True Grit (DVD/Blu-Ray) - Dir. Ethan Coen, Joel Coen. Starring Jeff Bridges, Hailee Steinfeld, Matt Damon.
Near-perfect story of a precocious 14-year-old girl (Hailee Steinfeld) who hires a grizzled marshal (Jeff Bridges) to help her track down the man who killed her father.
True Grit is an adaptation of Charles Portis's 1968 novel, not the 1969 movie: an important distinction because the film is a "visual novel" as only the Coen brothers can do. Each scene carries pages of subtext, and each slight shift in a conversation is felt-carried across with the minimum of movement and what looks like only the slightest effort. Every scene is captivating, like a series of mirror-polished short plays.
And it's as witty, in its way, as anything the Coens have done. The writers/directors are unafraid to create outrageous characterizations, treat them as though they're normal, and enjoy the absurdity that results. Sharp dialog lifted from Portis's text is the other half of the equation, of course. True Grit is as atmospheric and beautiful as No Country for Old Men-perhaps the most comparable of the brothers' films-but far more accessible.
Jeff Bridges makes the role of Cogburn entirely his own, which should be no more or less than we expect from him by now. He pushes the character's drunken half-dead gruffness to a level that would make most directors balk, but here it gives the film its life.
Even so, it's Hailee Steinfeld whose performance is most noteworthy. I can't imagine how the movie could have succeeded with a less capable, quick-spoken, acid-tongued teenage actress, and I wonder why we haven't seen her rescuing films with prominent children's roles for the last eight or nine years.
The pair of them play two of the best characters in the genre's history.
Rated PG-13 for things not panning out.
4.5 out of 5
Breaking Bad: Season Three (DVD/Blu-ray) - TV series.
The best show on TV doesn't stumble at all in its third season.
Breaking Bad is the ongoing story of Walter White (Bryan Cranston), a high school chemistry teacher who starts cooking meth for one last shot at an exciting life when he is diagnosed with terminal cancer. Over three seasons, we've seen the consequences of a drug manufacturer's lifestyle on Walter's personality and on the lives of his family.
What's special about Breaking Bad is that it's an intelligent show-not pseudo-intelligent like Lost or Battlestar Galactica-about an intelligent character. As a viewer, there is little need to suspend your disbelief or bash your skull with a hammer to make the plot add up. When you spot a loose end, you can bet it will return with a vengeance in the next episode or the next season. No sooner do you wonder, "Why doesn't he just" than you find Walter is already one step ahead.
The events of season three are the inevitable fallout of the first two seasons. There is no cop-out or backpedaling on the discovery that ended season two; the repercussions are detailed in all their ugly glory. Walter's involvement with Mexican gangsters a season or two ago is not forgotten, and nor are the sketchy moral choices that by now are weighing on most of the characters.
Like nearly all of the most tightly-paced shows on TV, Breaking Bad makes use of the 13-episode format. In 13 episodes, season three's story builds to perhaps four or five moments of overwhelming suspense-the kinds of moments that shows strive to achieve just once in their entire run. What's more, it's funny; many dramatic sequences unfold in a way that is simultaneously tragic and hilarious, although this may only be to those of us with sick minds.
Breaking Bad isn't perfect. The previous season got a little too smug with its own cleverness and a certain recurring image of a teddy bear. The writers started to wander dangerously down the "everything is mystically connected" path that has tempted so many in the past.
There's none of that in season three, where the coincidences stay believable and the only sacrifice to the gods of TV drama is the occasional over-the-top villain.
It might be the show's best season yet.
4.5 out of 5
