CRAZY HEART
Five of Seven Cows
As a rule I hate fantasy movies. Hobbits, wizards, and fairies at best annoy me and at worst give me a bad case of the willies. So, while I was intrigued by Alice In Wonderland because of Tim Burton’s and Johnny Depp’s involvement, I had intended to skip it and watch Crazy Heart instead. Well, ends up I saw both, and both were good enough that I can’t deny either mention.
If you are an outlaw-country music fan, the sort who would dearly love to see Waylon Jennings return from the grave and give Kenny Chesney a well-deserved smack-down, then Crazy Heart is an absolute must-see. Jeff Bridges is winning an Oscar for his performance as Bad Blake as I write this, and well he should.
A cross between the aforementioned Waylon and Kris Kristoferson at his whiskey-swilling best, Bad Blake is a broken down country star reduced to playing pool-halls and bowling alleys. When he meets reporter Jean Craddock, played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, his life is given purpose. The story is cliché, true, and the relationship between the craggy, old Blake and the young, beautiful reporter is laughably unlikely. Trust me: I’ve tried this sort of thing, and “laughably” unlikely is dead-on accurate. Still, the performances are great and the subject matter close to my heart, so I give it five cows.
ALICE IN WONDERLAND
Alice In Wonderland, however, needs no caveats. This is a great movie, combining all of the computer-graphic wizardry of Avatar with outstanding performances and Tim Burton’s delightfully-twisted touch at the controls. Johnny Depp leads a cast that has seemingly been groomed for these roles, with Helena Bohnam Carter doing an especially fun job as the Red Queen. Mia Wasikowska is great as Alice, though to be honest she looks so much like a young Gwyneth Paltrow that in ten years I’ll probably be insisting that it was the latter who played the role. As that would actually be a complement for either, neither should complain.
Comparisons with Avatar are inevitable given both film’s heavy reliance on computer graphics. But while Avatar satisfied itself with inserting humans into a fanciful world, Alice In Wonderland does it one better: The Mad Hatter, Red Queen, and many other characters are human actors that have been digitally modified. Just check out Depp’s huge eyes, or Helena Bohnam Carter’s bulbous head. Freaky! That the source material is Lewis Carroll’s masterpiece and not Karl Marx’s trashy little rant doesn’t hurt either. For all these reasons I’m proud to call Alice In Wonderland my first seven-cow movie.
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