Oscar Watch #3: Lincoln

Ok, it's been about a week since I saw Lincoln. So the feelings are not quite as potent as they were when I first came home, but I still know this movie is an Oscar contender. If Daniel Day-Lewis and Tommy Lee Jones are not nominated for Oscars, something is seriously wrong. It's a fantastic movie. It didn't feel like it was trying to impress you by shocking you with graphic civil war battle scenes, though I think that made them feel even more real. They were raw and ugly and primitive and intimate. But they weren't even the focus, in any way, other than to show you how horrible the Civil War was and how much hung on the decisions to end it.

I'm not an historian by any means, so my feelings are all just based on my own opinions, and well, feelings. But I was able to get into the movie so much, and Daniel Day-Lewis' performance, that I believed I was really seeing Abraham Lincoln. He was phenomenal. It made me wish I was more of an historian and made me want to run out and find the best books I can about him. He seemed like the best example of what a leader is in truly awful times having to make impossible decisions knowing any decision would be far from perfect. Go see it.