Film Review: Begin Again (2013)

Writer-director John Carney had a surprise hit in 2007 with his lovely, lo-fi romance Once, in which a man and a woman (Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová) fall in love while composing music together. It was a thoroughly charming and winning story - one that was given extra resonance when the two leads fell in love in real life and toured together as The Swell Season - that felt like a scruffy, raw debut album, the kind that people fall madly in love to. If Once was Carney's "Funeral", then Begin Again is his "Neon Bible"; a slicker, more polished sophomore effort that has much the same romanticism that its predecessor had, but lacks that sense of intimacy.

Film Review: True Grit (2010)

In Henry Hathaway's 1969 version of True Grit, Deputy Marshal Reuben "Rooster" J. Cogburn, played by John Wayne in an Oscar-winning performance, is introduced to the audience when he helps unload a group of prisoners from the back of wagon. When one stubborn prisoner refuses to move, Cogburn knocks him off, to the delight of the crowd that has gathered to watch. It's a fun scene that sets up Rooster as a prickly rogue, but one who gets the job done. In the new adaptation of Charles Portis' novel, Rooster (Jeff Bridges) is introduced when Mattie Ross (Haillee Steinfeld) finds him occupying an outhouse, having relocated there from a saloon, and he drunkenly informs Mattie that he will be in there some time.