Is it redundant to finish my half-arsed reviews of the Oscar movies I saw now that the Oscars are over?
Probably.
THE QUEEN
1 Oscar: Helen Mirren (Best Actress)
It’ll never win anything. Never in a million years. Especially not that Mirren woman…
There’s nothing particularly wrong with The Queen, but it never really seemed to me to be Oscar material. Unless they start giving Oscars to a made-for-TV miniseries played over Monday and Tuesday nights on TV One. Because that’s what it felt like.
A strange mix of actual footage and fake events doesn’t help. One minute we’re looking at file of people leaving flowers outside Buckingham Palace; the next, Her Majesty is weeping in a river somewhere because her 4WD has crapped out. Can you spot the event that never actually happened? And when the tight-lipped Queen is one moment being all well, tight-lipped, and the next moment confiding some element of emotional backstory to a random manservant, it doesn’t ring true. Probably because it’s not.
Similarly, one can’t escape the feeling that half the cast were chosen simply because they look kinda-sorta like the people they are supposed to be playing and can do a half decent vocal impression too. Which I suppose is one sort of acting, but personally I just prefer it when actors are pretending to be people I’ve never seen in real life before. Elizabeth I? Sure, never met the big ginger queen, never likely to. Elizabeth II? No go.
But apart from all that, yeah fine. Watch it if it ever comes on TV. But it’ll never win an Oscar for anything I tell ya.
LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE
2 Oscars: Alan Arkin (Best Supporting Actor); Best Original Screenplay.
My surprise favourite movie in quite some time, at least since the equally surprising Me and You and Everyone We Know entered my world a few months back.
Okay, when you boil it down to it, Little Miss Sunshine is a feel-good family movie, and some people have a problem with that. But to say it’s only that is to say that Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas is just a road movie, or Moby Dick a book about fishing.
I won’t tell you too much about it, just go and see it or get it out if you haven’t already. 15 words or less? Quirky family confined in a small van drive across US facing adversity and eventually redemption.
And when I say redemption, I mean laugh your arse off funny redemption. And judging by all the people who visibly shaking in their economy-class seats with laughter at 3am, I’m not alone in that opinion.
By the way, great discussion after my last post over at Public Address System. Feel free to continue after this one.
Next Up: I’ll talk about something more important than films.
Probably.