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And this was just a warm-up
Feb. 19th, 2011 11:13 pmSo, yeah, the folks at AMC theater are doing their annual marathon of all the best picture nominees. We're doing the two day version, five movies each day. Today was day 1: Toy Story 3, 127 Hours, The Kids Are Alright, True Grit, and The Fighter.
Toy Story 3 was as fun as i'd heard. i'm surprised at the level of scary for what was nominally a kids movie. and oh, the sentimentality near the end. but pixar does good movies.
I hadn't actually heard of 127 hours before hearing that it had been nominated. I missed word of its theatrical release entirely. But good heavens. what a hell of a ride. Unexpectedly so. It's the (reportedly) fairly accurate depiction of Aron Ralston's accident where his arm was trapped by a falling rock and after 5 days of not quite dying yet he broke his own arm and cut it off with a cheap dull multitool.
The Kids Are Alright was solid. It was more situational than plot driven. Annette Benning was stellar, nailing a lot of complex emotional notes. The rest of the cast is somewhere between solid and really quite good.
I've never seen the John Wayne version of True Grit, so I can't compare the new version to it. I am told it's much more true to the book than the first version. Not as utterly peculiar as most Cohen brothers movies, but good performances and great dialogue and lush use of scene. A very un-Matt-Damon performance from Matt Damon, too.
The Fighter is based on a true story (4 of this year's nominees were), out of Lowell. I'm always disappointed by bad attempts at Boston accents, but the actors in The Fighter were spot on. And my God, is there another actor working right now who does more impressive levels of physical transformations for roles than Christian Bale? Good stuff.
Next week, we go back to see the rest of the nominees. In the mean time, tomorrow is the 24 hour SF movie marathon over at the Somerville Theater.
Toy Story 3 was as fun as i'd heard. i'm surprised at the level of scary for what was nominally a kids movie. and oh, the sentimentality near the end. but pixar does good movies.
I hadn't actually heard of 127 hours before hearing that it had been nominated. I missed word of its theatrical release entirely. But good heavens. what a hell of a ride. Unexpectedly so. It's the (reportedly) fairly accurate depiction of Aron Ralston's accident where his arm was trapped by a falling rock and after 5 days of not quite dying yet he broke his own arm and cut it off with a cheap dull multitool.
The Kids Are Alright was solid. It was more situational than plot driven. Annette Benning was stellar, nailing a lot of complex emotional notes. The rest of the cast is somewhere between solid and really quite good.
I've never seen the John Wayne version of True Grit, so I can't compare the new version to it. I am told it's much more true to the book than the first version. Not as utterly peculiar as most Cohen brothers movies, but good performances and great dialogue and lush use of scene. A very un-Matt-Damon performance from Matt Damon, too.
The Fighter is based on a true story (4 of this year's nominees were), out of Lowell. I'm always disappointed by bad attempts at Boston accents, but the actors in The Fighter were spot on. And my God, is there another actor working right now who does more impressive levels of physical transformations for roles than Christian Bale? Good stuff.
Next week, we go back to see the rest of the nominees. In the mean time, tomorrow is the 24 hour SF movie marathon over at the Somerville Theater.
