In The Good Dinosaur, the minds at Pixar have imagined a world where the meteor that killed the dinosaurs has missed Earth. The result, a few million years later, are more evolved dinosaurs. They farm the land, are ranchers, or sometimes just scavengers. And the humans that have come along the evolutionary line are seen as wild animals.
Arlo and his family live on a little farm by the river under Clawtooth Mountain. There, they live a happy life and grow corn through the summer to feed them through the winter. His father is a stern, archetypal farmer; his mother, nurturing. Though he came from a large egg, Arlo is the runt. His sister is the brains, his brother the brawn and both have earned their right to make their mark on the family silo.
To earn Arlo his mark, his father gives him a special job. A critter (wild human boy) has been getting into their corn supply. Arlo is to catch and kill it. When Arlo fails, his father tries to help him finish the job, but tragedy strikes. With Arlo feeling guilty and his family struggling, his anger at the critter gets the better of him. He falls into the river, is knocked unconscious and wakes very far from home. With only the critter, who he names Spot as his companion, they set out on a long, epic journey against nature finding both friends and enemies.
What really struck me about this movie is how realistic the animation is. In the opening scenes, the water flowing down the river had me fooled. The wild landscapes the team at Pixar has created looked more like filmed live action than animated from scratch. It really is a brilliant achievement and a high point in modern animation.
Arlo and the other characters stand out from the backgrounds because they do not look so realistic, and that is a good thing. After all, these are imagined forms of dinosaurs with an extra few million years of evolution on them. I enjoy Arlo’s knobby knees, the wrangling t-rexes who gallop like horses, and the triceratops with many horns for his companions.
What I love most about The Good Dinosaur is that it is a simple story of a farm boy lost from home. He worries about his family, and the scene where he explains the idea of family to Spot is one of the film’s most poignant moments. Arlo’s biggest obstacles are not the scavenging pterodactyls, but nature and all its wild fury. After the river takes his father, Arlo, and the audience, has a better understanding and fear of nature’s power. In the end, Arlo realizes he is powerless against it, but he must brave it to move on.
While my son loves this movie, especially Spot, some moments in The Good Dinosaur might be scary for young children. And have fun explaining what happened to Poppa. But with a big adventure, a fresh look at familiar dinosaurs, a special emphasis on family and fun characters, I highly recommend this movie be shared with kids. My favorite thing about The Good Dinosaur is that it has taught my son the word family.
“You are me, and more.”
Oscar Sunday is almost here! Which means we are all making our guesses and predictions on what films will go down in history as Oscar winners. Personally, I think this year has been a bit bland, but let’s have fun with it anyway.
Visual Effects
Original Screenplay
Actress
Best Picture
The most memorable scene set in America was when Donovan comes home to find his son prepping for the bombs to drop. He shares with his father all that he was taught in school, as he fills up the bathtub in case the water were to suddenly be shot off. It’s obvious Donovan doesn’t quite know how to respond to the whole situation. Perhaps he knows the harsh truth that everything his son is doing would be pointless in the event of nuclear war, or he just doesn’t want to discourage his son. But then his son brings up the trial in a way that everyone must be thinking, “You’re not a communist so why are you defending him?”
One of the most fascinating scenes in the film shows the building of the Berlin Wall. All around the organized men stacking blocks of concrete on fresh cement are people panicked and scrambling to get on the East side. We see people rushing through the holes before they are filled and people climbing out of buildings that align with the wall, hanging out of windows to outstretched arms below. Among this chaos is a young American student on a bicycle trying to get to friends on the West side in time to get them out. When they are too late, the young man is arrested under suspicion that he is an American spy and becomes a complication in Donovan’s negotiations. 
That being said, The Academy decided to award Bridge of Spies with six Oscar nominations. Mark Rylance is nominated for best supporting actor, in his portrayal of a very mild mannered accused Soviet spy. The film is also nominated for best picture, sound mixing, production design, original score and original screenplay. 
In this barren, crazy land, Max (Tom Hardy) is a man just trying to survive. He is captured, taken to The Citadel and used as a blood bag for a sick war boy, Nux (Nicholas Hoult). When one of Immortan Joe’s Imperators, Furiosa (Charlize Theron) goes for a gas run and suddenly heads east, he discovers that she has taken his brides. Joe and his followers roll out to chase her down and bring back his treasured brides. But Furiosa is a fighter, taking the women to The Green Place where the Many Mothers are and is ready to crush Joe’s patriarchal oppression. 
On the flip side, I love how disgusting Immortan Joe and his gang are. Joe is this sickly fat man covered in boils who has to wear a device to help him breathe. Yet, his breathing apparatus looks like bared teeth, his see-through armor is molded to give him a six-pack and has medals hanging off of it. Talk about fragile masculinity, right? His war boys aren’t much better. They’re sickly pale and skinny, amped up on chrome they spray on their mouth and teeth, convincing them to die for Immortan Joe. And that guy with the nipple rings, ugh, so gross in every way. 
I love this film. I want everyone to see it. The first time I saw it, I thought it would be your usual action film, so I just relaxed and drank a couple beers. By the end, I was jumping up and down in my living room cheering, “Down with the patriarchy!” When I watched this film a second time, I was just as pumped up. I was ready to put monster tires and spikes on my dorky car and remove all horrible men from power. 
Much like Brooklyn’s main character, Eilis, this film is fairly quiet, sad at times, but so naturally charming, beautiful and elegant. Unfortunately, I doubt many movie-goers put Brooklyn on their must-see lists. It’s a very level headed film from the UK, it isn’t flashy or pandering to Hollywood’s usual target demographics. And I think that makes it better. The film’s skillful storytelling hooked me in and kept me captivated the entire time. I sincerely hope to see more wonderful films like Brooklyn in wide distribution. 
Directed by John Crowley and based on Colm Tóibín’s novel, it is the story of a young Irish immigrant in the early 1950s, Eilis (Saoirse Ronan). With a priest’s help setting things up for her, she leaves her little Irish town, her mother and sister to start a life on her own in Brooklyn. After a bumpy journey across the Atlantic, she finds herself in a boarding house with other young Irish women and a job working a department store counter. She becomes very homesick and feels guilty that her sister, Rose (Fiona Glascott), has to watch over their mother from now on. Brooklyn starts to feel more like home when she meets Tony (Emory Cohen). The two fall quickly in love, but tragedy brings Eilis back to her hometown. There, she becomes conflicted about the life she could lead there as opposed to the one she has made in Brooklyn. 
The long ship ride across the Atlantic shows just how naive and vulnerable Eilis is. The combination of the terrible food and the rocky ship makes her horribly sick and the awful girls in the next room have locked her out of the toilet. Thankfully her roommate for the voyage is a classy, more experienced woman who helps her through, gives her some makeup tips and makes sure she walks through Ellis Island like a pro. I love how this kindness is passed on later.
Brooklyn’s Oscar nominations only total to three, but they are three very big awards. Besides Ronan’s lead actress nomination, there is the award for best adapted screenplay and, of course, best picture. I believe these nominations simply show what a well crafted story this is and what a wonderful character Eilis is. 
The other night, a storm rolled through. There are a few trees in my yard I always worry about falling over. With the wind gusting and the rain pouring down, theses trees were shaking every which way. But then I remembered a line in The Revenant. “When there is a storm. And you stand in front of a tree. If you look at its branches, you swear it will fall. But if you watch the trunk, you will see its stability.” It’s true, the trunk was steady. That tree wasn’t going anywhere. Another storm weathered without having to replace my neighbor’s fence. 
But that’s too literal. We are all trees and in the storms of our lives, our branches are going to be shaken. Shaken so hard we may lose a few. But our trunks, anchored by strong roots are not going to let go so easily. The Revenant is about a man with one hell of a strong trunk. He’s not going down, even when he’s been mauled by a bear, helplessly watched his son murdered right in front of him and left in a shallow grave to die. 
If Leonardo DiCaprio does not win an Oscar for this brutal role, I don’t know if he ever can. The scene where he is attacked by the bear is intense, frightening and convincing. From then on, being dead weight in a stretcher made from tree branches and slowly recovering DiCaprio does not let up. After he is abandoned, he does not give up. We watch him drag himself across the dirt and snow. In one scene he really eats a raw bison liver. In another he crawls inside a real dead horse as if it were a damn Tauntaun. Like a Luke Skywalker on the frozen frontier. Just imagining all the suffering DiCaprio and the rest of the crew went through schlepping through the snow to make this film they all deserve the highest awards. 
The Revenant is nominated for a whopping twelve Academy Awards, the most of any film this year. DiCaprio is nominated for lead actor while Hardy earns nomination for supporting actor. Director Alejandro González Iñárritu received his third directing nomination. The rest are for cinematography, editing, production design, hair/makeup styling, costume design, sound mixing, sound editing and, of course, best picture. I’m sure The Revenant will not leave Oscar night empty handed.
Let me first say that I know next to nothing about big banking terms or the housing market and unless that knowledge impacts a major life decision, I don’t care to learn much about it. The filmmakers behind The Big Short realize that many people feel as I do, and they work with it. They take what is a very dry subject and make a fun and quirky movie about it. That being said, I apologize in advance if I fudge on terms and lingo ahead.
Christian Bale has earned an Oscar nomination in his supporting role as Michael Burry. Michael is a unique character. He works at his finance firm in old ill fitting t-shirts, sandals and annoyingly blares metal rock in his office as if he were listening to Mozart. He has a very awkward demeanor, he is obviously better with numbers than with people. Perhaps that’s why he would be the first bold enough to bet against the whole American economy and how he can stand so firm against his decision. Bale makes this character very believable, but not very endearing. 
Considering their circumstances, Joy is a very good mother to Jack. She is very patient with him, answers his questions in an age appropriate way, makes sure he gets enough exercise despite the lack of space and teaches even him to read. I can hardly stand being cooped up on my house with my toddler son all day, much less a tiny room for five years. I may use Joy’s track practice technique one day when my kid needs to get some energy out. 
When Joy and Jack are safe and back at Joy’s old home, things are not as perfect as Joy had hoped. The whole world has moved on without her. Her parents have split up. Her father, while obviously happy to see her, is no help when it comes to helping her move on. The media is outside the house, like vultures, just hoping to get a shot of Joy and her son. And the interview she does give makes her question the most important decision she made while captive and it pushes her to the edge. 
Brie Larson is nominated for best actress for portraying Joy. She is a remarkable anchor in this film, grounding us in the grim reality she has lived through. Best of all Larson works so well with her young co-star Jacob Tremblay. He should be honored for his role as well. Without him being so convincing, the whole scenario would fall apart. And many times, the film is seen through Jack’s perspective, he even narrates at times. 
Honestly, this is the film the year that I felt most connected to. It is raw, beautiful and powerful with amazing performances from the whole cast. Emotionally, it wrecked me. I sat in my car, locked the doors and cried in the theater parking lot after it was over. Before I was seven years old, my parents instilled in me a fear of being kidnapped. They dropped me off at college with pepper spray and told me not to go anywhere alone. Standing less than five feet tall, I know I’m easy prey creeps like Old Nick. Room plays out the aftermath of my worst fears, yet builds me up, knowing my son is my saving grace. Just as Jack is to Joy, with him, I can get through anything.
In Ex Machina, it is too simple to ask ourselves if a man is falling in love with a robot, though she is a remarkable and beautiful work of machinery. However, does the fact that Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) is a human, flawed, heterosexual male cloud his judgement when Ava (Alicia Vikander) confides in him so earnestly while her creator seems like such a heartless monster? I highly suggest watching Ex Machina to find out all the fantastic twists and mysteries this wonderfully crafted film holds. 
The film starts when Caleb, a lowly computer programmer, wins a contest to fly out to Nathan’s (Oscar Issac) estate for a week to test a new experimental work of artificial intelligence. The goal is to see if Caleb can believe that the subject, Ava (Alicia Vikander) could be mistaken as human. Over the week, Caleb is put in a little glass booth in Ava’s room and the two converse between the glass. All around are cameras, with Nathan watching Caleb interact with his creation. 
Nathan’s quiet dominance grows heavier and eerier throughout the film. When Caleb shows up at his estate, Nathan is hungover. He continues to drink throughout the week getting belligerent and passing out multiple times. But he also lets Caleb know he is smarter than him and in just a glance, we know he is much stronger too. He lifts some weights and does impressive sit ups to prove it. 
As Caleb’s week with Nathan wears on, the film feels tense and claustrophobic, mirroring Caleb’s emotions. The room Nathan gives him has no windows and while technologically advanced, feels spartan. The way Nathan asks Caleb about Ava is almost hostile at times, and when Caleb decides to hide the unsavory things Ava has said about Nathan, the conflict rises. 
When discussing Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight, I believe we should first discuss the era the film depicts. It’s 2001 in Boston. Not everyone has a cell phone. No one is texting. Information is not just a click away. The AOL dial up internet is slow and frustrating, just like many forms of communication. It is a modern world, but still very reliant on physical paper and pen. In one frustrating scene Ruffalo’s character has to wait so long to see physical copies of public documents. People depend on television and newspapers. That makes the Boston Globe such a source of power, so much so that people reach out to them to get important stories out to the world. When The Boston Globe fails to bring a spotlight on a story, it is lost in the dark. 
Spotlight is the true story of an investigative journalism team at The Boston Globe. The Spotlight team works apart from the daily grind of the newspaper and focuses on one big story. Under the suggestion of their new editor, Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber), they start looking into a few cases of child abuse within the local Catholic churches. It is not a task taken on lightly, most of Boston is Catholic, or at least grew up in the church, including the entire Spotlight team. 
Spotlight is nominated for six Academy Awards. They include best original screenplay, editing and best picture. Tom McCarthy picks up his first nomination for best director. Mark Ruffalo and Rachel McAdams both earn supporting nominations for their roles in the film. 
The Best Picture Project 