(50) The Reader

Directed by Stephen Daldry
Rated R
2008
124 minutes

***

I'm not going to lie, when I saw this as the fifth film nominated for Best Picture this year, I was livid. There seemed to be so many more deserving films; WALL-E, The Dark Knight, The Wrestler, etc. To be fair, however, I hadn't seen it. And while I still don't think it's even close to one of the five best films of the year, it is (behind Slumdog Millionaire and The Wrestler and ahead of Frost/Nixon and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) the third best of the nominees. The main problem with this film is that, for a film about Nazi's, none of the characters really elicited any sympathy from me. Winslet is brilliant, certainly deserving of the Oscar (though I wouldn't guarantee she'll win), but everyone else just seems to be coasting along for two hours. Still, I can recommend this film on Winslet's peformance alone.