Truth: The last post about my watch-every-Best-Picture-winner-before-I-die film quest was in April, when I watched Clint Eastwood be a snarky rascal in Unforgiven. Shame, shame on me. The blog here was alive and active, but my Best Picture watching skillz had taken a serious backseat. That’s an understatement even.

It’s just that sometimes, it’s super hard to remain motivated and take this Quest seriously. I mean, I made a Casablanca rap, for Skeletor’s sake! It’s hard to convince others to watch with me (“But you’ll loooove this black and white film from 1932, I promise! And it’s only 3-and-a-half hours long!”) and it’s also a trying task to choose movies like All Quiet on the Western Front over the new season of Big Brother (so scandalous!). Somewhere, a Hollywood Great is rolling in his/her grave.

I’m jumping back on the wagon. Or back off the wagon? I never really understood that wagon thing. What I mean to say is that HERE I AM – watching Best Pictures and rambling about them publicly. Last night, I bit into All Quiet and now I’m gonna chew on it and spit it at you. Or something like that.

Pros: The movie tells the story of a group of German boys who join the army during World War I after one of their instructors glamorizes what fighting for one’s country really means. They fall in love with these notions and are pretty much manipulated by teach’. Then [spoiler alert] they all die. Stuff happens in the middle – there are breakdowns, fistfights for food, rat infestations – these soldiers are just kids and they’re scared. Really scared. The film does a great job at portraying war and how it affects everyone involved.

Cons: This movie is soooo oooold. I love classic films (or I wouldn’t be doing this), but the audio was super rough and the quick jump-cuts and lack of character focus at times made it tough to follow.

Look, this movie is 83 years old, so I ain’t hatin’! It’s just a challenging movie to stay tuned in to if you’re under the age of…well, if you’re alive.