Peter Rainer

(2012-04-27 20:37:15)

Bridges draws us deeply inside Blake's moment-to-moment heartbreaks. He makes us root for him as we would root for a dear friend. Ultimately, his triumphs become our own.

Kyle Smith

(2012-04-27 14:32:03)

It's one of the year's best, most deeply felt films.

capone666

(2012-04-26 18:55:41)

The Vidiot Reviews...

Crazy HeartWhen a heart goes crazy, things can get a bit strange. For instance, itcould only pump blood to your buttocks, or make you fall madly in lovewith an electric fence. And while the crazy heart in this drama doesn'tcause its owner to become an objectum sexual, it does cause him to leadan unsavory lifestyle.When a down-and-out, alcoholic country singer, Bad Blake (JeffBridges), is interviewed by a journalist (Maggie Gyllenhaal) about hisonce illustrious singing career, he finds himself falling in love withher. However, when his hard-drinking lifestyle becomes hazardous to herand her young son, Bad Blake must reassess his priorities.Turning in one of the best performances of his career, Jeff Bridgesbrings the volatile vocalist and his music to vivid vivacity.Unfortunately, when you remove alcohol from the veins of a countrysinger, all you're left with is an inbred racist. (Green Light)

Ron Wilkinson

(2012-04-25 23:07:29)

Charles Bukowski morphs into Dewey Cox in this denunciation of the evils of paralyzing drunkenness.

moviemanMA

(2012-04-24 22:46:03)

Whiskey and women; the life of a country music star

Crazy Heart stars Jeff Bridges as Bad Blake, a country music singerwhose glory days are behind him. He plays bars and bowling alleys,drinking and smoking his way into oblivion. At a two day stint in SantaFe, Bad meets Jean (Maggie Gyllenhaal), an young reporter trying findher story. Just like a country song, the two fall for each other.Not all is well in the life of Bad Blake. His drinking and smokinghabits have him on the ropes and he is always reminded of his formerapprentice, Tommy Sweet (Colin Farrell), and how successful he is. Thetwo had a falling out and went their separate ways. Every day seems tobe a reminder of what was and what could be, but might not be. Insteadof sitting down and writing some more tunes, Bad finds solace in hisnever empty bottle of booze.Bad gets a shot at something special both in his career and in his lovelife. Jean offers some stability and Bad gets an offer to perform asTommy's opening act, a sort of slap in the face to Bad, but it's apaycheck. He and Tommy reminisce about the old days of singing anddrinking. With Jean and her young son, Bad finds a nice home, at leastfor a little while. Things go from better to worse when his drinkinggets him in more trouble than he can chew.The story is a reminder of embracing the moment. Bad goes through hislife mostly or partially intoxicated, missing a lot of good things andpassing up on some potentially beneficial situations. Bridges gives hisbest performance in years. He is almost a serious Jeff Lebowski, acharacter he made famous in the 90s in Joel and Ethan Coen's The BigLebowski. We sympathize with Bad Blake, though we never really feelsorry because it is his own fault really for being the way he is.Gyllenhaal gives a solid performance, as do Farrell in Robert Duvall,both taking smaller less significant roles. The real winner of thismovie isn't the acting (though without Bridges, the film would not benearly as good). The far and away best part of this movie is the music.Original tracks by T-Bone Burnett, Stephen Bruton, Ryan Bingham, GaryNicholson, and Greg Brown. In These men put together a fantasticcollection of well written and musically enticing tracks. The themefrom the film entitled "The Weary Kind" is one of the best originalsongs I've heard in a long time. Bingham and Burnett wrote it andBingham performs it. His voice is crackly, as if he has been singingfor 30 years or so. In reality Bingham is in his late 20s, but hisvoice is that of a veteran singer. It's a beautiful song and a perfectaddition to the film. Other tracks like "Fallin and Flying", "Gone,gone, gone" and "Hold on you" are fantastic.Overall a very good film. Bridges takes care of the acting portion andthe rest is taken over by the music. Not that the rest of the film isparticularly weak, I just think that those two pieces of the film arethe strongest and stand out the most. It's a great story that peoplewho are fans of country music will devour. I hope those people outthere opposed to country music will give this film a shot. It will bewell worth it.

A.O. Scott

(2012-04-24 18:30:07)

Crazy Heart, written and directed by Scott Cooper, is a small movie perfectly scaled to the big performance at its center.

Matthew Turner

(2012-04-19 20:01:37)

Crazy Heart is a superbly directed, powerfully emotional drama with an unmissable central performance from Jeff Bridges.

3xHCCH

(2012-04-19 15:00:29)

Story is Old Hat, But Jeff Bridges Shines

Back in 1983, Robert Duvall played an alcoholic country singer whoselife was changed by a loving woman in "Tender Mercies". He won an Oscarfor Best Actor for that performance. Tess Harper who played his loveinterest got nominated for Best Supporting Actress. Now, 16 yearslater, Jeff Bridges is poised to win the same Oscar for playing asimilar character in a basically similar story. And Maggie Gyllenhaalwho plays the love interest also earns a Best Supporting Actress nod.While watching this film, everything about it felt old and predictable.You simply know you had seen it all before. (In fact, just last year,Mickey Rourke just did the same washed-up star turn but in a moreexciting arena in "The Wrestler". Coincidentally, Marisa Tomei whoplayed his love interest also got nominated for Best SupportingActress.) The long running time of two hours with repetitive sequencesdid not help at all. The storytelling was slow and tedious. I am notreally a fan of country music, but the good catchy songs in this moviekept the movie afloat.The real reason to watch "Crazy Heart" though is to see Jeff Bridgeslive his role of "Bad" Blake. It seemed so real. I also admire hiscountry singing voice -- very energetic, heartfelt and on-tune, evenwhen he was singing drunk. Jeff Bridges had been Oscar nominated fourtimes before: "The Last Picture Show" (supporting, 1971), "Thunderboltand Lightfoot" (supporting, 1974), "Starman" (1984), and "TheContender" (2000). While his competition this year is also tight, asMorgan Freeman ("Invictus") and Jeremy Renner ("The Hurt Locker") alsosuccessfully inhabited their respective roles, all signs point that theOscar for Best Actor is Jeff Bridges' to lose.The standout in the supporting cast for me is not really MaggieGyllenhaal, who did not really do anything different or innovative. ButColin Farrell is a revelation in his portrayal of Bad Blake's protГѓВ©gГѓВ©turned current star Tommy Sweet. His thick Irish accent all butdisappeared in his effective Southern drawl. His country singing styleis also very good. It is also notable that Robert Duvall also appearshere as Bad Blake's loyal fan and friend.

Kurt Loder

(2012-04-08 19:41:09)

As the heavily dented Bad Blake, Bridges carries every scene in the picture with a performance that seems to materialize out of pure feeling.

Rockwell_Fassbender

(2012-04-08 00:21:05)

Decent performances but very poorly written.

I kept wanting to really like this film and every now and then therewould be a scene or two that struck an emotional chord with me, butsomething about it always felt off. I thought both Jeff Bridges andMaggie Gyllenhaal were solid on their own (I wouldn't nominate eitherpersonally but I don't mind their nominations) but that relationshipfelt so strained to me. I didn't understand the motivation of it atall, particularly from her character.One minute she seemed like this flighty reporter girl and the next shewas screaming at him and talking about all the mistakes she made.Itfelt like her character was written kind of all over the place and thenbrought around in order to bring out the most dramatic moments for Bad.I don't know, it all felt off to me, on that aspect. Plus really, howmany times do we need to see a mother give her child to a low-lifetrying to get by and have them lose the kid? The second that scenestarted you knew where it was going. That had me rolling my eyes a lot.I think the two of them make up for a lot of the flaws in the scriptand I liked some of the aspects of studying him as a character, but alot of it felt too convenient (all of these things happening in hislife so quickly) and like they didn't dig deep enough into the darknessof the character or his addiction. It really didn't work for me.

(2012-03-31 12:14:52)

Hollywood Twelve Step

There are two huge implausibilities that ruin this thin script. The smaller implausibility is that the sensitive, appealing young woman played by Maggie Gyllenhall would swoon in the company of the surly, paunchy, scuzzy whiskey-stinking has-been country singer acted by Jeff Bridges, whose portrayal of "Bad Blake" would be aptly convincing for a street drunk refusing to spend a night in a shelter, but is 'over the top' for a semi-functional dude even as wasted as Bad. The larger implausibility is Bad's sketchily-scripted miraculous recovery from decades of SERIOUS alcoholism, all in 'one swell foop' as my boozy Daddy used to say, at a posh retreat replete with expensive serenity. One-shot twelve-step transformation from 'crazy heart' to 'saintly heart'! This film got good press. I was expecting something with more depth, even on the threadbare theme of the redemptive virtues of Love. Maybe I missed the point. If you're a star-struck Jeff Bridges idolator, perhaps the fact that he himself sings his crying-in-his-beer country-western ballads is awesome enough for you. It's true, he's no worse than many country singers I've heard in small town bars and steak houses. He's better than his tone deaf fishing buddy, acted by Robert Duvall. But if I were a staunch 'country music' fan, I'd be defensive about this demonstration that 'country' isn't about music at all; it's about 'attitude' -- BAD attitude.

Carole

(2012-03-31 01:06:41)

Pleasantly surprised ...

Never been a fan of Bridges (nor his long greasy hair -- even this time), but he made Bad Blake believeable and that's what being an actor is all about. Understandable why he won Best Actor for his performance.

Jules Brenner

(2012-03-30 03:02:29)

There's nothing about the essential content of this film that's artificial.

Jeff Bayer

(2012-03-29 15:36:43)

There is no one I would rather have play an overweight drunk. Bridges nails it.

TxMike

(2012-03-26 04:08:16)

Jeff Bridges channels a washed-up, alcoholic country singer.

Jeff Bridges is Bad Blake, once the hottest thing around in countrymusic, largely for his song-writing skills, but as we pick up the storyhe is barely hanging on, always almost broke, and traveling all over inhis suburban to play gigs in such places as bowling alleys. People whoremember his glory still want to see him, and hear him sing his popularsongs, but the businessmen who run the record labels and pay the bigmoney don't want to touch him. He has not written anything in years andhis act, including his drunkenness, has long become stale.At one of his traveling gigs his keyboard player introduces Bad to hisniece, an aspiring writer. He asks Bad if he will grant her aninterview, he does so reluctantly, answering as little as he can, thenstanding up and cutting off the conversation when asked if he has anychildren. It clearly is not something he is comfortable talking about.Maggie Gyllenhaal is the writer, Jane Craddock, a single mom with a4-year-old son. Against the odds she falls for Bad, and he falls forthe kid, but he cannot do without his booze. A related incident whenthey were in Houston has Jane leave immediately and go back to NewMexico where she lives.So the movie is really about this struggling 57-year-old country singerthat has lost his way among the booze and easy women he meets on theroad. Can he salvage his life, and can he begin to write again? Goodmovie, and Bridges does his own singing, and very well too. Even ColinFarrell, who has a relatively small amount of screen time, does his ownsinging.SPOILERS: After Jane rejects him, tells him she and her son never wantto see him again, he has his life-changing moment. He asks his oldfriend (Robert Duvall) to help him, he enters alcohol rehab, and startsto write again. He starts to made a decent living again. He tries toget her back but she has moved on. She realizes that she and her soncan never overcome, with him, the incident where Bad lost track of theboy while stopping at a bar for a drink, after Jane told him never todrink in front of the boy. He lost the relationship, but he salvagedhis life for a few more years.

Joanna Langfield

(2012-03-25 22:44:31)

Sometimes you don't have to reinvent the wheel to steer right into the heart. Scott Cooper's Crazy Heart does just that.

Steven Rea

(2012-03-22 22:32:41)

Hand the Oscar to Jeff Bridges right now, and let's be done with it.

mysteryfan04

(2012-03-22 20:13:10)

Brilliant Music and Lead Performance Elevate a Wonderful Drama

Though there is nothing wrong with the typical action film, it's alwaysnice to see a well-made drama which features strong performances and anawards-worthy script. Crazy Heart is a film about an alcoholic countrysinger, played by Jeff Bridges, looking for a second chance in hiscareer and his life. Part of this second chance arrives in the form ofMaggie Gyllenhaal, who plays a sweet, earnest single mother who worksas a journalist. During an interview for her magazine, the two fall inlove with each other, even though she knows that enduring hisalcoholism and irresponsibility may hurt her in the long run. Thevarious concert scenes throughout the film are vibrant, engaging, andmake you feel as if you are actually there. This first-timewriter-director transforms a clichГѓВ©d, somewhat bland story into anuplifting and meaningful film. Of course, the real highlight of thisfilm is Jeff Bridges. He portrays the country singer near-perfectlyboth musically and acting-wise. He clearly knows how to avoid turningan over-the-top character into an over-the-top performance, making hison-screen presence seem natural and unforced. Maggie Gyllenhaal is alsostrong as the love interest, especially during the film's climax. CrazyHeart is a wonderful drama that deserves your attention.

meeza

(2012-03-16 20:18:00)

Jeff Bridges is not falling down! The Dude country rocks!

"Crazy Heart" is all about building Bridges (as in Jeff) to his longawaited well-deserved Best Actor Oscar? Well, maybe but that is not allof it. Jeff Bridges' exemplary starring performance as former countrystar legend Bad Blake was not (to say the least) half bad. In fact itwas one of the best orchestrated by an actor in this country this year.The "Crazy Heart" narrative tic-tock focuses on Blake's struggles tomake a country living; in not being the country crooner he used to be.He is not known by the present country fan generation, andquasi-followed by longtime country fans. Moreover, the bad about Bad isthat he now plays in rinky-dink bars across the country instead ofsold-out stadiums as he did during his heyday. Blake also plays thatbottle like there is no tomorrow, he is bad to the liver bone; butsomehow is able to perform satisfactorily at his small-time gigs. Blakelives day-by-day in the hierarchy of survival, even though on the backof his mind he knows that his hardcore alcohol & nicotine habits willend his country life in the near future. Bad does take in some goodsouthern comfort in a beautiful & wholesome music reporter named JeanCraddock who wants it real bad from Bad. OK, that was bad! I meant tosay was that Jean falls for Bad. Blake, who has been divorced fourtimes, takes a liking to his "I Dream of Jeanie" country gal; eventhough she is twenty years younger than him. First time Writer-DirectorScott Cooper does a nice job in his vision & scribe of this small taleabout an aging country star in the melancholy twilight of his career;sporadically it reminded me of Darren Aronofsky's wondrous small film"The Wrestler". My only sour note to Cooper is that the whole age-gapromance between Bad & Jean somehow did not seem authentic, and at timesa bit country creepy. "Crazy Heart" also had thespian heart from itssupporting players: Maggie Gyllenhaal was commendable as Jean (but notexactly Oscar-worthy), Colin Farrell marveled as country star & Blakedisciple Tommy Sweet, and Robert Duvall was once again scene-stealingas bar owner & Bad pal Wayne. T-Bone Burnett's music of "Crazy Heart"was a t-bone well done! But now to helming more Bridges, Bridges,Bridges. Not only was his starring performance off the country charts,but Jeff also croons many of the tunes of the film. So have a heart,and see this infamous actor dude named Jeff Bridges do his badassacting thang in "Crazy Heart". **** Good

spadama02

(2012-03-16 14:10:55)

Only for serious Jeff Bridges fans . . . otherwise, stay away - the story has no entertainment value

I registered with IMDb specifically to warn you about this dull andboring picture. The story plods along slowly with little if anythingoriginal or interesting to say. If you love Jeff Bridges, who is inevery scene, you may enjoy the film. Bridges does a good job giving thefilm its soul, but this is essentially the same story as "TheWrestler", but without the intensity (desperate, aging, substanceabusing performer, with an unrealistically young love interest, and anestranged child from a previous and unseen spouse). Colin Farrell asthe prodigy Country star is a real stretch and judging by hisperformance he doesn't believe it either. I would have fallen asleep ifI wasn't so angry about the 4 Star Rating in IMDb that helped us choosethis film.