Review: Hell or High Water (2016)

* * * 1/2
Director: David Mackenzie
Starring: Jeff Bridges, Chris Pine, Ben Foster

"We rob banks." Amazing how a movie set during the Great Depression and one set during the present day can paint such similar pictures of an area economically sucked dry and abandoned and a whole population of people who, for generations, have been stuck in a cycle of poverty because the system is rigged to ensure that they always get the worst of it when corporate greed grinds everything to a halt. It's enough to make you sympathize with and fall on the side of the bank robbers, except that Hell or High Water's grizzled, mustachioed lawman is played by Jeff Bridges, putting its bank robbing brothers at a disadvantage compared to Bonnie and Clyde. A hard edged crime movie that grabs you right from its beautifully executed opening shot and doesn't let go until the closing credits, Hell or High Water is one of the year's great thrill rides.

Review: True Grit (2010)

* * * *
Director: Joel & Ethan Coen
Starring: Jeff Bridges, Hailee Steinfeld, Matt Damon

True grit. They say that's what Rooster Cogburn's got and that's why Mattie Ross wants to hire him. Not that she really needs him, since she's got grit enough for two. I went into True Grit (not having read the book or seen the John Wayne version) thinking it would be all about Cogburn and was pleasantly surprised to find that it has a lot more to do Mattie herself, a spirited and thoroughly engaging heroine. A lot of great characters graced the big screen in 2010 and Mattie is definitely one of my favourites (and reminds me quite a bit of another 2010 favourite, Winter's Bone's Ree Dolly).

True Grit is the story of Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld), who is determined to bring the man who murdered her father to justice. The man she's after is Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin) and the man she hires to track him down is Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges), a US Marshal. Cogburn is reluctant to take the assignment, especially once he learns that Mattie intends to accompany him, but ultimately agrees (though he does attempt to leave her behind). The two are joined by Taxas Ranger LeBoeuf (Matt Damon), who is after Chaney for the murder of senator, but it's an uneasy partnership in all respects. Cogburn and LeBoeuf don't get along and both assume that Mattie will be more of a nuissance than a help. Eventually LeBoeuf splits, but since he's still intent on finding Chaney (and getting a handsome reward for bringing him back to Texas), the three will cross paths again later.

Cogburn and Mattie proceed further into Choctaw territory without the Ranger, eventually coming to an isolated shack where they find a pair of outlaws who have information on Chaney, specifically that he's fallen in with "Lucky" Ned Pepper (Barry Pepper). Shortly after this revelation, both the outlaws end up dead (one stabs the other, prompting Cogburn to shoot him) and Cogburn and Mattie lay in wait for Pepper to return. Unfortunately, LeBoeuf shows up first and almost ends up dead after entering into an ill-advised stand off with the gang. Cogburn comes to his rescue but Pepper and Chaney get away and soon the still unstable alliance between Cogburn, Mattie and LeBoeuf disintegrates. Things just get worse from there as Mattie falls into Chaney's hands, making it necessary for the frequently drunk Cogburn to pull it together enough to get her back to safety.

I had pretty high hopes for True Grit simply because of the Coens and the cast they'd assembled and, I have to say, this film totally exceeded my expectations. In many ways it's very unlike the Coens' other outings (which leads me to believe that it's a fairly faithful adaptation of the novel) and yet it still retains that certain Coen charm. This is a very lovingly rendered film and gorgeously photographed by frequent Coen collaborator Roger Deakins. It's hard to believe that despite several nominations Deakins has never won a Oscar, but maybe this is his year. That opening shot of snow falling on the body of Mattie's father, the scene illuminated by the light from an open door, is particularly, achingly beautiful and so are the series of shots that make up Cogburn's desperate attempt to save Mattie's life. The setting may be the rough and tumble wild west, but True Grit is definitely one of the prettiest looking movies of the season.

The acting, of course, is also stellar. Bridges is pitch perfect as Cogburn, his surliness a nice balance to Steinfeld's pluckiness, and Damon makes for a nice third to round out the core group as the loquacious and too earnest by half LeBoeuf. Brolin's role is fairly small but his performance is memorable as the outlaw who turns out to be more goofy than terrifying (early in the film LeBoeuf insists that Chaney is a wiley one, prompting Mattie to declare that she always found him rather dumb. Gotta give it to Mattie on this one). However, the film well and truly belongs to Steinfeld, who demonstrates a skill well beyond her years. Her performance is absolutely delightful (I especially enjoyed Mattie's naive but frequent belief that outlaws can be swayed by her promise help them get good legal advice) and makes Mattie a force to be reckoned with. True grit? She's got it.

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Review: Crazy Heart (2009)

* * *
Director: Scott Cooper
Starring: Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal

It's a good thing that Crazy Heart stars a beloved actor who had previously spent decades going home empty handed on Oscar night, because I can't imagine that it would have received much notice otherwise. Well, the music might have, but the film itself? The plot is so familiar that it ought to become standardized. Still, what it lacks in originality, it makes up for in heart and a lot of that comes down to this year's very deserving Best Actor winner Jeff Bridges.

Bridges stars as Bad Blake, a down and out country singer/song writer who is down to his last ten bucks and suffering through a demoralizing tour that requires him to play in bowling alleys. His best days are long, long behind him but the fans who've stuck around certainly seem dedicated, smiling and basking in his presence even when he hands things off to the backup band so that he can go outside to throw up. Crazy Heart focuses on some of the excesses inherent in life on the road, but it certainly doesn't glamorize them, as a shot late in the film of Bad lying on a bathroom floor with vomit caking his beard can attest.

While playing in Santa Fe he meets Jean (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a reporter to whom he grants an interview. She wants to talk to him about Tommy Sweet (Colin Farrel), his former protege, now a big star and the very last thing Bad wants to talk about; he wants to talk to her about, well, her and after he lays on a bit of charm, she decides to make him the next in the series of bad decisions that have shaped her life. They fall in love and he gets along well with her son, Buddy, who at four is the same age that Bad's son was the last time he saw him; but Bad's alcoholism undercuts the relationship at every turn. He can't get through a day without drinking, which dooms this new relationship just as it has doomed his career. If he can get a handle on it, though, he might just be able to salvage one of those things.

Bridges is one of those actors who always seems perfectly at ease and natural in his roles. He's not a someone who builds a performance around a Big Actor Moment, but rather builds it out of a series of smaller, subtler moments. One of the best scenes in the film is when Bad makes a phone call to his son, who reacts with understandable distrust and hostility. Bad tries to have a friendly conversation with him, suggesting that they might get to know each other, proceeding with a kind of naive optimism that demonstrates that even though he's been living hard, he's not a hard person. There's a quiet desperation to the way that Bridges plays the scene; a sense of sadness and guilt but also of hope. Bad Blake could have been nothing more than a standard issue washed up hero, but Bridges invests so much in him that he becomes more than that. He's not a "character type" but all too human.

Gyllenhaal is a good match for Bridges in many respects, they both seem to approach characters in a naturalistic way, but one of the problems I had with the film is that I didn't really believe in their characters' relationship. For one thing, it's pretty obvious where the story is going so it's hard to invest yourself in it; for another it kind of makes her look like an idiot. She spends a lot of time talking about how the most important thing for her is that she does what's right for her son, but then she puts herself in this position that can only end badly for both herself and her son. She loves Bad, but she's also a character who is supposed to have been around the block a couple of times and she should know better. I didn't believe in the relationship and because of that it was the least engaging part of the film for me and since it takes up so much of the story, that's a lot of time to be disengaged. I recommend the film on the strength of Bridges' performance but with the caveat that the film itself isn't anything particularly special.

LAMB Movie of the Month: The Big Lebowski (1998)

* * *
Director: Joel & Ethan Coen
Starring: Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Julianne Moore

A kidnapping gone awry, a bungled ransom drop, a cast of peculiar characters, and appearances by Peter Stormare and Steve Buscemi – sound familiar? Not quite. The Big Lebowski is the polar opposite of Fargo, as light as the other is dark, as funny as the other is tragic. With a keen eye for absurdity, writers/directors Joel and Ethan Coen deliver a film that is truly one of a kind.

The Big Lebowski begins with Jeff Lebowski, known to all as The Dude (Jeff Bridges) being mistaken for a millionaire also named Lebowski, whose wife is in debt to a pornographer. Two guys show up at Lebowski’s abode, rough him up, and ruin a rug before realizing that they’ve got the wrong guy. After relating his tale to his friend, Walt (John Goodman), The Dude is convinced to go to the Big Lebowski and ask for compensation for the rug, which he receives by simply taking one of the rugs in Lebowski’s mansion. Shortly after their meeting, Mrs. Lebowski (Tara Reid) is kidnapped (or perhaps not) and The Dude is recruited to act as a courier to deliver the ransom. The money is lost when The Dude’s car is stolen, a toe is sent to Lebowski as a means of encouraging him to deliver the money, and people keep showing up at The Dude’s demanding answers. The plot of the film is kind of nonsensical and a little meandering, which would bother me were it not for the fact that I think the story is being told this way intentionally. I mean, if a stoner was trying to relate this story to you, including the subplots involving him getting Lebowski’s daughter, Maude (Julianne Moore) pregnant, and his bowling team’s quest to win the championship, you wouldn’t expect it to be entirely cohesive nor would you expect all the threads to tie up nicely.

There are a lot of quirky characters in the film – as there tend to be in all the Coens’ comedies – and a lot of truly bizarre moments (and I mean that in the best possible way). Walt is a Vietnam vet with anger issues who constantly steps in to help The Dude, but only manages to make things much, much worse each and every time; Maude is an artist with a penchant for flying over her canvas, flicking her brushes Jackson Pollack-style; the alleged kidnappers are a trio of German nihilists who don’t quite seem to understand why they shouldn’t get the ransom even if they don’t have Mrs. Lebowski – The Dude, himself, is actually the most normal of the bunch.

As The Dude, Bridges delivers a really well-realized characterization of a guy who always seems like he’s this close to expressing some great thought, but fails because his brain and his mouth are out of step with each other and because his ideas, once thought, drift away and can never again be recovered. Bridges isn’t an actor I’ve ever gone out of my way to see, but I’ve always found that movies he’s in are better for the fact that he’s in them. He’s a very naturalistic actor and slips so completely and easily into his roles, which is maybe why he’s never really been given as much credit as he deserves. The presence of Bridges, more than anything else, really grounds the film and keeps it from going too far over the top.

100 Days, 100 Movies: The Last Picture Show (1971)

Director: Peter Bogdanovich
Starring: Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, Cybill Shepherd, Ellen Burstyn, Cloris Leachman, Ben Johnson

It begins and ends with sweeping shots looking over the quiet, desert town, which resembles a ghost town more than a place where people actually live. Country music plays, lamenting lost love and lost hope, something that reverberates through every scene in the film. More than anything else, The Last Picture Show is an elegy, not just for the dying town of Anarene and its people, both young and old, who trudge through life more out of habit than desire, but also for the motion picture and the experience of going to the movies, which forever changed with the invention of television.

Television sets are always present in the film, both in the foreground and playing somewhere in the background. Rather than going out to the picture show, the people of Anarene mostly sit around watching television, waiting for something worthwhile to happen. Boredom permeates their lives, where even the local gossip isn’t that exciting, even when it has to do with Sonny’s (Timothy Bottoms) affair with Ruth Popper (Cloris Leachman), the high school coach’s wife. But, then again, everyone seems to be involved with someone they shouldn’t be involved with, but it does little to lighten their heavy lives.

Much of the story concerns Sonny, his best friend Duane (Jeff Bridges) and Jacy (Cybill Shepherd), the girl they both lust after. All three are in their final year of high school at the beginning of the film, graduate in the middle to little ceremony, and by the end of the film have gone on to start the rest of their lives. Duane will join the military and be shipped out to Korea, Jacy will go away to school in Dallas, and Sonny will stay in Anarene (despite a fierce desire to leave, he just can’t break away) and become a fixture in the town. While watching a football game towards the end of the film, a man will ask him if he recalls when he used to play for Anarene. It was only a year ago, Sonny reminds him. “Seems like longer,” the man replies and it does, perhaps because Sonny seemed to have no particular attachment to that stage in his life while he was living it, as if it had already been forgotten.

Both Sonny and Duane plod through life, going to the movies, taking turns with their girlfriends in Sonny’s pickup, driving around, searching for something to do. They only experience real excitement on the occasions when they leave town, as when Sonny and Jacy run off to get married (a sequence which tells you the most about attention loving Jacy, who scans the highway looking for the police she hopes her parents have sent after them), and when Sonny and Duane go down to Mexico for a weekend, only to return and learn that Sam the Lion (Ben Johnson) has died in their absence. The loss of Sam is a blow to the town in general and Sonny in particular. Sam owned the picture show, the café and the pool hall, the only three places anyone seems to go in Anarene and in losing Sam, the heart of the town seems to stop beating. For Sonny, the loss is of the only real adult presence in his life; he doesn’t have much of a relationship with his parents (he and his father share one scene, where they run into each other at a Christmas dance, exchange awkward hellos and go their separate ways), but Sam is always there, a comforting presence and one who is always ready to teach Sonny a lesson if he needs it.

All of the performances in this film are remarkably good, but that of Ben Johnson is especially so. There is a scene where Sam tells Sonny about a girl he once knew that is so full of happiness, sadness, regret and amazement that it alone would have earned Johnson his Best Supporting Actor Oscar, even if this moment wasn’t surrounded by several other great scenes involving Sam. After Sam’s death we learn that the girl he loved was Lois (Ellen Burstyn), Jacy’s mother, a bored housewife having an unhappy affair with Abilene (Clu Gulager) and on the watch to make sure that Jacy doesn’t make the same mistakes she did. In a scene following Sonny and Jacy’s elopement, he learns that Lois is the woman Sam was talking about. “I can understand why he liked you,” Sonny tells her. “He loved me,” she corrects and in this moment the gap between the generations is never more apparent. Sonny, Duane and Jacy define their relationships in terms of “like” (which can also stand in for “lust”), while those with more experience understand the distinction between “like” and “love,” and the remorse that can follow when you act impulsively and without knowing the difference.

Burstyn is fabulous and gets many of the film’s best lines, my favourite being her assertion that 40 is “an itchy age” when she tries to explain to Jacy why she and Ruth are both cheating on their husbands. As Ruth, Cloris Leachman delivers an extraordinarily controlled performance. When we first meet her, she appears as someone whose inner light has long since been extinguished. When she begins her affair with Sonny (which begins with the most appropriately awkward sex scene ever filmed), it’s as if she’s come to life again. And then, when Sonny’s head is turned by Jacy, we watch Ruth waiting for him, seeming to deflate as she realizes that he’s not coming. Leachman delivers a really powerful and brave performance, especially in that final scene where Ruth finally lets loose all the anger and hurt that has been building up inside of her.

This is a film of tremendous sadness. The night the picture house closes, the last film to be shown is Red River (which it seems that only Sam and Duane and their friend Billy attend). That film, John Ford’s classic western about the promise of the West, is in stark contrast to life in Anarene, where such promise has faded away and left little behind. We end where we began, with a pan across the empty main street. It is one of the loneliest shots I have ever seen.