The Last Picture Show: Director's Cut

"Nothing much has changed."  Well, that's a tag line that sounds promising.  Normally, I would pass on a movie that sounds like the audio-visual version of a sedative, but this film earned eight Academy Award nominations in 1971, winning two, and they are primarily in the acting and directing categories.  I like me some Oscar bait, so let's check this out.

The Last Picture Show is the story of Sonny (Timothy Bottoms), a high school senior in a two-bit Texas town.  The only things to do in town are go to the movie house, play pool, and go to the diner, all of which are owned by Sam the Lion (Ben Johnson), the only man in town that seems satisfied with his life.  Everyone else does dumb stuff, like having petty affairs that are common knowledge in such a small town.  Sonny and his best friend, Duane (Jeff Bridges), are still too young to be disillusioned, but even they know that the biggest adventures of their life will come outside of this town.  Still, they try to find what fun they can in this town, and it usually boils down to sex.  In particular, it often comes down to Jacy (Cybill Shepherd), the prettiest and richest girl their age.  Jacy starts the film dating the handsome and popular Duane, but she is interested in expanding her experiences, and tries her best to manipulate any man who looks twice at her, including Sonny.  But this isn't the story of a love triangle.  It's more like "A Year in the Life of..." their small town.  Things change in that year, both big and small, but the big picture stays the same: teenagers will come of age, once again, in this two-bit Texas town.

That is kind of a bland synopsis of the film, isn't it?  I can't help it, this movie does not really have much of a plot.  It's all about the ensemble cast and a subtle sense of sadness that pervades the film.  The cast in this film is pretty impressive.  I wasn't terribly impressed with Timothy Bottoms in the lead role, but there were many strong supporting performances, including four (!) that were nominated for Oscars, and two that won.  Jeff Bridges (who was nominated) is pretty good as the not terribly bright high school alpha male that struggles to maintain his importance out of school.  Ben Johnson won the Best Supporting Actor award playing Sam the Lion based, from what I can tell, largely on a monologue where he reminisces on loves and risks taken and lost, but always worth the effort.  Sure, it was a great speech, and that speech alone separated his character from everyone else in the movie, but I have to admit that I was surprised that his famous role gets so little screen time.  I was impressed with Cybill Shepherd, in her first film role, playing what amounts to a femme fatale in training.  She might be developing into a manipulative bitch here, but her mother (Ellen Burstyn, in an Oscar-nominated role) is the reigning queen of bitchy despair and skepticism.  Cloris Leachman received the Best Supporting Actress award for her portrayal as the love-starved married woman who winds up having an affair with Sonny.  The rest of the cast is recognizable, but their contributions are relatively minor, although, compared to four Oscar-nominated roles, what do you expect?  Randy Quaid made his film debut in this movie; it's hard to picture now, with his near-permanent casting as a drunken uncle, but his character is a rival with Duane for Jacy's affections at one point.  Sam Bottoms, Clu Gulager, and Eileen Brennan all played functional roles to the plot (such as it is), but they get relatively little time to develop on screen.

Since there isn't much of a plot, the strength of this film lies in the small moments of small town life, circa 1951.  Some of those moments ring true today, like when Sonny freezes when confronted with Ruth's (Leachman's) tears; there is little more frightening to a young man than a woman's tears, because his idiotic first instinct is "How'd I break it?"  The same goes for any scene with Sam the Lion; it doesn't matter if he is talking about dreams, love, or how much you disappointed him, he is that rare adult that commands respect from the kids.  Other moments feel appropriate, but seem alien to me.  Maybe I didn't hang out with the right crowd growing up, but the cool, detached and uninterested attitude toward sex from these teens struck me as strange; however, if you're in a small enough town or clique, I suppose eventually everybody who's anybody gets with everybody else who's anybody.  Still, it makes for some unusually unerotic sexual scenes.

Peter Bogdanovich did a very good job directing the actors in this film (in case the four Oscar nominations didn't clue you in), but he was largely responsible for the film's other impressive nominations: Best Cinematography, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Picture.  Even if you are unfamiliar with the influence a director can have on a film, The Last Picture Show looks and feels different from 99% of the movies you will see.  It's a black-and-white movie made in 1971, set in 1951 --- that's an interesting choice, given the tendency for films in the early 50s to brag about their Technicolor picture.  The soundtrack is composed only of ambient sound, so when you hear music, it is because there is a radio nearby; that gives the movie more of a documentary feel to it.  But it doesn't go too far in that direction, since there are some very occasional moments shot from the point-of-view of particular characters.  The dialogue is good, the acting is very natural, but...the lack of a distinct dramatic arc bugs me.  Some of the less typical camera shots lead me to believe that I'm missing the message in this movie, but I couldn't tell you why or what it is.

My big problem with this film is that it is clearly aimed at a target audience that I don't belong to, and the subtle filmmaking makes it difficult for me, as an outsider, to decipher what message is being delivered here.  Why is the closing of the town's only movie theater the basis for the film's title?  I'm not sure, but it seems to connect to the general sense of loss that is pervasive throughout the film.  Maybe it's mourning the loss of larger-than-life men, like Sam the Lion (what an awesome name!) and John Wayne, both in daily life and in the escapism of film.  Maybe this is a love letter to an innocent way of life that died out as the post-Depression generation came of age.  Whatever it is, it is frustrating for me to try and fail to understand the point of the film.  The performances are good, but without that subtext, I was only truly impressed with Johnson and Shepherd's work.  I liked the direction in general, but it didn't give me a payoff I could appreciate.  Despite that, there were several inconsequential moments that I was disproportionately amused by:

• Every time Sonny or Duane drove their truck, Hank Williams was on their radio.  Of course he was.  It's Texas.
• How easily a beer bottle was broken over Sonny's head.  Either they make better bottles now, or that boy has a metal plate in his head.
• When Jacy offers to shake hands with a handsome rich boy, he reaches his hand for her and, instead of shaking her hand, gropes her crotch and then kisses her on the mouth.  The stones on that guy...!  Even better, that's is about all he does in the whole movie.
• I just can't get over Randy Quaid, looking like this, having even a fictional chance with Cybill Shepherd, when she looked like this.

Randy Quaid, Tiger Beat "Dream Hunk" of 1971

So, despite the good acting and the interesting direction, I'm going to knock this movie down a few notches for being too subtle with the point of the movie for me to fully grasp it.  And if there isn't a deeper meaning behind this film, then I guess I think the plot just stinks.

Of course, not everyone agrees with me...

True Grit (2010)

When I heard that some of my favorite filmmakers, the Coen Brothers, were remaking the John Wayne classic True Grit, I was conflicted.  The Coens usually don't disappoint, but a remake just seemed like it would paint them into a corner; I usually like the Coens best when they are free to be weird or dark or whatever they happen to feel like at the time.  The first previews I saw didn't encourage me much, either; while I don't know exactly how Jeff Bridges managed to speak that incoherently, my first guess is that he had somebody else's tongue in his mouth whenever he needed to deliver dialogue.  Nevertheless, I really liked the original film, I love the Coen Brothers, and I'm a fan of Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon, so I ignored my reservations and visited my local cinema house.

For those that are unfamiliar with the plot, young Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld), aged fourteen, goes to the town where her recently deceased father's corpse waits for her.  Quite the little businesswoman, she sends the body back to her hometown, buys and sells some horses, and goes to the sheriff, expecting to hear news about the search for her father's killer.  The news is that the cowardly killer, Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin), has left the state and entered Indian Territory, where the law is unlikely to pursue him.  Mattie wants to see Chaney die for his crimes, and she learns that she can hire a US Marshall to act as a bounty hunter for her.  There are competent trackers, and all-around good men that are well-suited for the job, but Mattie opts for the meanest Marshall around: the surly, one-eyed drunk, Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges).

It takes quite a bit of convincing, but Mattie manages to hire Cogburn for the job.  However, no amount of convincing talk will make him follow her wishes to the letter, which include taking her with him on the manhunt and making sure that Chaney dies for killing her father and not any other crime.  After all, a Texas Ranger named La Boef (Matt Damon) wants to bring Chaney to justice in Texas, where a sizable reward would be split between him and Cogburn.  And, as for the idea of Mattie joining the manhunt in person, that's just ridiculous.  But, as many older men find out as this film progresses, Mattie Ross is not a ridiculous young woman, but someone with the will to get exactly what she wants.

This film is certainly centered around the story of Mattie Ross, but the star of the film is definitely Rooster Cogburn. Jeff Bridges does not disappoint in his role, and he manages to not echo John Wayne's Oscar-winning performance.  Bridges' take on the character can be summed up as simply "dirty."  He looks fat and greasy, he fights dirty, and he is generally a rough, unlovable person.  And that all works out great; he's believably tough, socially awkward, and genuinely funny, depending on the situation.  And Bridges' physical acting was superb; he walked the walk of an aged roughneck very well and this might be the most believable "guy with an eyepatch" role I have ever seen.  The only thing I didn't like was his bizarre mumbling, but more on that later.  Hailee Steinfeld does a great job as the calm, collected, and damn stubborn Mattie.  She manages to be stubborn, persistent, and pushy, but still likable.  This is a great role with depth for a young actress, and Steinfeld (in her feature film debut) does a fantastic job.  Matt Damon made his character less charming than Glen Campbell did in the original, and I liked his character far better because of it.  I like Damon best when he is not trying to be funny, and he comes across as earnest and occasionally exasperated here, which I thought fit this film well.  The rest of the supporting actors have limited screen time, but benefit from the Coen's tendency to make their bit role colorful.  Barry Pepper looked every part the Wild West nomad as the villainous (Ned) Pepper.  Josh Brolin played his character as fairly dim-witted and brutish, which I thought was a good choice.  Domhall Gleeson (Brendan's son and Bill Weasley in the latest Harry Potter) is stuck with a fairly whiny role as the doomed Moon, but I thought he handled the part well and didn't overact, which is high praise, considering what they do to his character.

Joel and Ethan Coen did a great job writing and directing the film.  Every single character in the film is memorable, many are funny, but the viewer is never distracted from the main story.  Why does Rooster Cogburn go out of his way to kick those Indian children?  It doesn't matter, it's just something he does; on with the plot!  They got a very good performance from a very inexperienced actress, and they let Bridges have fun as a crotchety old man.  More importantly, though, is the overall tone of the film.  The word "quirky" is often (justly) applied to Coen Brothers projects because they enjoy going off on tangents and having a cast of extremely colorful characters.  Here, they are able to keep their cast of goofy characters, but they all serve the plot, so they don't feel like diversions.  The cinematography, done by frequent Coen collaborator Roger Deakins, is noticeably impressive; this movie looks and feels as filthy and smelly as the Old West must have truly been, but that doesn't mean that it wasn't full of harsh, broad, and beautiful landscapes.  This might be the best looking Coen film since O Brother, Where Art Thou? (also shot by Deakins), and it is perhaps their best balance of gritty stories and funny characters to date.

Now, let's discuss the mumbling.  When I saw the trailer for this movie, I assumed that Bridges just had his cheeks full of chewing tobacco, because the Old West was a disgusting place and chaw is nauseatingly fitting for that time and place.  Sadly, it was simply a choice by the actor and the directors.  I guess it could be the side effect of being a rough-and-tumble character in an age where medical attention was both lacking and deficient; theoretically, they could have invented a back story for Rooster than involved a few broken jaws that healed crooked.  Whatever the reason, it was kind of obnoxious, especially when it obscured a witty quip from Bridges.  Later in the film, Damon also joins the mushmouth parade, but at least his character is given an excuse.  These atypical verbal deliveries may have been realistic for the times, but I found them generally irritating and actually kept me from understanding some key moments of dialogue.

How does this stand up to the original?  Quite well, actually.  The performances (mumbles aside) are all very good, and Bridges does a good job with an interesting character.  Honestly, I think the primary actors are all worthy upgrades over the original film; the supporting cast is far better this time around (although Robert Duvall is still better than Barry Pepper), since the original film had many unmemorable bit players.  The one thing that the 1969 film did better was show the developing relationship between Cogburn and Mattie; when John Wayne starts calling her "sister" in the film, you can feel a loving bond in his words.  That closeness is not shown in this version, although some affection is clear.  I also prefer the ending of the original better (not the climax, but the falling action) because it summed up the story of Mattie and Rooster so well.  The Coens made a very grim and gritty Western, but they did so at the cost of the sweet sibling-ish relationship between the two lead characters.

That said, this is a very good movie, and it is a Western that will appeal to those that are not already fans of the genre (read: women).  It is funny in many parts, with sharp dialogue and three characters that mesh well together.  It is painfully raw and brutal in other parts, with uncompromising violence and some truly nightmarish dental prosthetics.  And, despite all of that, it is a story of accomplishment, above all else.  Does this eclipse the original movie?  No, but it certainly makes a case as a deserving peer.

Iron Man

Action movies aren't usually noted for their characters, and that is usually for good reason.  Do we really want to see Stallone, Schwarzenegger, or even Van Damme try to grapple with subtle emotion?  No, we usually just want to see them punch through the bad guy's face.  Iron Man is very different because it is an action movie starring an actor that can actually act.  What a concept!

The story here is better than most comic book adaptations.  Sure, it's an origin story, but Iron Man isn't so much about a man gaining super powers as it is about a man deciding to take responsibility for his actions.  At the beginning of the movie, we see Tony Stark (played by Robert Downey, Jr.) being the world's coolest billionaire ever; he is a genius, rich, funny, good with the ladies (even when they want to hate him), the head of a corporation, and he gets to play with stuff that explodes.  Stark's company sells cutting edge weapons to the military, but Stark finds himself on the wrong end of those same weapons when he visits Afghanistan to demonstrate some new missiles for the military.  Stark's convoy is ambushed, and he is taken prisoner by terrorists that want him to create weapons for them.  As a prisoner, Stark sees the weapons that he thinks are being exclusively sold to the US government in the hands of these terrorists.  Understandably, this changes his view on weapons manufacturing.  Since he's a genius, Stark builds a robotic exoskeleton to overcome his captors and escape.  Life's good when you're smart.  And thus, Iron Man is born.  That might be enough for most origin movies, but that just acts as the setup for the film proper.  From this point, Stark tries to find ways to help people instead of hurting them, and this has financial, business, personal, and public repercussions.

This sounds like a fairly action-free action movie, and that's because it kind of is.  There is a lot of talking in this movie.  When there's action, though, it is awesome.  The original Iron Man suit looks and sounds frighteningly heavy.  When Iron Man punches a regular person, they go flying across the room...and it looks like a feasible result.  That is how good the special effects are in this movie; the fighting doesn't come across as cartoony or stylized, but as the logical end result of being punched by a hulking robot.  The first Iron Man suit is pretty sweet, but the later model that Stark sports for the rest of the film is even better.  Sleek and stylish, it just makes sense that it sports the kind of technology that can blow up tanks with missiles the size of a pencil.  The Iron Monger suit used by the villain takes the idea of the original Iron Man suit to the other extreme, showing a preference for pure power that makes Stark's escape scene look like the work of an amateur.  In short, a guy wears a cool robotic suit and stuff gets blown up.  Nothing wrong with that.

Even with the great action sequences, Robert Downey Jr's acting is what makes this movie.  He doesn't play the typical tortured super hero.  He's not trying to be stoic like Superman, scary like Batman, or jokey like Spider-Man.  Instead, he comes across as a very smart man that is constantly making quips because he's smarter than everyone else.  He does whatever he wants because that's how the world works for him and because what he wants to do will work, and Downey is great playing up that intelligence, humor, and confidence; when the character has a realization or a moment of doubt, all those shields are stripped away and Downey shows his range as a dramatic actor. 

Credit for Downey's performance and casting should (at least partially) go to director Jon Favreau, who is able to make a smart, funny, and action-packed blockbuster with actors that had not been in a big hit in years.  Favreau probably didn't have to do much with the actors except encourage their own instincts, because they are all pretty good.  Gwyneth Paltrow does a good job as Stark's right hand; this can be seen with the romantic tension between Paltrow and Downey, which relies heavily on her performance.  I also like her delivery on the quips she uses to undercut Stark's cockiness.  Terrence Howard is okay (at best) as Jim "Rhodey" Rhodes, the resident military straight arrow.  Howard doesn't get to do much except gripe about Stark's casual attitude toward protocol.  When he gets the opportunity to say or do something entertaining, he usually under-performs, particularly with the foreshadowing of him someday wearing his own armor suit.  Part of this is due to his character being essentially a straight man to Downey's antics, but I'm still not sold on Howard as a charismatic actor.  I enjoyed Paul Bettany's voice-over work as Stark's computer more than I liked Howard.  Heck, I enjoyed Leslie Bibb as a judgmental reporter more than I liked him.  The other primary character is Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges), Stark's current business partner and former mentor.  Bridges is realistic as the guy who always has to smooth Stark's antics over with the press and the business sector.  When he turns nasty, though, the frustration that must come with his job rises to the forefront.  Personally, I thought Bridges overacted a little toward the end, but he was still fun to watch.

Iron Man is the type of movie that benefits most from the revamped Oscar nominations.  This movie was well-received critically (because it's awesome) and made over $500 million in theaters (because it's awesome), but could only get nominated for technical Oscars.  This movie was deservedly in many Top Ten lists of 2008 and its success will hopefully lead to well-rounded and acted action movies getting a little more respect from critical award shows.

The Men Who Stare At Goats

The Men Who Stare at Goats is a great title for a movie.  Maybe not as good as "The Men Who Do Things to Goats," but that's a flick that could go in all the wrong directions.  Oddly enough, goats play a relatively small role in this film.

This is the somewhat true story of a military program that was developed to harness the psychic power of the human mind.  The tale is told primarily through flashback, as George Clooney's character explains the events to Ewan McGregor.  This program began in the 1980s, headed by Jeff Bridges' character, and it attempted all sorts of paranormal stuff.  Traveling through the astral plane, invisibility, walking through walls, telepathy, and killing via only eye contact (which is how we get the title) are the tangible goals for this group.  The two star pupils are played by Clooney and Kevin Spacey; the two become rivals because Clooney likes the New Age-ish notions of expanding human consciousness, while Spacey is interested in the more practical (read: lethal) military applications.  It's appropriate that Bridges calls his men Jedi warriors, because Clooney and Spacey represent the light and dark sides of The Force.  Years after the military decides that the program is a wash, McGregor follows Clooney into modern-day Iraq, where they find a new program being run by Spacey and representing everything Clooney and Bridges hated.

This is a goofy plot.  You would expect the movie to be just as goofy, like maybe Big Lebowski- or O Brother Where Art Thou?-level goofy, but it's not.  Whose fault is that?  I blame the Coen brothers for not writing or directing this film.  Sure, you could blame Jon Ronson, whose book the movie is based on, but that just takes away from the solid fact that this should have been a weird, goofy Coen brothers movie.  It already had Clooney and Bridges!  What more enticing do those men need?  Well, parts of the film are as funny and goofy as you would want them to be.  The directing emphasizes weird, awkward moments and sometimes those moments pay off with funny.  However, every time the movie feels like it's going to finally get permanently weird, it stops and takes a cold dose of reality.  There are a lot of depressed characters in this movie and they are well-developed, so you feel for them.  Jeff Bridges, in particular, does a fantastic job with his dramatic scenes.  He's subtle, physical, and understated, but it is really worth noticing.

The acting in this film is as good as you would expect from three Academy Award-winning actors.  Bridges resurrects some of his laid-back surfer ways from Lebowski and Clooney performs with his usual deadpan confidence (although noticeably not a lady charmer here).  Kevin Spacey doesn't have quite as much opportunity to impress here, but he's always fun to see as a bad guy.  McGregor is good too, but he's stuck in the straight man role.  I'd like to see him take another stab at an outright comedy, because he's got good timing and I know he's a good actor.

The acting performances actually increase my frustration with this film.  These guys are usually enough to make me interested in a movie if even one of them is starring, but their presence here makes the movie's shortcomings more annoying.  The fact that the actors do so well might make you think that the direction was good, but this is the first major directing project for frequent Clooney collaborator Grant Heslov.  I think Heslov has friends that are awesome actors and they helped make him seem impressive.  It's a neat trick that I'd love to try.  Still, there are a lot of awkward moments that are not used for dramatic or comedic purposes and the pace drags at times.  Ultimately, the choice to balance the humor with so much realism had to come from the director.  I disagree with this choice because treating the ludicrous as reasonable for the sake of humor degrades any attempt at sincerity.  If Heslov wanted the dramatic moments to have a lot of impact (and, judging by the performances of Clooney and Bridges, he did), he would have necessarily had to tone down the deadpan comedy.  The other option would be to make the depressingly realistic portions of the movie more comedic.  It's not impossible for a comedy like this to have a point or to have heart, but it is a difficult task to accomplish with two styles (goofy comedy and sincere drama) that are so very different.