I love Anthony Hopkins, so when I saw this movie on Netflix I just had to watch it. I really really enjoyed it. Anthony Hopkins was amazing as always.
I had never understood why Ryan Gosling was so popular. I had seen him in Blue Valentine and The Notebook, but I just didn’t get it. With this movie, I can see the attraction. He was just so good. Not many people could hold their own against Anthony Hopkins, but he did.
I am a bit like a Duracell bunny. I can never sit still. Usually I cannot watch a movie all the way through because I get bored and start doing something else but this one I watched from start to finish without moving a muscle. For me, that’s a ringing endorsement!
Another one I really enjoyed was Lee Daniels’ The Butler. What a movie! There were so many famous faces as former US Presidents (Alan Rickman and Jane Fonda were fantastic as Ronald and Nancy Reagan Reagan) and the acting was superb. How the movie was not nominated for a single Academy Award was beyond me. Forest Whittaker should have been a shoo-in for Best Actor, and the makeup used to age the actors was worth an award in itself.
I’m a mad Hopkins fan, too–can’t believe I missed this one. That’s on my list now. You’re right about The Butler, though. I saw it when it first came out and thought it was fabulous. I’ll watch anything of Whitaker’s–he’s amazing. The aging process was believable and skillfully done, certainly worthy of an award. But I share your astonishment that this terrific movie didn’t earn anything. Just goes to show that these awards probably are as political as anything else, or decided in advance. I pay very little attention to them when choosing movies. If I like the plot, or the actors (even both if I get really lucky!), then it doesn’t matter to me anymore if it’s “award-winning”.