Back Seat Producers

14-year old Mattie Ross is a determined young girl. Being the most educated member of her family, she’s come to put her father’s affairs in order following his tragic cold-blooded murder at the hands of outlaw Tom Chaney. The most important thing on her mind though is finding and bringing Chaney to justice and she finds little help with the sheriff. She is determined though and using money from her father’s estate, she hires a roguish U.S. Marshal to aid her. That Marshal, being one Rueben “Rooster” Cogburn, has been described as one of the toughest in the business, though his drunken demeanor doesn’t exactly inspire the greatest of faith in Mattie. Mattie has one stipulation though, she wants to accompany Cogburn on his quest and make sure the job gets done, much to Cogburn’s chagrin. They’re unexpectedly joined by a Texas Ranger, LaBeouf, who’s also in pursuit of Chaney for crimes committed in Texas. So the three set off to find the outlaw, and get more than they bargain for in the process.

True Grit is a remake of the movie by the same name and it’s also the newest movie from the Coen Brothers. Honestly, I’ve never seen the Henry Hathaway original starring John Wayne, though I certainly know about it, it’s just one of those things that have slipped between the cracks. But knowing this was coming and further knowing it was Coen Brothers re-uniting with Jeff Bridges, certainly had me eager to see it. And it didn’t disappoint at all, though I don’t think it’s quite as strong as other Coen Brothers films, it’s still plenty entertaining.

One of the biggest standouts for me in the film is it’s unique dialogue style, it’s combination of being authentic to it’s time, yet still feeling heavily, theatrically written. It doesn’t quite sound natural to the ear, but it’s right for this story and for it’s characters. While it’s certainly very well made, and looks terrific, the real star here is the dialogue and the performances.

Jeff Bridges plays Rooster Cogburn and while there’s a somewhat cartoonish aspect to what he’s doing here, it works quite well and his character is full of authority. Matt Damon has a bit of a tougher part as LaBoeuf, he’s serving as support, and so is put into a position of taking more of a back seat to Bridges, and also has to come off as being a bit less than what Cogburn is. Damon certainly does that well, but still feels like a guy who is in control of what he’s doing, just without the same level of experience that Cogburn has. Josh Brolin plays Tom Chaney. Chaney’s a driving force for the characters in the film, but when we’re finally introduced to him, he doesn’t necessarily come off as the character that he’s built up to be. Brolin plays the character as simple, and for the brief time that he’s in the movie, he does a great job.

But the cast standouts to me are Barry Pepper and Hailee Steinfeld. Barry Pepper plays Lucky Ned Pepper, the leader of an outlaw gang and the boss to Tom Chaney. Pepper’s introduced late in the movie, but certainly makes his mark. As I said, I hadn’t seen the original movie, so I’d not even knew about Robert Duvall being in it, and yet the one person that Barry Pepper made me think of right away was Robert Duvall. It’s brief work, but considerable smarts behind it. Hailee Steinfeld plays Mattie Ross, and this young lady commands the screen whenever she’s in a scene with her as the force of the scene and further she certainly holds her own with Bridges and Damon. She’s terrific and I’d expect this girl to a big star soon.

True Grit is great work. Very much a dialogue and character driven film that makes it’s few action sequences really stand out when they happen. While this doesn’t quite stand out for me as other recent Coen Brothers movies like No Country For Old Men or Burn After Reading, it’s still an entertaining time in it’s own right. It’s great to see a western like this again. Very much recommended.

In 1982, a former employee for a huge conglomerate named ENCOM, one Kevin Flynn, with the help of two current employees, invaded ENCOM so that Flynn could get into the computer system and retrieve data. That data proved without a doubt that Kevin Flynn created some popular video games and that ENCOM had stolen those games and thus all of the amazing profits those games had generated. With the data, Flynn then took control of ENCOM for the betterment of all. But how he got that data was interesting- he was digitally transported within a cyber world and forced to fight the system in a video game fashion. That world held an interest for him that developed…

Flynn married and had a son, Sam, who after the death of his mother, Flynn raised on his own (with the help of grandparents). Flynn’s intrigue with the digital world still held with him and he was about to embark on a master plan for an integration of both which he thought would be for the betterment of all. Starting that plan, he says goodbye to his son one night and mysteriously disappears in 1989.

It’s the present day, Sam Flynn has grown up and wants nothing to do with ENCOM, other than embarrass the company at whatever opportunity he gets. Kevin Flynn’s old friend Alan Bradley, who helped him in 1982, receives a mysterious page that he passes on to Sam that comes from the old arcade that Kevin Flynn used to run. This has Sam curious and he returns to the arcade in hopes of finding out what happened to his father. And like his father before him, gets transported into the digital world to undergo a new adventure… and in the process, find his father.

When Tron first came out in 1982, it was something that was brand new for both Disney and movies- it explored the idea of digitally creating a world that traditionally would’ve been done wither with miniatures and elaborate sets. It’s story is simplistic (though viewed with hindsight is actually a lot more revealing) and it was truly an amazing thing to see, with it’s own brand of charm. I loved the first movie right from the moment that I saw it, and I still think it’s a lot of fun to watch.

Back in the day, while working for the Howard Stern show, Stuttering John Melendez used to go to various celebrity functions and get interviews with celebrities with of course that Howard Stern spin to them. Once he got a hold of Billy Crystal at one of these and Crystal knew he was being set up and tells Stuttering John that what he was doing was neither fun or funny…

… and that’s the same thing with Tron: Legacy, it’s neither fun or funny. After seeing this film, I was immediately in the mind of what I thought earlier in the year of Ridley Scott’s new take on Robin Hood which I thought deconstructed the idea of Robin Hood to the extent that it sucked all the fun and life right out of the concept in order to make it darker and more real. And that’s just what director Joseph Kosinski and the writers of Tron: Legacy have done.

I didn’t set out to hate this thing, far from it. Once seeing the original trailers and hearing that Disney was making this, I couldn’t wait to see it. If there was any sort movie from the past that could be updated now, Tron was it, especially considering the ideas of the original and the huge advances in technology. And here it was, three quarters of the way through and I was just about ready to walk out.

Where to start? Well, let’s just go for the throat first with the 3D aspect of the film. It’s just awful. The way this is shot, nothing other than a couple of scenes takes advantage of it, and then it’s not in any sort of way that’s captivating or exciting (say that movies like Resident Evil: Afterlife or Piranha 3D did). We had a trailer at the start of this for a film coming out called Born To Be Wild– a traditional nature based film, that just amazed me with it’s use of 3D and how striking and depth-filled that it was. Tron: Legacy should be milking this effect for all it’s worth, and yet it never really pops. And while the visual effects are indeed impressive in this film, their dark tone still manages to keep it all somewhat flat. If you have to see this, save yourself the extra money that you’d spend on the 3D side and see the 2D version, you won’t be missing anything at all.

But I could forgive that more if there was just something that was fun here. A big thing in comic books right now is deconstruction and making everything darker and thus a little more edgy. The way this is written, it feels like it was approached by writers that while they liked and were inspired by the original (much like comic book writers), they’re also embarrassed by aspects about it and decided that they had to do something to make it edgier and thus cooler. They get into long and tedious explanations of why Kevin Flynn has returned to this world that’s just more technobabble than anything else. Now again, I might be able to forgive that if there was some sort of fun aspect here. Some sort of sense of wonder about this world. With the original movie, we had this terrific scene where Kevin Flynn gets digitized the first time and is transported to this world and it’s just exhilarating. Here, it just happens- no fantastic fast paced journey, no sense of awe into entering into something new and exciting. Sam Flynn just shows up. Now I’m sure that the correlation with that is just how fast technology is today, and I get that, but it’s hardly fun or exciting. Some of this could’ve worked better if the film was faster paced, but we have some passages here that are just excruciatingly slow, trying to give this some unnecessary weight.

I’m not nearly as concerned with having total explanations as to the whole nature of The Grid and how it all works. I’ve noticed that that’s been a hang-up with other critics. I’m actually willing to just accept this as it is, or as it was in the original- this stylized fairy tale world in a digital realm, with the film being more science fantasy than traditional science fiction. Explanations to make this more real, at least to me would eliminate a lot of the charm of the original, so that’s one critical aspect that doesn’t really bother me. I’m more bothered that none of the characters are engaging on any sort of level.

Our main character, Sam Flynn, is pretty much a walking cliche. I’m sure that Garrett Hedlund is probably a pretty nice guy and he’s been decent in other things that I’ve seen, but he doesn’t bring anything here at all, though I’m more than willing to chalk that up more to the director and writer rather than Hedlund. Sam is angry, but he’s super-cool, being a daring motorcyclist and willing to stick it to the man by sabotaging the release of ENCOM’s newest product. He’s also got a touch of Batman inside of him as well, being willing to escape from ENCOM by climbing to the top of the building and jumping off landing below by parachute. On top of that, he’s got his own super-cool little hideaway, that’s both seedy and modern, something he could only have by benefitting from the wealth he’s obtained. All that he’s missing are some sort of tribal tattoos… that would certainly complete the cliche.

Jeff Bridges reprises his role as Kevin Flynn and we get to see him in three different stages- one as a younger Flynn, one as his digital creation, the program Clu and finally at his current age. I think the technology used to make him look younger is amazing. I’ve heard some thought of it as a little creepy and artificial, well that’s true, but for Clu, that works. Finally though, we have the current Flynn, and I guess just by his presence here, Bridges lends some sort of gravity to the whole thing. It’s just a shame that the writers seem like all that they’ve seen with Bridges is the original Tron and The Big Lebowski making him almost as much of a cliche as his son. I guess I’ll have to wait until next week for True Grit to see if the Coen Brothers can take him further, and I hope they will.

The only other member of the cast worth mentioning for me anyway is Bruce Boxleitner returning as Alan Bradley. He’s also reprising his role of Tron, using the same de-aging process used with Bridges, but that’s just used for some brief flashback sequences. He’s probably my favorite member of the whole cast. His scenes as Bradley are brief, but pivotal. I wish more had been done with Tron as a character here, but that would’ve gotten in the way of their tired father-and-son story.

I thought that a movie was going to have to work extra hard to beat Robin Hood as the worst movie I’ve seen this year, and ding, ding, it looks like we have a new winner. Tron: Legacy certainly does have some impressive visual effects, but it all gets hampered with a soulless approach, cliched characters and lackluster 3D. I really wanted to enjoy this, I truly did. Instead I was pissed off at the end of it, just stunned that all of the fun had been sucked out of it.

Nina Sayres is a talented young ballet dancer, and as our film starts has this dream that she’ll be playing the part of the Swan Queen in a production of Swan Lake. Her life is consumed with dance which is true for all dancers, but with added pressure by living with her obsessive mother, Erica, a former ballerina. She’s just as driven by the director of the company she works with, Thomas Leroy. Nina is his first choice to play the White Swan in his production, but he wants the same dancer to be able to perform as the Black Swan, and there Nina lacks right drive. Her obsession grows as a new dancer joins the company, Lily, who outwardly seems to represent all that the Black Swan should embody. An uncomfortable relationship forms between the two, which helps to put Nina more in touch with her darker side, but goes into a carelessness which threatens to destroy her life.

Black Swan is the latest film from director Darren Aronofsky, who has certainly kept me impressed ever since his very first movie, Pi and my most favorite of all of his movies, Requiem For A Dream. Black Swan is cut from a similar cloth as that of Aronofsky’s last movie, The Wrestler both of which show their own brands of performance creativity while trying to succeed in their chosen entertainment forms. The result of both, are pretty dark character studies, with Aronofsky showing the darker sides of both professions that most of us never see.

Nina’s on a lot more shakier psychological ground Mickey Rourke’s character was from The Wrestler. Aronofsky illustrates this by constantly keeping his camera on her in close-up odd angles that suggest an uncomfortable intimacy, so almost right from the start, you get the feeling that something is just a little off with her.

It’s a beautiful production and it does what I think the best movies should do, which is show us a world that we just don’t have any idea about. I know that ballet is certainly a graceful art form, but I don’t know the mechanics or the pain that the dancers go through, and on this Aronofsky certainly succeeds at showing that side of the craft.

This is billed as a psychological thriller, though I think dark character study is a little more appropriate. Aronofsky’s vision is certainly fresh, but I get the feeling of a few other movies in here as well- I certainly see some similarities to such things as DePalma’s Carrie to various Dario Argento movies to even something like Verhoeven’s Showgirls. At the same time, Aronofsky is very much telling the story of Swan Lake in his own visceral way. This is very much an “art house” movie, and as such it won’t be for all tastes, and at least from what I could tell, it wasn’t to everyone’s satisfaction at the theatre that I saw it at.

Ever since I first saw her in Luc Besson’s Leon (or it’s American title, The Professional) I thought Natalie Portman was going to be a huge star, and she certainly has become that. Aronofsky pushes her in ways she hasn’t been pushed in past performances and gets something truly harrowing out of her, though it doesn’t quite totally connect with me say the same way that James Franco did in 127 Hours (another recent example of a film where one character is dominant over all others). Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a terrific performance, very much worthy of all the accolades it’s receiving, but the character just isn’t quite as full. Of course some of this can be chalked up to her single minded obsessiveness as well with all of the other characters being there to personify some other aspects.

Portman’s backed up with a fine array of talent, best of which being in both Vincent Cassel as Leroy and Mila Kunis as Lily. Whenever I see Cassel in anything, I think the bar gets raised a bit, and while he is support here, he’s still compelling to watch. Kunis is playing the darker, freer side that Nina would like to get to and she certainly excels at that, and also serves for some brief comic relief to some scenes. Barbara Hershey plays Erica, Nina’s mother and it very much reminds me in it’s own way of Piper Laurie in Carrie with her obsessive tone. Winona Ryder fills out the main cast as an aging star who’s being put out to pasture, and if there is any performance that does lack here, it’s probably hers, though I wouldn’t say that it’s entirely her fault. We’re told she was great, but we never see that, instead just getting a one-dimensional anger. Now this certainly can be chalked up to this entirely being from Nina’s point of view, but Nina also has respect for her, but we don’t know why other than that we’re told it. It’s a moot point, but I thought worth mentioning, especially in light of the fact that we do see Lily (Kunis) perform.

Still this is very much worth seeing, but I honestly don’t think it’s for everyone. We had a group of 50-ish women in our audience who were just totally turned off once certain sexual and fantasy scenes played out, which just had me thinking that they weren’t really wanting to see something like this and would’ve been more at home with a safer movie with Jennifer Aniston or Sandra Bullock in it. One thing about Darren Aronofsky movies is that they’re never safe, and I certainly applaud that. So be sure you bring your pads and cleats to this and be ready to play when it comes to this film, it’s hardly a passive experience. Very much recommended.