Tag Archives: movies

Halftime Report: Winter’s Bone (2010)

Sara is big into reading and writing fiction like it's her job, because it is. That doesn't mean she isn't real as it gets. She loves real stuff like polka dots, indie rock, and underground fight clubs. I may have made some of that up. I don't know her that well. You can tell she didn't just write this in the third person because if she had written it there would have been less suspect sentence construction.
Sara

This is our first installment of Halftime Report, in which your good friends at SportsAlcohol.com revisit some of their favorite films from the first half of this decade.

Sitting down to watch Winter’s Bone for the first time since its theatrical release, I was most curious to see how Jennifer Lawrence’s breakout turn held up. In the years since she’s become a perennial awards favorite, star of multiple franchises, and America’s favorite “cool girl,” but her performance here is still bracing, alive with the sense of a major discovery. Playing Ree Dolly, a teenaged girl in the Ozarks in search of her fugitive, meth-cooking father, she exudes a toughness and sensitivity that she’s glossed up considerably as her profile has risen. I came away surprised by her anew and confident she’ll surprise me again soon.

The film itself remains one of the strongest of the new decade for the light it shines on the dark pockets of America, places most people would probably rather forget exist let alone spend any time in. But director Debra Granik demonstrates a meticulous attention to detail, from the detritus scattered over everyone’s yards to the secondhand clothes to the proper technique for skinning a squirrel, not to mention an unsparing but compassionate eye when it comes to the poverty the characters endure.

That same meticulousness is there in the plotting, too. At a brisk hour-forty, Winter’s Bone wastes no time, with a lean structure that recalls both ’40s noir and classical mythology. Tasked with ensuring her bailed-out father makes his court date or lose the family land, Ree’s dilemma could have become a by-the-numbers quest but Granik, and author Daniel Woodrell who wrote the source material, are interested in much more than that. This is a place of codes, not only of criminals or families, but between men and women too, and as Ree starts to navigate the world around her, the film becomes a fascinating inquiry into the power dynamics of this very particular corner of humanity. The women may answer the doors and the men may profess to have knowledge they’re not sharing, but it quickly becomes clear which gender is actually running the show and the climax plays almost like a grotesque initiation ceremony for Ree. But for most of the film she’s a young woman alone in an inhospitable environment; it’s a premise with inherent danger but Granik’s stripped down style refrains from pushing this too hard, preferring to showcase the starkness of the landscape and the emotiveness of Lawrence’s face rather than flashy technique. This was only Granik’s second feature film and while she did recently secure a release for a documentary, she’s yet to make a narrative follow-up. It’s one of the most disappointing, and damning, developments of recent years, and I hope to see another project from her before the decade closes out.

Let’s Talk about (Movie) Sex, Baby

Sara is big into reading and writing fiction like it's her job, because it is. That doesn't mean she isn't real as it gets. She loves real stuff like polka dots, indie rock, and underground fight clubs. I may have made some of that up. I don't know her that well. You can tell she didn't just write this in the third person because if she had written it there would have been less suspect sentence construction.
Sara

Perhaps you heard that a little, grey-ish movie got America’s collective panties in a twist over the weekend. Fifty Shades of Grey is going to make well over $100 million by the end of its first week in release, which, depending on how interested you are in seeing stars get busy, could be a blessing or a curse. Will the success of Fifty Shades herald a new era of mainstream erotic film? It’s too soon to say but I’m not sure I’d throw away my handcuff key just yet. The reviews I’ve read indicate that the film version of Fifty Shades tones down some of the book’s most unpleasant aspects, by which I mean Christian Grey’s emotionally abusive and controlling behavior, not the elementary-level spanking and binding that passes for BDSM in this series. And yet this is still just the latest in a long history of supposedly erotic entertainment that take a prurient interest in sex while being squeamish about actually engaging in it, let alone depicting it in a positive light — particularly when it comes to female pleasure. So, rather than explore what Grey may be getting wrong (which is already pretty well-covered territory, and also involves paying money to see Fifty Shades of Grey), I thought I’d take a look back through film history to see what, if anything, has gotten sex-positivity right. (Please note: for the sake of simplicity, I’m sticking mostly to American cinema, since there’s a plethora of sex-positive films from foreign countries [France is nothing if not sex-positive you guys].)
Continue reading Let’s Talk about (Movie) Sex, Baby

The SportsAlcohol.com Podcast: Jupiter Ascending

Jesse is a cofounder of SportsAlcohol.com even though he doesn't care for sports or alcohol. His favorite movie is Ron Howard's The Paper. I think. This is what happens when you don't write your own bio. I know for sure likes pie.
Jesse

The Wachowskis’ new movie Jupiter Ascending has already been tagged a critical and financial disaster — an expensive boondoggle to rival the other expensive boondoggles the writing/directing/producing siblings have worked on over the years. Join Marisa, Nathaniel, Jonathan, Ben, and Jesse for an instant appraisal and re-appraisal of Jupiter Ascending, which we saw in IMAX 3D and then talked about in great detail. You’ll hear comparisons to The Matrix as well as Blackhat and Mortdecai, appreciation of the fine art of dog-men and hench-lizards, analysis of the movie’s plot from a real-life businessman, evaluation of the movie’s Chicago locations from a native Chicagoan, AND MORE! Spoilers, crosstalk, and enthusiastic nerdery abound.

How To Listen

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  • I don’t really know what Stitcher is, but we are also on Stitcher.
  • You can download the mp3 of this episode directly here.
  • If you are lazy, like sci-fi movies that don’t bother to create winged lizard people, you can listen in the player below.

BEST MOVIES OF 2014 RECAP!

Gripes
There are contrarians, there are iconoclasts, and then there is SportsAlcohol.com co-founder Marisa. A contraiclast? Her favorite Springsteen album came out this century, so she is basically a controversy machine.

Also, she is totally not a dude!
Marisa
Gripes

Last year (2014) was a good year for movies.

We wrote about 14 of our very favorites here, including not-so-usual suspects like We Are the Best! and Obvious Child.

Our very favorite movie of the year, The Grand Budapest Hotel, deserved its own write-up.

The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies was never in contention for our Best Of list, but it does have the most variety in animals that are ridden, so we did a podcast about it.

The 15 Best Movies of 2014

Jesse is a cofounder of SportsAlcohol.com even though he doesn't care for sports or alcohol. His favorite movie is Ron Howard's The Paper. I think. This is what happens when you don't write your own bio. I know for sure likes pie.
Jesse

Finishing up our first ever year-in-review coverage for our first ever year in existence, we have for your approval or disdain.first SportsAlcohol.com list of the year’s best movies: The Top 15 Best Movies of 2014.

Fifteen, because ten was too few this year. Fifteen, because some of us were narrowing down our individual ballots from lists of thirty or forty. Fifteen, because it never hurts to offer more reasons to be hopeful about the future. Marisa, Sara, Nathaniel, Maggie, and Jesse all sent in ballots, and a lot of great and diverse choices didn’t quite make our final list. But I think we explain pretty well why these movies went the distance. So let’s quit preambling and just get to it:
Continue reading The 15 Best Movies of 2014

Extracurricular Activities 2014

Jesse is a cofounder of SportsAlcohol.com even though he doesn't care for sports or alcohol. His favorite movie is Ron Howard's The Paper. I think. This is what happens when you don't write your own bio. I know for sure likes pie.
Jesse

This week, SportsAlcohol.com hasn’t been publishing much new content because we’re all on a long-deserved vacation. Just kidding: we’re watching movies so that we can vote on the best of the year. But if you love that rich, hearty SportsAlcohol.com flavor, you may be interested to know that our various writers have also written other things. Yes, it’s true! So while you wait for us to return, feel free to peruse our other worthwhile writing projects.

Continue reading Extracurricular Activities 2014

The SportsAlcohol Podcast: Top 10 Summer Movies of 1994

Rob is one of the founders of SportsAlcohol.com. He is a recent first time home buyer and it's all he talks about. Said home is in his hometown in Upstate New York. He never moved away and works a job to pay for his mortgage and crippling chicken wing addiction. He is not what you would call a go-getter. This may explain the general tone of SportsAlcohol.com.
Rob

Like all the hot websites, SportsAlcohol.com is all about celebrating meaningless anniversaries. Join us as Rob and Jesse attempt to cash in by looking twenty years back in time at the top ten movies of the summer of 1994.

You can subscribe to our podcast using the rss feed. You can download the mp3 of this episode directly here. You can also listen in  the player below.