1. It begins in the bar of a bowling alley. Can anyone say Dude? (The Big Lebowski is probably my favorite Coen brother movie.)
2. The bowling alley is in Pueblo, Colorado. I know way too much about this town thanks to my job, but I would not have expected it to make an appearance in this movie.
3. The music is the kind of country music I love. The Waylon Jennings/Johnny Cash/Willie Nelson/Merle Haggard style of country, not this Toby Keith garbage.
4. Jeff Bridges really sings – and he's actually good.
5. The songwriting is even better. Kudos to Ryan Bingham and T. Bone Burnett for the title track, though there are several other songs that are even more stuck in my head.
6. Heart-wrenching, flawlessly written plot. I teared up during the movie. Then I teared up watching the preview at that last link. You know it's good when the trailer makes you cry.
7. Everyone is in this movie. Not everyone, but I had no idea going into the movie that anyone other than Bridges and Maggie Gyllenhaal were in it, and I enjoyed the surprises, so I'm not going to ruin it for you.
8. The little boy is so adorable. He has those chubby cheeks you just want to squeeze.
9. Jeff Bridges again – great acting. He makes an alcoholic unsympathetic jerk of a country singer into, well, a sympathetic character. He deserves the Oscar.
10. The last movie I saw in the theater was Avatar, and even without being in 3D, this was probably a million times better.
Sidebar: I tried to buy the soundtrack at The Groove, my neighborhood record store. They didn't have it. The guy asked if I wanted to have them order it, and I said sure, why not. Then he realized they couldn't order it for some reason. "You can get it on Amazon," he told me. So my effort to support a local business totally failed. Though I'm sure the copy I got on Amazon was a few bucks cheaper than it would've been in the store... oh well.
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