Month: February 2016

Oscar Recap

I actually found the 88th Oscars interesting and entertaining last night. One thing for sure is that it was fast moving. The days of the long “Thank You” speeches are over!!

Here is my Oscar Recap for Last nights awards.

“Spotlight” won the Best Picture Award! I saw this movie and gave it 5 stars. Other movies nominated that I saw in 2015 were: “The Revenant”, “The Martian”, “The Big Short”, “Bridge of Spies” and “Mad Max: Fury Road”. I gave all of these movies either 4 or 5 stars. “Room” and “Brooklyn” were the other two nominees.

Leonardo DiCaprio finally won the long deserved Best Actor Oscar. He had to get mauled by a bear in “The Revenant” to win it.

Mark Rylance won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role in “Bridge of Spies”

Alejandro Gonzalez won the Best Director Oscar for “The Revenant”

The animated movie that brought me to tears, “Inside Out” won the Best Animated Feature Film Oscar. I gave this movie 5 stars.

“The Big Short” – Best Writing Adapted Screenplay Oscar

“Spotlight” – Best Original Screenplay Oscar

Emmanual Lubeski won the Best Cinematography Oscar for “The Revenant”

Ennio Morricone – won the Best Music Original Score for “The Hateful Eight”

“Mad Max: Fury Road” was a surprise winner of the following 6 Oscars:

Best Costume Design, Best Sound Mixing, Best Film Editing, Best Production Design, Best Sound Editing and Best Makeup

Best Original Song went to Sam Smith for “Writing’s on the Wall” from the “Spectre 007” movie

If you have not seen “Spotlight”, “The Big Short”, “Bridge of Spies”, The Martian”, “Mad Max:Fury Road” or “The Revenant”, I encourage you to seek these movies out, make some popcorn and get comfortable!!

Other Oscar Winners are as follows:

Brie Larson: Best Actress Oscar for “Room”

Alicia Vikander – Best Supporting Actress for “The Danish Girl”

Best Documentary Feature Film – “Amy”

Best Documentary Short Film – “A Girl in the River”

Best Live Action Short Film – “Stutterer”

Best Animated Short Film – “Bear Story”

Triple 9

“Triple 9” is a “Dark Brooding” Cop Drama based in Atlanta, GA.

A band of dirty cops are being black-mailed by the Russian Mob. This band of dirty cops go about performing virtually impossible heists. The only way to successfully pull off these heist are to issue a “999” police call which represents “Officer Down”.

You know what happens when you have a crew of people working together and money is involved. People get greedy and paranoid. In “Triple 9” the Rookie Cop in the band is setup to die, but he foils the attack. This sets up what turns out to be the best part of the movie which is only a few minutes from the end.

“Triple 9” is strange and subdued. The movie starts off on the wrong foot and it never stands up straight. Kate Winslet is horrible as a Russian Mob Boss.
There is drug use throughout and blatant nudity. Once again you have a movie with “Heavy Weight Actors” who come across as “Light Weight Actors”.

“Triple 9” is best viewed on Cable.

This is a 2 Star Movie!

RACE

“Race” is about the incredible true life story of Olympic Gold Medalist Jesse Owens. Although the story is moving it only scratches the surface about the events leading up to the 1936 Summer Olympic Games where the legendary Jesse Owens won 4 Gold Medals.

By participating in the 1936 Olympic Games Jesse Owens displayed tremendous determination in facing off against Adolph Hitler’s vision of Aryan supremacy.

“Race” is a movie about courage, determination, tolerance and friendship.

What you see is very well execution, but I feel like the movie could have gone deeper into the story. The movie seems timid at times, but what’s there is definitely worth seeing.

This is a 3 1/2 Star Movie

Deadpool

Marvel’s “Deadpool” is a fictional antihero that appears in Marvel’s Comics. Deadpool would fit in nicely with the Mutants from X-MEN.

“Deadpool” is a rather obnoxious, profanity riddled, irritating film. It has its good parts. The action scenes and camera angles are awesome, but there is so much irritation that the good parts get lost.

The story is about how “Deadpool” came to be. A former Special Forces operative turned Mercenary, Wade Wilson finds out he has Lung Cancer and may not live long. Wade is subjected to an experiment that leaves him with the ability to heal himself rapidly if injured. Because of his altered looks, he chooses the name “Deadpool”. “Deadpool” then goes on a mission to find the man who is responsible for nearly destroying his life. The story unfolds from there…

If there wasn’t so much profanity, nudity and irritation this would be an excellent first installment.

If you can get past the irritation of “Deadpool” it’s worth a look. The paid critics gave this movie 4 1/2 stars. It will only receive 3 stars from me.

Hail Caesar!

“Hail Caesar!” was not on my original watch list but, I decided to give it a look.

The Oscar winning filmmakers the Coen Brothers are back with a Star-Studded Golden Aged Comedy. Unfortunately I did not find anything golden about the movie.

The story is centered-around a typical day in the life of a “Studio Fixer”, but what you see is anything but typical and I can’t imagine that everything that goes on could have possibly happened in 24 hours. There are so many problems that even Olivia Pope from the ABC hit Scandal couldn’t possibly fix them all without a cast of thousands.

The movie starts off ok, but goes down-hill fast. There were too many stories and sub plots, so the movie is all over the place and no place. At one point I was bored out of my mind. I sat there thinking how could they have this many heavy weight actors and the movie be so boring. Don’t get me wrong there were some funny scenes, but not enough to be entertaining. I did not find George Clooney funny at all.

The paid critics said that “Hail Caesar!” was “Fresh”. I say its “Stale”.

This is a 2 Star Movie!