30 Days of Oscar: Day 28: Finding Neverland

Movie: Finding Neverland
Year: 2005
Nominations: Best Picture, Best Actor (Johnny Depp), Best Art Direction, Costume Design, Adapted Screenplay, and Original Score
Wins/Snubs: This was the year of Million Dollar Baby, Sideways and The Aviator, so Finding Neverland only won Original Score. Sideways took Adapted Screenplay, and The Aviator took costume design and art direction.  
This movie makes me cry every single time.  The semi-autobiographical story of J. M. Barrie and how he was inspired to write Peter Pan after meeting the Llewelyn Davis boys - George, Jack, Peter, and Michael, and their mother, Sylvia (Kate Winslet).  He's married, but not getting along well with his wife, and his most recently play has flopped.  His child-like nature is ready to spend some time playing around.  He teaches the kids to imagine, which is important at this point as their father recently died, and their mother is not particularly healthy.  Of course, Barrie's attention to their family, given his marital status, doesn't go over well in London during the turn of the century.  But, that doesn't really matter as the kids need "Uncle Jim" and he needs them to help him write Peter Pan.  Depp did a really great job amidst all his piracy taking on a fairly serious role in a sad movie, with an accent (Barrie's Scottish), between Pirates 1 and 2, though he still dresses up as Captain Hook.
It's a rare year that Kate Winslet isn't nominated for an Oscar, and this year was no exception - instead of being nominated for this role, she was nominated for Eternal Sunshine for the Spotless Mind's Clementine.  So I can't really fault them for not nominating her for this - her role is smaller and less complex than usual.  The kids in this could have made the film unbearable, but Freddie Highmore as Peter is terrific, and the others hold their own.  

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