Last year, I wanted to see all the movies that had Oscar nominations for Best Picture before the awards were handed out. After the nominations were announced, the only ones I hadn't seen were "The Cider House Rules" and "The Insider." I saw "The Cider House Rules," and I thought it was pretty good, but not worthy of an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. I ended up not seeing "The Insider" before the Oscars, and to this day, I've never seen it. I want to, though. Hopefully, I'll find the time to watch it soon.
This year, as all the Oscar nominations were announced, there was only one movie nominated for Best Picture that I hadn't seen yet, and that movie was "Chocolat." Ironically enough, it was directed by Lasse Hallström, the same guy who directed "The Cider House Rules." Even more ironic, after seeing it, though I prefer "Chocolat" to "The Cider House Rules," I have almost the exact same opinion. It was pretty good, but not worthy of an Oscar nomination for Best Picture.
"Chocolat" stars Juliette Binoche, and she's very good. She won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for the highly overrated movie, "The English Patient," and she has an Oscar nomination for Best Actress for this movie. She's very cute, despite having a huge black mole on her neck that looks like a second head that died at birth. I also liked Lena Olin, an actress who made a name for herself in "Enemies: A Love Story," but I remember her best as the sexy femme fatale in "Romeo is Bleeding." They were both very good. Johnny Depp has a small role in the movie (perhaps as a favor for Hallström who directed him in "What's Eating Gilbert Grape"), and, as usual, he's very good. He had a pretty convincing Irish accent, and I like Johnny Depp anyway. He's one of my favorite actors. There are also some really good performances by Alfred Molina (he was in "Boogie Nights" as the guy who was buying drugs from Dirk Diggler and his friends, the one who was playing Rick Springfield and Night Ranger music while his Asian friend was lighting firecrackers) is great, as is Peter Stormare (Steve Buscemi's quiet partner in crime in "Fargo"), Carrie-Anne Moss ("Trinity" from "The Matrix"… she's playing a COMPLETELY different role, but she's no less convincing), and Victoire Thivisol who plays Binoche's young daughter. However, the one who supremely kicks ass is Judi Dench. She already won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for "Shakespeare in Love," but she may get another one for this movie. It's a well-deserved nomination, and she deserves to win, too.
As I mentioned earlier, this movie was directed by Lasse Hallström, and this movie is more visually appealing than his earlier films. However, my favorite of his movies is still "What's Eating Gilbert Grape," which I highly recommend if you haven't seen it yet. Leonardo DiCaprio's performance is shocking. Those who think he can't act need to see that movie.
Surprisingly, "Chocolat" was written by Robert Nelson Jacobs, the guy who wrote the Jack Lemmon/Walter Matthau movie, "Out to Sea." He was also one of the many writers of Disney's animated "Dinosaur" movie. The screenplay was based on the novel by Joanne Harris.
Okay, this may be going totally off on a tangent, but has anyone seen that really seedy picture of Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire and David Blaine? It's disgusting! I don't wanna get into details, but when I saw the picture, I decided that from that point forward, I would refer to Tobey Maguire as "Big T." I later read that the picture was a fake, but I dunno. If so, it's a great Photoshop job. Also, if it was a real photo, their publicists would DEFINITELY lie and say it's a fake in order to do a little damage control. It's a really creepy, disturbing picture, folks.
The reason why I was thinking about that picture is because Tobey Maguire was in "The Cider House Rules," and Leonardo DiCaprio was in "What's Eating Gilbert Grape." It's a reach, but it's slightly relevant.
Anyway...
I
liked "Chocolat," but it's mostly a movie for chicks and old
people. That being said, it's a nice, entertaining movie, even though
it's very slow at times. Judi Dench is awesome, and it's cool to see "Trinity"
play totally against type. Yes, it's a good movie, but should it have
gotten an Oscar nomination for Best Picture? No way.
Scale of 1-10: 7