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Oscar Bait month: Amelia

 A retrospective by Brooks Rich

Sometimes the Academy is right on the money. Occasionally I am confused on why a movie doesn't seem to hit when it comes to awards season. The early trailers come out and it seems inevitable this thing will be an awards player. No doubt in anyone's mind this is an Oscar player. Here's an awards film. This was the case when the first trailers for Amelia came out. A biopic about the world famous aviator starring two time Academy Award winner Hilary Swank? This thing can't miss. Spoiler alert. It missed. Amelia didn't crash and burn when it came to awards seasons. It didn't get off the runway. OK. I'm done with the plane puns. So the rest of the article is cleared for takeoff. Ok. Now I'm done.

The first problem is the movie is just kind of boring. Nothing really happens beyond just the beats of her life. There is nothing that feels cinematic about it. Mira Nair is a wonderful person I'm sure but her direction just comes across as flat to me. It's so by the numbers that it becomes dull. It doesn't even have that entertainment of so bad it's good. Nair directs it in such a paint by numbers way that is just becomes a shrug of a movie. An icon like Amelia Earhart deserves more than that and critics and audiences thought so as well. 

Even if it the movie doesn't do much itself sometimes a great performance can still make some buzz come awards season. A beloved actor or actress playing a real life person is like cat nip to the academy. Hilary Swank had already won two Best Actress Oscars so it was more then likely she would get nominated. But her performance as Earhart is nowhere near as good as her performances that won. Million Dollar Baby is not my favorite film but I can't deny she brings power and vulnerability to her role in that. And the film was the darling of the season so she just rode the wave to her second Oscar win. 

But her standout performance is Boys Don't Cry. This is one of those rare all time performances. She is just transcendent as Brandon Teena. Personally I think it's one of the ten best performances by an actress of all time. Of course I am not trying to compare Swank's performance as Amelia Earhart to her performance as Brandon Teena. Nothing she ever does will touch that. But there is just something that rubs me the wrong way about how she portrays Earhart. Yes she is doing a good impersonation but for me a good performance of a real life person goes beyond that. It only takes someone so far to do a great imitation. They also need to find a character there and Swank never really does with Earhart. If there was something there she would've cracked one of the five spots for Best Actress that year. The Oscars love past winners and she was still riding high then. But like the movie she was in, Swank never took off. 




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