The best part of The Cider House Rules, the 1999 film by director Lasse Hallström (An Unfinished Life, Chocolat), is the sweet, uplifting score from composer Rachel Portman. When a movie’s score is the best thing you can say about it, that’s not always good. With that said, some excellent movie scores out there help make a good movie great or a great film near perfect. Examples off the top of my head that I can think of are Jaws, Rocky, Sicario, Jurassic Park, The Last of the Mohicans, Drive, The Social Network, Halloween, Far and Away, The Empire Strikes Back, and Braveheart, to name a few. Each is a movie that I would consider to be, at worst, a B+ movie. Though a lesser score would likely not diminish my impression of any of these films, one of the first three or four things that come to mind is the score. When I think of The Cider House Rules, I think immediately of Portman’s beautiful Oscar-nominated score. However, unlike the movies above, its great score doesn’t equate to greatness. An A+ score probably takes this C+/B- movie up to a B.
Category Archives: Kathy Baker
Cold Mountain (2003)
The year was 2003, and a quiet little movie named The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King took home the Academy Awards biggest prize that year, winning Best Picture. Some will argue that this reflected on the culmination of a pretty darn good trilogy and that will ensure that the Peter Jackson franchise was worthy of its share of accolades that maybe Best Picture of the Year wasn’t one of them. I can’t give my personal opinion on that one because I have yet to see the film as of the time of this writing (February 2019). I liked the first two enough and don’t really have a reason for not seeing the third yet other than length and the thought that I should probably watch The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers again beforehand. There was a slightly quieter movie that year that seemed to be the Academy sweetheart heading into Oscar night, a film that reestablished Clint Eastwood as a major force to reckon with as, perhaps, THE best director in Hollywood for the foreseeable future (2004’s Million Dollar Baby being his crowning achievement). Mystic River was nominated for six Academy Awards (including Best Picture and Best Director for Eastwood) and earned both Sean Penn and Tim Robbins their long-awaited trophies. 2003 was also the year for the excellent Seabiscuit, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, Monster, and Lost in Translation. But there was one movie that was better than all of these. It too was a major name at Oscar night, earning seven nominations and landing Renée Zellweger her first win after receiving nominations for 2001’s Chicago and 2000’s Bridget Jones’s Diaries at the previous two events. That movie was Anthony Minghella’s (The Talented Mr. Ripley) sweeping Civil War piece Cold Mountain.
Saving Mr. Banks (2013)
Emma Thompson (Howard’s End, Remains of the Day) got hosed out of an Oscar nomination! I had made it a goal to see all the nominees in all major Academy Award categories. Still, I didn’t see the snubs or the next in lines for Best Actor, Best Actress, etc., unless their movie received a nomination in one of the other major categories. It’s been a while since I reviewed all of the really good films of 2013. I’m sure I had already replaced Amy Adams (American Hustle) with a more deserving candidate. I don’t remember who I replaced her with at the moment, and I don’t feel like going back and looking. I’m pretty sure I did this, though. I believe I replaced the Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, and Best Supporting Actor for this movie because I didn’t feel like any of them deserved it. I think I did keep Jennifer Lawrence as a nominee because the nominees in the Supporting Actress category in 2013 were not overly impressive. But this review isn’t about the underwhelming American Hustle. It is about the under-appreciated Saving Mr. Banks, a movie I had written off as a lame little kids’ movie after a single trailer. It was one of those movies that I told myself I would eventually see because it had so much hype surrounding it, and I have yet to talk to someone who didn’t, at least, like it.
Continue reading Saving Mr. Banks (2013)