With the new year here, it is time to get serious and consider what films will be nominated for the 2015 Academy Awards.
One of the most talked about films for the Oscars is Bennet Miller’s Foxcatcher, depicting the duo Olympic Wrestling team sponsored by the Foxcatcher Team for the 1988 World Olympics. Though the plot line for this film is heavy and can leave you feeling a tad bruised and broken, the acting is superb.
Channing Tatum and Mark Ruffalo take on new life in their roles, playing Mark and David Schultz, who deal with the manipulative and peculiar John Du Pont, played by Steve Carell. All three of these gentlemen poured their skill and heart into this film, creating a hauntingly beautiful drama on the insanity and the privilege required to make it in the world of wrestling.
While some may be bored by the lack of action and explosions involved in this production, the film proves that the raw essence of human emotion and response can truly create a beautiful film.
Peter Jackson returned to theaters for his final instalment of the Hobbit films, The Battle of the Five Armies, featuring Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins and Richard Armitage as Thorin Oakenshield. While the film itself does complete the trilogy, the Hobbit book was only about 300 pages long, and three two-and-a-half hour long movies were definitely not needed to get across the quality and beauty of J.R.R. Tolkien’s world.
Jackson’s films are special due to the love, devotion, and dedication put into the production of Tolkien’s novels. The quality of the films you see are brought on by years of time committed to breathing and living in the mind of Tolkien and thousands of hours spent to creating the perfect shots and perfect narrative.
The Hobbit is one of the most visually advanced and beautiful films of 2014 and has a great chance of winning Oscars for Cinematography and Production Design.
Are you paying attention? Great, because you should have heard that quote in Morten Tyldum’s The Imitation Game starring the brilliant Benedict Cumberbatch portraying Alan Turing in one of the most controversial and infamous stories of the Second World War. Hired to crack Germany’s Enigma code, Turing struggles delve more into his personal life than his brain’s abilities. This film provides us with a deeper look into the ignorance of people stretching back to the ‘40s, but also makes us look at how we’ve come or the little we’ve changed.
Imitation Game brings us into the mind of a genius and makes you see not only the logistics but the sadness of human nature. While fighting against Germany for Britain, Turing begins to realize how not one group of people or person is the enemy, but human nature’s strive for conformity and fear of difference.
These films are only a taste of what 2014 has produced. With the dedication put into these films, it is going to be hard to pick the few nominees to appear at the Oscars.
