Golden Movies

I was very happy with the Golden Globe nominations and winners overall. I have only seen a small number of films that were nominated, but hopefully I will see more before Oscar time.

This weekend I saw 2 of the nominated films. Slumdog Millionaire and Rachel Getting Married. Wow. 2 AMAZING films.

I was happy to see Slumdog Millionaire get the Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Score, & Best Screenplay. All were well deserved. Walking out of the movie, the immediate reaction was Danny Boyle is much more of a director that I gave him credit for and the score of the film was a much a part of the film as the 3 main characters. I am not going to give you the plot, you all can look it up. I am jusy going to say that the film is well done on every level. There are some parts that you chalk up to movie magic and that is to be expected. It's a little over the top on the love story, but again, it's a movie. If you want a discussion on the movie, call me, I am not going to bore you with the details. I give the movie an A. Go see it.

Rachel Getting Married. This one was hard. Very heavy. I am a little surprised that Anne Hathaway did not win for Best Actress, but I am reserving my judgement until I see Revolutionary Road in a couple of weeks. The movie is about Kim (Anne) who is an addict and has really done some bad things due to her addictions. She comes home for her sister's wedding and you go through an emotional roller coaster. You feel for the addict; you want the addict to grow up; you see the power of addiction; you see how addiction affects everyone in the family; you see the wounds and scars; you see recovery; you see what it really is. It is sad, hopeful, determined, and depressing. It was powerful. I am very very thankful that no one in my family deals with addictions like that. Great movie. Go see it.

I have also seen Frost/Nixon. Good movie. Frank Langella did a fantastic job. I am not a fan of movies about real people. That's what A&E is for. I understand their stories are interesting and deserve to be told, but Hollywood takes too much creative license and it becomes a work of fiction, not a movie on someone's life. It may be a good movie, but I do not trust the American public to make the separation. If you want to make a biographical movie and take a leap from the facts, just say it's a movie. Frost/Nixon did a decent job of seeming to tell it truthfully. It may be because the actual even happened on tape so it would have been hard to deviate.

My loathing of biographical movies came about with Catch Me If You Can. Good movie, great true life story. If you research it though, only half of the movie is true. Which is unfortunate because the true story is an amazing story in itself, but it gets muddied up through Hollywood magic.

Go see Slumdog Millionaire before the Oscars, you won't regret it.