Move Over Oscar

If you have been waiting breathlessly for my 2013 movie reviews – affectionately known as “The Daves” – the wait is over.

Netflix has released and I have watched all (except Amour) of the Oscar-nominated movies that I’m likely going to watch (sorry Les Miserables and Beasts of the Southern Wild).

So, take a deep breath and let’s get started.

In my view the only five-star in the bunch is Lincoln, a compelling story of a critical juncture in American history that is well-told and superbly acted. It is difficult for me to understand why this movie did not win Best Picture. Daniel Day-Lewis is the obvious choice for Best Actor this year and there is no close second even though there were several other fabulous performances (John Hawkes, Joaquin Phoenix and Bradley Cooper come to mind). We don’t know, of course, how Lincoln actually talked or moved in the way that we know intimately the mannerisms of Nixon or Carter or Reagan or even FDR. But if we did know Lincoln that well the chances seem good that the real Mr. Lincoln would very closely resemble Mr. Day-Lewis’s portrayal of him.

Day-Lewis wasn’t just acting; he was Lincoln.

Plus, Sally Field - one of my all-time favs – turned in yet another solid performance in a career chock full of them with her portrayal of Mrs. Lincoln.

Because Lincoln was my only five-star the real competition in The Daves this year was for second place where I had to choose from a tight grouping of solid four-stars. After some teeth-gnashing my choice for the runner-up slot is The Sessions, a movie that was not nominated for Best Picture by the Academy.

The Sessions has a lot of the things that I usually like in a movie; a simple, well-told, poignant story of people rising to the challenges that life has dealt them, making the best of those difficult circumstances and dealing with the complexities of being a human being. There is a lot of goodness - a lot of good people - in this movie, yet it's not syrupy. Admittedly, the nude scenes with Helen Hunt probably didn’t hurt. John Hawkes did a wonderful job in a role where he was flat on his back with only his head showing. Hunt was fabulous in her role as a sex therapist and she is my choice for Best Supporting Actress. William Macy was his usual solidly-superb self in his role as a Catholic priest. Ultimately I think it was Macy’s character that elevated this movie from merely interesting to compelling.

Close behind, in third place, was Silver Linings Playbook; another simple, well-told story of people rising to meet life’s challenges that was superbly acted. Jennifer Lawrence gets my nod for Best Actress and Robert De Niro is my choice for Best Supporting Actor. If not for Day-Lewis, Bradley Cooper might have been my choice for best actor. This is a very good movie.

In a solid fourth place I’ve got Argo. This is also a very good movie; a good story that is well-told and well-acted. But I can’t figure out why this movie was chosen as Best Picture over Lincoln. That’s ridiculous.

Trailing out behind the top four in (half-heartedly/maybe/sort of) the following order are; Moonrise Kingdom, Flight, Zero Dark Thirty, Django Unchained, Hitchcock, The Impossible, Life of Pi and Hyde Park on Hudson.

Moonrise is quirky and fun, Flight is entertaining and may cut a little closer to home than many frequent flyers might want to think about. Zero is good too, but it drags a bit in spots.

Django I think suffered because Tarantino set the bar so high with Inglorious Basterds. Don’t misunderstand me now; Django is good, but maybe the flesh pulp that splatters out every time someone gets shot (which – spoiler alert – happens a lot) is just a little too far over the top; or maybe DiCaprio doesn’t carry Django quite as well as Brad Pitt carried Basterds; or maybe, even though Christoph Waltz is fantastic in Django, he wasn’t as perfect for the part as he was as the Nazi officer in Basterds. I’m not sure exactly what the problem is but I think Django suffered with me because I couldn’t help comparing it with Inglorious Basterds.

Maybe Tarantino should have waited a year or two longer before he made Django.

Hitchcock is a good, solid, entertaining movie that is very well acted.

The Impossible lived up to its name by somehow managing to make Naomi Watts look like just another mom swept away by a tsunami. It should have won the Oscar for makeup (unfortunately, it was not nominated). Basically, this is just a disaster movie in reverse yet it is not hokey and it is well-acted and quite believable (which I suppose it should be, because it is based on a true story).

Life of Pi on the other hand is too unbelievable. Even though the ending tries to explain the fantasy this movie just didn’t do it for me. I gave it three stars. Ditto for Hyde Park on Hudson (which may also have been mostly a fantasy).

One thing that I can say for certain about the 2013 crop of movies is that The Master absolutely sucked even though Joaquin Phoenix was phenomenal. This movie was a jumble of disconnected scenes that vaguely held out a never-fulfilled glimmer of hope that it might eventually have some over-arching purpose that would somehow connect the dots and provide at least some justification for the viewer that had just wasted two hours watching this pathetic excuse for a movie.

But it didn’t. With Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams backing up Phoenix you would have thought something could have been salvaged. But it wasn’t.