The Testaverde Touchdown of Best Pictures

Art is subjective.  And voting has a great deal of popularity ingrained in the process.  So when it comes to picking a winner for Best Picture, there have been times where people have scratched their heads wondering how did this movie win.  The most recent was Argo from a few years ago.  This post will be about Moonlight, but first let's take a stroll down memory lane so that you can understand the title of this post.

Now that I think about it, that wasn't a very cheerful memory.  So last year in my post about the annual contest the wife and I have, I presented my version of how I would have handled the situation at the end of the Oscars.  Remember you were dealing with two people not very smart.  Especially Warren Beatty who is dumb enough for both of them.  He remade Here Comes Mr. Jordan and called it Heaven Can Wait, a completely different movie.  That would be the same as remaking Raiders of the Lost Ark and calling it Apocalypse Now.

The film is a good movie, although somewhat confusing at times.  It is broken into three parts, each one is its own entity as if it were three different short films.  The first segment shows the main character, Chiron as a child being bullied by the other kids and his mother is a drug addict.  A drug dealer, Juan played by Mahershala Ali, takes a liking to Chiron and acts like a father figure to him.  The second segment shows Chiron as a teenager still being bullied.  He has a sexual encounter with one his male classmates who ends up beating him up later on after being egged on by a bully.  Chiron retaliates against the bully and is sent to jail.  The third segment shows Chiron now an adult, is a drug dealer, and seeks out his friend he had the encounter with years earlier.

This is not a bad movie, the first part is terrific.  Mahershala Ali is amazing in every scene he is in, he carries the film and is so talented.  He clearly earned the Best Supporting Actor Oscar.  But he is only in the first part of the film, once he is gone the film is not really worth watching.  Naomie Harris who plays Chiron's mother, also does a great job and received a Supporting Actress nomination, but is not enough to carry the film after Mahershala Ali's character dies.

It received notoriety because the relationship involved two boys.  Just like Brokeback Mountain, if you replaced the two male characters with a male and female, would it still be considered as good as a film?  If the answer is yes, then it is a good story.  If no, then the film is not an Oscar caliber film.  In the case of Moonlight, I think this falls into the same situation.  It is a good film, but if the romantic interest of Chiron was a woman, I don't think it would be as well known.

That being said, it did win Best Picture and there was the big fiasco at the Oscars with Warren Beatty who is as dumb as soap.  But on a positive note, at least La La Land didn't win after all.  So Lion is still the best of the year, Hidden Figures second, Moonlight third and La La Land quickly moving towards ninth place but stopping at fourth for now.

If I Wanted a Rerun, I Could Have Watched The Partridge Family

So yes, technically this is a repeat of a blog post I did last year in April during the A to Z challenge where I gave a review of Lion, 2016 nominee for Best Picture.  The film I was planning on reviewing was Lost Horizon, but at the last minute I changed my mind and talked about this great film.  But it was only in the context of the A to Z challenge and not reviewed as compared to other films nominated that year.

To bring you up to speed, the movie is based on a true story about a young boy living in Western India in the 1980's who falls asleep on an empty train one night. When he wakes up the train is traveling and he can't get off.  A few days later he is in Eastern India lost, confused and speaking a different language.  Eventually he ends up in an orphanage and is adopted by an Australian couple who raise him in Tasmania.

Twenty years later his memory is triggered and realizes that he doesn't know where he is from and what has happened to his family.  Since this was the time when Google Earth came online, he attempts to trace back the train ride to find his hometown.  He has a memory of a water tower at the train station, but not much more than that.

Watching this film, I was reminded of Salaam Bombay! the 1988 Best Foreign Language nominee from India.  Please note this is a very depressing movie, but very fascinating to watch.  The stories are parallel to Lion being filmed during the same time frame, but on different sides of the country.  Just shows you how difficult life is in India, especially if you are orphaned.

This movie means a lot to me because it is about adoption.  When I saw the film a year ago (Yes I know that I am very behind on my blogging, but I have a good excuse.  Seriously, I do!) my wife and I were in the adoption pool to become adoptive parents.  Now that we are adoptive parents (Told you I had a good reason!) this movie means so much more to me.

The acting is terrific by Dev Patel, Nicole Kidman and Sunny Pawar who plays Saroo as a child in his first movie debut, is amazing.  This kid is so talented and carries the first half of the movie.  He even stole the show at the Oscars last year.  I hope he continues as an actor, looking forward to see what he can do next.  And when you see photos of the real Sue Brierley, you will see how talented Nicole Kidman is.

So this makes three of the nine I have reviewed.  Let's be clear, La La Land is still last.  But Lion does edge out Hidden Figures and is the best film of the year.  Look, if the world was fair this would have won Best Picture, but at least we have such a great film that will last the test of time.  Fifty years from now you'll be able to watch this movie and remark at how great it still is.

Here is the trailer for the film.  I hope you enjoy this film as much as I did.

And if you get a chance, here is the trailer for Salaam Bombay! which you should try and find sometime.  Occasionally TCM will show it during their Imports program on Sunday nights.