Academy Award Losers That You Should Still See

Nebraska

It takes a while to finally see any good in Bruce Dern's character in Nebraska, but there sure are a lot of laughs before we get to that point.

Even though this little independent film had gotten rave reviews and Academy Award nominations, I wasn't really expecting that much from it. But it really is a lovable movie. And Will Forte really keeps his streak going alongside one of my favorite TV shows of the moment, The Last Man on Earth. His mother in Nebraska is an absolute hoot. She really tells it like it is, and Bob Odenkirk is also perfect for the role of the less-than-there brother.

It lost the Academy Award to 12 Years a Slave in 2014, but was indeed probably the second-best flick behind the winner for that year.

****1/2 out of ***** stars

Working Girl

The wild 1980s hair of the many women in the office pool wasn't the only influential part of Working Girl. It's main service to society was how it helped influence the breaking of the glass ceiling on Wall Street and throughout the U.S.

Melanie Griffith's character Tess McGill uses her ingenuity to plan a wise deal for a major conglomerate to acquire a radio network, if only the smoothly evil Sigourney Weaver doesn't sabotage her first. Good-guy Harrison Ford helps her out, while Alec Baldwin doesn't help much.

The views of New York City from the perspective of the Staten Island Ferry add to the power of the 1988 film, which was nominated for best picture, while Griffith was nominated for best actress, and Weaver and Joan Cusack for best supporting actress.

**** out of ***** stars

Horrible Bosses 2

Four years ago, I gave Horrible Bosses 3 out of 5 stars. If you liked that one enough, you'll like this one enough to at least watch it. Nothing great, but great comedic actors and a few laughs make it worthy enough.

Jason Bateman and the gang decide to get out from under the world of bosses and build an empire of their own with the Shower Buddy.

Umm, I don't think it was nominated for an Oscar.

**1/2 out of ***** stars

In a Past Year of Powerful Films, Dallas Buyers Club Stands Strong

Matthew McConaughey may have seemed a bit of an egotistical jerk lately, but if Dallas Buyers Club is an indication, his acting is high art, and he deserves to be a show-off showman.

I would argue that Chiwetel Ejiofor of 12 Years a Slave was royally ripped off for losing the best actor Oscar to McConaughey, but that really shouldn’t take anything away from his performance as Ron Woodroof, a real-life AIDS victim in the 1980s who started a club in Texas for patients seeking an effective drug smuggled in from Mexico that the FDA refused to approve.

The actor’s performance is so powerful because of the transformation he makes from a rodeo-riding, racist drug and sex addict to a compassionate and successful businessman. He lives much longer than he is supposed to, and in that extra time, he forms a deep bond with best supporting actor Jared Leto’s Rayon, a weird transgender woman with advanced AIDS and just enough secret money to help make the Dallas Buyers Club the place to go for sick patients shunned by the mainstream medical establishment.

The story is fascinating, and it’s unbelievable that the script wallowed in Hollywood for years. At one point, Woody Harrelson was going to play the lead role. But once it was green lighted, the actors were all in, with Leto and McConaughey again going beyond the call. McConaughey stayed in his Texas mansion for six months to get pale and weak. Leto stopped eating at points along his way to losing 30 pounds.

I really love this movie. You could say it’s one of the many arguments for universal health care, and that it’s yet another emotional plea from Hollywood for the medical establishment in the U.S. to get its act together.

***** out of ***** stars

12 Years a Slave May Just Be the Most Important Movie Ever

My grandfather, Wade Mackie, was a great civil-rights leader in the Martin Luther King Jr.-era south of Louisiana. So when Roots came out when I was a little kid, I think I sort of inherently “got it.”

The TV miniseries certainly still hit me over the head like a sledgehammer. I’ll always remember Kunta Kinte’s plight and will always feel bad for all slaves and puzzle over how some people can be so downright bad, or at the very least clownishly imbecilic, with a big dose of sadistic. It’s still happening all over the world today. Unfortunately, slavery in some way will probably always be happening.

So then Django Unchained was released. With Argo, that was my favorite movie of 2012 (in fact, I named it my 67^th favorite movie of all time). This attacked Roots-era, pre-Civil War-era slavery with an eye for how violent it was and how ruthless. It added a huge dose of Tarantino humor and his style of the unorthodox. Despite that overlay, it was powerful. That’s why it was so good.

But then along comes 12 Years a Slave. This blows Roots and Django out of the water. There were loud sobs throughout the theater. I personally don’t think I’ve cried that hard since E.T. (seriously, I’m not making light, I always cry during E.T.).

So it’s a sad story, to say the least. It’s on-fiction based on a book written by Solomon Northup, a wonderful family man and talented and free musician from Saratoga Springs, New York who was recruited to tour the East coast in 1841 before getting kidnapped in Washington D.C. He was one of the few kidnapped slaves to ever escape captivity, which he does after 12 years at a string of hellish plantations throughout Louisiana.

It will be a crime if Chiwetel Ejiofor, as Solomon, doesn’t win the Oscar for best actor. This is a very important movie, and I’m really happy, in my grandfather’s honor, that, at least judging by Hollywood, we’re getting closer and closer to coming to terms with our country’s ugly past and moving forward into a much more tolerant understanding and appreciation of all our differences and similarities.

***** out of ***** stars