"Hoop Dreams" director returns with "The Interrupters"

Before I get into that, I don't tune in for many awards shows beyond a bit of the Golden Globes and most of the Oscars, but the Critics Choice Movie Awards, airing tonight on VH1, has gotten one of its kudos exactly right.

Quentin Tarantino, who has been making extraordinary use of music in his movies for many years, will be receiving the very appropriately named Music+Film Award. Though there are many examples of how his ear for music has enhanced his movies, the one that is permanently burned on my brain is that refrain of "putting out the fire with gasoline" from David Bowie's "Cat People" as Shoshanna is plotting the ultimate revenge in "Inglorious Basterds." Priceless.

If they could tell me exactly when that might happen, I'd tune in, but since that won't be happening, I can't imagine I will. In other news, however, the director of "Hoop Dreams," Steve James, is back with a new documentary, "The Interrupters," which is premiering at the Sundance Film Festival this year.

To put it as hokely (yes, I fully realize that isn't even terribly close to a word) as possible, "Hoop Dreams" was really a formative movie for me in that at the time I really was kind of ignorant about the power of documentary filmmaking. I can still remember watching Siskel & Ebert's rapturous review of "Hoop Dreams," and then loving the movie just as much as they did myself.

Since then (1994), James has made several more films, none of which, I'm ashamed to admit, I have seen, but coincidentally, "At the Death House Door," which he co-directed with Peter Gilbert, is being screened this Sunday at 1:30 p.m. in the Social Hall of St. Joseph Catholic Church here in downtown Macon. Yeah, I'll turn out for that.

And finally getting to the point, "The Interrupters," a collaboration with journalist and author Alex Kotlowitz, examines the lives three of the titular individuals who intervene in situations to try and prevent violence in Chicago. Like "Hoop Dreams," this should be a fairly harrowing journey with three people who used to live lives of crime themselves. Over the course of a year, it focuses on three specific situations that need some serious defusing.

Here below are the trailer and poster for the flick which, since I'm not going to Sundance (though I am hopefully returning as a guest of the Atlanta Film Festival 365 - bully), I'll eventually get to watch from Netflix's impressive doco library. And with that, I'm off to work. Peace out.

The Macon Film Guild is presenting the best movie of 2010 in "Winter's Bone"

Editor's note (or, I guess, writer's note, since there is no editor: This is the online version of my weekly newspaper column, but if you happen to be reading this and don't live in Macon, "Winter's Bone" is also out now on DVD, and is my current top rental recommendation.)

I see a lot of movies (probably way too many), but none this year has lingered as long in my head or heart as Debra Granik's "Winter's Bone," making it the best flick I've seen in all of 2010. And luckily for us here in Macon, it's being presented this Sunday at the Douglass Theatre by the Macon Film Guild.

Granik's movie works perfectly on many levels - a twisting film noir and a riveting mystery - but at its core its simply the story of a teenage girl who's fighting to save her family in the most desperate of circumstances. And Granik has a heroine who is up to the daunting task presented here in Jennifer Lawrence, a newcomer whose name you will certainly want to remember and whose face you won't soon forget once you've seen this.

As the movie begins, a sheriff's deputy knocks on the door of the Ozarks home that Lawrence's Ree Dolly shares with her two younger siblings, who she protects with determination. He informs her that if she doesn't track down her long-missing father, who is due in court on charges of cooking meth and other rather unsavory endeavors, they will lose their house, which he has put up as a guarantor of his appearance.

From there, Granik's movie takes us very deep into the underbelly of America, the kind of place we might have driven by from time to time but would never think to stop. As Ree pursues the "truth" about where her father is, or at least something close to it, Granik gives the movie an extremely strong sense of place, yet thankfully one with no irony and little false sentimentality.

What she does have for the characters that make up the twisted branches of Ree's family tree is compassion, and that's what keeps this harrowing tale from devolving into simply a horror story (but be warned, though its most extreme act of violence is more implied than splattered in your face, it still hits extremely hard.) And Ree's quest is driven throughout by a hope that manages to shine through all the bleakness.

The main thing that brings this all together so well is Lawrence, who plays Ree with the perfect mix of resolve and vulnerability, conveying both often without uttering a word. "Winter's Bone" has already won both the Grand Jury Prize and the Waldo Salt Award for Screenwriting from the Sundance Film Festival (both very well deserved), and if there's any justice, it should add an Oscar too for Lawrence's performance. She's almost matched here by John Hawkes as her uncle "Teardrop" (yes, really), who keeps his motivations tightly wrapped as he guides Ree through this warped world.

What Granik has managed to concoct here is both a compelling coming-of-age-way-too-fast tale and an unforgettable Midwestern Gothic, and a movie that I highly recommend checking out this Sunday at 2, 4:30 and 7:30 p.m. at the Douglass Theatre.

As for me, however, I won't be there, because I'm going on vacation (as you read this in the newspaper, I actually already am), which for me means more movies, this time at the Rehoboth Beach Independent Film Festival with my parents. And which means also that this column will not appear next week, but will return after that, hopefully with some rental ideas from the festival.