#5 Fruitvale Station
The most glaring omission in the best actor category is Michael B. Jordan in this true story (lots of those this year) as Oscar Grant, an ex-con trying to reform himself on New Year's Eve in the Bay Area. It isn't ruining anything to tell to you that he's dead by the end; the movie begins with real cell phone footage of real Oscar Grant getting a real gun fired into his back on the platform of Fruitvale Station, a stop along the BART line on the outskirts of Oakland. It's kind of like Milk in that regard--you know exactly how it ends, but you want to see it play out anyway. The story itself is told over about a 48 hour period with a few flashbacks thrown in to fill in the story. The rest of the supporting group is solid, particularly Octavia Spencer as his mother, trying hard to rein in her son and find a way to believe in him as a provider and a father. However, no one matches the gravitas of Jordan as Grant, the man desperate to fix his life before it's too late.
#4 Prisoners
What an intense movie. Holy smokes. Hugh Jackman is Keller Dover, a carpenter who, during a Thanksgiving celebration at the Birch's house (Terrence Howard as Franklin and Viola Davis as Nancy), has his 6-year old (and their 7-year old) kidnapped. Detective Loki (Jake Gyllenhaal) pulls over a suspicious RV driven by Alex (Paul Dano) and lets him go with a lack of evidence but not without paying a visit to Alex's aunt Holly (Melissa Leo). Keller won't settle for that, so he decides to pay Alex a visit of his own. As the days drag on, things get worse for Alex and Keller, subsequently, drags in Franklin and Nancy into his interrogation sessions. There are red herrings, copycat criminals, twists, turns, tension, the whole schabang. Nerve-wracking and unpredictable, Prisoners had me captivated for all of it's 2.5 hour run time. And that last shot? Unreal.
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