The Academy Awards are always a fun time for me. I enjoy watching movies of all different genres, and for the past couple of years I've tried to see as many Best Picture nominees as I can. This is what a group of experts consider the pinnacle of cinema each year; sometimes I agree with them, and sometimes I don't. Sometimes I applaud their choices and sometimes I am dismayed at what is being awarded.
This year 8 films are up for Best Picture, and I have seen 5 of them. 3 of these also have Best Actor nominations. I have also seen 2 of the 5 Best Actress nominees, 4 out of 5 for Best Supporting Actress, and 3 out of 5 for Best Director. Several of these overlap. Here are few thoughts on some of the top nominated films.
The Imitation Game
5 out of the 8 Best Picture nominees are based on true stories, and this World War II bio-pic is one of the first ones I went to see. Alan Turing is the classic misunderstood genius, a brilliant social disaster of a mathematician brought in to lead a team of Nazi code-breakers. Benedict Cumberbatch (Best Actor nominee) plays Turing with awkward, frustrating sympathy, which is the type of character he seems born to play. Keira Knightley (Best Supporting Actress nominee) is very convincing as Joan Clarke, Turing's mental match and closest friend. Turing saves lives during the war but can't manage to get his private life together, and the film portrays the last years of his life as lonely, persecuted and tragic. From what Matt researched, this ending seems to be highly embellished. Yes, Turing was gay. Yes, he was unfairly treated by some, which was wrong. But the film could have been more effective by handling the sadness of his life more gently and without such a heavy-handed socio-political agenda.
The Theory of Everything
To me, this Stephen Hawking bio-pic was less about the wheelchair-bound theorist and more about Jane, the wife that stood by him through his physical decline and rise to theoretical fame. Hawking's blatant disdain for God never wavers and rubs harshly on Jane's stalwart Christian belief. She holds to her faith through years of mockery on his part. At one point in the film Jane comes to her husband about a sentence in his manuscript that points to the possible existence of a Creator. She is full of hope, and he strings her along...for a moment. The theater-goers around me laughed as the scene ended with Hawking mocking Jane's faith again, while my eyes filled with tears to see her hope removed once more. Jane makes mistakes. She is not the perfect wife or mother. But at the end she has her faith and Hawking has his theories, and I think she is the happier one. Felicity Jones has a Best Actress nomination for her role as Jane, and I sincerely hope she wins.
American Sniper
Good movie about a hard (and still very present) subject. I think Bradley Cooper (nominated for Best Actor) is a strong contender for his portrayal of American solider (and Texas native) Chris Kyle. While Eddie Redmayne went through an impressive physical transformation to become Stephen Hawking, I feel that Cooper embodied Kyle's emotional state - unwavering patriotism, fierce familial love, encouraging spirit - as well as his massive physical appearance. It's always interesting to me when a film like this is made so quickly after the event itself transpires; the criminal trial surrounding Kyle's death is still in progress today.
Boyhood
Richard Linklater's ambitious 12-year project ultimately doesn't amount to much. While it is a welcome change to follow the same young boy as he grows up from age 6 to 18 (as opposed to an adorable child actor who bam! becomes Zac Efron or Ryan Gosling in his young adult years), the story was rather empty and disheartening. Ethan Hawke (Best Supporting Actor nominee) does a good job as the boy's mostly-absent-but-still-devoted father. Patricia Arquette (Best Supporting Actress nominee)...well, she just can't catch a break and has one of the film's whiniest moments near the end, a moment that really kind of broke the "epic" feeling for me.
The Grand Budapest Hotel
Oh, Wes Anderson. I never know if I am going to love or hate his work, but in this case, it was mostly love.
Budapest Hotel is a strange, quirky, heartfelt story about a strange, quirky, heartfelt concierge. The story is narrated by the young lobby boy who becomes the concierge's closest companion. Along with an equally colorful supporting cast, M. Gustave and Zero Moustafa make their way through service life at the hotel, a mysterious death, piles of legal paperwork, and a second-story hotel shootout. The film is rated R for some unnecessary sexuality and surprising moments of violence, but overall it is a story about simple humanity...in an oddly colorful and almost dream-like world.
I also saw
Wild and
Into the Woods, boasters of three acting nominations.
Wild is based on Cheryl Strayed's best-selling biography, which I read last year and for once enjoyed the movie more. It's a morally murky tale of a woman searching for herself and working to recover from a failed marriage, chronic promiscuity and a devastating drug habit. Reese Witherspoon (nominated for Best Actress) convincingly embodies the weary young traveler and Laura Dern shines as her effervescent mother (nominated for Best Supporting Actress). Meryl Streep also has a Best Supporting nod for her role as the
Into the Woods witch, which is a decent melodic adventure...but honestly, the nomination is just because she's Meryl Streep.
The awards are coming up on Sunday night, and this year's proceedings will be hosted by Neil Patrick Harris (meh). Overall it's a good bunch of films this year, and I'm excited to see who wins. The Best Picture nominations I haven't seen are Selma, Birdman and Whiplash. The first of these is a true story and the other two highly stylized fiction, and those two are ones I am honestly not very interested in seeing. Overall, it's been a year of film based in fact, history, and, for the most part, truth.
