The Forest Lodge Library continues its My Favorite Films series on Thursday, June 23rd at 6:30 with a screening of the latest Coen brother’s film, True Grit.

This new version of this western tale of hard-won vengeance is based on the 1968 novel by Charles Portis. Jeff Bridges takes on the Rooster Cogburn role, the role that won John Wayne an Academy Award. Matt Damon plays Texas Ranger LeBoeuf and Josh Brolin plays the bad guy, Tom Chaney. The glue that holds it all together is an impressive young actress named Hailee Steinfeld who plays Mattie Ross, a fourteen year old girl who travels to Fort Smith, Arkansas to identify and claim the body of her murdered father and to settle his affairs. That done, she embarks on her own agenda, hiring Rooster Cogburn to track down her father’s killer so that justice may be done.

“True Grit is a parable about good and evil. Only here, the lines between the two are so blurred as to be indistinguishable, making this a true picture of how the West was won, or — depending on your view — lost.”
   Manohla Dargis for the New York Times, December 21, 2010