Some Oscar Movies I Saw

A friend lent me some screeners and, after agreeing to "destroy this disc by cutting it in half" once I was finished watching them"*, I watched "Captain Phillips", "12 Years A Slave" and "Philomena". I also watched "Drive". Because of Hotline Mimi.

As far as big ol' based-on-real-life let's-engineer-this-to-be-an-Oscar-movie movies go, "Captain Phillips" hit every note.
Tom Hanks? Check.
Score by Hans Zimmer? Check.
Harrowing real-life drama that turns out okay for America? Check.
Introduction of some foreign, talented unknown actor? Check.
Tom Hanks crying? Check.
I'll admit that my staggering lack of awareness of "current"** events made this movie much more suspenseful that it should have been.
What else needs to be said?

"12 Years A Slave" was fantastic and brutal and horrifying, the serious version of "Django Unchained". I wish there had been more Michael K. Williams, and I wish I'd known that Ejiofor was the super-badass, completely fucked up mercenary from the final episode of Firefly.
Damn.

Paul Giamatti is the worst person in the world and probably had a great time portraying it, Michael Fassbender is, literally, hypnotizingly evil, and Benedict Cumberbatch is absolutely amazing until he, with all sincerity and heartfelt intention says the words, "you are an extraordinary nigger", at which point the audience is reminded that a nice slave owner...yeah, still a slave owner.

My only issue with this film was Brad Pitt playing that role. It felt so...I don't know...self-indulgent? I might not have felt that way if his company, Plan B, hadn't produced it and it had just been a weird casting choice. But him as Solomon's savior was a bit too much.

Seriously though, other than that?

Wow.

One question though, just something to think about: why are there still films being made about slavery and the Holocaust and other such atrocities? Do we need films with famous actors to remind us that these things happened? Are these movies for people who don't know anything about history? I'd like to hope they aren't just being made to garner Oscars. But, Kate Winslet did make a pretty compelling argument in Extras.

Maybe films like "12 Years A Slave" are made to mitigate the existence and *gag* success of Tyler Perry's cavalcade of loose feces that is his entire filmography.

Just something to chew on.

The question, not the loose feces.

Don't chew on the loose feces.

"Philomena" was sweet, but not Oscar sweet, na' mean? It was wonderful to see The Coog *** sing his insurmountable snark for the forces of good. For the most part. And Dam Judi nch. Good lord. She played an actual leprechaun and made it believable. One thing that did kind of boggle me a bit: her totally cool and laid back reaction to her son being gay. I understand that she was a nurse for thirty years, but she was so wide0eyed and naive in so many other ways that her complete acceptance, like, not batting an eye, was a bit hard to swallow. Also, wasn't her son taken when he was something like two or three years old? Can you really nail down that your kid is gay by then? In the forties? In Ireland? In a nunnery? When you didn't even know what sex was? Again, a bit of a stretch, but, like I said, not quite up the "standards" (read "rigorous and intentiona codtructional guidelines") of an Oscar movie.
I would now like to see the sequel to "The Trip" starring Judi Dench and The Coog.
Chop chop, we've all got places to be.

And, then, after a conversation with Ray about Hotline Miami, he urged me to watch "Drive".
And I did so.
Yikes.
First things first, I don't think I've ever seen anything of Ryan Gosling except for the meme with him being the best boyfriend in the world and riding on a white horse, so his character, who bounced between three states of being namely, being good with kids and Carey Mulligan (who looks like a grown up version of Drew Barrymore from "E.T." AKA as cute as the very cute nose on her very cute face), pure, cold nothing and Kill Machine X-15 was quite a shocking introduction. I have this crazy urge to not see anything else he's ever been in and let this be the Ryan Gosling that I know.
I love love love the idea of Ron Perlman and ALbert Brooks (!) as aging, Jewish gansters who are also brothers. LOVE. Brooks did a great job of being that bad guy who you hate to hate. He was just so nice...the way he murdered Bryan Cranston so humanly...wait.
Oh, and yeah, Bryan Cranston.
Why did they pick Zombieland over him as Luthor?
Silly.
And the quickness and brutality with which they dispensed Christina Hendricks?
Holy fuck.
Aside from a few too many shots dragging on for a few took many seconds, this was a really solid film. Surprisingly so.

Planning on checking out "Gravity", "Matthew McConaughey Gets AIDS In The 80's And Learns A Lesson About Being A Homophobic Asshole" and "Batman, Hawkeye, Hunger Games, Lois Lane, Hangover, No Actual Plot, Just Stars: The Movie" soon.





* Oh, Hollywood. Do you honestly think your movies are THAT valuable or that someone couldn't just download a torrent of them in the time it would take for someone to put said screener in the mail?

** There's no way I can get away with calling 2009 current without ironic quotation marks, is there?

*** What Steve Coogan's friends call him.