Movie Critic: The Reader

Let's go through the things that make the Academy Super Wet:
1. A Period Piece
2. A K(C)ate (Winslet or Blanchett)
3. Nazis
4. A Fiennes Brother
Going down this check list for The Reader
1. Spans from '58-'95
2. Kate Winslet
3. At least 6 Nazis
4. Ralph Fiennes (the Fienner of the two, if you will)
Before this was released you had to assume minimum 3 - maximum 7 Oscar Nods coming for this movie. Ends up it got 5, so right where we'd assume, now saying that this is a movie the Academy would love usually puts the casually movie goer to sleep - but I'll say this, I loved it too.
The movie starts with the early relationship between Hanna (Winslet) and 15 year-old Michael (the phenomenal David Kross - where's his Nod?) and their sexual escapades. The first 45 minutes of this movie no one is really clothed. I actually had to look at my watch to make sure that it was in fact 4 o'clock in the afternoon and I was in a movie theatre, not 11 at night at home watching Cinemax. I lost count after the 213,845 time I saw at least one of Kate Winslet's nipples... not to mention some solid male full frontal thrown in there too. They have sex, then Michael reads to her, and this goes on for a few months until Hanna is promoted and has to move - leaving Michael abruptly.
We next find Michael and Hanna together, but this time in a courtroom. Michael as a young law student and Hannah as an Ex-Nazi on trial. This is where the film really gains it's legs and starts to ask the moral questions that are really at it's core. Hanna's shameful secrets become obvious during the trial, Michael knows that secret - that although do not atone for what she's done - will definitely affect the sentencing... yet remains silent. She hurt him, he hurt her. The characters also from here on gain a real depth and you start to really feel for both of them.
Although many of the reviews I've read have called this just another 'Holocaust Movie' (which it's not), or just 'Soft-Core Pornography Disguised as a Sermon' (which is also not true). It's a movie about people, whether it's a middle aged bus worker with a shameful secret and even darker past, or a lonely shut off lawyer scorned by a woman while in his teens. This is a movie about morals and the way humans interact and affect the lives of each other... plus Kate Winslet gets naked a bunch of times.
The Reader - 4/5 Stars

Shorter (and differing opinion) Review at http://www.yerboyjohnnycastle.blogspot.com