Chiming in - I just took a 14 hour overseas flight on Thursday and watched both Boyhood and The Imitation Game on the United entertainment system. Enjoyed both - but was really taken by Boyhood. I had remembered JHS’ praise of it and had always kept it in the back of my mind as a movie I should watch.
^@pizzagirl - I think you watched the best of the Oscar contenders IMHO. If you haven’t seen Whiplash, it rounds out the top 3 for me.
I thought Whiplash was fabulous as well. Looks like many of us have the same taste in movies. Give me a good indie any day over some big blockbuster.
I’ll have to find the United flight entertainment guide and have you all pick movies to watch on my flight home as I need to stay awake the while time and its 14 hours! I saw that Birdman is on the list; worth it? This is really my only movie time. I saw Grand Budapest Hotel on a similar flight last year and loved it.
My son didn’t love as much as H and I dud, but he did like it.
Wanted to love it but didn’t. Deliberately stayed away from spoilers so went in with an open mind.
The documentary like concept with the same cast aging through the movie was really cool.
I guess I wanted the plot to be more mainstream…sure every family has “stuff” but the constant alcoholism/abuse and relocating was too unnecessarily dramatic for me.
Having raised a now 28 yr old son (and a daughter as well), I would find basic parenting adventures as interesting.
Just me, I guess.
musicmom, I enjoyed the movie tremendously, but I am sure it rang more bells because I saw it right after I dropped my daughter off at college for freshman year. For me it affirmed choices I made as a single parent that were not the same as the choices made by characters in the movie. But I could identify with the choices I didn’t make.
Oldmom (I bet you’re not!)
I can see your point. I still clearly remember that long tear filled drive home 10 years ago after dropping DS off for freshman year. But a lot of the everyday parenting adventure memories have faded a bit in MY oldmom brain…
Ya know, those positive and negative events that were so daunting then and now are just the threads of who he has become. Which is a fairly amazing young man (in my unbiased opinion, of course).
Ok - 14 hours - need to stay awake. So far I want to see Birdman and The Theory of Everything. Any other recommendations for movies? I’m always way behind the curve ball in seeing movies. The only relatively current movie I’ve seen was Gone Girl.
I really liked both This Is Where I Leave You and Wild.
I really enjoyed Wild.
FWIW, I didn’t enjoy Wild much at all. Most of Reese Witherspoon’s acting in it consisted of not wearing makeup (or, actually, wearing different makeup than usual). It’s a good story, but it’s a good story of interiority, and doesn’t translate to visuals without a lot of cheap cliches.
And I really had problems with Whiplash. A completely fascist idea of art, having nothing to do with what real musicians do, which is to play with each other all the time, not practice in their rooms so they can beat each other out. And it glorified abuse of power way too much, even if it wasn’t 100%. Plus, lots of ridiculous cliches about departing from the script in performance. It was cute in Flashdance, but it’s gotten old with repetition since then, and it’s never been as unrealistic as in this movie.
This Is Where I Leave You was an enjoyable sitcom not requiring much thought, except for trying to figure out how the alcoholic Congressman from House of Cards Season 1 could possibly be older than Jason Bateman, who is 7 years his senior and looks older than that.
If it were me (and I’ve already seen all of these I’m going to suggest) - I’d pick between Juno (if you’ve never seen it), Foxcatcher (creepily good), Whiplash, and The Theory of Everything. Three very different movies. Having seen them all, if I were on that flight, I’d pick Juno in a heartbeat. If you liked The Grand Budapest Hotel due to its quirkiness, then you’d like Juno for the same reason.