Oscar Nominations 2021: 2 of 9

1. The Power of the Dog, Dune, Belfast, and West Side Story

King Richard

6 Nominations

• Picture
• Actor: Will Smith (The Pursuit of Happyness, Ali)
• Original Screenplay: Zach Baylin
• Supporting Actress: Aunjanue Ellis
• Film Editing: Pamela Martin (The Fighter)
• Song: Beyoncé Knowles-Carter & DIXSON

Director: Reinaldo Marcus Green

Cast: Smith, Ellis, Saniyya Sidney, Jon Bernthal, Demi Singleton, Tony Goldwyn, Mikayla Lashae Bartholomew, Daniele Lawson, Layla Crawford, Erika Ringor

I get the sort of heartswell that this movie produces, I think, but I just didn't respond the way most others did. It felt like a movie with very few stakes. Like... will Venus and Serena become the best tennis players in the world? I just don't know! I think I wanted something more complicated and less hagiographic. In any case, most other people I know really liked this film, and Will Smith has been the anointed frontrunner for Best Actor since this movie appeared in theatres. It was nowhere near one of my favorite performances of the year, but Smith is an excellent actor and a big movie star, and he doesn't have an Oscar yet. I am going to be happy to watch him win one. Aunjanue Ellis is a jobbing actor who has been working steadily for about 20 years, and it's great to see her get some recognition. She won't win on March 27, but her nomination is good news. Beyoncé has actually never been nominated for an Oscar, so, as this is their first opportunity to give her one, I think the Academy will choose to do so. While we're talking about Best Actor, I want to say that I am really, really sad that Simon Rex didn't make it into this category. His performance in Red Rocket is astounding; he's wonderful. You can see my other favorite performances here.

Will Win: Actor, Original Song

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #43 out of 56

Drive My Car (ドライブ・マイ・カー)

4 Nominations

• Picture
• Director: Hamaguchi Ryūsuke
• Adapted Screenplay: Hamaguchi Ryūsuke & Oe Takamasa
• International Film: Japan (Shoplifters, Departures, The Twilight Samurai, Muddy River, Kagemusha: the Shadow Warrior, Sandakan No. 8, Dodes'ka-den, Portrait of Chieko, Woman in the Dunes, Kwaidan, Koto, Immortal Love, The Burmese Harp, Samurai 1: Musashi Miyamoto, Gate of Hell, Rashomon)

Director: Ryūsuke

Cast: Nishijima Hidetoshi, Miura Tōko, Okada Masaki, Kirishima Reika, Park Yoo-rim, Jin Dae-yeon, Sonia Yuan, Abe Satoko

I am so surprised that everyone has responded to Drive My Car the way they have. Four nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay is so many nominations! The Academy loves this movie. I thought it was really good, but I don't understand why everyone is over the moon. For example, Shoplifters, which was nominated a few years ago, felt like a much better movie than this one. Oh well. It's weird how some things catch on and others don't. In any case, the performances are very very good, and the theatre sequences are great. This film is a shoo-in for the International Film award; it's Japan's seventeenth nomination in this category, and this will be its fifth win.

Will Win: International Film

Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #21 out of 56

Don't Look Up

4 Nominations

• Picture
• Original Screenplay: Adam McKay (Vice, The Big Short) & David Sirota
• Film Editing: Hank Corwin (Vice, The Big Short) 
• Score: Nicholas Britell (If Beale Street Could Talk, Moonlight)

Director: McKay

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Rob Morgan, Cate Blanchett, Meryl Streep, Jonah Hill, Tyler Perry, Timothée Chalamet, Ron Perlman, Himesh Patel, Melanie Lynskey

This is a pretty good movie. I didn't really like it, but it's a solid picture, and I laughed quite a lot. It's a really smug movie, though, and I guess that's Adam McKay in general, so there's no getting around that. Nicholas Britell's nomination was a bit of a surprise, and I'm happy to see him there. I don't think this can win anything, but it could maybe eke out a screenplay win. McKay won the screenplay award for The Big Short, and people do tend to like the kind of milquetoast politics Don't Look Up is peddling. But listen, I'm really not trying to be hard on this movie, and in fact, it deserved an Original Song nomination that it didn't get. I was in love with the Ariana Grande song in this movie, with hilarious lyrics like "Just look up / Turn off that shit-box News / 'Cause you're about to die soon everybody". It was one of the best things in the movie! Ariana Grande was robbed.
Will Win: N/A

Could Win: Original Screenplay

My Rating: #46 out of 56

Nightmare Alley

4 Nominations

• Picture
• Cinematography: Dan Laustsen (The Shape of Water)
• Production Design: Shane Vieau (The Shape of Water) & Tamara Deverell
• Costume Design: Luis Sequeira (The Shape of Water)

Director: Guillermo Del Toro

Cast: Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara, Toni Collette, Richard Jenkins, David Strathairn, Willem Dafoe, Ron Perlman, Mary Steenburgen

I do not know how this got nominated for Best Picture, but let's just say up front that this movie deserves its below-the-line nominations. This is a gorgeous looking film, and if I thought most of the performances were off, I can't come for the way the film looks. It's impeccable. You may know that this movie is a remake of a 1947 noir starring Tyrone Power, and one understands why Del Toro was so drawn to this original film. His team – Dan Laustsen, Shane Vieau, and Luis Sequeira – didn't win Oscars for their work in The Shape of Water, though, and I don't think they're going to win for this movie either. My take on this film is that I think it's enjoyable if you haven't seen the original, so, by all means check it out.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #45 out of 56

3. CODA, Licorice Pizza, Being the Ricardos, and The Lost Daughter
4. The Tragedy of Macbeth, Encanto, No Time to Die, and Flee
5. Tick, Tick... Boom!, Parallel Mothers, The Eyes of Tammy Faye, and The Worst Person in the World
6. Cruella, Spencer, The Hand of God, and Lunana: a Yak in the Classroom
7. Cyrano, The Mitchells vs the Machines, Luca, and Raya and the Last Dragon
8. Spider-man: No Way Home, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, and Free Guy

9. House of Gucci, Coming 2 America, and Four Good Days

Just Look Up

Don't Look Up had some really funny moments. I laughed out loud a couple of times. (Rob Morgan's wig made me laugh every time I saw it). But Don't Look Up is also long and relentless. I had to take a couple of breaks while it was on just because it hits you with the same kind of tone over and over and over. It was just a lot to have to process without pausing.

Don't Look Up wants to be a kind of modern-day Network, I guess, but I think what I needed was more from the Leonardo DiCaprio character. I think my favorite moment with that character was the moment where he's on the phone with Rob Morgan's character and he says "you probably haven't heard of me because I haven't published in a while". I also really liked the moment early on where he's on the phone with his wife talking about his two sons. We get a sense of who he is in these moments – a sense we get just once more while he's in bed with Cate Blanchett's character – but none of this is ever about mortality, about the actual fact of the world's ending and how he is processing that for himself.

The film is about the media circus and it is a media circus, and it never really stops to be about real humans or hippopotamuses or hummingbirds, even though those would appear to be important to Adam McKay. I liked DiCaprio in this, and I liked Blanchett, and Timmy. Jennifer Lawrence glowers through the movie, as she always does when she's supposed to be "acting". I'll never understand why a person who is so dynamic and has so many different expressions in interviews chooses to make only three or four dour faces when she's playing a character. It's insane to me. She's so bad.

The movie isn't bad, I don't think. I just didn't really like it. I found its tone strange, and it never felt like it switched over into being something heartfelt or powerful to me. I loved the little story about waking up with a deer that Robert Radochia tells at the end (his performance is excellent), but then the script has Timothée Chalamet say a very sincere prayer to the Christian god that had me howling with laughter. I think maybe I wasn't supposed to be laughing at that, but it was honestly so absurd that I couldn't help but look at it satirically.

I'm a homosexual, so I loved the Ariana Grande song, obviously. It's hilarious.

Oscar Nominations 2019: Part 1 of 11

Every year I post about each of the films nominated for Oscars (this year there are 33 + 10 short films). I see all of them except for the documentaries (I am just not that interested in documentary film; I'm not sure why).

As always, a large number of the films in my own top 10 for the year were passed over (Vazante, You Were Never Really Here, The Strange Ones, Lean on Pete), but some of them scored a nomination or two (Shoplifters, Into the Spider-verse, Mirai), and this year one was nominated for Best Picture (Roma). In other words, as there is every year, there is something for me to appreciate here, even as I am, as always, impatient with the Academy's choices.

My main complaint – and I am sure this will come up in my commentary in the following weeks – is that Academy voters (and guild voters, too) just don't see enough movies, especially films from other countries. A slate of nominees like the International Cinephile Society's list for 2019 is way better than the one that Oscar made. And I honestly think it's just that the voters in the ICS just see more movies. But I am done expecting the Academy to vote for really, really good stuff. They will always skew toward the mediocre, I think. And that is just how it goes.

As usual with these posts, I will go film by film discussing each movie individually rather than discussing categories, beginning with the movies most beloved by the Academy this year. If the nominee has been nominated for Oscars previously, he or she will be listed next to his/her name in parentheses).

This year's nominees:

Roma

10 Nominations

• Picture
• Director: Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity)
  
• Actress: Yalitza Aparicio
• Original Screenplay: Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity, Y Tu Mamá También)
• Supporting Actress: Marina de Tavira
• Cinematography: Alfonso Cuarón
• Production Design: Eugenio Caballero (Pan's Labyrinth) & Bárbara Enríquez
• Foreign Language Picture: Mexico (Biutiful, Pan's Labyrinth, The Crime of Father Amaro, Amores Perros, Letters from Marusia, Tlayucan, The Important Man, Macario)
  
• Sound Mixing
• Sound Editing

Director: Cuarón

Cast: Aparicio, Tavira, Nancy García García, Jorge Antonio Guerrero, Verónica García, Diego Cortina Autrey, Carlos Peralta, Daniela Demesa, Marco Graf, Fernando Grediaga, Andy Cortés

I loved this movie. I loved the way that it was shot. I loved the way that it mostly relegated the bourgeois problems of its supporting characters to the background in order to focus on its main character's challenges of life, love, and work. The fact that Roma was made in both Spanish and Mixteco felt really special. But more than all of this, the filmmaking is just superb, and Roma is able to focus on the quotidian and the epic simultaneously, and even more importantly to place the quotidian within the epic with deftness and intelligence. I found Roma a little more intellectually satisfying than emotionally satisfying, but overall I loved it. As for what this movie will win come Oscar Sunday... Cuarón is a lock for director, but I think the amount of love this movie saw when nominations were announced (both acting nominations were real surprises) means that Academy members love this movie a lot more than your everyday Netflix subscriber does. And, I have to say, the Academy is getting this one right. Oh, also, when Cuarón wins Best Director on February 24th, he will be the fifth Mexican director to win in the last six year. The will be the first time Mexico has won the Best Foreign Language Oscar.

Will Win: Picture, Director, Cinematography, Production Design, Foreign Language Picture

Could Win: Original Screenplay

My Rating: #9 out of 66

The Favourite

10 Nominations

• Picture
• Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
• Actress: Olivia Colman
• Original Screenplay: Deborah Davis & Tony McNamara
• Supporting Actress: Rachel Weisz (The Constant Gardener)
• Supporting Actress: Emma Stone (La La Land, Birdman or (the Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
• Cinematography: Robbie Ryan
• Film Editing: Yorgos Mavropsaridis
• Production Design: Fiona Crombie & Alice Felton 
• Costume Design: Sandy Powell (Mary Poppins Returns, Cinderella, 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: Lanthimos

Cast: Colan, Weisz, Stone, Nicholas Hoult, Joe Alwyn, James Smith, Mark Gatiss

I reviewed this movie here. The Favourite is a hilariously bizarre Lanthimosic version of English history. What's brilliant about it is that it looks like it's a period film, and it is a period film – it's about England's Queen Anne – but then it is also a Yorgos fucking Lanthimos movie, which means that it is also insane. This means that it is very very funny and people continuously behave in ways that surprise and shock the viewer. The worlds Lanthimos gives viewers access to make perfect sense, but they operate on their own internal logics. He's really an extraordinary filmmaker, and I can't wait to see what's next. The costumes simply must win. Powell has 3 Oscars already, but she hasn't won in 10 years, and anyway the Academy doesn't mind giving costume designers additional Oscars. Colleen Atwood won two years ago for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. She's gonna win. Whether anything else can win here, I'm not quite sure, although I think The Favourite will also take home Original Screenplay.

Will Win: Original Screenplay, Costume Design

Could Win: Actress, Film Editing, Production Design
My Rating: #17 out of 66

Vice

8 Nominations

• Picture
• Director: Adam McKay (The Big Short)
• Actor: Christian Bale (The Big Short, American Hustle, The Fighter)
• Original Screenplay: Adam McKay (The Big Short)
• Supporting Actor: Sam Rockwell (Three Billboards outside Ebbing Missouri)
• Supporting Actress: Amy Adams (American Hustle, The Master, The Fighter, Doubt, Junebug)
• Film Editing: Hank Corwin (The Big Short)
• Makeup & Hairstyling

Director: McKay

Cast: Bale, Adams, Steve Carrell, Rockwell, Jesse Plemons, Allison Pill, Eddie Marsan, Justin Kirk, Tyler Perry, LisaGay Hamilton, Lily Rabe, Bill Camp

I really disliked Vice, a dislike I wrote about here. I'm not here to say Vice is a bad film, but it definitely was not for me. I am surprised that the Academy loved this as much as it did. Three acting nominations is a lot, and this is Adam McKay's second best director nomination in just a few years. It's quite impressive. The reason Vice doesn't work, to my mind, is that McKay tried to do the kind of Brechtian historical analysis he did with The Big Short but instead of analyzing a historical moment he tried (half-heartedly) to analyze a man. It didn't work. As for winning Oscars, it looks right now like Christian Bale will take home his second acting Oscar. I don't think he's very good in the movie, but that seems to be a minority opinion. But let's take a moment to talk about Amy Adams, who always seems to get outshone in these movies with Christian Bale. I am not sure I understand that. I feel like this woman – who is excellent in everything, as far as we can tell – should probably be directing movies by now. I have a feeling she can probably do anything. Let's give her a bunch of money and see what she'll do. Also, Vice should probably win makeup and hairstyling. It's the most high profile of the nominees in that category.
Will Win: Actor, Makeup & Hairstyling

Could Win: Original Screenplay, Film Editing

My Rating: #65 out of 66

A Star Is Born

8 Nominations

• Picture
• Actor: Bradley Cooper (American Sniper, American Hustle, Silver Linings Playbook)
• Actress: Lady Gaga
• Adapted Screenplay: Bradley Cooper, Will Fetters & Eric Roth (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Munich, The Insider, Forrest Gump)
• Supporting Actor: Sam Elliott
  
• Cinematography: Matthew Libatique (Black Swan)
• Sound Mixing
• Song – "Shallow": Lady Gaga (The Hunting Ground), Mark Ronson, Anthony Rossomando & Andrew Wyatt 

Director: Cooper

Cast: Cooper, Gaga, Elliott, Andrew Dice Clay, Rafi Gavron, Anthony Ramos, Dave Chappelle, Drena De Niro, Barry Shabaka Henley, Michael D. Roberts, Michael J. Harney, Ron Rifkin, Greg Grunberg, D.J. Shangela Pierce, Willam Belli

I like this movie more now than I did when I saw it. Lady Gaga is a very good singer, and she is good in A Star Is Born whenever she is singing. Whenever she's not, I don't get it. As for Bradley Cooper, I'm actually mad that anyone is talking about any of these other actors. The idea that Cooper lost to Rami Malek at the Golden Globes is actually insane. And I don't understand how a beautiful, sensitive, heart-rending performance like his in this movie could be compared in any way to Bale's stoic cartoon of Dick Cheney. It's really absurd. Cooper is superb in this film. Some people are saying he was snubbed in the best director category... no. He's a brilliant actor and he should be awarded for that. I think A Star Is Born is not going to win Best Picture, although it certainly still might. I think its wins on the 24th will be in sound mixing (it wasn't nominated for sound editing) and best song. And the song is pretty fucking great, I have to say. But it's definitely insane that Hollywood has decided not to give Cooper any prizes for this movie which has made a ton of money and is actually really high quality. This is the most Hollywood of the top four movies this year. They really ought to give Cooper a little gold man.

Will Win: Sound Mixing, Song

Could Win: Picture, Actor, Actress
My Rating: #40 out of 66

A Vicious Bit of Smugness

Top of the list of people I don't want to spend 2 hours with: Dick Cheney and George W. Bush. A (however well-intentioned) comedy about Bush and Cheney's criminal hijacking of our government? Not fun. Thanks but no.

Mr. Bale as Cheney

In fact, though, Vice is much worse than all of this. Adam McKay has made a gimmicky film, filled with bits that range from silly to tasteless to downright cringe-worthy. There's a fake credits sequence in the middle of the movie, for example. It's a silly bit that goes on for far too long, especially since its smug irony is so palpable. And there's a painful and bizarrely unfunny sequence in which Christian Bale and Amy Adams speak to each other in faux-Shakespearean dialogue that is supposed to indicate how like Macbeth and his queen the Cheneys were. I rolled my eyes, but then it just kept going. It's one of the most awkward things I've seen on film in a while.

Mr. Rockwell as Bush

Everyone is saying Oh the film doesn't work at all, but Christian Bale is great. But I guess that isn't how I feel at all. The man is probably going to win an Oscar for this performance, but my impression of his performance is that it mainly consists of him slowing down his speech and talking out of the side of his mouth. Vice has almost nothing to say about Cheney as a man. It sees him as a nearly passionless, vicious, criminal without principles, and, listen, I tend to agree with that portrait. But all of that makes for one-dimensional storytelling, and Bale does nothing to help the film with its dimensional challenges.

Mr. Carell as Rummy

To be honest, though, I thought Amy Adams was great. Her soulless politician character feels fleshed out in a way that Bale's does not. And Sam Rockwell's George W. Bush? He gets most of the film's laughs, and so he's a welcome bit of knowing camp in a sea of camp that doesn't know it's camp – like Tyler Perry's performance as Colin Powell. Steve Carell's performance as Donald Rumsfeld goes for every easy unfunny joke you can imagine. There's this absurd sequence where a very young Dick Cheney asks a youngish Donald Rumsfeld But what do we believe? and Rummy looks at Cheney and cracks up laughing. He then keeps laughing. Like some kind of villain in a Despicable Me cartoon. Carrell's laughter goes on for a long time. The joke – to Rumsfeld – is that Cheney would actually believe that (these particular) Republicans wanted to accomplish anything for the U.S. citizenry with the power they've accumulated. How green Cheney is that he thinks these guys have any principles! Ho ho ho! What a belly laugh. But what is supposed to be funny for us? Are we expected to laugh cynically but ruefully at the calculated greed of these men? Aside from the fact that this is a very, very old bit worthy only of a malefactor in a Saturday morning cartoon, there is simply nothing for us to find humorous at this point. Rumsfeld doesn't believe in anything and Cheney won't believe in anything either. Ok. Where's the joke?

Vice does teach us some things. There were a few things I didn't know about the Bush–Cheney years that Vice really made clear. But mostly I found this film smug and stupid.

Oscar Nominees 2016: Part 2 of 11

Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6. Part 7. Part 8. Part 9. Part 10. Part 11.

Bridge of Spies

6 Nominations

• Picture
• Original Screenplay: Ethan Coen (True Grit, A Serious Man, No Country for Old Men, O Brother Where Art Thou?, Fargo), Joel Coen (True Grit, A Serious Man, No Country for Old Men, O Brother Where Art Thou?, Fargo) & Matt Charman
• Supporting Actor: Mark Rylance
• Original Score: Thomas Newman (Saving Mr. Banks, Skyfall, WALL·E, The Good German, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, Finding Nemo, Road to Perdition, American Beauty, Unstrung Heroes, Little Women, The Shawshank Redemption)
• Production Design: Adam Stockhausen (The Grand Budapest Hotel, 12 Years a Slave), Rena DeAngelo & Bernard Henrich
• Sound Mixing

Director: Steven Spielberg

Cast: Tom Hanks, Rylance, Amy Ryan, Sebastian Koch, Austin Sowell, Will Rogers, Scott Shepherd, Mikhail Gorevoy, Alan Alda

First of all, this was an original screenplay? Bridge of Spies is incoherently stuffed full of so much stuff that I would have bet $100 it was an adaptation of some absurd novel. Huh. Oh well. I thought this movie was pretty boring and unsuspenseful, and had a long conversation about it here. But I am a Spielberg hater and everyone knows it, so I guess this shouldn't deter you if you usually like him. Still, the Best Picture nomination is a kind of strange stand-out here. The Academy obviously liked the movie (a screenplay nomination is a big deal), but they ignored Bridge of Spies' director, its lead actor, and its photographer Janusz Kaminski, so it didn't like the movie that much. Thomas Newman deserves his nomination here (his twelfth). He has never won an Oscar and, once again, will not win this year. It's starting to be a very notable situation. I keep hoping he'll write the score for a movie that people can really get behind. I expect almost all of the Academy's love for this film to have evaporated by February 28th. No Oscars for this movie.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #56 out of 61

Carol

6 Nominations

• Actress: Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine, Elizabeth: the Golden Age, I'm Not There., Notes on a Scandal, The Aviator, Elizabeth)
• Adapted Screenplay: Phyllis Nagy
• Supporting Actress: Rooney Mara (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo)
• Cinematography: Ed Lachman (Far from Heaven)
• Original Score: Carter Burwell
• Costume Design: Sandy Powell (Cinderella, 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: Todd Haynes

Cast: Blanchett, Mara, Sarah Paulson, Kyle Chandler, Jake Lacy, John Magaro, Cory Michael Smith

I didn't write my own review of this because everyone seemed to like it so much and I was sort of soft on it. Besides, Carol is gorgeous – beautifully designed, beautifully acted, exquisitely costumed – and the script is really tight and lovely. For me, though, something was off. I wanted something else from Carol, and the more I think about it the more I just felt sort of weirded out by the idea of "true love" or the idea of these two women being in love. I just didn't buy this relationship as fully as I wanted to buy it. As I puzzle this out, what I've come to believe is that the character of Carol is really much more like the main character in Purple Noon and The Talented Mr. Ripley than Todd Haynes (and Cate Blanchett) would like us to believe. If this is so, then Carol herself is not really to be trusted – her actions should be more mysterious. We should be spending much of our time puzzling her out from the perspective of the Therese character. Instead, the film doesn't see Carol as a problematic; Haynes presents her straightforwardly as a woman who knows herself well and is beaten down (but unbroken) by a constraining, difficult society. I wanted more complexity here.

Will Win: Costume Design

Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #31 out of 61

The Big Short

5 Nominations

• Picture
• Director: Adam McKay
• Adapted Screenplay: Charles Randolph
• Supporting Actor: Christian Bale (American Hustle, The Fighter)
• Film Editing: Hank Corwin

Director: McKay

Cast: Bale, Steve Carrell, Brad Pitt, Ryan Gosling, Finn Wittrock, Hamish Linklater, Marisa Tomei, Adepero Oduye, Rafe Spall, Jeremy Strong, John Magaro, Melissa Leo, Billy Magnussen, Max Greenfield

I started off thinking this movie was smug and more flash than substance. In a lot of ways the movie stayed smug, flashy, and insubstantial, but I came around to the way it was working as the movie progressed and really began to enjoy myself. The direction and screenplay are the most fascinating thing about this movie. They both really are excellent: the film takes a Brechtian tack toward its subject matter, addressing its audience directly, historicizing its narrative, teaching us about its difficult subject matter, and then asking us to get emotional not about characters so much as information. It's an extraordinary choice, and McKay commits to this fully. His commitment pays off and The Big Short works marvelously. It's funny and hard hitting and analytical. As I said, it maintains its rather smug tone for most of its running time (Brad Pitt's character is the lone voice of earnestness), but this doesn't seem to have bothered most audiences, and The Big Short surprised everyone by winning the big prize at the Producers Guild Awards on January 23rd. I expect it to win Adapted Screenplay for sure, but support for this movie may swell even more by the time we get to late February, and it may take home Picture and Director, too.
Will Win: Adapted Screenplay

Could Win: Director

My Rating: #13 out of 61

Star Wars: Episode VII - the Force Awakens

5 Nominations

• Film Editing: Maryann Brandon & Mary Jo Markey
• Original Score: John Williams (The Book Thief, Lincoln, War Horse, The Adventures of Tintin, Munich, Memoirs of a Geisha, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Catch Me If You Can, Artificial Intelligence: A.I., Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, The Patriot, Angela's Ashes, Saving Private Ryan, Amistad, Sleepers, Nixon, Sabrina, Schindler's List, JFK, Home Alone, Born on the Fourth of July, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, The Accidental Tourist, Empire of the Sun, The Witches of Eastwick, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, The River, Return of the Jedi, E.T.: the Extra-Terrestrial, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Empire Strikes Back, Superman, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Jaws, The Towering Inferno, Tom Sawyer, Cinderella Liberty, Images, The Poseidon Adventure, Fiddler on the Roof, The Reivers, Goodbye Mr. Chips, Valley of the Dolls)
• Visual Effects
• Sound Mixing
• Sound Editing

Director: J.J. Abrams

Cast: Harrison Ford, John Boyega, Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, Oscar Isaac, Carrie Fisher, Domhnall Gleeson, Lupita Nyong'o, Peter Mayhew, Max von Sydow, Andy Serkis, Mark Hamill, Anthony Daniels

This was cool, if completely predictable. But the thing is is that The Force Awakens is predictable in all the right ways, in ways that work to tell us that the world makes a kind of sense, that things are getting better, that our memories matter, that dad is looking out for us, that each of us has a heroine hiding inside us waiting to come out and kick the ass of the evil corporation/religion that doesn't care about people's lives and is seeking to destroy everyone in the world. So if The Force Awakens delivers exactly what it is meant to deliver and nothing more, it is hard to fault anyone for that. Anything more ambitious wouldn't have worked to please crowds as much as this film has. And for the record, five nominations is a ton for a Star Wars movie these days and even a Star Trek movie. The prequels to the original trilogy only ever got five nominations total, but then, they sucked, so that makes sense. John Williams has received his umpteenth Oscar nomination for this score, and I have to admit that the score is serviceable and interesting, though it doesn't really manage to transcend the original Star Wars material in too many ways – and not nearly as much as Ludwig Göransson's Creed score does with the original Rocky material.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: Film Editing, Original Score, Visual Effects, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing

My Rating: #27 out of 61

More 2015 Films. Awards-Season Edition. Part 2.

Adam McKay's The Big Short is funny and smart and moves quickly.

It is also filled with delightful, interesting characters, and a whole bunch of total morons. The Big Short is about how the housing bubble burst in late 2007, and it follows a group of guys who bet against the housing market and therefore made a profit off of the collapse of the economy of most of the world. In other words, it is kind of about guys who profited off of everyone else's bad luck.

But it is a tribute to Adam McKay that this film keeps its characters in perspective enough that they are mostly likable guys. The film's much bigger challenge is explaining the complicated financial situation that really occurred back in 2007. This is definitely a tough row to hoe for a comedy, but The Big Short takes a very clever, Brechtian approach. Instead of trying to tell us all of the things we need to know in some kind of expository way where the information is embedded in dialogue that the characters would never actually say (à la CSI), The Big Short's narrator simply stops the film, addresses the audience, and tells us that "now chef Anthony Bourdain will explain what you need to know". The Big Short is the most Brechtian of this year's films, and it had a true Brechtian effect: getting its audience emotional about information. My sisters and I left the theatre pissed; the mortgage crisis affected all of us very much.

The Big Short is also filled with some pretty excellent performances: Steve Carrell and Christian Bale are particularly good, but the film boasts great performances by Finn Wittrock, Ryan Gosling, Hamish Linklater, Adepero Oduye, Rafe Spall, Jeremy Strong, John Magaro, and Brad Pitt. Oh my god, and Melissa Leo has a hilarious cameo. Again, let me underline that this is a hilarious movie about the mortgage crisis and the collapse of the world economy. It is also a film that explains this crisis to its audience, and points out why it happened, who was responsible, and who was affected by the actions of these criminals, none of whom was ever indicted.

Oscar possibilities for The Big Short: Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay seem the most likely. To my mind Picture is a long shot and Screenplay is a lock, but who knows. If people see it, they will respond favorably.

* * *

France's entry this year for the Best Foreign Language Film award is called Mustang, and it is directed by the Turkish-French director Deniz Gamze Ergüven. Mustang is a powerhouse of a film and one of the absolute best of the year.

Mustang follows five sisters living in a small town about an hour from Istanbul. The girls have almost all hit puberty, but are all very much still girls. Early in the film, a crazy village lady accuses the girls of being whores, and their grandmother and uncle, who are raising them, basically lose their minds, lock the girls in the house, stop sending them to school, and begin marrying them off one by one.

The film is made like a suspense-movie, and Mustang is packed with surprises and peripities that you will not see coming at all. It's a story of religious extremism and the ways that religions attempt to control the bodies of women and work to destroy them.

I cannot recommend this enough. It's enjoyable, exciting, and packs an emotional punch. I loved the young women in the film in the extreme. Ergüven's work is extraordinary, and she fills Mustang with lighthearted moments as well as dangerous ones, so that even amid the strict control of the religious nutjobs in the movie, the possibilities for freedom and pleasure shine through. These girls' personalities are bright and beautiful, and they cannot be completely contained by the rules and strictness placed upon them.

Oscar possibilities for Mustang: this film will be nominated for Best Foreign Language picture for sure. No question. It's one of the best movies of the year.

* * *

This is, perhaps, going to seem a little crazy, but Hungary's entry for Best Foreign Language picture is even better. László Nemes's Son of Saul is my favorite film for 2015. 

Son of Saul is a film about Auschwitz, so it isn't going to be for everyone, and it is at times very very difficult to watch. This is a movie about horror, and there isn't any hope to be found in it. Nemes has designed his picture so that it attempts to communicate this as best as it can. It is, to my mind, basically a perfect film, with one of the best central performances of the year, by Géza Röhrig.

I don't want to spoil the movie, but the main character Saul works for one of the Sonderkommandos in the camp. He gets rid of the bodies of Jews that have been gassed, he burns corpses, he shovels ashes into a river, he rifles through the belongings of people murdered by the Nazis in order to pay off guards. This is a portrait of the Final Solution that is like nothing you've ever seen. And the filmmaking is so exquisitely good, that it is organized so that we see every aspect of the camps: the doctor's surgery rooms, the ovens, the yard, the officers dining halls, and the showers. It's absolutely fucking harrowing. And it does not let up. This is not a film that is designed to let up. Nemes wants to show us genocide without the bullshit peddled to us by films like Life Is Beautiful or The Book Thief.

Central to the plot of Son of Saul is the main character's quest to find a rabbi to say Kaddish for a small boy who has been killed in the gas chambers. Early on in the movie he says to one of his companions that he wants to do this: to find a rabbi who can say the prayer for the dead correctly, to mourn for this boy. His companion says "we do say Kaddish for them", and Saul replies simply It isn't enough. To put this another way, the central thrust of Son of Saul is an attempt to mourn correctly for the genocide of European Jews. But this is a task that is already doomed to failure. It isn't enough. It cannot be enough.

Son of Saul had me by the scruff of my neck for its entire running time. It's never boring, not for one second, and it is mostly simply terrifying. Death is around the corner for this man at every instant in this film, and I found this more exciting than any action movie this year. I sat in my seat willing Saul to find a rabbi, to say this prayer, to be successful at mourning. I guess it won't spoil anything for me to say to you that things do not end well for Saul, whether or not he is able to mourn for the boy. The camps were a closed system of power and destruction, designed to destroy as many Jewish lives as possible, and there is no hope to be taken from a story that bears witness to this destruction with any accuracy.

Oscar possibilities for Son of Saul: It's going to win the Oscar for Foreign Language. Done and done.