Milwaukee Movie Marathon

For the second year in a row, I headed up to Milwaukee with Craig to watch a movie marathon of the five Oscar Best Picture nominees at the AMC theater. This year, Andy and Dawn joined us and we took off Friday evening, arriving at Craig's friend Jake's house around 10-ish. We spent some time playing "Rock Band 2," including running through a 32-song set created by Craig. I was pretty happy as last year was the first time I'd ever played "Rock Band" and I sucked at the easy level. This time, I was playing bass (my favorite "Rock Band" or "Guitar Hero" instrument) at the medium level and consistently getting 90% or better.

After getting five hours of sleep and waking up to a heavy snowfall, we headed to the theater for fourteen hours of movie watching.

First up was Milk. Honestly, the movie surprised me. I was expecting it to be preachier than it was, and fully braced myself for a movie that was only pro-homosexual propaganda. Based on what I'd read of it, that's the impression I'd gotten of it. Now, I don't consider myself homophobic (as a straight guy, it runs completely counter to my own instincts as to not make sense, but who am I to judge?), but any time I feel I'm being preached at by a movie, I tend to have a knee jerk reaction. So, I wasn't really looking forward to it. But the movie really wasn't about homosexuality as much as it was about civil rights, so I was pleasantly surprised. It managed to get its message across without seeming heavy-handed and it even had a couple of good laughs in it. I definitely enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone with an open mind. At the same time, I'm kind of annoyed with the media for playing up the homosexual angle to the point that you lose sight of the forest from the trees. That was but one component in the whole and in my opinion, not even the most important one.

After a half hour break, we filed back into the theater for the second movie, The Reader. It was the other movie I wasn't looking forward to, as the general buzz about it being nominated was along the lines of "What the hell?!" Well, that was my general feeling about the movie too after watching it. It wasn't a bad movie, but my thought was that it was just a semi-decent drama, filled with a lot of cliche cinematography and a so/so story. If anyone has seen the movie Tropic Thunder, there's a fake movie trailer with Robert Downey Jr. and Tobey MacGuire at the beginning of that movie and The Reader, to me, was a self-serious version of that with all of the same shots and style of editing. But instead of two gay priests, like in the fake trailer, you had a young kid and an older woman in the actual movie.

We had another break, during which Craig and I sneaked off to Cinnabon for their sweet cinnamon roll goodness. The next movie was The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. At 2 hours and 45 minutes, it was a tad long-winded. Yet, the story was interesting and the performances were decent. I enjoyed it well enough, with the only real nit pick apart from the run time being that there was a bit about Hurricane Katrina in there that just felt oddly out of place. Still, I recommend it for a rental.

Another break, and after some dinner, we came back for Slumdog Millionaire. Personally, it was my favorite of the bunch with an interesting story-structure, great performances, and an intriguing narrative. The only downside I thought was that the love story was a little bit "been there, done that," but the rest of it was engaging enough to carry that aspect for me.

The last movie of the night was Frost/Nixon. I was interested in seeing it, but being a political movie, wasn't looking forward to it at the end of the night when I was going to be tired. Luckily, it was another surprise for me, as it wasn't as dry as I anticipated and really played up the conflict between the titular characters as opposed to the politics of the time. Even still, while I thought there were some great performances in it, the movie itself didn't really feel "Best Picture" worthy to me and while being decent, I put it on the same level as The Reader, being just so/so.

The marathon being over, we went back to Jake's house and cracked open a bottle of wine and sat around discussing the movies for an hour before going to bed. This morning, we took off, had wonderful Mexican food at a restaurant called Mi Cochina in New Berlin, and made our way back to the Quad Cities.

So, after seeing the nominated motion pictures, what do I think will win Best Picture? Well, my preference from the list is Slumdog Millionaire, yet it just seems too...upbeat to be an Oscar Best Picture winner. Given the previous winners over the years and the "vibe" those pictures put out, my gut tells me it'll be Milk, which frankly, if Slumdog doesn't win it, was the only other flick on the list that I felt was even worthy of the nomination. What will happen though? I guess we'll find out in a couple of hours (the Oscars are on as I write this). But, all in all, it was another good experience and I hope to do it again next year.