True Grit (2010)

In the Coen Brothers’ 2010 remake of “True Grit,” Jeff Bridges is not playing the John Wayne role. He’s playing the Jeff Bridges role – or, more appropriately, the role made in the lasting novel by Charles Portis, many of the original dialogue can be heard in this film. Bridges doesn’t have the typical physique of the Duke. Few have had it though. Roger Ebert said in his review, “But he has here, I believe, an equal screen presence.” We always knew we were looking at John Wayne in the original “True Grit.” When we see Rooster Cogburn in this remake, we’re not thinking about Jeff Bridges.

Ebert noted this in his review, “Wayne wanted his tombstone to read, Feo, Fuerte y Formal (Ugly, Strong and Dignified). He was a handsome, weathered man when I met him in the 1960s and '70s, but not above a certain understandable vanity. Roo­ster might be an ornery gunslinger with an eye patch, but Wayne played him wearing a hairpiece and a corset. Jeff Bridges occupies the character like a homeless squatter. I found myself wondering how young Mattie Ross could endure his body odor.”

Bridges’ interpretation is hands down closer to the actuality of a lawman in the years of the West. How pleasant can a man be when he lives in saloons and on horseback? Not all riders on the range carried a change of clothes. Obviously he’s a lawman with an office and room someplace in town, but for a lot of the movie, he is traveling through discouraging land to find the man who murdered Mattie’s father.

As said in the book, Mattie, played by Hailee Stienfeld, is a brave young teen with a look as level as her hat brim. She sires Marshal Cogburn to hung the villain Tom Chancey, played by Josh Brolin. She wants to kill him for “what he done.” If Bridges comfortably wears the Duke’s shoes, Hailee Steinfeld is more powerful than Kim Darby in the original, and she was really darn good. Steinfeld was 13 when she played in the film, close to the right age. Darby was a little over 20. Ebert said, “The story hinges on the steely resolve of a girl who has been raised in the eye-for-an eye Old West, seen some bad sights and picked up her values from the kind of old man who can go and get hisself shot.”

Ebert continues, “What strikes me is that I'm describing the story and the film as if it were simply, if admirably, a good Western. That's a surprise to me, because this is a film by the Coen Brothers, and this is the first straight genre exercise in their career. It's a loving one. Their craftsmanship is a wonder.”Their casting is always inspired and correct. The cinematography by Roger Deakins reminds us of the mastery that was, and can still be, the Western.

However, this isn’t a Coen Brothers film in the way that we usually put it this way. It’s not weird, odd, cynical or blistering. It’s like these two men, who have made some of the original films of our time, made it to a point where they decided to sail on the absolute freedom of good old straightforward mastery. Ebert noted, “This is like Iggy Pop singing “My Funny Valentine,” which he does very well. So let me praise it for what it is, a splendid Western. The Coens having demonstrated their mastery of many notes, including many not heard before, now show they can play in tune.”

Besides, isn’t Rooster Cogburn where Jeff Bridges started out 40 years prior? Ebert said, “The first time I was aware of him was in “The Last Picture Show” (1971), where he and his friends went the local movie theater to see “Red River,” starring John Wayne. Since then, that clean-faced young man has lived and rowdied and worked his way into being able to play Rooster with a savory nastiness that Wayne could not have equaled.”

All the same, the hero of this film is Hailee Steinfeld, and that’s right. This is her story, set in the pacing by her, narrated by her. This is Steinfeld’s first huge role, and she nails it. She walks around the chance to make Mattie beautiful. Mattie doesn’t live in a beautiful world. Ebert admitted, “Seeing the first “True Grit,” I got a little crush on Kim Darby.” Seeing this one, few people would fall in love with Hailee Steinfeld. Maybe in another movie, but the way she plays it with the Coens, she’s more the type of person you’d want defending you.

Matt Damon, Josh Brolin and Barry Pepper have weight and quality in supporting roles. Damon is LaBoeuf, the Texas Ranger who joins the team to hunt Tom Chaney. Glen Campbell had the role before, and was right for the tone of the original. Damon plays it on a more worrying way. His LaBoeuf isn’t a sidekick. He and Cogburn have problems that go back years. We also find out that LaBoeuf is not a man of simple loyalty.

As Tom Chaney, Brolin is a complete and untouched villain, a rattlesnake who would quickly shoot Mattie as Rooster. In the Western genre, evil can be less shaded than in your modern film with every psychological insight. Ebert said, “Barry Pepper plays Lucky Ned Pepper, leader of a gang Chaney ends up with, and part of the four-man charge across the meadow into Rooster's gunfire, a charge as lucky for them as the Charge of the Light Brigade.”

The 1969 film, directed by Hollywood great Henry Hathaway, had beautiful landscapes. The meadow and several other scenes took place in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado, near Telluride. Ebert noted, “This film's landscapes are all in Texas, and although some are beautiful, many are as harsh and threatening as the badlands described by Cormac McCarthy or Larry McMurtry.”

Ebert continued, “I expect Bridges and Steinfeld have good chances of winning Oscar nominations for this film.” Steinfeld is good the entire runtime, but the scene audiences love is the one where she negotiates with a horse trader, played by Dakin Matthews, for the money she feels is owed her. Here the main part is the dialogue by the Coens, which never tires, actually stays flat and commen sense, as Mattie reasons the thief out of his money by looking to say his own logic.

Ebert ended his review by saying, “I'm surprised the Coens made this film, so unlike their other work, except in quality. Instead of saying that now I hope they get back to making “Coen Brothers films,” I'm inclined to speculate on what other genres they might approach in this spirit. What about the musical? “Oklahoma!” is ready to be remade.”

Like how the Nostalgia Critic stated when he did his Old vs. New on the “True Grit” movies, I actually prefer the remake because of how realistic the ending turned out. I won’t say what happened, but I felt that ended off on a more powerful note rather than the typical happy ending in the Westerns in the past. I would say this is another one of my favorite Westerns. Do check it out if you haven’t, I highly think everyone will have a great time watching it.

Alright everyone, that ends “Coen Brothers Month.” I hope everyone enjoyed it, and I hope everyone was given some good recommendations for movies to check out. Stay tuned next month to see what I have in store for everyone.

No Country for Old Men

The movie opens with the even, confiding voice of Tommy Lee Jones. He describes a teenage murder he once sentenced to the chair. They boy had killed his 14-year-old girlfriend. The papers described it as a crime of passion, “but he tolt me there weren’t nothin’ passionate about it. Said he’d been fixin’ to kill someone for as long as he could remember. Said if I let him out of there, he’d kill somebody again. Said he was goin’ to Satan’s home. Reckoned he’d be there in about 15 minutes.”

Roger Ebert said in his review, “These words sounded verbatim to me from No Country for Old Men, the novel by Cormac McCarthy, but I find they are not quite. And their impact has been improved upon in the delivery. When I get the DVD of this film, I will listen to that stretch of narration several times; Jones delivers it with a vocal precision and contained emotion that is extraordinary, and it sets up the entire film, which regards a completely evil man with wonderment, as if astonished that that such a merciless creature could exist.”

The man is named Anton Chigurh. Ebert said, “No, I don't know how his last name is pronounced. Like many of the words McCarthy uses, particularly in his masterpiece Suttree, I think it is employed like an architectural detail: The point is not how it sounds or what it means, but the brushstroke it adds to the sentence.” Chigurh, played by Javier Bardem, is a tall, slumping man with thin, black hair and a scary smile, who walks through Texas carrying a tank of compressed air and murdering everyone with a cattle stungun. It forces a cylinder into their heads and brings it back again.

Chigurh is one thread in the sadistic plot. Ed Tom Bell, the sheriff played by Jones, is another. The third person is Llewelyn Moss, played by Josh Brolin, a poor man who lives with his wife in a house trailer, and one day, whole hunting, comes across a drug deal getting worse in the desert. Cars drive in a circle like an old wagon train. Almost everyone present gets killed. They even shot the dog. In the back of one pickup are piled bags of drugs. Llewelyn sees one thing is missing: the money. He finds it in a briefcase next to a man who made it up to a shade tree before dying.

The story is about Moss trying to make this $2 million his own, Chigurh trying to take it away from him and Sheriff Bell trying to stop Chigurh’s evil murder path. We also meet Moss’ young wife, Carla Jean (Kelly MacDonald), an overconfident bounty hunter named Carson Wells (Woody Harrelson), the businessman (Stephen Root) who hires Carson to find the money after investing in the drug deal, and so many hotel and store clerks who are sad to meet Chigurh.

Ebert credited, “"No Country for Old Men" is as good a film as the Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan, have ever made, and they made "Fargo."” It has elements of the thriller and the chase but is mainly a character study, seeing how its people meet and deal with a man so evil, heartless and cold that there is just no understanding him. Chigurh is so evil, he is sometimes almost funny. “He has his principles,” says the bounty hunter, who knows nothing about him.

Look at another part where the dialogue is as good as any from 2007, the year “No Country for Old Men” was released. Chigurh enters a shabby gas station in the middle of nowhere and starts a word game with the old man, played by Gene Jones, behind the cash register, who becomes really scared. It looks like they are talking about whether Chigurh will kill him. Chigurh undeniably has decided on what he’s going to do. Without explaining why, he asks the man to call the flip on his coin. Listen to what they say, how they say it, how they involve the chances. Listen to their timing. Ebert said, “You want to applaud the writing, which comes from the Coen brothers, out of McCarthy.”

The $2 million is actually easier to get than to keep. Moss tries hiding in vague hotels. Scenes are carefully made where each man knows the other is near. Moss can run but he can’t hide. Chigurh always finds him. He shadows him like his fate, never rushing, always moving as the same leisure pace, like a chaser in a nightmare.

Ebert credited, “This movie is a masterful evocation of time, place, character, moral choices, immoral certainties, human nature and fate. It is also, in the photography by Roger Deakins, the editing by the Coens and the music by Carter Burwell, startlingly beautiful, stark and lonely. As McCarthy does with the Judge, the hairless exterminator in his "Blood Meridian" (Ridley Scott's next film), and as in his "Suttree," especially in the scene where the riverbank caves in, the movie demonstrates how pitiful ordinary human feelings are in the face of implacable injustice.” The movie also loves some of its character, and feels bad for them, and always looks at the dialogue never as spoken but as thought.

Many of the scenes in “No Country for Old Men” are so perfectly made that you want them to just go one, and yet they make an emotional moment carrying you to the next scene. Ebert admitted, “Another movie that made me feel that way was "Fargo."” To make amazing film is a miracle, and this is the one.

As with the other Coen Brothers movies that I have reviewed this month, this is another one that should not be skipped. I loved the mystery that this one sucks you into as to what is going to happen. If I am not mistaken, I think this movie leaves off on a vague ending that makes you decide how you think the movie will end off. Just see it for yourself and decide. Like I said before, this one is not to be missed, so do check this one out, it’s a must. 

I know that I am posting this review late, but I lost track of time of when I was supposed to post this, so I apologize.

Stay tuned next week for the finale of “Coen Brothers Month,” where I end off with a great film.

O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Jokey to a point, Joe and Ethan Coen’s “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” released in 2000, tells Homer’s Odyssey and the Bible to no specific point. Peter Canavese said in his review, “The Coen Brothers do weave political and religious satire into their comic tapestry, but mostly they use their kinda-update of The Odyssey (updating only so far as the 1930s, mind you) as a clothesline for hillbilly jokes and roots music. T-Bone Burnett's musical supervision enriches the film immeasurably, elevating it from what the Coens have half-jokingly referred to as their "Ma and Pa Kettle" movie (or "the Lawrence of Arabia of hayseed movies") into something approaching a modern movie musical.”

In a completely hilarious performance that’s aging well, George Clooney plays Ulysses Everett McGill, the de facto “genius” of three escaped prisoners from a 1937 chain gang. With Pete Hogwallop (John Turturro) and Delmar O’Donnell (Tim Blake Nelson) with him, Ulysses must take the long journey home to his wife Penny (Holly Hunter, hilariously the opposite of an understanding wife). The similarity to Homer is right there, despite being wide as the comedy: along the way, the “man of twists and turns” meets supernatural advice, distractions and obstacles including a “Blind Seer” (Lee Weaver), a trio of Sirens (Mia Tate, Musetta Vander and Christy Taylor), a “cyclops” (John Goodman’s giant Bible salesman Daniel “Big Dan” Teague), and a variety of other beasts (politicians and the Klan, not equally limited) on the way to encounter, rather anticlimactically, enemy suitor Vernon T. Waldrip (Ray McKinnon).

Canavese noted, “The film's most memorable setpiece finds the trio of antiheroes lighting upon a surreal Klan rally simultaneously redolent of The Wizard of Oz's "March of the Winkies," a mass-synchronized Busby Berkeley number, and a Nazi rally; it's at once a bit scary and a lot funny, an effect enhanced by the revelation that the apparently progressive gubernatorial candidate—running on an anti-corruption platform—spits away from the head of the racist class. But the picaresque comedy is hit and miss, the horrors and delights of the Coens' random universe having little to no lasting emotional impact on their little-man heroes.”

Canavese continued, “Given that, one wishes the movie were funnier and a bit less discomfiting in its oh-so-smart superiority to dimwitted characters; to be fair, the idiots who have heart do get sympathetic credit for it.” Mostly, “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” is a mixture of literary, cinematic, musical and historical references (the title refers to the not-watched movie in Preston Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels), cameos from Coen regulars (Michael Badalucco as George “Babyface” Nelson, Charles Durning as a strongly resourceful, high-climbing politician), and lively musical numbers, like “Man of Constant Sorrow,” a fictional and (fortuitously) actual hit song. Canavese ended his review by saying, “One thing is certain: even with its mock-pretentious parallelism to The Odyssey—calculatedly undercut even further by the Coens' later insistence that they never read Homer's epic—O Brother, Where Art Thou? refuses to take itself seriously, which is both its principal failing and its charm.”

This is another one of those movies that is a must see by everyone. I have only known parts of The Odyssey, and this movie did a great inspiration of the play. As a Classical Mythology minor in College, I thoroughly found myself enjoying this and would say it’s another one of my favorite films. Definitely see it if you haven’t.

Alright everyone, there is a movie that I’m thinking of checking out tonight. If I don’t get to see it, then wait next week for the continuation of “Coen Brothers Month.”

The Big Lebowski

The Coen brothers’ “The Big Lebowski” is a friendly, awkward comedy about a human car accident, and needs a forewarning like the one Mark Twain gave to “Huckleberry Finn:” “Persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.” It’s about a man named Jeff Lebowski, who calls himself the Dude, and is said by the narrator to be “the laziest man in Los Angeles County.” He only likes to go bowling, but is confused for a millionaire named the Big Lebowski, with dreadful consequences.

This is the first movie by Joel and Ethan Coen since “Fargo.” Few movies could equal that one, but not this film – but it’s strangely engaging, like its protagonist. The Dude is played by Jeff Bridges with a goatee, a potbelly and a pair of Bermuda shorts so huge they have been borrowed from his best friend and bowling buddy, Walter Sobchak, played by John Goodman. Their other teammate is Donny, played by Steve Buscemi, who may not be smart, but it’s hard to be sure since he never is allowed to finish what he says.

Everyone knows someone like the Dude, and it has been said the Coen brothers do. Roger Ebert noted in his review, “They based the character on a movie producer and distributor named Jeff Dowd, a familiar figure at film festivals, who is tall, large, shaggy and aboil with enthusiasm. Dowd is much more successful than Lebowski (he has played an important role in the Coens' careers as indie filmmakers), but no less a creature of the moment.” Both dudes dpend on inspiration and improvisation more than organization.

Ebert said, “In spirit, "The Big Lebowski'' resembles the Coens' "Raising Arizona,'' with its large cast of peculiar characters and its strangely wonderful dialogue.” Here, in a film set at the time of the Gulf War, are characters that speak in a way of past times: Vietnam (Walter), the flower power years (the Dude) and “Twilight Zone” (Donny). Their very belief of reality may be looked at by the small ways they have seen it. One of the good things about “Fargo” was the way the Coens listened carefully to how their characters talked. Also, notice here when the In & Out Burger shop is said to be a meeting, the Dude gives the address: That’s the type of exact information he would have.

As the film starts, the Dude is visited by two guards for an adult king, played by Ben Gazzara, who is owed a lot of money by the Big Lebowski’s wife. Obviously, the thugs have the wrong Lebowski, but before they figure that out, one already has urinated on the Dude’s rug, giving deep hate: “That rug really tied the room together,” the Dude mourns. Walter, the Vietnam veteran, leads a cause for revenge. Quoting exactly what President Bush says on TV, he declares that “this aggression will not stand” and demands the Dude to “draw a line in the sand.” The Dude visits the other Lebowski, played by David Huddleston, leaves with one of his rugs, and soon finds himself enrolled in the millionaire’s plans. The rich Lebowski, in a wheelchair and looking into a fireplace like, how Ebert said, “Maj. Amberson in "The Magnificent Ambersons,''” tells the Dude that his wife, Bunny, played by the hot Tara Reid, has been kidnapped. He wants the Dude to deliver the ransom money. This plan is conflicting by Maude, played by Julianne Moore, the Big Lebowski’s daughter from an earlier marriage. Moore, who played an adult actress in “Boogie Nights,” here, plays an all around different kind of suggestive artist. She covers her body with paint and throws herself through the air in a leather harness. A major role is played by the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, as Brandt, the obedient assistant to the Big Lebowski.

Los Angeles in this film is filled with oddball characters. One of the funniest is a Latino bowler named Jesus, played by John Turturro, who is seen going door to door in his neighborhood on a kind of mission you read about, but never picture anyone really doing. Ebert said, “The Dude tends to have colorful hallucinations when he's socked in the jaw or pounded on the head, which happens often, and one of them involves a musical comedy sequence inspired by Busby Berkeley. (It includes the first point-of-view shot in history from inside a bowling ball.)” Some may complain “The Big Lebowski” goes off in every direction and never ends up anywhere. That isn’t the film’s flaw, but its style. Ebert said, “The Dude, who smokes a lot of pot and guzzles White Russians made with half-and-half, starts every day filled with resolve, but his plans gradually dissolve into a haze of missed opportunities and missed intentions.” Most people lead lives with a third act. The Dude lives days without evenings. The spirit is given right at the start, when the narrator, played by Sam Elliott, starts out well enough, but eventually confesses he lost what he was thinking.

If you haven’t seen this movie, go ahead and see it because you will love it. The Coen brothers’ must have drawn inspiration from Much Ado About Nothing, seeing how this film might have ended that way, but I wouldn’t know, I’m just guessing. Definitely another one of my favorites, though I was told I have to see it twice to understand everything. I think I got it fine when I first saw it. Don’t miss your chance to see this movie.

Look out next week for more excitement in “The Coen Brothers Month.”

Fargo

June is going to be one heck of a month because I’m dedicating this month to two director brothers and some of their most famous work. I’m of course referring to Joel and Ethan Coen, the Coen brothers. Let’s kick this month off with the 1996 classic, “Fargo,” which happens to be my 700th review since I started blogging.

“Fargo” starts with a completely spot-on look of smalltown life in the cold winter landscape of Minnesota and North Dakota.

Roger Ebert mentioned, “Then it rotates its story through satire, comedy, suspense and violence, until it emerges as one of the best films I've ever seen.”

Ebert continued, “To watch it is to experience steadily mounting delight, as you realize the filmmakers have taken enormous risks, gotten away with them and made a movie that is completely original, and as familiar as an old shoe - or a rubbersoled hunting boot from Land's End, more likely.”

The film is “based on a true story” that took place in Minnesota in 1987. It has been filmed at the spot, there and in North Dakota, by the Coen brothers, who grew up in St. Louis Park, a suburb of Minneapolis, and went on to make good movies like “Blood Simple,” “Miller’s Crossing” and “Barton Fink,” but never before a film as wonderful as “Fargo,” shot in their own hometown.

To tell the story it to give away spoilers, so I will do my best not to do that. A car salesman named Jerry Lundegaard, played by William H. Macy, desperately needs money for a business deal – a parking lot plan that can save him from bankruptcy. He is under fire of his rich father-in-law, played by Harve Presnell, who owns the car agency and treats him like dirt. Jerry hires a couple of lean criminals named Showalter and Grimsrud (Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare) to kidnap his wife (Kristin Rudrud) and promises to split an $80,000 payment with them. Easy enough, except that everything goes wrong in completely unplanned ways, as the plot twists and turns and makes a joke of everything Jerry can think best of.

Ebert described, “Showalter is nervous, sweaty, talkative, mousy. Grimsrud is a sullen slug of few words.” During the kidnapping, he suddenly kills some people (“Oh daddy!” says Showalter, scared).

The bodies are found the next morning, frozen beside the highway, in the bleak lands between Minneapolis and Brainerd, Minn., which is, as we are reminded every time we see the giant statue outside town, the home of Paul Bunyan.

Brainerd’s police chief is a pregnant woman named Marge Gunderson, played by the great Frances McDormand. Ebert noted, “She talks like one of the MacKenzie brothers, in a Canadian-American-Scandivanian accent that's strong on cheerful folksiness. Everybody in the movie talks like that, with lines like “you're dern tootin'.”” When she gets to the big city, she starts looking for a place with a good buffet.

Marge Gunderson might need some help to get her patrol car started in the morning, but she is a talented officer. Soon after visiting the murder place, she pieces the crime in the right way. Eyewitnesses put two suspects in a tan Ciera. This brings her to Jerry Lundegaard’s shop. “I’m a police officer from up Brainerd,” she tells him, “investigating some malfeasance.” Jerry, smartly played by Macy, is a man with a lot of mysterious complexities of the trouble he has put himself in. He is so weak at crime that, when the kidnapping becomes unneeded, he can’t tell the kidnappers, because he doesn’t know their phone number. He’s being hammered with constant calls from General Motors, curious about the unreadable serial number on the paperwork for the same missing tan Ciera. He tries sending faxes where the number is dirty. GM isn’t fooled. Macy creates the painful agony of a man who needs to think fast, and whose mind is filled with fear, guild and the crazy thought that he can somehow still do this successfully.

Ebert credited, “Macy, who has played salesmen and con men before (he's a veteran of David Mamet's plays), finds just the right note in his scenes in the auto showroom. It's fascinating to watch him in action, trying to worm out of a lie involving an extra charge for rust-proofing.”

“Fargo” is filled with so many similar moments that make us nod with recognition. When the two low-paying criminals stop for the night at a truck stop, they hire prostitutes. First is them performing bored, mercenary love making and the next with them sitting up in bed, watching “The Tonight Show” on TV.

Small parts look bigger because they’re so well written and looked at. Kristin Rudrud has a few scenes as Jerry’s wife, but makes a character out of them, always chopping or cooking something heatedly in the kitchen. Their teenage son, played by Tony Denman, who excuses himself from the table to go to McDonald’s, helps makes the film’s setting with a bedroom that has a poster on its wall for the Accordion King.

Ebert credited, “Marge, discussing a hypothetical killer who has littered the highway with bodies, observes matter of factly, “I doubt he's from Brainerd.”” Harve Presnell is a typical self-made millionaire in his firmness on giving the release money himself: He earned it, and by goodness, if anyone is going to deliver it, it’ll be him. He wants his money’s worth.

On the way to the violent and unexpected climax, Marge has a drink in her hotel buffet with an old high school love who obviously still loves her (Steve Park), even though she’s married (John Carroll Lynch) and pregnant. He explains, in a sentence filled with the vagueness of the possibly trimmed, “I’m working for Honeywell. If you’re an engineer, you could do a lot worse.” Frances McDormand must have nominated for an Academy Award with the performance, which is true in every little moment, and yet mysteriously, quietly, over the top in its increasing effect. Ebert ended his review by saying, “The screenplay is by Ethan and Joel Coen (Joel directed, Ethan produced), and although I have no doubt that events something like this really did take place in Minnesota in 1987, they have elevated reality into a human comedy - into the kind of movie that makes us hug ourselves with the way it pulls off one improbable scene after another. Films like “Fargo” are why I love the movies.”

Don’t read this review if you haven’t seen the movie. You will love this movie, as it is an absolute must. I would say it’s one of my favorites. Especially since Marge’s most quotable line in the movie is the most famous quotes ever said, “You betcha.”

Check in next week for an even better film in “The Coen Brothers Month.”