So highly ambitious, so incredibly flawed, but oh so engrossing is M. Night Shyamalan’s (Signs, The Sixth Sense) return to form his latest mind-**** Old. Suppose you’re new to Shyamalan (which I would understand if you are a bit younger and have avoided all of his critical flops since 2002’s Signs, Old might be the coolest thing you’ve ever seen. For the rest of us, we know that somewhere in the film will have a twist. It’s a matter of either trying to figure it out (which is something we inherently do now) or trying to enjoy the ride. I attempted to do both. I succeeded in enjoying the ride. I did not figure out the twist. There’s also the idea that Shyamalan might try to do one of these types of movies without a twist so that it also can be something that plays in your mind. All in all, I was able to set aside all of the many, many imperfections associated with Old and appreciate it for what it was worth and then some.
Category Archives: Rufus Sewell
The Father (2020)
Anthony Hopkins (The Remains of the Day, Amistad) gives the second-best performance of his career (The Silence of the Lambs) in a film that fails to overwhelm, like most of the other best picture nominees. Disguised by the outstanding performances of many of the other movies nominated for Oscar’s most prominent award of the night, The Father (Florian Zeller’s directorial debut) is a very well-made film that we should remember for its story, its performances, its execution, and its all too real haunting reality. I’ll concede to that if these things meet the checklist of a Best Picture-nominated movie. But there was something while watching this highly engaging film that felt like it didn’t deserve to be a movie that was one of the eight best in any year. With that said, 2020 as a whole did not generate many great films. In that regard, The Father merits its acclaim. The counter-argument is that the Academy doesn’t have to nominate up to ten films. Before 2009, only five films were able to receive a nomination. Since then, the fewest number of Best Picture nominated films for a given year has been seven (2018). 2020 would have been a year that warranted the minimum number of selections. However, the top movies, as a whole, were so poor that it would be just as challenging to distinguish five that are that much better than eight.