Double Feature: I
by Adam Hirsch
There are always films that fall through the proverbial cracks in every filmmaker’s viewing library, well-known and applauded films that we have claimed to have seen but actually have on our I’ll-eventually-sit-down-and-watch-it list. We all have these lists, myself as much as anyone.
Which is why last night, thanks in part to the wonderful advent of Netflix, I decided to start crossing a few films off the list with weekly double features of missed works. It certainly didn’t hurt that my girlfriend was out of town and I could unapologetically choose which films to watch.
I’m approaching these posts as impressions more than appraisals. I’m not going to write up synopses or review the filmmaking. The films that I’m going to watch are classics that have just passed me by — I’m choosing the ones I’ve heard are magnificent, and it follows that they are going to deliver on the promise. For this first week’s double feature, I chose to kick things off with a triple feature: Terrence Malick’s Badlands, Jerry Schatzberg’s Scarecrow and Robert Altman’s Gosford Park.
Music Video
by Giampaolo Bianconi
Crazy Heart, dir. Scott Cooper (2009)
There’s nothing surprising or radical in Crazy Heart. Instead, the film serves as a brilliant reminder: it reminds us of Jeff Bridges’ greatness and urges us to recall how irritating and overindulgent a performance by Maggie Gyllenhaal can be. The film also reminds us about a particular kind of movie made in the United States during the 1970s—films with strong main characters and stronger performances. Crazy Heart exists very much in the tradition of those films. Bridges quiet, genuinely soulful portrayal of how country singer Bad Blake gets his groove back carries the film into serious character study territory and keeps it from veering into overly sentimental, saccharine territory while also deftly covering up the film’s heavy reliance on music. (more…)
The Sad Schemer
by Giampaolo Bianconi
Films by Stephen Soderbergh fall into two categories—those like Ocean’s 11 that immerse themselves in the high sheen of Hollywood (even when the luster is dark, like Erin Brockovitch), and those like Ocean’s 12, which seem irritated that a place like Hollywood exists at all. The Informant! seems more the latter, though its anger is more focused and smaller.