Two-Sentence Movie Reviews

The Oscars are this Sunday and I love watching all the Best Picture nominees prior to the big night. If you haven’t seem em all, let me save you the effort, here are two-seconds worth of info on each:

• 12 Years a Slave: My front-runner for best picture; the story of a free man taken into slavery. At times hard to watch and really crazy/sad to believe that it’s a true story but an important, powerful and excellent film that will have you in tears.
• American Hustle: Loved the costumes and the soundtrack but the story line of 70s corruption and con-artists could use a little work. Worth seeing and entertaining but not a favorite.
• The Wolf of Wall Street: Lots of controversy surrounding this one about a fraudulent NY stock broker, but I enjoyed it and despite it being 3 hours, I wasn’t bored or looking at my watch. Another based-on-a-true story movie that is crazy to believe really happened.
• Gravity: Deserves to win all the visual effects awards but the story line was pretty meh. Not sure I’d recommend this outside of a 3-D movie theater since the story is basically Sandra Bullock floating around in space for 2 hours.
• Her: I really enjoyed this film even though it was a little strange. I’m also concerned for all of our futures because I think dating an OS system is really going to happen.
• Nebraska: Total snooze-fest about an old man who thinks he won a million dollars. Found it boring and was counting down the minutes until it ended.
• Dallas Buyers Club: Another film I thoroughly enjoyed, this one about an HIV-positive man who when faced with sub-par medical options in the US finds alternative treatments which he smuggles into the US and sells to others. Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto underwent incredible transformations and were both amazing in bringing this true story to the big screen and deserve to win in their respective categories.
• Philomena: Follows the true story about a woman forced to give her child up for adoption and her journey to find him 50 years later. Can’t say it was a favorite of mine but I found it interesting and gave some insight into a topic I knew nothing about.
• Captain Phillips: This riveting true-life tale of Somali Pirates taking over a ship and holding the captain hostage was exciting, scary and an all-around great film. I knew the basics of the story but not all the details and this movie had me on the edge of my seat.