Our next Best Picture nominee is Captain Phillips.
What I’m doing is posting my five favorite moments from each of the Best Picture nominees. It’s a nice way to take a break from all the Oscar stuff to remind myself (and all of us) that once you take away all the competition and the awards, what we’re left with is great cinema. That’s what it’s about.
Here are my favorite moments from Captain Phillips:
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5. How it doesn’t try to make him a hero.
Not changing the fact about whether or not he is a hero, of course. Just the fact that they didn’t try to Hollwyood-ize the story. It didn’t end with Tom Hanks holding a machine gun and kicking Barkhad Badi overboard, going, “Get off of my boat!” I respect that. The final scene shows you just how much they didn’t try to embellish what was already a perfectly compelling scenario. And that, to me, is one of the best decisions they made in telling this story.
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4. “Look at me. I’m the captain now.”
Because honestly — I need something to quote nonstop. I guess we can try to be classy and say that I’m honoring Barkhad Abdi’s very convincing performance, but let’s face it, I just love being able to say that over and over.
Just be glad that Rush wasn’t nominated. Imagine this times a thousand.
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3. The structure.
There’s no real “Message” here. I mean, I’m sure there are, but the story is the story. They’re not necessarily trying to make a statement on the nature of heroism or talk about the nature of Somalia and what makes these people have to resort to piracy – this is something that happened, and here’s an account of it. That’s it. And it’s thrilling, and, like a certain film set in space this year (or a film also set on the ssa), it really strips narrative down to its simplest form. And I love that. I like when movies focus solely on the story at hand without resorting to the bells and whistles just because they feel more is needed. Less is more, and we have three high profile films that are pure examples of that. (Two of which made over $100 million.)
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2. The near miss and boarding sequences.
They’re absolutely thrilling. And when you think about it — nothing is really happening. You have a giant ship, and they’re, “Port, thirty degrees” — that’s not exactly car chase type instant twists and turns. And yet, watching that sequence, you’re on the edge of your seat. Even though you know they’re gonna get on the boat. I like how they take something that’s not particularly flashy in real time and make it exciting. So I guess I’m shouting out the filmmaking and editing. Either way — great stuff.
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1. The final scene.
From the moment Hanks starts writing that letter to his family until the very end, he just completely turns it on. He’s so good. And the final scene is just a thing of beauty. It highlights all the stuff I was talking about earlier, about how I love that they don’t make him that much of a hero and doesn’t try to “Hollywood-ize” the story. This final scene is more dramatically compelling than any other scene they could have had. And it all rests on the shoulders of Tom Hanks’s performance. That was a real medic working on him in this scene. Tell me that didn’t look 100% real. I know it’s the obvious choice for this movie, but damn, was it convincing.
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