I remember when I first saw A History of Violence in the theaters in 2005. It was not what I was expecting at all. I remember thinking the movie was decent, but not what I expected. This was also when I started to get into the Oscars. I remember being flabbergasted when William Hurt (The Doctor, Children of a Lesser God) received a Best Supporting Actor nomination. At that time, my beef with his nomination was that he was only in one scene (basically the last scene in the movie). To warrant this kind of acclaim, I felt that you needed to be on the screen for more than 15 minutes. As I watched it again (for just the second time ever) last night, I realized that he didn’t deserve the nomination, not because he was only on the screen for 15 minutes, but because his performance sucked. He was such a minor character, and anyone could have played this performance, and it wouldn’t have affected the movie. If anybody deserved a nomination for this movie, it would have been Viggo Mortenson (The Road, Eastern Promises), who, as he always seems to do, hit a home run as this movie’s lead.
Continue reading A History of Violence (2005)
Category Archives: Mario Bello
The Company Men (2010)
In August of 2010, I made a list of the movies I had to see before the end of the year after reading Entertainment Weekly’s Fall/Winter movie preview edition. I ranked 15 films in order. #1 was Ben Affleck’s The Town, which has turned out to be my favorite movie (as of 2011). #2 was Buried, which starred Ryan Reynolds. This movie, which I did not see in the theatre, was one of the biggest wastes of two hours of my life. And #3 was The Company Men, which starred 4 Academy Award winners. The release date of The Company Men kept getting pushed back further and further, and while its limited release date was in very late December, the vast majority didn’t have a chance to see it until 2011. By then, my list had changed based on the Oscar Buzz and the lukewarm reviews of The Company Men. I finally was able to check the movie out on Netflix. Based on the film I had seen since my initial list, The Company Men would have still made the top 15, but it would have been closer to the 12-15 range rather than the 1-3 range. To further digress into my poor list, Little Fockers was #4, Unstoppable #5, and The American #6. The movies I liked most were The Social Network (initially #7) and Blue Valentine (initially #8). The Fighter (initially #10), 127 Hours (initially #11), Love & Other Drugs (initially #13), as well as True Grit, Rabbit Hole, Black Swan, and The King’s Speech (both of which I did not even rank).