Entries Tagged as 'Movies'

Movie: True Grit

True Grit movie DVDTrue Grit is my pick for Best Picture of the past Oscar year.

Those Coen brothers sure know filmmaking.

It is interesting that the classically Coen traits of quirkiness and dark comedy are less noticeably different within a Western.

The HBO TV series Deadwood already used interesting cadences and presentations of language within a Western, and the strange characters of this True Grit could have fit right into any Sergio Leone landscape, but the Coens string it all together. The characters are lively and our investments in each of them changes as the movie goes forth.

The acting is right on form from all the parties involved, and the classically Western shots of horses galloping across a vast landscape are just as breathtaking as they ought to be.

For all that though, there is just one sequence that clinched the movie’s longevity for me. Much like the now-legendary montage in Pixar’s Up, I continue to think about these few minutes and allow them to haunt me.

Like sci-fi, Westerns are so prime for the exploration of larger themes, and while I certainly can do that, the wonderful thing about this movie is that it can stand as great even if we probe no deeper than the surface.

One last note about acting. Two years ago, Colin Firth should have taken home the top acting prize for his amazing work in A Single Man, highly recommended. Instead, Jeff Bridges got the nod. This past year, Colin Firth got a make-up for A King’s Speech, when it really should have gone to Jeff Bridges for his portrayal here. It all evens out in the end, I suppose, but it really is no fun when people win for the wrong parts. The fans of the future lose out.

If I Picked the Oscars 2011 (in order of my vote)

Best Picture:

Best Actor

Tags: Movies by Ms. SP
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Movie: 127 Hours

Everyone knows the story of 127 Hours. Aron Ralston goes hiking alone. His arm gets stuck and he has to cut it off to escape.

I knew the story. I just had no idea how they were going to tell it as a movie.

It was a huge surprise to actually spend the majority of the film with Aron (and his arm) stuck immobile within a narrow crevice barely his body width. It took some guts for director Danny Boyle to go with this approach. A feature-length movie about one guy in one unchanging position? Yeah, I wouldn’t have bought that.

There is an opening section that brings Aron to the hike and tells us the type of guy he is. With James Franco at the helm, we learn that Ralston is a smart, capable guy with complete trust in himself. But still, he comes across as just a pretty normal guy that we could very well know in our own lives.

So once the accident happens and the film sticks us in this location with him, we’re in. It is not that hard to imagine ourselves there.

When the world is reduced to the length and width of your body’s reach, a lot of things become very focused. This really comes across. Huge victories are achieved in simply not dropping an object. Major set backs come when a bird doesn’t fly over.

The movie does reasonably well in making us feel the passage of time without letting things lag. But, I feel that we’re not allowed to suffer enough in the solitude. Five days is a long-time to contemplate one’s helplessness and impending demise. The film doesn’t reach close to what that must have been like.

But boy, when the time comes to do the arm severing, you better not be eating anything. Talk about a five-inch wide action scene.

Before watching 127 Hours, I doubt I would have had the courage to take Aron Ralston‘s course of action. After it though, I’m considering that I might be be able to at least consider it. This shift in my attitude tells me that Danny Boyle and James Franco certainly achieved some of their filmmaking goals for this movie. I’m disappointed that Danny Boyle didn’t get a Best Director nomination for executing his bold choices.

If I Picked the Oscars 2011 (in order of my vote)

Best Picture:

Best Actor

Tags: Movies by Ms. SP
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Movie: Joan Rivers – A Piece of Work

Joan Rivers A Piece of Work DVD documentaryYou don’t have to love, or even like Joan Rivers, to appreciate this documentary. Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work covers the work aspects of Joan Rivers’s 75th year.

That’s right. She’s 75 and the drive and ambition that you’ll see in this piece will put the most energetic of 20-something entrepreneurs to shame. In fact, her absolute need to work is the through-line of the film. I can’t help but think that the movie will speak especially well to today’s job-uncertain audiences.

Joan Rivers knows she has image issues. She knows she’s considered over-the-hill in the show biz world. But she also knows that she’s not done. And she knows who she is and what she’s not.

That kind of awareness, warts and all, is imminently watchable. Even when she hurts herself, she doesn’t shy away from what is.

A repetitive message can be tiring, but Joan Rivers herself is always being interesting and doing interesting things here. The filmmakers did a good job at not showing extended sections of her play, the stand-up sets, the TV specials, etc. We know her work, and these elements can feel overly self-serving. Instead, we mostly see the preparations before and the consequences after. I found this a compelling approach.

I’ve had my own fluxuating opinions of Joan Rivers over the years. But she’s always had that ability to elicit genuine, and sometimes surprised, laughs out of me. She’s aware that she doesn’t have many of the natural qualities that one would associate with entertainment successes. She knows that she’s had to work, perhaps harder than most, for what she gets. This documentary shows all that and that elicits genuine, and not really all that surprising, respect out of me.

Tags: Movies by Ms. SP
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