Tag Archives: The King’s Speech

The Rankatron Ranks The Oscars

Bow ties make anything look better.

 

It’s officially here!

Oscars Eve!

Did I finish ALL of the 10 movies? Technically, yes. Is there an actual review for all of them? No. There’s one glaring exception: Inception.

Let’s be honest with Inception. This was the Matrix for a new generation. A movie that holds up better in theatres with massive screens the size of Jupiter’s Moon, Io, and digital sound systems that you make Stevie Wonder sit up and say “what was that?” than on the small screen. I still intend on doing a review of Inception but I’ve reserved the right to mull it over and watch it a second time. Hence the delay in the review. But I will give you the Inception review next week. It really doesn’t matter…it’s not going to win tomorrow night. Sorry DiCaprio.

So how does this work? Now that I’ve taken an equivalent of nearly 2 days of my life to watch these…excluding the time it took to write the review, find cool pics and vids, and draw some admittedly silly cartoons (to me)…I’m going to do something that the Oscars can’t do. Keep it short and to the point.

I will now rank the Ten movies in order of pure AWESOME-TUDE! These will not necessarily be what the Academy picks tomorrow night…but these will be in gauged based on the most entertainment value, story depth and universality of the subject (y’know…so everyone can watch).

Before I get right into it, let me just say that for the first time in YEARS, every single movie on this list is truth-to-power-above fun to watch…but in different and unique ways. I remember one glaring Best Picture movie years ago that was so boring to watch, I had to split it between three viewings to get through it. I won’t share with you the title just to protect the anonymity of those talented individual involved but I will say that it rhymes with “There Will Be Blood”.

The Rankatron Oscars List (2011 Edition): – And it’s in reverse, MOFOS!!!! Just to mess ya up!

(Clicky on the titles to read the original review.)

10.  127 Hours

9. Winter’s Bone

8. Inception

7. The Kids Are Alright

6. The Social Network

5. Black Swan

4. The Fighter

3. Toy Story 3

2. True Grit

And the number one movie this year….drumroll please!!!!…what? No? What are you talking about it’s a boring choice? But what if it’s right? No. It is right! Get the drumroll! No…you’re right. Check that.

Cue Oscar winner Jamie Foxx featuring living legend Justin Timberlake with “Winner”. (And sorry…there’s no official vid.)

The Winner is….

1. The King’s Speech

If you’ve never scene it thinking that it would be just another stuffy royalty movie like The Queen, put that back in your “Stereotype Stereo” and give it a try. This movie is smart, entertaining, funny in the most unexpected way, and littered with brilliant performances that should earn Colin Firth a Best Actor win.

So am I done for this year with the Oscars?

Is Bob Saget as squeaky clean as his Danny Tanner character?

NO!

Tomorrow, I’ll be embarking on the most ambitious sacrifice anyone can do for the Oscars: sit through an ENTIRE broadcast beginning to end.

I will be…for the first time ever…using The Rankatron Twitter feed.

Click here to join and follow.

It shall begin 9pm AST (8pm EST) Sunday February 27, 2011. Together we can count how many drug references and hand references James Franco makes…and how many times Anne Hathaway looks hot.

Or not.

After I’m done, I’ll post the entire transcript on this website for you to enjoy…kinda.

So for now, I bid you all adieu and goodnight.

Enter…the Oscars.

O.S.C.A.R. - Only Some Can Always Reap

It’s that time of year folks.

A time where celebrities who worked so hard during the year can get some critical gratification from their peers. Sometimes this translates as great viewing for the average viewer…sometimes not.

It’s the 2011 Oscar Nominations.

Now, I’m not going to go down category by category and explain WHY my opinion matters on this. Nuh-uh. If you want this, go check out a billion other websites. But I may release my Oscar pool at a later time for you to peruse without comment…or you can comment. This is a free Blogiverse.

I will focus on what I do best: movies.

Here’s how it works. In years past, I’ve waited for the Best Picture nominations to come out and then proceed to watch every single movie on that list before the Oscars broadcast to see how wrong the Academy has gotten it. That would give me about a month to watch. In the pre-2009 days, this would be only 5 movies. Completely doable. But since they introduced 10 in ’10, I had to do some pre-research (presearch?) to anticipate who should be on this list so I can knock some of them off before hand.

Thankfully, this year I’ve seen 6 of the 10 nominees. I will be releasing blogs on my usual days with my reviews (Wednesdays and Saturdays) until all 10 have been seen. Then…I’ll make my pick in a final blog the Saturday before the Oscars broadcast.

This entry will stay at the top of my Home Page until after the Oscars as a means to reference the reviews. To find the reviews, just click on the “REVIEW” link beside the movie name and the magic of the Rankatron will bring you right there. If there’s nothing there, you can click on the name to see the trailer.

Now that you know the rules of Dis Game, here’s the list of Nominees for the Oscars 2011 and my preliminary impressions:

So there you have it…oh there’s a hand in the back…what was that? Yes. I’ll still be doing newer reviews of things in between all of this. I realize not everyone loves the Oscars.

All other questions will need to be reserved until the end of the proceedings after the Oscars.

Enjoy!

 

The Rankatron shows Oscar who's got really got the bigger "Awards".

OscaRank: He’s Not The Lover, He’s “The Fighter”

Uh-oh! Wahlberg's got his Oscar-brow working!

This is going to sound sacrilege to those movie purists who hate to shake the foundation of established movie masterpieces (i.e. the Citizen Kane‘s , the Casablanca‘s):

“The Fighter is a better boxing movie than any of the Rocky flicks.”

I even put that in quotations in case anyone in their promotional camps want a good blog-bite that’s cleanly cut out.

Actually, more aptly put would be:

“if you took all of the Rocky movies and mushed it into one two-hour movie, you’d get The Fighter.”

I won’t spoil this exceptional movie for you but suffice to say that even though there’s no Drago (“I must break you!”), there is the seemingly insurmountable foreign opponent.

This true story about the life and trials of “Irish” Micky Ward and his half-brother, Dicky Ecklund, stars Mark Wahlberg as Micky  in the best role I’ve ever seen him in. He entirely immerses himself in the Boston-raised world of the 1990’s. The Fighter follows their topsy-turvy decade stretching from Micky’s consecutive losses in the early 90’s and subsequent hand injury to his return to the ring and beyond to 2000. Those who’ve followed boxing knows his tale. Outside the chaotic hurricane that is Mike Tyson, I never did. So this story was refreshing to me. A story that seems so complex that it would’ve been difficult to make up.

Christian Bale plays Micky’s drug-addled half-brother, Dicky. A former New England Welterweight champ, who’s claim to fame was an epic battle with Sugar Ray Leonard in 1978, lives in his past trying to make that improbable comeback. He’s a shadow of his former self that he tries to ignore through his crack addition. The Fighter follows Dicky as he battles his crack dependence. His sorrowful story would be worth a movie on his own but since both characters are so intertwined to each other, it would’ve been difficult to pull off. Does Dicky eventually find redemption? A quick Google search will tell ya.

The director, David O. Russell (Three Kings and I Heart Huckabees), made an interesting choice in dealing with Dicky where he focused much of Dicky’s screen time during the period when HBO was filming a drug documentary on him in 1995 (High on Crack Street: Lost Lives of Lowell). Russell seemed to strive for authenticity by using actual archived footage and even choreographed the fight scenes to be as close to the real fights as possible. And the boxing scenes are every bit as good as you’ll find on any other Boxing movie except maybe Raging Bull. I found myself sitting at the edge of my seat cheering for Micky to win.

Amy Adams (who I’ve always been a fan for her sheer breadth of work) as the sexy and strong-willed girlfriend of Micky, Charlene Fleming, stood out in a sea of Bostonian women (mostly Ward’s sisters and mother). She played Charlene with gentle strength who was not afraid to let the claws out when she needed to. And she does!

Other notables is the actor who played Sergeant Mickey O’Keefe, Micky Ward’s trainer…which was Sergeant Mickey O’Keefe himself. Mark Wahlberg insisted on him playing himself for authenticity to which O’Keefe hesitantly consented. The other quirky notable (and fodder for trivia buffs) is that Conan O’Brien‘s own sister, Kate O’Brien, played one of Micky Ward’s sisters.

Speaking of Conan, did you know that Conan also had a movie short made out of his boxing travails?

The single weak-spot in this otherwise flawless movie is the rather abrupt ending that beckons back to the ending of Rocky II. With the exception of a short scene at the end that ties the start to the finish, the exposition almost seemed like an afterthought…or even a “no-thought”.

But I would gladly watch this movie over and over again.

When the Oscar noms come out later this month, I would be disappointed if The Fighter wasn’t there as Best Picture, Mark Wahlberg wasn’t there for Best Actor and Christian Bale wasn’t there for Best Supporting Actor. Do I expect them to win in either category? Not after seeing The King’s Speech…but I wouldn’t be disappointed either if they walked away with the prize.

The Fighter will pull you in with the quirky and endearing brotherly relationship between Micky and Dicky, will make you tear up when Dicky’s life falls apart, and make you scream in excitement (or maybe shift excitedly in your seat…I want to be realistic here!) during the boxing matches.

So I’ll say again, The Fighter is better than Million Dollar Baby, better than Cinderella Man, better than Raging Bull (except in the fight scenes) and slightly better than Rocky. If you all want to take me out for a boxing match after saying that, I’ll challenge you to a friendly game of Wii Boxing. Winner takes all…where “all” equals “I still get to keep this opinion and you get to say you beat me at boxing.”

9.5 Ward sisters out of 10

Which one's Conan's sister? Place your mouse over the picture!