Zach Sees Every Movie: Don’t you forget about me (sorry)

This is the second of three posts meant to conclude the Zach Sees Every Movie project. Previously, I reflected on the experience as a whole. On Friday, I’ll host the Zach Sees Every Movie Awards. But now, I dust off a handful of reviews that were finished but never saw the light of day. Enjoy.

So, as you may have noticed, the 119 movies I saw for this project doesn’t quite match up to the twenty-five reviews I wrote. But, believe it or not, despite this startling failure that should have shamed me into deleting this blog and spending a year by myself in the wilderness coming to terms with who I am, I actually wrote a handful of reviews that I never posted because fuck, why wouldn’t that be a good idea? So here they are.

Tangled (Greno, Howard, ’10)

Tangled is Disney’s latest fairytale, a loose spin on “Rapunzel” by the Brothers Grimm. It tells the story of an old woman, Mother Gothel (Donna Murphy), who finds an enchanted flower that restores her youth. She makes sure it stays hidden so that no one else can use it. But one night it is uncovered, and is used to heal a sickly queen as she gives birth. The flower is useless afterward, however the child, Rapunzel (Mandy Moore), retains its healing power in her blond hair. The old woman steals the child and takes her to the high tower in which she lives, where she raises Rapunzel from infancy to early adulthood, never once letting her step outside. But Rapunzel grows increasingly desperate to experience the world outside the tower and yearns to know the meaning of the floating lanterns that swarm over the horizon on her birthday every year. When a wanted thief, Flynn Rider (Zachary Levi), enters the tower to hide from the palace guards and former cohorts chasing him, Rapunzel blackmails him into guiding her to the kingdom to see the lanterns up close.

And so ensues an adventure tale that journeys down a familiar road, but that manages to be thoroughly charming. The two central characters are likable, with Mandy Moore doing a good job capturing Rapunzel’s spunky outgoingness and wide-eyed curiosity.  Zachary Levi does his usual goofy shtick as Flynn, the sort of movie criminal whose charisma somehow seems to exonerate his crimes. The two may not be particularly fascinating, but they are endearing enough to carry the film. Tangled is generally very entertaining if not groundbreaking, but it does have its flaws. The most noticeable one is the songs, which aren’t particularly good. I appreciate the attempt to recapture the magic of Disney’s classic animated musicals, but they really feel tacked on, and are unlikely to be remembered. The film would honestly be stronger if it subtracted them all together.

But the biggest problem is the villain. Mother Gothel has the potential to be a complex, sympathetic antagonist. Although she came into the job under pernicious circumstances, she has held the position of Rapunzel’s parental unit for eighteen years. The two should have an incredibly deep bond, especially since neither is ever so mean that the other notices. And given their reclusiveness, they have been each other’s sole companions in life for nearly two decades. These bonds shouldn’t be shattered as easily as they are here. Rapunzel’s initial rebellion makes sense. But in her efforts to track Rapunzel down, the film wastes no time turning Mother Gothel into a straightforward villain. By the end, any bond they shared at the beginning of the film seems to have disappeared entirely. Once the plot gets moving, the two simply cease to have feelings for the other. And the direction of the film wouldn’t have to be changed at all if this was amended. Gothel can act selfishly, but she could, you know, feel pangs of regret. Rapunzel could maybe, uh, be upset that she has become pitted against a person who prior to a couple days ago was the only other human she had ever known. Neither would have to make different choices at all – it would merely be that they were somewhat unhappy that they had to make these choices. I was sincerely excited about the potential that relationship offered, but it was sadly undelivered upon. (Never mind that there’s another family-related moment at the end that seems to entirely defy the nature human of behavior.)

But while this is a deep flaw, it hardly ruins the film.  Tangled rarely aims too high, but it is a fun film, and one that’s easy to enjoy. And it has some great moments. The scene where Rapunzel and Flynn watch the lanterns fly into the sky is emotionally moving, and visually it’s absolutely stunning. On a technical level it’s likely the best-animated scene I encountered in a 2010 movie. (Perhaps this can go towards explaining why Tangled is the second-most expensive film of all time. No joke.) It’s the movie’s peak, but the rest is still very good. Despite suffering from a poorly-executed villain and a mediocre soundtrack, Tangled’s good-natured energy and spirited protagonists compensate and add up to a strong family film.

The Tourist (Henckel von Donnersmarck, ’10)

The Tourist is a film with plenty to recommend it, yet it is all too confused about what it actually wants to be. It concerns Elise (Angelina Jolie), a woman engaged in a relationship with the wanted and elusive thief Alexander Pearce. Various groups are chasing her in hopes of finding him. She intends to mislead them into believing that a stranger she meets on a train, Frank Tupelo (Johnny Depp), is really Pearce. But the situation spins out of control, and the two wind up spending a good deal of time with each other, which shockingly leads to them falling in love.

The Tourist is a much more bearable film than its reputation might suggest. Jolie and Depp both give agreeable, if hardly accomplished, performances. Visually it amounts to location porn, as the film’s setpieces do their best to highlight the gorgeous Venice surroundings, and I don’t consider that a bad thing. But The Tourist suffers from some strange identity issues. It has the tone and style of a heated comedy-thriller, yet moves at a weirdly leisurely pace. (Although much of that is due to how slowly the actors speak. I’m actually positive that if they just talked at a normal speed, the film would be about twenty minutes shorter.) The movie glides so calmly into each new crisis that it has trouble building up any momentum. And when it comes time for the big finish, the quality more or less stays consistent with the rest of the film until a terrible, terrible twist ending. It’s the sort of twist that, if someone were to tell you twenty minutes into the movie that it has a twist ending, you would immediately guess what it was. But far more egregious than merely being predictable, it is a total characterization retcon. It renders any attachment to a certain character one might have somehow built up relatively meaningless. For a movie already balancing uneasily between fun popcorn flick and mediocre romantic comedy-thriller, it leaves the sort of bad taste in your mouth that it really needed to avoid.

The Dilemma (Howard, ’11)

The Dilemma is a curious, curious film. On the one hand, it assembles the ingredients of a really bad comedy, like mediocrity-symbols Vince Vaughn and Kevin James, a hammy performance by Queen Latifa, and what really appears to be an awful script. But then it hands these ingredients to Ron Howard, a director with an uneven but hardly awful résumé. And it’s almost as if Howard doesn’t realize what the ingredients he’s been given are meant for, because he takes them and he tries to cook something entirely different with them. In another director’s hands, this would be the instantly-forgettable comedy it was meant to be. But Howard turns each scene into something compelling, visually at least. He never builds up any attachment to the characters, but somehow he manages to frame scenes in such a way that you become genuinely engaged. In an early scene, where Vaughn’s character spots his best friend’s wife with another man and follows them, Howard takes a tacky setup but makes it arresting through sumptuous scenery and creative camera angles.

Throughout, Howard gives the movie a tone and pacing at odds with its unambitious script, and the effect is certainly jarring. It’s tough to say if he did a good job directing it because then wouldn’t it have been a good movie? But I’m not sure how much could really have been done with what comes off as a truly poor script. (Interestingly, it was written by Allan Loeb, who has written three of the movies I’ve seen so far for Zach Sees Every Movie, and will have written at least one more by the time it ends. Being that this is the closest I’ve come to liking any of these movies, I cannot yet explain why he has been so fruitfully employed in the past year.) There are moments where the script’s stupidity becomes so distracting that it completely overwhelms the movie – any appearance by Queen Latifa – and scenes where its stupidity retreats enough to allow for some pretty strong moments. The Dilemma isn’t a good movie overall, but a surprising amount of it is enjoyable because of Ron Howard’s directing. I’m left giving it a confused, but kind of earned, recommendation.

Country Strong (Feste, ’11)

Country Strong is one of the more frustrating films I’ve encountered thus far in the project. There is so much that I enjoyed about it, but whenever it builds some goodwill through a particular scene or development, it always does its best to completely derail itself. It tells the story of a famous fictional country singer, Kelly Canter (Gwyneth Paltrow), whose career was put on hiatus after she had an alcohol-induced meltdown while performing that caused her to fall ten feet off a stage, killing her unborn child. She enters rehab, but her husband and manager, James Canter (Tim McGraw), pulls her out of it before she’s ready to leave because she has a series of comeback shows lined up. This angers Beau Hutton (Garrett Hedlund), an aspiring country singer who befriended her while she was in rehab. Beau and fellow rising artist Chiles Stanton (Leighton Meester) are chosen to open for Kelly on her upcoming tour dates. Tension mounts between all four of them in the ensuing weeks as they perform three shows in the South.

The first chunk of the film is promising. The conflict between the characters at this point feels natural and genuinely interesting, particularly with Kelly and James, a couple whose flame has clearly dimmed, but whose true love for each other has kept them going through all the poor decisions they each have made. And Beau’s relationship with Kelly is intriguing, as he seems to have a deep connection to her and feels protective despite not actually being with her physically. Until, around thirty minutes in, it turns out he has been with her physically. That’s the moment that these complex, layered relationships take a turn for the melodramatic, and the story of this film is the story of a subtle character study competing with a rote, through-the-motions soap opera.

At Kelly’s first concert on the tour, she opens a package backstage sent by a sociopathic scorned fan that brutally reminds her of the gigantic mistake she made before. This, of course, logically leads her to immediately start drinking. One of the key problems with this character is that she badly wants this comeback tour and to put her past mistakes behind her, but anytime it’s convenient for the story she will use the slimmest of excuses to fall of the wagon. But Country Strong’s inconsistent characterization is most obvious in her husband James. In some scenes he’s a loving husband who clearly wants the best for his wife but is pushing her too hard, and in others he’s an asshole who blatantly ignores his wife’s wellbeing. He’s often a sympathetic, well-written character, and very well-played by McGraw, but he becomes a villain the moment the story needs him to be, and his contradictory behavior doesn’t seem to come from the same character at all. The worst moments are when he puts the moves on Chiles Stanton, since at no other points in the film is he the type of person who would do that.

But I give the film a huge amount of credit for the fact that these soap operatics never actually destroy any of the relationships. In fact, despite Kelly and James both being aware of the other’s indiscretions, they’re mature enough to recognize them as a character flaw in the other and not hold it against them. The budding relationship between Beau and Chiles is never challenged by the fact that each has had romantic encounters of varying degrees of intimacy with one of the Canters. This takes remarkable restraint on writer-director Shana Feste’s part, but I just wish that the relationship drama wasn’t so poorly telegraphed in the first place.

Still, much of the respect this earns is undone in the movie’s climax. It starts with snippets of Kelly’s third try at a comeback show, which show her to be a manipulative, artless performer whose melodies and subject matter are infantile. But after the concert, Country Strong delivers its final twist, which is just one of the most absurdly dumb endings I have ever seen in a movie. It’s completely unearned and it comes out of nowhere. To say that it properly laid the groundwork for this twist is to say that feeling raindrops before entering a building would prepare you for a flood when you exit it ten minutes later. It’s the moment where the film’s noble attempts to reign in its melodramatic tendencies and not completely give into insanity are finally overcome.

But there is still one final scene between two of the characters, which takes place a few months later. It’s a sweet, modest moment that manages to capture all that was good about the preceding movie. These two scenes at the end of Country Strong stand side-by-side as representatives of its best and worst tendencies. But even though the ridiculous climactic scene has more weight than the touching final one, overall the subtle emotional instincts of the film manage to win out, albeit just barely.

Beastly (Barnz, ’11)

Oh, Beastly. What an excellent, terrible movie this is. I mean, it really is awful, and for so many reason that I shall happily delve into soon – but it’s the good kind of awful. The kind that leaves you stifling laughter for ninety-five straight minutes trying to figure out if this is actually happening. If someone actually wrote this, and then was given millions of dollars by a studio to make it, and then cast this group of actors, and then filmed these actors performing it, and then actually tried to get a decent chunk of the population to spend an hour’s wage to see it.

Let’s start with the premise, which is preposterous. First, the protagonist Kyle (Alex Pettyfer) gives a campaign speech at his upper-class high school condemning ugly people and encouraging physically gifted students to revel in their rightful place atop the social hierarchy. Rather than getting him in massive trouble from the school, it only seems to make him more of a lock to win the election (which is for president of the school’s green initiative, which he openly professes to have no interest in). But he finally makes the wrong move when he goes to great lengths to mortify a weird fellow student (Mary-Kate Olsen), who casts a spell on him that turns him into a beast. (That means he loses his hair, grows bizarre graphite-esque black veins all over his body, and gets a boil on his nose.) The spell can only be broken if he gets someone to say “I love you” to him within a year.

So his next step is to drop out of school and move into a house that his father (Peter Krause) gets for him since he doesn’t want to live with an unattractive son. Will (Neil Patrick Harris), a tutor, and Magda (Lisa Gay Hamilton), their maid, move in. Then Alex begins stalking a girl from his class, Lindy (Vanessa Hudgens), who he has a crush on. When her addict father endangers her life, Kyle sets up a deal with him that involves Lindy moving in with Kyle for protection. She shows up reluctantly one day, aggravated by, yet somehow content with the fact that she now has to live with people she has never met who, apart from Magda, don’t even show themselves to her. And she just kind of rolls along with it. This premise is completely unconvincing, and is unaided by the fact that the movie barely bothers to set it up. It’s as though it knows how absurd this concept is, and decides it’s best to not even attempt to have it seem like a logical procession of events. The circumstances for all of this – from the spell being cast, to Will and Magda moving in with him, to Lindy’s father putting her in danger, to Kyle essentially abducting Lindy – just occur haphazardly, with no conviction or coherence. It’s almost beautiful, a movie so aware of its stupidity that it doesn’t even try to make you believe that these events are taking place: it just announces that they are.

From there, Kyle, who renames himself Hunter to conceal his identity from Lindy, begins to awkwardly try to win her over without ever showing his hideous face. While this section of the movie is as dumb as the rest, it’s the only part where it seems to really revel in it, being in on its own joke for once. That said, it still can’t really settle on whether Hunter is trying to be caught by Lindy or keep hidden, or which one Lindy would rather he do. After a few months have passed, she finally meets Will (the fact that she hadn’t earlier, when there was no reason for her not to, just goes to show how disturbing the premise really is since she has not left this house at all and has only had contact with one person, and barely). Then she finally meets Hunter, in all his veiny glory. The two grow closer to each other, and potential relationship spoilers arise but are never developed beyond a scene or two, like her desire to be back to her old life, the fact that she has a crush on Kyle from before the spell and doesn’t know Hunter is the same person, and a medical crisis involving her father. Eventually, after some inconsistent character behavior, the movie finally stumbles into its ending, which is as satisfyingly cheesy as you could hope for.

But I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface of how awful this movie is. Throughout Beastly, Lindy uses some strange Facebook-knockoff (that I don’t think really exists), where she posts mind-numbingly superficial status updates that contradict her characterization as someone who’s not mind-numbingly superficial. (She describes her feelings towards roses as “amazy crazy.”) She also barely seems to have a social life – though she communicates with a couple friends through this social networking site, they never have any presence in the movie. When Kyle is stalking her in the beginning, she is never seen in the company of others unless they are a part of her social activism. She clearly does not have a thriving social life, which is a potentially interesting thread that the movie never makes anything of.

Beastly also frequently tries to engage in snappy banter, but it all falls so horribly, horribly flat. This is due to the poor writing, but also the atrocious acting. Alex Pettyfer, unremarkable in his other leading role this year, I Am Number Four, reveals heretofore hidden shades of blandness. He doesn’t have anything but looks, and I can’t imagine his career leading anywhere. Teen stars don’t have to be good, but they have to have charm and likability; he has nice hair. Case-in-point: Vanessa Hudgens. I don’t know if she’s a legitimately good actress, but she’s easily one of the best things in this movie. She’s beautiful, yet also a charismatic performer, and I can see enjoying her presence in future dumb teen movies I might be subjected to. Neil Patrick Harris also shines, because Neil Patrick Harris is an incredibly gifted actor with great timing. His role should objectively be pretty abysmal (he’s a blind man who helps Kyle to see), but he somehow makes some of the banter work. It’s disappointing when he’s pretty much forgotten in the film’s final third. But they are the only two bright spots. Generally it’s Pettyfer who’s called upon to deliver the snappy dialogue, and lord is he incapable. Mary-Kate Olsen is also dreadful whenever she appears. Lisa Gay Hamilton doesn’t get much to do as Magda but serves a similar emotionally manipulative function to Harris’ tragically blind character since her children are in another country and don’t have citizenship in America. Peter Krause has a totally thankless role as Kyle’s father, which is depressing given how great Krause can be.

But Beastly, despite being really, really bad, is also really, really fun. If you enjoyed this outlining of its flaws, then you would probably enjoy seeing them at work in the actual film. It reminds me of my reaction to Alpha & Omega in that sense, albeit certainly a few pegs above that movie. But despite its truly low quality, I would choose it in a heartbeat over objectively better but infinitely more mediocre teen fare, such as Pettyfer’s I Am Number Four. I am happy to have spent ninety-five minutes with it stifling laughter.

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Earlier this year, I took part in AMC’s Best Picture Showcase, a marathon of every nominee for Best Picture at the Oscars. It was a great experience, and I meant to write about it but I never really got around to it. Or rather, that’s how I remembered things, until a week ago when I found a file on my computer titled “AMC Best Picture Showcase,” which was, of course, three pages of me writing about it. As it turns out, I just forgot it existed. In fact, something tells me I might have finished it if I hadn’t forgotten it so quickly. So here’s what I managed to finish writing before it slipped my mind. (Since I never finished it, I figured I might as well present it without any edits. But fair warning: some of these really could have used edits.)

AMC Best Picture Showcase

Over the past few months, you might have heard about AMC’s Best Picture Showcase, an event in which participating AMC theaters screened a marathon of the nominees for best picture at the Oscars, either across two consecutive Saturdays, or all ten films in one near-24-hour marathon starting at 10am the Saturday before the Oscars. Well, the Boston theater I frequent happened to be one of the theaters doing the 24-hour one, and if you know me, you know I paid $50 for admittance, and sat and enjoyed all ten films in a row (without sleep – go caffeine). I was lucky enough to have company for seven of the ten films from my friend Scott Douglass. Overall, it was a great experience. Although I have issues with some of the films, the vast majority of these are great movies, and viewing them all stacked up against each other painted a strong portrait of what the best of 2010 was in movies. (I also appreciated the opportunity to see the The Kids Are All Right and Winter’s Bone, the only two nominees I hadn’t seen before.) So without further ado, here are some thoughts on my experience with each film last weekend, along with comments on the Oscars (focusing on the awards themselves, as the abysmal telecast has been sufficiently trashed by the internet). [Note: I do not get to this part.]

Toy Story 3

This is the one I have the least to say about viewing again, because it was my fourth time seeing it (more than any of the others), and the last time was less than two months ago. And while I could appreciate it more with each repeated viewing, I didn’t necessarily love it more. It’s not the sort of film that I expect many people would either raise or lower their appreciation of based on repeated viewings. But I’ll still reiterate what countless others have said before, and what I myself have said: Toy Story 3 is a great movie from just about any angle. As a sequel, it evolves from the previous entries by expanding the scope of the story in an interesting direction and maintains consistent characterization. As a conclusion to this series, it perfectly encapsulates the spirit and themes of the films, and reaches an emotional climax unrivaled by anything preceding it, that works so well because it takes advantage of the attachment the other films have built towards the characters. As an individual film, it is exciting, funny, and gripping, and sets up its conclusion incredibly well to ensure maximum emotional payoff. As animation, it is skilled and often grand. As children’s movie, it does an amazing job of being accessible to kids of all ages while simultaneously being something adults can appreciate even more for its complexity, and not by relying on jokes or references that only adults could understand. As a Pixar film, it helps cement their reputation as one of the premiere sources of great filmmaking in the modern cinema landscape, not just in animation, and not just in children’s films.

Grade: (before) A/(now) A

127 Hours

I never discussed 127 Hours on this blog, but I was not terribly happy with it. It’s the astonishing true story of Aron Ralston (played by James Franco), a reckless mountain climber whose arm is pinned down by a boulder, leading him to resort to drastic measures to free himself. The film promises to be a claustrophobic, narrow narrative with a brutally exclusive focus on Ralston’s attempts to put an end to his predicament. But Boyle’s instincts as a director fail him in telling this story. He implements excessive stylization, in the form of split screens, fast editing, and a large number of meaningful but hollow flashbacks and hallucinations. But these impulses serve to blunt the impact of the story. They create a pillow of sorts, protecting the audience from feeling the sheer disparity of the situation. A set of flashbacks involve Ralston’s “one that got away,” played by Clémence Poésy. We come to know nearly nothing about her as a human, but the fracturing of their relationship does blatantly underline the theme that Ralston’s detachment from others is what led him to this crossroads. I could call Poésy’s role thankless, but it’s nothing compared to Lizzy Caplan and Treat Williams, who play Ralston’s sister and father, respectively, and have nothing to do but sit on a couch in a hallucination. (Though Caplan does get to leave a phone message off-screen earlier.) It wouldn’t be so objectionable if these weren’t two individuals with a history of strong performances who should never be cast in something to just sit still for probably less than a minute of screen time.

127 Hours ultimately feels like a candied version of the story it’s telling. Some scenes work really well, such as when Ralston’s mind, slipping from reality, enacts both sides of a radio talk show interview. (Here the fast editing is an asset, although I still wonder if it would be better to just let Franco play out the scene without cutting to a new shot every time he changes character.) The climactic scene where he frees himself is good too, largely because Boyle lets the event play out on screen without unrelentingly fast editing and narrative distractions. But the thing is, while Boyle’s predilection for these techniques diminishes the effect of the film, I’m not convinced there was a great movie here at all. The film looks especially weak compared to 2010’s most claustrophobic film, Buried, which really did manage to tell a compelling story with an even more limited setting, although there the character could move and interact with other objects in the setting. Plus, it wasn’t based on a true story, so the writer was free to include as much as his imagination would allow him. The story of Aron Ralston might just be too simple for it to make a good movie. So maybe Boyle decided that he simply needed the flashbacks and hallucinations to make this work, but it still doesn’t. 127 Hours still entertains in many parts, features a strong (if overrated, albeit with some great moments) lead performance from Franco, and in the end is quite uplifting. But it seems misguided in the first place, and if it ever did have potential to be great, its own stylistic trickery undermines it. It has strengths, but it’s one of the most disappointing films of the year, and for my money the worst of the Oscar contenders.

Grade: (before) B-/(now) B-

The Kids Are All Right*

The Kids Are All Right might have had the strangest position going in to the Oscars, because there didn’t seem to be anybody that actually thought it was the best film of the year. The other nine films all had their diehard advocates, but at the very least I couldn’t detect any for Kids. And that’s not something I take issue with – I would be very interested in hearing someone explain how this could be better than all the other candidates. This was the first time I saw it, and I was interested in what my reaction to it would be, since I had certainly read some opinions proclaiming it to be overrated.

It focuses on a lesbian couple, Nic and Jules, played respectively by Annette Bening and Julianne Moore, both giving excellent performances. They are in love with each other, but still experiencing trouble with their relationship. Their children, Joni (Mia Wasikowska), eighteen and preparing for college, and Laser (Josh Hutcherson), fifteen and involved in a misguided friendship, become interested in finding the sperm donor their mothers used to conceive them. They eventually contact Paul (Mark Ruffalo), a man whose life is relaxed and easy-going, but a tad unfulfilling, who agrees to meet with the two. The meeting is relatively successful, and Paul becomes a deeper part of the family’s life. Joni and Jules in particular are accepting of him, but Nic is uncomfortable with his looming presence. Eventually his integration into their lives goes too far, and the walls start to peel away from the family’s close bonds.

What really makes the movie click is the characters. They all make bad, destructive choices, but remain sympathetic throughout and are winning in moments of levity. The dialogue is believable and often quite funny. It enhances the light tone, which is very modest but effective, and can deftly support dramatic moments. The only character I wasn’t entirely sold on was Laser, whose subplot about his troublemaking friend never connects emotionally with the other characters. The movie is also a tad awkwardly structured. The beginning and especially the ending have a heavy focus on Joni, but the rest of the film relies far more on the adults. To balance it out it should have focused more on her relationship with Paul throughout, which was interesting and certainly had the potential for further exploration. (And more Mia Wasikowska is never a bad thing – as one of the many who was riveted by her performance in the first season of the great HBO series In Treatment, I can’t express enough how happy I am that Hollywood is giving her a career.) A final scene between her and Paul would have aided the movie in more ways than one. But despite these flaws, and despite not being a great movie, The Kids Are All Right is a strong film that left me very satisfied. To me it’s not really a contender for best film of the year, but I appreciated its presence in this movie marathon.

* I should note that regarding the two movies I saw for the first time here, this and Winter’s Bone, I decided that they didn’t count as part of this project because it wasn’t an official re-release and their time in theaters had passed.

True Grit

The Coen Brothers’ latest, based on a novel by Charles Portis, True Grit tells the story of a fourteen-year-old girl, Mattie (Haley Steinfeld), who enlists a US Marshall, Reuben “Rooster” Cogburn (Jeff Bridges), and a Texas Ranger, LaBoeuf (Matt Damon), to help her track down Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin), the man who killed her father. When I first saw it, I felt like the film seemed to be a triumph in many aspects. The only nagging complaint was that it’s not the level of greatness many have come to expect from The Coen Brothers. It left me somewhat on the fence when I was initially grading it, but ultimately I settled with an A. But seeing it a second time, its strengths were only amplified, and I came to hold much more conviction in my original grade. Perhaps when not expecting it to be something it’s simply not, it’s easier to revel in what it is. The three pillars upon which the rest of the film hangs are its characters, performances, and dialogue. It’s not as philosophically fascinating as the Coen usually strive for, but those three qualities make it a pure delight to watch, especially as Steinfeld and Bridges chew into the script. If you’ve seen and enjoyed True Grit, I can’t recommend enough watching it again, because it stresses just what an exceptional film it is.

Grade: (before) A/(now) A

And…that’s as far as I got. The before/now thing with grades was to reflect if my opinion had shifted at all. In the ones I finished, it hadn’t, so it looks pretty useless. In fact, The Fighter’s the only one I adjusted (decided that while it’s damned good, it wasn’t quite an A), so it would have been 90% useless even if I had finished. For the record, my grades for the ten Best Picture nominees:

Toy Story 3: A
127 Hours: B-
The Kids Are All Right: B+
True Grit: A
The Fighter: A-
Winter’s Bone: A
Black Swan: A
Inception: A-
The Social Network: A (yeah, it was kind of amazing seeing these all in a row)
The King’s Speech: B