2017 Oscar Winners Predicted by Harvard Math Wizard
If you haven"t yet seen the movies that won this year"s Academy Awards, it"s not too late. Six filmsincluding Moonlight (best picture), La La Land (winner of six awards, including leading actress and best director), and Manchester by the Sea (which won for leading actor and original screenplay)are still playing in the Seattle area. Click through the film titles below to see complete movie times and theaters, watch trailers, and read our critics" full reviews. For other films playing in Seattle, see our movie times calendar.
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ArrivalArrival is an ominous, thrumming, beautiful thing that starts out being about aliens who need a decoder ring. It ends up being about something quite different. Based on Ted Chiangs 1998 short story Story of Your Life, with a screenplay adapted by Eric Heisserer, Arrival is about Big Thingsand the manner in which Villeneuve gets to them, as his camera slowly traces structures and landscapes both familiar and strange, cant help but surprise and impress. Arrival finds nuance and surprise in a way that not only echoes the nuance and surprise of language, but in a way that echoes other forms of communication, tooforms of communication that, like language, have the power to change how we feel and how we think. Visually and aurally remarkable, Arrival sometimes unfolds like a clever puzzle and other times like a raw-nerve thriller; throughout, with heart and wit, Heisserer and Villeneuve never lose sight of the films characterscreatures in a situation thats weird and mournful, exciting and threatening. ERIK HENRIKSENPlaying at: Thornton PlaceWon: Sound Editing
Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them"I"m annoying," says Eddie Redmayne to Dan Fogler in the opening half-hour of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Hes like Doctor Who with gout, and yetjust like the good Doctor in even his lamest incarnations, theres just enough charm glimmering beneath the surface and shining through the contrivances that you cant write him off entirely. Fantastic Beasts, featuring an original screenplay by J.K. Rowling, is annoying in the manner of Scamander: It is eager to please and amaze, but undersells its spectacle until that spectacle becomes perfunctory. Its a goofy blast of kid-lit in love with Looney Tunes-inspired adventureexcept when its a sour metaphor for child abuse and intolerance that owes one h**l of a debt to Stephen Kings famous prom queen. But somehow, the two stories are sewed together just tightly enough that the TV pilot-esque clumsiness of Fantastic Beasts (there will be four more of these films, likely transforming ASAP into The Dumbledore Prequels) can be forgiven for the power in its climax. BOBBY ROBERTSPlaying at: Crest (Shoreline)Won award for: Costume Design
FencesRecently, while leaving a screening of the solid and engaging film adaptation of August Wilson"s play Fences, which was directed by Washington himself, a man walking behind me said to the woman walking next to him that this is not the kind of Denzel Washington film he likes. It"s too act-y, it"s all about the Academy Awards. Clearly, he wanted Washington to shoot more and talk less. But Fences has no guns and a whole lot of talking about lifeit deals with failed dreams, race relations in mid-century America, marital problems, parenting problems, working-class problems, drinking problems, problems with debts, mental health, and, ultimately, death. What might kill the character Washington plays in Fences, Troy Maxson, is not a car chase or a shoot-out, but blocked arteries to the heart. He is a normal guy with a very standard suite of personal and social issues. CHARLES MUDEDEPlaying at: Landing Stadium 14 (Renton)Won: Supporting Actress (Viola Davis)
La La LandYou guys, I LOVED La La Land, and you will too. Dont be afraid of it just because its a musical about a struggling actress (Emma Stone) and a pretentious jazz musician (Ryan Gosling) who meet and fall in love and sing and dance in a romanticized, cartoony LA. Yeah, its splashy and grandiose and full of hazy violet Southern California sunsets, but its emotional core is genuine. Take it from shriveled-hearted me, the Unearned Sentiment Police: La La Land is a grand, over-the-top, razzly-dazzly love story that wont make you puke one bit. It might even help you forget the horrors of reality, however momentarilyand after the year weve had, that practically makes La La Land a public service. MEGAN BURBANKPlaying at: Big Picture, Pacific Place, Seven Gables, AdmiralWon: Lead Actress (Emma Stone), Best Director (Damien Chazelle), Cinematography, Production Design, Original Score, Original Song ("City of Stars")
Manchester by the SeaIn Manchester, Lee Chandler (Affleck) seems content to shovel walkways and unclog toilets for a living in Boston, until word comes that his older brother Joe (Kyle Chandler, seen in flashbacks) has died of a heart attack. Joes will stipulates that he wants Lee to move back to his titular hometown and become Patricks guardian. Lee, however, is haunted by past events and resists, with a toddlers tenacity, every effort by the people around him to help him come to terms. I feel for the guy, and you will too, but after two hours, I wanted to grab him by the collar and tell him to buck up. MARC MOHANPlaying at: Bella Bottega, Oak TreeWon: Original Screenplay, Leading Actor (Casey Affleck)
MoonlightEver get left speechless? Hear, see, touch, or taste something so rare that you don"t want to bruise its petals with your clumsy analysis? That"s how I feel about Moonlightyet that is exactly what I must do. Moonlight pulses with subtle, lived-in details that may just feel like breathing memory to a whole generation of African Americans. I can"t imagine what it must be like to be Black and queer and see something as vital and rare as Moonlight for the first time. But what"s most unexpected is that these lives may just get to live, happily and understood, at least to some degree. America hasn"t left much room for that outcome, and neither has the art we see about it. Our narratives deliver tragedy, spectacle, and melodrama. Stories like Moonlight, told humanely and intelligently, with complexity, nuance, and hope, may help more of its children envision their own. LARRY MIZELL JR.Playing at: Sundance Cinemas, CineramaWon: Best Picture, Supporting Actor (Mahershala Ali), Adapted Screenplay
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Source: http://www.thestranger.com/things-to-do/2017/02/27/24895020/where-to-watch-the-2017-oscar-winners-in-seattle
