CRAZY HEART / ***½

Distributor: Fox Searchlight
Release Date: December 16, 2009
Genre: Drama
Running Time: 111 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

After four previous Oscar nominations and decades of being one of the most respected actors in Hollywood, Jeff Bridges finally seems poised to capture an Academy Award for best Actor for his performance as the hard living country singer Bad Blake in Scott Cooper’s “Crazy Heart.”

The story is strikingly similar to another film that brought its leading man plenty of Oscar talk last year – Darren Aronofsky’s “The Wrestler” with Mickey Rourke. Bad Blake is a country singer who used to be a lot bigger than he is now, as his concerts are booked in bowling alleys and corner bars in small towns. He’s been drunk likely as long as he can remember, and his carousing lifestyle has led to a distance from those he once loved.

On one of his tour stops, he meets a young journalist named Jean Craddock (Maggie Gyllenhaal) that wants to interview him. They develop an instant rapport and Bad even takes a liking to her young son. Jean approaches the relationship with some degree of trepidation, but she can’t help but be transfixed by the man who seems to effortlessly write great songs while simply lying in bed and hardly thinking about it.

While Bad Blake is playing in dives, one of his protégés, a man named Tommy Sweet (Colin Farrell) has attained worldwide stardom and plays to sold out arenas. This is definitely a subplot to the main love story, but the scenes between Farrell and Bridges actually outshone the Gyllenhaal and Bridges scenes. Farrell and Bridges undoubtedly have chemistry together; their scenes together are two men unsure how to act around each other, even though there is clearly respect there. I wouldn’t have minded if this was the film’s main story, but alas. Farrell continues to impress me as an actor – between this and “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” (as well as last year’s “In Bruges” I really don’t think he’s getting enough credit these days.

In a bit of irony or just clever casting, Robert Duvall also shows up as Wayne, a bartender whom Bad has had a long friendship with. Duvall won an Oscar in 1984 for “Tender Mercies,” another film “Crazy Heart” can be compared to.

“Crazy Heart” though simply belongs to Jeff Bridges, and it is a wonderful performance. Whether or not it’s been declared “his time” or not it’s a performance worthy of the Oscar he’s sure to win.

Theater: RDM Westroads 14, Omaha, NE
Time: 210 pm
Date: February 7, 2010

THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS / ***

Distributor: Overture Films
Release Date: November 6, 2009
Genre: Comedy
Running Time: 90 minutes
MPAA Rating: R

As a journalist, watching the opening minutes of “The Men Who Stare at Goats” was a tad upsetting. Ewan McGregor plays Bob Wilton, a journalist for the Ann Arbor News, which shuttered its doors over the summer. It was yet another sad reminder of the state of the profession I love.

From that point forward the film took on a much lighter tone, and can best be described as amusing. Like many men before him, Wilton has been jilted by a woman, and thinks he can impress her into taking him back. To that end he travels to Iraq to try and get some kind of combat experience. While there he encounters a story that may seem too good to be true, but Wilton assures us that “more of this is true than you would believe.”

Wilton encounters a man named Lyn Cassady (Oscar winner George Clooney), who was a member of the New Earth Army, which was a top secret branch of psychic soldiers, or “Jedi Warriors.” Oscar nominee Jeff Bridges plays Bill Django, the leader of the New Earth Army. Think of a more motivated version of “The Dude,” Bridges’s character from “The Big Lebowski,” and you get a pretty good idea of what Bill Django is like.

Much of the story is told in flashbacks, to a time when everyone apparently sported just a moustache. Cassady is Django’s star pupil, but another student, Larry Hooper (Oscar winner Kevin Spacey), fancies himself as the top psychic in the class and resents the attention Cassady gets.

The film is certainly disjointed and certainly could have been tightened up in spots. Overall first-time director Grant Heslov (Clooney’s co-writer on “Good Night, and Good Luck”) lets the actors do what they’re best at and doesn’t try to force scenes, no matter how ridiculous.

I can see why “The Men Who Stare at Goats” didn’t light the box office on fire, but I have a suspicion that it may gain a cult following sometime in the next decade.

Theater: Marcus Midtown Crossing Cinema, Omaha, NE
Time: 945 pm
Date: 11/23/2009