This year, I decided that I’d see all the Best Picture nominees before the Oscars. Unfortunately, I forgot that this year they’d upped the Best Picture nominees to ten. Nevertheless, I did see all ten of them before the Oscars, and here are my thoughts on the Best Picture nominees.

Up
I knew it wasn’t going to win, but this was actually my favorite nominee. It’s wonderful— funny, suspenseful, touching, and, at the beginning, incredibly sad. (The marriage montage? Tell me you weren’t crying during that.)

An Education
If I did a regular “Katie Recommends,” this would get top billing—it’s a gem of a movie that not enough people have seen. Carey Mulligan is fantastic as Jenny, a smart sixteen-year-old girl in the London suburbs in the early 1960s. Jenny’s well-meaning but overbearing parents are pressuring her to get into Oxford to study English. Then she meets David (Peter Saarsgard), a charming older man who gives her a ride home one day. Soon, he’s swept her off her feet, taking her to jazz clubs, the opera, even Paris—and charming her parents into letting her go. It’s so much more exciting than what she’s used to that she starts wondering what the point of all she’s been working toward is—why go to Oxford and then pursue the limited career opportunities she’ll have as a woman when she could have all the excitement David is able to offer her? The screenplay is by Nick Hornby, which is in itself a reason to see it, and combined with Mulligan’s acting, you start to find Jenny’s logic convincing, even as you begin to see that there’s something sketchy about David (not going to spoil the ending). It’s also unexpectedly funny—Alfred Molina as Jenny’s father, in particular, adds a lot to the movie.

Precious
I definitely recommend this movie, but you need to be in the right mood to see it. Precious is an obese, illiterate teenager whose mother physically and emotionally abuses her and whose father rapes her, resulting in two pregnancies. Mo’Nique is fantastically scary as the mother, and some parts of it are very intense. But weirdly, it’s as uplifting as it is depressing. Gabourey Sidibe, who plays Precious, is almost as good as Mo’Nique—I can’t believe she’d never acted before this. You’ve probably heard about Mariah Carey and her mustache, too (she’s not bad, but it’s not a terribly demanding part), but I’m really surprised Paula Patton hasn’t gotten more attention for her role as the teacher who helps Precious get her life on track. I wouldn’t say she was the character I remembered most, but she was up there.

Up In the Air
It seems like a lot of people are kind of meh on this movie, but I really liked it. For one thing, it’s very timely—George Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, a guy who works for a company that fires people from other companies, and considering they probably started planning for the movie before the unemployment rate started plummeting, the filmmakers are probably jumping for joy about the recession. Ryan is based out of Omaha, but really lives in the sky, flying all over the country without any connections to any one place or any one person. In a job where he’s paid to disrupt people’s lives, there’s no sense of accomplishment, so he finds a reward in collecting frequent flyer miles and membership reward points. But then his company brings in Natalie (Anna Kendrick), a twenty-something Ivy League grad, who has the idea to do the firing via videoconferencing. Ryan does not take this well—but first he has to travel with Natalie, showing her how the firing is done. It’s directed by Jason Reitman, whose last movie was Juno, a kind of unconventional romantic comedy. If you see this movie, you need to know that despite what you see on the commercials, it’s not remotely a romantic comedy. Also, while I love George Clooney, I don’t think he should have gotten an Oscar nomination—he’s playing the same role he always plays. Vera Farmiga, who plays a business traveler whom Ryan gets romantically involved with, shouldn’t have been nominated either. But Anna Kendrick is fabulous. Until I saw Precious, I was rooting for her to win Best Supporting Actress. Now I think Mo’Nique totally deserved the Oscar, but I hope this is just the beginning of a long, illustrious career for Kendrick.

The Hurt Locker
I probably wouldn’t have seen The Hurt Locker had it not been nominated for (and later won) Best Picture—war movies are just not my thing. That said, The Hurt Locker is extremely well-done for what it is. It’s one of those movies that’s easy to sum up in one sentence—it’s about soldiers dismantling bombs in Iraq. Jeremy Renner is great as one particularly reckless soldier, and the direction is fabulous. The script was written by a journalist who spent time with a unit like this in Iraq, and the result is a surprisingly apolitical movie, considering that it’s set in Iraq in 2004.

Avatar
You’ve already heard my thoughts on another James Cameron movie. While my thoughts on this one are not quite as enthusiastic, I will say that Avatar is definitely worth seeing, and if you do see it, you should see it in the theater in 3-D. Visually, it’s absolutely beautiful. The writing, however, is awful. It’s incredibly simplistic with one-dimensional characters and a plot that’s stolen from the 90s kids’ movie FernGully. I’ve heard people read a lot into it—it’s a metaphor for Iraq, it’s anti-American, blah blah blah fishcakes—but honestly, I don’t think James Cameron was thinking about it that hard. And one random little thing that kept bugging me—the protagonist, played by Sam Worthington, is a paraplegic. The movie takes place in 2149—they’re invading other planets, but they haven’t found a cure for paralysis by then? Really? On the plus side, Sam Worthington is quite attractive.

District 9
I actually didn’t like this movie at all. It takes place in South Africa after a race of aliens have ended up stranded on Earth, and the government has to round up and relocate the aliens, who are derogatorily referred to as “prawns.” I think the biggest problem with it is that it’s told in a mockumentary style, which would work for a comedy, but in this case keeps you from getting drawn into the story. It’s too bad, too, because it had the potential to be an interesting commentary on racism and xenophobia, but for that to happen we would have to care about the rest of the movie.

A Serious Man
I’m not usually a fan of the Coen Brothers—I liked Fargo, but absolutely hated No Country for Old Men—but this movie wasn’t bad. Starring absolutely no one you’ve ever heard of, it’s about a Jewish professor in 1967 Minnesota whose life is falling apart to the point of absurdity. His wife has left him for another man, forcing him to sleep in a motel along with his freeloading brother. His kids are stealing from him, the father of a student is trying to bribe him into passing his son, he’s up for tenure and someone is writing letters to the committee telling them he shouldn’t be granted it, and he’s in the middle of a property dispute with his neighbor. A friend suggests that he consult with three rabbis, which he does, but he never finds the answers that would help him make sense of all the chaos. None of this is as depressing as it sounds, by the way—it’s more of a black comedy than anything else. I didn’t love it, I didn’t hate it…it’s somewhere in the middle of movies that came out last year.

Inglorious Bastards
A lot of people like this movie, but I just could not get into it. Don’t quite know why. Christoph Waltz is great as a Nazi, though.

The Blind Side
I liked this movie, but it won’t appeal to everyone. You’ve seen the commercials, and it’s exactly what it looks like—a sappy, feel-good sports movie based on a true story. Personally, I have a weakness for that kind of movie, so I enjoyed it. I don’t think Sandra Bullock was any better than the other Best Actress nominees, although her winning was worth it just for her great speech. However, I completely understood why she was nominated after seeing an interview with Leigh Anne Tuohy, the woman she portrays in the film. Leigh Anne seems like someone out of one of those Real Housewives shows— a bleached blonde, type A interior decorator from Memphis whose husband owns a bunch of Taco Bells and whose expression tells you that you won’t win any argument you start with her, and Bullock completely nails this woman’s personality, mannerisms, accent, and manner of speaking. My one issue with is it is that it doesn’t give Michael Oher enough credit for his own success—yes, he had a lot of help from his adoptive family, but many kids in similar circumstances wouldn’t have thrived the way he did. But if you like movies like Rudy or Remember the Titans, you’ll like this one, too.

When it came out in August, I read a review for the low-budget indie movie Frozen River and thought it sounded interesting, but I didn’t get around to watching it until it came out on DVD a few weeks ago. I’m here to encourage you to do the same.

It takes place in northern New York, near Canada—an area of the country I can’t remember seeing portrayed in any other work of fiction. Ray (Melissa Leo) is a cashier and mother of two whose gambling-addicted husband has run off with the money they were going to use for a down payment on a new house. She has to ask for $2.74 worth of gas at the gas station until she finds an extra five bucks at the bottom of her purse, and her family’s dinner sometimes consists of popcorn and Tang.

While she’s looking for her husband, she meets a Mohawk woman named Lila (Misty Upham) who gets extra cash by driving to Canada over the frozen St. Lawrence River to smuggle immigrants into the country. Seeing Ray as a white woman with a car, unlikely to be stopped, Lila asks Ray to help her with the smuggling. Ray is reluctant at first, but eventually agrees.

This is a very grim movie, but a realistic one. I don’t want to give too much away, but I’ll just say that it’s very suspenseful and kept me guessing. The acting is fantastic—while I’m thrilled that Kate Winslet won the Oscar because I love her and she’d been nominated too many times without winning, I think Melissa Leo deserved it more. It’s not perfect—in particular, I’m a little annoyed at some important details that I feel were left out of Lila’s story—but it’s extremely well done. Amazingly, this is writer-director Courtney Hunt’s first feature-length movie, and I’ll be very interested to see what she does next.

Other movies I’ve seen lately:

Milk
I almost recommended this instead, but fewer people have seen Frozen River. Anyway, Milk is absolutely amazing. There aren’t a lot of movies that not only move me but inspire me to learn more, and that’s what Milk did. Before I saw it, I knew the bare details of the Harvey Milk story—gay politician in San Francisco in the 1970s who was assassinated by another politician who got off easy due to the “Twinkie Defense”— but not much else. I hadn’t known about what he actually did as city supervisor—most notably, sponsoring a civil rights bill and being instrumental in the defeat of Proposition 6, which would have led to the firing of gay teachers in California—or anything about his personal life or even his personality. But after seeing this movie, I watched a documentary called The Times of Harvey Milk, and I’m planning on reading The Mayor of Castro Street as soon as I can. Sean Penn is absolutely brilliant— I could barely remember that this was the same guy who felt the need to demonstrate his lack of a sense of humor at the 2005 Oscars. Josh Brolin is also great as Milk’s assassin, Dan White. While he’s not sympathetic, Brolin makes him interesting and three-dimensional, and while I don’t know if this was true, the movie implies that White may have been in the closet. (Side note: how did I not know until the Oscars that Josh Brolin is married to Diane Lane?)

The movie is also incredibly well-written. Screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, whose acceptance speech made me cry, completely deserved his Oscar. The timing of this movie is interesting, too—Harvey’s speech on hope (“I know you cannot live on hope alone, but without hope, life is not worth living”) is reminiscent of a certain politician we elected on the same day Californians demonstrated how little has changed since the 1970s. Bottom line: see this as soon as you can. It’s fantastic, and would have deserved Best Picture just as much as Slumdog Millionaire.

Speaking of which…

Slumdog Millionaire
First, what I didn’t like: it’s fairly predictable, and in telling the main character’s life story, there’s one part that the movie leaves out that I would have liked to see. Also, both the Golden Globes and the Screen Actors Guild Awards spoiled a major scene at the end. Other than that, I liked about everything about Slumdog Millionaire. While it’s a love story at heart, it’s also very dark, and I like that it brings attention to the plight of kids living in the slums of India. Another thing this movie made me think about is how we accumulate knowledge. The main character, Jamal, is able to answer the questions on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? not because he’s super-intelligent, but because he’s picked up bits of knowledge from a variety of places. And if you’ve ever played any kind of trivia game, you know how much sense that makes—the answers that are obvious for you aren’t so for everyone else.

The Reader
This is worth a watch, for sure, but I’m surprised it was nominated for Best Picture. While it’s a well-done movie, there’s a certain…coldness to it, for lack of a better word, that turned me off. Kate Winslet plays a very interesting character, but one who’s not exactly sympathetic. This wouldn’t be a problem except that it sometimes feels like the movie is begging you to sympathize with her— did I mention that she’s a Nazi war criminal? The secret that’s revealed halfway through the movie is supposed to shed light on her actions, but it’s not really a surprise and doesn’t explain all that much. Kate Winslet is very good in it, and I’m glad she got her Oscar since she’s been so consistently excellent in everything she’s been in but like I said, I think Melissa Leo in Frozen River, and Winslet herself in a lot of her other movies, were better.

He’s Just Not That Into You
First, let me say that I absolutely love the book and consider it my relationship bible. It’s a book that delivers concrete examples of such a simple concept: if it’s not obvious that he likes you, stop making excuses for him—he’s just not that into you and you need to move on. The movie takes this philosophy and applies it to three main storylines: one about a sweet but clueless woman and the man trying to get her to see things clearly, one about a woman whose boyfriend of seven years doesn’t want to get married as much as she does, and one about a love triangle involving a young woman and a married couple. I do like romantic comedies, and while this won’t become a classic, it’s a fun watch. I was cringing at some parts of it, though—Ginnifer Goodwin plays a character who tends to misread signals and make some embarrassing mistakes. I recommend it, but you definitely need to read the book, too.

Revolutionary Road
…Damn. This movie is ridiculously depressing. I had high hopes for it because I’ve loved Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, both separately and together, since my days as a Titanic fangirl. While the two of them don’t disappoint with their excellent performances, I couldn’t enjoy the movie as a whole. 90% of it is the two of them, a married couple in the Connecticut suburbs in 1955, screaming at each other. Like, imagine if Mad Men was all about Don and Betty. It starts off sad and just gets darker and darker—these are two people who aren’t happy with their lives and will never find what they’re looking for. Also, the screenplay is very melodramatic and lacking in subtlety. The most interesting parts involve their neighbor’s son, a mentally disturbed man with no filter (Michael Shannon) whose words hit a bit too close to home. Note that Shannon was the only cast member to get an Oscar nomination. I actually think Kate Winslet might have been better here than in The Reader, but great acting and pretty actors are really the only reasons I have to recommend this movie.

Coincidentally, I saw Sicko right after yelling at my doctor’s office because they wouldn’t give me the referral that my insurance required.

Turns out I’m one of the lucky ones. I’ve never gone bankrupt over health issues or lost a family member because insurance wouldn’t cover treatment. Many of the people featured in this film can’t say that.

It starts off with a scene I couldn’t watch—a man without health insurance giving himself stitches. But, as Moore demonstrates, Americans with health insurance often aren’t much better off. He found his subjects by advertising on the Internet, and thousands of people—most of whom were insured—responded. A woman who was in a car accident couldn’t get her insurance to pay for the ambulance because it wasn’t pre-approved—even though she was unconscious when the ambulance came. An older couple portrayed early in the film were forced to move in with their daughter after mounting insurance bills caused them to lose their home. One man, whose insurance would only pay for cochlear implants in one of his hearing-impaired daughter’s ears, called his insurance company’s CEO and name-dropped Moore, ending with, “Have you ever been in a movie?” The result: a hilarious voicemail from the CEO informing him that they’d reversed their decision and would cover both implants.

Not so hilarious are the stories of people who’ve lost loved ones to insurance problems. One woman describes how her husband died of cancer after their insurance wouldn’t cover a bone marrow transplant, even though his younger brother was a perfect match. Another woman lost her toddler daughter because she couldn’t get to the hospital covered by her HMO on time, and the closest hospital wouldn’t treat her.

Furthermore, the rules for purchasing health insurance are ridiculous. If you have basically any pre-existing condition at all and try to buy health insurance, you’ll be denied—even if, in the case of one woman, it’s just a yeast infection you had years ago. You can be denied for having a weight deemed too high or too low. One woman was denied treatment for cervical cancer because, at twenty-two, she was apparently “too young” to get the disease. And some 9/11 rescue workers who suffer from breathing problems and PTSD are denied treatment because they weren’t technically “working” at the time.

Equally amazing are the snapshots he gives of healthcare in foreign countries. In England, the hospital will reimburse you for your travel. In France, doctors make house calls, extended sick leave is granted, and not only are new mothers required to take maternity leave, but the government will actually send someone to help them with their laundry. Even Cuba—a country whose ills Moore does anything but deny—offers free universal health care and drugs that would be hundreds of dollars in America for the equivalent of five cents.

While I loved Bowling for Columbine, one issue I’ve always had with Michael Moore is that he kind of preaches to the choir. I don’t think most of his movies are likely to get people to change their minds. That’s why I didn’t see Fahrenheit 9/11—I already knew I didn’t like Bush, and I didn’t think I needed Moore to give me any more reasons. But this movie is different. It’s surprisingly non-partisan—he gets in shots at both Dubya and Hillary, and the key word in universal health care is universal. Everyone, at some point, has had to deal with the flaws in the US health care system, and it’s getting harder and harder to argue that the system is fair.

As always, his facts are presented selectively. I’m sure that not all British hospitals are as great as the one shown in the movie. Those Cuban drugs might not be of good quality, and while he shows how a typical French family doesn’t seem to be adversely affected by the taxes they’re paying, he stops short of saying how much they do pay. Regardless, these countries have, by all measures, a much more successful health care system than that of the US, which is ranked 37th in the world. And considering that this a country that supposedly holds the truth that all men are created equal to be self-evident, the philosophy of letting hard-working people die because of a pre-existing condition or an inability to pay seems more in line with Animal Farm: “All animals are created equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”

Other movies I’ve seen lately:

No Reservations

I expected this to be exactly like Raising Helen, and it was—cute, harmless, ultimately unmemorable. If you know the plot elements—workaholic woman, orphaned niece, attractive co-worker— you already know how it’s going to go.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

I tend not to be very critical of the Harry Potter movies. I think if you go in expecting them to be just like the books, you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. They’re long, complicated books, so something’s going to get the shaft somewhere. Order of the Phoenix was the longest Harry Potter book, and a lot—including all the Quidditch and Ron’s “Weasley is our king” storyline—is left out here, but I think they did a nice job focusing on the important parts. I saw it in IMAX, and it was awesome—the whole Ministry scene is in 3-D. Also, the casting of the new characters is fantastic. Imelda Staunton is a perfect Umbridge. Helena Bonham Carter is a terrific, psychotic Bellatrix. Natalia Tena, who I remember from About a Boy, is a great Tonks, and Evanna Lynch made Luna exactly the way I pictured her. And a lot of scenes were interesting visually in a way I hadn’t anticipated, like Umbridge posting all her decrees on the wall.

Ratatouille

While this wasn’t my favorite Pixar movie, it was entertaining and cute. I hate rats, but Remy, the movie’s hero, is just so adorable and likeable. And while the plots of some other Pixar movies—toys coming to life, the lives of bugs—have been done elsewhere, this one’s very original. I’d call it the best movie ever made about a foodie rat.

Bridge to Terabithia

I was hesitant to see this for a long time because the previews turned me off. I was afraid they’d turned a beautifully written children’s book about friendship and loss into an overdone, CGI-animated fantasy. Luckily, my friends who’d seen it told me, correctly, that the previews were misleading and the CGI sequences constituted only about five minutes of the movie. All told, it’s pretty faithful to the book, except that they’ve updated it (the book was written in the 1970s) and it’s very well-done.

Pan’s Labyrinth

I really enjoyed this. It’s wonderfully original and very sad. Ivana Baquero, who plays the young protagonist Ofelia, gives a sensitive performance. The really interesting thing, though, is how you come away remembering the historical drama and the fantasy sequences equally, and how seamlessly they fit together.

Dreamgirls

Okay, I’ll say it—the Academy was right not to nominate this for Best Picture. Not that there isn’t a lot that’s good about it. Jennifer Hudson is every bit as good as you’ve heard with both her vocals and her acting. It’s amazing to think that this is her first movie. The rest of the acting is solid (although I think Eddie Murphy’s performance is overrated), as is the memorable music. Plot-wise, however, it drags a bit. The storyline just couldn’t hold my interest the whole way through.

Happy Feet

Well, first of all, it’s got penguins. Who doesn’t like penguins? Especially penguins who dance and/or sing? And have parents named after Elvis and Marilyn? And teach us, in a rather unexpected way, about global warming? While the song sequences can get a little weird, this is a cute, very enjoyable movie.

The Last King of Scotland

I liked this. Didn’t love it, but liked it. It’s very well-acted by both Forest Whittaker as Idi Amin and the underrated James McAvoy as Amin’s fictional personal physician. Gillian Anderson, whom I loved on The X-Files, has a memorable small part as well.

Little Children

I read and liked the book by Tom Perrotta, and I enjoyed the movie as well. While it doesn’t really add anything new to the desperate-and-bored-suburban-parent genre, it has Kate Winslet being fantastic as usual and an interesting subplot about a child molester moving into town—a zealous parent, who turns out to be an ex-cop with a dark secret of his own, goes so far as to spray-paint the guy’s driveway. The use of a third-person narrator is a bit jarring, but necessary for the plot.

The Queen

This is such an interesting idea for a movie. I remember so well when Princess Diana died—it seems impossible that it was ten years ago—and of course I remember it from the perspective of most of the world. Telling the story from the queen’s point of view raises a lot of interesting questions. What did cause her to make that speech? How sincere was it? How affected was she by the negative press surrounding her? It’s speculation about the lives of people who are still alive, and I kind of wonder if the queen has seen this movie. I doubt it, but I wonder what she’d think. I have this image in my mind of her watching and fuming, “I never said that!” but in the end, the movie makes her look pretty good. Helen Mirren is outstanding, capturing the dignity and sensitivity of Queen Elizabeth II and making her very sympathetic.

Next Stop Wonderland

Anyone familiar with the T can surmise from the title that this movie is going to have at least one scene on the Blue Line. Actually, with scenes at the airport and the aquarium, it could be called Ode to the Blue Line. It came out in 1998, and I recently saw it on On Demand. It’s nothing you haven’t seen before—woman being dumped by long-term boyfriend, meddling relative placing a personal ad, two characters are MFEO but don’t know it yet—but it still comes off feeling authentic. Hope Davis is great as Erin, the main character, managing not to make her any of the single-urban-woman clichés. She’s not a workaholic, not a sex addict, not a shoe collector, and not a man-hater. She’s just a modern woman simultaneously craving aloneness and love. It’s not likely to be anyone’s favorite movie, but it’s enjoyable. Plus, I have a soft spot for any movie that takes place in Boston.