Still Crazy After All These Years

When Jeff Bridges got up at the Golden Globes to accept the award for Best Actor in a Drama for his role in Crazy Heart, he may have started to shed his reputation as the most underappreciated actor in Hollywood. It was his first win at the Golden Globes after three previous nominations. He has also been nominated four times for an Oscar (The Last Picture Show, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, Starman, and The Contender) without winning. He wasn't even nominated for some of his great signature roles like Tron, The Fabulous Baker Boys and The Big Lebowski. In Crazy Heart, Jeff Bridges plays a down and out country singer, Bad Blake. He is down on his luck, to say the least, and is driving from town to town playing at bars and drinking. In one small town, he is interviewed by a local reporter (Maggie Gyllenhaal), who is divorced with a small son. A rocky romance ensues. Meanwhile, Bridges tries to get his life together with help from his best friend (Robert Duvall) and a younger performer (Colin Farrell) that he helped on the way up.

On paper, this plot of this movie is a hackneyed stereotype of the hard-drinking, hard-living country singer with has lots of talent but has become an old-broken down alcoholic who is performing at bowling alleys. But Crazy Heart rises above the stereotype, thanks to Jeff Bridges, the rest of the wonderful supporting cast, and some great music composed by T-Bone Burnett. Bridges performs the songs himself. The director of  Crazy Heart is Scott Cooper, yet another first time director. This film certainly has the feel of an indie movie despite the A-list cast.

I love, love, love Jeff Bridges. He is one of my favorite actors. He really inhabits a role and gives it a life with energy. His characters are always struggling with setbacks in life and are tinged with some sadness, whether it is an alien in a human body in Starman, The Dude in The Big Lebowski, or one half of a brother pianist act in The Fabulous Baker Boys. In Crazy Heart, he has found another such role and he handles it perfectly. 

Crazy Heart is a tale of redemption, but also of realism. His character is struggling to get his life back together, and he makes some progress, but by the end of the movie the jury is still out on whether he will succeed. Crazy Heart involves a May-September romance like so many of movies do. But Bridges' relationship with Maggie Gyllenhaal seems very real, and it founders on the rocks as it must. Robert Duvall is good as always as Bridges' down-home best buddie, in a role almost as small as he had in The Road. And Colin Farrell does a nice almost cameo as Bridges' protege who has gone on to stardom but still remembers his roots. Farrell is Irish, but he fits into the British tradition of big stars doing character roles and doing them very well.

Crazy Heart is the story of a musician and it never would have been believable if it didn't have his music. So, T-Bone Burnett composed a whole bunch of songs that become the 30-year repertoire of an Bad Blake. And it all works because Bridges can play the guitar and sing the songs. I'm not a country fan but the soundtrack is great. And so is Bridges' performance which may win him his first Oscar. This movie is still in the theatres. You should see it if you can.

  

It's an Education

The plot of An Education sounds like it is just a remake of Lolita but it is actually based on the true story of a high school girl (Carey Mulligan) growing up in England  in the 1960's who is seduced by a con artist (Peter Sarsgaard) in his early thirties who is passing himself off as an art dealer. He and another couple (Dominic Cooper & Rosamund Pike) live high off the hog while leading a life of crime. Sarsgaard meets Mulligan by chance and is soon seducing not just her, but her parents (Alfred Molina & Cara Seymour) as well. The naiveté of the family is such that Mulligan's father, who originally doesn't even want her to date another high school boy for fear of hurting her chances of getting into university, urges her to go away for a weekend with Saarsgard. Mulligan is in cahoots with him because she has fallen for  him hard and she is scamming her parents without realizing that Saarsgard is doing the same to her.

Mulligan, who was Kitty in the Keira Knightly Pride and Prejudice is perfect as the 16 year old (she is actually 24) who wants her life to begin now. An Education is her movie and she carries it off very nicely. Peter Sarsgaard (Rendition) is always very good and he is very believable as the smarmy con artist. I really like Dominic Cooper (The History Boys)  who plays Saarsgard's sidekick with panache and Rosamund Pike who was Jane in the Keira Knightly Pride and Prejudice is good as his blonde bimbo girlfriend. Alfred Molina who plays the father gets to speak in something like his real accent here. In most of his movies (Frida, Spider-Man 2, The Da Vinci Code), he is not even British. He is a classic British character actor and is fantastic at whatever role he plays. Emma Thompson also shows that all British actors are character actors at their core. She does a nice turn in An Education as the dowdy, hard, bitter, principal at Mulligan's school who considers her to be damaged goods. Olivia Williams (Rushmore, The Sixth Sense) has a nice but small part as the teacher who turns out to be the opposite of Thompson.

The direction and the art direction in An Education are really fab. The setting of the film in 1960's middle class England looks perfect. The story moves right along and An Education feels like it has a lot of action for a film that is mostly just people talking. The thing that makes this story more interesting than just Lolita is the involvement of Mulligan's parents in the seduction and how they are totally taken in by. There are still some very Lolita-esque parts of An Education so it does have its creepy aspects. The film is just very well done with a bunch of great British actors so it is a joy to watch them in action. And Mulligan shows that she belongs with the likes Thompson and Molina.

Not so Fantastic Mr. Fox

Fantastic Mr. Fox is the new film from quirky director Wes Anderson, whose previous films include Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, and The Darjeeling Limited. Anderson's films are comedies that specialize in awkward, unsocialized characters who are trying to fit into the real world. This may explain why Anderson's muse is Bill Murray who has appeared in all of Anderson's movies in greater or lesser roles. In fact, I credit Wes Anderson with saving Bill Murray's career which has had a resurgence since he appeared in Rushmore, including an Oscar nomination for Lost in Translation. Like Woody Allen and the Coen Brothers, Wes Anderson's movies are hit or miss, but you want him to keep making movies.  Rushmore is a big favorite of mine, and as a fan of Jacques Cousteau as a kid, I really appreciated The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.

In his new film, Wes Anderson has moved into animation; not just animation but stop-action animation. This is a little used technique these days outside of the classic Wallace and Gromit movies. The making of Fantastic Mr. Fox involved puppets and tiny sets, with each puppet painstakingly moved a tiny fraction and then filmed and so on over and over until you get a movie. One of the charms of Fantastic Mr. Fox is that the animation really doesn't look that good. This movie has a Wallace and Gromit feel to it. The makers of  Wallace and Gromit  concoct a complex plot about something very silly, usually involving cheese and sheep, and Wes Anderson has done something very similar involving foxes, chickens and cider. The film is based on a book by Roald Dahl. In the story, Fantastic Mr. Fox (George Clooney) decides to settle down and raise a family. He marries Mrs. Fox (Meryl Streep). But he can't quite settle down and he is always wanting to raid the chicken coops of the nearby nasty farmers, Boggis, Bunce and Bean. The Foxes have a son (Jason Schwartzman) who is a chip off the old block and before long he and another young fox (Wallace Wolodarsky) are planning raids of their own.

For a slight, silly film, Fantastic Mr. Fox has a fairly complex plot and a lot of characters. Besides the fox family, there are various other animals who are friends and associates of Mr. Fox, including Badger (Bill Murray). There are three evil bad guys plus their minions including a rat (Willem Dafoe). But it is all very light-hearted, especially Mr. Fox himself who blithely goes forward with his plans even as the roof is literally falling in. My favorite silly things in the movie are the whistle and clicks that Mr. Fox always gives as a greeting and the "bandit hats" that they wear as a badge of courage during their raids. I quite liked parts of Fantastic Mr. Fox but it didn't really hold my interest.  I took a few naps during the movie so I may have missed the best bits. My napping is not a good method of rating a movie since I slept through quite a bit of The Big Lebowski the first time I saw it. Anyway, I have to say that most people liked Fantastic Mr. Fox better than I did. So don't let me stop you.

8 1/2 + 1/2 = Nine

Nine is, more or less, a musical version of Fellini's 1963 film, 8 1/2. The 8 1/2 refers to the number of movies he had directed. Nine tells the story of a Fellini-esque Italian film director (Daniel Day-Lewis) as he tries to shoot his latest movie while his life slowly crumbles around him. The story of Day-Lewis' life is shown in the present as well as flashing back to the past as he bounces from woman to woman to woman without the will or ability to stop himself. He is also being haunted by his dead mother (Sophia Loren). Nine is directed by Rob Marshall. He started out as choreographer on Broadway and was nominated for six Tony Awards. His first film was Chicago. I never saw Nine or Chicago on the stage, but I think Nine is much better. I kind of napped through Chicago when I saw it, but there was no danger of that in Nine.

I'm not sure exactly what it was that made me like Nine so much The music was definitely great. Maybe it was the women (see below). Or maybe it was Daniel Day-Lewis' sunglasses (shown at left along with Marcello Mastroianni and his sunglasses in 8 1/2) or maybe it was his baby blue 1963 Alfa Romeo Giulia Spider Veloce. Oh man, that car is sweet. Between the Alfa and those sunglasses, it's not hard to believe that Day-Lewis could pull all those women and all that trouble.

Nine has an amazing cast. I mean amazing. Take a look at the women in Daniel Day Lewis' troubled life in Nine: from left to right (standing), Judi Dench (his costume designer and confidant), Marion Cotillard (his wife), Sophia Loren (his mother), Nicole Kidman (his leading lady and muse), Kate Hudson (a fashion journalist). From left to right (sitting) Penelope Cruz (his mistress), Fergie (his first sexual experience). Judi Dench, in particular, is looking really great, and is not even the oldest in the cast since Sophia Loren is three months older. They are both 75.

Nine is a tragedy but one with some redemption. It is very operatic and Fergie is definitely the fat lady. Boy, does she ever have a voice. I never realized that listening to the Black Eyed Peas. She is great. But everyone in Nine gets their chance to perform in a big musical number. It's a new experience to see Kate Hudson in a movie like this, but she does well playing a musical version of herself. She looks a lot like her mother on Laugh-In. Kidman is good, but her part is almost a cameo. Dench really has fun with her part which a bit different from her usual. Cruz is playing Cruz and she does it very well. This is definitely Day-Lewis' movie and he is on stage all the time, but Marion Cottilard does a good job of sharing the limelight with him. She had her breakout year in 2008 winning the Oscar for her amazing performance as Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose. She followed that up as Johnny Depp's girlfriend in Public Enemies and Day-Lewis' wife in Nine in 2009. She is always good.

Playing Fellini in a big Broadway musical might be daunting to most Hollywood actors, but Daniel Day-Lewis is not most Hollywood actors. He can pull it off and make it look easy. Nine has a lot of the feel of another cool film musical, All That Jazz, which starred Roy Scheider, and was written and directed by another choreographer turned director, Bob Fosse. In All That Jazz, Scheider is haunted by the Angel of Death (Jessica Lange) and drops into a similar death spiral to Day-Lewis' in Nine. But Nine is a bit more upbeat at the end. Life goes on, except when it doesn't. Go see Nine and put All That Jazz on your Netflix list.

No Shit Sherlock

It was inevitable that the current trend of re-imagining and remaking every movie and TV show ever made, should eventually reach Sherlock Holmes. The question is, why did it take so long? The books and short stories written over a century ago by Arthur Conan Doyle have been recreated for the screen hundreds of times, but in the last 20 years or so, not so much. The most famous portrayal of Holmes was by Basil Rathbone (with Nigel Bruce as Watson) in 14 films in the 1940's. My personal favorite is not a real Sherlock Holmes movie. It is They Might Be Giants, the story of a troubled man (George C. Scott) in modern (c. 1970) New York City who believes that he is actually Sherlock Holmes, and his psychiatrist, Dr. Mildred Watson (Joanne Woodward). Put it on your Netflix list. There hasn't been a major motion picture version of Sherlock Holmes for about twenty years. Until now.

The new Sherlock Holmes has been promoted and discussed endlessly. The discussion has been mostly about the fidelity of this re-imagining. In the film, Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) and Watson (Jude Law) are basically action heroes in an action film. Most of the plot concerns a serial killer (Mark Strong) who is Jack the Ripper with a little voodoo added in, who apparently returns from the grave to resume his life of crime. Also in the mix is Inspector

Lestrade (Eddie Marsan) of the Yard, Watson's fiancee (Kelly Reilly) and Holmes competitor and love interest, Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams). As is normal for recent remakes of old books and comics, the filmmakers have included a hodgepodge of stuff from many actual Sherlock Holmes stories into the screenplay for the new film. Irene Adler appears in the books as Holmes' love interest ,and Watson does get engaged, married and eventually widowed. And Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard appears in many Holmes stories. Robert Downey Jr.'s character is, in fact, very close to the original in many ways. Holmes was an eccentric. His manner of dress and his wildly untidy flat at 221B Baker Street are straight out of the books. He and Watson carried pistols, and Holmes had trained as a boxer and regularly dispatches bad guys. If anything, I think Watson is changed more from the original, from the stuffy, recorder of events into Robin to Downey's Batman.

Sherlock Holmes was directed by Guy Ritchie, who besides having been married and divorced from Madonna, specializes in such fast-talking, fast-action films as Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch and RocknRolla. There are some similarities of style between Sherlock Holmes and these earlier films. The main one is non-stop action. In movies like Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, this made for a very entertaining movie, but in Sherlock Holmes, I found it a bit disappointing. It's not that I didn't like the action, it's just that these scenes make up almost the whole movie, and displaced what I was looking for which is some deduction. I was quite looking forward to a whole lot of scenes of Holmes deducing people's lives from one tiny bit of cigar ash, but sadly this is mostly missing from the film. It's too bad because, otherwise, it's a nice movie. It looks great and the casting of Jude Law and Robert Downey Jr. as the iconic leads works well. And I just love, love, love, Robert Downey Jr. The rest of the cast has little to do and mostly makes no impact, including Mark Strong (RocknRolla) as the one-dimensional villain, Eddie Marsan (V for Vendetta) as the one-dimensional Inspector, and Kelly Reilly (Pride & Prejudice) as the one-dimensional fiancee. Only Rachel McAdams (State of Play, The Family Stone), as the mysterious female "Holmes," breaks out of the pack, and holds her own with Downey Jr. and Law. I hope she will be back for the sequel.

I know you are asking yourself the question, "Where is Professor Moriarity?" Well, in this respect at least, the makers of Sherlock Holmes are taking the long view. Moriarity does appear near the end of the film, albeit cloaked in darkness, revealing to the viewers that he has been pulling the strings all along and presaging the inevitable sequel. There are rumors that none other but Brad Pitt will be playing Professor Moriarty in the next movie planned for 2011. Anyway, even without much Moriarity, this is an enjoyable bit of fluff which makes it a perfect holiday movie.

George Clooney is Me

In Up in the Air, George Clooney plays a good-looking middle-aged man who travels a lot and doesn't have any long-term relationships. OK, I know this sounds suspiciously like the Geoff Clayton Story but there are some small differences between his character and mine First, I don't fire people for a living. And second,  Clooney takes both the travel and the lack of relationships to a level that even I can never reach. He is trying to reach ten million frequent flyer miles and zero relationships. In fact, he gives self-help lectures about "emptying the backpack" of all the things that are weighing you down in life. The heaviest things in the backpack, of course, are relationships. Clooney has been happily traveling and not making relationships for years but things are about to catch up with him. First, a new young young member of his firm (Anna Kendrick) suggests to Clooney's boss (Jason Bateman) that people could be fired by video-conference; no travel necessary. Then relationships start sneaking up on Clooney. Not only does he have to mentor his young associate on the road, but his sister (Melanie Lynskey) is getting married and wants him to come home to Wisconsin for the wedding. For a while, Clooney seems to have the perfect non-relationship with a female version of himself (Vera Farmiga) but he begins to doubt his empty-backback lifestyle.

                                  

Up in the Air was written and directed by Jason Reitman, son the of the fabled Ivan Reitman who directed Meatballs, Stripes, Ghost Busters and Dave to name a few. Now Ivan's son, Jason, is doing very well for himself. He has already directed Thank You for Smoking, Juno and now Up in the Air. That's an amazing first three movies and I really liked all of them. Up in the Air is just so well put together. The screenplay, the cast and the direction are all great. And the end of the movie may surprise you.

George Clooney is so good at playing, well, George Clooney that he is a joy to watch. He doesn't veer off and play characters that he knows are beyond him. But that being said, he has made some very interesting movies and played some very interesting characters including a smooth ex-con (Ocean's Eleven), a tired spy (Syriana), a bitter fixer (Michael Clayton), and even a sly fox (Fantastic Mr. Fox). Up in the Air is George Clooney's movie. He is in every scene. And because he fits the role so perfectly and plays it so effortlessly, people may not recognize that there is some great acting going on here.

The rest of the cast is also very nice. Jason Bateman (Juno) is cool as always, and Anna Kendrick (Twilight) is excellent as the women who becomes more like George Clooney than she would like. Vera Farmiga (The Departed) does great job playing the female George Clooney. And she and Clooney have a nice chemistry together. There are some nice cameos by people who are getting fired by Clooney including the suddenly ubiquitous Zach Galifianakis (The Hangover) and J.K. Simmons (Juno). Danny McBride (Pineapple Express) plays Clooney's future brother-in-law. The always wonderful Sam Elliot appears as the chief pilot of the airline.

 Up in the Air is one of the best movies of the year. It will definitely be on my Top Ten List and  probably up for a few Oscars as well. It's not often that I go to a movie expecting it to be great and have it meet my expectations. Maybe if you hate George Clooney, you might not like Up in the Air but who could hate George Clooney. I mean really. Go see it.