The Blind Side is different than I expected. For starters, I don’t like sports movies, pretty much as a rule, because I don’t really like sports. But, like Invictus, which I reviewed earlier, The Blind Side isn’t so much about sports as it is about the human condition, hope, and faith. But, while it was different in that the sports aspect was pretty much glossed over, it wasn’t too different than everything else out there and what you ultimately have on your hands here is a feel-good movie. A feel-good movie done well, but a feel-good movie nonetheless.

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Truly, An Education wasn’t what I expected it would be going in.

To be fair, it was probably my fault. Concerned about sexual content, I looked it up on some family-oriented movie review sites. The kind of sites that warn parents about inappropriate material in films, and tell you which to stay far away from.

This particular website described An Education as pretty terrible. In not so many words, it said that the film was about a young girl being seduced by an older man who wanted to have sex with her. It said that the majority of the film surrounded this attempt, by the older man, to get the younger girl to have intercourse with him. It said that that was essentially the point of the film. I had my own reservations as well. Having recently seen Crazy Heart, I was still smarting from the classic Hollywood older man is swooned by much younger woman fantasy that that film let play out. An Education seemed like it would be much the same. But, as I’d find out, it wasn’t all about sex and it wasn’t just that same old Hollywood story.

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Those that know me well know that I love everything about the British royals—the Monarchy—so I approach a cinematic offering like The Young Victoria ready to just devour it. I’m happy to say that this film is a feast that doesn’t disappoint.

I should clarify. I do love the royals, but more than that, I love a good historical biopic film. The Young Victoria is exactly that: a dramatization of just what the name implies—the life of the young Queen Victoria. The beginning of the film covers Victoria’s growing up, her aging uncle, the King, and the power struggle that surrounded her eventual rise to the throne. Once she assumes the throne—and I hope I’m not spoiling this for anyone but she does become Queen—the rest of the film follows her settling into power, her mistakes and missteps, her personal life and, of course, her falling in love.

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Crazy Heart is one of those rarer films in which you can easily separate performances from plot. In this case, a Best Actor from a less-than-best film.

Crazy Heart is a film about a washed-up country singer and the choices and changes he makes and the challenges he faces. It’s got great atmosphere, in dark and seedy little bars, and it really takes you to the edge of a life, the life of Bad Blake, played by Jeff Bridges, but it is, in the end, really a film made up of actors and not story.

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I may get some flack for saying this but please read the whole review, and maybe you’ll understand: The Lovely Bones, the latest offering from famed director Peter Jackson, is one-half a good movie. The other half I could’ve done without.

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My wife, Maria, described Up in the Air as a very well put-together movie. That about sums it up. And she’s totally right, of course.

Up in the Air is essentially a film about a traveling salesman. Ryan Bingham, played expertly by George Clooney, is a businessman who’s job it is to travel around the world firing people. He’s hired to fire, and he makes a living doing it. In fact, he loves doing it. Bingham loves the experience of flying, staying in hotels, eating out, and wracking up air miles. It’s his passion; living alone, isolated, is his credo. His philosophy. It’s interesting, seeing someone living their life like that. It is. Up in the Air is a movie about Ryan Bingham, and it’s very well done.

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Well, the Oscars have come and gone again. I wouldn’t say the results were unexpected, but they were, I would say, good. I’m glad, first and foremost, to see that Avatar, the gazillion-dollar blockbuster, didn’t sweep the podium. It had the potential to, and the rumour mill was buzzing like nobody’s business leading up to Sunday. But thankfully, common sense prevailed and the Academy decided that just because a movie was twenty years in the making, costs the GDP of a small nation, and brought it ten times that amount means that it deserves an award. Avatar, after all, is a movie about Indians and the White Man and of all the Best Picture nominees this year, this genre has definitely been done to death.

So instead, the good guys prevailed: The Hurt Locker, taking almost every award possible away from Avatar. It was interesting. James Cameron just sat there, nearly the whole time, with that smug look on his face: a look of arrogant confidence. It was with that expression, that smugness in mind, that it felt so good when Kathryn Bigelow took both Best Director and Best Picture. When she won, she was beside herself and it showed, she could barely stand up to receive her first and then second award. A sharp contrast to Cameron’s demeanor. One would say, just from looking at them, that she deserved it more.

But unfortunately, the movie I would’ve picked for the best out of these three didn’t really have a chance. Precious, in my opinion, was the best film out of the front-runners. I think it was far more impactful and a much more complete film than The Hurt Locker, ditto Avatar. Why it didn’t win is anyone’s guess, but I imagine it got lost in the shuffle. This year’s Academy Awards, wrongfully so, were billed as a battle between former husband and wife. While there was some mention of an African American filmmaker, possibly for the first time, taking home Best Picture, it wasn’t the headline like the Cameron-Bigelow affair was. Sadly, I think the best picture became a casualty of war—a victim of collateral damage.

It was a pretty solid night, though. Some unexpected things, one of which was Avatar winning almost nothing but another was the severe lack of banjo. Before the show, I took a vote with the friends at our Oscar Party, the question was: when do you think Steve Martin’s banjo will make an appearance. If Avatar losing everything was a big shocker, it’s only supplanted by the shock that Martin never had a chance to play us  Camptown Races. I don’t know, but if Hugh Jackman gets to put on his dancing shoes, why doesn’t Steve Martin get to display his musical chops? After all, he does have a Grammy to his name. I would’ve bet good money on a Baldwin-Martin musical duet but instead we get, what, an opening musical number by Neil Patrick Harris? My apologies to N.P.H. fans, but I would’ve preferred to see the hosts perform.

Although the Oscars are over, I’m still getting through reviewing a few more nominated films. While we watched most of them, I couldn’t keep up with writing the reviews too—after all, I do have a day job, and it’s report card season right now. We just watched Up in the Air, The Lovely Bones, and Crazy Heart, so there are still lots more Oscar nominees coming up, stay tuned.