Fourth Row Center

Saturday was the third annual Best Picture Showcase, featuring the five movies nominated for this year's Best Picture Award. Sitting through five movies is very difficult, especially for the final film. Last year, they played No Country For Old Men , and I dozed off during a critical part and I was lost for the final twenty minutes of the film. Not wanting to repeat the same thing this year, I packed up some "No-Doze" to help me make it through. With the exception of Benjamin Buttons, I had very little idea of what the films were about. I posted the films that I liked the best on my Facebook page when I got home, and I wanted to address that here. Milk - It was the first film of the day, and it was the one that I was looking forward to watching the least. It was the subject matter - an openly gay man running for office. What I found was a movie that was more about civil rights than homosexuality (however, there was plenty of men kissing men in the film, so be warned). ...

It’s not unusual for me to wait until the last moment to post my Oscar picks. I am always torn between picking my favorite in a given category or choosing the artist or film that I think will win, regardless of my own opinion. What follows, this year, is a combination of both, a few predictions and a few hopefuls. We'll see how I do following tonight's Oscar telecast. Supporting Actress Viola Davis, Doubt Supporting Actor Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight Actress Kate Winslet, The Reader Actor Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler Editing Slumdog Millionaire Art Direction The Duchess Cinematography The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Costumes The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Makeup The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Visual Effects The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Screenplay, Adapted Frost/Nixon Screenplay, Original In Bruges Song Peter Gabriel, “Down to Earth,” WALL-E Score The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Foreign Film Waltz with Banshir Documentary Encounters at the...

In Taken , Liam Neeson plays Bryan Mills, a retired secret agent who moves to Los Angeles to be close to his daughter, who is living with Bryan’s ex-wife and her well-to-do husband. But when his daughter is kidnapped while visiting Paris with a friend, Bryan comes out of retirement and hunts down the thugs who snatched his daughter. Taken is a high concept movie that moves along well and benefits from Neeson ’s determined and level performance. He is likable and believable. Taken holds no surprises -- we know how things are going to go down in the end: with fists and bullets flying. It’s the journey that’s entertaining, seeing how Bryan uses his experience and his wits to connect the dots and find his daughter’s kidnappers. Taken is co-written by Luc Besson (who directed La Femme Nakita and The Fifth Element ), but his script, though often crisp and tight, has no real spark. The film is ultimately mediocre, and it occurred to me that as capable as Neeson is, Harrison Ford or B...