Winter's Bone

What the f*ck is up with Missouri?

This question kept popping in to my head as I watched Winter's Bone, starring relative newcomer Jennifer Lawrence as Ree Dolly, a 17-year-old girl who has assumed the role of caregiver for her two younger siblings and mentally vacant mother in a backwoods town in the Ozark Mountains. You see, the mother apparently lost her marbles because she was surrounded by some of the most vile, unpredictable, menacing men who dabble in methamphetimine production and really, really, really, don't like to talk to much about it. These guys are just as terrifying as your run-of-the-mill chainsaw-wielding Texan. No joke.

And as bad as the men are, they don't hold a candle to what the women prove they are capable of by the end.

But let me back up. Ree is barely keeping it together for her family. There is no obvious income source and they  usually don't know where their next meal is coming from, most days. They rely on the kindness of strangers (which, believe me, is few and far between) and old-school survival skills to get by.

One cold and miserable day (indistinguishable from every other cold, miserable day), a local lawman drives up to the house and informs Ree that her father has jumped bail and has gone missing. Daddy has gone and put their house up for bond, so if they don't track him down, the house will be taken by the state and Ree and her family will be homeless. The rest of the film is Ree's search for her dad, and her challenges in dealing with the hillbilly underworld of Missouri and the meth-cooking culture. Ree turns over rock after rock in search of her dad, much to the ire of those who would rather keep that information to themselves. Jennifer Lawrence is amazing in scene after scene of Ree trying to fake toughness in the face of some pretty intimidating people.

There is a scene about halfway through the movie where Ree visits a military recruitment center, having her eye on the $40,000 dollar signing "bonus" for new recruits. She has a brief conversation with the recruiting officer, who calmly explains her options and gives her real advice on what to do next. At this point in the movie, Ree has been met with so much adversity from every man around her, including her family, that the kindness and respect shown by this character comes off as if delivered by an angel from heaven. She thanks him at the end of the meeting, not because he gives her the answers she wants, but because she, however briefly, was treated with respect.

This is a powerful and beautiful film. As much as I loved the city of cards that Chris Nolan built with Inception, this movie is nudging it out on my list of best of the year, so far. Tonally, the film reminded me of Wendy and Lucy, another film that relies on the beauty and harsh reality of everyday life to create genuine tension and empathy for the lead character. Sometimes you have to blow up an asteroid hurling toward Earth. Sometimes, you just need a quarter to make a phone call. Ree could use that quarter.

For fans of: slow-burning indie dramas, quiet thrillers

Rating: A

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo / The Girl Who Played With Fire

I can't boast that I hopped on the Larsson "Girl" bandwagon at the beginning, but I picked up the book about 3 months after it started having dedicated real estate at Borders. I slogged through the first 20 pages describing, in great detail, the corporate workings of the Wennerstrom dynasty and thinking "how the HELL is this book so popular?"

When Miss Marple  Mikael Blomkvist arrived on Hedeby island, the defined number and cast of characters introduced, the dark crime described, and the (metaphorical) storm clouds rolled in, I proceeded to read in 50 page chunks. The book is nearly as ubiquitous as The Da Vinci code at this point, so I'm saying nothing new when I say that Larsson created a classic mystery with at least one of the most memorable and fully realized characters ever committed to pop fiction in Lisbeth Salander.

Noomi Rapace, a.k.a. "The Girl"

So, the book is great. I then went to see the Swedish film adaptation, and was equally impressed. Of course the movie can never capture everything in the book, but I felt that the decisions that the screenwriters made around what to include and what to abandon were pretty spot-on. For example, I don't think that the philandering that was so prevalent in the book would have necessarily translated to the screen, it would have added bloat, and it would not have had a cultural impact here in the US (we don't as openly fess up to our wife-swapping). And being able to visualize what was in the mind's eye while reading the novel is always interesting (Martin's basement was much more sterile than I pictured).

So, as is often the case, I had a big case of the Diminishing Returns when I read The Girl Who Played With Fire. I didn't find the story nearly as compelling, and for a while after I closed the book I literally had a hard time remembering anything high-level about the plot. With the exception of a couple of memorable moments involving a large blonde man who can feel no pain, it felt like a sub-standard thriller riding on the purchase of the amazing characterization of Lisbeth.

The film version of Fire is quite apparently an inferior interpretation of an inferior sophomore novel. The actors seem to be going through the motions this time around, and seeing the villains has a weird dual let-down: on one hand, seeing them in the flesh takes the supernaturally evil quality away, but at the same time, some of their qualities are so broad-stroke and exaggerated that you don't really buy-in to the reality.

I've elected to not read the third book, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, and to experience the story wrap-up in the theater when the third film is released in a few months. I have hope: I hear the third book is great, but there may be issues translating the tech-heavy aspects to the screen. We shall see.

The Iron Giant

I saw The Iron Giant in the summer of '99, by myself. I don't really remember what drew me to the film beyond the high praise it was getting from critics; maybe I was just bored on a Saturday. I remember not being terribly impressed with the opening 15 minutes of the film, lynch-pinned on a slapstick scene involving a squirrel. But by the time the lead character, Hogarth, settles down in front of his black-and-white TV to watch a 50s-era sci-fi film involving a living, man-eating brain on the loose, I knew I was hooked. The scene puts the film in a specific place in time - early in the Cold War - and foreshadows the humor and tone for the rest of the movie.

The basic plot of TIG is horribly derivative, and is nearly a clone of E.T. The Extra Terrestrial. What differentiates The Iron Giant is its deadpan sense of humor and the the way it uses Cold War paranoia to enhance the fish-out-of-water device. It was a masterstroke of Brad Bird (an unknown to this point) to set his story here, and allows him to pull in other pop culture devices (e.g. Superman's appearance in Action Comics) - not just to add era credibility, but to integrate those elements in to the story thematically. It would be as if Hot Tub Time Machine had actually used 80s excess to make a point or to drive a plot device, rather than to wink at the audience and move on. Another example are the shots and numerous mentions of Sputnik to comment on the fact that the "enemy" came from space.

Other than the endearing appeal of Studio Ghibli, I think of The Iron Giant as the last in the era of hand-drawn animation (which made a short-lived comeback with The Princess and the Frog). In fact, TIG wasn't strictly hand-drawn, and boasts the first-ever fully CGI character in a feature-length film (take that, Jar Jar). The CGI animators, incidentally, wrote a program that would add a slight "squiggle" to the outline of the Giant so it better integrated with the hand-drawn bits. The CGI effect is subtle, but really gives the Giant mass and a "space-age" feel.

My frequency of viewings of the film have increased from once a year to twice a week since I exposed the film to my 3-year-old son. And I have to admit, it gets me every time. ("You can fly!). No wise-cracking sidekick. No spontaneous music numbers. No jokes about body functions (ok, there is half a joke). Just classic story telling backed up by a mix of classic and new-age animation. Love it.

Amazon: The Iron Giant (Special Edition)