The movie isn't, in the end, about Lars's Real Girl at all. The film is about Lars learning to accept human contact, and Ryan Gosling does a spectacular job of keeping his performance grounded in Lars's Real World without ever giving into the all-too-easy laughter or sadness that could both overtaken this movie in lesser hands. He is assisted ably by an entire town of people who play more as extras than as characters, feeling far realer than almost any acted characters I've seen. It's the caring, love, and simple, normal interactions that these people show Lars that make for the emotional core of the film.
Lars is full of laughter at times, tears at other times, but most importantly full of absolutely wonderful, understated performances and pitch-perfect writing at every turn.
I don't know how or why it took me four years to see the film.
Jeff Bridges has been around for a while, having started out as a Disney boystar and working his way through The Dude to land as Bad Blake, a broken down country singer working his way across the Southwest playing in every bowling alley with whatever pickup band the locals can put together. Blake is slowly drinking and smoking himself to death, trading on songs he wrote years before and hoping to make enough money to drag on a little longer.
The eventual story - boy (old man) meets girl, boy falls in love but loses girl - is relatively straight forward and served well by the lack of a tacked-on, happy resolution, but the story isn't the draw here. The draw is seeing Jeff Bridges in an excellent performance, singing his own songs and inhabiting Blake with a humanity and vulnerability that is impressive to see.
This might be Bridges's best performance, and his Oscar win was deserved for not overselling the part. The film isn't the finest of the year, but Bridges's performance certainly was one of the year's finest.
From here, I'm hitting quick reviews because there's too much backlog...
- Captain America: The First Avenger - Another excellent one from Marvel. This fits in perfectly as we roll along toward next summer's Avengers. The central performance from Chris Evans is spot on perfect both as the scrawny Steve Rodgers and the buff Cap. The supporting cast is also spot on from Tommy Lee Jones (hilarious and cantankerous as only he can be), Hayley Atwell (spunky - perhaps a bit too much so for the times - and beautiful), Stanley Tucci (Teutonic to a fault), and especially Hugo Weaving (thoroughly and perfectly villainous as the Red Skull). Probably still ranks just below the first Iron Man, but it's a solid and enjoyable entry into the run - right there and probably a little better than even Thor.
- The Thin Red Line - Rewatched it after seeing The Tree of Life because I wanted to see if it held up. It certainly does. Wonderful job of showing the dichotomy between the humanity and beauty of the world with the horrors of war and mankind within it. Days of Heaven is on hold and to be picked up later today.
- Angel: Revelations - Freaky artwork in this pre-X-Men tale of Warren Worthington (could there be a better name for a child of money than this - without going all Richie Rich?), but I got used to that. The tale is actually pretty engaging and teases the eventual X-Men-ness of Angel. Good story.
- In Defense of Food - Michael Pollan boils down all eating advice into seven words: Eat food - not so much - mostly plants. In the course of the book, Pollan lays out his arguments in favor of and provides more detail on each of these three eating koans. By the end of the book, it seems so simple and straight forward. If we're lucky lots of people will read this and start changing their habits - even if by a little bit at a time. Sadly, I wonder how much good will be done in the long run, how possible it is for us to steer away from the cliff.
- Blue Valentine - "This emotionally gripping examination of a marriage on the rocks isn't always easy to watch, but Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling give performances of unusual depth and power." Those are the summary words from the Rotten Tomatoes review page for Blue Valentine, and they sum everything up pretty well. This isn't an easy or fun movie to watch as it tells the story of the beginning and end of a couple's relationship between Williams and Gosling. Both ends of the tale are told - in interspersed fashion - warts and all with heart-wrenching honesty. The performances by Williams and Gosling reveal phenomenal depth of character and of acting talent, but I never want to see this one again.
- Limitless - The trailers for this one use Kanye's propulsive "Power" to great effect, and I'll admit to being hooked in almost from that alone. Turned out that the movie actually lived up to the propulsive drive of the trailers. Bradley Cooper does a great job transforming himself from a dirty, aimless writer to a focused, genius Wall Street trader savant who hooks his wagon to Robert DeNiro's Wall Street star/bully. The arc is a little predictable, but the film and the actors are engaging enough to keep my attention. Fun watch.
- The Adjustment Bureau - Another film based on a Philip K Dick short story. Matt Damon and Emily Blunt have nice chemistry as a couple the fate seems to be both drawing together and pulling apart. Only in this case fate acts in the form of a bureau of men in suits and fedoras. On the surface it's a silly premise, but as the Bureau men reveal themselves to Damon's Senator-to-be happens to see the Bureau at work. In the course of the film, the Bureau explain themselves as agents of 'the chairman,' a metaphor for God/fate/'the plan' and themselves as the modern interpretation of angels - an interesting premise and one I'm curious as to whether it was in the original short story or not. This is a science fiction story without much science, and it's an enjoyable watch.
- Marvels Project - Nice enough effort but nothing more than a more positive version of Marvels. It's been done before and didn't need to be done again.
- Bedazzled (1967) - I had no idea that Bedazzled (2000) was a remake. I've seen maybe an hour of the newer version and thoroughly enjoyed watching Elizabeth Hurley in that atrocious movie. Turns out that the original version is every bit as boring but without Elizabeth Hurley.
- Astounding Wolf-Man (vol 1-3) - I'm starting to think that Robert Kirkman may just be a pretty good writer. I'm five volumes into Invincible, fourteen volumes into Walking Dead, and now three volumes into Astounding Wolf-Man (please buy the next volumes of the first and last, PLCH), and I'm enjoying the hell out of all three of them. I'm going to be kind of sad to eventually read the last volume of Wolf-Man because Kirkman has created a number of engaging, rich characters again, these as part of the same universe as Invincible. The tale of Gary (the titular Wolf-Man), his family, his advisers (vampire, werewolf, government hack), and his fellow heroes is filled with great, new characters that are easy to care about.
- Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne - I hate Grant Morrison. I hate his take on Batman. I hate Final Crisis. I kind of enjoyed The Seven Soldiers. This volume just made me hate Morrison's stupid, bald head even more. I look forward to his retirement and professional death.
- The Walking Dead (vol 1-13) - Seriously, Robert Kirkman's got my full faith and credit at this point. The ongoing series set in a zombified near-future United States should have come out as thoroughly unnecessary. We've seen zombies take over the country in dozens of other stories before, and we don't really need to see a story that is about the zombies. Kirkman's story, however, is about the creation of a new kind of family brought together by dire circumstances and trying to hold themselves together in the face of a thoroughly ruined world. Kirkman has crafted a thoroughly engaging read (and in doing a bit of reading, one that's going in a different direction from the television series).
- Fall of the Hulks (vol 2) - I go back and forth on this story arc. The confusion of Red Hulk/Red She Hulk/Thunderbolt Ross(dead or alive)/Abomination/etc does get a little old, and the entire bit about Bruce Banner being the fourth smartest man on the planet and every bit as dangerous as the Hulk himself is intriguing, and the semi-constant one-upsmanship between the good and bad smart guys smacks a little bit of the Master Thespian, and yet I really enjoyed this volume. I wish the storyline were a little less stretched out, but it's occasionally a pretty good read.
- AVClub Inventory - A book of lists...a book of lists about pop culture. I'm all in. A book of pop culture lists most of which were already posted online before they were put into a form that I could pay for...I'm still all down with it because I prefer reading in print rather than online. Thoroughly entertaining even if there were a few lists I skimmed rather than read in great detail.
- American Vampire (vol 2) - Still well worth reading and starting to add in new characters. We seem to be heading toward present day, and I'm looking forward to seeing what's coming.
- Second Coming: Revelations - I don't really have any idea what the main storyline is for Second Coming, but I enjoyed reading this offshoot which I'm guessing isn't really necessary reading for the Second coming storyline.
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