Movie Crush Monday: Little C and A Bag of Hammers

It's Monday again, and since CT and I spent all weekend in long lines at Disney, my brain is fried. I'm so glad that I did all the research for this post last week, or we would be in real trouble here.

So last week CT told you about the greatest con-artist film ever, The Sting. It took a little doing, but through the great actress Sally Kirkland, I arrived at a little known indie movie from 2011.

A Bag of Hammers (2011)

This was one of those little movies that gets skipped over by the crowds because it doesn't have explosions or a big name actor attached to it. But what this movie lacked in in Samuel L. Jackson, it made up for in heart. The story is about terminal slackers/criminals Ben and Alan who make their money by pretending to be valets and then stealing cars. They start to mentor a smart aleck kid named Kelsey and when they find out that Kelsey is being severely neglected, they have to try to pull their own lives together to take care of him. It's a movie that doesn't shy away from the true moments of drama but always comes back with a joke to keep the mood from turning. 

The performances by the whole cast were wonderful and real. Jason Ritter and Jake Sandvig manage to take two pretty unlikable characters and make them charming and relatable. They lucked into Chandler Canterbury, who stands up to all the adults around him and manages to hold the entire movie together. 

But let's talk about the reason I went to see this film in the first place. It was the soundtrack. In an act of pure awesome the soundtrack was done by a favorite of ours, the wonderful Johnny Flynn. We've seen Johnny live a few times now and we own every album. We've managed to not obsess enough to actually follow him to his grocery store in England so that we can make sure we purchase the same kind of cereal. But only just. The soundtrack for this film matches the energy and rough edges of the movie perfectly. It does what a really great soundtrack always should; it stands alone as a great piece of music, but also blends brilliantly into the scenes so that once you've experienced both they're always linked in your mind. I expect at some point one of us will post a long form rant about Mr. Flynn, but for now you should all look him up and support him so he continues to make music forever. 

Long may he play...

Happy watching, 

Little C