2009 The Hurt Locker

2009 The Hurt Locker

"You love playing with that.  You love playing with all your stuffed animals.  You love your Mommy, your Daddy.  You love your pajamas.  You love everything, don't ya?  Yea.  But you know what, buddy?  As you get older, some of the things you love might not seem so special anymore.  Like your Jack-in-a-Box.  Maybe you'll realize it's just a piece of tin and a stuffed animal.  And the older you get, the fewer things you really love.  And by the time you get to my age, maybe it's only one or two things.  With me, I think it's one."
 
My judgment of a war film tends to be based on Tyler’s reaction (aside from Platoon -I hated that all by myself).  If it evokes a strong reaction from him, and he says that it is extremely accurate, I appreciate it.  Saving Private Ryan is the movie he speaks most highly of in this sense.  The Hurt Locker didn't seem to move him, so that kills it for me.  If Saving Private Ryan didn't win, then this certainly doesn't rate the award.

It is about Sergeant First Class William James, who is part of an Army Explosive Ordinance Disposal unit.  There are some very tense scenes of him going in to deactivate bombs (no more tense than in The English Patient), and I do appreciate getting to see a perspective of army life in Iraq, not to mention seeing how returning home to civilian life effects James; however, if it doesn't make a huge impression on Tyler, no Oscar.  He's my war film guru.

I am relieved Avatar didn't win.  Titanic's success was overblown because of special effects, but this took it to the next level.  Without the hype, it was an okay movie.  A definite Ferngully knockoff with video game graphics, but okay.  The amount of attention it got is ridiculous.  It was all based on the effects.  The pro-environment, anti-military message is so in your face obvious it becomes cliche and ridiculous.  I mean, really...unobtainium?  Wow.

None of the nominees were really great -a famine year.

Oh, except Star Trek!  Not a nominee, but I loved the refabbed Star Trek.  The cast was spot on at recreating the original crew.  It was exciting, funny, gritty.  Loved it.  But the Academy is not full of sci fi buffs -that became clear back when Star Wars didn't win.

Christopher Pike: If you're half the man your father was, Jim, Starfleet could use you.  You could be an officer in four years.  You could have your own ship in eight.  You understand what the Federation is, don't you?  It's important.  It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...
James T. Kirk: Are we done?
Christopher Pike: I'm done.  Riverside Shipyard.   Shuttle for new recruits leaves tomorrow morning, 0800.  Now, your father was captain of a Starship for 12 minutes.  He saved 800 lives, including your mother's and yours.  I dare you to do better.
-Star Trek

2008 Slumdog Millionaire

2008 Slumdog Millionaire


Jamal Malik: I knew you'd be watching.
Latika: I thought we would meet only in death.
Jamal Malik: This is our destiny.
Latika: Kiss me.

This was a great movie.  I didn’t expect to like it, but it was excellent.  Usually I don’t love movies that use flashbacks, but in this case they were worked in flawlessly.  A beautiful love story, interesting characters, and a romantic ending –the good guy won!

It is set in India, and is the story Jamal Malik, a young contestant on the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?.  He is from the slums, with no extensive education, but is getting all the questions right, so they think he is cheating:

Police Inspector: Doctors...Lawyers...never get past 60 thousand rupees.  He's won 10 million.  What the hell can a slumdog possibly know?
Jamal Malik: The answers.  I knew the answers.

He recounts his difficult life growing up in the slums, being taken in by a brutal gangster to serve as a child beggar, escaping and becoming a thief along with his brother, and continually trying to track down the love of his life, Latika.

Very well done.

Gran Torino.

Gran Torino is runner up.  Clint Eastwood is at his finest as a gruff (of course) old man who takes his young Hmong neighbor, Thao, under his wing and helps to save him from the clutches of a local gang.  Thank goodness that while it parallels Million Dollar Baby in many ways, it has a much more satisfying ending.

I think Slumdog Millionaire and Gran Torino tie for Best Picture in my mind -both are deserving.

Duke: What you lookin' at old man?
Walt Kowalski: Ever notice how you come across somebody once in a while you shouldn't have fucked with?  That's me.
-Gran Torino

2007 No Country For Old Men

2007 No Country For Old Men

Javier Bardem as Anton.

Gas Station Worker: I didn't put nothin' up.
Anton: Yes, you did.  You've been putting it up your whole life you just didn't know it.  You know what date is on this coin?...1958.  It's been traveling twenty-two years to get here.  And now it's here.  And it's either heads or tails.  And you have to say.  Call it.
Gas Station Worker: Look, I need to know what I stand to win.
Anton: Everything.

What an odd movie.

It has three main components.

One: Josh Brolin being quiet.  Going about his (rather stupid) business of (rather stupidly) taking drug money, without talking much at all.

Josh Brolin.

Two: Javier Bardem acting his ass off as an eerily cool and sadistic psychopath named Anton –pretty much rampaging and killing wherever he goes, flipping a coin to decide who will live and who will die.  His performance was excellent, but I mostly wanted him off the screen, because he was creepy and violent.

Tommy Lee Jones.

Three: Tommy Lee Jones musing to himself that “Well, this place has gone to hell…this sure ain’t no place for old men.  I sure ain’t really effective in any way in this movie 'tall, am I?”  My wording, but pretty darn close.

It wasn’t a completely terrible movie, but how these three components combine to equal a good movie, much less an Oscar winner, I know not.

Worst of all, some AMAZING movies came out in 2007!  Arranged, Stardust, Waitress, and Juno were all such terrific movies that I want to give them all Oscars.  What the heck, Academy?



I will be posting individual reviews of Arranged and Waitress, so stay tuned.

2006 The Departed

2006 The Departed



Better than I anticipated.  I liked the music and the cast.

It focuses on two moles (not the animals -that would have been a surprising twist).  Matt Damon is a mole who infiltrates the police force for mafioso Jack Nicholson.  Leonardo DiCaprio is a police officer who infiltrates Nicholson's organization.  It also stars Mark Wahlberg, Alec Baldwin and Martin Sheen.  It's pretty much the battle of the moles, with each trying to unearth the other, and both living dishonest lives in order to help their prospective organizations.

Not really best picture quality, but a pretty good movie.

Not many survivors -quite Hamletesque in that sense.

At least Little Miss Sunshine didn't win.  I am tired of quirky, dysfunctional family movies.

I can't say that I saw many of the other movies that were released in 2006.

I did love The Queen, but is it more deserving than The Departed?  I'm not sure.  I want to say yes, because I like it more, but it's a tough call.



HM Queen Elizabeth II: So, what would you suggest, Prime Minister - some kind of a statement?
Tony Blair: No, ma'am.  I believe the moment for statements has passed.  I would suggest flying the flag at half-mast above Buckingham Palace, and coming down to London at the earliest opportunity.  It would be a great comfort to your people, and would help them with their grief.
HM Queen Elizabeth II: Their grief?  If you imagine I'm going to drop everything and come down to London before I attend to my grandchildren who've just lost their mother, then you're mistaken.  I doubt there is anyone who knows the British people more than I do, Mr. Blair, nor who has greater faith in their wisdom and judgement.  And it is my belief that they will any moment reject this...this "mood", which is being stirred up by the press, in favor of a period of restrained grief, and sober, private mourning.  That's the way we do things in this country, quietly, with dignity.  That's what the rest of the world has always admired us for.
Tony Blair: If that's your decision, ma'am, of course the government will support it.  Let's keep in touch.
HM Queen Elizabeth II: Yes.  Let's.  
-The Queen

2005 Crash vs. Brokeback Mountain

Crash 2005

"She had these little stubby wings, like she could've glued them on, you know, like I'm gonna believe she's a fairy.  So she said, "I'll prove it." So she reaches into her backpack and she pulls out this invisible cloak and she ties it around my neck.  And she tells me that it's impenetrable.  You know what impenetrable means?  It means nothing can go through it.  No bullets, nothing.  She told me that if I wore it, nothing would hurt me.  So I did.  And my whole life, I never got shot, stabbed, nothing. I mean, how weird is that?"

The moral of the story is this: Racism is bad.

There are a couple parts of the movie that are really intense, emotional, and interesting, but a lot of it is too much.  There's no subtlety.  We are all racists -white people, black people, Hispanic people, Chinese people, Middle Eastern people.  We are pretty much all racist in some way or another.  Even the most accepting and incorruptible of us (ahem, Ryan Phillipe), are secretly racist, either against our own race (i.e. ashamed of yourself and denying your own race) or of another.  There are a bunch of interweaving stories revealing this in Crash.
There are two really powerful moments that had an impact on me.  One is when an angry Persian shop owner (He is mad at a locksmith because the locksmith told him he needs a new door, not a new lock, and he ignored the locksmith and got robbed.  Insurance won't cover the damages, so he decides to shoot the locksmith -not so rational, this guy.) shoots at a lovable locksmith whose daughter jumps in front of the gun at the last second because her father gave her an invisible protective cloak (or so he told her).  We find out the gun had blanks, unbeknownst to the shop owner, so the little girl is okay.


The other is when a racist police officer, who earlier had pulled over a lady and felt her up, later ends up saving the same woman from a burning car.  She doesn't want his help at first, but is forced to let him save her, and he seems very affected by the experience (as does she).  I would like to know what both of them were thinking afterwards.

These two parts were good; otherwise, it's overall a bit too preachy and self-important for my taste.

Just remember: Racism is BAD (Who knew?), and you ARE a racist (Don't argue.  Yes, yes you are.).

Brokeback Mountain 2005

"There ain't never enough time, never enough..."



I preferred Brokeback Mountain, the story of two cowboys, Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal), who fall in love while they are tending sheep one summer on Brokeback Mountain.  They are kept apart mostly because of Ennis's fears of the social repercussions of them being together.  Jack wants them to live together on a ranch, saying, "Truth is, sometimes I miss you so much I can hardly stand it," but Ennis has memories from childhood of a homosexual man being violently murdered: "Bottom line is, we're around each other an' this thing, it grabs hold of us again at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and we're dead."  Ennis and Jack both get married (their wives are played by Michelle Williams and Anne Hathaway respectively) and have children.  They are living in different states (Wyoming and Texas), and only see each other periodically when Jack is able to get to Wyoming and they can go on "fishing trips" together.  As the years pass, it is very painful for them to live apart, but despite Jack's constant urgings, Ennis is never comfortable with the idea of being openly gay.  He seems to be ashamed of his behavior, but unable to let Jack go.  Similarly, Jack finds it painful that Ennis won't agree to live a real life together with him, but is not able to move on:

Jack: Tell you what, we coulda had a good life together!  Fuckin' real good life!  Had us a place of our own.  But you didn't want it, Ennis!  So what we got now is Brokeback Mountain!  Everything's built on that!  That's all we got, boy, fuckin' all.  So I hope you know that, even if you don't never know the rest!  You count the damn few times we have been together in nearly twenty years and you measure the short fucking leash you keep me on, and then you ask me about Mexico and tell me you'll kill me for needing somethin' I don't hardly never get.  You have no idea how bad it gets!  I'm not you.  I can't make it on a coupla high-altitude fucks once or twice a year!  You are too much for me Ennis, you sonofawhoreson bitch!  I wish I knew how to quit you.
Ennis: Well, why don't you?  Why don't you just let me be?  It's because of you Jack, that I'm like this!  I'm nothin'.  I'm nowhere.  Get the fuck off me!  I can't stand being like this no more, Jack.

They are the loves of each other's lives, it is plain to see, and it is heartbreaking watching them live apart because of social pressure.  Very sad.  Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal are terrific.  I would have picked this movie over Crash.  It gets its message across without hitting you in the face with it.

Ennis mourns the loss of Jack.

2004 Million Dollar Baby

2004 Million Dollar Baby

Maggie Fitzgerald: You're gonna leave me again?
Frankie Dunn: Never. 

Million Dollar Baby competes with The English Patient for most depressing Oscar winner.


It tells the story of Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank), the nicest girl in the world, who is finally beginning to get her dream and some happiness when her life is suddenly and irrevocably destroyed in a freak accident.  The end.

Maggie comes from the worst family imaginable -"white trash" is too good for them, they are just terrible, terrible excuses for human beings.  She buys them a house with her boxing winnings and all they can do is complain and gripe.

She has been waitressing since she was 13 in order to try to do the one thing she loves: box.  When she is 31, she joins the gym of Frankie Dunne (Clint Eastwood, who also directed the movie), and works out there daily while she tries to convince him to become her trainer.

Frankie is a sad character -he has a good heart, but is a lonely soul.  He is out of touch with his daughter, and writes to her every week, only to have her return the letters.  He is betrayed by a boxer he has trained right before he goes for the title shot.  His only friend appears to be his partner, Eddie Dupris (Morgan Freeman).



Finally, Frank caves and agrees to train Maggie, letting her into his life and into his heart, which takes a lot of courage for him.

Maggie becomes an excellent boxer, but when she gets her chance at the title, her competitor, a dirty fighter, hits her in the back of the head in between rounds, causing her to fall and hit her neck on a stool, which leaves her a paraplegic.

I don't know whether this is worse for Maggie or for Frank, who does everything he can to help her, and is devastated by what has happened.

As if this poor, kind girl hasn't been through enough, she ends up needing one of her legs amputated, and suffers the flagrant indifference of her family.  When she is injured, they spend their time visiting amusement parks, only to finally visit to try to take all her money for themselves.  These are garbage disposal people.

Finally, after a great deal of pleading, and after she tries to kill herself by chewing on her tongue (eek), Frank agrees to help her die.



It starts out as a pretty good (not great) boxing movie, and then turns into misery on depressing street.
Blech.  Not at all sure why this movie won.

Hilary Swank and Clint Eastwood were terrific, as usual.

I did enjoy the part where Morgan Freeman (whose character was a former boxer), hops into the ring to face a punk who has been beating up a mentally handicapped young man who fancies himself a boxer.  The guy is mocking him as he approaches him with one glove on, and Morgan Freeman proceeds to lay him out.  Beautiful.

Downfall.

I would have preferred Downfall win.  That was an interesting movie.  If you have to watch a movie about people dropping like flies, it may as well be a movie about Nazis dropping like flies.

2003 The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

2003 The Lord of the Rings:
The Return of the King

"Authority is not given to you to deny the return of the king, Steward."


Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings Trilogy is obviously incredible.  It was filmed on an epic scale, with fabulous effects, action, danger, good vs. evil, friendship, betrayal, redemption, love.  All around amazing.  The whole team behind the making of the movie clearly put a lot of passion into its production.

I personally think that Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship  of the Ring (2001) was the best of the trilogy.  Clearly the 2003 Oscar ceremony was about honoring the trilogy as a whole (it won 11 awards).  I don't endorsing this idea –The Godfather got awards for the individual movies, why not this?  I did love the trilogy, though, so I was very glad to see it get its props.  The awards were very deserved.

Helm's Deep -The Two Towers.

The Return of the King was probably my least favorite of the three movies.  After the intensity of the battle at Helm's Deep in The Two Towers (2002), it was hard to get enthused about the battle scenes in The Return of the King -been there, done that.  The movie also doesn't seem to know when to end.  Every time you think you've seen the finale, it fades to another scene instead of credits.  The ending it finally settles on is so sad, with Frodo heading off to the Undying Lands because he can't emotionally recover from the toll his journey took on his mind and spirit.  I wanted the trilogy to end on a triumphant note (how about the scene where everyone is kneeling in honor of the four hobbits?), not a melancholy one.  I also would have liked a little more than a quickly exchanged glance to establish that Eowyn and Faramir were going to get together (if Tyler hadn't told me, I wouldn't have known, and these two characters deserve happiness).

Arwen and Aragon  -The Fellowship of the Ring.

The Fellowship of the Ring was so groundbreaking and achingly beautiful that it's hard for the two sequels to match it.  It sets a slower pace at first, developing the characters and Middle Earth itself, and then gets into the action with a gusto.  The two following movies are pretty much all action, or Frodo/Sam/Gollum fighting over the ring.  Still great, but if I had to rate them, it would be Fellowship, Two Towers, then Return of the King.

The Shire -The Fellowship of the Ring.

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World is runner up.  It pairs Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany again, this time at sea, and it didn't get the accolades it deserved.  It is very difficult to get me interested in a naval movie with no love story, but this one managed it.  The characters were so engaging, and the naval battles so gripping, I had to love it.

Captain Jack Aubrey: England is under threat of invasion, and though we be on the far side of the world, this ship is our home.  This ship, is England.  So it's every hand to his rope or gun, quick's the word and sharp's the action.  After all...surprise is on our side.
Crew: Huzzah, huzzah!  

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World