I didn’t for the first time in my adult life watch the Oscars last night. Not that my love of great storytelling and film making has diminished, but more to the point I don’t want to watch three hours of political activism take center stage over the movies and the art of storytelling. Don’t get me wrong, no one more than me thinks Donald Trump is a douchebag, but enough already, the Oscar show should be a ninety minute show which features great films, great performances, and outside the box writing.
These were my six favorite films of the year in order of preference:
1 Lady Bird
2 Molly’s Game
3 Get Out
4 The Shape of Water
5 Darkest Hour
6 The Post
Lady Bird got my nod for Best Picture. It was a sleeper movie made for $10 million dollars which grossed over $50 million. It scored points with me on every nuance of the story being told about this young college bound woman from Sacramento who has this contentious relationship with her mother. I thought the writing was great. The performances were Oscar worthy and the in the end these characters have you loving both of them for the right reasons as the movie winds to its tearup-good gulp conclusion.
My best actor Oscar goes to Gary Oldham in Darkest Hour. You see this movie and you feel as if you’re in a room with Winston Churchill for two hours. Slam dunk easy for me on this one.
My best actress Oscar goes to Saorise Ronan from Lady Bird. She was superb. She had me from the opening scene to the very last scene of the movie when she was calling her mother from college with her grownup moment speech. Her coming of age moment so to speak as a young woman. Bravo. More of this and less of the bullshit from the Oscar show.
My best supporting actor Oscar goes to Idris Elba from Molly’s Game. Elba plays the high powered defense lawyer who takes on the pro bono legal defense of Molly Bloom. Again, this character had me every moment he was on the screen in what I thought was a better film than some of the films which touched more on our current state of political affairs than on compelling storytelling.
My best supporting actress Oscar goes to Laurie Metcalf who plays the mother of Lady Bird. She nailed it. I know in this day and age these kind of roles probably don’t play as big as politically correct figures, but she was great.
My best director Oscar goes to Jordan Peele from Get Out. Who would have known there would be a horror story remake of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? This is one of those movies I’ll need to see again from the opening scene to that final scene in that this movie artfully through sublimation touches on race relationships in this country. This is a horror movie which leaves you feeling creepy at times, but like I said, I’ll watch it again just to make sure I didn’t miss anything. To me, this was a much better movie than last year’s best picture winning Moon Light.
So those are my awards. If you want to go see six good movies then I’d say go for it. If you want to argue about the Era of Caligula then there’s always MSNBC and Fox. Go see a movie would be my advice. Give yourself a break.