BadAss Movies Day 2: Winter's Bone

Don’t let the boring title or shitty poster fool you, this is an amazing modern day noir set in the Ozarks with some of the best performances of the year.

Why its badass:

-A great adaptation of Daniel Woodrell’s novel by Debra Granik and Anne Rosellini.

-Jennifer Lawrence. Somehow she manages to be tough, maternal, badass and naïve all at the same time.

-John Hawkes' incredible performance as Teardrop. Nobody doubted his range, from Me and You and Everyone We Know to Deadwood to (of course) Eastbound and Down but his transformation here is so impressive its like he’s been getting into character for forty years.

-A banjo score!

-The beautiful bleak cinematography.

- Her reaching in for the second hand (you’ll know it when you see it).

Cinematic Relatives: Brick, Fargo

Check out BadAss Movies Day 1 here.

Two green movies and Thor

Here’s a quick breakdown of the upcoming superhero releases based solely on trailers and hearsay.

3. Green Hornet: Stephen Chow directing a Hollywood superhero movie starring Seth Rogen with Nicolas Cage as a supervillain, coming out Summer 2010? Awesome!

Then Chow drops 0ut, to be replaced by Michel Gondry? Okay, still cool.

Then Nicolas Cage drops out, replaced by Christoph Waltz? Still fine.

Then its pushed to dump-month January? Uh-oh.

The trailer is a bland-a-thon? I’m getting concerned.

And their post-converting it to 3D? Maybe it’ll be better than The Last Airbender.

Pros: The writers. Director. Hopefully practical effects.

Cons: Cameron Diaz as a plucky new secretary. Isn’t she 40?

2. Green Lantern: A dumb-looking purple alien gives Ryan Reynolds a ring and he gets a new CGI body that can project ‘magic fist.’

Isn’t Green Lantern the guy who’s allergic to yellow?

Pros: Ryan Reynolds seems very nice when not buried underground.

Cons: From the director of Vertical Limit!

1. Thor. Check out Anthony Hopkins' golden eyepatch. Then remember this is from Kenneth Branagh the director of the clusterfuck that is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. I cannot wait for this movie b/c everything here screams high-profile train-wreck.

I will not look away.

Pros: Natalie Portman is so hot its dumb.

Cons: It’s Thor. There are no cons.

Cautious Optimism, 'Cowboys vs Aliens' be thy name

The Cowboys vs Aliens trailers hits the web on wednesday and i can't wait. I love westerns, alien invasion movies, genre mash-ups, explosions, director Jon Favreau and the cast. So what could go wrong? Well like a beaten dog, I've at least learned to taper my expectations. Here's why:

5. Wild Wild West: A Mega-budget summer tentpole that combines westerns, science-fiction, and 'comedy'? We've seen this before. Wild Wild West effectively killed Barry Sonnenfeld's (previously impressive) big screen career. The only things to walk away from this with any dignity were the theme song (which i can still sing) and a giant mechanical spider.

4. Jonah Hex: A mega-budget summer tentpole that combines westerns, science fiction and 'comedy'? We've seen this before. Jonah Hex effectively killed Jimmy Hayward's (never impressive) big screen career. The only things to walk away from this movie unscathed were the Mastodon score and Megan Fox's cleavage (see previous).

3. Iron Man 2: Jon Faveau's superhero sequel made a ton of money but anyone who argues its a good movie is lying through their teeth.

It's a boring mess filled with tedious action sequences, an incoherent story, f/x for f/x sake, and wall-to-wall one-liners that let us know the characters care just as little as the audience does. It's better than Wild Wild West or Jonah Hex, but then again so are a lot of things I don't want to stare at for two hours.

2. Vs movies: Freddy, Jason, Alien, Predator, Santa Claus, Martians, The People, Larry Flynt. The bar is not as high as we'd like it to be.

1. Space Cowboys: What if this is just a remake of a shitty Clint Eastwood movie?