Monday, January 26, 2015

Three In One! Two Days, One Night; Captain America:Winter Soldier and Finding Vivian Maier

Well, folks! I outdid myself yesterday, seeing three nominations in one day.

I started the morning at the movie theatre watching Marion Cotillard's nominated performance in Two Days, One Night. She plays a young woman with depression who is doing her best to save her job. She has to convince her coworkers to vote for her job and creates a lot of chaos along the way. It's a small film, that lags at times. I think truths about clinical depression were stretched if not broken in order to tidy up the plot line and that was bothersome. She was very good, but it doesn't seem like "the one" to me.

After the kids went to bed, we watched Captain America: Winter Soldier. The Captain America movies are not my favorite Marvel products. It took effort for me to stay interested through large parts of the film. I like the new character of the Falcon though, so he helped. I have to admit, as I watched the film I thought it was nominated for all of its big vibrational, feedback-y sound effects. It turns out it's up for Visual Effects, which makes sense, I guess. I just can't get myself to care that much about visual effects when the story isn't rocking my world. That is probably not fair to Visual Effects artists who don't always get their choice of material, I'm guessing.

But after all that action I was ready for a late night documentary so we watched Finding Vivian Maier, about a prolific and talented photographer whose work was discovered posthumously at an auction of her old stuff. Solving the ensuing mystery of who this artist was and how she lived is an intriguing and pleasing mystery to watch unravel. This is one of those rare Oscar Nominated documentaries that doesn't tear you apart emotionally! Sadly, those ones almost never win.

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