Who’d have expected to see Matthew McConaughey in a thoughtful coming-of-age
story set on the Arkansas/Mississippi border? The titles of Fool’s Gold
and Failure to Launch might almost have been metaphors for his career,
although he’s mixed in some good movies too. Still, with his turn as a male
stripper in Magic Mike, his upcoming role in Martin Scorsese’s The
Wolf of Wall Street, and even his small part in Bernie, he seems to
a have been choosing a higher percentage of noteworthy projects lately. (The July/August 2013 Atlantic includes the actor in a list of “Once-Discredited Ideas Now Staging Comebacks.”) McConaughey is the biggest name here, and plays the
title character, but not actually the main one. Instead, Mud becomes the
vehicle through which an idealistic 14-year old (Tye Sheridan), Ellis begins to
understand the complexities of adult relationships, and romantic ones.
Ellis’s parents are threatening to split; for him, the primary meaning of
this will be having to move from his home by the river and become a “townie.” A
more programmatic plot might have made Mud into a wise father figure imparting
wisdom. But wise men are not often found living alone on an island, where Ellis
and his best friend find him. Why Mud is there, and what/who he’s waiting for,
becomes clearer as the movie goes on, even as his true character becomes
murkier. (His name stays mysterious.) Mud does impart wisdom, but subtly. The
ending is probably less subtle, and less ambiguous, than I’d have preferred,
but I suspect I’d be in the minority, and it’s certainly not awful.
IMDb link
viewed 6/13/13 and reviewed 6/14–17/13
Showing posts with label Arkansas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Arkansas. Show all posts
Friday, April 26, 2013
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
True Grit (***3/4)
Somehow, two of the year’s best movies are both taken from novels set in backwoods Arkansas about unusually self-possessed teenage girls on a manhunt. In Winter’s Bone, Jennifer Lawrence plays one looking for her father. In this Coen Brothers adaptation of the Charles Portis novel, Hailee Steinfeld plays one looking for the man who killed her father, then fled.
The posters for the film understandably tout the big names, Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, and Josh Brolin. But Steinfeld is the star of the movie, and her feature-film debut is arguably the equal of Lawrence’s performance. Steinfeld convincing renders Mattie’s erudite speech, which includes lines like, “My brother is a child and my mother is indecisive and hobbled by grief.” That’s by way of explaining why she, a 14-year-old, is the one seeking justice. Revenge might technically describe her quest, but “justice” seems more apt for the dispassionate Mattie. She’s not hobbled by grief or much of anything else, and as a character is nearly impossible to resist. Her sly negotiation over some horses her father had agreed to purchase is as entertaining as anything in the movie.
Bridges is Rooster Cogburn, the “pitiless man” played by John Wayne in the 1969 adaptation of Portis’s tale. He also gets some of the choicest dialogue (much of it taken from Portis’s novel), even if, in Bridges’s Nick Nolte-ish gravelly delivery, it’s not entirely intelligible. Rooster, frequently drunk, is the opposite of LaBoeuf, the Texas ranger Damon plays. Seeing his clothing, Mattie deadpans, “We have no rodeo clowns in Yell County.” And off the three of them go, quarrelsomely hunting the same quarry through dangerous country lovingly shot by the Coens and their director of photography, Roger Deakins. Deakins also shot last year’s A Serious Man, No Country for Old Men, and other movies for the brothers.
This film lacks the sometimes-studied quirkiness of most of the Coens’ movies and therefore will be among their most accessible. Even if it retains Portis’s grim worldview, it’s tempered by his sense of humor, which is delightful because all of the characters are playing it straight. Thus it’s less of a downer than No Country for Old Men, the Coen brothers film to which it might otherwise be compared. I found the setup for Mattie’s adventure more appealing than the more “western” part of the film, but even so this part avoids many of the expected clichés. Ending with an elderly Mattie, absent from the 1969 version, as the movie does, might seem odd, but the flashback structure is taken from the book. Although her narration earlier lets us know Mattie will survive her quest, the instantaneous passage of the decades ends the film on a mildly melancholy note.
IMDB link
viewed 12/15/10 at Ritz 5 [PFS screening] and reviewed 12/15–23/10
The posters for the film understandably tout the big names, Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, and Josh Brolin. But Steinfeld is the star of the movie, and her feature-film debut is arguably the equal of Lawrence’s performance. Steinfeld convincing renders Mattie’s erudite speech, which includes lines like, “My brother is a child and my mother is indecisive and hobbled by grief.” That’s by way of explaining why she, a 14-year-old, is the one seeking justice. Revenge might technically describe her quest, but “justice” seems more apt for the dispassionate Mattie. She’s not hobbled by grief or much of anything else, and as a character is nearly impossible to resist. Her sly negotiation over some horses her father had agreed to purchase is as entertaining as anything in the movie.
Bridges is Rooster Cogburn, the “pitiless man” played by John Wayne in the 1969 adaptation of Portis’s tale. He also gets some of the choicest dialogue (much of it taken from Portis’s novel), even if, in Bridges’s Nick Nolte-ish gravelly delivery, it’s not entirely intelligible. Rooster, frequently drunk, is the opposite of LaBoeuf, the Texas ranger Damon plays. Seeing his clothing, Mattie deadpans, “We have no rodeo clowns in Yell County.” And off the three of them go, quarrelsomely hunting the same quarry through dangerous country lovingly shot by the Coens and their director of photography, Roger Deakins. Deakins also shot last year’s A Serious Man, No Country for Old Men, and other movies for the brothers.
This film lacks the sometimes-studied quirkiness of most of the Coens’ movies and therefore will be among their most accessible. Even if it retains Portis’s grim worldview, it’s tempered by his sense of humor, which is delightful because all of the characters are playing it straight. Thus it’s less of a downer than No Country for Old Men, the Coen brothers film to which it might otherwise be compared. I found the setup for Mattie’s adventure more appealing than the more “western” part of the film, but even so this part avoids many of the expected clichés. Ending with an elderly Mattie, absent from the 1969 version, as the movie does, might seem odd, but the flashback structure is taken from the book. Although her narration earlier lets us know Mattie will survive her quest, the instantaneous passage of the decades ends the film on a mildly melancholy note.
IMDB link
viewed 12/15/10 at Ritz 5 [PFS screening] and reviewed 12/15–23/10
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)