Movie Reviews

This past Saturday Tai and I, along with a couple friends, went to a movie marathon at a local theater that showed the 5 films nominated for "Best Picture". The first movie started at 10:30am and the last one started at 9:45pm. Needless to say it was a great day of sitting around, eating lots of popcorn and drinking lots of coke (and we cheated because we had already seen one of the movies so we left for about 3.5hrs while our friends stayed the whole time). Below are some of my thoughts on the 5 movies in the order they were played on Saturday.

Overall a pretty good movie. Homosexuality is such an interesting topic and I think the movie did a good job of making the point that discrimination for any reason is NOT cool. And though I don't think this particular lifestyle is God's plan for His creation it was a good reminder to me that the Church must be a place of love, love through truth and grace.

I thought Sean Penn did a great job as Harvey Milk by capturing the viewers attention and emotions throughout the entire film. Overall I would rank this movie at #3 (though extremely close to being a tie for #2) out of the 5 nominations.
*Disclaimer: strong sexual themes, language


I did not find this movie to be particularly interesting or really that good for that matter. I was somewhat surprised to see Kate Winslet win "Best Actress" for this film but I also did not see any of the other movies containing the "Best Actress" nominees. I personally did not think that the plot, storyline or characters of this film were strong enough to wade through the uncomfortable amount of awkward and unnecessary nudity. Overall I felt like the movie was fairly weak and did a poor job of engaging the viewer. This movie was #5 of 5 and would not earn a recommendation from me.
*Disclaimer: nudity


I thought this was a fairly entertaining film but that goes to figure as it is based off the short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald written in 1922. I liked that the story was something different and found it interesting but they should have taken note from the original in that it was a short story. The movie is 166mins long and seems much longer still. A good story but not strong enough to be strentched into an almost 3yr movie. I thought Brad Pitt did fine, nothing spectacular and in my opinion, not even worthy of a "Best Actor" nomination. This gets my #4 of 5 for the day. I would recommend it if it didn't feel soooooo long toward the end.


Great movie! Completely deserving of winning "Best Picture" as it was by far the strongest overall film of the day. Everything from the story, characters, music, scenerary fit perfectly together. This film is put together extremely well and takes the viewer on an emotional adventure through the valley of loss, desperation and longing onto the mountaintop of joy, perseverance, determination and love. I'm not sure I can say enough about how good a movie I thought this was. While I found this film to be quite entertaining I also couldn't help but notice the extreme poverty that so many people in the world live in with little to no chance of every breaking the cycle. I think a good movie is one that can entertain, engage and humble the viewer at the same time. This easily gets my #1 of 5 vote and a recommendation.


This movie pleasantly surprised me as it was the last movie of the marathon day, starting at 9:45pm. My initial thought was that this was going to be a killer movie to see as the last one because it had the potential to be incredibly boring but ended up being quite enjoyable. Though the whole Watergate scandal is still fairly confusing to me, even after watching the movie, I thought it was well done and well put together. There were enough things going on that kept me engaged in the story, despite the fact that it was centered around the idea of 2 guys sitting down talking to each other for something like 12hrs. I thought that both Frank Langella as Nixon and Michael Sheen as Frost did a great job. Surprisingly enough, I would recommend this movie as it got #2 of 5 on the day.
*Disclaimer: language