Failed Oscar Campaigns: "Hacksaw Ridge" (2016)

Scene from Hacksaw Ridge

As awards seasons pick up, so do the campaigns to make your film have the best chances at the Best Picture race. However, like a drunken stupor, sometimes these efforts come off as trying too hard and leave behind a trailer of ridiculous flamboyance. Join me on every other Saturday for a highlight of the failed campaigns that make this season as much about prestige as it does about train wrecks. Come for the Harvey Weinstein comments and stay for the history. It's going to be a fun time as I explore cinema's rich history of attempting to matter.

Review: "Hacksaw Ridge" is an Awe-Inspiring Look at Faith During War

Scene from Hacksaw Ridge

The events of Mel Gibson's aggressive personal life are likely well known by this point. It's full of a hostility that has kept him from being nearly as big of a star as he was even 15 years ago. Yet with his latest directorial film Hacksaw Ridge, he creates the perfect allegory for redemption. What's more impressive is that he does it without sacrificing the things that make his cinema singular (violence). Mixing war with faith, he explores how a man excised from his community based on his beliefs regains their trust through hard work. There's an earnestness here that is striking amid the graphic decapitations of the war scenes. This may be a story about having faith in time of crisis, but it's also a story about how Gibson regained our trust while producing his best film as a director. 

Theory Thursday: Tom Hanks Deserved an Oscar Nomination for "Cloud Atlas"

Scene from Cloud Atlas

Welcome to a weekly column called Theory Thursdays, which will be released every Thursday and discuss my "controversial opinion" related to something relative to the week of release. Sometimes it will be birthdays while others is current events or a new film release. Whatever the case may be, this is a personal defense for why I disagree with the general opinion and hope to convince you of the same. While I don't expect you to be on my side, I do hope for a rational argument. After all, film is a subjective medium and this is merely just a theory that can be proven either way. 

Can the Epic Scope of "Cloud Atlas" Win Best Picture?

Tom Hanks

Update: I have written a review that you can read here.

This Friday marks the release of the highly anticipated epic from directors Lana and Andy Wachowski (The Matrix series) and Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run). The film is Cloud Atlas based on the best selling novel by David Mitchell that intertwines numerous stories through numerous eras. The ambitious scale of this sci-fi film has a lot to do to fill the three hour running time. However, can these three directors take the source material and turn it into a blockbuster hit of the Fall on a scale not seen since Avatar? Also, is it possible that we'll see this movie bump heads with Ben Affleck's Argo and Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master for Best Picture?