The 81st Annual Academy Awards

The 2009 Academy Awards nominations have just been announced. Click on Oscar for a link to the list:





Among the nominations are a bunch of films on my list to watch: Slumdog Millionaire, Rachel Getting Married, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and Changeling.

One movie that I hadn't planned to see is Revolutionary Road but given its 3 nods, perhaps it is worth checking out??

Also not on my radar, The Wrestler with Mickey Rourke.

Great to see Richard Jenkins nominated for Best Actor in The Visitor.

It is rare to ever see comedies get the slightest nod (animated ones excluded), so it's interesting to see that Robert Downey Jr. has a Best Supporting Actor nomination for Tropic Thunder. (A movie that was hilariously bad. Completely vulgar but--when I saw it--kept a full theater laughing out loud). Since he's up against the late Heath Ledger for his role in The Dark Knight, I have a feeling that poor ol' Downey isn't going to win.

Unfortunately I have yet to see any of the Foreign Language Films or documentaries on the list. That will soon change....

The Visitor, 2008

I saw this movie at the Ritz East with my Dad. We hadn't actually planned to see this film. I had read the current reviews online and we had decided on a comedy. I guess I did not pay enough attention to the title of the film we chose or the Ritz it was playing at. We got to the theater just as it was starting, and quickly realized that this didn't look like the movie that we had picked.





The Visitor starts out rather ominously and I really began to wonder what we had gotten ourselves into. Thankfully this movie is really good and I am glad that we ended up seeing it together. My Dad enjoyed it.

It is a movie about a college professor and a young couple who unexpectedly enter his life. Richard Jenkins delivers a very fine performance. Also stars Haaz Sleiman and Danai Jekesai Gurira. Written and directed by Thomas McCarthy.


Melody's Stars: *****


Rating System:
*****=Worth Buying
****=Worth Seeing in Theaters
***=Worth Renting
**=Worth Watching on TV
*=Worth Watching if also cleaning house or doing paperwork
0=Total waste of time
Fail=So bad it doesn't even make the rating system

Step Brothers, 2008

For the most part, I like Will Ferrell. Some people don't. But he usually can make me laugh. And teamed up with John C. Reilly, Richard Jenkins (The Visitor, 2008), and Mary Steenburgen this movie starts off with a comic bang. If you're in the mood to play along with the premise that two 40-year-old men still live at home and behave like 13-year-old boys, this movie is quite fun.




Unfortunately towards the end, Step Brothers gets all Hollywood sappy and that kind of ruins things. But there are quite a few laugh-out-loud moments in here (and not just the ones shown in the trailer).


Melody's Stars: ***


Rating System:
*****=Worth Buying
****=Worth Seeing in Theaters
***=Worth Renting
**=Worth Watching on TV
*=Worth Watching if also cleaning house or doing paperwork
0=Total waste of time
Fail=So bad it doesn't even make the rating system