From filmschoolrejects.com

Jeff Bridges is a crusty, cranky old drunk here, sort of exactly like the broken-down piece of meat that Mickey Rourke was in The Wrestler. And like Randy the Ram, Bad Blake has a run-in with a younger woman; in this case, she’s younger than Marisa Tomei was to Rourke. She’s Jean Craddock, a local newpaper reporter, played by the always effervescent Maggie Gyllenhaal (who’s terrific here). Like Tomei’s character, Craddock has a kid and has weathered tough relationships. (It’s set in the Southwest, where movie womenfolk seem to make multiple bad relationship decisions.) Jean falls for the oddly endearing Bad, and a long-distance relationship is born.

Bridges is one of those actors who seems just plain awesome in everything. I mean, the man’s fun to watch, whether he’s The Dude, The President, the bad guy in The Vanishing, a lounge singer, even a comic-book villain. His effortless charisma carries even the most lightweight of movies, and perhaps that’s something that’s worked against him over the course of his career. Crazy Heart was his fifth nomination and his first win, so it’s not as if he’s never been recognized, but because he’s so good at disappearing into roles and because he takes the crap movies along with the meaty ones, maybe Hollywood’s been taking him for granted. Oh, but not now. Bridges’ Bad Blake is both unbelievably strong and weak, a man beholden to the bottle but desperate for love. Against his better instincts, honed over a very long middling career, he falls for Jean and her little boy in return.

The movie could have taken a few shortcuts and called it a day, and it didn’t, and for that it deserves a lot of respect. Colin Farrell plays a singer who got his start from Blake years ago and is trying to repay the favor. A lesser movie might show Blake all bitter about the younger man’s success, but it’s not so here. A lesser movie might also show anger and resentment from ol’ Bad Blake, just trying to keep on keepin’ on, only to culminate in a not-at-all-shocking concert that somehow saves his career, but this one doesn’t do that, either.

I think one of my favorite aspects, though, is how well the two leads played off each other. Maggie Gyllenhaal is 33 years old, and Bridges is 61, but you’d never know it watching the two of them together. Oh, sure, he does present as an older man, but not almost 30 years older. Their connection is palpably strong and a wonder to behold.

It also helps a lot that the songs – some performed by Bridges and Farrell themselves – are real toe-tappers, excellent – pardon the pun – stage setters. Whether Blake’s playing in a bowling alley or before 12,000 fans as an opening act, he and his tunes are genuine country, solid American entertainment.

Blake, like Rourke’s Ram, is not an entirely sympathetic man; he’s not even a man who’s made bad decisions in the past and suddenly begins to make good ones. He’s a good man, yes, but trapped by a device of his own design. It’s not even a certainty, over the course of the movie, whether he will come out on top in the end – or whether he deserves to. And that’s a testament to both Bridges’ tremendous, career-defining work and to a top-notch script by director Scott Cooper, who adapted Thomas Cobb’s novel.

Crazy Heart: ***1/2

Image from the Baltimore Sun

Even though it has the premise of a disease-of-the-week movie, Extraordinary Measures is both compelling – seriously – and dramatically satisfying. Harrison Ford gives one of his best (nonaction) performances in years, and even Brendan Fraser is palatable. It’s definitely a three-hankie movie, so it’s sort of a chick flick. Fellas, you should watch this at home, alone, with the curtains pulled.

John (Fraser) and Aileen (Keri Russell) Crowley have two young children with a rare disease called Pompe that damages muscle and nerve cells in the body. Both children are wheelchair bound but in generally high spirits, thanks to wonderful, supporting parents. (They have a third child who does not have the disease.)

Time is running out on the kids, though, because Pompe victims typically do not live to double-digit ages. In desperation, Crowley turns to researcher Robert Stonehill (Ford), a cranky, iconoclastic scientist who cares only about his work and, sometimes, fishing. Stonehill has a remarkable new theory for the treatment of Pompe, but he’s never tested it on anything, let alone anyone; his field is in theoretical, rather than applied, research. But the persistent Crowley wears him down, and – long story short – agrees to form a partnership with him, a foundation dedicated to finding a cure for the disease, a foundation to which moneyed people can donate funds.

What makes this particular film work isn’t that there’s a race against time or even that there are adorable kids who are basically at death’s door. No, it’s because director Tom Vaughan chooses to have Crowley’s daughter Megan (Meredith Droeger) act as the face of the disease, and she’s a charming, happy child. Her personality is so magnetic that you could easily forget she was riddled with the debilitating disease, were it not for the wheelchair.

Vaughan doesn’t waste his time playing on the audience’s sympathies in abundance. He focuses on the machinations that Crowley and Stonehill have to undergo to fund, research, and bring to market this miracle cure – actions that are either in praise or an indictment of the real-life politicking needed to get medicine to drugstores. Crowley and Stonehill form a company, which they sell for funding, and then the funders want to make more money and so are bloodless beasts (maybe not), and all the while the two Crowley kids are slowly getting a little worse.

The movie manages to be sentimental and touching without even a hint of cloying insincerity, and that’s a remarkable achievement nowadays. I mean, think about it. Even people who don’t watch a lot of movies have become jaded to storylines that we just know are trying to manipulate us one way or another. We know we’re being played, and we don’t really care, and when that manipulation is too obvious, we just turn to something else for our entertainment fix. But we’re not really being manipulated here at all. The film honestly, and not melodramatically, presents us with a real-life crisis that has distinctly and believably human element to it; without it, we may as well be discussing an Olympic hopeful’s chances at the gold after learning she has contracted vasculitis.

Ford is terrific. The man can do drama. It’s worth noting that this is the film since Return of the Jedi in which Ford was billed somewhere other than first. It’s true, he’s almost 70 years old, but the guy still has charisma to burn. Whether he’s doing a slow burn or raging at the elementally specious bureaucracy surrounding him, he is nothing short of believable. He’s so good that you forget he was Han Solo or Jack Ryan or Indiana Jones and think that, for a short while, he’s Dr. Stonehill.

Now, admittedly, this isn’t a movie for everyone. And even though it’s not overtly manipulative, it’s still a tugger of heartstrings. So be warned. It’s tough not to be affected by it, a sure sign of a well-made movie.

Extraordinary Measures: ***

And you know what? Sir Michael Caine agrees with me! (I know, he’s going out on a limb here.) See for yourself, along with four more of Caine’s favorites:

from my-cineplex.com

Daybreakers isn’t terrible, but it’s predictable amid a veritable sea of vampire movies, particularly post-apocalyptic ones. It’s strictly by the numbers and doesn’t even have the promise of strong individual performances (Sam Neill, Ethan Hawke, and Willem Dafoe) to serve as a selling point. It’s as drab and lifeless as the bloodsuckers contained therein.

It’s the future – of course – and a plague has changed most of the human race into vampires; now there’s only about 5% of the human population remaining, and the vampires – who vant to suck their blud – are getting antsy. Hawke plays a hematologist who’s been working on a replacement blood supply, something artificial that’ll have all the kick of regular human blood but that can be created without he help of humans. His boss, played by Sam Neill, understands the importance of getting a stable food supply but seems to have ulterior motives. So it’s a plot lifted right out of Blade II, which also wasn’t very good.

Things heat up when Hawke stumbles upon some humans who are on the run from the rest of the world and who – of course – desperately need use of his blood-studying skills to find a cure for vampirism. This doesn’t sit well with Neill or with Hawke’s soldier-brother, the former of whom has no intention of solving this worldwide malady and the latter of whom hunts humans for a living. You can kind of see where this is headed.

The humans are led by Dafoe and Aussie Claudia Karvan, who looks like a younger Catherine Keener (a compliment). They have the crossbows, and Dafoe has no heartbeat. Know why? Because he was a vampire and got cured! And now Hawke can try to repeat that miracle and cure all those sad, mopey vampires! It’s a win win win situation!

Brothers Michael and Peter Spierig, with their first big-budget film, aren’t able to make this journey any more memorable than similarly themed movies, such as the aforementioned Blade. There’s little mystery and intrigue, which is fine if there’s also a lot of butt kicking. But there isn’t. There’s a lot of gloom, a lot of gray covering everything, and a real sense of seedy despair; it’s as if the movie were filmed in a low-budget motel. It’s the Econo Lodge of vampire movies. There’s no real twist, and the action is so low key that you’re not distracted from how straightforward and uninspiring the plot itself is.

Daybreakers: **

Well! If you don’t see the movie listed, it’s because there’s no full-length review of it on this site. HOWEVER, I like all of you so very, very much that I went to great, grand, awesome lengths to make sure you know precisely how much I like a specific movie.

When you visit the site – www.frothyruminations.com, bookmark it today! – at the top of the page, above the posts, you’ll see several links. Included are links to pages that contain a list of, well, everything. Everything I’ve seen, anyway.

The list is spread over five pages, and it’s alphabetical by title. Click on the appropriate link and scroll on down to find the movie.

What will you find? The title, the year of release, the MPAA’s rating, the length of the movie, and – TA DA – my own rating.

The scale is like so:

* means it’s terrible

*1/2 means it’s only mostly terrible

** means it’s pretty bad

**1/2 means it’s almost good

*** means it’s satisfying, probably entertaining

***1/2 means it rocks

**** means it’s way awesome

from hollywoodgo.com

If you have a yen for sumptuous, dazzling musicals with an array of show-stopping numbers, there’s nothing in Nine you won’t like. It’s well staged (no pun intended) and choreographed, and it doesn’t feel claustrophobic, as so many movies adapted from plays do.

Guido Contini (Daniel Day-Lewis) is a legendary film director whose most recent movies have been flops, and he’s in the middle of a crisis on his latest, titled Italia: he has no script and no idea on how to proceed.

As he struggles to keep the movie afloat – and while production begins – Guido must also juggle the affections and attentions of the various women in his life, from his mother (Sophia Loren) to his lover (Penelope Cruz) to his wife (Marion Cotillard) to his muse/leading lady (Nicole Kidman) to a reporter (Kate Hudson) to a long-ago crush (Stacey Ferguson) to his confidant (Dame Judi Dench). The plot carries us from woman to woman, one sensational musical number after the other. Director Rob Marshall, who also directed the Oscar-winning Chicago in 2002, does a magnificent job of interspersing the songs with the actual storyline.

Now, I’m really not much of a fan of musicals – really! – but there’s so much to love about this one. Each actress performs her own numbers and is so spellbinding that you’d almost think they were musically talented and not just pretty faces. Okay, granted, you wouldn’t think that anyway, not with all those Oscar winners up there. But seriously, would you believe Cruz, Kidman, or Dench could or would sing? Not I. Not I!

Cruz, who earned an Oscar nomination for her work here as the aggrieved mistress, is simply stunning, with the full-bodied passion and angst one would expect from a woman who wants especially what she cannot have. To say that Cruz is beautiful is to state the obvious, but here she is incandescent.

Oddly enough, the movie didn’t really do all that well at the box office (although it did receive several Oscar nominations), despite that tremendous cast. I think it might be because when all is said and done, one might wonder what all the singing and dancing was all about: what was the point, anyway? Essentially, it is a way for Contini to regain his creativity and get moving on his film, by examining the effect that his various relationships have had on him. If you can accept that this isn’t meant to be a linear plot like Chicago (i.e., murderess gets her due), it’s a lot easier to swallow the film itself.

And amid all of the flash and glamour of the musical numbers is another treasure of a performance from Day-Lewis, who seemingly doesn’t know how to be a bad actor. His conflicted, desperate Contini is both dislikable and vulnerable, an enigma whose multifaceted life is symbolized by his two-toned career.

Fun fact: the title refers to the nine films of Federico Fellini, who directed the immortal 8 1/2 (1963). It’s also the age of the young Contini in a flashback number.

As I mentioned, musicals aren’t really my thing, but when they’re done well, it’s hard not to acknowledge their awesomeness. And Nine is about as awesome a musical as you get. A perfect cast sells each number with gusto and sheer talent, not to mention no small amount of beauty and panache.

Nine: ***1/2

from Village East Cinema

The Missing Person is, on the surface, about an alcoholic ex-cop who’s assigned to find the titular character and bring him home to his wife. But it’s much more than that; it’s a look at how the survivors of the September 11 attacks continued with their lives, post-tragedy, and it’s about man’s powers of self redemption. It’s a character study in the guise of a film noir mystery.

John Rosow, played by Michael Shannon, is contacted by a mysterious client to follow a man from Chicago to LA, find out what he’s up to, and then bring him home to New York. But Rosow’s investigation unearths more than a simple retrieval mission, and ultimately it reveals a heck of a lot about him and his past, particularly in how he has dealt with losing his wife during the 9/11 attacks.

Because, you see – and you will, early on, no spoiler here – the missing person is one of the many who simply were never heard from again after the attacks on the Twin Towers. Many of those people were (and are) presumed dead, but some may have behaved like Harold Fullmer (Frank Wood) and moved elsewhere to get on with their lives anew. Harold’s up to something, but luckily for us it’s not something nefarious (that would have been too obvious, certainly), and soon Rosow is faced with a moral quandary – should he let Harold stay where he is, or is he obligated to bring him back east?

Shannon is superb, a craggy, world-weary Johnny Law who’s been leaning on the drink for far too long. We’ve seen these oversoaked cops before, the ones who are either cold-shocked by tragedy or just numbed to everyday horrors. But below the seen-it-all surface, Rosow has plenty of issues, plenty of bad memories, and plenty of guilt.

Thus there are dovetailing plots – the apprehension of Fullmer and the redemption of Rosow. Writer Noah Buschel, who also directed, has crafted a rich, crusty mystery thriller into a pyschological study of the long-term effects of a truly horrific day in American history, particularly on individuals; in this case, one man flees his memories, while the other embraces them nightly.

I wanted to mention this movie in particular, because it’s certainly not one that most people have heard of (it’s now on DVD). It’s a quiet, subtle look at an event that was itself nothing but. It’s well written and insightful into the psyche of a survivor, and it includes a commanding performance by Shannon (nominated for an Oscar for Revolutionary Road, overshadowing both Kate Winslet and the overacting of Leonardo Dicaprio) along with strong support from Amy Ryan (Gone Baby Gone).

The Missing Person: ***

www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkrRQ626oho

www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6RU5y2fU6s