Quick Review (Oscar Edition): Winter's Bone

At the end of this post I'll rank the Oscar Best Picture nominees, now that I've seen them all. The one I had missed, "Winter's Bone," wasn't rereleased to theaters after its nomination, so I had to rent the DVD. (Not only is it the first time I've ever rented a DVD, although way back in the day I did rent VHS tapes, I got it for $1 from a Redbox machine. It would've cost $4.99 for On Demand rental from Comcast.)

The tension-filled "Winter's Bone" mostly held my interest well. I got up just once, to get a drink. (Being able to pause the movie just isn't possible in theaters, dammit!) 17-year-old Ree (Jennifer Lawrence, nominated for Best Actress) is taking care of her mother, younger brother and sister in severe poverty in a rural area. She has to set off on a desperate quest to find her missing father, out on bond after an arrest on meth-making charges; he signed over their house as part of his bail, and if he doesn't show up for court they'll lose the house. The search won't be easy; meth labs are a big business in these areas and those who may know her father's whereabouts, including his own brother (John Hawkes, also a nominee as Best Supporting Actor), keep warning her to keep her mouth shut. I kept waiting for some typical dialogue and action and overacting that we usually get from big-budget Hollywood films. It never came. This is a quiet but rather powerful story. My grade: B-plus.

So, now that I've seen all ten Best Picture nominees, here is how I'd rank them, although my hunch is that "The King's Speech" will actually win the Oscar:

1. Toy Story 3
2. The Social Network
3. Black Swan
4. Inception
5. Winter's Bone
6. The Kids Are All Right
7. 127 Hours
8. True Grit
9. The King's Speech
10. The Fighter

Quick Review: The King's Speech

"The King's Speech" stars Michael Sheen as British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has to...wait, what? This is a movie about British royalty and/or politics and it doesn't have Sheen as Blair? Hmmm. Okay, let's start over. "The King's Speech" stars Colin Firth as King George VI, who had to overcome a speech impediment and deliver a radio address to his people after war was declared against Germany in 1939. Of course, the film actually starts well before this, when he's just the plain old Duke of York; after failed attempts to correct his stammer he gives up, until his wife (Helena Bonham Carter) goes behind his back and seeks out Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush), whose unconventional methods (such as insisting on calling each other by their first names) infuriate the Duke until he realizes that they seem to work. It probably worked better for me because it's a story I wasn't familiar with, but even so it's sort of predictable. For a drama, though, it's got a surprising amount of humor. It doesn't make my top 10 of 2010, even though it's an Oscar Best Picture nominee, but it's still fine. My grade: B-plus.