2011 Oscar Reviews

The Oscar season is heating up, so I thought you, Faithful Reader, would want to read my reviews of last year's Oscar nominated best pictures. Enjoy!

Toy Story 3- Pixar hit it out the park again. Beautiful movie, beautiful story, this one deserves an Oscar nod, just not a best picture nod. The Academy has a category for this one already; it is called Best Animated Feature. It is the same with foreign films. There is a category for that as well. Anyway, TS3 has us following the toys on a new adventure when Andy has grown up and no longer plays with them. I think Kevin Smith puts it best as describing it as Schindler’s Toy Box. If you don’t tear up at the end, you are dead inside. A must see.

127 hours- Danny Boyle is amazing. He takes a story of a young man who gets trapped in a ravine for 5 days and makes it into the most interesting character study I have seen in a long time. James Franco is good as the hiker, Aron Ralston, and deserves his nomination as best actor. The movie never gets boring and is actually quite harrowing throughout. If you like stories about struggles between man and nature as well as man within, then you need to see this movie.

The Kids Are Alright- Ok, I didn’t go into this one as something I really wanted to see, so maybe that skewed my opinion. I don’t know, maybe I just don’t get lesbians. A lesbian couple has two children by the same sperm donor and the boy child is curious about the father, you could feel he needed a man in his life. The boy and his sister contact the donor and hilarity ensues… not really. The story goes places that felt weren’t genuine and maybe they were and that is why I say I don’t get lesbians. Everyone in the cast was great and the writing was good. I just couldn’t get behind the story nor the ending. They were so many more deserving movies that could’ve been nominated. Why this one.

True Grit- I can’t help it, I have to say it, this movie is much grittier than the original. With that said, The Coen brothers didn’t bring anything new to the film. I love Joel and Ethan Coen. They have made some of the best movies over the last 20 years, bringing freshness to many different genres. I want to say something negative here, but it is hard because the film is good. They were able to get wonderful performance out of the lead characters, which is great considering one is Matt Damon. I just had a problem with the storytelling. This is an adaptation of a book and we were told it was to be a true adaptation of the book, which tells me that the original movie wasn’t a true adaptation of the book. So, if this is true, why are the two movies extremely similar? I’m just saying. See it if you like westerns, Coen brothers films, and/or remakes.

The Fighter- Based on a true story. I love that saying. It means that although it is a Hollywood movie, there is a nugget of truth in the story somewhere. That being said, this turned out to be a pretty typical “Hollywood” story. Don’t get me wrong, it is a good movie, in spite of Mark Wahlberg, it just ends up being a typical “man triumphs over all odds” movie. The shining point in this movie is Christian Bale. He again transforms himself and puts on a performance worthy of an Oscar, not just the nomination. There are other good performances in this and the movie is put together beautifully. The story was way too typical for me to get into.

That is it for now, so far nothing Oscar worthy. I am seeing the rest of the nominees today and should have my reviews up before the show Sunday night. Let me know what you think about the movies and who you think deserves the win. Until next time, enjoy yourself, just don’t make yourself sore.