When I was a kid, one of those crappy nineties action movies that my brother and I loved was Point Break. If you're around my age and a guy, you probably remember it fondly; if you're older that me, you probably remember it as trash...Keanu Reeves plays an FBI agent out to catch bank-robber Patrick Swayze, Lori Petty plays the girl, even Anthony Kiedis gets in the act, playing an asshole-surfer-drug dealer. The director of the film was Kathryn Bigelow.
Kathryn Bigelow also directed the most recent Best Picture Oscar award winner, The Hurt Locker, which also won her the Best Director award, making her the first woman to win it. I finally got around to watching it...I'd wanted to, but didn't make it in New York as other movies caught our attention better. One of the roommates rented it, and we watched it on the big tv. I posted a few minutes ago about the intense incinerator scene in Toy Story 3, but this film is nearly nonstop intensity. Not quite a downer, not a political statement, just a portrait of an adrenaline junkie with a deathwish surfing the thrill of heat and hostility, The Hurt Locker barrels through crises both large and small, almost all of which are life threatening. Hard to believe that a simple scene with the main character and his wife and toddler at the grocery store could be so affective. For anybody who doesn't know, it was bothering me, so I looked it up: the name is slang dating back to Vietnam and means "the infirmary", like, "he's banged up, he's in the hurt locker getting mended."
Another amazing film I've been wanting to discuss here has been called "country noir", one of the best films of 2010, and soon to be in the canon of best feminist films ever made. It was written and directed by Debra Granik, and goes by the nearly pornographic title of Winter's Bone. It's a mix of hillbillies and Goodfellas, country folk turned gangster by way of meth-amphetamine, and one seventeen-year-old girl trying to save the house. Jennifer Lawrence plays Ree Dolly, the young heroine who needs to track down her crystal-meth cooking father before the sheriff takes the house and land as payment for skipping bond, all while also raises her two siblings and taking care of her mostly invalid mother. Most gangster films tend toward the predictable side, but this tale of searching the Ozarks during a cold spell is anything but predictable. Another very intense film made by a lady. If, or maybe when, any of my dear readers may get around to seeing Winter's Bone, tell me you didn't shudder when the chainsaw comes out of the trunk.
One interesting thing about Winter's Bone was that it was made using grants from the state of Missouri's newly created film board. The story is based in Missouri, based on a novel written by a gentleman from Missouri, and also, entirely filmed in Missouri, thanks to the film board and their grants. Many of the extras are actual people who live in the places Ree visits, and most of the few actors were local to the area. The characters, like the woods and homes, all feel lived in and real, and rightfully so.
I mention Missouri so much in that last paragraph that I felt it necessary to discuss here another film I've been meaning to get to on this blog. It takes place almost entirely in Missouri, but was filmed mostly in Alberta, Canada. This film came out in 2007, didn't do so well at the box office, was reviewed extremely well, I'd wanted to see it but didn't have the time, and was nominated for Best Picture. I'm referring to The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. I found this movie an achievement in film, a moody thinky cowboy movie, not a shoot-em-up western, a psychological tease throughout, and thoroughly enjoyable and suspenseful, even though the climax of the story is in the title. Every scene is deliberate and tense, and the director had the courage to slow things down and let scenes play out naturally. The fact that Jesse James is a brutal bastard is never shied away from, and Casey Affleck's portrayal of Bob Ford really captures the awkwardness of wanting to belong. Played as the psychological conflict between the two leads, the story has been generally called the most likely film rendition to be historically accurate.
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