Avengers: Endgame (2019)

Assemble.

The day finally came.  After 11 years and 22 of my top 22 favorite films of all time, we’re in the Endgame now.  Even with all my hatred of people and crowds, my excitement and impatience would not allow me to wait long to see it.  But Infinity War set a very high bar for the MCU.  There was certainly no way they could pass that, or even blow it completely out of the water, right?  Well there’s only one way to find out.  Well, by the time of writing this, two ways because I’ve already seen it twice.  And even though the second time was today, I feel like I’m itching to see it again.  But what did I think of the movie, you might be asking?  …Really?  Have you never read one of my reviews or seen one of my videos?  Well here’s my probably entirely predictable review of Avengers: Endgame, written by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, directed by Joe and Anthony Russo, and starring…like everyone.  Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Josh Brolin, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Don Cheadle, Paul Rudd, Brie Larson, Karen Gillan, Danai Gurira, Benedict Wong, Bradley Cooper, and so many more names.

Thanos (Brolin) won and wiped out half of all life in the universe with the snap of shiny, bejeweled fingers.  Even though they were thoroughly trounced by Thanos by himself, the remaining Avengers – Captain America (Evans), Hulk (Ruffalo), Thor (Hemsworth), Black Widow (Johansson), and War Machine (Cheadle) – as well as the two remaining Guardians of the Galaxy – Rocket (Cooper) and Nebula (Gillan) – decide it would be a good idea to take another crack at it because the new girl, Captain Marvel (Larson) claims to be super strong.  Iron Man (Downey) decides to stay home because he’s sleepy.  So the Avengers set off to … avenge.  And all of this is the first half hour.  Pretty much anything else is a spoiler.

Y’know what?  Avengers: Endgame could’ve been better.  …Don’t get me wrong, it was the greatest movie of all time ever, but I’m sure there’s something that could’ve been improved.  I was able to think of at least one, but we’ll get to that.  But a movie that contains as much hype as this movie has and I only really had one gripe?  That’s a killer flick!  Problematically for the sake of this review, I don’t think it’s worth talking about without spoilers.  Pretty much the entire movie after the first half hour is spoilers, so if that is a problem for you, feel free to stop reading and come back after seeing it.  Otherwise, let’s dish!

The story of Endgame was fantastic.  Time travel is a tricky thing to pull off and even the most well thought out stories can probably fall apart if you think about things too much.  Endgame does a good job of avoiding talking too much about the science involved so it can’t be picked apart too badly.  Science probably can’t prove that you can’t travel through time by shrinking down to sub-microscopic levels and entering the Quantum Realm because those things probably can’t happen in the first place.  And if you’re going into Avengers looking for good science to occur in the movie about superheroes, then what’s wrong with you?  The story obviously does leave some questions that may or may not be addressed.  What happened with past Loki?  What happens later when Hydra thinks Cap is one of them?  What changed when Cap decided to stay in the past?  In the very least, it seemed like these choices were intentional and may be leading to something.  The MCU has earned my faith in them.  And what’s more is that the time travel stuff added to what this movie really was deep down: fan service.  It was the most fan servicey movie ever, and I loved them for it.  There were callbacks to earlier movies (including what I say is the best moment of the film: when Falcon’s voice crackles through the radio when all hope seems lost and calls back to Captain America: The Winter Soldier when he says, “On your left.”)  And then when they start getting into time travel, we’re literally taken on the greatest montage/flashback in cinema history!  We go into Avengers, we go into Guardians of the Galaxy, and we go to shortly after Captain America: The First Avenger.  We see the filmmakers saying, “Remember this?  Oh you loved this!”  And we also see extra stuff, like how and why Loki got that gag mask in Avengers and what were the sorcerers that are supposed to be defending our realm doing during the Battle of New York.  You could also say that the death of Thanos in the beginning of the movie was not too surprising.  I mean, the team is in a spaceship heading off to kill Thanos in the first half hour, but we all know this movie is 3 hours.  They probably should’ve run the credits after killing Thanos and treated the rest of the movie as the best after-credit sequence ever.

I generally talk about the look of the movie here, but they put so much time and money into this movie it’s not worth talking about.  It was great.  I guess the only thing worth saying about it is that people often complain about CG characters and how they’re not realistic or compelling.  Avengers already got rid of that idea with Infinity War, making Thanos a very realistic and well-acted CG character, so much so that you could be forgiven for forgetting he wasn’t really there.  This movie continues that with Thanos, but also does the same level of quality with the Hulk.  So instead of talking about the look of the movie, I’m just gonna list the most exciting moments that I wrote down during that last fight.  And I’ll write them just as I wrote them in my notes.  Cap and Mjolnir!  Chips are down!  ON. YO. LEFF!!  Assemble! Rescue and Iron Man!  Wasp called him, “Cap!”  INSTANT KILL!  A-FORCE!!  CAPTAIN MARVEL!  I AM IRON MAN!!  …I straight up got goosebumps just typing those.  …I’m gonna go see it for a third time…

The cast of the movie was…well it was everything.  If you ever appeared in an MCU movie before, you probably showed up in this movie in some way or another.  You can get mentioned and shown in pictures like the Dark Elves from Thor: The Dark World or you can appear in unused footage with some new voiceover like Natalie Portman did or you can straight up appear in some degree like Tessa Thompson, Rene Russo, John Slattery, Tilda Swinton, Hayley Atwell, Marisa Tomei, Taika Waititi, Angela Bassett, William Hurt, Winston Duke, Maximiliano Hernandez, Frank Grillo, Jacob Batalon, Robert Redford, Ross Marquand, Callan Mulvey, Sean Gunn, James D’Arcy, and even Ty Simpkins, the little kid from Iron Man 3 that’s all grown up and appears at Tony’s funeral but even I didn’t figure it out until I got to the parking lot.  (In my defense, I didn’t care for Iron Man 3 much and don’t rewatch it often)  So many people you couldn’t possibly ask for more, to the point where they even had Wong say, “You wanted more?”  …Here’s my thing…  Yes, you gave us so many people.  Almost everybody!  …ALMOST!  There’s so many that I know I shouldn’t complain, but this is the end of an era, man!  I think you should’ve found a home for everyone.  At least everyone that’s still alive in the continuity.  But what about Lady Sif?  She’s still alive as far as I know.  What about some Nova Corps action?  Where was Adam Warlock?  What about the Skrulls?  Anybody from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., like Quake or Agent Coulson?  I’m not caught up on that show, but past Coulson could’ve appeared.  I’m not like most people in thinking that this was the time for X-Men to show up now that Marvel has the rights.  It would’ve been too rushed and the MCU really should build to them properly.  But biggest of all would be the Defenders.  I know the Netflix series are cancelled and Marvel’s not looking to bring them back, but this would’ve been one hell of a sendoff.  Just having Daredevil, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, Iron Fist, and the Punisher step out of a portal together?  Tell me that wouldn’t have blown your mind!  And it would’ve been easy!  If those actors wouldn’t have agreed to get into wardrobe and step in front of a green screen looking determined, those actors are silly people!

Now let’s go through the main cast.  They are all still amazing at this, and I’m gonna be sad to see some of them go.  Though thankfully for my tear ducts, not too many of them had to die.  I think only 2 big ones.  Downey’s Tony Stark being the biggest one, obviously.  Man I cried so hard the first time I saw the movie!  And only maybe 10% less on the second viewing.  I didn’t see it coming really.  I was convinced that Captain America was going to die and Tony was going to retire, but they flipped it on me.  Tony bothered me in the beginning.  I really liked his relationship with Nebula, but when he gets home he starts being a real douche for no reason.  He claims Cap wasn’t there when he needed him.  I saw Infinity War, Tony!  Everyone was begging you to call Steve, but you just never got around to it!  I understand his motivations for not wanting to get involved when they found a possible solution, but I feel like everyone knew that Tony wouldn’t be able to resist if someone posed an interesting enough theory to him.  It was just a matter of time.  And finally, Tony’s sendoff was perfect.  Retirement would never be good enough for him, and if he was going to have to go, it should be by saying, “I am Iron Man,” and saving the day.  And the funeral was perfect, from the cast involved in it, to the music and presentation, to the wreath with the proof that Tony has a heart.  Speaking of send offs, Cap’s was perfect as well.  I was expecting a noble death, but his noble life was even better.  I loved the “Hail Hydra” moment and the fight with himself, and I especially loved America’s Ass.  …I mean the line!  I wasn’t staring at his ass…  Most of the joy of Captain America was in the final fight, how even as possibly the weakest of the three heroes that started it; Cap was the one holding his own the most.  And holding Mjolnir!  I squealed with glee at that moment!  And then how he used it!  Calling in lightning, spinning it like Thor, throwing it at his shield in midair!  Perfect!  And finally, after all these years, he says, “Assemble!”  Though it raises questions, I really enjoyed his ending.  He finally got that dance with his best girl.  It makes you wonder now where second Cap was through all these other situations as you assume he wouldn’t be able to just lay low and hide knowing he could help, but whatever.  I’m kind of on the fence about him handing the shield off to Falcon.  I know that happens in the comics, and I know Sam is an honorable dude, but I feel like you go with Bucky.  He can be Captain America, from the strength and the history and the fighting ability.  Falcon can’t do what Cap could.  Falcon should be Falcon.  But whatever.  It’s fine with me.

I was bummed and surprised at what happened with Black Widow.  Having heard she had a movie coming, I was not expecting what happened to her.  On second viewing, hearing her say, “See you in a minute,” before they head back in time was heartbreaking.  But anyone watching Hawkeye and Widow head to Vormir after having seen Infinity War probably had a sinking feeling in their gut.  I was personally hoping that the self-sacrifice aspect would be a loophole.  I mean, we’ve only ever seen someone sacrifice someone else.  Thanos threw Gamora in there and Thanos got the stone for it.  Widow threw herself in there, so Widow should get the stone.  And then the Soul Stone says, “Well…ya got me.”  The other hope I have is ongoing because, besides wondering what happens when Cap is returning the stones and goes to Vormir and sees his old buddy Red Skull there, what happens when the Soul Stone is returned?  Is the soul returned?  Maybe we’ll see…  Thor continues to be a joy since Ragnarok.  It was very funny, and very fitting, to see fat Thor, drowning in self-loathing as he would be.  And he got to have a lovely moment with his mom.  I was kind of hoping that his magic, armor-up, beard-braiding action transformation might Hemsworth him up a little and bring that sexy back, but it’s fine.  He’ll get there.  I also felt like they used Captain Marvel well.  They didn’t make her too over-powered and didn’t make her just save the day easily when she decided to show up, and they also explained well why she wasn’t going to be around to save the day every time because she’s busy in space.  And she set up a moment I loved.  First, her little interaction with Peter Parker was adorable, but then that leads to the assembly of A-Force, or all the women heroes of Marvel, getting together for a save the day push.  I love me some badass ladies, and they put so many of them in one frame that I nearly passed out.  I would say that part of me found it a bit pandering because why in the context of the movie would only the ladies decide to make a stand.  We’re all equal on this battlefield and everyone was all spread out, but all these ladies just ran to the same point to do some work.  But who cares?  It was awesome!  Speaking of awesome, Scarlet Witch versus Thanos!  At that moment, I wasn’t even thinking about how much I wanted to see that, but then it happened and it was epic.  And Tom Holland.  His activity in this movie was somewhat limited by the whole dead thing, but it should be noted that this kid is such a damned good actor.  His death in Infinity War and his reaction to Tony’s death here were so heartbreaking!  I felt worse for Peter than I did for Pepper, and Pepper is his wife and mother of his child! For two other tiny points, I loved Nebula’s character ark.  She’s really becoming likable. I just wish when Cap called Thanos a son of a bitch that Nebula would chime in and say, “Actually, my grandmother was a lovely person…”  And he wasn’t in there much, but I wish Doctor Strange’s line was, “If I tell you, it won’t happen…but trust me, the whole thing is going to be an awesome spectacle.”

Now, you’ve been waiting through a lot of fangasming to see the payoff of a tease I mentioned in third paragraph and never paid off.  What is the one problem that I had with Avengers: Endgame?  It sucks to have something built up and built up and never pay it off, doesn’t it?  …Well too bad!  Moving on!

I’m kidding.  THE HULK!  That was my one problem with this movie!  Infinity War sets up Hulk’s inability to transform and help the team SO HARD and never pays it off.  It gave me blue balls!  …Or in this case, green balls, I guess.  And it just ended on that!  So of course I spend an entire year dreaming of what that moment will be where the chips are down and everything looks like it’s lost and then Falcon says, “On your left,” and Hulk transforms and turns the tide.  It would have to be some epic moment, right?  After all that build up?  …NOPE!  This movie starts and he’s just Hulk already.  Granted, he’s Hulk AND Banner, which is cool, but he just figured it out off screen in a bland, science moment we never saw and all that build up to nothing.  Well then certainly we’ll have some great moment for him in the big fight where almost everyone has a big moment then, right?  …NOPE!  I think I saw him once, and he punched something insignificant off camera and was never seen again.  I will grant you that technically the greatest moment for me in the film happens because of the Hulk.  If he hadn’t sacrificed his arm to snap then no heroes return moment.  I also grant you that his arm was hurt so he wouldn’t be as big of a factor in the fight.  But I’m not asking him to be the one that defeats Thanos, but give him something!  In Infinity War, Banner had a very hard time in his fight against Cull Obsidian because he had to rely on the Hulkbuster armor.  Why could we not have the moment when Cull is walking up on Iron Man but the Hulk drops down, makes some quip about beating him with one hand tied behind his back, and whoops that ass?  Well we couldn’t because Cull was stepped on by Ant-Man as a throwaway gag.  I don’t need Hulk to save the day or win the movie or absorb the gamma radiation he said the glove gives off to become Worldbreaker Hulk or anything, but you guys set it up and let it fizzle out and that was a real bummer that stuck with me after the movie.  …The one and only bummer, so you guys still did an amazing job.

So that’s it.  A decade long setup leading to a seemingly decade long review written by me.  And all of it paid off perfectly.  At least from Avengers: Endgame.  This review?  Fine at best.  But Endgame was the perfect fan service movie that included characters and references from nearly all of their 21 movies leading to this moment that in no way disappointed.  Well, in one way disappointed because of the Hulk thing, but if your movie is 2 hours of solid fan service followed by one hour of back to back hype moments and I leave with only one minor bummer as a Hulk fan, you have succeeded in a way no one ever has and possibly no one ever will.  You have done the impossible.  I’m not even going to tell you to see this movie because it’s obvious that I think you should and you should have already at least 7 times and I also told you not to read this until you had.  Avengers: Endgame gets “I love you 3000” out of “SO MANY STAIRS!!”

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Men in Black III (2012)

I Promised the Secrets of the Universe, Nothing More.

When I went to see Snow White and the Huntsman, I decided that I had the time and the energy to make the day into a double feature.  There were about four movies available at the time that I had any kind of interest in seeing.  Having one taken down at the request of my readers, I decided that I would choose the next one and that I’d just take the one that had gotten the best reviews.  It was fortunate for me that it was also the one that I wanted to see the most.  Being the third part in a series of movies that I have liked so far, as well as being the movie that seemed the most fun, it was an easy decision.  The movie I chose was Men in Black 3, written by Lowell Cunningham, directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, and starring Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin, Jemaine Clement, Michael Stuhlbarg, Emma Thompson, Alice Eve, Mike Colter, Bill Hader, Will Arnett, David Rasche, Keone Young, and Nicole Scherzinger.

An intergalactic criminal named Boris the Animal (Jemaine Clement) is busted out of a prison on the moon by his girlfriend (Nicole Scherzinger).  He sets his intentions on killing an agent of the Men in Black, Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones), for shooting his arm off in 1969.  And, because he got that arm shot off in 1969 while trying to stop K from preventing his race of Boglodites from taking over the Earth, he decides he needs to go back in time and kill K.  The strange part is that he succeeds.  K’s partner, Agent J (Will Smith), wakes up to find that the space-time continuum has changed and K has been dead since 1969.  With a little help from the new Chief of the Men in Black, Agent O (Emma Thompson), he figures out what he must do to stop it from happening, so he too goes back to 1969 to stop him.  Of course, a time-travelling black man in 1969 gathers some attention, most notably from Agent K (Josh Brolin).  He must try to convince K that he’s telling the truth so that they can stop Boris and save the Earth.

Much as with the other movies in this series, I’m still charmed by Men in Black 3.  The story follows the same pattern that I remember from the other two movies, but adds interest and emotion to it with the time travel story.  All of the movies have been, at their core, a story of two guys trying to stop the destruction of the world.  The first one added the fish out of water part with J being brought into the Men in Black, the second one added the getting the gang back together thing with having to bring back K, and the third one adds time travel.  That adds for some decent emotion that they barely went for in the first movie and didn’t try for much in the second.  Not only is there the emotion involved in K’s temporary death, but something else that’s pretty sad happens near the end of the movie.  The problem with the thing at the end of the movie is that you can kind of see it coming.  It’s something that my roommate brought to my attention in the Avengers movie, but if they talk about something they’ve never really talked about before, seemingly out of nowhere, you know something’s up.  K defending the person that was being talked about cemented it in my mind, so when it happened, the shock was a little bit lessened.  But you don’t really come to a Men in Black movie for the emotional depth.  It’s more about the cool look and the humor, and both of those are well realized.  Every time J used the neuralizer on someone, the explanations he came up with afterwards were all pretty funny.  There was another point where J started drinking a little kid’s chocolate milk and the little kid said, “Mommy, the president is drinking my milk.”  That’s a solid joke, but it was so quiet I almost missed it.  J makes a joke about agents O and K, and I think you can figure what joke would be made there, but it was still a solid joke.  There were also two references for comedy that were a little obvious.  If you’d seen the other movies, you know that they often have eccentric celebrities on the screen in the background, implying that they’re aliens.  When I started the movie I knew that Lady GaGa would be one of them, and I was right.  Also, when they had Andy Warhol in it, I figured he’d be an easy target for an alien too.  I wasn’t entirely right, but I wasn’t entirely wrong either.

I liked almost all of the performances in this movie.  Will Smith is usually very charming and funny, and he’s also able to bring it with the emotional performance as well.  It’s no surprise that he’s able to do that in this movie, but it’s always a pleasure to watch him do it.  Tommy Lee Jones is also the perfect counterpoint to Will Smith, always able to be the consummate straight man.  He doesn’t bring it too hard with the emotional performances because that wouldn’t be right for the character, but he does have moments where you can see that it’s right under the surface, and it’s really well done.  I think the biggest surprise for me was Josh Brolin.  Not because I didn’t expect quality from him as I’ve seen him do both drama and touches of comedy before, but he does a fantastic impression of Tommy Lee Jones that deserves to be lauded.  I wasn’t really a fan of Michael Stuhlbarg in this movie though.  His character was kind of comic relief and never really worked for me.  Perhaps it was because he reminded me way too much of Justin Bartha’s character in Gigli.  Though their parts were small, I was also happy to see Will Arnett and Bill Hader in this movie, and both were pretty amusing in their small bits.

If you liked the other Men in Black movies, Men in Black 3 should be right up your alley.  It might even overcome those of you that didn’t like the other two.  It’s definitely a candidate for the best of the three, though perhaps the original still edges it out.  MiB3 is funny, interesting, and even has a few moments of emotion to get us more invested.  It still looks great and the greater majority of the performances remain fantastic.  I definitely recommend getting to the theater to watch this.  It’s worth your money.  Men in Black 3 gets “Sort of a surly, older gentleman.  Smiles like this…” out of “That’s what I’m talkin’ about!”

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True Grit (2010)

If You Would Like to Sleep in a Coffin, it Would be Alright

Today’s movie was a request by me.  For a while now I’ve talked about Jeff Bridges and how, though I respect him greatly as an actor, the greater majority of the movies I’ve reviewed with him in it seemed very similar in their performances, often resembling his character of The Dude from the Big Lebowski.  But, while I’ve said these things, I’ve usually mentioned them along with a certain movie I’ve seen where his performance had little to nothing in common with The Dude, and that is today’s movie.  It’s also a movie that I believe I originally saw in the theaters and fell completely in love with.  When it came out for purchase, I got it on BluRay and renewed my love for it.  I’ve been putting off my review for no particular reason, but no longer.  The time has come to review the second film adaptation of the novel True Grit, written by Charles Portis, written for the screen and directed by Joel and Ethan Coen, and starring Hailee Steinfeld, Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, Josh Brolin, Barry Pepper, Elizabeth Marvel, Ed Lee Corbin, Dakin Matthews, Domhnall Gleeson, Leon Russom, and Joe Stevens.

The father of 14-year-old Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) is gunned down by one of his hired hands, Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin), for two California gold chips and a horse.  Her brother being even younger and her mother being unqualified for the task, it falls on Mattie’s shoulders to arrange for the body to be transported back home.  But, when she gets to the town, she sets about the task of revenge.  Realizing that it’s not a top priority for the law to find Chaney, she decides to hire U.S. Marshal Reuben “Rooster” Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) to seek him out.  He refuses her at first, but when she raises enough money, he relents, even though she demands to accompany him on the task.  But, when Mattie shows up to join Rooster, she finds that he’s already left, having had no intention of allowing her to follow.  She races down to the river to find Rooster on the other side of the river with Texas Ranger LaBoeuf (Matt Damon), who is looking for Chaney on another bounty.  Since Rooster has paid the ferryman to keep Mattie on the other side of the river, she hazards the river on horseback to join them.  Rooster and LaBoeuf are not pleased, but the three set off to find Chaney and bring him to justice.

This is such a good movie!  I love the hell right out of this movie.  It’s set itself amongst my favorite westerns, and even amongst my favorite movies.  Though I’m not sure where it came from, I’ve had a predisposition for loving westerns for as long as I can remember.  So when a really well-written one comes along (which I find fairly rare nowadays), I love it that much more.  And this movie is, indeed, well-written.  The story is really interesting, often funny, and heavy with some badassdom or, as they would call it, “grit”.  And, in my opinion, the movie dwarfs the original movie in every conceivable way.  I liked this version of True Grit so much that I decided I should buy the original, sight unseen.  You can imagine my disappointment.  The original seemed to have very little respect for the source material (as best I can gather from the source material’s Wikipedia page) and changed parts of the story with great emotional impact at will.  But it seems like this Portis guy knew what he was doing when he put pen to paper, because the much more accurate new movie renders the original movie unwatchable.  The dialogue that the Coen brothers bring to the movie is very endearing, though I did find it to be in poor taste that Mattie decides to name her horse “Little Blackie” right in front of the little blackie stable boy, but perhaps that’s just my racism reading things the wrong way.  The action that they bring to the movie is also very satisfying, and pretty great in a very real way.  They build up a lot of tension in the interrogation scene when Rooster is casually trying to get information out of two guys they come across in a cabin, and the ensuing gun fight was pretty cool and very realistic.  I really liked the courageous ride that Rooster takes against the gang at the end of the movie as well, especially the part where a guy gets shot off his horse and smashes his face on a rock for good measure.  I have conflicted feelings about the ending of the movie though.  ::SPOILER ALERT::  I thought the part of Rooster courageously riding to get Mattie to medical attention was very emotional and fantastic, but the bit after that confuses my feelings.  It was sad that an aged Mattie was trying to reconnect with Rooster but finds him dead by the time she gets to him.  It was nice that she gets his body moved closer to her so she can visit him, but sad again that she lost her arm and never married because she was too business minded.  I thought the ending was great, but a part of me always wants the ending to be a happy one, and you don’t get that here.  The original movie breaks from the book to give the audience the happy ending they usually want, but I don’t like that they did that.  So you can see how conflicted I am about this.  I don’t like them changing the ending to appease me, and the ending was fantastic and emotional, but that nagging part of me always wants that happy ending.  ::END SPOILERS::

Contending admirably with the high quality of the script is the performances in the movie.  Every single one of them is enjoyable.  Hailee Steinfeld is the real breakout performance of this movie, even amongst heavy competition.  No one has seen anything from this girl before this movie which just makes her that much more impressive.  She delivers heavy and complicated dialogue as if she’s smarter than everyone in the room, and in most occasions she is.  Take, for instance, when she’s negotiating over the sale of some horses with Colonel Stonehill (Dakin Matthews) and she completely outwits him.  She also delivers some real emotion to further impress.  And she was not above showing the innocence of youth, like when she tried to break the tension caused by a fight between LaBoeuf and Rooster by offering to tell a story by the campfire.  I envy her for her early showings of talent, but I assume I was not given such ability because of how heavily I would rub it in the faces of all of my peers at school.  “Look what I’ve accomplished while you guys were doing each other’s hair and talking about Justin Bieber!  I was nominated for an Academy Award!”  Although, for some reason she was nominated for supporting actress.  What’s that about?  As awesome as Bridges was in this movie, this wasn’t the Rooster show.  Mattie was the main character of the movie.  And Jeff Bridges was indeed awesome.  John Wayne fans must be pissed ‘cause this guy makes the Duke look like a pile of duke.  He plays Rooster very funny, intelligent even though he’s semi-constantly drunk, absolutely heroic in a part or two but still very flawed in others, and outright awesome.  My favorite thing about the character was that he wasn’t a cliché.  Most heroes in western movies are the best at something.  They’re the best tracker, they’re the toughest, they’re the most heroic, they’re the best shot or the quickest draw.  Rooster was none of these things.  He just had grit, and he was more awesome for it.  Matt Damon was also very good as LaBoeuf.  You dislike him for the bulk of the movie because of his ego and the vague air of pedophilia he gives off in relation to Mattie.  In the middle, he’s more of an amusement because of his nearly severed tongue.  But, by the end, he’s also a very heroic character.  Josh Brolin is also pretty great.  He’s this sinister character throughout the movie, but only in what people are saying about him because you haven’t actually met him yet.  When you meet him, he comes off as an idiot and in no way intimidating.  He’s almost laughable in how put upon he is.  But when he decides it’s in his best interest to rid himself of Mattie, he makes an awesome turn from almost goofy to pretty intimidating.

True Grit is an amazing accomplishment of a movie.  Fantastic story, sharp dialogue, and some amazing performances.  This movie has all of the ingredients to be considered one of the greatest westerns ever, and it’s already become one of my favorite movies ever.  And the original that was already regarded as a classic becomes a mess in comparison.  I don’t only recommend you watch this movie; I want you to watch this movie.  It’s not only worth a rental; it’s worth going out and purchasing it outright.  Go find it and watch it.  You can thank me later.  True Grit gets “Well, if it ain’t loaded and cocked, it don’t shoot” out of “If them men wanted a decent burial, they should have gotten themselves kilt in summer.”

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