84th Annual Academy Awards (2012)

The Oscars were last night, as many or all of you are aware.  I did my best to see as many of them as my sanity would allow although I missed the big winner The Artist.  I'll have to get to that one, seeing as it's the first silent film to win Best Picture since 1928.  I'll put a full list of the winners below but let's talk about the ceremony for a minute.

They dragged Billy Crystal out of retirement in order to make up for the shitshow that was last year's Oscars.  I didn't even see the camera stop on Anne Hathaway or James Franco.  Billy was a professional but I would have liked to see someone a little edgier, like Ricky Gervais, as host.  Then again, that didn't work for either Jon Stewart or Chris Rock.

The presenters were lovely and it really seemed like they were trying to loosen up and give a much more festive tone.  At least Jennifer Lopez and Cameron Diaz did, although the phrase "loosen up" did not apply to J Lo's skintight dress.  They presented the awards for Best Costume (The Artist) and Best Makeup (The Iron Lady) and quoted famous movie costumer Edith Head.

The theme this year was The Magic of the Movies and so there were a number of vignettes with A-listers talking about how they feel when they watched movies, or the first film experience they ever had.  Those were nice, as was the piece by Cirque du Soleil, but overall it felt a little stodgy.  The memorial segment for all the star and tech people who died over the past year was also lovely but I personally hated the inclusion of "What a Wonderful World" as accompaniment.  That song puts me to sleep.  I appreciated that they managed to add Whitney Houston in, but I was super confused as to why Steve Jobs made the cut.  I can only imagine that Apple designed software or something that helped production...?  No idea.

Apparently, Mission Impossible:  Ghost Protocol won some sort of techie Oscar (They get their own ceremony a month or so before the real thing.) which was why it got included in Billy's opening clip where he puts himself into each film nominated for Best Picture.  It confused the fuck out of me until I saw the part about the tech Oscars.

Anyway, here's the list of winners:

Best Picture:  The Artist
Best Actor:  Jean Dujardin, The Artist
Best Actress:  Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady
Best Supporting Actor:  Christopher Plummer, Beginners
Best Supporting Actress:  Octavia Spencer, The Help
Best Animated Film:  Rango
Best Cinematography:  Hugo
Best Art Direction:  Hugo
Best Costume Design:  The Artist
Best Director:  Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist
Best Documentary:  Undefeated
Best Short Documentary:  Saving Face
Best Editing:  The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Best Foreign Film:  A Separation
Best Makeup:  The Iron Lady
Best Original Score:  The Artist
Best Original Song:  "Man or Muppet" from The Muppets
Best Animated Short:  The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore
Best Live Action Short:  The Shore
Best Sound Editing:  Hugo
Best Sound Mixing:  Hugo
Best Visual Effects:  Hugo
Best Adapted Screenplay:  The Descendants
Best Original Screenplay:  Midnight in Paris

I think Meryl Streep gave the best acceptance speech of the night, Octavia Spencer had the best winning reaction, and Martin Scorsese got the most number of thank-yous.  If you were playing the Martin Scorsese drinking game like Rose Byrne and Melissa McCarthy were (you take a shot every time his name is mentioned at the Oscars) you were probably wasted by 10 p.m.

Now we just get to look forward to all the films coming out this year.

John Carter- 09 Mar- Rob is really interested in seeing this one.  He even read the first book the movie is based on to get an idea of what to expect.
The Hunger Games- 23 Mar- Also a Rob wish-to-see.  He loaned me the trilogy so I knocked it out in a couple of weeks.  It will be interesting to see how much makes it into the movie.
Mirror Mirror- 30 Mar- Frankly, this movie looks a little stupid.  Julia Roberts hams it up as the evil queen but it's a Tarsem movie so it's already got my money.  What can I do?
The Raven- 27 Apr- John Cusack playing Edgar Allen Poe solving crime!  Win!
The Avengers- 04 May- Again, already has my money.
Dark Shadows- 11 May- Johnny Depp playing a vampire.  It's like they can see my dreams.
Snow White and the Huntsman- 01 Jun- This one might be good despite Kristen Stewart.
Prometheus- 08 Jun- It's the Alien prequel.
Rock of Ages- 15 Jun- I love Adam Shankman.  I will totally watch this musical.
Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter- 22 Jun- Everything about this seems hilarious.
Brave- 22 Jun- It's Pixar's first animated film where the main character is a girl.  Plus, it looks adorable.
The Amazing Spider-Man- 03 Jul- I really don't know how many times they can tell this story but I like Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone so I'll suffer through it.
The Dark Knight Rises- 20 Jul- My number one must-see movie of this year.
Looper- 28 Sep- Joseph Gordon-Levitt fights crime while jumping through time.  Sounds awesome.
Frankenweenie- 05 Oct- Tim Burton is doing an animated film.  Love it.
World War Z- 21 Dec- Kind of fitting to open this movie on the final day of the Mayan calendar.
The Great Gatsby- 25 Dec- I never finished this book because I found it horribly boring.  Let's see if the movie is any better.

The Dead Zone (1983)

The Oscars are recording as I type this but I thought I'd take a minute to write about something completely different.   This was an absolute relief to watch after that last one. 

It's based off a short story by Stephen King, and I don't care what anybody says, the man should be limited to 100 pages.  The longer ones make great paperweights but that's about the extent of their use.  But I digress.

Johnny Smith (Christopher Walken) gets into a car accident and awakens from a coma five years later.  His girlfriend (Brooke Adams) has married another man and has a baby and he seems to have gained psychic abilities that work through touch.  Wanting nothing more than to be left alone, he retreats from the world to become a private tutor but, after shaking the hand of a Senate hopeful (Martin Sheen), Johnny is faced with a dilemma:  does he act on the vision he sees?

This was revived into a relatively successful TV show starring Anthony Michael Hall on USA Network but I haven't seen it.  The concept transfers pretty easily so I imagine it would be Netflix-worthy.

Margin Call (2011)

 Nominated for Best Original Screenplay   This movie sucked out my will to live.  Honestly, it's still sitting in my Blu-ray tray because I just do not want to finish watching it.  I volunteered to help a friend paint a three-level townhouse.  That's how badly I did not want to watch this movie.

Thank God the Oscars are tomorrow.  Maybe I just had it too easy last year with the nominees and it gave me a false sense of accomplishment.  I can't do any more this year.  It's too much like masochism.

I got about halfway through this film the third time I tried to watch it.  I hated every character, I hated the story, and I hated the score.  When I didn't understand what was happening, I was bored and when I did, I was angry.  It's Goldman Sachs:  the Movie and I can't even think about it without grinding my teeth.  It sucks because there are a shitload of good actors in this movie.  I will never finish watching it so I don't know; maybe they turn out to not be complete and total world-economy-destroying fucktards.  You can watch it and tell me.  I'm out.

Insidious (2010)

  So, like I said before, Christy is up visiting.  I asked her what she wanted to watch and she immediately said Insidious.  She'll lie and say I twisted her arm but really she volunteered.  Apparently, watching horror movies with me is more acceptable than watching them alone.  I got Rob to get it for us even though he steadfastly refused to participate.  He sat with his back to the TV, playing Star Wars:  The Old Republic, and ignoring everything that was going on behind him.  Personally, I would have had to turn around because I can't stand listening to a movie, especially a horror movie, without watching.  My imagination is so much worse than anything I'll see on screen. 

The movie itself was barely above dreck.  As the poster says, the same people made Paranormal Activity and Saw so they probably just keep a dartboard full of phrases like "haunted house", "haunted kid", "green lens filter" and just throw for points whenever they need a mortgage payment.  The only really good 'startle' moment in the film was apparently in one of the trailers, which I didn't see because I wasn't terribly interested in it.

Now, I talk a lot of shit about Christy and Rob not liking horror movies.  Words like "pansies" get thrown around and whatnot.  When I say the only good 'startle' moment, I mean the one that got me.  There is a moment in this film (and it's not a spoiler because it's in the freakin' trailer) where Barbara Hershey is telling some creepy story about how she spoke to the creature trying to possess her grandson.  There's an appropriate flashback with some shadowy thing standing in the corner pointing long-ass claws at the comatose kid and making a chittery noise.  It cuts back to Barbara, still talking, then cuts to Patrick Wilson and the demon face hovering behind him.  BOOM.  I was looking away, making some joke to Christy (cause that's how we deal with stuff) and caught that out of the corner of my eye.  I screamed like a little girl.  No joke.  I then burst into laughter, and found the remote to rewind and watch it again.  Other than that one part, there was nothing really disturbing.

A young family moves into a house and their oldest son is stricken with a mysterious coma.  The wife (Rose Byrne) starts seeing creepy shit and gets attacked by ghosts while the husband (Patrick Wilson) knows something's wrong but tries to rationalize it away.  Eventually, things get so bad that they move into another house but the creepy shit follows them there, too.  The mother-in-law (Barbara Hershey) suggests that they talk to an expert (Lin Shaye) who can exorcise the demons.

It felt very much like Paranormal Activity meets Poltergeist except with astral projection instead of Indian burial grounds.  There are more ghosts than you can shake a stick at but the only ones who are really anything to stay awake for are listed in the credits as Doll Face 1 and 2.  They'll stick with you.  (CLENCH!)  The actual demon loses about a million cool points since his theme song is "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" by Tiny Tim.

 I rest my case.

It gets the Liked It tag, not for being good but for giving me and my cousin so much comedic fodder.

One for the Money (2012)

 This was not a good movie.  It wasn't my idea, though.  My favorite human and center of the Experiment, Christy, popped into town for a surprise visit and one of her requests was to go see this piece-of-shit movie.  We love the book series and she was curious how different the movie would be.

One of the few good things is that it follows the book very closely...right up until the end where it goes completely off the rails.  It was probably a time-saving measure, but they could have cut out any number of scenes so they do not get a pass from me.  We'll get to all the negative things in a second.

Stephanie Plum (Katherine Heigl) is down on her luck.  She needs a job and quick.  Her spunky grandmother (Debbie Reynolds) suggests she apply with her cousin Vinny, a bail bondsman.  She goes to his office and learns that cop Joe Morelli (Jason O'Mara) is a wanted fugitive on a $500,000 bond.  He shot a guy named Ziggy Kulesa while off-duty and it looks bad.  Steph has her own history with Joe, who took her virginity and then never called.  She decides to become a bounty hunter and enlists the help of badass Ranger (Daniel Sunjata) to get her up to speed.

Problems:  1) Katherine Heigl's Jersey accent.  God, it was terrible.
2) Katherine Heigl's voice over narration through the entire movie.  Unnecessary.  If I had wanted a book on tape, I would have gotten one.
3) Zero chemistry between Heigl and O'Mara.  He handcuffed her naked to a shower rail and I felt nothing.
4) Supporting characters.  All of them.
5) There is a character named Benito Ramirez in the book that is supposed to be a psychotic boxer/rapist.  The guy playing him (Gavin-Keith Umeh) has these huge puppy-dog eyes that do not say "I will giggle while I bounce your head on the curb".  Just because you gave him a sleeve tattoo does not make him look dangerous.  Especially if you're going to "time save" and cut all the menacing build-up (in the book, Benito is much more stalker-ish), you need an actor who is going to come off as threatening.  I was not threatened.

Puss in Boots (2011)

Nominated for Best Animated Film    Ha!  Finally got all of at least one category this year!

This was one of the few nominees that Rob was actually interested in seeing so I had to jump on it when he offered.  I probably would not have watched it on my own unless people raved about it, because generally spin-offs of animated movies do not do well.  'Shameless cash grabs' I believe I usually call them.

This one was better than most.  The Dreamworks people have been really good about picking better properties to develop lately which is probably due to the influx of Shrek cash.  If they had to pick a spin-off character, Puss is a much easier pill to swallow than, say, Donkey.  /shudder

We weren't entirely certain about where this fell in the established canon but I'm going to say that it was pre-Shrek.  Puss (Antonio Banderas) is a wanted criminal, slinking around seducing housecats, and looking for his Big Score in order to right a mysterious wrong in his past.  He hears a rumor that notorious brigands Jack (Billy Bob Thornton) and Jill (Amy Sedaris) have found magic beans.  He is immediately intrigued and sets out to lift them off the bickering couple.  Unfortunately, he is not the only one after the prize and a masked cat ruins his attempt.  He chases the cat burglar to the Glitter Box and engages in a Dance Fight.  The villain is unmasked and turns out to be Kitty Softpaws (Salma Hayek), a master thief.  She is working for Humpty Dumpty (Zach Galifinakis), once a childhood friend of Puss' but now a sworn enemy.  Humpty entreats Puss to put aside their animosity and band together to steal the magic beans, plant them, climb the resulting beanstalk, and steal the golden goose of legend.

It's a cute film that will probably appeal to the Shrek crowd.  I found some of the themes to be slightly dark for a kids film but they should probably learn about betrayal early on, to save them from being surprised later.  Rob and I would have sworn up and down that Patton Oswalt was the voice of the Keyser Soze-wannabe egg, but it was the Hangover guy.  That was pretty much the only thing that surprised us.  Also, Guillermo del Toro has a really deep voice.  I wasn't expecting that.

Stealing Beauty (1996)

   Obviously, this is the Christy pick for February.  And what a perve-tastic vagina-shrivelling pick it was.

I don't know if I could scrub hard enough to get this movie off my skin.  No redeeming qualities.  Zero.  Oh, but there are tons of naked old people.  See, unlike my evil cousin, I will warn you of these hazards so your eyes aren't seared like mine were.

19-year-old Lucy (Liv Tyler) travels to the artist commune in Tuscany to find her bio dad after reading a poem written by her now deceased mother (Liv Tyler in a blonde wig).  They're all old hippies.  Besides her quest to resolve her daddy issues, --you know what, I'm not even going to call her Lucy.  That's my name and I'll be damned if this character has earned the right to it-- this chick is also planning on giving up her V-card to the guy she had a crush on the last time she was there.  He is a total man-whore, which she is all butt-hurt about, and meanwhile all the old people are gossiping about her and trying to get her laid by someone more suitable.

Don't watch this movie.  This is what will happen to you.

Haywire (2011)

  This had Steven Soderbergh all over it.  The music could have been lifted directly from any of the Ocean's movies, the cast list is all A-listers (except for Channing "Mushmouth" Tatum and UFC star Gina Carano making her big screen debut), hell, even the title screens are trademarks.  What was absent was the usual wit and humor of his movies.  I don't know if that's the way he wanted it, if he saw her as more Evelyn Salt than Karen Sisco (from Out of Sight) or if he just didn't feel she could pull off the dialogue but it just felt a lot colder than his usual style.

Speaking of Gina Carano, she has been very up-front in interviews that she is not an actress and I have to agree.  The fight scenes were great but aside from that she really doesn't have any charisma.  I don't see her getting a lot of leading roles in the next few years, in case she was looking for a career change.

Mallory Kane (Gina Carano) is a private contractor used for very specific missions.  Having recently broken up with her boss, Kenneth (Ewan McGregor), she is looking forward to some downtime but there is a highly-placed Washington insider (Michael Douglas) who specifically requests her for a mission to rescue a kidnapped dissident in Barcelona.  It seems to go well, but Mallory uncovers a plot that implicates her boss and possibly a member of the State Department (Antonio Banderas).  Now she has to avoid assassins while trying to find the truth.

It's a fairly standard movie that felt almost like a throwback to some of the gritty 70s films like Get Carter or The French Connection.  Except more boring.  Pretty much any time someone was talking was a complete snoozefest.  I saw it with Rob and his friend Taylor and all of us had issues with the pacing of the film.  Definitely one to skip.

Chronicle (2012)

  I'm sorry there are so few posts up this weekend.  I usually don't like to talk about my personal problems here (that's what Facebook is for) but I've been having a hard time lately with various things and I spent most of the past week, when I normally would have been watching movies, curled up in a ball staring down the long tunnel of depression.  I haven't had that bad of an episode in a couple of years now and I'm fighting my way back from it but that's why there are two posts for Saturday instead of six.

This was a very good movie to see while depressed though, because the main character is just as helpless and angry as depression makes me feel.  This is how supervillains are born.  It reminded me a lot of Hancock, in that it's a superhero story without established superheroes.  I think Hancock had a better core story though.

Andrew (Dane DeHaan) is a loser in high school.  His mom is dying of cancer and his father (Michael Kelly) is an abusive alcoholic.  He gets a video camera and decides to document his life.  His only friend is his cousin, Matt (Alex Russell), who is trying like hell to get this kid to stop being so weird and actually participate in life.  After dragging Andrew to a party, Matt and popular guy Steve (Michael B. Jordan) find something in the ground and convince Andrew to come down with them and film it.  Boom.  Superpowers.  It starts off with small things, being able to stop a ball in mid-air or stack Legos, but soon becomes much more and the three must soon decide exactly who they want to be.

I think if I had been about fourteen I probably would have loved this movie.  I'm guessing that was about the average age of the kids in the theater watching with me and they seemed to really enjoy it.  Maybe I'm too old, but I've seen too many superhero movies to get excited by this one.  Also, I do not understand the appeal of gimmicks like 3D, Channing Tatum, and found footage.  Is it not enough to simply tell a story?  Do you have to make me feel like I'm watching some idiot's lame-ass vacation videos?  Just tell the story.

Warrior (2011)

Nominated for Best Supporting Actor    This was not as good as The Fighter.  Not even close to the same level.  The poster is pretty cool but that's about all this movie has going for it.

I don't know how, but Gary O'Connor managed to turn MMA into some sort of touchy-feely therapy session.  I can't approve of that.  Tommy (Tom Hardy) and Brendan (Joel Edgerton) are brothers, estranged over their parents' divorce as children.  Tommy went with their mother, who died, then joined the Marines.  Brendan stayed with their alcoholic father (Nick Nolte), married his childhood sweetheart (Jennifer Morrison), had two daughters and became a high school physics teacher.  Tommy comes back to their dad for training after he enters a $5M MMA championship in order to exorcise some of his demons.  Brendan signs up for the same tournament in order to keep the bank from repossessing his house.  The fight in the octagon isn't nearly as tough as the fight in their hearts, or some such shit.

Honestly, I just wanted to see some dudes beating the shit out of some other dudes.  There are moments of that but they are sprinkled far and few in this movie.  There is the obligatory training montage but it is irritatingly split-screened between the two protagonists.  There are also absolutely no surprises plot-wise.  Nick Nolte does a good job but, from what I hear, Christopher Plummer has got this award sewn up in a bag.  We'll see what happens.

On a side note, Tom Hardy looks like a freakin' mountain range of muscle.  I was worried how much of his body would have to be bulked with CGI (like they did Billy Crudup in Watchmen) to play Bane in this summer's The Dark Knight Rises but now I feel a little better about it.

A Better Life (2011)

Nominated for Best Lead Actor    This movie wasn't nearly as depressing as I thought it would be.  Granted, it's not sunshine and roses but I was expecting utter hopelessness based on the Netflix sleeve.  As far as Best Leading Man is concerned, I'm not 100% sold on Demian Bichir.  He's up against Clooney, Pitt, Gary Oldman, and Jean Dujardin.  I haven't seen The Descendents or The Artist but both of them have had way more buzz than this movie.  I wasn't that impressed with Moneyball but Gary Oldman has been passed over a number of times and I think he could break that streak with Tinker Tailor.

But we're talking about this movie.  Carlos Galindo (Demian Bichir) is an illegal immigrant who works as a gardener.  His boss is retiring and urges Carlos to buy his truck and take over his route, even though Carlos has no license, because it will let him earn more money; maybe even enough to move out of East L.A. before his son Luis (Jose Julian) joins one of the omnipresent gangs.  He struggles to come up with the cash, finally turning to his sister, Anita (Dolores Heredia), who married a citizen some years before.  Things seem to be picking up for Carlos until a compassionate decision leads to disaster.  One of his fellow workers steals his truck and all of his tools.  He and Luis try to track the man down in order to secure their future.

It is a hard thing to have a child and to want to provide more for that child than you were given.  In this much, I understand the plight of this character.  He is breaking the law with his very existence and yet trying to set an example of honesty and integrity for his son, trying to instill a strong work ethic despite the promises of an easy indolent life made by the local gangsters, trying to make him understand that respect is something that first starts inside yourself rather than in a tattoo.  It is a hard life and an unenviable one.

This is not a movie I would have ever watched on my own but it serves to remind me why I do this Oscar list every year.  Even, like this year, when I think the nominees are complete crap for the most part, there will be one or two gems that I would otherwise have missed.

Drive (2011)

Nominated for Best Sound Editing   I do not understand how a movie this violent can be this boring.  The violence is very thorough but I just didn't believe Ryan Gosling as a badass.  His voice is too soft.  Romantic lead?  Sure, no problem.  Quiet political thriller?  Ok, I'll buy that.  Ruthless getaway driver?  Not so much.

He doesn't even have a name.  He's just listed as Driver.  People!  It is only cool when Clint Eastwood does it!  Anyway, 'Driver' is a part-time stunt man, a mechanic and moonlights as a getaway driver for petty larceny.  He's like The Transporter but with less personality.  His pretty young neighbor, Irene (Carey Mulligan), has car trouble so he strikes up a friendship with her.  Her husband, Standard (Oscar Isaac), gets out of jail and plans to go straight.  Unfortunately, he owes some people protection money and they want him to rob a pawn shop.  Of course, Driver steps in to be his...driver.  The heist goes horribly wrong and Standard gets killed.  Driver goes after the people behind the heist in order to protect Irene and her son.

This movie had a ton of talent in it from Albert Brooks, playing way against type, to Christina Hendricks, who's in it for a hot minute.  She is a very pretty woman and they do not show her to advantage.  Honestly, I thought everyone in the movie did a great job except Ryan Gosling.  He's just not hardened enough for me.  I thought the soundtrack was like an 80's remix and didn't really suit the movie at all.  As far as sound editing, I don't know enough about the technical aspects to really judge.

Chico and Rita (2011)

Nominated for Best Animated Film    This is not a kid's movie.  There is cursing, animated nudity, drug use, and a murder.  Do not get this movie for your kids!

As adults, however, feel free to watch.  Chico, an old man shining shoes in Havana, remembers the days long back when he was a piano player in 1948, looking for a singer to help him win a local contest.  He finds the beautiful Rita, charms her and takes her home for the night, intending to begin a musical partnership.  Then a previous paramour, Juana, shows up at his place and gets into a slap-fight with Rita, who storms out ending their career before it starts.  Chico mopes but his manager, Ramon, is undaunted and pays Rita to come to the contest and sing Chico's song.  They win a month-long engagement at a Cuban nightclub.  Rita is scouted by an American who wants her to move to New York and make it big.  She refuses to leave without Chico but, blinded by jealousy, he spurns her, gets drunk, and sleeps with Juana again.  Rita goes to New York.

A couple of years later, Ramon and Chico head to the Big Apple as well to ride the wave of popular interest in Cuban music.  They're playing dive bars while Rita is signing Hollywood contracts.  The two lovers meet again when Chico gets the gig of playing Rita's congratulations party.  Incensed, her manager goes to see Ramon.  The next day, Ramon has a brand new office and Chico has a swanky gig playing for some of the biggest names in jazz...on a European tour.  But even that isn't enough to keep them apart and when they see each other again, they make a plan to get married in Vegas on New Year's Eve.

The rest of the description is spoiler-y so I won't say anything.  This was a lot more serious than any of the other contenders in this category.  I didn't know anything about it before I watched it so I was completely surprised by everything.  It is a good movie and I feel okay recommending it with the caveat that it is not for children.

The Help (2011)

Nominated for Best Picture, Best Leading Actress and Best Supporting Actress x 2  
   This is one of the few movies this year that I can feel comfortable recommending to people.  It has gotten a lot of good press and the three female Oscar nominees (Viola Davis for Lead, Octavia Spencer and Jessica Chastain for Supporting) have been collecting statues all over the place lately at the Golden Globes and at the SAG Awards.  I still think Meryl has the lock on Best Actress this year but Supporting Actress is up for grabs.  It did not get nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, which I found surprising but I didn't read the book.  Maybe they changed a lot of stuff.  I don't know.

Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan (Emma Stone) is a fresh Ole Miss graduate looking to jump-start her writing career with some experience working for the Jackson newspaper.  She is assigned the cleaning advice column and seeks out the professional tips she needs from the maid of one of her college friends.  However, once she sees how Abilene (Viola Davis) is treated by the white well-bred society women, ruled with an iron fist by Hilly Holbrook (Bryce Dallas Howard), she decides to write an anonymous book telling the true perspective of the women relegated to the background.  Hilly's own maid, Minnie (Octavia Spencer), finds herself fired and ostracized for simply using an indoor toilet.  The only job she can find is working for the flibbertigibbet Celia Foote (Jessica Chastain), the white trash transplant who stole Hilly's boyfriend.  As tensions mount over the growing Civil Rights movement, Skeeter, Minnie and Abilene must decide how much risk they are willing to take to see this project through.

It's not a movie I could watch over and over because there are just too many sad parts but I do think that everybody should watch this movie at least once.

Real Steel (2011)

Nominated for Best Visual Effects    Special effects have come a long way.  I've now seen all but one of the nominees in this category and Real Steel does the best job of blending CGI and animatronic effects seamlessly.  The light and color shading match reality beautifully and go a long way towards suspending disbelief.

Story-wise, it's Rocky...with robots.  At least as far as the boxing goes.  The rest of it is about a degenerate robot controller (Hugh Jackman) who signs over parental rights of his eleven-year-old son (Dakota Goyo) to his dead girlfriend's sister (Hope Davis) and her rich husband (James Rebhorn) but agrees to take custody of the kid for one summer while the couple is in Italy on vacation.  The kid finds a broken down sparring bot and convinces his father to let him enter it into fights.  Father and son bond over winning.

Now this movie differs from other schmaltzy similar fare by never having Hugh Jackman try and fight for custody.  Rob thinks that's morally reprehensible of the character but I think he was acting in the best interests of the child since his lifestyle is not conducive to stability.  Rob conceded the point but maintains that the guy is an asshole.  No arguments here.  I found the emotional stuff was laid on a bit thick for my taste, like buttercream frosting.  A little bit is nice but you eat a whole pink rose and it makes you want to puke.

Also, the movie made several allusions that it never followed up on, like whether the robot, Atom, had any self-awareness; if Atom and the world champion, Zeus, were made by the same designer; and if the kid is even his son.  The movie is straightforward enough without them, but it would have been nice to have seen a little more depth.

BKO: Bankgok Knockout (2010)

  It's hard to get Oscar nominees this year.  Only two of them were available for streaming and they were both documentaries.  I can't even find the other three in that category and half the movies up for Best Picture are still in theaters.  Since I'm unemployed and looking at $2000 worth of vet bills right now (my cat escaped and got hurt, fractured her hard palate and almost ruptured her eye) I can't be running off to the movies every weekend.  I'm still trying and I'll get as many of them as I possibly can but, in the meantime, I'm still working my way through Rob's collection. 

I love Thai films.  Well, all the ones with ass-kicking anyway.  They kick and jump and flip off walls.  It is frequently insane but never boring.

It starts with two teams of martial artists competing against one another in front of a panel of three judges.  One is the Director of Performing Arts and another is a loud American who smokes cigars and talks down to people.  The teams are competing for a chance to go to Hollywood and work with Mr. Sneed, the American.  The good team is called The Fight Club and all its members were students of Master Udon, who recently passed away.  His son Pod now leads the team.  Fight Club wins the match easily and the team goes out to celebrate, drinking and having a good time.  Then they wake up the next morning to realize they were all drugged by the waitstaff and their cars and phones have been stolen.  They quickly learn, as two of their team mates are kidnapped by masked men, that they have unwittingly entered a tournament called Level of Death organized by Mr. Sneed so high-rollers can gamble on the kids' chances of success versus a host of enemies.  If they run, they'll be killed.  They must fight their way to freedom.

Oh, the fighting.  A symphony of choreography!  C'est magnifique!  The humor is a little broad for my tastes but I got past that easily.  Thoroughly enjoyed this movie.

Mary and Max (2009)

  I thought this was one of the previous year's Oscar nominees but it doesn't appear to be after all.  It won a bunch of Australian awards.

It's a cute little claymation film based on the true story of Mary, an 8-year-old Australian girl and Max, a 40-year-old New Yorker with Asperger's Syndrome, and their pen pal relationship.  Beginning in 1976, Mary (Toni Collette) copies an address randomly from the New York phone book and writes a letter to it, asking questions she can't get answered by her alcoholic mother or her mostly absent father.  Max, having no friends thanks to his as-yet-undiagnosed condition, writes back.  Their letters fly back and forth, despite Max's anxiety attacks culminating in an 8 month stay in a psych ward, for years as Mary grows up, goes to college, and gets married.  Things seem to be going to well, at least for her, until she publishes a dissertation on Max's condition, infuriating him, and her husband (Eric Bana) leaves her for his pen pal, Desmond.

Even though it's animated, probably best to keep your kids away from this one.  There's no cursing but there is a bit of claymation nudity and, thematically, it's pretty dark.  Well worth a look by adult audiences, however.

Jane Eyre (2011)

Nominated for Best Costumes    If you're like me, you never read the book because it looked stupid and boring.  Nonetheless, if you are planning to eventually read the book, **WARNING--164-year-old SPOILERS**

Jane Eyre (Mia Wasikowska) has had a rough life.  Orphaned and left with an aunt who hates her, Jane is packed off to a repressive boarding school where her only friend dies of illness.  Undaunted, young Jane grows up and gets a job as governess to the French ward of a rich dude named Mr. Rochester (Michael Fassbender) out in the middle of nowhere.  The girl is the daughter of a favorite prostitute of Rochester's who had died and left her to his care.  Apparently, that's how you do things in the 1840's.  Anyway, Rochester is kind of an asshole but he starts to warm up to Jane.  Warms up enough to propose, at any rate, totally shocking the housekeeper (Judi Dench).  Just as they are about to tie the knot, however, BOOM!  Some random dude from Jamaica shows up and says that they can't get married because Rochester already has a wife.  A crazy one he keeps locked up in the attic because she keeps trying to kill him.  But still legally his wife.  Personally, I think Crazy Bitch would have been better served with an "accidental" fall from a window the first time she tried to set fire to me but that's frowned upon.  Jane runs away across the moors and gets found by a preacher (Jamie Bell) who's looking for a schoolteacher.  After living in obscurity for a while, Jane gets the news that her last surviving relative has died and left her a fortune.  She only found out about this uncle when her aunt, the one who hated her, was on her deathbed and confessed that Rich Uncle wanted to take Jane in as a child but the aunt told him she had died at boarding school.  Now that's fucked up.  Anyway, now that she's rich, the preacher proposes in a bold attempt to make it out of the Friend Zone but is denied because Jane still wants Rochester.  She heads back to the manor house only to find that it is a burned out ruin, which a gentle push out a window would have prevented.

I was ready for her to only be confronted with Rochester's grave because that seemed to be par for the course in this chick's life but he's alive, just blinded by the fire.  Which I don't even know how that's possible with no other burn scars but I'm not a doctor.  Whatever.  He's "tragically marred" but she still loves him.  I did like that Jane didn't fall apart like a lot of heroines from that time.  She actually came off as someone who wasn't a complete waste of space but was unfortunately born in the wrong time period.

The costumes were all right, I guess.  They were obviously well-researched and everything had to be custom-made but I wouldn't call them special.  They reminded me a lot of Mia's opening costume in Alice in Wonderland (which actually won the Oscar for Costume Design), only more drab.

A Cat in Paris (2010)

Nominated for Best Animated Film    Rob had to find this one for me since Netflix dropped the ball.  I've not seen very many French cartoons.  They're hard to find in the States.  This one is very cute.  The style reminds me of art deco posters.

By day, Dino the cat belongs to Zoe, a little girl who has given up speech after her father was killed by a gangster named Victor Costa.  By night, Dino roams the rooftops of Paris with Nico, a jewel thief.  One night, Zoe decides to follow her prowling tom and falls right into Victor Costa's hands.  Nico comes to the rescue but gets arrested by Zoe's mom, also a cop.  He must convince her to let him go and work together to rescue the little girl.

There were a few very funny moments, including a running gag involving a neighbor's dog, but overall I felt the movie was very serious.  You could still let your kids watch it but I would suggest you sit with them the first time, just in case.