Tag: Jeff Bridges

Sci Fi · Uncategorized

Starman

LizLockeLeave a comment
Image credit: Starman, 1984

If typical romantic fare has you rolling your eyes with boredom, and you just cannot stand to see How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days show up in your watch suggestions yet again*, then maybe you’re ready for John Carpenter’s Starman (Disc/Download), a bonkers sci-fi romance featuring a naked Jeff Bridges, a creepy CGI baby, and love on the run.

Starring Karen Allen as the recently widowed Jenny Hayden, and Jeff Bridges as the alien who crashes into her Wisconsin backyard and adopts the physical body of her recently deceased husband (thanks to an old photo album, a lock of his baby hair, and some truly bizarre special effects), this movie has similar visual elements to other campy Carpenter classics like They Live, The Thing, and The Fog, but it also manages to tell a moving story about grief and connection. Although I laugh pretty hard at Bridges’ halting alien voice, my heart twists when Jenny is forced to reckon with this terrifying stranger who happens to look exactly like the love of her life, as though even the memories of his face and smile aren’t sacred anymore. Carpenter may be known for horror, but honestly, I can’t think of anything scarier than the place our heroine inhabits at the start of this movie.

A fun element to this story is the collection of “energy balls” our alien uses to start fires, heal the dead or dying, and send interplanetary messages. Basically, any task you would need a bit of magic to accomplish. I don’t have any of these silver balls myself, but I do have a bottle of Fireball Whiskey. While watching Starman, make a little magic of your own with this Fireball Old Fashioned.

Fireball Old Fashioned

1 part Fireball Whisky

1 part Bourbon

2-3 Dashes Angostura Bitters

½ tsp Sugar

Orange twist

Muddle sugar with bitters in the bottom of a glass. Add ice, bourbon, and Fireball, and stir to combine. Twist the orange peel over the glass, then drop in.

This movie definitely has some soap opera elements to it, which is probably why I like it so much. Yes, there are the typical scary government guys chasing Bridges to a crater in Arizona, and the standard bumbling scientist who realizes it’s better to let the interplanetary traveler go home than see him get hurt on Earth, but there’s also a terrific pie scene and a secret alien baby that may or may not turn up in a sequel. It’s been forty years, and I am ready for that sequel. Cheers!

*Note to Netflix/Hulu/Amazon, et al.: I do not want to watch How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. It’s never going to happen, stop trying to make it happen.

Dramas

The Door in the Floor

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the-door-in-the-floor
Image credit: The Door in the Floor, 2004

I’d like to give a shout-out to summer beach read season, or what I like to call, “that time of year magazines say it’s acceptable to read the books I actually read all year long.” One book that has found its way to the bottom of my beach bag multiple times is the John Irving classic A Widow for One Year, set in a Long Island seaside hamlet thick with privets and scandals. Although several Irving books have been adapted to the big screen, this one, and its film adaptation The Door in the Floor (DVD/Download), will always be my favorite.

Although this movie only covers the first half of the novel, it does this small bit exceptionally well. With Jeff Bridges as eccentric children’s book author Ted Cole, and Kim Basinger as his damaged wife Marion, the performances in this film are gut-wrenching and powerful. After losing their teenage sons in a tragic car accident, the couple struggle with being parents again to their young daughter Ruth (played by Elle Fanning). Marion starts sleeping with Eddie the intern, Ted continues sleeping with everyone, and little Ruth accepts it all with unnerving maturity. There is sand, there are waves, and there are cedar-shingled mansions. But there are also secrets, monsters, and stories best told in the dark.

For the record, Ted Cole is my hero. The man waltzes around in caftans (even on the squash court!) and a Van Gogh straw hat, just not giving a f*ck. His glass is always full, his barbs always the sharpest, and his squid-ink drawings like something out of a mental hospital. Enjoy this Ted Cole-inspired cocktail while you fantasize about afternoons dozing in an Adirondack chair, and nights drunk-peddling your bicycle home. While watching The Door in the Floor, I recommend drinking an Ink Well.

Ink Well

2 oz Dark Spiced Rum

1 oz Chambord

¾ oz Simple Syrup

¾ oz Fresh lemon juice

½ oz egg white

1 tsp activated charcoal

2-3 dashes Angostura bitters

In a cocktail shaker, add all ingredients except bitters, and give it a dry shake. Add ice, then shake vigorously until egg white is foamy. Strain into a glass, and garnish with bitters.

I have incredibly high hopes that there will one day be a film sequel covering the second half of the book, wherein young Ruth is grown up and experiences the sound of someone trying not to make a sound. Jeff Bridges- you better stick around for that one. It’s a doozy of a story. Cheers!

Action/Adventure/Heist · Dramas

Hell or High Water

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Hell or High Water
Image credit: Hell or High Water, 2016

While I was prepping my Top Five Films of 2017 list this year, I took a look back at the 2016 list to see which of those films had the most staying power. I’m definitely guilty of getting swept up in awards season hype, lauding a film then forgetting all about it a month later (cough *Argo* cough). Of any pick from that 2016 list, the one with the best legs is definitely Hell or High Water (DVD/Download). I have watched this movie with a salty Navy vet, several times with my husband, once with my cat-loving mother-in-law, and yet again with my dad (semi-professional “shoot em up” connoisseur). Five stars from everyone, and I’m still not sick of it. I think this one is here to stay.

Hell or High Water is one of those rare films that spans multiple genres, but does it so well that it doesn’t get pigeonholed into any one of them. It could be considered a Western, or a heist film, or even an art-house drama. The story of two brothers robbing small West Texas banks to save the family farm sounds very simplistic, but Taylor Sheridan’s clever script turns this into a complex masterpiece with not a single loose thread left hanging. Chris Pine (sporting the best mustache since Clark Gable swept Vivienne Leigh off her feet) is a revelation as the quiet, thoughtful brother trying to atone for past sins and pull his family out of poverty, and Ben Foster turns in some of his best work as the reckless ex-con who you know right away is too wild to walk away from this unscathed. Jeff Bridges elevates the stereotypical “I’m too old for this shit” Texas Ranger character into an homage to Western cinema heroes- his hotel blanket draped around his shoulders like a serape cape fit for a superhero.

I could get fancy with a Texas-inspired cocktail, but that’s not what this film is about. It’s about average folks and the lengths they’ll go to protect what’s theirs. It’s a movie about sipping a beer on a ramshackle porch, wondering if there’s even such a thing as right and wrong anymore. While watching Hell or High Water, I recommend getting a Shiner Family Reunion 6-pack, maybe a shot of whiskey, and kicking back with a damn good movie.

Shiner beer

I tend to love films about sympathetic criminals because I think there’s a little part of all of us that can relate to good people doing bad things. Like Tom Ripley, I want the Howard brothers to get away with it. Or at the very least, go out in a blaze of glory. The great thing about Hell or High Water is that we get both, but it still leaves you guessing until the very end. Cheers!