What I Watched -- The Descendants

Look at me, catching up on all the Oscar darlings that I never saw!   (Exhibits A, B, C, and D.)  This time around, it was The Descendants which caught my eye.  George Clooney is a damn good actor.  For some reason, that fact annoys me, but he is.  I think I want to dislike him, but I just can't!

And The Descendants was good!  I think I liked it better than The Artist, in fact.  The story is pretty simple: distant dad has to learn how to rear his own children after his wife falls into a coma, and on top of that, he learns that she was having an affair.  And there's the meta-story, which is that dad and his family are descendants of a Hawaiian princess and have some wealth in the form of pristine shoreline; they're under some time pressure to figure out what to do with it, and as an attorney, our part-time dad is the trustee in charge.

Clooney as Matt King is clearly the star of the show, but he's backed up by a great ensemble cast: Shailene Woodley as Matt's older daughter Alex, Amara Miller as his younger daughter Scottie, Matthew Lillard as Matt's wife's lover, Judy Greer as the lover's jilted wife, and Beau Bridges as Matt's cousin and fellow royal descendant.

Bottom line: the whole thing is well-acted, the story is funny and sad and touching, and I loved it!