Movie Review: Country Strong

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The first full weekend of 2011! At least we had two selections available unlike last weekend! Choices: Country Strong or Season of the Witch. It was a tough decision. Nick Cage and Ron Perlman looked kinda hokey in their preview. I'm not a super huge fan of country music either. So the deciding criteria this week was the earlier film and one that would earn me extra movie points which meant the country music was awarded my attendance!

Gwyneth Paltrow has been showing her musical chops over the past few months with her appearance at the Country Music Awards show and her role on Glee. This allowed her to play six time Grammy Award winning singer Kelly Canter. Like a lot of music superstars (and many not so super) she's in rehab after having an alcoholic meltdown in Dallas. James her husband/manager (Tim McGraw) decides to pull her out a month early. You watch the two look and talk to each other and you wonder why he pulled her out. While laying in bed next to each other she says to him "I got a Brazilian" and his response is "I just took an Ambien, see you in eight hours". Not the normal take on "not tonight honey, I have a headache." So why did he pull her out: for him, for her, for the music or for the money?

Befriending her at the rehab center was Beau, a local country singer/song writer who was an employee there. The formerly clean shaven Tron: Legacy star Garrett Hedlund is transformed into the scruffy looking orderly by day, local country singer heartthrob at night. Kelly wants Beau to come on her comeback tour as an opening act. James on the other hand wants the former Miss Dallas beauty queen Chiles Stanton (Leighton Meester) to be the opening act. So a compromise is hit and they both go on the three city tour with the final stop being Dallas itself. What better location to pick yourself up and dust yourself off other than the scene where you fell off the bucking bronco in the first place!

This is where the story gets messy. There are a number of cliches that follow. Both up and coming stars Beau and Chiles are making tough decisions about their future. The superstar who wants to remain on top but may be washed up but hoping for a come back. Wow, that last one sounds like Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart, doesn't it? People around the star enabling them and their bad habits. Sleeping around in order to get what you want. These earned the film a PG-13 rating for thematic elements involving alcohol abuse and some sexual content. Was Beau there to get ahead in music, to save the old star or get the new one was murky at best. Same sort of questions with Chiles. Was her intention to get James, a career or Beau? There are too many more to mention. As I said it was messy.

The singing in the movie seemed good. Apparently Hedlund grew up around country music and was excited to play the part for the movie. McGraw who played Hedlund's father in 2004's Friday Night Lights let Hedlund stay on his ranch near Nashville in order to get Hedlund ready for the role. Meester also did a respectable job. After the big appearances last year, we know Paltrow has pipes that can do the country twang required of the role. What I thought was funny is that the one true country star among them, McGraw, didn't sing. I take that back, he did, but in the end credits, not as part of the film.

There was one major surprise in the film that I didn't totally see coming but for the most part, I sat in my seat for the 112 minutes, not really bored, but not excited about what was in front of me. Towards the end when Paltrow was giving a medley I wondered how many more songs I would have to wait through for the drama to start up again. Maybe if I was a big country fan my response would be different for the music and the movie.

The Movie Monkey

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Movie Review: TRON: Legacy

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When the original TRON released in 1982, it wasn't a huge box office hit but it made its money. More importantly is that it managed to work its way into tech boys hearts as a film that put an idea into their head of what the digital realm of the inside of the computer would be like if they could live there, to live on The Grid. The effects used in the movie were eye popping. Now, 28 plus years later director Joseph Kosinski brings us back to The Grid with effects that are just as eye popping. The real world has evolved and so has The Grid in TRON: Legacy.

Jeff Bridges and Bruce Boxleitner reprise their roles as Kevin Flynn and Alan Bradley in the real world and CLU and TRON on The Grid. Not much is done in the way of showing detailed close ups of TRON, but CLU is shown. With the computer technology available today Bridges 60 year old face was recreated as a 30 year old for CLU as a program inside a computer wouldn't age. Bridges has to play against himself as both the good and the bad guy. This is not a walk in the park mind you, but it didn't seem for him that it was hard to do.

Flynn's son Sam (Garrett Hedlund) has been missing his dad for twenty years. At that time, the elder Flynn told his young son that they'll go play video games on the following Saturday but the older Flynn disappears. No one knows what happened to him. When Bradley informs the younger but now grown Flynn that he received a page from his dad's old arcade, Sam checks it out. He finds out what happened to dad as he does like father, like son and gets digitized and placed on The Grid. When Sam is almost derezzed meaning digitally destroyed, he is rescued by Quorra (Olivia Wilde who was Thirteen on Fox's House TV show) a friend and student of his dad's. It's up to both Flynns and Quorra to prevent CLU from taking complete control of not only The Grid, but the real world as well.

Right now if you're trying to find a copy of the original, good luck! Disney has allegedly pulled all copies for purchase and current rentals. Maybe if you have a friend who purchased the DVD or VHS tape or scour eBay or Craig's List you might be able to see it. The prevailing theory is that Disney didn't want people to see what by today's standards might seem like a poor movie but for the time that it released was state of the art. For three years starting at Comic-Con 2008 this film has received huge promotion even following the foot steps of Avatar by releasing a 23 minute advanced preview during TRON night to drive buzz about the new film. I went to Tron Night here in Honolulu and was surprised that most of the theater was empty. With so many empty seats, it might seem that there wasn't interest. Apparently Disney didn't follow the rule that when you offer something for free, you must oversell the event in order to fill all the seats. When people came out of the theater there was excitement.

The digital world of The Grid is familiar if you had seen the original TRON but evolved and changed. The suits worn on The Grid are similar but developed. The special effects necessary to bring The Grid to this new life are impressive. The world as defined within the evolution of The Grid between the input and influence of Kevin and CLU will wow the senses. As a note here, I saw the 2D version of the movie. But the effects alone don't carry a movie, there has to be a great story that makes us want to boo the bad guy and cheer for the heroes. From Pixar Studios, Toy Story 3 writer Michael Arndt, and The Incredibles director Brad Bird were brought in to help tighten up the screenplay. What we got was not a great story, but it was a good story. Most of the points of the film moved the plot forward. There were a couple of times I was scratching my head because I seemed to miss point B on the way to connect points A and C.

The film had a PG rating for sequences of sci-fi action violence and brief mild language and ran 127 minutes long. I didn't find myself looking at my watch and there were no easter eggs at the film end. Of special note is the score done by Daft Punk. The music went hand in glove with the imagery and tone of the film and the duo even got parts in the film as masked DJs at the End of the Line club.

There was a lot of visual imagery to take in for this film and I'll probably make the effort to see it a second time to absorb those details.

The Movie Monkey

To subscribe to the audio podcast of the reviews via iTunes click here. Audio versions are released the following Wednesday.