TRAVIS BYRAM'S MOVIE REVIEWS

Awards season has kicked off! The Critic's Choice, SAGs and Golden Globe nominations have all been announced, and there have been several consistencies in those three! One is the presence of Reese Witherspoon, someone who hasn't led a good movie since her Oscar-winning turn in Walk the Line . Call it an Oscar curse, but fare like This Means War and Water for Elephants have plagued her career since the Academy Award win. Last year she came back as the object of McConaughey's affection in the amazing Mud , but Wild sees her anchoring an entire film, mostly, and I know this backpacking pun will come up a lot, on her shoulders. Buh dun tss. Wild is based on Cheryl Strayed's account of her travels on the Pacific Coast Trail. I was very much unfamiliar with her adventures, and though this might say something about me, I only knew it from seeing it in Borders (this was a while ago after all) as an Oprah Book Club book. Witherspoon's performance has been repeatedly lauded...

It's been established the Oscars love depressing topics. Last year's front runners involved topics like 9/11, slavery, a boy losing his entire family on a shipwreck, and bipolarity. Luckily this year's Oscars have changed that drag of a vibe, with topics like...slavery, AIDS, child abandonment and possible dementia. I'm gonna need a Prozac to get through next year's Academy Awards. Dallas Buyers Club  falls into that depressing subject category, but its risky subject completely pays off, especially considering it's the true story of Texas electrician Ron Woodroof's fight to live after being diagnosed with AIDS. It may not have the f-words of Wolf of Wall Street  (this film has about 104, compared to Wolf 's estimated 414, according to kids-in-mind.com) or the tenderness of Her , but this is absolutely one of the year's best films, and deserves its ranking among the other fine eight pictures. While watching the SAGs, Globes and Critics Choice Aw...

I've never seen so many people in my life in a movie theater lobby. Apparently the must-see movie of the year (and take in the year is less than 20 days old as of this publishing) is Ride Along , a buddy cop movie with Kevin Hart and Ice Cube. As original as a funny guy getting teamed up with a serious cop going through a series of wacky antics sounds, I chose instead to catch up on my Oscar movies. I'm happy to report that "Nebraska" and "Her" are small, pleasant films for anyone looking to avoid the January movie dumping grounds, and are competing against each other for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay. NEBRASKA: There isn't a single moment in Alexander Payne's latest family drama Nebraska that doesn't ring true. Growing up in a small, semi-rural town myself, the relatives of Woody Grant (Bruce Dern) are utterly authentic. You're probably familiar with the premise: Woody gets a notification claiming he needs to go to Lincoln, N...