Movie Thread

Best Picture - The Revenant has the momentum. It's really good, but I'd rather see Spotlight, The Big Short or Mad Max win.
Best Director - Inarritu has it locked up. Hard to deny his achievement here, though the same can be said for Miller.
Best Actor - It's finally Leo's year, though I wish he had won for Wolf of Wall Street instead. My favorite performance was Fassbender in Steve Jobs.
Best Actress - Larson was incredible, and I'm glad she's getting noticed now.
Supporting Actor - They've got a chance to reward Stallone for playing Rocky 40 years after he got nominated but lost for the role. They won't pass it up. Only one I'd have an issue with winning here is Rylance. Would love to see Hardy win. Beside the cinematography and maybe the score, he was the best part of The Revenant to me. Lot of snubs in this field, particularly Idris Elba for Beasts of No Nation and Jacob Tremblay for Room.
Supporting Actress - Everyone seems to be in on Alicia Vikander, but I'd like to see Jennifer Jason Leigh win.
Screenplays - Spotlight for original, Big Short for adapted.
Editing - Mad Max, no question.
Cinematography - The Revenant. Just beautiful. I felt like I was right next to Leo the whole time.
Animated - Inside Out, but Anomalisa was really good.
Documentary - I've got three of them queued up on Netflix ready to watch before the weekend.
Score - Hateful Eight
Song - Who cares? Never understood the point of this category. I think it's much more important how you work in a soundtrack.
Sound categories - Probably between Mad Max and The Revenant
Costumes and makeup - Mad Max
Visual effects - I think they reward Star Wars here.
Production design - I guess they'll go The Revenant or Mad Max here, but I'd like to see The Martian snag one.

Finally got around to seeing all eight Best Picture nominees. I'd rank them:

Spotlight
The Big Short
Mad Max
The Revenant
Room
The Martian
Bridge of Spies
Brooklyn
 
Oscars went about as expected. I was fine with all of the winners. Only prominent movies I missed of those with nominees were Creed, Room, and The Danish Girl. I think Alicia Vikander is awesome and she could have been nominated for Ex Machina as well (and I think that somehow goes into some of the voters calculus). Seeing that a lot of people didn't like the Mark Rylance win, but he did a nice job in Bridge of Spies. His career is really on an upswing with all the accolades from Wolf Hall on PBS (find a way to see it if you haven't yet). There was a lot of sentiment for Stallone and it would have been nice to see him recognized for his work and who knows why he didn't win. My choice would have been Mark Ruffalo. Like bravesnumberone said, this category probably had the most snubs in it.

The pre-Oscar awards are often indicative of what the intelligentsia (if anyone in show business can belong to any kind of intelligentsia) is thinking and Spotlight was winning a lot. Great ensemble cast and a weighty story told well without becoming salacious. McCarthy basically made All the President's Men using inside voices. A lot of people I know who haven't seen the movie say "It's about all that icky sexual abuse and why would I want to see a movie about that?" I keep telling them it's an extremely well told story of a newsroom working on a difficult issue that involves a cover-up and is more about the pressures felt in that environment than anything else. Hopefully, they'll take my advice.

One puzzler to me is that Mad Max: Fury Road pretty much swept the technical awards over The Revenant, but then Innaritu gets the Best Director Oscar. It seems to me that the director is in charge of mixing all of the parts of a movie together and the logic here would be that The Revenant is greater than the sum of its parts, while Mad Max: Fury Road is less than the sum of its parts, all due to the director's talent. Two very good movies at any rate, although it pains me that The Road Warrior, which I think is Miller's best work, is, in my view, a superior movie to this iteration of Max.

Of course, some of the jokes fell flat and the Twitterverse is rife with righteous indignation as a result. I thought Chris Rock did a solid job on a night that could have been fraught with a lot more tension. Only bit that made me cringe was the segment featuring interviews with black moviegoers in Compton.

PS--Good to see Ennio Morricone get a win. I'm not that much of a Tarantino fan, but he does honor the industry in most of his work and finds ways to bring some neglected greats into his work. So kudos to Quentin for bringing Morricone on board and giving him a chance to win a well-deserved Oscar.
 
I think Morricone is a bigger story than Leo. He was Leo before Leo. Waited almost 5 decades to win an award.

Leo wins in probably one of his less strong performances.
 
The Don said:
I think Morricone is a bigger story than Leo. He was Leo before Leo. Waited almost 5 decades to win an award.

Leo wins in probably one of his less strong performances.
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Leo should have won for Wolf. But then again, this is the Academy Awards. The same body who named Forrest Gump best picture over Pulp Fiction or Shawshank redemption. Or had Shakespeare in love beating Saving Private Ryan. Or how Marty didn't win anything up until the Departed (which si fantastic, but not close to his best film)
 
Saw Zoolander 2. It was OK. I wouldn't spend a lot of money on it. But it had a lot of laughs. Benedict Cumberbatch was brilliant.

Few thoughts. Don Atari seems like it was written for Aziz Ansari, and would have been better with a better comedic actor. I hate Kristen Wiig. I don't see why people love her, I don't find her funny. So many funnier women in comedy and she seems to get all the starring roles.

Ben Stiller was on point as was Owen Wilson. They delivered.
 
My thoughts.

1. Thrilled to see Spotlight win. Makes up for All the President's Men losing in 1976. Kinda fascinating that Michael Keaton has been in back-to-back best picture winners. He got shafted by not winning for Birdman, and he arguably should have gotten a supporting nomination this year, but that field was so stacked. Still can't fathom how Idris Elba wasn't nominated. Guess the Academy are snobbish against Netflix.
2. Leo finally got his win, but again, I wish it had been two years earlier because Fassbender was better.
3. Brie Larson and Alicia Vikander seem to be the two new "it" girls for Hollywood. Wish Vikander had been nominated for Ex Machina instead.
4. Stallone losing sucked. I thought they pushed that back in the order because they knew he was gonna win and they wanted to make it a big moment. Rylance is fine, but IMO he was fifth out of five on that list. I thought for a second they were gonna say Mark Ruffalo. That would have been a better choice than Rylance.
5. Little surprised Mad Max took six. I thought The Revenant would split them a little more evenly.
6. I thought Chris Rock was mostly good. Few jokes were stupid, mostly the ones written by white people.
7. Really loved Dave Grohl's version of Blackbird during the In Memoriam segment.
8. Ex Machina winning Visual Effects on a much smaller budget was a pleasant surprise. One of the most underrated movies of the year.
 
Just watched The Revenant and while I enjoyed it, it's hard to imagine Leo finally winning his Oscar with this part. I hope he shares the love with his stunt doubles, who did most of the work as far as I could see.
 
bravesnumberone said:
My thoughts.

1. Thrilled to see Spotlight win. Makes up for All the President's Men losing in 1976. Kinda fascinating that Michael Keaton has been in back-to-back best picture winners. He got shafted by not winning for Birdman, and he arguably should have gotten a supporting nomination this year, but that field was so stacked. Still can't fathom how Idris Elba wasn't nominated. Guess the Academy are snobbish against Netflix.
2. Leo finally got his win, but again, I wish it had been two years earlier because Fassbender was better.
3. Brie Larson and Alicia Vikander seem to be the two new "it" girls for Hollywood. Wish Vikander had been nominated for Ex Machina instead.
4. Stallone losing sucked. I thought they pushed that back in the order because they knew he was gonna win and they wanted to make it a big moment. Rylance is fine, but IMO he was fifth out of five on that list. I thought for a second they were gonna say Mark Ruffalo. That would have been a better choice than Rylance.
5. Little surprised Mad Max took six. I thought The Revenant would split them a little more evenly.
6. I thought Chris Rock was mostly good. Few jokes were stupid, mostly the ones written by white people.
7. Really loved Dave Grohl's version of Blackbird during the In Memoriam segment.
8. Ex Machina winning Visual Effects on a much smaller budget was a pleasant surprise. One of the most underrated movies of the year.
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Pretty much in agreement. Didn't see Steve Jobs, more out of my dislike of the real Steve Jobs than anything else. I'm sure Fassbender was excellent. Can't think of a time when he hasn't been (even in the wretched The Counselor). MacBeth 2015 is now free for those of you with Amazon Prime and it's worth the watch.

Great to see Michael Keaton resurrected to a great extent. I could have flipped a coin last year because I thought both he and Eddie Redmayne were fantastic, but the disabled character always seems to win the coin flip. I'm surprised Cuba Gooding, Jr., wasn't nominated for Radio. But Keaton is a blue-collar actor and it's great to see him getting top roles.

Totally agree on Ex Machina. When I first saw it advertised, I thought "That's one to skip," but it's free on Amazon Prime, so I watched and was totally blown away. Vikander was excellent and the extremely busy Oscar Isaac and Domhnall Gleeson were as well. Really moody piece that delivers a knock-out punch.

Like I wrote in my wrap-up, I was surprised that The Revenant didn't do better in some of the technical awards. Close call with Max Max: Fury Road in a lot of these categories, but I thought that The Revenant was one of the more carefully-constructed movies I have seen in this or any year. I was surprised that The Revenant was not nominated for Best Score as I thought Innaritu's use of music to set the mood in the movie was nothing short of awesome.
 
50PoundHead said:
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Pretty much in agreement. Didn't see Steve Jobs, more out of my dislike of the real Steve Jobs than anything else. I'm sure Fassbender was excellent. Can't think of a time when he hasn't been (even in the wretched The Counselor). MacBeth 2015 is now free for those of you with Amazon Prime and it's worth the watch.

Great to see Michael Keaton resurrected to a great extent. I could have flipped a coin last year because I thought both he and Eddie Redmayne were fantastic, but the disabled character always seems to win the coin flip. I'm surprised Cuba Gooding, Jr., wasn't nominated for Radio. But Keaton is a blue-collar actor and it's great to see him getting top roles.

Totally agree on Ex Machina. When I first saw it advertised, I thought "That's one to skip," but it's free on Amazon Prime, so I watched and was totally blown away. Vikander was excellent and the extremely busy Oscar Isaac and Domhnall Gleeson were as well. Really moody piece that delivers a knock-out punch.

Like I wrote in my wrap-up, I was surprised that The Revenant didn't do better in some of the technical awards. Close call with Max Max: Fury Road in a lot of these categories, but I thought that The Revenant was one of the more carefully-constructed movies I have seen in this or any year. I was surprised that The Revenant was not nominated for Best Score as I thought Innaritu's use of music to set the mood in the movie was nothing short of awesome.
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I think it would have been but it got disqualified under some weird rule because multiple people contributed selections to it. Or something absurd like that.
 
Runnin said:
Just watched The Revenant and while I enjoyed it, it's hard to imagine Leo finally winning his Oscar with this part. I hope he shares the love with his stunt doubles, who did most of the work as far as I could see.
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he wasn't even the best actor in the movie

he shouldn't have won
 
goldfly said:
he wasn't even the best actor in the movie

he shouldn't have won
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Correct. But considering there were at least 2 times he should have won and lost (Wolf and Departed, honestly don't know why he was nominated for Blood Diamond)

Though I think th eway the movie was directed, Hardy was gonna look the best actor as he was the conduit that the film ran through. Leo was great in the film, but you were inclined to like Hardy's performance more because without Hardy's performance, Leo's would have rung a little shallower. Without an intense hatred of the villain, you'd just wonder why doesn't Leo die, afterall he has no family anymore.
 
zitothebrave said:
Correct. But considering there were at least 2 times he should have won and lost (Wolf and Departed, honestly don't know why he was nominated for Blood Diamond)
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He shouldn't have won over McConaughey and his performance in the Dallas Buyers Club when he was up for Wolf and he wasn't nominated for his role in the Departed

but even if he was nominated for that and blood diamond that year, neither performance was as good as Whitaker's performance in the Last King of Scotland

none of this is saying he's a bad actor btw
 
goldfly said:
He shouldn't have won over McConaughey and his performance in the Dallas Buyers Club when he was up for Wolf and he wasn't nominated for his role in the Departed

but even if he was nominated for that and blood diamond that year, neither performance was as good as Whitaker's performance in the Last King of Scotland

none of this is saying he's a bad actor btw
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It's all opinion so it doesn't matter.

But he was superior to McConaughey. He just wasn't in an Oscar-bait role. His performance in Wolf of Wall Street was something special.

And as far as vs. Whitaker, that's debateable. Much closer than him bs MM.
 
Saw "London Has Fallen" last night and it was hard to tell whether it was earnest or a satire. It will make The Donald's Top Ten list for 2016 and if he becomes President, Gerard Butler will be named head of the Secret Service.
 
thewupk said:
Watched 10 Cloverfield Lane. Pretty good movie. Didn't expect the ending but I should have.
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I actually played hooky last Friday because it's the last breather I'll get to take for a few months and saw 10 Cloverfield Lane at a matinee (did a double header with Mrs. 50# in tow at London Has Fallen) Friday evening. I thought 10 Cloverfield Lane was pretty much standard Bad Robot stuff. It's kind of high brow Stephen King. With you totally on the ending.
 
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