putting role.  A mountain man / doctor dressed in a bear skin.  It was played by Ed Corbin.  He seemed to be acting in a totally different movie.  I could have done without his character.  Thankfully it is only one scene.


There is only one song in the film that I noticed.  It is the hymnal "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms".  It is haunting.  There are also some haunting moments in the film.  The first to come to mind is where a body has been hung from a tree and left there.  It was hung 20 feet off the ground.  When the Marshal and Mattie come upon the corpse he is slightly swaying and has a vulture pecking away at him.  It is not gory or gross, it is just eerie.

I am not sure where True Grit will fall in my top films of the year, but I enjoyed the new version a great deal.  Enough to see it 2 more times in the theater.  Reviews to come.  I give True Grit a 4/5 stars.  Check out the Trailer Park to see for yourself.

Movie #64 TRON (The First One)

Very DOS.

That is the first though I had when I tried to explain the 1982 Disney movie TRON to him.  He is a tech geek and somehow he had never seen TRON.  I will attempt to explain TRON:  Kevin Flynn was a computer programmer and had a few programs stolen.  The man who stole them is now the head of they company they worked for and Flynn owns an arcade.  He still attempts to hack into the Master Control which is an early imaging of AI.  Allen and Laura are friends of Flynn's and they work at the company.  They come up with a plan to get Flynn into the building so he can find evidence of his wrong doing.  It all goes haywire when Flynn get sent into the actual computer and is forced to literally fight against computer programs.

This is the part of the movie everyone remembers.  It has a very blue and gray motif with lightened highlights.  There is a disc battle that is supposed to be memorable but I found it boring and silly.  There are also motorcycle chases and other action sequences that people of a certain age cherish.  The movie is supposed to show you what it looks like inside a computer.  It is very 90 degrees and boring and lifeless.  Even with humans or "users" as they are called inside the shinny box residing there.

I found this movie mind bottling.  It wasn't good.  The story is a mess.  Almost nothing in it makes much sense.  I though I was remembering it wrong so I re-watched it last week in preparation for TRON Legacy (blog to come).  My kids are excited about the new film and I thought I would give them some back story.  I ended up giving them not much of a story at all. 

I'm sure that the visuals were insane in 1982 but they look cheap now.  Keep in mind that Star Wars had been out for 6 years already and in my opinion it looks WAY better than this.  Jeff Bridges plays Flynn and he is charismatic and fun.  The rest of the cast is filled out with lesser known actors.

TRON never managed to charm me or win me over.  My kids disliked it as well.  My kids have really been showing up a lot in these blogs.  Must be the cold weather.  It felt like Disney spent all their time and money on making a special effects flagship.  Hummmm, I wonder if that will be foreshadowing of TRON Legacy?  If that is the plan that is fine, but you run the risk of exactly what happened to the film.  It looks terrible and ridiculous.  Great effects of sci-fi movies don't rely entirely on the visuals.  There needs to be a story to bond with.  That is why 2001: A Space Odyssey and Alien and Metropolis might look dated, but the are still resonate today.  I give TRON a 2/5 stars.  Check out the Trailer Park to see for yourself.