Crazy Heart

Jeff Bridges anchors the performance vehicle Crazy Heart with a durable turn as the washed-up never-was country singer Bad Blake.  There’s also fun and perfectly character- and narrative-appropriate songs composed by T-Bone Burnett.  But what starts as a loosely-paced character study dissolves into a string of loser redemption sub-genre clichés.  It’s The Wrestler in a Kristofferson mask.

A failure at fatherhood and marriage Bridges’ struggling country singer’s second chance appears in the form of Maggie Gyllenhaal.  By the time he utters the line, “My name is Bad and I’m an alcoholic,” your eyes will begin rolling if they’re not buried in your forehead by that point already.

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

The tragic passing of Heath Ledger occurred before he had completed work in his final film, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, opening Christmas Day.  Director Terry Gilliam has handled the completion of the work in a clever way, having three of Ledger’s most accomplished peers—Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell—play Ledger’s role during three separate sequences taking place within the imaginarium fantasy world.  The concept becomes a touching tribute to an actor whose brief life has left what is certain to be a lasting legacy.

However, it’s one of the only redeeming elements of Doctor Parnassus.  The fantasy film is filmed with great visual audacity, but the film’s only wonder is the kind associated with confusion.  A collection of set pieces, it is not the first time that a Terry Gilliam film has felt to me to be a hodge-podge of randomly juxtaposed sequences and ideas.  Things that work—a black hole of mirror shards, the cinema’s largest pair of stilts—are fleeting and aren’t accompanied with the emotional investment needed in order for these moments to provide any power.  To experience magic, it is necessary to believe.

–Pops Corn