The 2015 Oscar Post!
I started doing this last year, since discovering the Majestic Theater in Gettysburg means that I do actually get the opportunity to see many of the Academy Award nominees each year. (We live just far enough from Baltimore and DC to make it impractical to go there just to see a movie, and our local theaters don't tend to show them. Good movies
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I'm totally with you on Wild. It's a wonderful movie, starkly honest and now I'm dying to read the book. I suspect everyone would be talking about this movie if it were about a guy. Can't help but thinking about 'Into the Wild', which, in my harsh opinion, is about a selfish boy. Cheryl goes the other way around and comes out better. And Laura Dern as her mom is wonderful and could be a contender for Patricia Arquette's mom in Boyhood if we had had her a little more time on screen. Btw, PA earned my complete respect for that role, here from my single-mom chair. She was wonderful in ways that I can't still write about without getting a sting in my eye.
Loved Still Alice (Jullianne Moore is flawless, as usual and KStew shines - she can act! who knew!). Loved Whiplash (there's already slash at AO3, lol - need to read that). American Sniper... not so much. I think it sits on the edge of the razor, it just shows and abstains from telling you what to think, which is great - I'm so done with moralizing movies... but maybe it could show a little bit more, to push it over the edge? Like Kyle's darker side, which is completely left out?
Loved Birdman. The story in itself would be bland but the cinematography and the acting are superb. The score is awesome. I love the blend of light and dark, the touches of humour, the feeling of being on the brink of madness and the ending! :D And Ed Norton. :D
And Wild. I need to say it again, how much I loved this movie. It has Adrienne Rich and Leonard Cohen all in one scene. :D
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I haven't seen Still Alice yet, but it is on my list! Whiplash is out tomorrow, and my husband and I are planning to watch it this weekend. If I like it, I might break my fannish monogamy long enough to read that story. ;)
I think it sits on the edge of the razor, it just shows and abstains from telling you what to think, which is great - I'm so done with moralizing movies... but maybe it could show a little bit more, to push it over the edge? Like Kyle's darker side, which is completely left out?
Yes, I felt like it needed to go a bit further. As it stands, I feel like it confirms whatever opinion the viewer brings to the theater. My father-in-law, a firearms instructor and red-blooded 'Merican, saw it totally differently than I did, as an anti-war progressive. I felt like it wanted to say something, but it also wanted to be a blockbuster and so needed a clear enemy (the foil characters of Kyle and Mustafa felt like that to me) and couldn't be too morally messy. Kyle's complexity is lost, but I think part of that too is that he is only recently deceased (and was alive during the filming) and with a very-much-alive widow and children; it's hard to show a person in all his complexity (read: flawed) under those circumstances. (For the same reason, Theory of Everything gave a rosy picture of Stephen Hawking whereas Selma was much more honest about MLK.)
Totally agree on Birdman. :)
And Wild. I need to say it again, how much I loved this movie. It has Adrienne Rich and Leonard Cohen all in one scene. :D
Yes! It was robbed by not being nominated (despite the fact that there could have been one more nominee).
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