Very rarely go to the movies anymore! With the price of movies today - I just wait 6 months and watch them on TV!
I saw The Imitation Game a few weeks ago and The Theory Of Everything last night, both superbly crafted films, great acting all round. The true story of The Imitation Game is just jaw-droppingly amazing. Eddie Redmayne may just get a BAFTA and an OSCAR for his very moving portrayal of Professor Stephen Hawking, whose book, A Brief History Of Time, I have now been inspired to read.
I have only seen The Theory of Everything and American Sniper and liked them both with Theory being the more worthy of an Oscar. Id love to see Theory win but after the outcry that Selma was snubbed I almost guarantee it will win. Hollywood has its way of caving in to pressure!
Sarcastic Coffee Aficionado
I have yet to see Selma and Boyhood .... and they are on my list!
I absolutely LOVED The Grand Budapest Hotel .... so much that I bought the CD for my library.
Each movie in the listing had something wonderful to offer ..... and my personal "hope" is that the quirky TGBH has a good showing of wins.
I may change my mind after seeing Selma and Boyhood.
Van
I've only seen Boyhood on that list... and thoroughly disliked it.
Aside from the fact that it was filmed during 12 years, there really isn't anything interesting or memorable about that movie. Basically, you follow this very average family doing very ordinary things during 12 years: boy goes to school, boy has his first kiss, boy smokes pot, and so on and so forth. The scrip is very basic, the dialogs are unoriginal and boring, and the movie is unnecessarily long (2 hours 45 minutes). And then during the last 30 minutes of the movie, the characters keep having those 'appraisal discussions' where they're trying to provide some sort of moral to their story; it really feels like the producers were dissatisfied with the final result, and then filmed a few extra-scenes to provide some 'depth' to their unimaginative script. Needless to say, it feels very forced and artificial.
I had high hopes with this movie, but was largely disappointed. It just feels like the producers wagered everything on the original concept, and then omitted all the rest (ie. script, dialogs, plot, evolution of the characters, cinematography, soundtrack, etc.). Despite the fact that you see the same characters aging through their lives, you barely feel any form of sensible evolution in them: kids become teens and dye their hair, mother goes through different boyfriends, father gets into his forties and trades his sports car for a minivan. It's all very basic and unoriginal. You don't even sense the particular challenges of growing up in that specific generation (ie. the Millennial Generation), nor do you acknowledge the evolution of our lifestyles in the last 12 years. If it hadn't been filmed during 12 years, absolutely no one would have given any attention to that movie, I'm sure of it. I hate to say this as the concept was in fact rather original, but it just felt like a big gimmick that attempted to draw attention on a very mediocre movie.
I watched this movie with a rather educated/sophisticated girl, and she had the exact same opinion of it. We really didn't have anything interesting to discuss about after watching this movie together, aside from wondering why the hell it was nominated for the Oscars.
I'm looking forward to watching these other movies though. Birdman particularly intrigues me, mainly because it's presented as a sequence shot and because it's a slight parody of my all-time idolized movie (Batman, 1989).
My heart says Selma, but Birdman is just brilliant. It deserves the win, as does the director, Keaton, Stone, and Norton.
You can’t truly call yourself peaceful unless you are capable of violence. If you’re not capable of violence, you’re not peaceful. You’re harmless.
