TRAVIS BYRAM'S MOVIE REVIEWS

#OscarsSoDiverse? I'm hoping the Oscars will set the correction straight on this one, hopefully rewarding the actions of people of color like Barry Jenkins, Ruth Negga and Mahershala Ali. That's just amidst others, Ali and Fences frontrunner Viola Davis are on their way to supporting actor glory. Octavia Spencer and Denzel Washington, already Oscar-winners, are poised to be nominated once again! But the film that I predict will get nominations in the double digits goes beyond color to deliver one of the century's finest musicals; I've called it since I saw it on December 27th that La La Land will make a clean sweep, hold for Ryan Gosling, who'll deservedly lose to Casey Affleck in Manchester by the Sea . Check out the rest of my picks for this coming Tuesday morning in all the major categories. BEST DIRECTOR: Chazelle is the clear frontrunner, but it'll be nice to see Jenkins, who might be only the fourth black director nominated in this category. Let's ho...

Say the words "First Lady" to anyone over about 30, and the next two words they associate with that will probably be "Jackie Kennedy," or if they really know their history, "Jackie Onasis." Anyone around my age will probably say Michelle Obama, and while I anticipate a movie made about her legacy in the decades to come, Jackie is surely the most iconic in modern history. The last memorable depiction of a First Lady was in Spielberg's Lincoln , where Sally Field played Mary Todd Lincoln as an unhinged, witty partner to her husband's more calm figure. Field lost the Oscar that year to Anne Hathaway crying, but Natalie Portman looks poised to win her second Best Actress Oscar as the widow who captured the hearts of a generation. The film follows Lincoln 's outline of effective biography: focus on one aspect of this person's enormous life and dissect it, find out the key players, and examine the conflict that made them who they are. In that f...

In my last review, I spoke of my desire to jump at the chance to go to another film opportunity at my college. I'm very happy to say that I was able to: the French Club funded a quick day trip to Charlottesville's Paramount Theater, where Abderrahmane Sissako's latest film Timbuktu was screening. For Oscar enthusiasts like myself, the name struck out as being nominated as one of the five best foreign language films at this past Academy Awards! Sissako himself was there, and while I would've loved to hear him talk about his film my group was on a strict time schedule. I can confidently say that this was my first Mauritanian film experience, but that probably goes without saying. Timbuktu , though its narrative structure is not solely driven on a particular set of characters, concerns the impact a group of Muslim jihadists has on the very remote titular city. Primarily it involves the affairs of Abdelkerim and his wife Satima, their two small children and their herd of...

Wow, wow, wow!  That was a truly remarkable Oscar awards!  First off, congratulations are due to first-time Oscar host Seth MacFarlane, who knocked it out of the park, and only had one joke who didn't land for me: the Lincoln joke.  You know which one I'm talking about.  MacFarlane and the hilariously placed William Shatner predicted what today's headlines would read, and attempted to alter it by providing classy dances, while MacFarlane had previously made a sock-puppet version of "Flight," made out with Sally Field, and a song dedicated to....the risque women of cinema, to put it politely! MacFarlane was a welcome presence when commenting on the length of the show, saying 85-year-old Emmanuelle Riva had been Quvenzhane Wallis' age when the program began!  But what I really came for was to see the race between "Argo," "Lincoln" and "Life of Pi," the presumed front-runners.  The awards started off great though, with Christop...

Let me tell you that it is not an easy task seeing all of the Best Picture nominees when you're not a professional critic!  I've been scrambling to see the last ones in theaters, and finally got around to catching one of the two relatively quiet Best Picture wannabes: "Beasts of the Southern Wild." (The other nominee being that feel-good film "Amour" about old people dying, (in subtitles) which I have still yet to see.)  Unlike last year while I dozed off during "War Horse" and was unsatisfied with "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close," there hasn't been a movie nominated this year that hasn't blown me away in some fashion. "Beasts" kept up this streak, and that blown-away factor coming in the form of pint-sized force of nature Quvenzhane (Kwah-ven-juh-nay) Wallis, who I'll refer to as Q for the sake of review brevity!  At the age of six Miss Wallis shows us how strong the human spirit can be, as Hushpuppy, a to...

If you can hark back to the ancient days of Oscar season 2011, you'll remember that like this year, there were nine nominees, with one 9/11-themed movie as well: "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close."   "ELIC" was the odd man out of last year's nominees, with critics not so polarized as they were flat out displeased with it.  That movie dealt with post 9/11 trauma in a completely different way, but Thomas Horn's whiny protagonist and Jessica Chastain's B.A. spy do have one thing in common: they are completely and utterly obsessed with their subject; his finding his father's last message and her....bin Laden. Is there a 17 year old version of her? The movie opens, surprisingly not with the torture sequences you've been hearing so much about, but with 9/11 emergency calls made on that day.  It's a lividly intense few minutes, even if the screen is completely back, and you realize listening to that audio is all the evidence one needs...

You'd be surprised since I've only been around for 16 years and some change, but I've seen a lot of national tragedy.  I can vividly recall being pulled out of my kindergarten class on that Tuesday in September 2001, and hearing that both towers had collapsed when I arrived at a family member's house.  I can remember exactly where I was when word broke of the Connecticut massacre and the Aurora massacre.  My Virginia brethren probably know exactly where they were as well when that earthquake hit us back in late August...I was completely engrossed in my new Kanye West album when I thought the ground was opening up and I ran outside and into my neighbor's house.  The same applies to the Indian Ocean earthquake back in December, the day after Christmas (we Americans don't know this, but in other countries it's called Boxing Day).  I wasn't informed immediately, but the morning on the day I went back to school, I remember being in a Min...

When I was vacationing in Myrtle Beach for winter vacation, I saw a slew of critically acclaimed movies: "Young Adult" ( http://tito-ito.blogspot.com/2012/01/review-young-adult-r.html ), "War Horse," "The Muppets" and this film, "My Week with Marilyn."  It follows just what it promises: a third assistant director on "The Prince and I"'s week with the legendary Marilyn Monroe. People like Lindsay Lohan can say they're channeling Monroe when they pose naked with blonde hair all they want, Michelle Williams sincerely looks like it's the late actress on the screen again.  Totally by coincidence, I had watched with my family "Don't Bother to Knock," a thriller starring Monroe as a psycho babysitter.  After viewing the film, and watching "Some Like It Hot" a few months later, there is absolutely no denying Monroe's keen acting ability, or immense beauty.  Williams conveys all of that into her version ...

So many moves have come out between when I did my review for The Help !  I saw the brutal, fantastic Warrior, the excellently well-done perfectly cast Moneyball  & the less-than-satisfactory In Time .  I can honestly tell you that 2 out of those 3 will mostly likely be featured in the Academy's latest gaggle of nominations.  They've been having controversy lately, but ultimately I'm happy with the change from Eddie Murphy to the always reliable Billy Crystal.  One of the monkeys from Rise of the Planet of the Apes  could do a better job than the Franco/Hathaway disaster that was the 2010 Oscars. So without further ado here are my predictions for the best picture nominees of 2011.  Recent buzz has definitely changed my decisions:  * indicates my choice for Best Picture. BEST PICTURE NOMINEES (10): Moneyball (Perfect casting.  I know for sure Pitt will at least get a nod.) The Descendants (It's gotten tons of buzz, but it m...