With a career spanning more than 60 years, Jeff Bridges is one of Hollywood’s most beloved and versatile actors.
A single Oscar seems like meager compensation for an artist who has given us such memorable performances in everything from The Last Picture Show, Starman and The Contender to The Fisher King, The Fabulous Baker Boys and Thunderbolt and Lightfoot.
To celebrate his return to action at Disney+’s The old man, Things to watch took a look at the now 72-year-old’s back catalog and created this list of seven of our favorite Bridges movies (and where to watch them right now).
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Tucker: The Man and His Dream, True Grit and The Big Lebowski are among the best Jeff Bridges movies currently available to stream in New Zealand.
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* Seabiscuit: The Greatest Horse Racing Movie of All Time Comes to Disney+
* Jeff Bridges recalls being ‘pretty close to death’ as he battled COVID-19 while undergoing cancer treatment
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Jeff Bridges, Steve Buscemi and John Goodman are just three of The Big Lebowski’s star-studded ensemble.
The Big Lebowski (1998, Prime Video)
Bridges’ most recognizable, beloved and oft-quoted role (“The Dude abides”). He headlines this cult of comedies about a man who is mistaken for a millionaire and then seeks restitution for a ruined carpet.
Julianne Moore, John Goodman, Steve Buscemi and Philip Seymour Hoffman also star.
“Put a smile on my face that never left 117 minutes”, wrote Michael Wilmington of Chicago Tribune.
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Jeff Bridges plays Bad Blake in Crazy Heart.
Crazy Heart (2009, Disney+)
Bridges won the Best Actor Oscar starring Maggie Gyllenhaal and Robert Duvall in this drama about a faded country music star who is forced to reassess his dysfunctional life as he embarks on a seemingly doomed romance.
“Blessed with many wonderful moments, beautiful lines and lively characters,” wrote Joe Morgenstern of Wall St Journal.
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Jeff Bridges and Gil Bermingham play the men tasked with stopping the bank robbery Howard brothers in Hell or High Water.
Hell of High Water (2016, various rental services)
Filled with dramatic tension, complex characters, rich, memorable dialogue, and uneasy reflections of the plight of many modern Americans, David Mackenzie’s contemporary western is a compelling watch from go to whoa.
With great performances by Bridges, Chris Pine and Ben Foster, this delivers a political message about institutionalized poverty with chutzpah, brio and humor as dry as a chasm.
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Jeff Bridges gets up close and personal with his horse companion in Seabiscuit.
Sea Biscuit (2003, Disney+)
Not long after Phar Lap rocked hearts and wallets in Australasia, a small, knobby laurel foal took America by storm.
Born in 1933, Seabiscuit made nearly half a million dollars from 1935 to 1940 for its owner, Charles S. Howard. the great Depression.
Starring Bridges, Chris Cooper and Tobey Maguire, this 2003 story focuses on the three men who shared the glory that was “the biggest thrill on four legs since Hope and Crosby.” Part history lesson, part boys own adventure, Seabiscuit is a beautiful human and horse drama.
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Jeff Bridges gets stuck in a video game computer in Tron.
Tron (1982, Disney+)
Whether it was the neon-soaked special effects, the light cycles, or the idea of being trapped in a computer game, this was a family fantasy film that proved to teens that Disney could make more than just cartoons and movies that would be better suited to two-part tea time. on Sunday.
Bridges and Bruce Boxleitner are our heroes battling to stay alive against the seemingly unbeatable powers of the Master Control Program, while David Warner, fresh from playing pure Evil in Time Bandits, provided another sleepless night for young moviegoers.
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Jeff Bridges and Hailee Steinfeld worked together for True Grit.
True Grit (2010, Netflix)
In a role first made famous by John Wayne in 1969, Bridges is outstanding as the taciturn Rooster Cogburn in the Coen Bros’ adaptation of the 1968 novel by Charles Portis.
His drunken, trigger-happy lawyer is hired by a stubborn teenager (Hailee Steinfeld in a stunning debut) who is determined to track down her father’s killer in 1870s America. Matt Damon, Josh Brolin and Barry Pepper are also too to see.
“Great: tough, exciting, funny, beautifully and enchantingly acted, this is close to perfection,” wrote Empire Magazine’s Angie Errigo.
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Jeff Bridges took on a role originally envisioned for Marlon Brando in Tucker: The Man and His Dream.
Tucker: The Man and His Dream (1988, iTunes)
Francis Ford Coppola spent 15 years creating this biopic about Preston Tucker, the maverick car designer who tried to take on the “big boys” of the American auto industry.
At various stages, he planned to make Marlon Brando his leading man and tell the story as a musical, but in the end he got quite a brilliant turn from Bridges, ably supported by the likes of Joan Allen, Martin Landau, Christian Slater and Dean. Stockwell.
“Coppola tells this story with great exuberance without masking the personal and historical tragedies it entails,” wrote Richard Brody of The New Yorker.