Much better than I expected.. I mean, WOW

Rating: 10/10 (4 January 2004)

Cold Mountain was such a great movie! In fact, it's my favorite movie of the year, maybe even my favorite movie of all time. It was almost perfect, with the great directing and amazing performances. Jude Law, Nicole Kidman, and Renee Zelwegger make a magnificent team. They did such a great job that affected the movie in a good way.
I don't know why people were saying that Law and Kidman lacked chemistry in the movie. I thought they had a perfectly good chemistry in the movie that made it even better. Jude Law really surprised me on this one. I never knew he had the talent to pull this off. I thought he was perfectly cast. I can't imagine Tom Cruise (who was supposed to play Inman) to play this role. Jude deserves an Oscar nomination for this performance of a lifetime.
Nicole Kidman, on the other hand, was also good, although I liked her better in Moulin Rouge and The Hours. She delivered a great performance, as usual, but she kinda messed up on her southern accent. Renee Zelwegger HAS to win the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for this movie. She just HAS to. She was perfect as Ruby Thewes. Natalie Portman, in my opinion, delivered her best performance so far in her career. You can actually feel her pain and her love for her husband, who died in the war, and her baby (who was, by the way, HUGE!). I think that Jude Law, Nicole Kidman, and Renee Zelwegger all deserve Oscar nominations, and hopefully wins.
Ok, about the love scene. It was... um.. weird and confusing. It's not like any love scenes you see in other movies. It was confusing too because one moment they're standing up and Nicole is naked, next they're lying down and Nicole isn't naked. Then they're standing again and she's naked, then they're lying and she's not naked. blah blah blah. I dunno about the love scene. I thought that it was uneccessary to show Nicole's butt twice. I didn't see the reason or the point of showing it.
Anyway, I liked this movie because you can relate to Inman as he travels home to Ada. You can tell that he's really, really, really, really, really in love with Ada, and vice versa. It was amazing how they didn't lose hope and how they remained faithful to each other even though they only shared three or four moments at the beginning. And that kiss. That kiss looked... WOW. I'd kiss Jude in a heartbeat. It was that kiss that helped him survive through the war, and with the help of Ada's picture.
This movie deserves all eight nominations it got for the Golden Globes. I'm rooting for this movie to win the Best Picture award for the Globes AND the Oscars.
I give this movie two thumbs up! ***** out of *****! 10 out of 10! A+