Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea. —Henry Fielding

29 February 2016

Oscar Blackout

One of my standing frustrations with the Academy is that Academy members aren't watching enough movies, and one of the reasons we don't see more black nominees is that Academy members aren't watching enough movies directed by, written by, and starring people of color.

But what should they be watching? I asked a couple of friends to help me out, and I thought the three of us might just rant about some badass movies made by and starring black folks. So, I am joined by my friends Adwin Brown and Dr. Leah P. Hunter. He's a film actor in Los Angeles and she's a professor of communication who specializes in diversity in film and television. I gave them free rein to talk about whatever films they felt like ranting about.

So, if you feel like protesting the Oscars' lack of inclusion, or just wanna watch some awesome movies starring and made by black folks, here are some recommendations.

* * *
ADWIN: Dope is a coming-of-age crime comedy-drama that debuted at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival and was bought for distribution by Open Road Films. Boasting an incredible cast (Kimberly Elise, Chanel Iman, Tyga, A$AP Rocky to name a few) and an even more impressive production team, (produced by Forest Whitaker, executive produced by Pharrell Williams and Sean “Diddy” Combs) Dope is a hilarious and touching story about millennials, made for millennials. As the movie begins, we meet Malcolm (played by Shameik Moore) a black nerd living in crime-infested Los Angeles (intriguing already, I know) who plays in a rock band with his two best friends. The three of them are obsessed with '90s hip-hop culture, which provides a very welcoming throwback vibe to the entire film that any '90s baby would enjoy. Malcolm dreams of going to Harvard, but after trying to impress a pretty girl that lives across the street (played by Zoë Kravitz) and ending up at a party he shouldn’t have been at, Malcolm and his friends are taken on a scary and hilarious journey of drugs and self discovery that could land them all in huge trouble. If I can be frank, there are honestly so many things to love about this movie – it’s beyond fun! And the script seems to really toy with the idea of playfully mocking the earlier ghetto/hood dramas of the '90s (Boyz n the Hood, Baby Boy, etc.) and mixing up the usual stereotypes associated with them. Visually, the movie is bright and vibrant and the story gets you hooked from the beginning—equally hilarious and violent, and an accompanying soundtrack that will have you bobbing your head the entire film.  

LEAH: Dope was ... um, well ... dope! While it was a classic coming-of-age story, the story itself was turned on its ear because of the racially diverse cast and the choice to make the characters outcasts and not really a part of the culture they were coveting. But, really, they were a part of that culture, right? And, that is what makes Dope such a good film because it goes against stereotype to show the universality of hip hop music (primarily early hip hop) and to give a little insight on how the genre was so identifiable to people who in no way lived the life. Because of all of this, I believe that Rick Famuyiwa should have gotten acknowledged in the Best Director category. Dope is a beautifully shot film! And, Famuyiwa does a great job of directing the cast of young actors. What hurts him though is that the story itself often delves into silliness. Part of what makes the film fun (the coke-out dream girl who is filmed going to the bathroom in bushes, for example) also pushes it more in the comedic direction, which typically means Oscar suicide. Despite that, the movie Dope, and Famuyiwa in particular, remain on my top of the year list.

* * *
AARON: I've already talked about how good Beasts of No Nation is, so I won't repeat that here, but you should know how much I love it. Instead I want to highlight a really awesome African film: Timbuktu. Abderrahmane Sissako's Timbuktu was nominated last year for the Foreign Language Oscar. This movie is absolutely gorgeous, and is perfectly shot from start to finish. Timbuktu is also about the way that a kind of religious fundamentalism has started to take over in Sissako's home country of Mauritania. This film, though, approaches the price of religious fundamentalism and the rule of religious law from the perspective of a young girl – but then really it is an entire city – as they cope with these rules that have nothing to do with their lives. It's a powerful, awesome film. It is important to note, too, that this is a film that is not "about" race, but is about religion and about attempting to live with the difficulties of religious rule. It's an exquisite movie.
* * *
LEAH: Can we talk about how that list of writers (there are 5 people!) who are nominated for Best Original Screenplay for Straight outta Compton should not have been nominated?! It’s probably a moot point because Spotlight won and deserved to win. But, it’s laughable that this film about an African-American rap group, directed by an African American (F. Gary Gray) and starring a majority African-American cast would only have the white folks nominated! In my opinion, though, it was not a great screenplay. Great biopics show all sides of the story. Ray not only showed Ray Charles' genius, but also showed his womanizing and debilitating drug addiction. This is where Straight outta Compton falls short. How can this be seen as an authentic telling of their story when there is no acknowledgement of their abusive treatment of women? No acknowledgement of Dee Barnes or Michelle, among others? By only showing the highlights of NWA’s lives, the screenwriters sucked the humanity out of the characters. Only Jason Mitchell (who played Eazy-E) had some meat to his character, and even then he was portrayed as a hero in the end – just disregarded all of the foul things he did earlier. It just felt a little after-school-special at the end.

 * * *
ADWIN: Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (based on the book with the same title) is another coming-of-age drama/comedy that tells the story of a teenage boy’s newly formed friendship with a girl who is dying from cancer. The film premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival with a standing ovation from the audience and was purchased for distribution by Fox Searchlight Pictures. The film is filled with superb performances by the cast, but one of the strongest stand-out performances comes from newcomer, RJ Cyler. In the movie, Cyler plays Earl, the POC best friend to the white lead, Thomas Mann, and although this may sound like familiar territory, I promise you it does not play out like your typical story. In most movies, having a POC best friend is very common – whether it be the "cool" black guy, the "responsible" Asian guy, or the Indian guy with the "funny accent" – these characters are generally one-note and are only necessary to establish backstory and/or maintain the story-line of the (usually) white lead character. However, while viewing Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, I was pleasantly surprised to see how in many situations in the film Cyler’s character seemed to be the voice of reason. Earl could easily be played as another black kid “from the bad part of town”, but Cyler really found a fun and intriguing balance of being extremely wise beyond his years while still maintaining his comically blunt street smarts. And although the movie follows the platonic relationship between the characters of Greg and Rachel, in many instances Earl is the catalyst between them. Earl is the one who jump-starts their friendship by forcing Greg to show Rachel his homemade movie collection, and at the peak of the movie, Earl is the one who is sympathetic to Rachel’s situation and influences Greg to feel the same way. I believe it can be very easy to fall into familiar traps when writing a script and creating characters, and I am glad that Me and Earl and the Dying Girl went against everything I was expecting.

* * *
AARON: Slightly more recent and also released this year is a film by Jonas Carpignano about Italian immigrants called Mediterranea. This film is, frankly, awesome, and follows a pair of brothers who immigrate to Italy in order to make a better life for themselves, to find work and make money that they can send back home. What they find in Italy is terrible living conditions, terrible working conditions, and the racism of Italian citizens. They find themselves embroiled in violent skirmishes that are protesting the way that police corruption has made the lives of the people in their immigrant community absolutely impossible. It's a powerful story with an extraordinary central performance from Ghanaian actor Koudous Seihon. This film was on many, many critics' top ten lists, which is why I watched it, and it is really revealing as to the immigration crisis that exists in European nations (and not just the U.S.). I can't recommend this movie enough.

* * *
LEAH: I want to say, too, that I am shocked that Creed would get only one nomination and it would be for Sylvester Stallone. Creed was a beautiful film! It was luscious and I cannot believe that Ryan Coogler was not nominated. Second, Coogler’s body of work to be so young in the business is extraordinary! (Fruitvale Station was robbed the year it came out.) That he managed to direct a tentpole film like Creed, still part of the Rocky series, and managed to not only make it big and violent (fight scenes) while at the same time offer the audience very tender moments (virtually every moment with Michael B. Jordan and Tessa Thompson) speaks to his abilities as a director. At the very least, Coogler should have gotten a nomination for Best Director. And, the fact that he collaborated on the screenplay (along with Aaron Covington) as well makes me even more convinced of this.

* * *
This list is far from over. These are the films my friends wanted to call attention to, but there is also Z for Zachariah, a cool exploration of dystopia and race in a world where (apparently) there are only two people left. And there is Spike Lee's Chi-Raq, an updated version of Euripides' Lysistrata. And Girlhood, Céline Sciamma's film about an African-French teenager living in a Paris suberb, who joins a girl gang. The film stars Karidja Touré and has gotten superb reviews across the board.

In any case, Adwin, Leah and I would like to encourage you to support films made by and starring people of color. There are some awesome films out there made by black filmmakers and other filmmakers of color. The only way we can diversify the end-of-the-year awards is by calling attention to – and actually going to see – more films made by and starring people of color. Happy movie-watching!

27 February 2016

Oscar Predictions

This year I am very disheartened by the Academy Awards – by the whiteness of this year's nominees, by the Americanness of the films, by the idiotic bowing to big blockbusters, by the lack of imagination among the Academy's voters. In short, this year's laziness on the part of the Academy has me very close to skipping the show altogether. I am going to watch, still, and I still watched all of the movies, but this year I want to list my favorite movies for each category as well as these winners, because to my mind these winners are mostly very poor choices indeed. Below, then, I am charting the distance between my own favorites and my actual predictions. 

No one really knows anything, so, in truth, there could be quite a few surprises, including the big award itself. But here's what I think will happen:

Best Picture: The Revenant
My favorite movie of the year: Son of Saul
Best Director: Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu, The Revenant
My favorite director: László Nemes, Son of Saul
Best Actress: Brie Larson, Room
My favorite actress: Charlotte Rampling, 45 Years
Best Actor: Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant
My favorite actor: Géza Röhrig, Son of Saul
Best Supporting Actress: Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl
My favorite supporting actress: Nina Kunzendorf, Phoenix
Best Supporting Actor: Sylvester Stallone, Creed
My favorite supporting actor: Harvey Keitel, Youth
Best Adapted Screenplay: The Big Short
My favorite adapted screenplay: Beasts of No Nation
Best Original Screenplay: Spotlight
My favorite original screenplay: White God
Best Animated Feature: Inside Out
My favorite animated movie: Anomalisa
Best Foreign Language Film: Son of Saul
My favorite foreign language film: Son of Saul
Best Animated Short Film: We Can't Live without Cosmos
My favorite animated short: We Can't Live without Cosmos
Best Live-action Short Film: Stutterer
My favorite live-action short: Shok
Best Film Editing: The Revenant
My favorite editor: White God
Best Cinematography: The Revenant
My favorite photographer: The Revenant
Best Production Design: Mad Max: Fury Road
My favorite designer: Saint Laurent
Best Costume Design: Carol
My favorite designer: The Assassin
Best Original Score: The Hateful Eight
My favorite score: The Revenant
Best Original Song: "Writing's on the Wall" from Spectre
My favorite song: "Simple Song #3" from Youth 
Best Sound Mixing: Mad Max: Fury Road
Best Sound Editing: Mad Max: Fury Road
Best Visual Effects: Mad Max: Fury Road
Best Makeup & Hairstyling: Mad Max: Fury Road
Best Documentary Feature: Amy
Best Documentary Short Film: Body Team 12


23 February 2016

Oscar Nominees 2016: Part 11 of 11 (Best Animated Short Film)


Historia de un Oso (Bear Story)
1 Nomination
  • Animated Short Film
Director: Gabriel Osorio

This is one of the most imaginative things I've seen in ages. Osorio's film is a film-within-a-film. We watch a bear who is a street performer, operating a kind of hand-cranked storytelling machine. The machine tells a story of how the bear himself was once kidnapped and then enslaved by a circus. So instead of watching the story animated in a standard way, we watch a kind of clockwork toy version of the bear and his family. This, of course, is animated, as well, but the detail, because the animated bears and trees and buildings are all clockwork versions of themselves, is absolutely stunning. Bear Story is a fabulous achievement. Can it win the Oscar? Your guess is as good as mine. I think the competition here is really stiff. These are some great movies.
Will Win: N/A
Could Win: Animated Short Film


Sanjay's Super Team
1 Nomination
  • Animated Short Film
Director: Sanjay Patel
Cast: Brent Schraff

This film is charming. It played in front of Pixar's The Good Dinosaur, but was in fact much better than the main attraction (which was not nominated for an Oscar). Sanjay's Super Team follows a young man who is not interested in the religion that his dad practices, and would prefer, instead, to watch cartoons. Through a series of delightful sequences in which his dad's Hindu gods are themselves revealed to have superpowers with the ability to fight evil, Sanjay learns to respect his dad's beliefs and comes to learn a little bit about his father's culture. It's a cool little picture and will probably be the favorite to win on the 28th.
Will Win: N/A
Could Win: Animated Short Film


We Can't Live without Cosmos
 (Мы Не Можем Жить без Космоса)
1 Nomination
  • Animated Short Film

We Can't Live without Cosmos was my favorite of the animated shorts. They are almost all fantastic, so choosing between them will be difficult for anyone. They are just so good this year. But WCLWC is a film about friendship and about loneliness and about living inside of a dream so much that it spurs you to live your life to its full capacity. This film is absolute magic and I adored it from start to finish. It's (for some reason) not a part of the shorts program that is available via Amazon video, but luckily it is available on the New Yorker's website here, and you can watch it in full. I recommend that you do. I can't recommend it enough. It's quirky and fun while also being touching and wonderful. I loved it so much that I am going to predict that it will win the Oscar, even though such a win seems rather unlikely.
Will Win: Animated Short Film
Could Win: N/A


Prologue
1 Nomination
  • Animated Short Film

Prologue is another gorgeous selection in this category. This (very) short film is the story of a small skirmish during (what appears to be) the Peloponnesian War between the Spartans and the Athenians. The film doesn't take sides at all, but rather pays close attention to the bodily harm that each of the soldiers does to each other. We see into each of their eyes before they fight, and we come to know them very briefly before they move in to murder each other. This is a beautiful dance of death, but it is only beautiful; that is, it is not a dance without horror, and Prologue takes care to register disgust and horror at the senseless slaughter that is the subject matter of the film. This is a hard little gem of a picture.

Will Win: N/A
Could Win: N/A


World of Tomorrow
1 Nomination
  • Animated Short Film
Director: Don Hertzfeldt
Cast: Julia Pott, Winona Mae

This little film was not for me. The animation is the stick figures you see above – which is not bad per se, since you know I loved Boy & the World – but they are actually not cute at all in Don Hertzfeldt's film. World of Tomorrow is also about a dystopian future. It takes a kind of wryly humorous attitude toward this dystopian future, as well, and this attitude didn't go over well with me. Call me serious, but the idea of the world's poor attempting to time-travel and then accidentally projecting themselves outside of the Earth's atmosphere only to burn up on re-entry as falling stars is not exactly hilarious to me. In any case, World of Tomorrow was the only one of this year's animated shorts that I didn't love, so that's not half bad.
Will Win: N/A
Could Win: N/A

Oscar Nominees 2016: Part 10 of 11 (Best Live Action Short Film)


Stutterer
1 Nomination
  • Live Action Short Film
Director: Benjamin Cleary
Cast: Matthew Needham, Chloe Pirrie, Eric Richard

This film is about a man who stutters and his relationship with a woman he has met online. It is a slight thing, but I expect it to win the Oscar. None of this year's live action shorts functions primarily in English, but Stutterer is the most Anglophone of the films, and so I think it takes home the trophy. But this is not a very interesting film, actually. We follow a young typographer (although how he makes his living is not really explained) as he tries to communicate with various people, including his dad and a woman he has been chatting with for six months. This is your traditional heterosexual love plot with a happy ending. I was sort of bored, actually.
Will Win: Foreign Language Film
Could Win: N/A


Day One
1 Nomination
  • Live Action Short Film
Director: Henry Hughes
Cast: Layla Alizada, Alain Washnevsky, Bill Zasadil, Alexia Pearl, Navid Negahban, Shari Vasseghi, Yanellie Ireland

This movie is better than most of the others. It is emotionally powerful, and the acting (particularly by the two leads Alain Washnevsky and Layla Alizada) is really very very good. Day One follows a new translator for the U.S. military named Feda. She goes with a small squadron to find weapons or do something or other (where we are is not clear – evidently an Arabic-speaking country). From here there are several quick reversal and surprises. As a short film, this is a finely plotted little piece of work, but I found its politics a little stupid. The film is invested in a kind of secularism in which "science" and "American clear thinking" triumph over "silly Islamic customs" and "proper religious decorum". The script writers, of course, are in charge here and so of course things go the way they plot them to fall out. At the end of the movie when Feda tells her commanding officer "We should not have come here", I had to concur. This has a chance of beating Stutterer for the Oscar, and it is certainly a better film, but I suspect it will lose out to the love story.
Will Win: N/A
Could Win: Live Action Short Film


Shok (Friend)
1 Nomination
  • Live Action Short Film
Director: Jamie Donoughue
Cast: Lum Veseli, Andi Bajgora, Kushtrim Sheremeti, Eshref Durmishi, Xhevdet Jashari, Astrit Kabashi, Armond Morina

This was my favorite of the live action shorts. Shok is a film about two Albanian boys living during the war in Kosovo. The movie is a serious examination of the dangers of everyday life lived under military rule in which human beings have no rights whatsoever. The film is ostensibly about friendship (hence its title) and its main subject is the relationship between the two boys as they negotiate a kind of ethical living based on loyalty and courage. I didn't love any of this year's shorts, but this one is the most mercilessly directed, and one of only two films that does not finally succumb to a kind of sentimentalism. It is way too hard-hitting of a film to win the Oscar, but Donoughue is a very good filmmaker, and we should expect good things in the future.
Will Win: N/A
Could Win: N/A


Ave Maria
1 Nomination
  • Live Action Short Film
Director: Basil Khalil
Cast: Maria Zreik, Shady Srour, Maya Koren, Ruth Farhi, Huda Al Imam

This is a delightful little film. In the West Bank, a Jewish family's car breaks down near a little cloister where five nuns who have taken a vow of silence are living. We mostly spend time with a young novitiate named Marie, who seems to be a kind of rebel among the nuns. She also happens to be something of a car mechanic. This is an irreverent little tale, and like Day One, advocates a kind of secularism. It's fine to have religion, each of these films says, as long as you are willing to let your principles go every once in a while. So the Jewish family operates a phone on Shabbat and drinks water that isn't from a Kosher kitchen, and the nuns speak in order to get things done and help this family. This is all quite contrived, of course, but it is charming enough, and I found its irreverence to be rather a delight.
Will Win: N/A
Could Win: N/A


Alles Wird Gut (Everything Will Be Okay)
1 Nomination
  • Live Action Short Film
Director: Patrick Vollrath
Cast: Simon Schwarz, Julia Pointner, Gisela Salcher, Marion Rottenhofer

Eh. This movie wants to be a kind of mystery tale, where we don't really know what is going on until halfway through its running time, except that where we are headed is actually quite obvious from early on in the movie. So for much of the movie, it is operating under this idea, even though that idea is no longer viable. I found this very frustrating. In many ways, too, this film asks us to sympathize with a man who really is behaving foolishly in the extreme. The other thing that is weird qbout this movie is that it is a sort of male version of the amazing 2013 short film Just Before Losing Everything (Avant que de Tout Perdre). And who needs a male version of that movie? To be honest, and this is a little odd, the live action short films just weren't that great this year. Usually they are some of the best of the year's Oscar-nominated pictures, but this year... sort of a let-down.
Will Win: N/A
Could Win: N/A

18 February 2016

Oscar Nominees 2016: Part 9 of 11 (Best Foreign Language Film)


Saul Fia (Son of Saul)
1 Nomination
  • Foreign Language Film: Hungary (Hanussen, Colonel Redl, Revolt of Job, Mephisto, Confidence, Hungarians, Catsplay, The Boys of Paul Street)
Director: László Nemes
Cast: Géza Röhrig, Levente Molnár, Urs Rechn, Todd Charmont, Jerzy Walczak, Sándor Zsótér, Marcin Czarnik, Levente Orbán, Uwe Lauer, Christian Harting, Mihály Kormos

This was my favorite movie of the year, and for me it is basically perfect. I realize that this isn't in wide release, and that not a lot of people have seen it (I saw it in West Los Angeles when it was playing in only one theatre in the U.S.). The movie is hard to watch – it's about the lives of those imprisoned at Auschwitz and so it is a film about genocide – but it is a powerful, exciting movie from start to finish with not even a little fat in it. And Géza Röhrig gives one of the best performances of the year by any actor. [Side note, I was voting in a kind of mock-ballot the other day for Best Actor and I looked at these ridiculous names – Damon, DiCaprio, Cranston – and thought, wow the Academy really laid an egg in that category this year. What a silly list.] In any case, I want also to say that Hungary is not often nominated in this category; they don't often choose a film to which Academy members will respond. Last year's selection was the dog-revenge movie White God that is my second favorite movie of 2015. But it is easy to see why Oscar didn't jump for joy. It's basically a horror film. But this year all that is off the table. Son of Saul is going to win this Oscar. It is just so damn good.
Will Win: Foreign Language Film
Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #1 out of 67


Mustang
1 Nomination
  • Foreign Language Film: France (A Prophet, The Class, Joyeux Noël, Les Choristes, Amélie, The Taste of Others, East-West, Ridicule, Indochine, Cyrano de Bergerac, Camille Claudel, Au Revoir les Enfants, Betty Blue, Three Men and a Cradle, Entre Nous, Clean Slate, The Last Metro, A Simple Story, Get Out Your Handkerchiefs, Madame Rosa, Cousin Cousine, Lacombe Lucien, Day for Night, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, The Bamboo Incident, My Night at Maud's, Stolen Kisses, Live for Life, A Man and a Woman, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Sundays and Cybele, The Truth, Black Orpheus, Mon Oncle, The Gates of Paris, Gervaise, Forbidden Games, The Walls of Malapaga, Monsieur Vincent)
Cast: Günes Sensoy, Doga Zeynep Doguslu, Tugba Sunguroglu, Elit Iscan, Ilayda Akdogan, Ayberk Pekcan, Nihal G. Koldas, Bahar Kerimoglu, Burak Yigit, Erol Afsin, Enes Sürüm

This is an excellent, gorgeous film, and another of my top ten for this year. In fact, I managed to see Mustang and Son of Saul back to back, catching Mustang after Christmas dinner with my sister and son. We were all emotional wrecks. It's a beautiful, hopeful, but very powerful movie about the strength of women and the ways that women's lives are controlled by religion. Mustang is a film by Turkish-French director Deniz Gamze Ergüven, and it is set in Türkiye, but you might notice that it has been submitted by France. The French committee has been cleverer and cleverer these days about what they submit to the Academy, submitting movies that deal with important contemporary social issues rather than films about the past. I find this laudable. I should also note that their submission last year, Saint Laurent, is another one of my favorite films for 2015. Unlike Son of Saul, which I know is not for everyone, I am happy to recommend Mustang to anyone who will listen to me. You will love it. It's beautifully performed, it's as exciting as any action movie, and it has an excellent score. In another year it would've won the Oscar, but its competition here is too fierce.
Will Win: N/A
Could Win: Foreign Language Film
My Rating: #4 out of 67


El Abrazo de la Serpiente (Embrace of the Serpent)
1 Nomination
  • Foreign Language Film: Colombia
Director: Ciro Guerra
Cast: Nilbio Torres, Antonio Bolivar, Jan Bijvoet, Brionne Davis, Yauenkü Migue, Nicolas Cancino, Luigi Sciamanna

And now we have reached the first of two films that I haven't been able to see this year. Embrace of the Serpent is in theatres right now; well, some theatres. But the trailer for this is incredible. It looks like another gorgeous Malick-inspired movie, something of which you know I approve. This nomination is a very cool surprise. There were plenty of foreign language films with important distributors that did not get nominated, but the Academy went with Colombia this year, giving that country its first nomination. Colombia often submits Ciro Guerra's movies (La Sombra del Caminante and The Wind Journeys), so this is a very cool moment of validation for a hardworking director. Embrace of the Serpent is obviously his most visually ambitious film, too, so this is a cool nomination. I am very excited to see this movie.
Will Win: N/A
Could Win: N/A
My Rating: Unranked (2016 Release)


Krigen (A War)
1 Nomination
  • Foreign Language Film: Denmark (The Hunt, A Royal Affair, In a Better World, After the Wedding, Waltzing Regitze, Pelle the Conqueror, Babette's Feast, Harry and the Butler, Paw, Qivitoq)
Director: Tobias Lindholm
Cast: Pilou Asbæk, Tuva Novotny, Dar Salim, Søren Malling, Charlotte Munck, Dufi Al-Jabouri, Alex Høgh Andersen, Phillip Sem Dambæk, Jakob Frølund

I haven't seen A War either, and I hate it. But the Academy loves Denmark; they've basically been nominated every other year in this category. The films are always excellent, and often they end up remade by American directors. Should I pause at this current moment and complain about the fact that each of these films only got nominated for Best Foreign Language Film? Every year this seems to happen. My top ten films of the year always include several films from foreign countries in foreign languages, and I am always surprised that people don't watch more of them. It's just simple logic – only the best films from other countries are going to be imported to the U.S., so the likelihood that you're gonna get an excellent movie goes way way up. Back to Denmark, though: A War is about a soldier in the war in Afghanistan and the story of him attempting to balance his ability to protect his men, care for his family, and protect the civilians he charged with protecting. This is a Danish film, so its perspective on the war in Afghanistan will likely be very interesting.
Will Win: N/A
Could Win: N/A
My Rating: Unranked (2016 Release)


Theeb (Wolf) (ذيب‎)
1 Nomination
  • Foreign Language Film: Jordan
Director: Naji Abu Nowar
Cast: Jacir Eid Al-Hwietat, Hussein Salameh Al-Sweilhiyeen, Hassan Mutlag Al-Maraiyeh, Jack Fox

I am still so surprised this got nominated. It's a fine movie as far as it goes, but it is no great shakes, in all honesty. Theeb is, perhaps, a strange little movie, in that the film's plot is not always clear, and the director introduces several strands that aren't really tied up by the end. Theeb is maybe about the railroad and the way that World War I and the introduction of weapons technologies and transportation technologies influenced the people who lived in the Jordanian desert during the Great War, but because the story is told through the eyes of a child (the Academy loves a story told through the eyes of a small boy), it didn't really resonate with me. Even the nostalgia in the film seems misplaced. Still, this isn't a bad movie by any means, but its nomination feels strange to me. Germany's Labyrinth of Lies, Ireland's Viva, Finland's The Fencer, and Belgium's The Brand New Testament all made the December shortlist, and I felt sure that one of them would get this slot. In any case, it is Jordan's first nomination, so that is cool, but don't run out and rent Theeb.

Will Win: N/A
Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #38 out of 67

14 February 2016

Oscar Nominees 2016: Part 8 of 11 (Best Original Song)


Spectre
1 Nomination
  • Original Song: Jimmy Napes & Sam Smith
Director: Sam Mendes
Cast: Daniel Craig, Léa Seydoux, Ralph Fiennes, Naomie Harris, Ben Whishaw, Christoph Waltz, Monica Bellucci, Dave Bautista, Andrew Scott

I heard people thought this was boring. It wasn't as good as Skyfall, certainly, but apparently I was one of the only people in the world that thought it was sort of fun. Eh. Oh well. The opening sequence of Spectre was definitely its coolest setpiece, but in general I thought it was sort of fun. I loved Léa Seydoux and Monica Bellucci (obviously – why isn't she in more American movies??), and I liked the way that this Bond movie became a little bit more about the team of Q, M, Moneypenny, and Bond and not just the lone wolf himself. (Thomas Newman's score is excellent, too.) There were two main problems with this new Bond caper. One was that the villain sort of sucked. Everyone loves Christoph Waltz. The man has two Oscars and he works a ton, but he is totally flat in Spectre, and I am not even sure why. The villain's villainy in this film just isn't that interesting or sadistic, and by comparison he is just no match for the creepy/sexy/weird quality of Javier Bardem's Skyfall villain. The other problem is the film's just general tone which is morose and regretful. Skyfall was this, too, of course, but Spectre positively revels in the dead and the way they haunt us. The first sequence takes place at a Día de los Muertos celebration, but from there we get sad messages from the grave, a sad dying father who shoots himself, another sequence at a funeral where Monica Bellucci mourns her husband. The entire plot, even, is related to the idea that MI6 itself is a relic and needs to be retired. The tone is just too morbid: Bond needs a vivacious reboot for sure. (I think one of the problems with James Bond nowadays is that he and those films are both sort of inextricable from the nostalgia that exists about previous Bonds and previous Bond films. Both of the Mendes Bond movies attempt to deal with that nostalgia head on, with, it seems to me, differing levels of success.) Frankly, I am not so crazy about Sam Smith's weepy song, either, and was a little surprised to see "The Writing's on the Wall" get nominated, but here it is, and I expect it to win now that it's here. It seems like a sensible consensus choice.
Will Win: Original Song
Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #42 out of 67


Youth
1 Nomination
  • Original Song: David Lang
Director: Paolo Sorrentino
Cast: Michael Caine, Harvey Keitel, Rachel Weisz, Paul Dano, Robert Seethaler, Luna Mijovic, Heidi Maria Glössner, Helmut Förnbacher, Ed Stoppard, Paloma Faith, Jane Fonda, Madalina Ghenea, Tom Lipinski, Chloe Pirrie, Mark Gessner, Nate Dern, Alex Beckett, Roly Serrano, Leo Artin

This was one of my favorite movies of the year. It is a lot like Sorrentino's previous film La Grande Bellezza in style, although Youth is a much more sentimental movie, and one that explores feelings a great deal more than Bellezza. I still adored it; Sorrentino's frames are so rich, so full, and his filmmaking is so confident. It's just amazing movie-making. I think he is a master. I have to say that I was a little surprised that the Academy didn't like this more than it did. Jane Fonda was pretty close to scoring her eighth Oscar nomination for her turn as an aging actress, but it didn't happen. Maybe this was Fox Searchlight's fault for the way it promoted it, or maybe Sorrentino just isn't people's thing. I don't really understand. If any movie this year is specifically aimed at old white men it is definitely this one. Perhaps this underlines my very serious theory about the real Academy voters not actually being old white men but being old white women (old Academy wives). Youth is very male. It's nominated song, David Lang's "Simple Song #3", is absolutely gorgeous and there was no question about its nomination. It's not a pop song, so that will hurt it with voters, certainly, but I have been listening to it for months now. It's a real feather in David Lang's cap. I should also note that it is a very important part of the film itself, much of the film's action revolves around the song, and we hear little phrases from it throughout the film, so that when we hear it in its entirety in the film's third act, it has the ability to be deeply moving.
Will Win: N/A
Could Win: Original Song
My Rating: #3 out of 67


Fifty Shades of Grey
1 Nomination
  • Original Song: Ahmad "Belly" Balshe, Stephan Moccio, Jason "DaHeala" Quenneville & Abel "The Weeknd" Tesfaye
Cast: Dakota Johnson, Jamie Dornan, Marcia Gay Harden, Eloise Mumford, Victor Rasuk, Jennifer Ehle, Luke Grimes, Max Martini, Callum Keith Rennie, Rita Ora, Dylan Neal

This is awful. I've written in detail about how I think this film is a kind of rape fantasy, so I won't really go into anything about this movie here, but I will say that I was super into this song when it came out (the song is "Earned It" sung by The Weeknd). It really is a great tune with a great beat and The Weeknd is this kind of neo-R&B artist, that I will admit to liking a lot. So I was loving this song, and listening to it rather a lot – which is when I noticed that the chorus rhymes the lyrics "So I love when you call unexpected / 'Cause I hate when the moment's expected". And now I can't get out of my mind that expected and unexpected aren't so much words that rhyme as they are, you know, the same word. But whatever, I keep trying to let it go. It's still a fun song. (But goddamn, this movie is bad, if not downright offensive.)
Will Win: N/A
Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #66 out of 67


The Hunting Ground
1 Nomination
  • Original Song: Lady Gaga & Diane Warren (Beyond the Lights, Pearl Harbor, Music of the Heart, Armageddon, Con Air, Up Close & Personal, Mannequin)
Director: Kirby Dick

It is, perhaps, one of the great ironies of this Oscar season that another of the nominated original songs is from a film that attempts to document the problem of rape on college campuses. If Fifty Shades of Grey is a film where no always means ask again, The Hunting Ground is a film that wants to combat the real danger to which many women are subject on college campuses across the country. The Hunting Ground is doing really well when it is using testimony to inform its audience of the real crisis in USAmerican higher education, whereby the schools, which should be interested in helping students, in keeping students safe, and in, well, basic ethical principles, have become beholden to the dollars of their donors, particularly fraternity members, who prevent these institutions from dealing with absolute epidemic of sexual violence that exists on our campuses. The Hunting Ground is not a great film, though, and it jumps from story to story in a way that often feels inorganic and awkward. In many ways the film is not about taking on the universities using Title IX, and when the film is not about this, it feels messy. Still, when it is about this The Hunting Ground is, frankly, terrifying. In any case, this issue is close to my heart, and I am glad we are talking about this more frequently, more openly, and more vehemently. There is no more important issue on college campuses today, if you ask me. As for the song, Gaga sings, and the lyrics are chilling. Diane Warren – who wrote the very popular pop songs from Armageddon ("I Don't Wanna Miss a Thing"), Up Close & Personal ("Because You Loved Me"), and Con Air ("How Do I Live")received her eighth nomination for "Til It Happens to You" (why it is missing that other l in the title I am not really sure), but she will have to go home empty handed yet again. One day, Diane, one day.
Will Win: N/A
Could Win: N/A
My Rating: Unranked (Documentary)


Racing Extinction
1 Nomination
  • Original Song: Antony Hegarty & J. Ralph (Chasing Ice)
Director: Louie Psihoyos

This movie is a serious wake-up call. The images of the thousands of shark fins removed from slaughtered fish are chilling enough, but Racing Extinction also spends a great deal of time on the way manta rays are being driven to extinction so that their gills can be harvested. And it documents the acidifying of the world's oceans. Racing Extinction is a truly sobering look at the planet and what we are doing to it. This movie should convince absolutely anyone that we need to change our way of living and become better caretakers of the planet on which we live. It is simply unacceptable – in fact the film's argument is that it is mass suicide – for us to continue to destroy this planet. I am sold, and I encourage everyone to watch this movie. J. Ralph also composed the haunting melody that underscored the Jeff Orlowski environmentalist documentary Chasing Ice, but the song from Racing Extinction, "Manta Ray", also boasts the talents of Antony Hegarty, the second transwoman ever to be nominated for an Academy Award (the first, by the way, was Angela Morley, the composer of The Little Prince and The Slipper and the Rose). Antony's lyrics are truly haunting: "Without biodiversity / I'm nothing / It's like I never existed // Without my home / With no reflection / I cease to exist //  And my children / Are dying now / Inside me". Yikes. Because Racing Extinction's subject matter is "how do we get this information out to people?" I am hopeful that the filmmakers use the Oscars themselves as a platform for their important message.
Will Win: N/A
Could Win: N/A

12 February 2016

Grey Areas

Fifty Shades of Grey is laughable for many, many reasons, and I spent much of the film riotously cackling at its nonsense, but I was, I must admit, left with a few questions after the final elevator doors closed and (spoiler alert) Christian Grey and Anastasia Steele said goodbye-for-now.

What a caretaker!
Leading the list of my questions is the very plot of this film, which, in effect, concerns a single question: Will Anastasia sign a very long contract that gives Christian legal immunity so that when he hurts her during sex she won't sue him? Will she sign this document or won't she? When Anastasia asks Christian what it is that she gets for signing this document, Christian's response is "me". I found this surprising mostly because the response wasn't related to Anastasia's own pleasure: Anastasia is not supposed to get pleasure out of these sexual encounters but instead understands these sexual encounters as a kind of currency that she uses in exchange for Christian "himself", a self we come to find out does not refer to his body (Anastasia is not allowed to touch him, according to the contract) but his wealth and his family connections. Anastasia is supposed to sign a contract that exchanges her submissiveness in sadomasochistic sexual situations not for the pleasure of those situations but for (what amounts to) a series of expensive gifts.

He plays the piano.
This is the film's plotline. Christian tries to convince Anastasia to sign this contract; she resists signing it.

Anastasia doesn't understand why she and Christian can't just be boyfriend and girlfriend. Why can't they just hang out and watch Netflix? (I don't do the boyfriend thing, he says sullenly.) Why do they have to have elaborate theatrical sex during which she will feel some amount of pain. She asks him: Why do you want to hurt me? Again the language is oddly fixated on inflicting harm and not on the pleasure that both the dom and the sub take in BDSM sex practices.

If Fifty Shades' plot is one that hinges on the granting or withholding of consent, it is worth noting that Anastasia does not, after all, sign the contract. In other words, officially, Anastasia withholds her consent from these sex practices. The film sets up this additional threshold of consent – she is to sign a contract – and, because it is a document that needs to be signed or not signed, it is always extremely clear that Anastasia does not cross this threshold. Perhaps surprisingly, this withheld consent does not stop her from having (and enjoying) sex with Christian, and it doesn't stop her from willingly yet hesitantly participating in some of the sex practices he has proposed. In other words, Anastasia both withholds her consent and grants it.

Fifty Shades, to be clear, represents a woman who says no, who says no repeatedly, but who actually means yes. She always officially says no, but what she actually wants is for her lover to convince her. At one point she actually texts him "Nice knowing you", but when he shows up with wine and ice (?) and tells her she didn't mean that at all, she completely agrees. No, she didn't mean she was done with him forever. She meant: try a different tactic and then perhaps the answer will be yes.

If there are shades of grey in Fifty Shades, it seems to me that what the film is shady about is the difference between yes and no, the difference between consensual sex and non-consensual sex. Fifty Shades firmly believes that a woman saying no is simply a request for a man to pursue further negotiations. No is a grey area that might mean, probably means, could eventually mean, simply yes.

* * *
And another thing: as much as this film seems fascinated by kink and is willing to use it to titillate its audience, Fifty Shades is also surprisingly normative. I don't make love. I fuck. Hard, Christian tells Anastasia early in the film. But, we will come to find out, he is full of lies. He is happy to make sweet sweet love to the film's protagonist, and even spend the night with her, arms intertwined. He will protest, of course, that he doesn't do such things, he's not the boyfriend type, but, as it turns out, he absolutely does do those things. Mr. Grey spends much of the film holding Anastasia's hand, holding her face in his hands, caressing her lower lip, performing cunnilingus on her, caressing her with the feathers of peacocks, washing her back in a bathtub they share. And that's when he's not playing the piano, lifting her gently and carrying her to bed, dancing with her around his penthouse, posing for pictures with his arm around the small of her back, flying her around in his helicopter, or introducing her to his parents as his girlfriend. What's interesting about this is that Christian is obviously some kind of romantic heteronormative fantasy: he is simultaneously the image of the perfect future-husband who is rich and well dressed and can fly a helicopter and also the bad boy who hides his true feelings and secretly wants to hurt you.

Christian, I feel like there is something between us. Like a windshield.
I resent, of course (and we ought perhaps all to resent) the implication that Christian Grey is interested in his kinks because he is somehow damaged, because he is, as he says in the film's third act, "fifty shades of fucked up". This is absurd and offensive. This is equivalent to saying that his sexual tastes are somehow wrong as opposed to being one instance of the wide (and benign) variety of human sexuality. Grey has developed particular sexual interests and, as far as we were shown in this film, they weren't all that fucked up. What they were were specific. And anyway he is clearly capable of doing all of the things that heternormative vanilla sex deems appropriate (holding hands, cunnilingus, gentle caresses, etc.). If he doesn't want to do those things, that is his business, and if Anastasia doesn't want to have sex with him in the way that he wants to have sex, she is free to reject him and his floggers at any point. Furthermore, the caning sequence that somehow pushes Anastasia over the edge and convinces her (at least for now) that Christian is too far gone to be redeemed, is staged almost explicitly as a non-sexual encounter, in which he is hitting her only to hit her. If this is a kink, where is the eroticism?

(One might also ask why Christian Grey doesn't simply go on the internet and find a woman who is into his tastes from the get-go instead of trying to convince this college girl that she really will like it, no trust me.)

Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy night.
And I guess this is none of my business – Sam Taylor-Johnson can put whatever fantasies she likes on her screen – but might I wonder aloud about how a film like this, directed by a woman and written by a woman, barely manages to pass the Bechdel test? Why doesn't Anastasia talk about this weird relationship she's in with, oh I don't know, her best friend and roommate? Or, perhaps, her mother? Our heroine could've used a little perspective, I feel. But instead she lies to both her roommate and her mother about Mr. Grey. What on earth is the point of having her do this? Why not have a simple conversation with another woman in your life? A bit of female solidarity, and perhaps some good advice, would, I feel, have helped this college senior a great deal.

I had numerous other problems with this movie, of course – mostly because it was a terrible film – but I see no reason to go into them. Fifty Shades, if it is anything, is a purely unrealistic rape-fantasy; the movie is simply a series of fantastic romantic images all of which involve the hope that the man of one's dreams won't take no for an answer. Christian Grey himself is merely the projection of many of those desires. There is much, perhaps, that is intriguing here about the way that Fifty Shades represents the fantasy of the white American (mostly) heterosexual woman in the early 21st century. These fantasies are, I will confess, darker than I had thought. But they strike me as dark not because of their propensity toward kink, but because what is clear in this version of the female fantasy is that the film simply refuses to be clear about what we think we in the 21st century mean by the word rape. The shades of grey upon which this film is predicated are all between the word yes and the word no.

11 February 2016

Oscar Nominees 2016: Part 7 of 11


Anomalisa
1 Nomination
  • Animated Feature
Cast: David Thewlis, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tom Noonan

I thought this movie was brilliant. I had seen the trailers, and the critics had loved it, but I really wasn't sure what this thing was going to be, if you know what I mean. I kept wondering, too, why the faces of the characters looked so weird, and where the Charlie Kaufman quality was going to appear. I didn't need to wait long after the movie started. Early in the film, the main character Michael starts listening to the flower duet from the opera Lakmé, but both of the female voices on the track on his ipod are sung by Tom Noonan. I immediately started to laugh quite loudly in the theatre. Michael hears everyone's voice as the same voice. Everyone he meets in the film literally sounds the same to him. This is one. bored. man. Anomalisa attempts to address the boredom many of us feel: the sort of inundated quality of our lives as we are consistently bombarded by people attempting to sell us things and resell us things and up-sell us things, and also by the ludicrous bureaucracy that seems to surround getting absolutely anything done. But Anomalisa is also fundamentally about the very hard work it takes to see what is special in people other than one's self (and indeed in seeing what is special in one's self), and the absolutely necessity of doing precisely that. (At least, this is my read of the movie.) The animation in Anomalisa is jarring and strange, and is intended to work in this way, and this is, more than anything, a movie about sound, which makes it even more fascinating. I adored this, and I felt like it really captured facets of my own life (at least at the moment) really really well.
Will Win: N/A
Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #10 out of 65


O Menino e o Mundo (Boy & the World)
1 Nomination
  • Animated Feature
Director: Alê Abreu
Cast: Vinicius Garcia, Felipe Zilse

This is a hidden gem that I never would have seen if it hadn't scored this surprise Oscar nomination. Let's say first of all that it is my second favorite animated film of the year and that I liked it a good deal more than I liked Pete Docter's Inside Out. The animation is absolutely gorgeous – simple, elegant, clever, and beautifully colorful. This is also a film that pays real attention to the work of laborers in Brazil, and the ways that manufacture and globalization have affected the lives of Brazilians. The film's point of view is slightly simplistic, certainly, but then it is a movie aimed primarily at children, and so its simplicity and elegance are fairly necessary. Boy & the World (that ampersand is ridiculous) is also about the environment: the destruction of the rainforests and the pollution of the drinkable water sources. But the whole thing is told so beautifully – with music and the point of view of the child – that I was in love with this enchanting movie fairly instantly. Boy & the World is also available online and only about eighty minutes long, so check it out! I recommend it wholeheartedly.
Will Win: N/A
Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #19 out of 65


Shaun the Sheep Movie
1 Nomination
  • Animated Feature
Cast: Justin Fletcher, John Sparks, Omid Djalili, Richard Webber, Kate Harbour, Tim Hands, Andy Nyman, Simon Greenall, Emma Tate

This is fine. A little sheep decides he needs a change from the day-to-day boredom of his life on the farm. His proposed vacation day, however, causes a lot of trouble, and little Shaun and his family of sheep end up in the big city trying to find their amnesiac farmer-owner and return him to his home. Shenanigans ensue. As I said: fine. But this seemed a little more farcical and a little less clever than, say Wallace and Gromit or Chicken Run or other Nick Park fare. I do enjoy the way that these films seem to take pleasure in thwarting local law enforcement or bureaucracy, but I wanted quite a bit more form Shaun the Sheep Movie than I got.
Will Win: N/A
Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #50 out of 65


When Marnie Was There (思い出のマーニー)
1 Nomination
  • Animated Feature
Cast: Sara Takatsuki, Kasumi Arimura, Nanako Matsushima, Susumu Terujima, Toshie Negishi, Ryōko Moriyama, Hitomi Kuroki, Kazuko Yoshiyuki

This is, apparently, the last Studio Ghibli film for a little while (although haven't they been saying that for years? I seem to remember that The Wind Rises was the last Studio Ghibli film, and there have been two since then). In any case, When Marnie Was There is the story of a young girl who has a great deal of anxiety and so she goes to spend the summer far away from the majority of civilization. What happens next is that she meets a mysterious stranger in an oddly abandoned (or is it?) mansion on the coast. This girl becomes her best friend, and they spend a great deal of time together. I found the whole thing intensely queer (which means, of course, that it is intensely queer), but this is about a loner child who can't seem to make friends very well and doesn't quite know how to behave in society, so we're already in fairly queer territory. The plot of When Marnie Was There is really complicated, and I occasionally need a pause to consider: wait, what is happening? What just happened? But for all its complexity, the movie winds itself up in very conventional terms. Worse yet, it uses a kind of deus ex machina to make sense of everything that has happened, so that the film finally doesn't really leave us with any mystery: all seems explained, and life goes back to normal. I found all of this a bit disappointing.
Will Win: N/A
Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #47 out of 65

07 February 2016

Oscar Nominees 2016: Part 6 of 11


Straight outta Compton
1 Nomination
  • Original Screenplay: Andrea Berloff, Jonathan Herman, S. Leigh Savidge, Alan Wenkus
Director: F. Gary Gray
Cast: O'Shea Jackson Jr., Jason Mitchell, Corey Hawkins, Paul Giamatti, Neil Brown Jr., Aldis Hodge, Marlon Yates Jr., R. Marcus Taylor, Carra Patterson, Alexandra Shipp, Keith Powers, Lisa Renee Pitts, Tate Ellington

I absolutely loved this movie. I don't know how it didn't get more awards buzz than it got. It is so excitingly fierce and fun, and then it very intelligently takes a turn toward the serious, and documents an important moment in USAmerican music history. Straight outta Compton also manages to be a movie about racism and police corruption in Los Angeles. It manages to do a lot of things, in fact. It's also gorgeously shot – the concert sequences are perfectly done – and cleverly scripted. The acting is superb as well, and F. Gary Gray, who directed, manages to strike the right tone throughout, surprising the audience at just the right times, carefully balancing the characters' bravado, sentiment, and danger. Somehow this only got an original screenplay nomination, and this film, directed by a black man, got nominations only for the four white screenwriters. It's an odd little joke, really. And a joke that isn't very funny. Still, I am glad it got this nomination. It is well deserved. The acting in this movie is great, too, by the way, Jackson, Mitchell, and Hawkins – the three men at the film's center – are excellent, and in a small role, Lisa Renee Pitts kills it.
Will Win: N/A
Could Win: Original Screenplay
My Rating: #5 out of 65


Creed
1 Nomination
  • Supporting Actor: Sylvester Stallone (Rocky)
Director: Ryan Coogler
Cast: Michael B. Jordan, Stallone, Tessa Thompson, Phylicia Rashād, Tony Bellew, Ritchie Coster, Andre Ward, Jacob "Stitch" Duran, Malik Bazille, Graham McTavish, Wood Harris

Another of my favorite movies of the year. I've written about this movie already here, so I won't add a lot more, but I will complain (as I did for Straight outta Compton, above) that this movie got only this single nomination. I'm glad it got it, don't get me wrong – Stallone is great, and he deserves to win the Oscar that he'll win on Oscar night – but Coogler is one of the most exciting young directors working today, and Michael B. Jordan is superb in this film. The screenplay, too, is a kind of marvel; it reuses old tropes and makes them new again, breathing new life into a tired genre. Creed is a film about fatherhood, about making a name for one's own self, and about making a family out of the people who love you and the people you love. It's excellent.
Will Win: Supporting Actor
Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #14 out of 65


Cinderella
1 Nomination
  • Costume Design: Sandy Powell (Carol, Hugo, The Tempest, The Young Victoria, Mrs Henderson Presents, The Aviator, Gangs of New York, Shakespeare in Love, Velvet Goldmine, The Wings of the Dove, Orlando)
Director: Kenneth Branagh
Cast: Cate Blanchett, Lily James, Richard Madden, Stellan Skarsgård, Holliday Grainger, Sophie McShera, Helena Bonham Carter, Nonso Anozie, Derek Jacobi, Ben Chaplin, Hayley Atwell, Alex Macqueen, Rob Brydon, Tom Edden

This film, I am happy to report, is surprisingly charming. The young white girl at the center is a little bland, but Cinderella more than makes up for it with the fun it has retelling this animated Disney film. The prince and his own story is made a little heftier by the screen treatment, and the stepmother, played by Blanchett, takes a much larger role here. This is all to the good. The tale is a pleausure, and Helena Bonham Carter's little scene as the fairy godmother is itself worth the price of admission. I found the whole thing delightful, to be honest. And the costumes are breathtakingly exquisite. Sandy Powell must win another Oscar this year. She just must. She deserves to win for this, but if not this, she really needs to win for Carol. (Girlfriend already has three Oscars, but when you're at the top of your game?) Click on the image above if you don't believe me.
Will Win: N/A
Could Win: Costume Design
My Rating: #34 out of 65


Hundraåringen Som Klev ut genom Fönstret och Försvann 
(The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed out the Window
and Disappeared)
1 Nomination
  • Makeup & Hairstyling
Director: Felix Herngren
Cast: Robert Gustafsson, Iwar Wiklander, David Wiberg, Mia Skäringer, Jens Hultén, Alan Ford, Georg Nikoloff, Bianca Cruzeiro, Sven Lönn

This was whimsical and very silly, and I have to say that it got a couple of good guffaws out of me. The 100-Year-Old Man is like an unpretentious version of The Butler or Forrest Gump, in which the main character (who is something of an explosives expert) meets Franco and Reagan and Stalin and Oppenheimer and a host of other important world leaders over the course of his century of life We are told this in flashback, of course. Meanwhile the real plot of the film – which is a sort of crime caper involving a great deal of money, a gang of skinheads, a rescued circus elephant, and more vodka than I could track – proceeds apace, filled with absurdity, cartoonish violence, and poetic justice. Robert Gustafsson, who plays the film's eponymous centenarian, is only half that old, and so this nomination is for his old-age makeup, which, I will admit, looks pretty great. Not as great as, say, Bad Grandpa from a couple of years ago, but pretty great. Usually this makeup category is filled with films that don't feature in the Best Picture category: movies like The Wolfman or The Iron Lady or, you know, Pirates of the Caribbean: at World's End, but invariably the one film that is the most respected of the bunch wins this Oscar. The 100-Year-Old Man, in other words, has no chance of winning, against its two rivals in this category: The Revenant, with its 12 nominations, and Mad Max: Fury Road, with its 10.
Will Win: N/A
Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #49 out of 65