Andrew Staniland
Actor/Videographer
SICARIO was easily the best film I saw in 2015 and it's nominated for only sound editing?! Totally lame. Great, tight, thought-inspiring script. great actors, AMAZING cinematography (would we expect anything less with Deakins lensing it?) and not even a mention of it for best picture, cinematography or script.
The Revenant, for all it's 2 1/2 plus hours was, frankly, kind of boring and left me thinking "Why the hell would you make a film about this?" Don't get me wrong. Innaritu is my favorite director these days and filming it was a technical feat, but it is not that great a film and is almost an homage to wanky Terence Malick flics (I loved The Thin Red line, but everything since has been terribly self-indulgent and boring)
Spotlight: so much potential, but poorly executed and pretty boring.
Mad Max: Come on......REALLY?? a teenage wank-fest with almost no dialogue??
The Martian....lame and pandering to a seemingly "thick" audience as always
The Big Short: interesting look at our big banks and the thieves they are, but not terribly compelling.
The Danish Girl: Had to shut it off 10 minutes in, it was so bloody precious and cutesy. Two great actors and one lame director. I felt sorry for the actors.
This year's Oscars consists of too many "I'll scratch your back if you'll scratch mine" films. It appears that the accountants have their hooks ever-deeper into the creative process and continue to ruin films and dumb-down audiences. The only thing I agree with is Kate Winslet for best supporting actress in "Steve Jobs" She was almost unrecognizable. Amazingly subtle eastern-european accent. Great work.
Without a doubt, The Exorcist. Scariest movie of all time. I'm in my 40's and even now I wouldn't sit in the dark and watch it by myself. There's something primordially frightening about it.
WHIPLASH: A ten times more interesting movie for a quarter the price of Black Swan.
The acting was self-conscious(probably not the fault of the actors) and the the film totally needs to "trim the fat" and quite frankly, like several other commenters, I found it beautifully shot, but pretty boring. We're all entitled to our opinion. If you haven't already watched it, one of the best shorts out there is "The Six Dollar Fifty Man". Great story, great little actors, beautiful cinematography, "tight" and never boring. Something we should all aspire to: https://vimeo.com/groups/awardeo/videos/52652624
Someone call in an editor....and an acting coach...YIKES!
I agree with Andy. If you're into visuals, Ridley Scott is one of the best, but don't expect depth and pathos in the stories he tells. Maybe it's his having come up(as a filmmaker) in advertising but, beautiful though they may be, his efforts almost always feel pretty superficial and often pander to the audience to likely keep the producers happy. The Martian is no exception and certainly the script contains that very superficiality that appears onscreen, but there's always a choice to go deeper or remain on the surface.
I can appreciate his visual efforts as he's a master at that, but so what? I'd rather see less spectacular imagery and actually be moved by a story/characters/performances and, apart from Blade Runner (where Rutger Hauer made up the last lines of the movie himself) I have yet to be moved by anything Scott has done. His films are beautiful, but they lack real humanity.