Thumbnail Movie Reviews from 2010

[This blog entry was originally part of a piece from January 2011.]

I thought Winter’s Bone was the best movie I saw all year. It won the 2010 Sundance Grand Jury Prize. I’m kind of partial to Southern, hillbilly noir, or “country noir.” Read the book, Winter’s Bone recently, too. Thought it was great stuff. Raw, lean prose, as they say. A new voice in literature you’ve never heard of, Daniel Woodrell, from the Missouri Ozarks. I look forward to the re-release of his hard to find novels in April. I hope the movie does well at the Academy Awards this year. I loved the uncle character, Teardrop. People tended to give him wide berth. He’s like the crazy-assed country boy who grew up around guns and is not afraid to bust some caps. I’ve known a few. Like a quiet, subdued, country folk equivalent of some psychotic, Joe Pesci character in a Martin Scorsese mob movie.

I watched Howl and thought it was great. It brought back a lot of memories of my youth when I wanted so badly to be a poet like Arthur Rimbaud, Allen Ginsberg… or a Richard Brautigan or Patti Smith… or Bob Dylan, the demigod.

I liked The Killer Inside Me, though I thought it was really creepy, as intended, I guess. It worked. It was difficult to watch at times because of the graphic violence toward women. Read up on Jim Thompson, too. Didn’t know he was a local Ft. Worth boy, though an Okie. Read his bio, Savage Art, by Robert Polito. More hillbilly noir, I suppose, created back in the 1940’s and 1950’s at the dawn of the whole film noir movement. There were some crazy tidbits of information about Texas and Oklahoma characters from the Great Depression era and ensuing years.

Didn’t get to see as many movies as I would have liked in 2010. Scant time available for such luxuries. Hope to see more in 2011. Looking under rocks for some seed money. Jonesing to make another movie. I have to have one more movie in me before I die. Jacksboro Highway? Dead or in Huntsville? A Girl and a Gun? Warboots? Knock on wood….