Three-movie weekend!

 Last weekend, with time on our hands, it was movie time!  The weather was terrible, my wife had COVID, I had to quarantine with her due to contact (but I never did test positive), so I got to watch THREE movies in one weekend!

First up, my Oscar requirement - this time, Moonlight, the eventual Best Picture winner after the embarrassing La La Land announcement.   While the storyline didn't go the way I expected (I thought it was more about Maherasha Ali's character), it was a great look into the life of a man who wound up in a place he didn't want, and the (sometimes unexpected, sometimes predictable) forces that led him there.  Really well done (duh, it won Best Picture), I thought it was more relatable than a lot of the other BP winners in the past.

After that, I switched to the current year.  Lately, I've tried to watch at least half of the Best Picture nominees before the actual Oscar ceremony, so I can have a reason to root for / against some of the films.  I'd already seen Power of the Dog, Dune (Part 1 - let's wait for Part 2), and Don't Look Up (shouldn't be a contender).  So this week, we watched Belfast, a (mostly) black and white film about the experiences of a young boy too innocent to understand the forces at work around him.  This was another great film, worthy of the nomination, and probably a top 3 contender in the end.   I have a couple of weeks before the actual nominations come out, so we'll see if I can get half of them done before the awards.

Finally, a movie with an actress I really like - Carey Mulligan, in a film that was a little less deep than the other two this weekend.    My wife didn't expect me to like this show, Promising Young Woman, due to the subject matter, but I thought it was story well told.  Sad, to be sure, on just so many levels, but a well thought through concept.  A few twists kept the story moving, and helped to convey the reasons for the main character's actions, at least to a point.  For a simple movie goer like me, it didn't have that same type of 'missing minute' that I mentioned in Taxi Driver.  That's not to say that you didn't have to think about the character's motivations - it wasn't all put out there for you, but you could follow the thought process of the characters more clearly.  

This week - no movies for me....a bit too much work and football.  Next week, I'll be babying my wife while she recovers, but if she's out of it, it's two war movies for me.  Patton and Platoon are both on my list (how have I not seen some of these films?), albeit from two very different wars.