12 Years of Philomena in Osage County this August

There were two shots in 12 Years A Slave that held for an uncomfortably extended length of time.  I dig that.  I like what Steve McQueen was putting me through as an audience member.  I just wish he would have done it more.  It seems as if he did not want to call attention to the Director's point of view, but when he made an exception, the film was more powerful.  Lupita Nyong'o was so astonishingly good when she was on screen that I can't figure out why they even nominated other actresses.  There were other strong performances as well.  And then every once in a while a minor character would enter the world and just fall short.  I wanted more consistency from Steve McQueen!  I also took issue with Brad Pitt in the role of Bass.  It was too small of a role for Brad Pitt to get lost in and you couldn't stop thinking about the fact that a megastar just showed up in the middle of someone telling you an unbelievably painful story.  Nitpicking aside, 12 Years has the Oscar approved level of importance and was a very moving and effective film.  It would not bother me if this won.

Philomena was an interesting story.  The character banter was fun.  All in all it seemed well made but not quite Oscar level for reasons I can't easily put my finger on. I did have to watch it in two sittings weeks apart so I know that didn't help my viewing of it at all. I was called away from the first screening for a sick kid at school and I sneaked into the second screening after watching something else at an unnamed movie theatre. I think I may have missed a few minutes of the middle of the film, so it really isn't fair at all for me to complain about the minimal impact the film had for me.

August: Osage County had two things going for it. The first is that I had three good friends basically warn me off of it entirely.  So my expectations were nice and low.  Secondly, I have a degree in Theatre Arts so I have sat through an insufferable amount of these plays about the tortuous small town family reunion and NONE of them had acting as good as this!  So I ended up enjoying something that may not have held much interest for me otherwise. I am totally with you and your odd choice Meryl Streep! I did not think you overacted a bit. Julia, I've never seen you so good, although my mom thinks that wasn't acting, it's just who you are, which might explain a lot.  Sam Shepard?  More of you next time, please! Juliette Lewis, you came up with a different character for this movie and she was heartbreaking. The telling of the story was problematic as every scene shouted, "Stage play!" but thank goodness the movie version cut out over an hour of the stage script because as much as I enjoy people verbally abusing one another, I could not have taken much more.