Brad Pitt is not a great actor. He was awkward and stilted in Se7en, terrible in Troy, cartoonish in Burn After Reading, and he’s pretty much played himself in every other notable movie he’s made (Fight Club, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Ocean’s Everything). Sorry Sulmoney, but his performance in Benjamin Button was not “wonderful” and “subdued,” it was boring and blank-faced. Despite its enormous promise (and premise), Benjamin Button was ultimately a fairly empty love story with a deceptively narrow scope set against a disappointingly lackluster backdrop. I guess the film was pretty striking from a visual and technical standpoint, though, so if you’ve got the mind of a raccoon that’s content with collecting shiny objects from the garbage heap, I could see it finding its way to #7 on your list.
And did I mention Brad Pitt is terrible with accents? Because he is. Here’s my #6:
Frost/Nixon
I heart the craft of politicking, and I heart the art of argumentation, so Frost/Nixon, a movie that’s literally about two people sitting in a room and arguing about politics, was a no-brainer for me. Sure, when you put it that way the story really doesn’t sound very cinematic at all, but what the premise lacks in showiness, the execution makes up for with a tried and true formula that’s worked for one famous film franchise at least 6 times. In one corner you’ve got Richard Nixon: master intellectualizer and heavyweight champion of the world with the hurting bombs to prove it (literally), and in the other corner sits David Frost: the underdog with nothing to lose and everything to prove. Who will win? Well, we kinda already know the answer, but we knew Rocky wouldn’t lose, either (at least in part II), and it didn’t stop us from enjoying that one.
The underdog structure is brilliant, but it’d be nothing without Frank Langella’s uncanny performance as Nixon. Langella deserves credit for refraining from playing Nixon as a complete douchebag, which deserves an Oscar nod in itself. Instead, he gives us a pretty rounded and surprisingly hilarious picture of one of the oddest political figures in our nation’s history. Like Rocky’s heavyweight adversary, Apollo Creed, we don’t necessarily hate Nixon, but after watching his arrogance slowly build through the course of the movie, we can’t help but cheer when the knockout blow finally lands.
Frost/Nixon is far from a perfect movie, but really nothing on this list is without flaw. It didn’t need the documentary style, it pushed the boxing metaphors a little too far, and the acting does get a bit hammy at times. The good far outweighs the bad, though, and the climactic clash of wits and words is so satisfying, you’ll forget where it went wrong.
[…] need not come Sunday night. The nominees include Richard Jenkins (The Visitor), Frank Langella (Frost/Nixon), Sean Penn (Milk), Brad Pitt (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), and Mickey Rourke (The […]
[…] The nominees in Best Director are David Fincher (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), Ron Howard (Frost/Nixon), Gus Van Sant (Milk), Stephen Daldry (The Reader), and Danny Boyle (Slumdog […]
[…] them shortly. As for now, the nominations for Best Picture are The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, Milk, The Reader, and Slumdog […]