Academy Awards - Best Picture

Now that I have seen eight of the nine Oscar nominees for Best Picture let's put them in the order of my liking, shall we?

Argo
Beast of the Southern Wild
Amour
Life of Pi / Django Unchained
Zero Dark Thirty
Lincoln
....
Silver Linings Playbook

I'm saving the second to last spot for Les Misérables, as I don't like musicals and it is safe to assume that this will not change my mind, however beautiful the songs.

And, yes, I get that this will probably come down to Argo or Lincoln. I liked Lincoln fine, but found is a bit long and kitschy. Thing is, I actually liked all but one of the nominated films I saw so far and I have to squeeze them into some kind of order.

Zero Dark Thirty

This is a 157 min movie that feels like a 157 min movie. Does that make any sense? What I'm trying to say is that it does not drag on, but it doesn't fly by either. Every scene is stretched to the point where it is about to get exhausting, but then doesn't quite.

It starts off with an extended torture scene. The main players are established as being tough, but only because they need to be. They are really only doing it for the intelligence and are totally awesome true patriots. Never mind that the new name they get out of the poor guy is one that they eventually get from multiple others that seemed to be giving up details much easier.

From this moment until the final showdown at Bin Laden's hide-out we follow CIA agent Maya in her years of struggle to convince her superiors that her hunches are right and, ultimately, she knows how to find the big bad wolf. This part is pure drama, no action - other than the occasional explosion that will have you jump out of your seat.

The storming of the hide-out feels like it takes place in real time. Sure, it is exciting, but - much like the torture scene - is so detailed one could argue that it is too long.

Overall pretty good. Jessica Chastain is much more deserving of the Oscar than Jennifer Lawrence in the same category.

6/10

Nine Lives

These are snippets of the lives of nine different women. The situations depicted are difficult for each one of them, mostly in different ways but always in the settings of some relationship.

Every episode bears the name of the woman at the center of the story. Some of the scenes are done in one lengthy shot, which is interesting/impressive.

All stories are unresolved, most feature well-known and well-respected character actors (Holly Hunter, Robin Wright Penn, William Fichtner).

And of course there is the insufferable Dakota Fanning.

3/10

Beasts of the Southern Wild

This is the story of Hushpuppy, who lives with her ailing, stubborn father in the Bathtub, a little slab of land in constant threat of disappearing through the frequent storms that flood it. A group of locals refuses to leave.

Hushpuppy gets some rough treatment from her father, because he wants her to grow up strong and survive in the world after he's gone, which is likely to happen sooner rather than later, as he suffers from a heart condition.

When the locals are forcefully evacuated after blowing a hole in a nearby levee that threatens their existence they break out of the medical camp again and return to the Bathtub. Tough group.

Hushpuppy is on a constant search for her missing (deceased?) mother while a horde of mythical aurochs roam the land and eventually face off with the little girl. But since Hushpuppy is 'the man', what chance can they possibly have?

The 9-year-old Oscar nominated Quvenzhané Wallis (and no, I have no idea how to pronounce that, either) is simply wonderful, carrying the entire film on her tiny (and then 5-year-old) shoulders.

9/10

Ace In the Hole

In June 2007, The Guardian published a list of 1,000 films one must see before dying. Although I do not agree with all of the films featured, the list differs from all the other such compilation, where you basically get the same 1000 films, give or take a few.

Here are some that I have never even heard of. I started watching them a while back and this is as good a time as any to share my thoughts. So, in the upcoming days, weeks and months I will review films that may not be fresh in my memory anymore but appear on the list. Look for the label 'guardian1000' to follow.

Some I simply refuse to watch (nobody can tell me that I simply must watch Ace Ventura before I die and keep a straight face), some I have watched and hated (I will tell you about them), some I have not been able to track down (yet).

The list is alphabetically and the very first must-see film is Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole.

Here is the first I had never heard of before, not being the biggest Billy Wilder fan (or, not yet). I am actually grateful for the suggestion, because this is really good - and a hint of what was to come in journalism (*cough* *cough* Murdoch *cough*).

Kirk Douglas plays a journalist that recently fell from grace with the big newspapers in New York. While holed up in New Mexico, he stumbles upon a story that carries the promise of getting him back on top.

A young man is trapped and hurt inside a local mine and Douglas is the big-shot on location to milk the story for all it's worth. And we know that trapped miners make for good sob stories.

Somewhere amid the town fair-like atmosphere and the profit seekers, Douglas loses any kind of morals he had and delays a rescue mission for the good of the story. Too late he realizes that he has essentially contributed to the miner dying and that's no good because he really needed a happy ending for his orchestrated story.

Billy Wilder himself considered this the best film he'd ever made.

7/10

The Twilight Zone: Five Characters in Search of an Exit

An army major wakes up in unfamiliar surroundings with no memory how he got there. Worse even, he doesn't know who or where he is. The room he is in has no doors or windows, the only light source coming from high above his head.

Almost immediately he encounters other characters in the same situation - a clown, a ballet dancer (moving mechanically), a hobo and a bag piper. The major starts questioning the situation and looking for a way out.

Rod Serling makes an ominous appearance, looking over the edge of the pit, talking to the camera, telling us,

"We will not end the nightmare, we will only explain it, because this is The Twilight Zone."

Everyone tries to make the major feel more comfortable, explaining that they all suffer from neither hunger nor thirst and tell him that his efforts to get out are futile. They have themselves tried every conceivable option long ago. The newcomer then concludes that they are in hell.

The only break in their eternal boredom is an occasional ringing of a bell, so loud it makes their surroundings shake and hurts their ears. In the end, the five turn out to be toys at the bottom of a bin, collected for poor children as Christmas presents.

6/10

Lincoln

So, this is it. The film that received 12 nominations for the Academy Awards. And it was.....okay.

Daniel Day-Lewis was fantastic (obviously), as were Tommy Lee Jones and Sally Fields. However, most of the film was really, really, really slow. One could have easily clipped off a few minutes here and there.

The most entertaining parts were the ones that Daniel Day-Lewis was not even in - the discussions in the House and the trio Spader/Hawkes/Nelson going about their task of getting a few of the Democrats on their side. Everything in between is laden with kitsch and pathos.

Oh and am I the only one that thinks Steven Spielberg gets nominated as a matter of course?

6/10