Sometimes when you see a movie that you know nothing about, you are treated with an unknown little treat…a film that will stick with you forever. Ex Machina is that movie this year. My comparison here is to the Brad Pitt/Morgan Freeman gem Seven. It was a movie in which I knew nothing. I had only heard that it was a movie I must see through word of mouth. Seven probably has a place forever reserved in my all-time top 25. That’s how good it was. But I think a lot of this initially high rating was because of how in awe of it I was when I saw it in a such a small, rickety stage theater converted to a movie theater in Lexington, VA, in the fall of 1997. Now, Ex Machina is not in the class of Seven. But like Seven, it is a gripping, carefully scripted movie, and one that will stay in your head for a very long time after its viewing. Ex Machina will be hard to beat for the best movie of the first half of 2015.
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Category Archives: Academy Award Nominees
Maria Full of Grace (2004)
Joshua Marston’s (The Forgiveness of Blood) Maria Full of Grace is one of the best foreign-language films I’ve ever seen. Unfortunately, I watched this movie on the heels of another foreign language film (A Girl Walks Home At Night), which, despite the 95% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, I thought was an incredibly dull film and one I had no interest in reviewing. So I was a little uncertain about watching another subtitled movie the next day, but I am happy I gave it a fair chance. It’s a great movie that tells a heart-wrenching and believable story.
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Still Alice (2014)
Still Alice is a slightly above-average movie with the best lead performance you will see by an actress all year. I think there are only a couple of shoo-ins at this year’s Academy Awards. I believe that most categories are predictable, but there will be a couple of surprises. The big ones that will not be surprising are Patricia Arquette (Best Supporting Actress – Boyhood) and Julian Moore for her performance as a 50-year-old woman suffering from Early Onset Alzheimer’s Disease in this Still Alice. Each year there seems to be a movie that earns a significant award but is not recognized in any other category. This year, that movie is Still Alice. I’m not a huge fan of Moore. I think she’s good, but she’s slightly overrated. Nonetheless, she is due to be recognized, and this is the lead performance that is head and shoulders above the other contenders.
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The Judge (2014)
The Judge was exactly what I thought it would be: an average fictional movie released in the heart of better films based on true stories. There was a lot of hype around this movie, but I felt it would do nothing for me. And that was what happened. Audiences seemed to like this movie while critics slammed it. I’m in favor of the critics. At best, this was an average movie. At worst, it was a movie that tried every trick to get you to think it was a great movie. The fact that Robert Duvall (Apocalypse Now, The Apostle) got a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award nomination is a bit of a joke. His performance is a bit of an embarrassment when you compare it to the four other nominees. The highlight of this movie is not the story. Nor is it Duvall. If you are going to see this movie at all (which I would recommend you don’t), you would see it for Robert Downey Jr.’s (Iron Man, Chaplin) outstanding performance.
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American Sniper (2014)
In a year that hasn’t had that many must-see movies, American Sniper has proved that there is at least one reason to head out to the theaters. 2014 has been the most disappointing year overall for movies since 2008. Yet despite its horrendous start and some incredibly overrated movies (Birdman, Unbroken, Mr. Turner, Snowpiercer, Godzilla, even Boyhood to an extent), some films did manage to live up to their expectations (Foxcatcher, The Theory of Everything, The Imitation Game). In addition, some movies exceeded my hopes for them (The Drop, Nightcrawler, Kill the Messenger, and the surprise, feel-good movie of the year, Chef). But the film that had the most pressure on its shoulders to perform was American Sniper, the final released movie of the year. And while the movie did not exceed my expectations, it certainly met them in every single way. So before I review the film, I want to refer to a couple of observations.