The Oscar

So it's Oscar night and "The King's Speech" is likely to sweep the board. It's a good film, entertaining, with some scenes that make you want to squirm with anguish at what the character of the king is going through. Three excellent performanc in it: Colin Firth of course; Helen Bonham Carter playing Quees Elizabeth who became the queen mother - she makes you rather like her, more than she did in life, and Geoffrey Rush as the man who tried to cure the king's stammer, a fine performance by an Australian of an Australian.
But since seeing that I have seen two other films which border on great: "True Grit" and "The Fighter". "True Grit" is not so much a remake of the John Wayne film though it does follow the same plotlines for most of the time; it's another version of the book by Charles Fortis; it follows more exactly the plot and the style with its old-style speech patterns as in the book. The characters all speak as if they are characters straight out of the bible; no one says "it's" or "they're" but "it is" and "they are". Which make some of conversations seem longer than they are.
There is a scene in the film that shoots out at you emotionally, it hits you in the gut (or maybe heart). It's a short piece: the girl who wants Rooster Cogburn to capture the man who killed her father says somethingn like "I want to hire you because I have heard that you are a man of true grit". I can't say why it is so jolting to the em,otional senses; it has something to with the evident sincerity of the girl and with the one-eyed gaze of the man but, like jokes, "it's the way you tell 'em" and she "tells" it beautifully: a little smile, but only a very little one, and a look in her eyes that is heartrending.
"The Fighter" is just a grand old boxing film. But it's not just that: it's a story of a disfunctional mother trying to cope with two boxing sons; she wants the best for them but doesn't have a clue how to do that.
There are three oscar-winning performances in these two films: Jeff Bridges. Christian Bale and the mother (whose name I can't remember). But Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush will probably win.
They should have a "young oscar" for the girl in "True Grit".