Out of Africa

First of all, on an unrelated note to the title of this blog, I saw Lincoln today.  It was fantastic.  Daniel Day Lewis was so good that I forgot it was even him playing the role.  It never felt like Daniel Day Lewis trying to be Lincoln - he just WAS him.  Really well done.

Anyway, back to the task at hand.

Out of Africa.  1985.  Best Picture Winner.

I have never even HEARD of this movie, let alone knew it was an Oscar winner.  But the actors seemed good, so out of all of my 50 something movies, this is the one I got first from Netflix.

Now, when I was about an hour into this movie and wanting to give up I started googling what the other nominees were that year thinking there must be some mistake here.  I haven't seen any of the other nominees, so I can't really make a comparison.  The only one I really know anything about is the Color Purple, and I didn't see that.  The beginning of this movie was DULL. 

I soldiered on, and was pleasantly surprised.  It was looooooooooooong.  Two hours and 40 minutes that felt like at least double that.  I'm pretty sure this movie won because Africa is beautiful, and there really is some great cinematography.  In all honesty, I think it must be hard to get anything BUT beautiful cinematography in Africa.  Current day movies and technology do make you realize how far we've come.  That beautiful cinematography I was just mentioning would sometimes be juxtaposed with some pretty epically bad blue screen material.  However, it was 1985 so I will cut them some slack.

Both Meryl Streep and Robert Redford really helped this movie along.  One interesting thing about Meryl in this movie is that she starts the movie as a "fake" old woman, all wrinkled up with makeup and a shaky voice to narrate the film as she is looking back on her life.  It was pretty wonderful to see young Meryl Streep pretending to be old Meryl Streep especially since now she really IS old Meryl Streep and she looks way better than pretend old Meryl Streep.  Well, I guess he isn't as old as she was pretending to be in the movie, but she's almost 30 years older now, which is quite a chunk of time.

Robert Redford is charming as hell.  Now I know why everybody always talks about him.  He's OLD now, but jesus was he hot.  It's not even so much HOT as charming, like I said before.  He is kind of mesmerizing in a way.  His voice is forever the narrator of A River Runs Through It for me, which is one of my all time favorite movies.  But interestingly enough, his mannerisms in this movie are strikingly similar to Brad Pitt's mannerisms in that very movie (and in life in general I would say.)  They look eerily similar.  In fact, here's a picture:

I don't know if this is the best comparison, but it's good enough for you to get the idea.

Anyway, long story short, I did like the movie overall.  I probably wouldn't watch it over and over, but after lulling me to a sleep a couple of times, the ending truly shocked me.  I didn't see it coming for some reason and I was definitely connected to the story and characters by that point. 

So far, I haven't been blown away yet by either of my first two movies.  I hope this isn't a trend. 

Up next: Chicago.