Late To the Oscars...What'd I Miss?
I had actually seen all the Oscar nominated movies for 2016? 2017? (that always confuses me) before the Oscar broadcast, but due to a wrist injury, I never posted about them.
So now, after the Oscar Kerfuffle---who won Best Picture BTW? I will review what is Gone and Past (like Gone With the Wind but not so hungry).
Moonlight:
So now, after the Oscar Kerfuffle---who won Best Picture BTW? I will review what is Gone and Past (like Gone With the Wind but not so hungry).
Moonlight:
- I appreciate the Late confusing Win for this movie, I cried all the way through the movie. So emotionally, I am drained and happy for the win.
- Have you ever read Black Boy by Richard Wright? It is memoir of his youth growing up black in the South of the early 20th century and Jim Crow laws. The book and this movie are very much alike, perhaps Barry Jenkins, the director, and Tarell McCraney (the writer) were making a tribute to Wright and his memoir with this movie. That is just my speculation, in all the interviews that I have read about Moonlight, this is never brought up. A pity, that in Black History month, such recent literary and artistic history and the probable antecendent for this movie is forgotten. I can recommend the movie and the book.
- I thought that the best actress award should have been given to either Naomie Harris for her portrayal of Black's mother in this movie or Natalie Portman for Jackie. Emma Stone is a charming lady, and her charm came through in La La Land, but the real acting, a true portrayal of a complex woman unlike the actress, was done by Harris and Portman. Harris successfully portrayed a woman with addiction problems and poverty problems and a son through a twenty year period. She was so convincing, that until I looked her up, I didn't realize that she was English. She had the accent and the culture, and she only had three days of filming to do it in. Magnificent Job! Kudos to her!
- Mahersala Ali who won Best Supporting Actor is a man to watch, but he played his basic charmer much like Emma Stone. The award was for what he is not what he acted. Maybe he has the talent to take over for someone like Denzel Washington and become not only a Star but a major acting talent, or maybe not. We'll see.
- In the poster for this movie, the main character, Desmond Doss, an Army medic in WWII who won a Medal of Honor for bravery and duty above and beyond that of an Army Medic, (---think about that for a while---what is beyond and above a medic's duties? It is even more Incredible than you can imagine) carries a wounded soldier on his back during combat. And that is what this movie did for anti-semite and misogynist, Mel Gibson. This movie carried a marred and disreputable Mel Gibson back to the Hollywood Hospital to administer a whitewash and rehabilitation of his reputation. Apologies to Corporal Doss, who tended not only American soldiers during his night of salvation, but also Japanese wounded soldiers, but Good God, what a travesty!
- Andrew Garfield was good in this movie. He had the goofy pleasantness of a Good Ole Boy. I am no Spider Man or Marvel fan so I never saw any of those movies and this and Silence were my first real exposure to him. More on Silence later. Most of the actors were Australians and they all gave good portrayals and accents.
- I was surprised that this movie was nominated. The combat scenes were surprisingly static, they didn't move. Watch any Kurosawa samurai movie or Steven Spielberg's first thirty minutes of Saving Private Ryan to see how a combat movie should move. Or watch Battleground, an old William Wellman movie of the Battle of the Bulge in WWII, to see how an action and combat movie should handle the calm between the abrupt spikes of chaos of battle. This movie did not compare to any of these.
Click to view- It was obvious that this movie was a tribute to the old Hollywood musicals, the cinematography, the story line, the production, etc. It was quite pleasant in its way. But watch Singing in the Rain, it's much better with better music, dancing, and all the rest. And Singing in the Rain doesn't take itself or Hollywood so seriously.
- Ryan Gosling is a good dancer. He moves fluidly. Emma Stone is charming.
- I found the music unremarkable. It didn't come alive for me until John Legend and his "Sellout" band showed up. Loved him.
- This movie was pretentious.
- This movie wasn't nominated and shouldn't have been anyway. I got through about 40 minutes of this movie before I gave up on it.
- I kept thinking that this would be a tribute to the old Silent Movies, much like Scorsese's Hugo was a tribute to the genius of Georges Méliès. You know, silent and all that. And there was some cinematography that used the coloring of the old Silent movies---blue tints for night and sepia for the poor (like a Mary Pickford flick), but the movie started out with a group of Jesuit priests in 16th century Japan having the Japanese crucify them, the priests, to prove their Christianity to the Japanese. I'll say it again, the Jesuits put the thought of crucifixion in the Japanese officials' minds to crucify them for their religion. Isn't that sacriledge? I am not Catholic or Religious, but that is Westboro Baptist Nutter Crazy. No wonder the Japanese closed themselves off from the West for the next three hundred odd years. It was too much crazy even for them. And the movie just got worse from there.
- Scorsese is a movie sensei, but like his Jesuit priests, he just went nutters in this movie.
- And now, let us cleanse our palettes with Méliès, because this is why the Japanese opened themselves back up to the West (well, that and those crazy Yanks and their ships)
- I don't know why this movie received a nomination for its screenplay. The screen play was repetitious with its portrayal of grief. Yes, grief is unending and harrowing for its victim, but this was not the way to show that. The screenplay was better when Jackie was bitter and out for revenge, it did do that well.
- Natalie Portman's portrayal of Jackie Kennedy was almost perfect. The only thing that she did not capture about Jackie was her athleticism.
- Peter Sarsgaard was supposed to portray Bobby Kennedy. He didn't bother.
- Casey Affleck is a misogynist ass. But he did a better job acting to win Hollywood's approval than Mel Gibson did directing.
- This was a good movie. Even though I don't approve of Affleck, I watched the movie and I was involved with his character and the character's tribulations.
- I loved the moments in the movie when it just went Silent. Like an old Silent Movie, it let the action and the pictures tell the story and reveal and explore the characters' emotions and personalities. It also pointed up the incoherence and almost pointlessness of the Michelle Williams' character's inability to portray her feelings about the loss of her children. All through that scene where she encounters Affleck when she is out walking her new baby, I kept thinking, "You aren't getting anywhere with this. You aren't telling him anything that he doesn't already know and feel on his own. Your feelings matter, but this isn't making them better. Just stop it. You both lost this one."
- It was a simple movie, but a powerful mix of emotions. In many ways, a low key movie that showed more about the human character and existence than any grand musical or combat movie. Just like Moonlight.