Two Movies

Watched two movies in the last two days, both of them Oscar winners.

"Spotlight" was the Best Picture Oscar winner for 2015, and we pulled it out and re-watched it on Sunday.   The movie, which details the Boston Globe's investigation and reporting on the sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church in Boston in 2001-02, holds up terrifically as a drama and a thriller.  If anything, the movie is all the more searing in light of further news developments on this issue that came to light in the past year.  No doubt, this is a movie that stands the test of time and will still be compelling to watch ten, twenty, and thirty years from now.

Four Stars all the way from The Grandstander

Got around to watching "The Favourite" yesterday.   My reaction to this one is simple:  THIS got nominated for ten Academy Awards?  Marilyn was in and out of the room as I watched this, and when she asked me how it ended, I had a hard time in answering her.  When you have to go to the Google Machine to research what the ending of a movie was all about, well, that's not my kind of movie.

One review I saw said that the movie was "idiosyncratic".  I suppose that is one way to look at it.  It was prettily photographed and the costumes and make-up were eye-catching, but it was also pretty pretentious.  The acting from Olivia Coleman, Rachel Weisz, and Emma Stone was good, but when the sum of the parts add up to a story that is just, well, weird, it's not for me.

The Oscar it won was for Best Actress for Olivia Colman.  Good for her, but after seeing this movie, I still say that Glenn Close got shafted by not winning the Award for "The Wife".

Only One Star from The Grandstander.