Thursday, February 25, 2016

Sicario (2015)

We streamed this story of an FBI agent fighting the drug war at the US-Mexico border a month ago because of its Oscar nominations for cinematography and original score. Those parts were good but the rest of it didn't knock us out. Emily Blunt (last blogged for Into the Woods) is fine as the agent, as are Josh Brolin and Benicio del Toro (both in these pages for Inherent Vice) as two of the men working with her.

It's directed by Denis Villeneuve (last blogged for Prisoners) from a script by actor Taylor Sheridan (I haven't seen anything he's been in) in his screenwriting debut. Cinematographer Roger Deakins earned his 13th Oscar nomination for this (the others were The Shawshank Redemption (1994), Fargo (1996), Kundun (1997), O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), The Man Who Wasn't There (2001), No Country for Old Men (2007), The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007), The Reader, True Grit, Skyfall, Prisoners, and Unbroken (2014)). He also did wonderful work in White Mischief (1987), Barton Fink (1991), The Hudsucker Proxy (1994), The House of Sand and Fog (2003), The Ladykillers (2005), Jarhead (2005), Revolutionary Road, A Serious Man, and so much more. Jóhann Jóhannsson's (also Oscar-nominated for The Theory of Everything) score can be streamed from this link (it takes a few seconds to begin). I don't like to make Oscar predictions, but I suspect the cinematography statue will go to The Revenant on Sunday and for music, I'd like The Hateful Eight to win but wouldn't be disappointed if it went to Carol or Bridge of Spies.

For once, the critics and audiences at Rotten Tomatoes like something way more than we did, coming in at 93 and 85%.

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