'Bridesmaids,' one of the best comedies in years

Bridesmaids, the newest release from comedy juggernaut Apatow Productions, has been alternately described and marketed as The Hangover with girls, a chick flick guys can enjoy and a long-awaited raunchy comedy for women. It might be all of these things, but the reason Bridesmaids is a great comedy isn’t its ties to comic conventions, but its confidence to be itself.

Annie (Kristen Wiig, who also co-wrote the screenplay with fellow Groundling Annie Mumolo) is falling behind in life. Her dream cake business went under, she lives with a pair of annoying (but hilarious) roommates, she works in a jewelry store where she can’t seem to stop dropping reality bombs on happy couples, and she’s under a mountain of debt. When her best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph) gets engaged, Annie sees it as an opportunity to celebrate something good in her life, but when she meets Lillian’s pushy, super-rich new friend Helen (Rose Byrne), planning the perfect bride experience for her best friend becomes a power struggle.

As Helen steadily gains influence over Lillian, Annie searches for a way to overcome, looking to fellow bridesmaids Megan (Melissa McCarthy), Rita (Wendi McLendon-Covey) and Becca (Ellie Kemper) for help, spending more time with her caricature painting mother (the late Jill Clayburgh) and befriending a good-natured Irish highway patrolman (Chris O’Dowd).

What starts as an unambiguous rivalry comedy pitting Annie against Helen evolves into a kind of soul search picture that feels neither pretentious nor posed. Annie becomes less concerned about overcoming her fellow bridesmaid and more concerned about what’s happening to her and how she can fix it. It’s a welcome dose of true heart to a genre of films often missing an emotional core.

It’s a challenge to present such a touch-feely concept in a comedy setting anyway, but Bridesmaids makes it work. Director Paul Feig (a veteran of TV shows like The Office and Freaks and Geeks, both of which walk a similar line) masterfully balances relentless, often raunchy jokes with moments of genuine humanity. This comedy could have been all about an over-produced wedding or a bachelorette party gone horribly wrong. The fact that it isn’t, but it still manages to be funnier and better than any movie of that kind made in the last decade, makes it all the more charming.

It seems to be a universal truth that Kristen Wiig is funny, but Bridesmaids proves she’s a star. She carries the film, both as actress and writer, and manages to maintain a glowingly beautiful sense of being both a real woman and a really funny woman throughout, even in her character’s moments of absolute despair. Her supporting cast is each equally wonderful in their way, and made even more wonderful by their diversity. The stand-out, though, is McCarthy, who steals every scene she’s in (which won’t surprise any viewers of Gilmore Girls, where she regularly upstaged Lauren Graham).

All these ingredients (well, these and a cameo by a certain 80s pop group that will go unnamed for fear or spoiling it for you) add up to a comedy that’s rare in a world of mass-produced raunch. Unlike so many of the comedy films that have rolled out of the Hollywood machine in the past decade (many of them quite good in their own right), Bridesmaids takes the high road. It manages to pack in a truckload of dirty jokes and various and sundry gags - all of them well-placed and most of them gut-bustingly funny - while still giving a sense that it’s populated with real people, real problems and real love. It manages to fit perfectly into the comedy scene while standing distinctly outside of it in a new, maybe better, category. Bridesmaids is a rare gem, a comedy that made all the right moves and kept its heart in the right place.

'Thor,' an epic in two worlds

Hemsworth only wishes he were working on the railroad.

Thor, the herald to sound the coming of 2011’s summer movie season, is the kind of shamelessly overblown epic that you should have shameless fun watching. It’s a flick that walks a line between science fiction and fantasy, between hero’s journey and God’s burden, and manages to maintain the best of both worlds.

It’s a fitting way to tell the story, because Thor is also set in two worlds. The journey begins as the titular hero (Chris Hemsworth) is exiled from the realm of Asgard (where the Norse Gods reign) by his father, Odin (Anthony Hopkins). Thor foolishly and cockily dealt with the malicious Frost Giants, and his action led to war. He pays the price by being stripped of his godly powers, including his legendary hammer Mjolnir, and cast down into the desert of New Mexico, where his frustration grows as he begins the search for his hammer and way back to the realm of gods.

By chance, foxy stargazer Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) and her two assistant (Stellan Skarsgard and Kat Dennings) happen to be looking up at the sky when Thor falls to Earth. As they get to know him, and his ambition to reclaim what’s his, Jane begins to feel that there might be something else to the universe.

What begins as a kind of comedy of manners as Thor adjust to life in the human world soon becomes a struggle to reclaim not only his powers, but his realm, as Thor begins to learn there’s much more to being a leader than strength. It sound like an overly big, overly corny concept for a blockbuster to tackle, and in a way it is, but Thor and its bombastic, superhero backdrop is the perfect venue to watch a hero rise.

Director Kenneth Branagh, known more for his work with Shakespeare than superheroes, erases almost any doubt that he’s a capable of a big action adventure flick. He has an over-reliance on crooked camera angles to keep things visually interesting, but other than that he keeps every sequence tight, brisk and brimming with visual wonder (but not the kind of visual wonder that merits extra money for 3D; remember that). He also knows exactly how to turn an arrogant, hammer wielding god into a hero among men, and even when the film’s blockbuster sense of humor might get in the way, Branagh (with the help of a story by Thor comics writer J. Michael Straczynski and a screenplay by Ashley Mill, Zack Stentz and Don Payne) never loses the epic threads that run through this story.

Even with Branagh’s measured direction, Thor could have been the kind of film the degenerated into farce were it not for a strong cast to hold it up. Portman and Hemsworth aren’t exactly electric in their chemistry, but they, along with Dennings and Skarsgard, manage to juggle the flick’s many and often rapid-fire jokes with a sense of the gravity of what’s going on around them. Adding to the excellence are Hopkins and English actor Tom Hiddleston, who is a wonderfully cool but still slippery version of Thor’s trickster brother Loki. Thor could be the kind of movie that’s nothing but wise cracks, or it could be the kind of movie that’s filled with melodramatic angst. Thankfully, it’s a movie that contains both wise cracks and melodramatic angst, and another cast might not have made it work.

Thor is not a masterpiece, or a deeply moving piece of fantasy cinema, or an acclaimed attempt to humanize a hero. It’s a big, bold, thrill ride with plenty of laughs, explosions and danger, and it’s all the more admirable because it never pretends to be anything else. It’s a welcome addition to the Marvel Comics cinematic canon, made all the more welcome by a carefully placed titled at the end of the credits: “Thor will return in The Avengers.”

'Paul,' the alien you can get high with

Simon Pegg and Paul (voiced by Seth Rogen) on a bad trip.

There’s a constant danger that a film like Paul could end up one long inside joke, filled with obscure sci-fi references and nerd shout-outs with no real connection to anyone who isn’t a massive geek. It goes without saying that Paul is a flick by geeks, for geeks, but it also packs enough heart and energy to win over anyone with a taste for the odd, or even just a dirty sense of humor.

Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (the team that brought you Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz) star as Graeme and Clive, a pair of English nerds who flew into America for the annual San Diego ComicCon and then opted for an RV tour of America’s most noteworthy UFO-related sites. After a pit-stop at the Little A’Le’Inn (a real place) in Nevada, the pair encounters a car crash on a lonely road. It’s there that they meet Paul (voiced by Seth Rogen), a little grey alien on the run from a government facility.

After the initial shock of finally meeting an actual alien after years of nerdy speculation, Graeme and Clive chat with Paul, who reveals that his spaceship crashed in Wyoming in the 1940s and he’s been hanging around ever since, informing the government on alien life and even influencing more than a few aspects of American culture (Agent Mulder was his idea). But now he’s used up his intellectual and scientific currency, and the Powers That Be want to keep him quiet. So, with a cold Man in Black (Jason Bateman) and his two hapless subordinates (Bill Hader and Joe Lo Truglio) hot on their trail, the threesome set off on a cross-country adventure to get Paul back to his home in the sky. Along the way, they meet a Bible-thumping RV park manager (Kristen Wiig), her crazy father (John Carroll Lynch) and a host of other helpers and obstacles as an adventure full of cursing, car chases and cosmic fates unfolds.

It’s easy to dismiss what’s going on here as a foul-mouthed, grown up version of Steven Spielberg’s E.T. If you said that’s what Paul is, you wouldn’t be wrong, but you would be wrong to dismiss the film because of what it owes to classic alien visitor films. Wrapped up in “Paul” are E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Aliens, The X-Files and all those fun old flying saucer cheeseball flicks from the 50s. But there’s nothing wrong with that. Pegg and Frost, celebrated nerds in their own right, celebrate even the most clichéd parts of the characters and story they’ve created, because after all, Paul is a love letter to all the “visitors from beyond” flicks of yore, and in that respect it works marvelously.

It also becomes very hard to fault Pegg and Frost for making a film based almost entirely on other films when you take into account how funny Paul is. The pair made their names as in over their heads zombie battlers in Shaun of the Dead, and they do just as well as in over their heads alien companions. It might be a formula, but it’s not worn out yet.

Pegg and Frost know how to do what they do better than anyone, but Paul is their first truly Americanized film, and it's set apart by a bevy of American comic actors joining the act. Bateman, one of the great straight men of modern comedy, delights in the villainy of his character. Hader and Truglio are brilliantly bumbling, and Wiig is her typically effortless self.

What it all comes down to is that there’s nothing to complain about here. Mixed reviews for this film are mystifying. There’s no doubt that a good portion of what’s in Paul is derivative, but it’s also well done, reverent and a flat-out blast to watch.

Matt’s Call: If you’re a sci-fi geek, you’ll love it. But even if you’re not, there’s plenty to enjoy here.

New on DVD: 'The Fighter' goes all 10 rounds

"Marky Mark" Wahlberg and Christian "Ginger Jesus" Bale in "The Fighter."

Some films get under your skin before you even know it.

They sneak up on you, make you think that you’re not going to care and then hit you with the truth: you cared all along, it just took a few key developments to make you realize it.

The Fighter, the new film from I Heart Huckabees director David O. Russell, is one such film. Much of its runtime is devoted to explorations of poverty, drug abuse and general misery, but it all builds to soaring scenes of hope and triumph, and all those minutes of darkness were well worth the wait.

Based on the true story of a pair of boxer brothers in Massachusetts town in the early 90s, The Fighter of the title is Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg), a struggling boxer trying to break his losing streak while working his day job as a road paver. His trainer, mentor and resident upstager is his brother Dicky Eklund (Christian Bale), a former boxer still trying to relive his glory days and disappearing for days at a time to hang out in a crack house.

As the film opens, a documentary film crew is following Dicky around, chronicling his boxing career and his efforts to make a comeback even as he tries to train his brother for the big time. What he doesn’t know, what no one in the family knows, is that the documentary being shot is about crack addiction, not boxing.

As Micky struggles to succeed even as his brother’s absence and bad decisions sabotage his career, he also must juggle his domineering mother (Melissa Leo) and his new girlfriend, bartender Charlene (Amy Adams), who is in a fight of her own to get Micky past his family’s hang-ups and into the realm of real boxing glory.

Much of the film, at least the first half, is often incredibly hard to watch. The filmmaking is top notch. Russell packs strong visuals and intense scenes together in a rapid fire cocktail of powerful cinema, but the fact that it is so powerful, so convincing, means a long ride of drug use, family tension, poverty, depression, pain and failure that’s real enough that it almost hurts to look at.

It’s almost a theatrical ordeal, and as a result it might seem unenjoyable. But where Russell and his cast and crew succeed is in portraying the turnaround, the high moments, the crescendos of bright glory. When the inspirational portion of this inspirational true story kicks in, it really kicks in, and the fact that the first two acts were so hard to watch makes it all the more satisfying.

The performances are almost all top notch. Wahlberg gives a solid performance as Micky, and Amy Adams, known for her sweetie romcom fare, shows off her chops in a grittier role. The real champion of the film, though, is Bale, who lost a good deal of weight for the part. It’s not just the fact that he’s skinny, though. It’s the look in his eyes, his nervous energy, his nonstop squirrelly shaking and yammering that make Dicky so convincing, and so tragic. It’s a daring, powerful performance, and he steals every scene.

The Fighter is a film that never lets up, that pummels you first with despair, then with unrelenting hope. It’s a film about struggles, about not just one fighter but a whole town of them. Some of it might be a cliché, and it’ll never be Raging Bull (the best boxing film EVER), but rarely has a film about a working class hero been done so well.

Matt’s Call: Definitely one of the best films of the year, made even better because it’s hard to make an original film about a boxer any more. 

Movie Review: 'Winter's Bone'

Check out Matt's review of Winter's Bone from today's edition of The Huntsville Item.

Winter’s Bone, the top winner at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival that recently garnered four Oscar nominations including Best Picture, is a startling, intoxicating blend of dark family drama, gritty crime thriller and coming of age tale dropped into the deeply impoverished Ozark Mountain region of Missouri. At first glance, it’s a combination of effects that seems to generate more despair than drama, more unease than entertainment, but if you have the stomach to keep watching, it will grab you and refuse to release.

Ree (Jennifer Lawrence) is 17, and already dealing with the problems of a person twice her age. Her father is a meth cooker on the run from the law, her mother has withdrawn into a deep depression and doesn’t even speak, and she has two younger siblings to feed, clothe and educate with little food and almost no money. Things only get worse when the local sheriff arrives to announce that her father, Jessup, has skipped out on his bond and is likely to miss an upcoming court date. Because Jessup signed away his house as collateral for his bond, if he doesn’t make it to court, the house will be repossessed, leaving Ree and her family with nothing.

Determined to find her father, Ree trudges through a rural underworld of meth dealers and cookers, a kind of mountain mafia that includes her uncle Teardrop (John Hawkes) and the brutal Merab (Dale Dickey), gatekeeper for the area’s head honcho Thump Milton (Ron Hall), who may be the only person who knows where her father is.  With few resources, little hope and a gallery of shadowy figures who would rather beat her senseless than hand someone over to the law, Ree keeps fighting to run down the quasi-legendary spectre that is her father, and save her family in the process.

Though the undeniable symbolism of a girl searching for a father pervades the film, the thing that sets the tone, and holds it throughout, is the simple fact of ubiquitous poverty. Ree and her siblings shoot squirrels for dinner, feed questionable leftovers to their dogs and take any handouts from their family and neighbors they can get. Added to this is the simple desolation of the landscape. At times, as Ree walks through the hills from house to house in search of her father, it feels like she’s journeying through a wasteland, past burned mobile homes, rusted trucks and toppling barns. The beautiful photography of, director Debra Granik and cinematographer Michael McDonough only serves to raise that awareness that this girl lives in a kind of apocalypse, a place where the only escape for many is drugs, and the only redemption for her is to shoulder the burden of her family and carry them through the dark.

From beginning to end, the film is a battle for Ree, a battle against the simple-minded men who govern the region, against the drugs that cripple nearly everyone in one way or another, and against the unseen force of her father, who moves like a ghost through the landscape of the story. We never see Jessup, but everyone feels his influence, Ree most of all.

It’s this struggle, the struggle of a girl against every circumstance of her often pitiful life, that makes up the meat of the tale, but the tragedies of Winter’s Bone are highlighted and offset by the trappings of a classic film noir. There’s a man on the run through the darkness of a criminal underworld, but this time, instead of Humphrey Bogart or Robert Mitchum on his tail, it’s a tough as nails teenage girl with no weapon but her own determination.

Without that determination, the film falls flat, and it’s because of Lawrence that Winter’s Bone soars. She has the strength and sensitivity of an actor far beyond her limited experience, and her quiet, intense, rock-solid interpretation of Ree is the thing that ties the movie together. Hawkes and Dickey add their own hauting, often terrifying performances to the mix, and the rest of the cast, largely a group of unknowns, make Winter's Bone one of the most naturally, effortlessly acted films of the year.

Despite its grim exterior, within Winter’s Bone is something exhilarating, something primal and energetic and even hopeful. It’s this unlikely mixture of sorrow and spirit that makes it a great film.

Matt’s Call: This film deserves every accolade it’s received. It’s under the radar, but it’s definitely worth seeking out.

'RED,' one bloody cool flick

Not long ago, I listed RED as one of my five most anticipated films to close out 2010. I placed it among some pretty heavy company, the likes of The Social Network, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I and the Coen Brothers’ remake of True Grit. I did this because I am utterly enamored with the work of its co-creator, comic writer extraordinaire Warren Ellis (Read his sci-fi series Planetary and thank me later.), I am utterly enamored with just about every member of the ensemble cast, and I was utterly enamored with the idea: an action comedy about former CIA agents saddling up for a revenge mission.

Ellis’ original comic miniseries is almost shockingly short; three slim issues. It’s a dark, solitary tale of a single deadly retired agent named Frank Moses who, when an overanxious new CIA director sends a hit squad to eliminate it, turns his guns back on his former employers. That’s it. No frills, no friends, no laughs.

To make the whole thing long enough to film, director Robert Schwentke (The Time Traveler’s Wife) and writers Jon and Erich Hoeber (They wrote the atrocious Whiteout, but we’ll let that slide.) sought to expand the tale while keeping the dark cool that ran through Ellis’ original story. To do this, they gave Moses friends in similar predicaments and turned the villain into an apparently vast governmental conspiracy. Also, they made it funny. Does it work? Most of the time.

Frank Moses (Bruce “Bruno” Willis) is a retired CIA agent living a quiet life in a suburban neighborhood, decorating for Christmas and tearing up his pension checks just so he has an excuse to call his lovely benefits coordinator Sarah (Mary-Louise Parker) and ask her how her day is going. When a wet team (Which any spy thriller fan knows is called “wet” because their work is bloody.) visits him in the dead of night to try to eliminate him, Frank proves he’s still got game, takes them all out and hightails it to Kansas City, where he promptly attempts to enlist the help of Sarah, who is so shocked by his arrival that he’s forced to kidnap her (it’s funnier than it sounds, believe me).

The next chunk of the flick is a road movie. Frank is on the run and visiting old friends like Joe Matheson (Morgan Freeman), who’s living out his days in a retirement home, and stuffed pig-bearing Marvin Boggs (John Malkovich) a paranoid retired operative hiding out deep in the Florida swamps.

On Frank’s trail is William Cooper (Karl Urban), an ambitious CIA honcho ordered by his superiors to take care of the Frank problem. After learning that Frank has been tagged RED (Retired Extremely Dangerous), Cooper pulls out all the stops to make sure his targeted it history, but Frank, with his friends in toes, foils him at every turn. As the film progresses, details emerge about why exactly Frank has been targeted, and he must enlist the help of saucy former MI6 operative Victoria (Helen Mirren) and Russian agent Ivan (Brian Cox) to bring the wild ride to a close.

One of the things I love about RED is that it never bills itself as anymore than what it is: an action comedy about spies getting old. For me, it covered each of the bases well. The action was well-paced, fun to watch and even cheer worthy at times. The comedy had sharp timing, good delivery and a fair share of belly laughs, and the getting old thing was made amusing without becoming what the whole movie was about.

The problem with RED comes when you try to take too seriously that plot that the filmmakers threw together to make up for the fact that the source material was too short. It’s a thinly-stretched tale, to be sure; to mention awfully farfetched. But that shouldn’t change your enjoyment of the finer things. Come on, John Malkovich uses a grenade launcher like a baseball bat in this movie, and Helen Mirren fires a machine gun at a limousine. That's a pretty healthy dose of badass.

Speaking of the cast, they’re a masterful bunch, but you knew that already. Freeman and Mirren are two of the best actors in the world, and it shows. Malkovich is one of the great portrayers of crazy characters in the business, Parker is great at being in over her head, and Willis is an action icon. It’s a recipe for awesome.

RED is not perfect. It’s not a mind-blowing cinematic experience, or a profound one, or a though-provoking one. It is, however, a highly-polished, completely fun action flick, and one that’s definitely worth seeing.

Matt’s Call: I stand by my declaration that it’s among the five most worthy flicks at the cinema last fall. It’s not an Oscar-winner, but it was never trying to be. It’s a popcorn flick, and it’s among the best popcorn flicks I’ve seen in a while.

'The Green Hornet' isn't super, but it's fun.

Jay Chou and Seth Rogen don't look at explosions.

The Green Hornet is yet another story of a billionaire playboy who decides to turn his life around and use his resources, his dark past and his trusty assistant to fight crime (a la Batman and Iron Man). Where it splits from previous films of its kind is in the kind of hero it portrays: a headstrong, largely good-intentioned buffoon who’s far more confident in his abilities than his fighting skills suggest he should be.

Ambitionless party boy Britt Reid (Seth Rogen) has just inherited a successful Los Angeles newspaper after the death of his overbearing father (Tom Wilkinson). After a night of serious drinking and a morning of general apathy, he meets Kato, his father’s mechanic and resident barista. The two bond over a general dislike of Old Man Reid, as well as Kato’s supercool modifications (among them bulletproof glass and no-flat tires) to several of the vehicles in the Reid garage. 

During yet another of Britt's bad decisions, the two come across a gang of street toughs (yes, street toughs) attacking a couple in the street, and save the day. It’s then that Britt decides he and Kato should become a crime fighting team, but should masquerade as criminals to keep their good deeds hidden from the rest of the criminal underworld.

And so by day, Britt and Kato pose as big shot newspaper executives, assisted by the foxy and brainy Lenore Case (Cameron Diaz), and by night don masks and do battle with the criminal element of Los Angeles and its leader, Chudnofsky (Christoph Waltz).

The Green Hornet has a long history in the costumed hero tradition. It predates Batman and Superman. It’s appeared in numerous incarnations over 75 years, including comic books, radio shows and a television series co-starring the legendary Bruce Lee. This version, written by Rogen and his partner Evan Goldberg (they wrote Superbad and Pineapple Express together) and directed by art-house icon Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), bears little resemblance to any of the previous Hornets. This masked hero is immature, selfish, cocky and definitely not the sharpest tool in the utility belt. Conversely, Rogen and Goldberg’s Kato has evolved version beyond the mere sidekick. He’s the backbone of the team, the facilitator, the guy who gets it done while his cohort is ducking below the bullets. Green Hornet and Kato have become an Odd Couple, and their crime fighting adventures are played for laughs.

Fortunately, the laughs are there in abundance. As in Superbad, Rogen and Goldberg once again prove their gift for pitting opposites against one another with rollicking results. Britt and Kato clash like contentious brothers over everything from women to the best gadgets to deploy, and it all works. 

The problem with this is that everything else doesn’t necessarily work around it. Skill in comedic dialogue doesn’t help Rogen and Goldberg pull off a convincing villain (even with a mega-actor like Waltz pulling his weight) or give any accurately sinister portrayal of the criminal underworld. This too is played for laughs, and the lack of contrast that presents is a stumbling block.

Still, the laughs are there, but they don’t work if you don’t like Seth Rogen. His Britt Reid/Green Hornet isn’t a character. It’s Seth Rogen in a domino mask. For some, seeing the dude from Knocked Up riding in a cool car and throwing punches is a good thing. For others, it isn’t. Fair warning. Chou’s performance is admirable if for no other reason than he manages to get bigger laughs than Rogen. Whether or not he has talent beyond that is tough to tell, since his co-star seems bent on talking as much as possible (which, again, may or may not be a bad thing, depending on how you feel about said co-star).

One thing that isn’t uneven or softened by ubiquitous comic touches is the action. Gondry proves he’s got the game to do a genre flick and do it well, interspersing trippy art-house touches (including a nifty device that could only be called "Kato-Vision) with classic blockbuster polish to great effect. Every action sequence ups the ante from the last, all building to one remarkably entertaining (if highly improbable) final showdown.

The Green Hornet is a deeply flawed film, but it’s a film that also packs plenty of entertainment into its two hour run-time. Don’t ask it to be something it’s not and it might prove a pleasant surprise.

Matt’s Call: If you’re burned out on Rogen, skip it. If you’re happy with a decent popcorn ride, this is your remedy. But don’t pay extra for a 3D seat. That technology is wasted on this flick.

"True Grit," a True Masterpiece of Western Cinema

Here's Matt's review of the Coen Brothers' new film, True Grit, in theatres now. The review appeared in The Huntsville Item this morning.

It’s tricky business trying to convince someone that a remake, particularly a remake of one of John Wayne’s seminal films, is worth their time, especially when you’re a person who’s spent years declaiming against most remakes at the movies. The remake stigma – “Why can’t Hollywood come up with new ideas?” “They’ll never replace the original,” etc. etc. – has been clinging to Joel and Ethan Coen’s True Grit since it was announced they were making it. Even when the stellar cast was named, even when the trailers showed promise, those whispers continued: “But it’s a remake. I just don’t care for remakes.”

Thankfully, the release of the flick seems to be proving most of those whispers wrong. If you’re still on the fence, consider that there are exceptions to the “Remakes Are Dumb” rule. Huge exceptions. Sometimes these exceptions are a re-imagining for a new age (Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead is a good example of this), sometimes they’re just a chance to have fun with ideas we already know we love. Sometimes, as is the case with True Grit, it’s a chance to create a more faithful adaptation of the source material (Charles Portis’ 1968 novel), and to refresh and reinvigorate a faithful old genre: the Western revenge tale.

In post-Civil War Arkansas, 14-year-old Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld), is traveling to settle her father’s affairs after his murder at the hands of Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin), a hired man who shot him after an argument. After making arrangements for her father’s body, Mattie sets her sights on revenge, and seeks out someone to help her bring Chaney to justice. After hearing that he’s the “meanest” of the U. S. Marshals, she seeks to hire Marshal Rueben J. “Rooster” Cogburn (Jeff Bridges), a drunken, overweight, one-eyed lawman who, after persistent pestering from Mattie, agrees to accompany her into Indian Territory on Chaney’s trail.

Also on Chaney’s trail is a flashy, cocky Texas Ranger named La Boeuf (Matt Damon). He’s been hunting Chaney for months, and while Mattie believes the man that killed her father to be a buffoon, La Boeuf cautions that he’s much more, that the buffoonery is only an act, that Chaney is actually a cold, calculated killer who murdered a Texas State Senator months before. La Boeuf urges Mattie to go home to her mother, and he and Cogburn even attempt to set out on the trail early and leave her behind. Mattie, with the help of her new pony, refuses to be shaken from their side, and the adventure into the wilderness in search of a killer begins.

Fans of the John Wayne version will find many recognizable chunks of the story still intact, including the famous “Fill your hand, you son of a bitch!” scene. Where the Coens shove off into new territory is in the film’s tone. While Cogburn was undoubtedly the driving force of the first film, the Coens focus much of their energy on Mattie, who narrated the original Portis novel. Everything happens through her eyes, colored by her determined, unshakeable desire to avenge her father. This not only makes the film more emotionally resonant, but also funnier, as Mattie observes the macho foibles of Cogburn and La Boeuf trying to outride, outshoot, and out-tough one another.

The film is also decidedly darker than its predecessor. The original True Grit, though it deals with dark themes, is bright, brisk, often almost hopeful. This True Grit, seen through the lens of brilliant cinematographer Roger Deakins, is gloomy, dim and crawling with shadows. Combine this with the Coen’s insistence on a more accurate depiction of the brutally desperate American West, and the result is a film that makes its predecessor look tame.

The entire cast is perfect, but no one can eclipse the daring, iconic performance of Bridges. John Wayne’s Rooster Cogburn was John Wayne with an eye patch. Jeff Bridges’ Rooster Cogburn is unrecognizable as Jeff Bridges. He disappears into the character, inhabits him, transforms into him completely. It’s another landmark performance from one of the greatest American actors. Steinfeld could be commended just for keeping up with the heavyweights that surround her in the flick, but she manages much more. Her vision of Mattie is nuanced, bold and wise beyond her years, just as the character should be. Brolin is wonderful, redeeming himself for the disaster of Jonah Hex earlier this year, and Damon proves he can do Westerns.

It was inevitable that any major discussion on True Grit would have to involve comparisons to the original, but it’s a shame if that’s the only place the discussion goes. There are parallels, to be sure, but the Coens’ True Grit is a different, more cinematic world, filled with breathtaking images, brilliant dialogue and all the love that comes with two fans of the genre working at the top of their game. It’s still amusing and amazing that two Jewish boys from Minnesota have made some of the great Southern films of our time (O Brother, Where Art Thou? and No Country for Old Men are just two examples). True Grit fits that bill, but it goes beyond. In their first exercise in straight genre filmmaking, working against history and cynicism, the Coen Brothers have managed to create a classic of Western cinema.

Matt’s Call: Easily one of the best films of the year, and the best Western made since Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven nearly two decades ago. Don’t let your devotion to The Duke cause you to miss it.

New on DVD: "Despicable Me," the best animated film of the year.

IT'S SO FLUFFFFFFFFY!

"Despicable Me" is new on DVD today. Here's Matt's original review of the flick from its summer release.

Despicable Me is pure cinematic joy.

It’s becoming more and more difficult to rave about animated films these days. It’s not that I’m getting older, or that the films are getting further and further away from my understanding as I lean toward more sophisticated cinema fare. At this point, the level of saturation of animated gimmick flicks has reached somewhere well beyond critical mass.

Animated cinema was once an event to be cherished. Remember the second Golden Age of Disney? In the span of about a decade we got The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King. All brilliant, complex, downright exhilarating movie experiences.

It’s not the same now. Now animated films are computer-generated toy commercials interested in little more than throwing lots of light and sound up on screen (preferably though 3D rendering) and tossing out countless cliched gags that have no originality and no real meaning.

I try very hard not to be jaded about these things, but I’m very, very tired of seeing trailers for films with the following premise: “OK, we’re going to take something that doesn’t talk, make it talk, and hilarity will ensue, because animals aren’t supposed to talk, right? Hardy har har.” Or how about this one? “OK, remember that classic story you all remember growing up? Well, look out, because here comes the twist!”

It’s not my fault, I swear. This is the result of two decades of family films and the slow decay of quality in what was once one our proudest subgenres. Every time I go see a new animated flick, even one by the legendary Pixar, I worry that instead of a film, I’m about to instead watch a lengthy moneymaking equation set to catchy tunes and bad jokes.

And then there are films like Despicable Me.

As much as I lament the current state of animated film, this flick, the debut feature from 3-year-old studio Illumination Entertainment, made me forget all of that. It’s so rare that I get to rave about animated films anymore that I promise over the next few paragraphs I will not hold anything back. Simply put, Despicable Me is a dose of pure happiness fed through a projector.

Gru (Steve Carell) is a supervillain. He’s good at his job. He builds balloon animals and gives them to kids just so he can pop them. He zaps people with his freeze ray so he won’t have to stand in line for coffee. He’s got an army of adoring minions, and an assistant, the brilliant (if a little senile) Dr. Nefario (Russell Brand), who can build him any gadget he’d like.

But Gru is being outpaced in the villainy department lately. While he was off stealing the Statue of Liberty (the little one from Las Vegas), new villain Vector (Jason Segel) was busy hijacking the Great Pyramid. Desperate to get back on top, Gru hatches a plot to steal the moon from the sky. All he needs to do it is a shrink ray. Unfortunately, the shrink ray is in Vector’s hands.

Undaunted, Gru adopts a trio of adorable cookie-selling girls: Margo (Mirando Cosgrove), Edith (Dana Gaier) and unicorn-obsessed Agnes (Elsie Fisher). Knowing Vector’s weakness for cookies, Gru plans to use the girls to infiltrate his enemy’s fortress so he can get his hands on the shrink ray. Of course, being a supervillain, he’s got no head for children, and comedy spontaneously combusts (That’s a weird phrase I know, but I wanted a change from “hilarity ensues.”).

Amid the madcap adventure of it all are Gru’s financial woes (He can’t get a loan from the Bank of Evil. Yes, there’s a Bank of Evil.), his issues with his overbearing mother (Julie Andrews) and his wicked heart melting for the three little girls sleeping in hollowed out bombs in his house.

Everything about the film is just plain playful. There are gags woven into every detail of the flick (see if you can spot where Vector hid the pyramid), from the dialogue to the animation. It’s all spectacularly well-designed, filled with the cinematic craftsmanship that all those garden variety flicks I mentioned earlier just don’t manage.

It’s also a great example of marvelous voice acting. Carell is his usual awesome self, Brand is so adept at his character that you can barely tell it’s him, and all three girls, particularly Fisher, are mindblowingly adorable. And yes, the “It’s so fluffy!” moment from the trailers really is just as awesome as you think it is.

Right here is normally the part where I nitpick about something the flick did wrong, but I was too busy laughing to see any flaws. I think that just about says it all.

Matt’s Call: Easily my favorite animated film of the year. Two hours of absolute joy on screen. Take the whole family and forget your troubles, because this is what family cinema is meant to be.

New on DVD: "Inception," the coolest movie of the year.

Inception, the mind-bending mega blockbuster from Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan, hits DVD and Blu-Ray today. ITZ Managing Editor Matthew Jackson reviewed the film for The Huntsville Item when it was released in July.

Inception really is that good

Some flicks just have an air of destiny about them.

The idea sounds great, the cast and crew come together perfectly, the trailers strike just the right note of anticipation, and when the film finally rolls out for all to see, it turns out it really was the sublime experience everyone hoped it would be.

It’s rare that a film really does that. Films can be good, but not as great as you thought they would be, very often, but it takes something more for them to meet your every expectation. After all, in our minds there are no budget constraints, actors never make mistakes, and special effects look completely real.

It’s an even rarer occasion when a film exceeds your expectations, and rarer still that a film leaves you dumbfounded with a kind of gleeful sensory overload.

Inception, the latest offering from Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan, is one of those films. In spite of a boatload of impossible expectations, this flick went far beyond my wildest dreams (pun definitely intended) of how great it could be.

It’s not just that this is a lovingly crafted, carefully designed and flawlessly executed exercise in filmmaking. This is a strikingly original piece of cinema, truly something you’ve never seen before, and that alone should be enough to get you marching to this particular drum.

Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his partner Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) are thieves of a very particular order. They don’t knock over casinos or museums. They invade dreams in search of world-changing ideas buried in the minds of corporate honchos. They do this because they are handsomely paid by other corporate honchos.

The process involves a technology called “shared dreaming,” in which several people are hooked up to the same sedation machine and simultaneously transported into a pre-designed dream world that is inhabited by figments of the dreamer’s subconscious (this all makes more sense when you see it, trust me). Once there, they find a way to get to the deepest and darkest part of that subconscious, where the secrets lie.

Cobb is good at his job, but he’s also on the run from his own past, and when an Asian tycoon (Ken Watanabe) offers him a chance at redemption through “one last job,” he jumps at it. But the job is anything but ordinary. This time it’s not about taking an idea out, but putting an idea in, something that becomes far more difficult when ensnared in the trappings of the mind.

To pull off this ambitious reverse-heist, Cobb and Arthur recruit brilliant young architect Ariadne (Ellen Page) to design the dream world, and international charmer Eames (Tom Hardy) to rustle up a mass of deceptions, all to be placed inside the head of the heir to an international conglomerate (Cillian Murphy).

I’m stopping there, not just because I don’t want to spoil anything for you, but also because if I wanted to get into the intricacies of this flick’s plot, I’d need a whole book to do it. Nolan, already famous for his magnificently layered films (his breakout film Memento is a prime example) outdoes himself here, crafting a world that’s part reality, part dream, and part dream within a dream, each with its own carefully designed set of rules. 

It may seem a long shot, making a film built around the structure of a heist, which involves careful, logical planning, but set in the illogical and ever-shifting world of dreams. But the whole flick really does make sense, and Nolan achieves this by placing all the things we know about dreams into the context of his tale. Time moves differently, the subconscious intrudes on logic, and everything seems to revolve around the dreamer. All this not only grounds the film, but also makes it believable. Believe me when I tell you that this does not feel like science fiction. 

The realism is heightened by Nolan’s use of special effects. Though what you see is mindbending, never does it feel contrived or intended to impress. It’s all simply part of the world you’ve been pushed into. Cities bend in half, freight trains fly through taxi-packed streets, people spin through hallways in zero gravity, but never during any of that does it feel like Nolan is shouting “Look at me! Look at how cool this is!” It’s all woven into the fabric.

The acting is, put simply, top notch. DiCaprio manages to be psychologically complex without seeming melodramatic, Gordon-Levitt is super-spy cool, Page is alternately curious and wise at all the right times. You don’t feel like you’re watching movie stars cavorting about the blockbuster-scape, and that’s a miracle in itself.

But what’s most brilliant about his treasure of a movie is the way reality almost becomes a character itself. Nolan makes much of the difference between what’s real and what’s not, and is careful to note that as we’re dreaming nothing seems illogical. “Inception” is a film that plays with this concept like no other, bending and shaping reality in layers and shadows into a funhouse of the mind. Never once is the plot, the pace or the conceptual solidity lost in all the smoke and mirrors, and yet by the end you’re still left with a dizzying sense of openness, as if you’re still waiting to wake up. 

Matt’s Call: The best movie of the year so far by leaps and bounds, and nothing slated to come out later this year looks like it will even come close (The Social Network has since forced me to revise this opinion, but not much.). It’s as good as you heard it was, and better. All that’s left is for you to see it.