Kate Winslet’s Post-Oscar Career Choices, Ranked in Order of Bizarreness

https://decider.com/2017/10/02/kate-winslets-post-oscar-career-choices-ranked-in-order-of-bizarreness/

The truth of the matter is, the 2008 Oscar didn’t change Winslet fundamentally as an actress. But it did seem to change her career choices. Whether or not an appetite for Oscar gold was her prime motivator, Winslet’s pre-Oscar choices all seemed to follow that same narrative. Even the projects that missed — like 2003’s disastrous The Life of David Gale — felt like they made sense given what the mission seemed to be. After 2008 — really, after the release and second round of awards for the HBO miniseries Mildred Pierce — Winslet’s career has felt more wayward. Not exactly ruinous; there have been enough high points to keep reminding us how wonderfully talented she is. But just … a little crazy. The Mountain Between Us is a great example of a Kate Winslet Post-Oscar Choice. Working with a talented filmmaker (Oscar-nominated Palestinian director Hany Abu-Assad) on a film that has the sheen of respectability but is nevertheless a little beneath her. After all, this movie could be as triumph-of-the-human-spirit as it wants to be; it’s still going to be sold as a will-they-or-won’t-they about Kate Winslet and Idris Elba having sex on a mountain.

This is the Kate Winslet Post-Oscar Choice in a nutshell: you can see where it might have seemed like a good idea, but you can’t shake the sense that Winslet is slumming it. And that maybe this is all a way for Winslet to seek out movies that are a little more fun than the self-consciously Important films The Reader and Revolutionary Road which got her tagged as the Oscar-Bait Queen.