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The month of February is commonly considered a dark period for movies. Nick mentioned that it is the graveyard for film. New releases are basically overshadowed by the award season.  In fact, Oscar nominated films get a distribution boost in February in order to milk the buzz they get from the nomination.

So, we know that you are not going to hit up the theaters for new releases. Instead, we know that you all are going to try to catch up on the Oscar movies that you didn’t get to see the first time around.  Get this, “An Education” went from 100 theaters before being nominated for the award, to over 700 after receiving the nod for Best Picture. However, Summit’s “The Hurt Locker” was sent to DVD, which went from being in theaters to being completely removed. Theaters will not show movies that get sent to DVD FYI. So, Summitt messed up.

As we are in the Oscar season, there is trophy talk everywhere. We have a year where 10 films got nominated and lots of movie hooplah to go through.  Since we know you all are trying to play Oscar catch up, we wanted to help you out.   Here are the 10 films nominated for Best Picture and our review for each one.

1. The Hurt Locker

2. Avatar

3. Up in the Air

4. Precious

5. Inglorious Basterds

6. The Blind Side

7. District 9

8. An Education

9. UP

10. A Serious Man

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This past Saturday night, while I was stuck on Martha’s Vineyard (“MV”) with no ferry going back to Cape Cod, I caught the end of the SAG’s at the steamship authority. I crowded around the only TV there along with all the authority attendants, and we all watched Inglorious Basterds take home the top prize for Best Ensemble.  If you don’t know by now I am a huge Hurt Locker fan, and being loyal to my fanhood, I was pulling for Kathryn Bigelow’s masterpiece to take this trophy.  One of the attendants was screaming for Nine and another was clearly pulling for Precious but wasn’t so overly emotional about it.

After the Basterds was announced as top dog, I immediately felt a sigh of defeat. At this point, I’m pretty emotionally invested in the Hurt Locker.  However, being stranded on MV allowed me to really think about this. Hey, I had nothing better to do. Hurt Locker really had 3 people in it, Precious had only a handful, An Education was dominated by Carey Mulligan, and Nine wasn’t going to win. Let’s just be honest, that attendant was going nuts for basically nothing. The Basterds had lets say between 12-15 people that all had fairly important roles in the movie. The star of the movie wasn’t Waltz, as much as it was Tarantino.   The Basterds was a true ensemble movie.

Christoph Waltz, who will win Best Supporting Actor, was still supporting. He’s as much a lock as Brett Favre’s dramatic tussle with whether to return or not next season.  Sure, he had the best performance of the movie but his screen time did not dominate the film. Only those scenes where he actually was in, did his presence really dominate.  Each personality in this film played an important role and added to the dynamic and wit that made the Basterds great.   I think that handling such a large cast and producing such a great result was what put this movie over the top from the SAG voters.  Clearly actors know good acting, and I think they got it right here.

Judging from results alone, it is apparent that actors clearly think that managing a cast of 15 people is a lot harder than managing a 3-5 person cast.  I’m not taking anything away from The Hurt Locker or Precious but managing a large cast has got to be straight tough. While I think The Hurt Locker is a better movie than the Basterds, the top prize at the SAG is best Ensemble performance, not Best Movie. The ensemble performance for Basterds was second to none and deserved the trophy. SAG got it right.

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Precious, a movie about an illiterate girl who goes by the name Precious living in the slums of 1980’s Harlem.  After getting raped, she is now carrying the second child of her father and who is gone, and now living with her lazy mom who abuses her constantly both mentally and physically.  Precious gets introduced to an alternative school as a way to learn the basics to provide hope for her and her children to have a better life.

The movie is well done, and although an independent movie will most likely be up for the Best Picture nomination at the Oscar’s this year.  The film was very well acted especially by new comer Gabby Sidibe who plays Precious in this gritty, tale of a young girl searching for survival and looking for hope when there seems to be no way out.  Mariah Carey even stops in for a quality minor role.  I had to do a double take before I even realized it was really her up on the screen.  This is one of the better movies of the year, go check it out.

Snap review of Precious