Week of January 18 to January 24 (Rhoades)

Week of January 18 to January 24 (Rhoades)

Tropic Goes for Gold With

Four Oscar-Nominated Films

Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades

Front Row at the Movies

Solares Hill

Take a sea voyage with a boy and a tiger, get some crazy lessons in mental health, visit with top-hatted Abraham Lincoln, and witness tawdry behavior among Danish royalty -- all at the Tropic Cinema.

And each of its scheduled films has been nominated for bright, shiny golden Oscars in the upcoming 85^th Academy Awards.

Ang Lee’s spectacular “Life of Pi” opens this week at the Tropic (in both 3D and non-3D). This is a movie they said couldn’t be made, but Lee has crafted a visually stunning masterpiece that serves as an allegory about life, religious beliefs, and survival. Based on the acclaimed same-titled book by Yann Martel, this is the story of an Indian boy marooned on a lifeboat with several surviving zoo animals. Piscine Molitor Patel, or Pi as he is known, witnesses the hyena kill the zebra, then the orangutan, but is shocked when a tiger hiding under the boat’s tarpaulin emerges to kill the hyena. Now can Pi survive alone on a drifting boat with a fierce tiger? Nominated for a whopping 11 Academy Awards, “Life of Pi” is a movie you’ll not want to miss.

Up for 8 Academy Awards is “Silver Linings Playbook,” David O. Russell’s wonky tale about a bipolar guy just released from a mental institution and a crazy-with-grief young widow who changes his life with a few dance moves. There’s lots of chemistry between Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence, with Jennifer already picking up a Golden Globes award for her funny performance.

Another Academy Awards multiple-nominee is “Lincoln,” Steven Spielberg’s masterful look at the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery in the United States. Holding onto its screen at the Tropic, “Lincoln” has garnered 12 nominations (the most of any contender), with Daniel Day-Lewis expected to win as Best Actor for his iconic portrayal of Abraham Lincoln.

New to the Tropic screens this week is “A Royal Affair,” a historical drama about Mad King Christian VII of Denmark, his unfaithful Queen, and the German doctor who usurped both the wife and country. Mads Mikkelsen (the villain in “Casino Royale”) stars as the doctor who became the de facto regent of Denmark. A true-but-little-known story from the pages of history, “A Royal Affair” has been nominated for an Academy Award as Best Foreign Language Film.

It’s a lineup you’ll definitely want to see before all those Oscars are handed out on February 24.

srhoades@aol.com

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