Category Archives: Academy Award Nominees

Arrival (2016)

Alien, Fire in the Sky,  Independence Day, Men in Black, Starship Troopers, Cloverfield, Signs, Prometheus. These are some of the many movies that have successfully explored contact in some form with extraterrestrial beings in some form. And then you have films like E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Cocoon, Contact, Solaris, District 9, GravityInterstellar, and The Martian, which are also movies about either extraterrestrial encounters or innovative space exploration that deal more with human component or relationship building than they do action, adventure, and a post-apocalyptic future. Add Denis Villeneuve’s (Sicario, PrisonersArrival as the latest movie to try to get itself on this impressive list. The critics (93% on Rotten Tomatoes) and audiences (82%) have enjoyed this movie.

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The Lobster (2016)

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.

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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 RyanHacksaw Ridge is a better movie.” But that seemed like a copout. I couldn’t spoil it with some condition that limited my case.

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Anomalisa (2015)

This post is a first. It is my first-ever post on an animated movie. After 260+ posts, I had to add an animation category under my genres. I have repeatedly said that I wouldn’t review animated films or documentaries. Still, Charlie Kaufman’s (Synecdoche, New York, screenwriter for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless MindAnomalisa is not your traditional Pixar or Dreamworks animation. And this isn’t really animation. It’s an entirely different stop-motion animation. Well, it is, and it isn’t. 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); Anomalisa was the most adult-oriented animation I’ve ever seen. It wasn’t adult-oriented in the X-rated sense. There wasn’t anything obscene in this movie. It’s just that the themes were very adult-oriented, and you wouldn’t want to be next to a kid while watching this film. I don’t think 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 did, and 2) It was uncomfortable to watch at times. It is tough to recommend this movie.

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45 Years (2015)

I drank the Kool-Aid on this one. In many previous reviews, I discussed who would receive the five Best Actress Academy Award nominations. 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 my first chance to see 45 Years. I saw it a day later and 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.

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