More nominees: Selma, Gone Girl, Ida, Whiplash (43 movies to go)

Blogger's Note: Good grief, I started this entry on Sunday and it is now Tuesday night. I'd like to think this means I'm being thoughtful, but I honestly can't say, I just want to apologize for the delay. Clearly, I'm not meeting my self-imposed deadlines.

It has been a busy week. Someone asked if I could do this for a living. I don't think so. Too stressful, and I don't think I could meet my deadlines. I may make my current deadline, which is February 22, Oscar Night, and I'm on pace to hit 95%.

1/17/15 Selma, nominated Best Picture, Best Song 2014

This review is being written last, even though it was the first film in this selection that I saw. I wanted to be thoughtful, maybe thought-provoking. The truth is, I loved the movie. I have been interested in the Civil Rights movement for a very long time, and the Civil Rights movement within the context of everything else that was happening in the 1960s: Vietnam, assassinations of American leaders (the Kennedys, King, Malcolm X and others). I don't usually cry in movies (this has been documented), but I started to cry pretty early on and didn't stop (it wasn't a weepfest, but it was very emotional). The movie focuses on Martin Luther King, Jr., the SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Council) and the voting rights movement in the South, specifically in Alabama. David Oyelowo is Martin Luther King, Jr., Tom Wilkinson is Lyndon B. Johnson; they are the leads in this very deep and talented cast. The pivotal event in the film is the march from Selma to Montgomery (capital of Alabama) to protest the multitude of voting restrictions for African Americans at the time (if you do not get absolutely spitting angry when Oprah Winfrey's character Annie Lee Cooper is denied her right to vote after answering the registrar's questions, then you're just not paying attention). The early part of the movie lays the background for the necessity of the march (the denial of Annie Lee Cooper's right to vote is part of that); the background is important, especially if the viewer is not really familiar with the Civil Rights movement. It also gives us an opportunity to see some of the dynamics within the SCLC and the conflict between the SCLC and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). The idea of the march was to be nonviolent and peaceful, but the state troopers (sent by Governor George Wallace, played by Tim Roth) and the county sheriff had other ideas. Unfortunately for them, the violence was captured on television (this is before cable and the 24 hours news cycle) and shared around the country and world. Of course, there is a lot that happens between the opening scenes and the march, including visits to the White House by King, a conversation between Malcolm X and Coretta Scott King, and other events. I never felt overwhelmed by the information, and even though the movie was long in duration (two hours), I could have sat there a while longer. Director Ava DuVernay does a great job at pacing the movie and captures the crowd/action scenes with a visceral quality. There are a couple of original songs in the film and "Glory" by John Legend and Common is one of them, and it is nominated for Best Song. The movie (it is a movie) conveys the events of the time, the emotion of people fighting for their rights, does not shy away from the allegations of King's infidelities (which it could/would if it was a whitewashing of his legacy, and I don't think it is at all) or the conflicts within the Civil Rights Movement as a whole. Is it 100% accurate as might be told in a monograph on the subject? No, somethings are done for a dramatic purpose; Maureen Dowd wrote an article taking issue with LBJ's position in the movie on Civil Rights versus his position in real life; in real life LBJ was more sympathetic than portrayed in the movie (her article is worth reading because it gives food for thought). My own opinion on this is King had to have a place to voice his thoughts, desires for action, the frustration he and others were feeling; I think it was important to have that dialog with a white man. Who would that white man be? Wallace, a racist? He wouldn't have let King go off like he did. The county sheriff? That wouldn't have the impact. He needed to have this conversation with the most powerful man in the free world and that would be LBJ. That's just my opinion of how I understand moving a story along. This wasn't a documentary, just like Glory or  Mississippi Burning or Pearl Harbor were not documentaries. They are movies. They tell part of a story that may be 100% true and other parts are contrived. As a history major, I think it's important to get movies like this (well-told, well acted, thought provoking) out there and have discussions like Dowd and others have provoked. I mean, if a movie is totally inaccurate, that's a different story. But if you can get kids (or even grown ups) to watch a movie like this or Schindler's List, then you can have discussions that go further, read historical books about the topic. Some people hate history because it's so dry and boring (WHAT?), but if you can humanize it, and if Selma does anything it humanizes the people of the movement, Annie Lee Cooper, Cager Lee, John Lewis, and the others. The Civil Rights Movement precluded the Women's Rights Movement of the 1970s and the Gay Rights Movement in the late 1980s through today. We stand on the shoulders of those men and women, black and white, and we should not forget that.

1/17/15 Gone Girl, nominated Best Actress 2014

I do not even know where to start with Gone Girl but I'll try. I am not one of the many people who read the book and I intentionally did not read any of the reviews because I knew I would see it at some point, especially after hearing such great reviews of Rosamund Pike's performance. Rosamund Pike plays Amy Dunne, the inspiration for her parents' best-selling books featuring "Amazing Amy"; Amy is married to Nick Dunne (Ben Affleck), who writes for a magazine, until he gets laid off. Early in the movie, we are led to believe that something awful has befallen Amy, and perhaps Nick is responsible. The movie is not a straight narrative, going from point A to point B; it's told from different perspectives and uses flashbacks. I would suggest paying attention (on occasion, I have been known to multi-task, but I can focus when necessary). I don't want to give anything away in case you haven't seen it because the suspense is imperative to the success of the movie, I think. For the first 45 minutes or so of the movie, I thought Pike was good, but not nomination worthy, and then about an hour into it, she flipped a switch. Wow. I was not expecting any of what happened next. She totally transformed, and was amazing. Between the actual story and the musical score (by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, which surprisingly was not nominated for an Oscar), I was a little freaked out and not sure how I was going to sleep that night. Even being a little wigged out, I still liked the movie, I thought it really kept you on your feet. I think The Best Actress category is a pretty tough one, having now seen three of the five movies, I really don't have an inkling. Now that I've seen the movie, I don't plan on reading the book (sorry Rach).

1/19/15 The Last Days, Best Documentary, 1998

The Last Days is a documentary focusing on five survivors of the Holocaust; all five survivors were from Hungary. They were all kids when they were sent to the camps and at the time of the documentary were in their 60s or 70s. They begin by telling their stories of growing up in their villages or town and how they (almost all of them) felt their Hungarian nationality was primary and their Jewishness was just a small part of who they were. In fact, when they started to hear stories from Polish or Czech refugees about what was happening in their hometowns, the Hungarian Jews were convinced that could not happen to them. Unfortunately, fascism reared its head in a most forceful way in the form of the Arrow Cross Party; the Arrow Cross were responsible for deporting and killing Jews. Raoul Wallenberg of Sweden saved many Hungarian Jews by giving them fake passports. The survivors provide vivid and detailed descriptions of their deportations and the intake process into the camps, how in some cases they were separated from their family members. All of the survivors in the movie go back to Hungary, some of them go back to the sites of their camps with their adult children; they meet their old neighbors. Returning to Hungary and the camps seems to give some 'closure' (not the best word) to survivors; in fact, a couple of them say they never need to come back. Documentaries like The Last Days are hard to watch and they should be, but they should also be watched, especially considering the rise of anti-Semitism and the continued existence of Holocaust deniers. The documentation of Holocaust survivors has been a singular goal of Steven Spielberg as part of the USC Shoah Foundation - The Institute for Visual History and Education.

Wild - The book by Cheryl Strayed was the basis for the 2014 movie with Reese Witherspoon as Cheryl (in an Oscar nominated role). I think it's a coin toss when you have a book that's made into a movie, sometimes I read the book first, sometimes I see the  movie, sometimes I don't read the book. In this case, I probably would not have read the book had I not seen the movie and really enjoyed it and been moved by Cheryl's story. I found them complimentary to one another, not one better than the other. I loved the movie for the incredible scenery and because Witherspoon gave a voice and embodiment of Cheryl, and also, Laura Dern gave Cheryl's mother Bobbi a voice as well. For me, because I saw the movie first, this helped me when I read the book to have a visual in my head. The book is more raw and has more details than the movie, because I think that's the beauty of a book. Bobbi's sudden illness and death were almost more palpable to me in the book than the film, and in fact, I was not sure I was going to get through the first chapter. But, as a friend of mine told me, the payoff was well worth the tears in the first 50 pages or so. Obviously, the book (or any other book like Foxcatcher or Unbroken (which I'm reading now) will have more information, and movies compress events and often make composite characters to facilitate the film, but in this case, I don't think it hurts the movie, and you can find the depth in the book.

1/24/15 Ida, nominated for Best Foreign Film, Poland, Best Cinematography 2014

I kind of feel bad, but I didn't like this movie, even though I wanted to, and you would think it would be right up my alley. The movie ended and I said something like "What a f*&()*) awful movie" or words to that effect. Ida is set in post World War II Poland, early 1960s, and we first meet Ida in a convent where she is preparing to take her vows as a nun. That is until the prioress tells Ida that they have finally heard from her one living relative, an aunt, and Ida is encouraged, nay told, to go and meet her. At first I thought the aunt was a prostitute, but apparently she was not, she was a judge. Aunt Wanda is not one for sentimentality, and blurts out that Ida is Jewish. After a false start, the two start out on a quest to locate the bodies of Ida's parents, which takes Ida back to the village where she was born. Wanda was very closely associated with the Stalinist regime and seemed possessed by a deep melancholia or something which keeps her in between cynicism and morbidness. The movie is full of long silences and pauses, which normally don't bother me, but here it just seemed annoying. It is a beautiful film, the black, white and grays are very powerful, but otherwise, I could have cared less, about Ida or her aunt (I might have been more interested in a movie about Wanda and the complexities of her life, which were based on a real person). It seemed to me that the idea that Ida was Jewish was just a gimmick. The only blessing is the movie was less than 90 minutes.

1/24/15 Gary Louris, Northfield Arts Guild

In September, I had the opportunity to indulge my recent love of the Jayhawks at the First Avenue in Minneapolis. I'd been waiting ever since for a solo date by Gary Louris, lead singer and main writer for the band. Of course, it would be in January in Northfield, MN (read: country), but it was on a Saturday night, and as luck would have it, the East Coast was getting all of our snow. So, I headed down the road, it's really not that far. A very good friend of mine is from Northfield and told me the venue was small. I had no idea how small "small" was until I got there. The seating capacity might have been 100, tops and I was in the very last row and it was still one of the best seats I've had at a concert. I did feel like some outsider, since I think almost everyone in the theater was from Northfield or Rice County at large. Terry Vanderwalker opened; Terry is a local guy, and I was actually sitting next to his wife, and is (was?) in a band called The Big Wu which is known around Minnesota. Then Gary Louris came on and played a few Jayhawks songs and then brought out Kraig Johnson, also of the Jayhawks, to play guitar and sing. You could tell these guys have known each other a long time, and they also just got back from a West Coast trip, so they seemed a little loopy (in a good way); they had great banter with each other and the audience. There were Jayhawks songs, songs Gary wrote with other people, including the Dixie Chicks and stuff from his own solo material. It was a fun night at the Northfield Arts Guild.

1/25/15 Whiplash, nominated Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Editing, Best Sound Mixing, 2014

This movie was intense, not intense in the way Selma or Gone Girl were intense, maybe percussive is a better way to describe it, especially since the drums are another character in the story. Andrew (Miles Teller) is a first year student at the most prestigious music conservatory in the country, and he aspires to join the elite jazz band led by the sadistic Terence Fletcher (Oscar nominated J.K. Simmons). Andrew gets his chance, but that doesn't mean things get any easier for him, and the minute he shows any flash of confidence or heaven forbid, bravura, Fletcher knocks him down. It's nothing personal, Fletcher is pretty brutal to everyone. Andrew is driven and instead of being discouraged, he practices harder, much to his father's chagrin (his dad is played by Paul Reiser). As a viewer, you learn pretty quickly not to get too comfortable with Andrew's successes, and you kind of hold your breath, waiting for something else to happen. There comes a point near the end of the movie where Andrew has the chance to walk away from Fletcher, move on, take a different path, and he does not; I began to think that Fletcher may have been a sadist, but Andrew was pretty close to a masochist, and maybe they belong together. If you remember J.K. Simmons from his role as J.J. Jamison from the Toby McGuire Spiderman franchise, you are very well aware that he can be blusterous, and in Whiplash he takes it up a notch, but yet is a little more restrained; you knew J.J. was just blowing off steam and he would never really do anything, but with Fletcher, you're not sure. I liked the movie, I don't know if I loved it, but J.K. Simmons is powerful and he would be vote for Best Supporting Actor with Edward Norton. The characters that they play impacted and informed what the main characters did. I'm not a big band/jazz enthusiast, so I have no idea if the music was spot on in the genre, but I liked a couple of the songs/pieces and may get some Buddy Rich or Charlie Parker from the library.

1/25/15 Finding Vivian Maier, nominated Best Documentary Feature, 2014

Everyone likes a good mystery, including the Academy (Searching for Sugarman from a couple of years ago), so I was going to see this whether or not it was nominated. John Maloof was looking for photographs of Chicago for a project he was working on, so he bought a box of photos from an auction. What he found led him to buy more boxes of photos, negatives and film, all by a nanny named Vivian Maier who died in 2009, not leaving any documentation or narrative other than her photos and bits of receipts and bric a brac, and a small group of former employers. Maloof becomes obsessed with learning more about Vivian, even tracing her family in the French Alps. Vivian comes across as a complex person, not quite the Mary Poppins-type. The photographs are captivating and very good, and several professional photographers opine that she may have become quite well-known had she ever published her work or gave an exhibit. I enjoyed the film and would be interested in a book or exhibit of her photographs, but something in the documentary didn't quite fill me with the joy, passion, anger or whatever strong emotion I like to get from a documentary. I think it was because we never 'find' Vivian the way we 'found' Sugarman; we could enjoy Rodriguez's resurgence with him in a way we cannot with Vivian. I'm guessing based on past documentary winners this may lose out to the documentary on Edward Snowden (Citizenfour) or the documentary on the Vietnam War.