Bovie Movie

Neither Jeff Bridges’s quiet authority nor the “in-your-face” dramatics of a killer storm can lift director Ridley Scott’s attempt to remake Top Gun (which was directed by brother Tony) at sea. School-ship skipper Bridges gathers a group of undisciplined students aboard the brigantine Albatross for a voyage of self-discovery to South America. Unfortunately, this undemanding but entertaining rite-of-passage adventure, based on a true story, takes a sudden lurch into disaster with the arrival of the storm of the title. It may be a tour de force set piece, but it represents such an abrupt change of tone that the movie’s credibility is almost blown away in the process. 

After her mother dies from a methadone overdose, Jeliza-Rose is taken from the big city to a rural farmhouse by her father. As she tries to settle into a new life in a house her father had purchased for his now-deceased mother, Jeliza-Rose’s attempts to deal with what’s happened result in increasingly odd behavior, as she begins to communicate mainly with her bodiless Barbie doll heads and Dell, a neighborhood woman who always wears a beekeeper’s veil.

In this bungled hi-tech thriller, Jeff Bridges plays a bomb disposal expert with Tommy Lee Jones as his former colleague who wants Bridges blown away. To show us just why he does, the film takes us back to Northern Ireland (always a risky subject for Hollywood). This aspect of the movie is neither interesting nor particularly relevant to the main thrust, which aims to deliver a tense sequence every 15 minutes or so. Bridges and Jones can make nothing of the thinly written, not to say tasteless, material, and Lloyd Bridges and Forest Whitaker struggle in badly realised roles. 

Small-town America gets down ‘n’ dirty in the most sweetly naive way in this good-natured comedy from debuting director Michael Traeger. In this sketchy exploration of middle-aged angst lifted by a cheeky veneer, Jeff Bridges is in “dude-ish” mode again as the insecure, divorced dad who’s desperate to compete financially with his son’s wealthy stepfather. Suddenly hitting on a supposedly perfect solution, he persuades his nerdy friends to help shoot a locally recruited porn flick. Of course, everything that could go wrong invariably does, unleashing bursts of goofy humour as the cast and crew repeatedly demonstrate their professional inappropriateness. While the characters are one-note stereotypes, the performances are warmly engaging, with a deadpan Joe Pantoliano a standout as the project’s inept writer/director. The quirkiness degenerates into sugary sentiment in the final third of the movie, but overall this is still a daftly likeable romp. 

Against the backdrop of a nation on the brink of revolution, Uncle Sweetheart (John Goodman) and Nina Veronica (Jessica Lange) are slimy promoters planning a benefit concert. They desire the services of legendary singer Jack Fate (Bob Dylan), and soon Fate is sprung from jail. A rock journalist (played by Jeff Bridges) investigates the concert, attempting to determine just who will benefit. Revolution may be raging outside the arena, but Jack Fate and the benefit concert play on as planned.

After tackling the competitive world of high-school cheerleading in Bring It On, screenwriter Jessica Bendinger turns her attention to the cut-throat arena of teen gymnastics for this, her directorial debut. Jeff Bridges plays the hard-nosed head coach of a top gymnastics academy; Missy Peregrym the emotionally damaged but gifted teenager who’s sent there after ending up in front of a judge on a charge of criminal damage. There’s no prize for guessing that the collision of their personalities proves to be a learning experience for both. If there’s one thing Stick It isn’t, it’s original. However, the gymnastics sequences are spectacular and there’s an interesting subplot about the unfairness of competition judging. And Bridges is always worth watching, even when, as here, he looks like he’s only working to pay his mortgage. 

While not in the same class as the Coen brothers’ previous film, Fargo, this goofy tribute to Raymond Chandler and film noir still comes gift-wrapped with enough good lines, ingenious plot twists and eccentric characters to satisfy their dedicated army of fans. There are, in fact, two Lebowskis: one is Jeff Bridges, who calls himself “the Dude”, an ageing hippy who becomes embroiled in the kidnapping of the other Lebowski’s wife, aided and abetted by tenpin bowling chum John Goodman. What follows is an insane labyrinth of plot and counterplot that encompasses the drug and porn underworlds, Busby Berkeley fantasies and bath time with a savage marmot. It’s a distinctive, crazy treat, decked out with a trademark film noir narration and marvellous performances from Bridges, the toothsome and taciturn Steve Buscemi and Coen regular Goodman, who based his Vietnam-veteran character on the bear-like writer/director John Milius.