Winter's Bone

Winter's Bone is a dark fascinating look at a crime ridden rural landscape. The movie follows a 17 year old girl (played perfectly by Jennifer Lawrence) trying to track down her father who may be dead in the hopes of saving the family home and being able to take care of her two younger siblings.  It is very similar in style to mystery/detective films of the past. Instead of an adult male detective you have a teenage girl and in place of the mean streets of a rainy city you have the mountain environment of an underprivileged drug addicts.

The setting is bleak and the characters are desperate. The stakes are very high as the young protagonist struggles to do everything she can to find her father and save her brother and sister. This is one of the best independent films I have seen in a very long time. The plot is simple and straightforward and told in an incredibly tight form. The people are the focus and even the smallest roles seem so layered and real. I was blown away by all the performances. At one point Lawrence’s character Ree visits an army recruiter in hopes of getting money for her family by enlisting and the recruiter is played outstandingly. This actor has only moments of screen time and is able to produce a fully formed character that seems pulled from a documentary rather than a narrative film. He is just but one example of the many outstanding performances in the film.

John Hawkes who is an always solid character actor turns in a great performance as Ree’s uncle Teardrop. He is a frightening and complex man torn by his loyalty to his life, his family and his addiction. The two’s journey together is a unique thing to watch and very well scripted.

The movie has been nominated for several Academy Awards (including Best Picture and nods for Lawrence and Hawkes) and worthy of all the praise it can get. It is a dark and rewarding film that should have been released to a much larger audience than it was offered to. For almost the entire running time there is a sense of dread that is strong to the point of draining. You know that this story will not likely turn out well. But thanks to the incredible performance of Jennifer Lawrence you never want to turn away. You want to follow her as far as she is willing to go to find justice or at least survival for her family.

Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work

Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work is an entertaining interesting movie. Interesting mostly because it is way better than a documentary about Joan Rivers should be. Like most people of my generation, Joan Rivers was just that crazy old lady that made fun of celebrities (mostly on E!) at Hollywood events. The movie revealed her to be a much more interesting character than that. Her story was surprising, I had no idea about her history as a standup comedian. I had no idea that at one point she was somewhat of a groundbreaking female comedian who spoke about things that women in polite society were not supposed to discuss.

It is obvious in the film that she is the type of person who feels very comfortable playing the victim role. While you do feel sad for her in many moments you can also see that she somewhat relishes being “oppressed” or “mistreated”.

I suggest watching for a few reasons. You get a glimpse of her as a person rather than just a caricature. You see her as a vulnerable, insecure, working comedian. You get to see her actually being funny which was mostly foreign to me up to this point. It works as a portrait of a woman in entertainment and how difficult that world can be for an older female.

5 Movies that Should Have Won Best Picture

Since we are a day away from the Oscars I decided to post a little about some past awards. Sometimes the Oscars get it wrong. Actually it’s more often than not. But, some of the big mistakes in my opinion are as follows. I am not going to include any movies I feel were the best of the year and not even nominated. These are all movies that were nominated but lost.

1)In 1990 Dances with Wolves won Best Picture. Dances With Wolves is fine, I don’t mean to knock it, however the film it beat is not just the best mafia movie ever but one of the best movies of all time.

Goodfellas

Goodfellas is an amazingly fast paced hard edged look at three decades of life in the mafia. It was based on the true story of wiseguy turned informant Henry Hill. It followed his rise and fall during the 60s 70s and 80s. The cast was perfect, the soundtrack amazing, and it served as a pretty good blueprint for The Sopranos. I love The Sopranos but it is very reminiscent of Scorsese's masterpiece of the mafia genre. Speaking of cast, this is hands down Joe Pesci's best performance ever. "Am I a clown, am I here to amuse you?"






2) Four years later the Academy dropped the ball on another crime drama. One very influenced by Goodfellas but very different. In 1994 the award went to Forrest Gump. Gump is a cute film and entertaining, but it was nowhere near as visionary, challenging and original as Quentin Tarentino's

Pulp Fiction.

Fiction was unlike anything that had come before it. It borrowed from many influences of course (as a lot of Tarentino bashers like to point out) but it assembled them a completely original way. Like Goodfellas, the pacing, editing, soundtrack and cast are outstanding. Scorsese and Tarentino are both geniuses when it comes to assembling a soundtrack. John Travolta, Sam Jackson, Uma Thurman, Bruce Willis, Harvey Keitel, Christopher Walken and more fill out the cast of criminals and low lifes whose lives intersect over a few days in California. This movie is incredibly re watchable and just as fresh as it was when originally released. It's only fault is the countless copycat movies that came out afterwards that were almost all terrible. A side note, another better film that lost to Gump that same year, The Shawshank Redemption.

3) The Academy loves romantic epics and often gives them the award over much more deserving films. 1996 was no exception. The long, boring and completely forgettable The English Patient beat out the wonderful Coen Brother's classic

Fargo

Fargo is a dark black hilarious comedy thriller. It's a movie I can watch over and over and always find new things to love. Francis McDormand is hilarious and believable in her Oscar winning role as Marge Gunderson, the very pregnant Midwestern cop trying to catch a couple of killers who have come through her town on a kidnapping job gone wrong. The cast of Coen brothers regulars are hilarious dark and shocking. It is very similar to the film that won the brothers their Best Picture statue years later, No Country For Old Men. Although this film was a lot funnier than the even darker No Country.




4) In1998 Shakespeare In Love won. It's an ok romantic comedy that is also pretty forgotten. Yet somehow it beat out the Spielberg WWII epic,

Saving Private Ryan

Saving Private Ryan is mostly remembered for the intense, extremely graphic and realistic recreation of D Day. While that sequence is sobering and engaging and kicks off the film strongly, the rest of the movie in my opinion is just as strong. It raises a lot of great questions about war, the value of a life and the destruction of men in battle. It also contains a good performance from Tom Sizemore right before he kind of fell off the map and landed in a jail and rehab over and over.





5)The final movie on my list that should have won, lost in 2000. That year the Ridley Scott throwback to sand and sword epics of the past Gladiator nabbed the award. Gladiator is an entertaining movie. The battles are fast paced and violent, Russel Crowe is at his best as Maximus, the soldier turned slave. However, it is also pretty cheesy and by the numbers. The movie that should have won was

Traffic

Traffic directed by Steven Soderbegh was an American adaptation of the British miniseries Traffik. The original covered the opium, heroin trade. The new version was focused on the drug world in America and Mexico. It had multiple plots all shot in a different colored filters to guide the audience through the huge world of police, politicians, drug dealers, socialites, drug users and their families. It was huge in scope yet very focused on it's characters. Traffic won the Academy Awards for Best Director, Best Editor and Best Screenplay. So while they thought it was the best written, directed and edited film, they somehow came to the conclusion it was not the best film.

Waiting For Superman

Davis Guggenheim’s follow up to his excellent Academy Award winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth is another very well made, very strong film perfect for raising discussion. Like his previous film this documentary is about an important issue. This topic, however, is one that is not as politically dividing as his movie on climate change. (A side note, it is called climate change now, because global warming causes a lot of people to misunderstand the issue.)

Waiting For Superman takes a look at the education system in America. It takes aim at many of the flaws that are prevalent in our system. It is told in a very savvy and entertaining way. It looks at the bureaucracy of the system, the teachers unions and the rise of Charter schools. The biggest fault of the film comes towards the end. The movie spends its running time describing the issues but by the end you realize it has not done enough, in terms of suggesting a solution.

The strongest portion of the film is also its emotional core. It follows a selection of children across the country entering lotteries in the hopes of gaining a spot for their children in the overcrowded Charter schools. All of the children are worthy of the best education possible and watching the hope and despair that comes along with their situation is heart wrenching.

This is an important film no matter what you believe about the state of our schools or the reason we have gotten to this point. The movie raises discussion about one of the most important issues in life, the well being and future of our children and nation.

Movies I Love: Little Children

I remember back in late 1999 hearing so much buzz about this new movie coming out called American Beauty. All of the critics were raving about it and it had a very intriguing poster. If I remember correctly the poster was a a picture of a stomach and a rose. Around this image were paragraphs of rave reviews from pretty much every major film critic and a lengthy list of critic circle awards it had won. For a film geek, this was exciting, they were selling this as the greatest movie of all time. It even went on to win a bunch of Academy Awards.

 

I am not knocking that movie, but when I saw it I was a little let down. It was good, had amazing performances from all the main cast and was cleverly scripted. But it didn't move me, it didn't blow me away like I had expected. I bring this up, because a movie came out a few years later that dealt with a lot of the same themes. It was a look at suburbia, family, infidelity, criminals, redemption, secrets, hopes. Like other films had done (namely American Beauty and Blue Velvet) it was a look at the underbelly of suburban life.

 

Little Children did exactly for me what I wanted American Beauty to do those years earlier. It blew me away. Megan and I watched it one night on DVD, I had picked it up at a used book store because I had heard good things about it and remembered it had garnered some Oscar Buzz. We started the film and were sucked into this world within the first few minutes. A lot of times people will accuse movies with narration of being lazy. This is not one of those movies. The narration actually adds another great layer to the film. It is a God voice, not of any of the characters. It gives the movie an almost surreal documentary feel. As if we are with a crew secretly filming these people. When the film ended I called a friend of mine and instead of suggesting that he watch this movie, I demanded that he come over the next evening and watch it with us again. He was unsure at first that it sounded interesting but like Megan and I the night before, within minutes new he was watching something exceptional.

 

Director Todd Field guides us through this suburban landscape expertly. The leads, Kate Winslet (perfect as always) and Patrick Wilson play two unhappy married people struggling with the fact that their dreams have not come true. They find each other at the playground and neighborhood pool where they routinely take their children and immediately respond to each other. They see in each other what they want in their spouses. Meanwhile, Jackie Earle Hailey; in a powerful, sad and creepy performance, is a recently released sex offender who is constantly tormented by an ex cop obsessed with running him out of their safe ideal world. Hailey is joined by Phyllis Somerville, in a heartbreaking performance as his mother, who just wants her son to be normal and in her words, "Be a good boy".

 

As these peoples lives intersect and slowly unravel the film builds to an emotional climax that without spoiling it will leave you haunted and conflicted and definitely discussing. This was the movie American Beauty could have been, it is a very funny, very disturbing (like Beauty) but also emotionally engaging and affecting.  

 

 

Infographic About How Netflix Is Killing Blockbuster

Cool infographic I came across on Slashfilm. Which is my favorite movie blog.


Via: Online MBA Programs

Due Date

The new comedy from The Hangover director Todd Phillips, Due Date may not be to the level of that movie but is very funny for most of its run. Robert Downey Jr and Zack Galifinakis are both well cast as the films leads and have a chemistry that really pushes the film forward. Watching Due Date I kept thinking of two previous movies.

First off, Zack Galifinakis is not technically playing the same character he portrayed in The Hangover but the only difference I can see is his name. He essentially has all the same character traits that made us laugh last time. I don’t know how long he can get by playing the same dude every time but he doesn’t seem to have worn out his welcome yet. Just watching him walk is hilarious.

The second movie I kept thinking about was the amazing 1980’s John Hughes film Planes Trains and Automobiles. The plot is almost exactly the same. Two guys are stuck on a trip across country with one another. One is a jerk (Steve Martin, Robert Downey Jr) and the other is a heavyset nightmare who has a good heart in the end (John Candy, Zack Galifinakis). They hit many of the same notes but since this was made in 2010 everything is amped up to even more unbelievable extremes.

Due Date clearly takes the character from The Hangover and throws him through a loose remix of Planes Trains and Automobiles, but for the most part it works. I was laughing really hard for almost the whole time. However in the last 30 minutes the movie does contain an escape from authorities that diminished the rest of the film. I just couldn’t stop thinking there is no way they could get away with this.

Overall if you are a fan of Galifinakis or Todd Phillips this is worth checking out.

I Am Comic

Director Jordan Brady’s I Am Comic is a funny behind the scenes look at the world of standup comedy. It mostly consists of a combination of interviews with comics from the last 3 decades and footage of them performing. While it may not be the most illuminating look at the development of comedy, the interviews and standup provide consistent laughs for the entire runtime.

                It covers a lot of information already provided in other films. Jerry Seinfeld’s Comedian devoted an entire movie to cover an artist’s developing and honing a new act to perfection. The Aristocrats gave us a look behind the scenes of the comedy world by way of showing a multitude of comics working the same bit. Judd Apatow’s severely underrated Funny People showed us the life of people whose job it is,  is to make people laugh and the neurosis and dysfunction that comes along with the profession. So while I Am Comic might not be bringing a lot new to the conversation it is entertaining due mostly to the laugh per minute ratio it maintains.

                There are some standout moments. Sarah Silverman and Roseanne discussing being offensive and the limits of good or bad taste is perfect. I mean who else could talk about this. (George Carlin is dead, so he was not able to appear.) It was also great to see Carlos Mencia confronted about his stealing of material. I would rather see him confronted about not being funny, but that’s just me. Surprisingly he seems very very proud of his joke theft.

                The narrator of the film is Ritch Shydner. He was a popular comedian in the 80s who walked away from comedy in the early 90s. Throughout the film we watch him try to restart his career taking small timeslots in small comedy clubs in an attempt to work out his act. It is endearing to watch but also a little awkward. The awkwardness stems from the simple fact that he is not very funny. It certainly is not like watching Seinfeld in the aforementioned Comedian.

                It may not be revelatory but it is an entertaining way to spend an hour and a half.

Movies I Love: Three Great Horror Movies

It's been a slow week in terms of movie watching. I have not actually seen anything new. With the exception of a movie I watched with my kids about a dog and boy running from a gang of crooks that was not worth writing about. So I thought I would throw out a list of some of my favorite horror flicks since I dig horror movies and never talk about them on account of them scaring the crap out of my wife. There are many more I would have liked to mention and probably will in time. But as a starter here you go:

The Descent

A crazy claustrophobic nightmare of a movie. The two best things about the movie are that the "monsters" that come into the film are actually kind of plausible and the movie is actually horrifying way before they show up. The sense of dread that sets in moments after the group of female adventurers are trapped by a cave in never lets up. It is the last really great horror film I have seen lately. Movie studios are more into pumping out bad sequel after bad sequel. Actually, this movie got one of those too but I didn't waste my time with it. If you watch it, make sure you see the original directors version of the film with the better ending. It was changed for it's American theatrical run.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

The low budget and faux based on a true story premise make this one hell of scary movie. I remember the first time I saw it being blow away and how real it seemed. The events are insane, yes but it looked like a movie that a psychotic person made with a home video and some inmates at an asylum. None of the sequels or remakes came close to the brutal intensity of this one.  The cast is filled with non professionals and it is obvious at points but they do their jobs well. The insane family in this film truly feels insane and in 1970's rural Texas plausible.

Pet Semetary

Out of the movies on this list, this one is the one that actually scared me the most. I remember lying in bed as a child and being scared out of my mind just thinking about Pet Semetary. I knew any minute Zelda was going to come running out of the corner screaming, "I'll twist your back like mine." This is hands down one of the most faithful adaptations of a Stephen King novel. The novel itself is a great read I suggest to anyone. It works on a lot of levels a two hour horror film can't. It is a very scary, movie, but it is a terrifying and moving book. The story is simple, a family moves into a small town and their young son is killed by a truck. Racked with grief the father takes him to an old burial site that is told to have the powers to bring back the dead. The father, family and neighbors soon find out that sometimes dead is better.

Movies I Love: Raising Arizona

                Ok, so in addition to writing reviews of movies I have already seen, I have decided to also write about some of my favorite films. The first one I want to comment on is the Coen Brother’s film, Raising Arizona. Who knew kidnapping a baby could be so funny?

                I have a feeling that throughout this series I am going to come back to the Coen Brothers again and again. I figure what better place to start than the 1987 comedic masterpiece Raising Arizona. This is one of those movies I watched over and over growing up. I loved it. Luckily, Raising Arizona is different than a lot of movies I loved as a kid, it holds up 100%. It’s no Red Dawn. Man I remember thinking that movie was so cool. Too bad, that didn’t hold up. Raising Arizona on the other hand has changed in another way. It was a movie that I laughed at and enjoyed as a kid. Now as an adult I am happy to say, it makes me laugh even harder. So much I didn’t pick up on as a kid is apparent now.

                I am trying to completely avoid hyperbole here so take this to be an honest opinion; every single shot of this film is perfect. Every performance is spot on, and the plot is extremely fast paced and hilarious. I am watching it at this vary minute and honestly can’t see a single wasted shot or bad choice.

                I love the Coen Brothers and will admit to being biased towards them, but in regards to this movie I really feel it is pretty much flawless. Allright maybe there was a bit of hyperbole. There are two tiny mistakes, Nathan Arizona says Nathan Junior slept in jammies when we saw him in a diaper and when H.I. flies through a windshield there is no glass. But other than those two small quibbles, I have no other problem with this film.

                Nicholas Cage has made probably more bad movies than good, but you can always count on him to bring everything to his performance. This is no exception. He is hilarious as the high strung criminal who is completely unable to turn his life around.  On top of that, his narration is perfect and serves to raise the film to an almost poetic level comedy never reaches.  Holly Hunter is perfect as his partner in life and crime.

                The rest of the cast is just as good. John Goodman and William Forsyth are hilarious and way over the top as H.I.’s prison friends.  Francis McDormand has a hysterical cameo as a jealous mother who wants the baby for her own.

                Kill Bill Volume 2 has an incredible fight in a trailer that is great at showing a fight in a small space. As good as it was it was only borrowing from the fight between Cage, Forsyth, and Goodman here. It is an exciting and hilarious battle.

                I love a movie that gets better and better upon repeat viewings and like most Coen Brothers films this is one of them. If for some reason you have not seen this, rent it now.

Unforgotten: Twenty-Five Years After Willowbrook’

Unforgotten is a very powerful and very sad account of a terrible part of our nation’s history. It is the story of a handful of families that lived through a family member’s life at Willowbrook. The story of Willowbrook is one that his been told many times. The horrors that occurred in the facility have been well documented. The filmmakers make the wise decision of just focusing on these few accounts of how families dealt with before, during and after having siblings and children spending years locked away in this facility that was supposed to care for their disabled relatives.

                Going into the documentary I knew it was going to be rough, but the film effected me more than I originally prepared for. It is sad but amazing to see how these people have dealt with the repercussions of living with not only the repercussions of their family members ailments but the way they were treated for years.

                Watching Unforgotten makes you very grateful for what you have and the abilities we all take for granted. I couldn’t help but think about what I would have done if in the position of some of these families at the time. Would I have sent my child to live with others in the hopes that they could care for them better than I could have?

                 I don’t know, I am lucky enough to have never been faced with these decisions. The one thing that comes through is that these families loved their children and made the best decision they saw available to them at the time. I am just grateful that the choices for these people have been made easier as the establishments we have to care for the disabled have improved.

                The film acts as a snapshot of our national history. One that we have hopefully evolved past.  It is amazing to see that these kids who were at one point deemed helpless have gone on to live instead of rot in an unforgiving landscape like Willowbrook. Unforgotten is now available to view on Netflix Instant Viewing and deserves to be seen.

Bridesmaids Trailer

I am looking forward to this one. Kristen Wigg cracks me up in everything I have seen her in, even movies that were not very good. It will be nice to see her as a lead. Plus the movie is produced by Judd Apatow and directed by Paul Feig (the dudes behind Freaks and Geeks). It will be interesting to see what this genre of movie is like when led by a female cast since we usually just see it through the male perspective. The cast is made up of a lot of other funny actresses like Maya Rudolph, Wendi McLendon-Covey and Ellie Kemper.  Jon Hamm also has a small role.

Check out the trailer below.