“3 tours in Iraq but no bailout for people like us,” reads an eerily accurate graffiti tag on a West Texas building in the opening shot of “Hell or High Water.” The scrawled phrase of anger provides a fitting epigraph for the events to follow. Within the framework of the Western sheriff and bank robber folklore, screenwriter Taylor Sheridan finds the ideal setting for an examination of post-recession fallout and the remnants of small towns left behind by the behemoth economic forces of urbanization and globalization.
Anxiety, even anger, over forces out of these humble folks’ control seeps into virtually every corner of the film. Jeff Bridges’ Marcus Hamilton, a graying Texas Ranger, receives a Mandatory Retirement Notice in his first scene. A video surveillance system fails to capture a bank robbery because the management team has yet to fully make the change from VCR to digital recording. A farmer herding animals across a road frustratedly exclaims, “Wonder why my kids won’t do this shit for a living?” Everything in this provincial world seems on the verge of collapse at an accelerating rate.
And in the midst of all this turmoil, two estranged brothers unite for a spree of low-impact bank heists to pay off the ludicrous reverse mortgage their family was swindled into taking out on their farm. This “rob the rich” mentality has been rippling through American cinema in the years following the Occupy movement, but scarcely has it felt more poignant or less politically charged as it does in “Hell or High Water.” In a racket where bankers – those who men who “look like [they] could foreclose on a house” – rig the rules in their own interest, what hope is there besides throwing the system into disarray and tipping the scales in one’s own favor?
If there was any doubt that we’re reaching the point of supersaturation with dystopian YA adaptations, “
It looks like Halloween came early (or two months late).
Yet even now, in a generation of overexposure to computers, the movie still doesn’t make sense! All I could discern from that plot was that Jeff Bridges’ Kevin Flynn invented the TRON program, his intellectual property was stolen, and he beams himself inside the program to prove his creation. From then on, it’s a total mess of seemingly unconnected events inside the computer that have little going for them other than the retro ’80s appeal.
Unlike “The Fighter,” which seems Academy-appealing on premise, “True Grit” is appealing on pedigree. It comes courtesy of the Coen Brothers, who each have three statues thanks to their work producing, writing, and directing “No Country for Old Men” in 2007 and another for writing “Fargo” in 1996. Including the nominations they have received for editing under the alias Roderick Jaynes, Joel and Ethan Coen have each received a whopping 
Bridges isn’t the only threat the movie has in the acting categories. Two-time nominee Matt Damon looks to make an entry into the Best Supporting Actor category, as does prior nominee Josh Brolin. The race still has no clear frontrunner (hard to believe), and either of them with enough buzz when the movie screens around Thanksgiving could lead to a major shake-up.
Brolin, on the other hand, has only recently emerged as an actor to be reckoned with thanks to roles in “Milk,” which earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor, and “No Country for Old Men,” the Coen Brothers’ Best Picture winner which earned him a SAG Award for Best Ensemble. He has a more volatile personality, and this could harm him. In “True Grit,” he plays the outlaw Tom Chaney, another villainous role that he has gained so much notoriety playing. Unlike the Best Supporting Actress category where double nominees from the same film are common (see the 
But perhaps the movie’s biggest wild card is the spunky teenaged heroine Mattie Ross, played by newcome Hailee Steinfeld. She will be a more central figure in the 2010 version of “True Grit” since the novel focused more on her perspective. Still, Steinfeld will likely be campaigned for Best Supporting Actress where the field is thin and the category is more hospitable territory for young actresses. In the past decade, 13-year-old Saiorse Ronan and 10-year-old Abigail Breslin have been nominees for “Atonement” and “Little Miss Sunshine,” respectively. The category has also seen pint-sized winners like Tatum O’Neal for “Paper Moon” at the age of 10 and Anna Paquin for “The Piano” at the age of 11.
At the Screen Actors Guild Awards, they call it “Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role.” At the Golden Globe Awards, they call it “Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture.” But at the Academy Awards, the most celebrated show of them all, they call it simply “Best Actor.”
I set a lofty goal to see every Academy Award-nominated performance of the ’00s by the final ceremony of the decade. I’m not going to reach this goal, but along the way, I have seen some great movies and great acting. This week’s “F.I.L.M.” (First-Class, Independent Little-Known Movie – refresher on the acronym), “The Contender,” is one of those movies.
Marshall and the Movies 
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