2016 Oscar Films On Sling TV!
The much-anticipated 88th Academy Awards are finally here! Well, almost. This weekend we will finally know who is, in fact, the best actor and actress, who directed the best film, and which film is actually the best of the best. The fun of the Oscars, apart from snarking about the bad dresses on the red carpet, is actually knowing what the heck you’re talking about when you fill out your office ballots and make your way to your black-tie Oscar party. That’s where we come in.
Listen, we love movies just as much as we love TV, especially Oscar-worthy movies, so we’re excited to point you toward a number of this year’s nominated films.
Mad Max: Fury Road
Available on HBO on-demand.
Nominated for a whopping 10 Academy Awards, George Miller’s visually stunning fourth trip to the wasteland is an easy favorite in the technical categories, like hair and makeup, sound mixing, and cinematography. But don’t write it off for the major categories just yet: Charlize Theron is secretly the movie’s lead and gives one of the best performances of her career, Oscar nominee Tom Hardy (nominated this year for his performance in The Revenant) is no slouch here either, and the movie as a whole is the most entertaining two hours we spent all year.
Bridge of Spies
Available for rent on-demand.
Nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor for Mark Rylance, Bridge of Spies is not one to miss. Although Tom Hanks missed out on a nomination this year, he delivers a great performance (per usual) as James Donovan, a New York lawyer who is recruited by the CIA to negotiate the release of a U.S. pilot captured by the Soviet Union during the Cold War in a trade for Rudolf Abel (Rylance), a convicted Russian spy Donovan represented in court.
Sicario
Available for rent on-demand.
This film came and went through the box office without much notice, however, it’s nominated for three Oscars this year: Best Original Score, Best Sound Editing, and, most importantly, Best Cinematography by longtime Coen brothers accomplice Roger Deakins. Emily Blunt stars alongside Josh Brolin and Benecio Del Toro as a star FBI agent who finds herself recruited by a mysterious government official (Brolin) to join a task force led by Alejandro (Del Toro) to get close to one drug lord in order to capture another.
Steve Jobs
Available for rent on-demand.
Twenty years ago, Kate Winslet made her Oscar debut when she was still virtually unknown – this was pre-Titanic – and was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her role opposite the late Alan Rickman in Sense and Sensibility. Now she’s up for the same award again for her role as Apple marketing executive Joanna Hoffman, opposite Michael Fassbender, who’s also nominated for Best Actor, in the title role. Based on the biography written by Walter Isaacson, along with interviews conducted by writer Aaron Sorkin, this film chronicles 14 years (1984 - 1998) of Steve Jobs’ life and the large releases of Apple’s first few key products: Apple Macintosh, the NeXT Computer, and iMAC G3.
Spotlight
Available for rent on-demand.
Nominated for Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Directing, Film Editing and Original Screenplay, Spotlight is one of this year’s most talked-about films due to its thoughtful treatment of a very sensitive topic. Rachel McAdams, Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo and Brian d’Arcy James make up Spotlight, a four person investigative journalism team for The Boston Globe. After a new editor (Liev Schreiber) comes in, he asks the team to dig around for more information involving Catholic clergy and pedophila. To the team’s surprise, they uncover one of the biggest cover-up stories in the early 2000s.
Trumbo
Available for rent on-demand.
Bryan Cranston, best known for his role as a meth-dealing chemistry teacher on the hit AMC show Breaking Bad, has nabbed his first Academy Award nomination for his role as Dalton Trumbo, a well-known screewriter – he wrote Roman Holiday and Spartacus, to name a couple – who was blacklisted in Hollywood for being a communist during the 1950s. Cranston carries the only nomination for this film, but Helen Mirren deserves recognition for her role as Hedda Hopper, an actress and gossip columnist who was outspokenly against the Communist party.
SPECTRE
Available for rent on-demand.
Following in the footsteps of the 2012 James Bond film, Skyfall, Spectre has been nominated for Best Original Song for ‘Writing’s On The Wall’ written by Jimmy Napes and Sam Smith and performed by Sam Smith. James Bond (Daniel Craig) follows instructions left by M to hunt down and stop a terrible organization known as SPECTRE. With a little help from his friends, Bond uncovers a cyber-terrorist plot orchestrated by an enemy from his past (Christoph Waltz).
Straight Outta Compton
Available for rent on-demand.
Nabbing an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay, Straight Outta Compton stars a slew of newcomers who deserved much more recognition than they got this awards season. Named after N.W.A.’s debut album, Straight Outta Compton traces the true story of rap group N.W.A.’s rise to fame and how the pressures of fame and success strained the friendships at its center.
Find out if you live in a city where ABC is available on Sling TV!