Posts Tagged ‘Crazy Heart’

ISOLATION STUDIOS: WHAT TO WATCH WHEN YOU’VE ALREADY WATCHED EVERYTHING PART 6!

What to watch when you’ve already watched everything Part Five! Binge worthy, not cringe worthy recommendations from Isolation Studios in the eerily quiet downtown Toronto. Three movies to stream, rent or buy from the comfort of home isolation. Today, a human-animal hybrid, a homemade superhero and a country music legend.

Listen to the whole thing HERE!

OUT OF THE FURNACE: 3 ½ STARS. “you’ll almost want to play it in reverse.”

furnaceIn the future when dictionaries have been replaced by computerized data banks surgically implanted in our fingertips the entry for “bleak” will be excerpts from “Out of the Furnace.”

Christian Bale stars as Russell Baze, a steel mill worker in America’s economically depressed Rust Belt. After doing time for vehicular manslaughter he emerges from jail to find his live-in girlfriend (Zoe Saldana) no longer lives in and his Iraq war vet brother Rodney (Casey Affleck) having trouble with civilian life.

Rodney is a tough guy. How tough?  “Four tours in Iraq tough,” says John Petty (Willem Dafoe), a low level gangster who also acts as Rodney’s manager in the bare- knuckle fight game.

As Russell tries to rebuild his life he is pushed to extremes when Rodney gets mixed up with Harlan DeGroat (Woody Harrelson), a vicious hillbilly meth dealer who is so backwoods he drinks moonshine out of a mason jar. After someone asks him, “Do you have a problem with me?” he replies, “I got a problem with everybody.”

When Rodney goes missing after a fight run by DeGroat, Russell takes the law into his own hands to exact some vigilante justice.

The vengeance angle sounds Batmanesque but there isn’t a cowl or a cape in sight in “Out of the Furnace.” Instead this is a deliberately paced family drama that spends most of its running time setting up the circumstances that lead to the revenge angle.

“Crazy Heart” director Scott Cooper packs more bleakness in here than the most mournful George Jones song. Bad things happen to good people, hearts break and innocence is thrown out with the trash. It’s a portrait of a hard life drawn in hard edged detail, with no relief for the characters or for us.

Bale and Affleck are believable as brothers and hand in suitably intense performances but Harrelson is the most memorable character. Is there a better scuzzball in mainstream movies than Woody? He’s a menacing presence, twitchy and unpredictable with the worst teeth this side of the Appalachians.

Cooper hangs these fine performances on a framework so grim it’s hard to see what the point of the film is other than making audiences want to open a vein as the final credits roll. For all its pluses—the depiction of the treatment of soldiers coming home from war mixed with its take on family love and loyalty—and its singularity of director Cooper’s uncompromising vision, “Out of the Furnace” is so focused on the dark you almost want to play it in reverse. Like the old joke goes: What do you get when you play a country song backwards? You get your house back, get your wife back…

CRAZY HEART: 3 STARS

CrazyHeart_QuadIn “Crazy Heart” Bad Blake, played by Jeff Bridges in what will likely become his fifth Oscar nomination, is Willie Nelson if the IRS had their way with him, or Kris Kristofferson if he hadn’t written “Me and Bobby McGee.” “I used to be somebody,” he sings at one point, “but now I’m somebody else.” That someone else is a broke, drunk country music has-been whose idea of a great gig is playing a bowling alley where he isn’t even allowed to run a bar tab.

In a story that echoes “The Wrestler” “Crazy Heart” follows the tail end of the career of a man who once had everything but threw it away. Bad Blake was a big country music star whose life seems ripped from the lyrics of a hurtin’ Hank Williams song. On the road he’s so lonely he could die, so he fills his time with groupies; women who follow him back to his seedy hotel room, remembering the star he once was and not the sweaty, drunk wreck he has become. His downward spiral is slowed when he meets Jean Craddock (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a journalist and single mother who becomes his anchor.

“Crazy Heart” is an average movie buoyed by a great central performance. We’ve seen stories like this before but Bridges’s performance and the film’s details make this a recommend.

First the details. As a general rule most movies about fictional musicians get the most basic thing wrong—the music. Forgettable songs have ruined many a music movie but “Crazy Heart” and composers T-Bone Burnett and Stephen Bruton (who died of cancer before the film was released) nail an authentic country sound. The songs sound Grand Ole Opry ready and once filtered through Bridges’s weathered vocal chords could be echoes from any small town honky tonk or dive bar. It’s hurtin’ music and is spot on.

Beyond the music there are the small details that add so much to the film. There are the nice shards of dialogue like Bad’s flirty remark to Jean as they do an interview in a dingy motel room, “I want to talk about how bad you make this room look” and the accurate portrayal of small town bars and bowling alleys.

It all helps to elevate the predictable story, but none of it would matter a whit if Jeff Bridges wasn’t firmly in control. His Bad Blake is pure outlaw country, a hard drinking and cigarette smoking poet who breathes the same air as Waylon Jennings and Merle Haggart. Bridges throws his vanity out the window, allowing his gut to peak out from behind his guitar and wrinkles to peer out from the sides of his aviators. More than that, however, he nails the troubled charm that made Bad a star and then brought him to his knees. It’s complex work but Bridges, with his smooth, relaxed way with a character makes it look easy. Don’t be fooled; this is the work of a master who is often underrated.

“Crazy Heart” has some major flaws but is worth a look for the performances from Bridges, Gyllenhaal (although she seems a tad young for the part) and Colin Farrell in a small un-credited part as Bad’s former protégé.

BEST LINES EVER! “I wanna talk about how bad you make this room look. I never knew what a dump it was until you came in here…” – Bad Blake (Jeff Bridges) in Crazy Heart, 2009 By Richard Crouse

CrazyHeart_QuadIn a story that echoes The Wrestler, Crazy Heart follows the tail end of the career of a man who once had everything but threw it away. Bad Blake (Jeff Bridges in his first Oscar winning role) was a big country music star whose life seems ripped from the lyrics of a hurtin’ Hank Williams song. On the road he’s so lonely he could die, so he fills his time with groupies; women who follow him back to his seedy hotel room, remembering the star he once was and not the sweaty, drunk wreck he has become. His downward spiral is slowed when he meets Jean Craddock (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a journalist and single mother who becomes his anchor. In their first interview Bridges shoots her a flirty line destined to become a classic.

“I wanna talk about how bad you make this room look,” he says, looking at her framed against the peeling wallpaper of his motel room. “I never knew what a dump it was until you came in here.”

It’s a sharp line that says two things about the character. First it shows that Blake is used to charming women and secondly, that he speaks like a songwriter, like someone who knows how to play with words.

“It is the sign of a master craftsman at work,” says Crazy Heart writer / director Scott Cooper of Blake’s enticing words. “A man who can write a line like ‘I used to be somebody but now I’m someone else,’ or ‘Sometimes fallin’ feels like flyin’’ or ‘Pick up your crazy heart and give it one more try.’ That line seemed to me like something George Jones or Waylon Jennings might write, and it felt very appropriate. I hope it comes across as organic.”

The line is the beginning of Bad Blake’s redemption. Seeing her he realizes that beyond these seedy motel rooms he is forced to stay in and the crappy bowling alleys he has to play, that seeing her he realizes there is something better out there for him to aspire to.

“He now knows he has a purpose in life and someone is making him feel like he has a purpose and someone is helping him,” says Cooper, “even though he doesn’t yet quite understand that he is rediscovering his artistry. And he says to her, “I haven’t seen anybody blush in I don’t know how long,” and she says, “Well my capillaries are close to the skin.” She doesn’t give him all the credit, but they are flirting and we know that this may be the beginning of an unlikely but a good relationship.”

It’s a line that could have come off as stilted in the hands of a lesser actor but Cooper had ever confidence in Bridges and his ability to deliver the words with just the right amount of emphasis.

“I told Jeff that any time he says this writing I didn’t want it to come across as clever or seem overly written. I wanted it to feel organic. You can throw those lines away and Jeff does that beautifully. That’s why you hire people with his instincts and abilities.”

CRAZY HEART: 3 STARS

crazy-heart-jeff-bridges-robert-duvallIn “Crazy Heart” Bad Blake, played by Jeff Bridges in what will likely become his fifth Oscar nomination, is Willie Nelson if the IRS had their way with him, or Kris Kristofferson if he hadn’t written “Me and Bobby McGee.” “I used to be somebody,” he sings at one point, “but now I’m somebody else.” That someone else is a broke, drunk country music has-been whose idea of a great gig is playing a bowling alley where he isn’t even allowed to run a bar tab.

In a story that echoes “The Wrestler” “Crazy Heart” follows the tail end of the career of a man who once had everything but threw it away. Bad Blake was a big country music star whose life seems ripped from the lyrics of a hurtin’ Hank Williams song. On the road he’s so lonely he could die, so he fills his time with groupies; women who follow him back to his seedy hotel room, remembering the star he once was and not the sweaty, drunk wreck he has become. His downward spiral is slowed when he meets Jean Craddock (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a journalist and single mother who becomes his anchor.

“Crazy Heart” is an average movie buoyed by a great central performance. We’ve seen stories like this before but Bridges’s performance and the film’s details make this a recommend.

First the details. As a general rule most movies about fictional musicians get the most basic thing wrong—the music. Forgettable songs have ruined many a music movie but “Crazy Heart” and composers T-Bone Burnett and Stephen Bruton (who died of cancer before the film was released) nail an authentic country sound. The songs sound Grand Ole Opry ready and once filtered through Bridges’s weathered vocal chords could be echoes from any small town honky tonk or dive bar. It’s hurtin’ music and is spot on.

Beyond the music there are the small details that add so much to the film. There are the nice shards of dialogue like Bad’s flirty remark to Jean as they do an interview in a dingy motel room, “I want to talk about how bad you make this room look” and the accurate portrayal of small town bars and bowling alleys.

It all helps to elevate the predictable story, but none of it would matter a whit if Jeff Bridges wasn’t firmly in control. His Bad Blake is pure outlaw country, a hard drinking and cigarette smoking poet who breathes the same air as Waylon Jennings and Merle Haggart. Bridges throws his vanity out the window, allowing his gut to peak out from behind his guitar and wrinkles to peer out from the sides of his aviators. More than that, however, he nails the troubled charm that made Bad a star and then brought him to his knees. It’s complex work but Bridges, with his smooth, relaxed way with a character makes it look easy. Don’t be fooled; this is the work of a master who is often underrated.

“Crazy Heart” has some major flaws but is worth a look for the performances from Bridges, Gyllenhaal (although she seems a tad young for the part) and Colin Farrell in a small un-credited part as Bad’s former protégé.