Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Lobster is one weird movie. I don’t often do well with movies that I find to be strange. Some movies that have gotten high ratings with the critics are so utterly dreadful that they are virtually unwatchable. The tone is simple, the dialect is weird, and the actions are peculiar, but the overall strangeness of these movies makes the experience a chore. I know some love Wes Anderson, and to each his own. The Lobster feels similar to one of these Anderson movies, but oddly enough, it interested me. While I didn’t understand why a strange movie needed to be made, I found it engaging, and it didn’t feel like I was watching it to say that I watched it. While I wouldn’t say I liked it and would never watch it again, there were parts of it.
Category Archives: Academy Award Nominees
Hacksaw Ridge (2016)
Hot take. Hacksaw Ridge > Saving Private Ryan.
That was my claim after my theater viewing of Mel Gibson’s (Braveheart, The Passion of the Christ) newest film. I’ve since slept on this, but I should have watched it again. Nonetheless, it doesn’t take away from Gibson’s movie. Hacksaw Ridge was based on a true story, whereas Saving Private Ryan was not. For me, when all else is equal, it nods to the more factual-based one. Saving Private Ryan was a fantastic movie. The Invasion of Normandy Omaha Beach to open the movie was one of the most captivating and memorable action sequences in film history. When I claimed that Hacksaw Ridge was a better movie, I almost inserted the caveat that “outside of the opening 30 minutes of Saving Private Ryan, Hacksaw Ridge is a better movie.” But that seemed like a copout. I couldn’t spoil it with some condition that limited my case.
Anomalisa (2015)
This post is a first. It is my first ever post on an animated movie. After 260+ posts, I had actually to add an animation category under my genres. I have repeatedly said that I wouldn’t review animated films or documentaries (heck, sometimes I don’t know what I can even offer when I review a horror film or a comedy). Still, Charlie Kaufman’s (Synecdoche, New York, screenwriter for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind) Anomalisa is not your traditional Pixar or Dreamworks animation. And this isn’t really animation. It’s a stop-motion animation, which is entirely different? Well, it is, and it isn’t, I guess. I don’t watch the F/X show Archer or anything on Adult Swim, so I don’t have much of a comparison (if any at all), but Anomalisa was the most adult-oriented animation that I’ve ever seen. It wasn’t adult-oriented in the X-rated sense. I wouldn’t say that there was anything obscene in this movie. It’s just that the themes were very adult-oriented in nature, and you wouldn’t want to be next to a kid while watching this film. Heck, I’m not sure you’d want to be next to anyone during this film. I would not say that I didn’t like this movie. I did expect to like it much more than I did as I kept hearing great things about it. But the two prevailing thoughts that I had while seeing this film were 1) I wanted to like it more than I really did and 2) It was really uncomfortable to watch at times. It is really difficult to recommend this movie.
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45 Years (2015)
I drank the Kool-Aid on this one. I discussed who would receive the five Best Actress Academy Award nominations in many of my previous reviews. I kept including Charlotte Rampling (Melancholia, The Eye of the Storm) as one of the five based on everything I had been reading. I regret including her name, but, in my defense, January 29th was the very first chance I had to see 45 Years. I saw it a day later, and I am uncertain what I just saw. I love heavy dramas and movies about broken relationships. I also like slow, methodical movies if they are building towards something. The pieces were in place for 45 Years, but this movie ultimately didn’t do it for me. I realize I am in the minority when I give it a less-than-average review. Nevertheless, it earned a stellar 96% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. I don’t like using this excuse (mainly because I’m no spring chicken), but I may have been too young to truly appreciate this movie. I want to think that I am not. I have a deep appreciation for movies about aging in general or movies about couples dealing with life-altering experiences. I adore the film Away From Here. I love About Schmidt. Cocoon, Driving Miss Daisy, and Amour are also movies that I admire. And while it is a different type of aging movie, I believe The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is one of the best love stories ever told on screen is one of the best 100 movies ever made. In each of the five movies mentioned above, at least one actor or actress (and in many cases more than one) received a nomination for an acting award. Each was deserving. I have nothing against Rampling, and I went into this movie thinking I would see one of the three or four best performances by a leading actress all year, but her performance failed to meet my expectations. Now that I have seen all of the contenders, I believe Carey Mulligan (Suffragette) deserved the final nomination for Best Actress this year.
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The Revenant (2015)
Why not save the best for last? It doesn’t always work out that way, but The Revenant was the final movie released in 2015. In fact, except for in a few select theaters in a few select cities, you couldn’t see the film until January 7th. Was it worth the wait? Absolutely it was. It seems like we’ve seen trailers for months building this movie up. Each time I saw a preview, I couldn’t help but get excited. I believe that this might have been my most anticipated movie since Shutter Island, and with that movie, I had reason to be wary because it was a 2010 movie released in February. You usually don’t get the best films of the year released that early in the year. While Shutter Island exceeded expectations, The Revenant was all that and more. Leonardo DiCaprio (The Wolf of Wall Street, The Great Gatsby) has been burned by the Academy many times before. While The Revenant is his fifth Academy Award nomination for acting, he should have at least three or four more. None of those past omissions matter now, as DiCaprio is the front runner to win Best Actor this year. I wouldn’t quite qualify him as a lock to win, but it is only a two-actor race, and his performance was more impressive than the fabulous performance given by Eddie Redmayne in The Danish Girl.
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