Review / Best Picture Nominees

This weekend, the Oscars are upon us. It's my favorite night of the year. I don't just sit down & watch the Oscars. I study them and obsess over them months before even the nominees are announced. It's currently one of my goals to watch every Best Picture winner (a little over halfway there!).

This year, I watched all 9 of the nominees for Best Picture. I even caught 4 of the 5 Best Documentary nominees and most of the Best Actor/Actress films. So in honor of my favorite night of the year (and one of my greatest obsessions), here's a crash course on the Best Picture nominees for 2012:

Amour
Amour was a very quiet, moving, emotional film about an elderly couple in Paris. The film begins showing the two going out on the town and enjoying life, until the wife Anne has a stroke, and her husband Georges has to care for her until her death. I didn't have a dry eye the entire film and couldn't speak for a few minutes after the credits rolled. The film, which is entirely in French and is also nominated for Best Foreign Film, had no score, took place mostly in the couple's apartment, and only had about 10 characters. It was incredibly quiet and intimate, and I walked away in complete awe and admiration. 

My grade: A+
Rotten Tomatoes: 93%

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Argo
Argo has been taking the awards show season by storm. Ben Afflect is winning, the cast is winning, the movie itself is winning... basically it's all winning. My thoughts on Argo are two-fold. One: the story of six US citizens hiding in the Canadian embassy after the US embassy in Iran was storm by militants in 1979 is one of the best premises for a movie in recent history. The dialogue is compelling, and the story is told well. Two: I do not understand why it's winning everything. We watched the film again this week to see what we missed on the first viewing, and walked away thinking the same thing we did on the first viewing: it's not the best film of the year.  Maybe I'll be proved wrong on Sunday? Only time will tell. (Side note: it is the highest rated Best Picture nominee on Rotten Tomatoes.)

My grade: B+
Rotten Tomatoes: 96%

Beasts of the Southern Wild
By far the most unique movie of the nominees, Beasts of the Southern Wild tells the story of a 5-year old girl named Hushpuppy and her hot-tempered, deathly ill father in the Louisiana bayou community called "the Bathtub".  A storm destroys the community and Hushpuppy and her father fight, alongside a few other "locals," to keep the community alive. Hushpuppy is played by 9-year-old Quvenzhane Wallis, who is the youngest nominee ever for Best Actress. While the story was solid, the camera work was blurry and shaky at times, which made the film difficult to enjoy.

My grade: B-
Rotten Tomatoes: 86%

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Django Unchained
It takes a lot for me to like a Quentin Tarantino film, but Django Unchained was fantastic. I loved it. The acting was fantastic. The directing was fantastic. The score was amazing. And I was on the verge of crying, cringing or laughing the entire film. There was never a dull moment. Jamie Foxx (a freed slave) teams up with Chrisoph Waltz (a bounty hunter) and after a series of comical events, they go on a search for Foxx's wife on Leonardo DiCaprio's infamously cruel plantation. The premise sounds as ridiculous as it actually is, but Tarantino made it work much to my enjoyment.

My grade: A
Rotten Tomatoes: 89%

Les Misérables
I may the only person in the world to say this, but: I didn't like Les Misérables. {Yes, I know. I'll understand if you stop reading now.} The odd thing is, I don't have a bad to thing to say about it. The acting was solid. The directing, cinematography, musicality, sets, costumes, and everything else were well executed. The fact that they sang everything live? Amazing. I didn't even hate Russell Crowe as many people did. It was just missing an "it" factor for me. After obsessing over the film, I still can't put my finger on why I didn't like it, but all I can conclude is the magic wasn't there. It felt forced. I walked away completely unchanged by my experience. (In my defense, this is the lowest rated Best Picture nominee on Rotten Tomatoes.)

My grade: B-
Rotten Tomatoes: 79%

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Life of Pi
Life of Pi was the best-made, most visually-stimulating film of the year. From the start to the end, I was completely mesmerized. The film follows Pi, an Indian teenager, on a journey to America with his family, when the boat they are traveling on sinks into the Pacific. After the amazing ship sinking scene (one of the best I've ever seen), Pi finds himself as the sole survivor and on a life raft with a tiger. As the film follows Pi's journey on the open seas, every new happening was even more stunning and mesmerizing than the scene before. I can only say, if you didn't see this in theaters, you missed out. It was spectacular.

My grade: A
Rotten Tomatoes: 88%

Lincoln
Lincoln had my heart from the moment Daniel Day-Lewis came on screen once again completely engrossed in his role. While some may consider the film boring, I found it beautiful, touching, and inspiring. It gave life to perhaps the worst time in our country's past, and delicately maneuvered its way through the political and personal lives of some of the country's most prominent politicians of the day. The screenwriter, Tony Kushner, is as meticulous with his words as Day-Lewis is with his acting. When you add Spielberg to the mix, this film was destined to be magnificent.

My grade: A+
Rotten Tomatoes: 89%

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Silver Linings Playbook
If I had to pick my favorite movie of the year, it'd be Moonrise Kingdom, immediately followed by Silver Linings Playbook. Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper blew me away with their incredible, touching performances. The story was compelling, and just odd enough to be unique. It was well made, and made me laugh and cry throughout the whole film. Unfortunately, the ending left me wanting, and I walked away with just a tinge of disappointment, which is why I don't believe it'll win Best Picture. But even that wasn't enough to knock it off my "favorites" list.

My grade: A
Rotten Tomatoes: 92%

Zero Dark Thirty
When I watched 2009's Best Picture winner Hurt Locker, Kathryn Bigelow's first Oscar film, I instantly understood why it won. Unfortunately, I went into Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn's first film after Hurt Locker, with my expectations too high. I was expecting to be as shocked and moved as I was with the first film, but was instead met with a film that was lacking focus. Jessica Chastain gave a solid performance, but as Meryl Streep's win as Best Actress for The Iron Lady last year shows us, great acting can't save a film. Even with the torture shock factor, and relevancy to today's culture, Zero Dark Thirty wasn't handled with the proper care it needed to be, and thus isn't the film it could have been.

My grade: B+
Rotten Tomatoes:  94%


Cheers to a spectacular evening! Enjoy the show ♥
ps: my 2012 Oscar Best Picture reviews 

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