With the Awards Season well underway, you may want to get up to snuff on any movies you may have missed. Here are our top picks.
American Hustle – Jennifer Lawrence, Christian Bale, Bradley Cooper, and Amy Adams star in a fictional film loosely based on the FBI ABSCAM sting operation of the late ’70s / early ’80s. A con man, along with his equally-cunning female partner, is forced to work for an FBI agent who pushed them into a mafia. The film has already won three Golden Globe Awards as well as SAG Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture, among numerous other nominations and achievements.
Lone Survivor – It’s June 2005. Navy Seal Marcus Luttrell and his team set out on a mission to capture or kill notorious al Qaeda leader Ahmad Shahd. Luttrell and his team are left to fight for their lives in one of the greatest stories to date in modern warfare.
Side Effects – A woman, severely depressed with emotional episodes and suicide attempts, is prescribed an experimental new medication by her psychiatrist. The side effects of the drug lead to the woman killing her husband in a “sleepwalking” state. With the woman plea-bargained into mental hospital confinement and the psychiatrist’s practice crumbling around him, the case seems closed. However, the doctor refuses to accept full responsibility and investigates to clear his name.
Dallas Buyers Club – In 1985, in Dallas, electrician and hustler Ron Woodroof works around the system to help AIDS patients get the medication they need after he is himself diagnosed with the disease. The drug AZT is only in the clinical trials stage within the US; angered that he, as a dying man, cannot pay for any drug which may save or at least prolong his life, he goes searching for it by whatever means possible. Woodroof and a partner begin an underground market for the drug. Woodruff reasons that such drugs aren’t technically “drugs” yet since they are not FDA approved; in his eyes, therefore, his practice shouldn’t technically be against the law, and he distributes the drug to HIV+ patients.
12 Years a Slave – Based on an incredible true story of one man’s fight for survival and freedom. In the pre-Civil War United States, Solomon Northup, a free black man from upstate New York, is abducted and sold into slavery. Facing cruelty at the hand of a malevolent slave owner, as well as unexpected kindnesses, Solomon struggles not only to stay alive, but to retain his dignity. Things finally take a turn for the better upon Solomon’s chance meeting with a Canadian abolitionist (played by Brad Pitt), when the real adventure begins.
The Wolf of Wall Street – In The Wolf of Wall Street DiCaprio plays Belfort, a Long Island penny stockbroker who served 36 months in prison for defrauding investors in a massive 1990s securities scam that involved widespread corruption on Wall Street and in the corporate banking world, including shoe designer Steve Madden.
Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom – An Oscar-nominated chronicle of Nelson Mandela’s life journey from his childhood in a rural village through his inauguration as the first democratically-elected president of South Africa.
