The Keeping Room is the second feature-length film from Daniel Barber, director of the disappointing Harry Brown and Oscar-nominated short film The Tonto Woman. What’s frustrating is that, despite some glimpses of great work found in the film, we’re ultimately left with a disappointing experience similar to Barber’s previous efforts.

Taking place at the end of the Civil War, The Keeping Room starts out with a bang as two rogue Union soldiers and kill a group of women and a man unfortunate enough to cross their paths. But just as quickly as the film steps on the gas, it eases up as the story transitions to a small Southern family’s farm that only houses sisters Augusta (Brit Marling) and Louise (Hailee Steinfeld) along with their slave Mad (Muna Otaru). Any interesting dynamics or tension that could be expected from this situation are pretty much glossed over in the first half of the film, and largely go unexplored. Later, Augusta goes into town to get medicine for Louise and runs into the rogue soldiers Moses (Sam Worthington) and Henry (Kyle Soller) seen at the beginning. This triggers a cat-and-mouse game that continues throughout the rest of the film, as the three women attempt to survive the murderous Moses and Henry.

Guiding the film through a shaky first half are two great performances; Otaru with her endlessly expressive eyes, and Worthington’s menacing presence. And the rest of the cast turn in mostly admirable efforts. Brit Marling is solid in the lead role, but unfortunately her character is also the most uninteresting of the main cast. Hailee Steinfeld is strong at times but severely underwritten, and Kyle Soller does what he can with his thankless role.

Barber makes great use of space and locations, but his direction is a constant source of frustration. He consistently lets the film meander longer than needed, mishandling sequences that should be thrilling and intense. Cinematographer Martin Ruhe does solid work, bringing a cold sense of dread to the film that makes up for some of the unnecessary and ineffective handheld shots. The feminist leanings of Julia Hart’s screenplay are a welcome addition to this bloody western, but the story is overly simple to a fault and only gets interesting in the final minutes. And that’s the ultimate problem with the film; outside of a rambunctious opening and promising conclusion, it not only fails to engage but seems fairly uninterested in doing so.

While the acting helps the film stay afloat and some intriguing ideas are brought up (and then immediately dropped), the film has very little to offer and doesn’t even provide some of the B-Movie thrills that the equally disappointing Harry Brown managed to pull off. So while The Keeping Room isn’t the worst way to spend 90 minutes, there are certainly better ways to fill one’s time.

Filmmakers have historically had a difficult time capturing the true essence of the American hardcore scene onscreen. More often than not, cinematic approaches to hardcore feel inauthentic, cheesy, and occasionally even desperate. With Ten Thousand Saints, directors Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini approach the subject matter admirably, albeit a bit unsuccessfully, before transitioning into a predictably sweet story about the perils of young love.

As a drug-using hardcore kid growing up in 1980s Vermont, Jude (Asa Butterfield) yearns to get out of his hometown. After a devastating accident leads to him moving to New York City to live with his estranged, pot-dealing father (Ethan Hawke), Jude is exposed to a whole new world. After befriending Eliza (Hailee Steinfeld), a directionless cocaine addict, and Johnny (Emile Hirsch), the frontman for a straight edge hardcore band, Jude finds himself reevaluating his past, his present, and his future.

Equal parts redemption story and coming-of-age tale, the appeal of Ten Thousand Saints lies more in its compelling cast of characters than its plot. Extremely character-driven, the film provides a realistic look at teen life. Though it’s set roughly thirty years ago, Jude and Eliza deal with issues that are as relevant now as ever and are sure to be extremely relatable to teenage viewers.

Because the film is based around a subculture, Berman and Pulcini utilize plenty of exposition to keep the audience up to speed, but it always feels like exposition. As Jude navigates through the film, he explains the concept of the straight edge lifestyle time after time after time as if he were reading the definition off of Urban Dictionary. At times, the dialogue is borderline cringe-worthy and most of the characters don’t appear believably to be a part of the hardcore scene, which is distracting. Aside from the musical scenes, Ten Thousand Saints could easily be added to the ever-growing list of movies that don’t accurately capture the essence of the hardcore scene.

Thankfully, the film has plenty of heart elsewhere, particularly in its cast. Performances are strong across the board, with angst-filled teenagers and their equally confused parents proving both empathetic and likable in spite of themselves. Butterfield and Steinfeld share a charmingly awkward chemistry while Hawke and Emily Mortimer provide a majority of the film’s comedy. It’s an interesting dichotomy between generations, and the way in which Berman and Pulcini analyze two vastly different forms of rebellion is very sharp and interesting. There proves to be a vicious cycle as the new generation rebels against their parents who chose to use drugs in rebellion against their parents who remained abstinent and sober.

While this isn’t explored as in-depth as it perhaps could have been, it serves as the basis for the best scenes in the film—most notably one where Jude’s mother and Eliza’s mother have an emotional heart-to-heart conversation about their children. It’s a beautiful moment, wrought with sentimentality, and it sums up the entire film. Ten Thousand Saints, at its core, is about a group of flawed people who all learn more about themselves through their interactions with each other, and try their hardest to become better human beings as a result.

While certainly not a dark comedy in the traditional sense, Ten Thousand Saints consistently finds humor in plenty of tragic situations. Death, drug abuse, unexpected pregnancy, abortion, assault, and adultery are all explored during the film’s 113-minute running time; and while not a decidedly adult film, it ventures into some extremely bleak territory.

Despite not portraying the American hardcore scene in the most authentic light, Ten Thousand Saints is a well-acted, technically sound film with a wonderful ensemble cast and an adequate amount of charm.

In honor of Oscar season being fully upon us, we’ve created a new column that combines three of our favorite things: arguing about the Oscars, nostalgia, and passing judgment on others. Oscar Winners Revisited hopes to re-evaluate past Academy Awards results and see how well the winners and nominees held up versus the choices Way Too Indie Staff members would make today. We’ll be sticking to the big six categories: Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor, and Supporting Actress. Make sure to check back on Way Too Indie tomorrow for another year’s batch of Academy Award winners, revisited.

Best Supporting Actress

Who Won – Melissa Leo, The Fighter
Who Should’ve Won – Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit

It’s hard to complain about Leo’s win for The Fighter, though her self-funded pleading for the award looks more desperate now than even then. Truthfully, her performance might be the year’s second Best Supporting Actress role, but her performance wasn’t the best in the category. As the lead of her film, True Grit’s Hailee Steinfeld carries a movie that also features major actors like Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, and Josh Brolin. The 13-year old’s steely reserve, and scrappy determination in the face of an overwhelming Wild West is captivating filtered through the Coen’s vision for True Grit, and aided by a script packed with Southern idioms Steinfeld is a delight in the role. This is the type of performance Hilary Swank would have won an Oscar for if Steinfeld were 10 years older, but her relative youth makes the part easier to ignore. 4 years later, it’s impossible to overlook Steinfeld’s captivating performance. [Zach]

Best Supporting Actor

Who Won – Christian Bale, The Fighter
Who Should’ve Won – John Hawkes, Winter’s Bone

The Academy loves when big name actors lose massive amounts of weight for their role, as if that’s the only way to show true dedication, and that’s exactly what Christian Bale did (for the second time in his career). Truth be told, Bale did a great job in David O. Russell’s The Fighter, it’s hard to imagine the film without him. But the best performance in this category goes to a different nominee who played a meth-addict; John Hawkes for Winter’s Bone. Here Hawkes makes the most of his limited screen time and perfectly counterbalancing the then little-known Jennifer Lawrence as her drugged up uncle. Hawkes embodies the part of the conflicted antihero with his natural scrappy grit, making him the perfect fit for the role. After picking up the win during the Independent Spirit Awards for this role, there were high hopes Hawkes would also win his first Oscar too. But to this day we’re still waiting for that to happen. [Dustin]

Best Actress

Who Won – Natalie Portman, Black Swan
Who Should’ve Won – Michelle Williams, Blue Valentine

I can’t think of a more heartbreaking performance from 2010 than Michelle Williams in Blue Valentine, it’s one of the best lead actress performances of the decade so far and right up there with Anne Dorval (Mommy), Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine), Marion Cotillard (Two Days, One Night) and so many others. Natalie Portman who won this year for Black Swan was incredible in that film, arguably the best she’s ever been, and that certainly made the loss for Williams easier to understand. But still as great as Portman is and she is great, Williams is just on another level with a performance full of tragic and beautiful moments (sometimes seconds apart) as a woman caught in the dissolution of her marriage. [Ryan]

Best Actor

Who Won – Colin Firth, The King’s Speech
Who Should’ve Won – James Franco, 127 Hours

Are you serious? James Franco plays a man who literally gets trapped between a rock and a hard place for 127 hours in agonizing pain and resorts to an unthinkable escape, and yet the Award goes to the portrayal of a British King with a speech impediment? Franco spent the entire film by himself, in a single setting, and wasn’t even able to move, yet his relentless determination proves the power of the human condition, inspiring everyone who watched it. In doing so, Franco demonstrated his ability to perform in a more serious role and earned an Independent Spirit Award in the process. The King’s Speech is one of those films that people forget about several years later, and while Colin Firth’s performance was sufficient, Franco’s is one that sticks with you over the years. [Dustin]

Best Director

Who Won – Tom Hooper, The King’s Speech
Who Should’ve Won – David Fincher, The Social Network

The Social Network isn’t David Fincher’s best work, not by a long stretch, he’s at his best on films like Se7en and Zodiac. But still it’s impossible to call any of the other nominees this year more deserving than the calculated, precise and damn near perfect work on display from Fincher here; it’s almost insulting to award it to anyone else in fact. Still, Tom Hooper and The King’s Speech rode a wave of late-season awards success and pulled the rug right out from under Fincher. It’s not that Hooper’s a totally undeserving winner, although between The Damned United and The King’s Speech I began to sour on his style, it’s that he’s undeserving in 2011. Aaron Sorkin wrote a great script, Jesse Eisenberg gave a career-best performance, but it’s Fincher who is the true MVP of The Social Network bringing his procedural leanings, unique style and oddly strong sense of humor to this story about the beginnings of Facebook or what could just as accurately be called a story of friends, betrayals, and human nature. Fincher’s presence at the helm can’t be undersold and is the biggest reason why this film is or will be considered a masterpiece by many. [Ryan]

Best Picture

Who Won – The King’s Speech
Who Should’ve Won – The Social Network

The Academy Awards have a penchant for looking back at history with the films they awards their top honors. The King’s Speech fits that mold, an ostensibly feel-good project that depicts a bygone era through the experience of a King and his speech therapist. It’s a pleasant film that for one Weinstein-fueled reason or another turned into the foregone conclusion of 2011’s Best Picture race. In awarding The King’s Speech, the Academy snubbed several films that will be remembered as various auteurs’ defining works, notably David Fincher’s The Social Network. “The Facebook Movie,” as many people dubbed the movie, retains the cold precision of Fincher’s other works but fills its story with damaged egos and big money squabbling. The script from Aaron Sorkin (which won Best Adapted Screenplay this year) features dialog delivered at the pace of a screwball comedy, while somehow communicating the intricacies of computer programming and web strategy. The Social Network is a distinctly modern movie, and it captures the rebirth of America’s tech boom without the benefit of hindsight. But far beyond that it’s a compelling story about human behavior, and the value of relationship vs. power. [Zach]

Set in the American South in 1865, two rogue Union soldiers (Sam Worthington and Kyle Soller) scout and pillage everything in their path as the Union army lags behind them. Setting the tone early, The Keeping Room opens with them brutally murdering two innocent women, as well as setting a horse-drawn coach on fire with yet another victim at the helm. Their next stop is a small farm-house belonging to two sisters and their African-American slave (Muna Otaru). With their parents gone, it’s up to Augusta (Brit Marling) and her sister Louise (Hailee Steinfeld) to protect their property, and more significantly themselves, at all costs.

Based on the screenplay featured in 2012’s Black List, Daniel Barber gives a rare perspective of the Civil War era, telling it from a female point of view. A time when woman were often left alone as the men fought. The Keeping Room is a disturbing but powerful watch at times, especially as the women’s experiences get more and more horrific during this old-fashioned home invasion. The film’s biggest names, Marling and Stenifeld, are both serviceable, if not a touch middling, in their performances, but it’s Otaru that impresses the most with her courageous and cheerful performance. The Keeping Room walks a fine line between unpredictable and questionable moments, ones that only tend to happen in movies, but its unique focal point makes for an intriguing watch nonetheless.

Following the success of Once, director John Carney was afforded a bigger budget and bigger stars to help him in making Begin Again, his follow-up to the eminently popular music-romance mashup. The result is a delightful, breezy movie that’ll please those big on cutesy dramedies with little patience for pretension. The film’s similarities to Once are indisputable, and it’ll be lucky to see half the success of its older brother, but Begin Again will nonetheless hook you with its catchy ditties and irresistible performances.

Carney unabashedly embraces schmaltz with his script, but it’s this uncompromising commitment to sweetness that pushes the film over the hump from sickly sentimental to utterly adorable. Set in New York City, the story revolves around a serendipitous encounter between Dan (Mark Ruffalo), a washed up former record exec, and Greta (Keira Knightly), an English singer-songwriter new to the city. Dan sees Gretta at a bar singing a song called “Step You Can’t Take Back”, a song whose lyrics mirror a near-suicidal experience he had just minutes before. It resonates with him so deeply all he can do is stand there wearing a dopey, drunken smile. Improbability be damned, the film wins us over with a sequence in which Dan imagines the unmanned instruments behind Geta springing to life, laying down the backing instrumentation to her mini pop gem. The film is full of enchanting moments like this, and they’re all as easy to buy into.

Dan’s just been fired from his own record label by his old partner and co-owner (Yasiin Bey), and Greta, a singer who embodies the independent artistry he founded the label on in the first place years ago, is his ticket to regaining control of his career and steering the label back in the right direction after years of relying on no-talent pretty pop stars. Along with a band of musicians plucked from the street, Dan and Greta record an indie pop album in the great outdoors of NYC–in Central Park, on row boats, on rooftops, in alleyways–living out the dreams of every coffee shop musician on earth. The songs, written by Gregg Alexander of “New Radicals” fame (“You only get what you give!”), are beautiful and catchy in the moment, but won’t stick to you like the gripping ballads of Once.

Ruffalo, with his messy beard and generally gruff appearance, is a perfectly likable slob, constantly charming with his self-deprecating, pull-no-punches humor. While Knightly is solid as the sometimes spunky, sometimes brooding Greta, but most impressive is her singing voice, which is actually quite beautiful. Steinfeld is the dark horse of the film, sharing wonderfully earnest father-daughter scenes with Ruffalo, with whom she has nice chemistry.

What adds to the film’s success is that it actually got a few surprises tucked away in its ostensibly predictable plot. While the obvious trajectory for the two protagonists would be for them to fall in love (Carney does toy with this possibility in a tasteful, lovely manner), things prove to be much more complicated than that. Dan’s had a heartbreaking split from his wife (Catherine Keener) and doesn’t know the meaning of “quality time” when it comes to his teenage daughter (Hailee Steinfeld), and Greta’s just been dumped by her boyfriend of five years (Maroon 5’s Adam Levine), who’s been acting like a dick since becoming a famous musician. (Levine’s facial hair grows throughout the movie to ridiculous lengths, the humor of which is addressed in witty banter between he and Knightly, a nice comedic touch.) Too often do likeminded rom-coms lose their luster due to rote plot mechanics, but Begin Again sidesteps this pitfall, with its characters winding up in slightly different, bittersweet places than you might expect.

Begin Again champions the principles of loyalty over money and realness over fakery, though it flirts with hokey Hollywood manipulativeness so often it almost shoots itself in the foot. It ultimately passes the authenticity test with flying colors, however, due to strong, heartfelt performances and well-written tunes that dovetail perfectly into and out of Carney’s script. It won’t change anyone’s life or be heralded as a modern romance classic, but Begin Again is a fine, good-natured movie perfectly tailored for light summer viewing.

Begin Again trailer

2013 was the year for Saturday Night Live alums to break out of their comedic roles to star in smaller indie dramas. First there was Will Forte who set aside his MacGruber impersonations for a more serious father and son road trip film in Alexander Payne’s Nebraska. In Hateship Loveship it’s Kristen Wiig who boldly steps outside of her wheelhouse of wise-cracking joker (Bridesmaids, Knocked Up) for a role in which she barely cracks a smile. Unfortunately, her transition is not quite as smooth or effortless as Forte’s, though the uninspiring material doesn’t do her any favors.

The story begins as a painfully shy personal caregiver named Johanna (Kristen Wiig) must find a new client after the elderly woman she was looking after passes away. She is referred to the McCauley household to look after a teenage girl named Sabitha (Hailee Steinfeld) who has lived with her grandfather (Nick Nolte) ever since her mother passed away. As expected from a rebellious teenager, Sabitha is standoffish towards Johanna from the beginning and eventually exploits the caregiver’s gullible and delicate personality.

From the moment Sabitha’s estranged father Ken (Guy Pearce) arrives on-screen the film attempts to subtly reveal his backstory of addiction problems, but the moments are so deliberately presented that they feel forced. In Johanna’s first interaction with Ken, she finds him stealing prescription pills for which he awkwardly asks her to look the other way. In the very next scene Johanna learns that Ken’s wife passed away and that Sabitha’s best friend is not allowed to get a ride from him. Immediately following that scene, Johanna overhears an argument where Ken is shouting, “It was an accident!” As if it wasn’t obvious enough that he killed his wife while driving under the influence, a gossiping bank teller informs Johanna that he spent time in prison for “what happened”. Each time Hateship Loveship tip-toes around the obvious, it becomes more and more cringe worthy.

It’s frustrating that so much exposition is given to characters other than its main star. It’s easy to see Wiig is a sexually repressed woman, in the film’s best scene she passionately makes out with herself in a mirror, but it’s never revealed why she acts the way she does. She comes off as a flat two-dimensional character incapable of expressing any emotions, despite enduring some colossal ups and downs. Even Pearce, who is normally excellent, has trouble making his out-of-control junkie character seem convincing.

Unfortunately, it’s pretty easy to tell that Hateship Loveship is adapted from a short story. There’s simply not enough material to call for a full-length feature, even the best moments were only mildly interesting and very short-lived. Not only does the film derive from a stifling script full of predictable outcomes, but it also dedicates too much time toward its minor subplots (like Nolte’s relationship with the bank teller), while skimming over important details like marriage and pregnancy. Perhaps Hateship Loveship would have been better suited as a short film, or maybe it should have just remained a short story.

Hateship Loveship trailer

Ender’s Game is Gavin Hood’s (X-Men Origins: Wolverine) adaptation of Orson Scott Card’s popular 1985 sci-fi novel about a gigantic, intergalactic war, the outcome of which relies on our eponymous hero, a pre-teen boy-genius. Hood’s film retains the thoughtfulness (however morally misguided) of the source material, homing in on the internal conflicts of the hero rather than relishing in the spectacle of war (though we’re given a satisfactory helping of that.) Hood’s is a heavy-handed thoughtfulness, though, as his symbolism lacks subtlety and finesse. Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity is this year’s thinking-man’s sci-fi epic; Ender’s Game is best suited for the thinking-boy.

The people of Earth are gathering their forces in preparation for the imminent invasion of an insectoid race of aliens called “Formics”, who fifty years prior had attempted to overtake the planet, killing millions in the process. Humanity endured, barely, all due to the heroic actions of one man: Mazer Rackham (Ben Kingsley, trying on an awful New Zealand accent.) With the enemy’s return looming, earth is in need of a new hero to command its armies, and it must be a child (apparently, only young minds are capable of commanding the impossibly complex fleets of high-tech spaceships.)

Enter Ender Wiggin (Asa Butterfield, Hugo), a 12-year-old with a vast intellect and a prodigious gift for tactical dominance. He’s a “Third”, the youngest of three siblings, in a time when parents are only allowed two children, maximum (a clear reference to China’s “one-child policy”.) Kids at school bully him for this, but his intellectual superiority allows him to defend himself with ease. He’s recruited by grisly military commander Colonel Graff (Harrison Ford, who’s less growl-y than usual, surprisingly) to attend Battle School, a military academy meant to groom the next Rackham that rejected both his violently demented brother, Peter (Jimmy Pinchak), and his warm-hearted sister, Valentine (Abigail Breslin, Little Miss Sunshine herself), who he loves to no end.

We spend most of our time in the futuristic chambers and barracks of the Battle School, which are about as generic as it gets, aesthetically (lots of metal panels, neon lights, inexplicable buttons scattered about randomly). Ender begins, like a lot of us did, as a social outcast in the school halls, but strategically-timed exhibitions of talent (in a quidditch-like laser tag anti-gravity game) and fearlessness (he gives Graff lip, right in front of the others, of course) win his classmates over, inch by inch, making allies out of bullies and adorers out of acquaintances.

Ender’s social maneuverings and foresightful power plays make for the best scenes in the film, and it would have been nice to have seen this interplay receive more attention and time. His classmates Petra (Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit), a sharpshooter quasi love interest, and Bean (Aramis Knight), a pint-sized sidekick, are likable confidants, while his nemesis, Bonzo (Moises Arias), the Napoleonic leader of the bully-brigade, is a one-dimensional, but fun-to-hate villain.

Butterfield fits the role nicely–he’s a believable wunderkind, and while he’s a good looking kid, he’s also not hunky tween-bait. It’s great to see a normal-looking young man leading big-budget series, especially when you consider the film is being distributed by Summit Entertainment, the same folks behind the Twilight series. He acts with his eyes, casting stares that are at once icy and compassionate, and he shows restraint at all times–this is crucial to the role, as Ender is constantly suppressing a war-within.

Despite Ender’s uncanny ability to win his classmates’ respect, Bonzo’s pubescent ego makes his disdain impossible to budge, and he eventually challenges Ender to a fist fight. Ender dispatches of Bonzo physically, in self defense, and hates himself for it. Must he resort to destroying his enemies, like his sinister older brother, Peter? The internal war of humanity versus merciless dominance rages inside Ender throughout the film; Graff’s intent is to wipe all empathy from Ender’s nature, molding him into a cold-hearted commander that’ll do anything to save the human race, while Valentine and his friends keep the kindness in his heart from being hushed.

Card has been criticized for years for the way his novel covets the intentions of the protagonist while excusing his actions, essentially vindicating the violence. Hood makes no attempt to embellish upon Card’s philosophy (or any other part of his story, for that matter), and in fact magnifies his mixed-up morality, constantly bludgeoning us over the head with Ender’s conflict of heart and mind. There are a lot of high-concept ideas swimming around underneath the surface that should be thought-provoking and relevant to our time (training kids for war with video games is a more interesting notion now than it was in the ’80s, when Card’s novel was first published), but Hood’s too enamored with picking apart Ender’s psyche to flesh them out.

The large-scale, shimmering, spaceship battle scenes that bookend the film are spectacular, and will have kids across the country leaping in the air and pumping their fists with excitement at the sci-fi action gloriousness (I’ll admit, my inner video-game-kid was giddy as can be.) The half-baked high-concept ideas floating around Ender’s Game are a tease, but this won’t bother those who just came to see a light show.

The Coen Brothers’ set themselves up for a challenge by deciding to do a re-make of a classic Western film, True Grit, that starred John Wayne. The Coens work again with Jeff Bridges from his role as The Dude in The Big Lebowski and give him the tough role of replacing John Wayne from the original True Grit (1969). But do not let the movie poster fool you, while Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon and Josh Brolin all do exceptional jobs, the true stand out is the young, less-known Hailee Steinfeld.

Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) is a fearless 14 year old farm girl whose father was recently murdered by Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin). She sets out to capture the killer with help from a U.S. Marshal who is notorious for being ruthless. Considered a man with “true grit” she hires Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges). Cogburn was recently on trial for being so careless with the amount of killings from his trigger-happy finger. She deems this a perfect candidate to help her seek redemption.

A Texas Ranger named LaBoeuf (Matt Damon) explains he would like to join Mattie and Cogburn in their effort to capture Chaney. Both LaBoeuf and Cogburn decide to try ditching the young girl to catch the killer and split the reward money between them. However, Mattie is forceful and stubborn, thus not easy to get rid of. The three set out on a journey filled with danger and unexpected circumstances.

It was not blatantly evident that True Grit was done by the Coen brothers. Typically, Ethan and Joel Coen put a quirky and irony touch to their films, however, they normally do original films that produce massive cult followings. This is time they decided to do a re-make of a classic John Wayne Western film. So do not go into it assuming they are picking up where they left off from No Country for Old Men, it has a lesser “Coen brothers” feel to it.

The cinematography in this film is phenomenal. True Grit looks like an authentic Western shot from the time period thanks to Roger Deakins. The buildings, clothing and even their language felt very true and accurate. The shots around the campfire were pleasantly done and the landscape is majestic.

The thing I enjoyed the most about True Grit was the acting performances. Jeff Bridges was born to play Westerns, he has the lazy, raspy voice that perfectly fits the role. This is something that proved true in the last film he did, Crazy Heart. The two roles were not all that different. Matt Damon did not seem too out of place as I expected he might. Hailee Steinfeld had the right amount of passion required for her role as a determined and stubborn lead character.

True Grit has a straightforward storyline that showcases beautiful landscapes and talented actors while proving that re-makes of classic Western’s are still possible. While I am not a huge fan of the Western genre, I feel like the Coen brothers paid some homage to the genre and did nothing over-the-top, probably for the better. However, I could see an even split between Coen lovers loving it or hating it, since it does not scream Coen. But if you like Western’s or just want to see a well-made one, you do not have to look further than True Grit.