Oscar Nominations 2022: 3 of 9

This year's nominees:

Avatar: the Way of Water

4 Nominations

• Picture
• Production Design: Dylan Cole, Vanessa Cole & Ben Procter
• Sound
• Visual Effects

Director: James Cameron

Cast: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Britain Dalton, Jack Champion, Kate Winslet, Cliff Curtis, Brendan Cowell, Jemaine Clement, Bailey Bass, Trinity Jo-Li Bliss, Joel David Moore, Edie Falco, CCH Pounder

I expected to love this, and... I loved it. It's visually stunning, and it's a superb action movie that frequently feels just like you're on an enormous ride. I had a great time. The double fight sequence at the film's end is completely excellent. I think the movie thinks it is getting to important questions of meaning and deep themes, but actually Avatar just needs to be enjoyed on the level of pleasurable visual spectacle. I don't think any movie this year can top Avatar for that. It's just extraordinary. I'm also currently obsessed with Polynesia, and when I watched this I had just finished the book Sea People; I loved the way the film made the new Na'vi we met into a riff on Polynesian societies, with tattooing and a different relationship with the water. And then they cast one of my favorite actors, Cliff Curtis, as the Polynesian Na'vi chief? Great move. Oh one other thing I loved. I was super into the way the movie treated the whale-adjacent creatures as persons, referring to the Kate Winslet character's friend as a composer and talking about how much she wanted a child. I do not understand how Britain Dalton's character began understanding the whale-language instantly, but hey, not all of it has to make sense.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: Production Design, Sound, Visual Effects

My Rating: #9 out of 63

Triangle of Sadness

3 Nominations

• Picture
• Director: Ruben Östlund
• Original Screenplay: Ruben Östlund

Director: Östlund

Cast: Charlbi Dean, Harris Dickinson, Dolly De Leon, Woody Harrelson, Vicky Berlin, Zlatko Burić, Arvin Kananian, Sunnyi Melles, Amanda Walker, Oliver Ford Davies

I know lots of people loved Triangle of Sadness, and I wanted to love it. I love Ruben Östlund's other movies, and his brand of satire and sincerity makes great sense to me. This movie is divided into three parts. Part one is great, and part two is better than great. It's absolutely hilarious, and it's so intensely outrageous that I was laughing out loud, nearly in tears in the theatre and completely enjoying myself. But then act three happens. In this part of the film, a bunch of rich folks are stranded on a deserted island and they expect a cleaning woman from their yacht to work for them by catching food for them and helping them survive even though they are themselves useless/helpless. This is a funny conceit, and it's made all the more enjoyable because of brilliant acting by Dolly De Leon and Harris Dickinson. This even has the added element of sexual politics with Dickinson trading sexual favors for other favors. But the trouble with this act is that it's the plot of Lina Wertmüller's 1974 film Travolti da un Insolito Destino nell'Azzurro Mare d'Agosto (Swept Away), which starred Giancarlo Giannini and Mariangela Melato. Original screenplay? I've literally seen the whole thing before. Indeed, Wertmüller's movie was remade in 2002 by Guy Ritchie with Madonna and Adriano Giannini (Giancarlo's son). I know that if I hadn't already seen this movie I would have liked it more, but I have seen it, so Triangle of Sadness fell flat for me.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #44 out of 63

The Whale

3 Nominations

• Actor: Brendan Fraser
• Supporting Actress: Hong Chau
• Make-up & Hairstyling

Director: Darren Aronofsky

Cast: Brendan Fraser, Hong Chau, Sadie Sink, Ty Simpkins, Samantha Morton, Sathya Sridharan

I have already written out most of my feelings about Darren Aronofsky's film. I won't repeat much of that here, but I will say that I hated this movie; it's the worst movie I saw in 2022 (so far). However, I am delighted for Brendan Fraser, and I won't be at all mad to see him win this Oscar. He's great, and he's had a lot of gaps in his wonderful career, so I'm very glad to see him back in the spotlight and hopefully getting more work. It's weird that it has to be in this enormous fat suit and for this stupid movie, but what can you do? I also think this movie will win for best make-up: the fat suit actually was the most realistic thing in this intensely unrealistic film, to my mind, so giving it an Oscar makes sense to me.
Will Win: Actor, Make-up & Hairstyling

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #63 out of 63

Babylon

3 Nominations

• Production Design: Anthony Carlino & Florencia Martin
• Score: Justin Hurwitz (La La Land)
• Costume Design: Mary Zophres (The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, La La Land, True Grit)

Director: Damien Chazelle

Cast: Diego Calva, Margot Robbie, Brad Pitt, Jovan Adepo, Jean Smart, Li Jun Li, Lukas Haas, Max Minghella, Olivia Hamilton, Eric Roberts, Katherine Waterston, Olivia Wilde, Ethan Suplee

This is a very good movie, at least for most of its running time. For its first two acts I was having a great time. I say first two acts, but one does wonder how many acts this movie had. It really was far too long of a film, and I think it might have done a lot better with the Academy if it had been shorter – even by forty minutes or so. This movie begins with a party, and the entire thing is wild and fast-moving, and I enjoyed myself thoroughly. Having Brad Pitt at the film's center during this part of the movie makes things so much easier. Watching him, I just sort of relax. Like, I know he's going to be great and he's going to keep this movie working perfectly. Then we're making movies on two different sets simultaneously before sound pictures, and the whole thing is pleasurable, like really just fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants fun. Somewhere in act two we descend into the bowels of hell, though, and the film really takes a perverse turn. I rather liked this part too, actually, but it did bring things down quite a bit, perhaps too far for Chazelle ever to be able to bring us back up from it. For the film's final section, we jump ahead to 1952 and sit in a theatre and watch Singin' in the Rain with Diego Calva. This is where the film really lost me. The character cries because he remembers the people he made movies with, but the film we're watching has proved what Jean Smart's character said to Brad Pitt's. The town doesn't care about you. They remember you by transforming your pain into something else, writing songs for other actors to sing, and forgetting everything you went through so that instead of remembering they can think about the new stars, the new costumes, the new audiences, the new dollars they can rake in. For me, the ending of this film is coldly cynical, and yet Chazelle asks us to feel very different, satisfied, exultant emotions. This section didn't sit right with me, but Babylon is still a really good movie.

Will Win: Score

Could Win: Production Design
My Rating: #15 out of 63

1. Everything Everywhere All at Once, The Banshees of Inisherin, All Quiet on the Western Front, and Elvis

2. The Fabelmans, Tár, Top Gun: Maverick, and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

More posts coming soon:

4. The Batman, Women Talking, Living, and Aftersun
5. Blonde, To Leslie, Glass Onion, and Causeway
6. Argentina, 1985, Close, Eo, and The Quiet Girl
7. Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, Pinocchio, Puss in Boots: the Last Wish, Turning Red, and The Sea Beast
8. Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths, Empire of Light, Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris, RRR, and Tell It like a Woman

Check out my new book Love Is Love Is Love – out March 24!

Oscar Nominations 2019: Part 3 of 11

Part 1: Roma, The Favourite, Vice, A Star Is Born.
Part 2: Black Panther, BlacKkKlansman, Green Book, Bohemian Rhapsody.
Part 3:

Mary Poppins Returns

4 Nominations

• Production Design: John Myhre (Nine, Dreamgirls, Memoirs of a Geisha, Chicago, Elizabeth) & Gordon Sim (Nine, Chicago)
  
• Costume Design: Sandy Powell (The Favourite, 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)
• Score: Marc Shaiman (South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut, Patch Adams, The First Wives Club, The American President, Sleepless in Seattle)
  
• Song - "The Place Where Lost Things Go": Marc Shaiman (South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut, Patch Adams, The First Wives Club, The American President, Sleepless in Seattle) & Scott Wittman
  

Director: Rob Marshall

Cast: Emily Blunt, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Pixie Davies, Nathanael Saleh, Joel Dawson, Ben Whishaw, Emily Mortimer, Colin Firth, Julie Walters, Meryl Streep, Dick Van Dyke, Angela Lansbury, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, Jeremy Swift, David Warner

This is a charming little film. It does feel just a tad off – Emily Blunt is cute, but she doesn't quite feel like Mary Poppins. She isn't, after all, Julie Andrews. How could she be? Mary Poppins Returns is less stagey than his other films. I found that to be quite appealing. I find myself so frustrated with the sound-stage look of most of his films, and so I was delighted that this movie was underneath the lovely London sky, so to speak. But then... the biggest musical number in the movie is, of course, on a sound stage. I really cannot understand why Marshall does this. You're making a movie, sir. Go outside for Heaven's sake. Still, I was delighted that Marshall actually cast two theatre actors in his film. It's always nice when actors in Hollywood movies can actually sing. Emily Blunt doesn't have a great voice (again, she's not Dame Julie), but her voice is pretty when she uses her full voice and lets go of breathy sound. Speaking of Blunt, she just missed a best actress nomination here, and I think it speaks volume for the imagination of the Academy here that she did. Blunt was only ever going to be a also-ran kind of nominee. The Academy, in fact, consistently shows imagination and principle when voting for best actress nominees (except when it comes to Meryl Streep), and they deserve credit for that. I think this movie will win score, since Justin Hurwitz's gorgeous First Man score somehow got snubbed. And it will deserve it. Marc Shaiman's score is lovely, and the songs are mostly lovely, and this movie was pretty damn cute.
Will Win: Score

Could Win: Song

My Rating: #31 out of 66

First Man

4 Nominations

• Production Design: Nathan Crowley (Dunkirk, Interstellar, The Dark Knight, The Prestige) & Kathy Lucas
  
• Sound Mixing
• Sound Editing
• Visual Effects

Director: Damien Chazelle

Cast: Ryan Gosling,Claire Foy, Jason Clarke, Kyle Chandler, Patrick Fugit, Christopher Abbott, Corey Stoll, Ciarán Hinds, Pablo Schreiber, Shea Wigham, Lukas Haas, Ethan Embry, Olivia Hamilton, Brian d'Arcy James, Cory Michael Smith

This movie was not for me, despite Ryan Gosling's brilliant performance at this film's center. I wrote a lot about what I liked and didn't like and why I didn't think it worked, so I won't rehash that here. What I want to say about these nominations is that Justin Hurwitz's score for First Man was literally the best thing about the film, and the fact that the music branch did not nominate him is actually crazy. To have nominated Alexandre Desplat (last year's winner and now 10-time nominee) is just insanely conservative. I do not understand. The music branch tried some new things this year with its nomination process – they always seem to be doing that – and that is fine, but they need to figure out a way to become less insular. The music branch is small, and they seem to nominate the same people over and over. It's very frustrating. Hurwitz's work this year was superb. I will complain more about the music branch when we get to The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, I'm sure, so I'll stop now, but I've listen to the score for First Man more than any other score this year, and I can't imagine anyone sitting down to listen to the Isle of Dogs score more than a couple of times.

Will Win: Visual Effects
Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #43 out of 66

Zimna Wojna (Cold War)

3 Nominations

• Director: Paweł Pawlikowski
• Cinematography: Łukasz Żal (Ida)
  
• Foreign Language Picture: Poland (Ida, In Darkness, Katyń, Man of Iron, The Young Girls of Wilko, Nights Days, The Deluge, Promised Land, Pharaoh, Knife in the Water)

Director: Pawlikowski

Cast: Malek

For me, Cold War isn't quite as great as Ida, but I think this is mostly because of the subject matter and not because of the work the director is doing. Pawlikowski is obviously a superb filmmaker. This is an epic story, and it is told economically and beautifully. All of the actors are absolutely excellent, and Joanna Kulig probably should have been in the running for best actress. Yalitza Aparicio is great, but Kulig's performance in this is really searing. Pawlikowski's best director nomination was perhaps a surprise to some folks; it wasn't to me. The directing branch frequently does things right and selects excellent filmmakers from around the globe. Occasionally a stinker gets in, but usually they do things well. It's great to see Łukasz Żal here again too. His work is just so good. In short, the fact that this has 3 nominations speaks very highly of the Academy's choices this year. These are discerning, excellent nominations. I don't think Cold War can win any awards on Oscar night, but good for Pawlikowski. I can't wait to see what he'll make next.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: Actor, Film Editing
My Rating: #28 out of 66

One Small Step for Man

First Man, Damien Chazelle's new Neil Armstrong picture, left me pretty cold.

Oddly enough, this isn't because of Ryan Gosling, whom people insist on calling cold and reserved. I am not sure that I understand why everyone insists on referring to him as distant or standoffish when he gives such sensitive, heartfelt performances that – at least to me – feel open and vulnerable. And he smiles a ton in this movie. He is really enjoying himself here. It isn't as though he's doing that silly Jennifer Lawrence thing where she pretends to be very serious in a movie because she thinks "that's what acting looks like". In First Man, Gosling plays a man who has trouble connecting with others about things that are not aerospace or engineering. But it isn't as though he doesn't let the camera see his vulnerability or as though he hides from us what's happening with him. In fact, I think Gosling's performance is excellent. I loved Neil Armstrong by the end of this film. I felt for him deeply. The reason the film is cold is that Damien Chazelle seems to have intended it that way.

First Man is designed to be very specific about the technical elements of space flight. We get the astronout's perspective for several sequences in the movie, and these sequences are moments in the movie when we are supposed to be flying through space. But because we have a camera perspective that is limited by the astronaut's position, these sequences refuse to soar. They have no emotional pull and instead take on the kind of businesslike, keep-my-head-down-and-survive attitude for which Neil Armstrong was known. In other words, I'm saying that I understand what Chazelle was going for with these sequences, but they severely hamper the film's ability to connect with the audience emotionally.

As I say, the acting is not the problem. Gosling is great, and Claire Foy is very good, and the supporting cast – Jason Clarke, Christopher Abbott (love him!), Patrick Fugit (love him!), Kyle Chandler (love), Ciarán Hinds (love), Pablo Schrieber (love), Corey Stoll – they're all great. Little Luke Winters, who plays the Armstrongs' son Rick, is fantastic.

Christopher Abbott and Ryan Gosling

But the filmmaking is distant. It's not a warm film, and Chazelle seems to be keeping a respectful distance from his characters, as though they're a little too precious to be approached. What we learn about them is basically what we already knew: that they were the emotionally distant men of mid-century America who didn't know how to talk to their kids and gave their careers more affection than their wives but of course they were also deeply emotional men who had dreams of discovery and were willing to sacrifice their lives in quiet, unsung heroism. This struck me as mostly cliché, all the more so because it doesn't ask us to think with a new perspective about these men. In many ways it just tells us that although we might complain about these men a lot, and think they're sexist old dudes who didn't consider women, people of color, and the environment when they made their decisions, we should still be appreciative of them because they taught us all – take your pick – to dream, to look up at the sky and see possibility, to stand together and connect while we watch history in the making. Perhaps all that is true, but I feel like I've heard that song before.

There is a sequence near the end of act two that puts the space program in context, with an interview with Kurt Vonnegut where he's like why are we spending all this money to go to the moon when New York City needs infrastructure? This sequence even calls out the whiteness of the project by playing almost a full minute of a great poem by Gil-Scott Heron (performed by Leon Bridges) called "Whitey on the Moon":

I can't pay no doctor bills

But whitey's on the moon

Ten years from now I'll be payin' still

While whitey's on the moon

The man just upped my rent last night

'Cause whitey's on the moon 

No hot water, no toilets, no lights

But whitey's on the moon

But although First Man acknowledges this problem with the Gemini/Apollo projects, it doesn't have anything to say about it at all. It's as though by acknowledging the problems in such a nicely realized sequence, it can simply move on and go back to ignoring them.

I need to say another thing about this movie and my resistance to it. One of the reasons I had trouble connecting is that Linus Sandgren's photography is really unattractive. Now, maybe it's because I'm used to space movies being gorgeous to look at – films like Sunshine or Gravity or Interstellar, or even popular films about space like Rogue One or Life or Star Trek Beyond – or maybe it's because the most recent movie we all saw about the space race was the candy-coated Hidden Figures, but First Man looks ugly. The visuals at NASA are not beautiful at all, focusing as Chazelle is doing, on minutiae and the astronauts' real lives, and maybe I could excuse that in the name of authenticity. But then the sequences at the Armstrong house are equally unattractive looking. The film is just not shot lovingly. The whole thing feels distant, as though that really was 50 years ago and we simply cannot have access to it. (Also I hated the costumes.)

I think for First Man to work, we needed – in addition to the day-to-day banalities of being an astronaut – also a sense of awe about the moon. We needed access to Armstrong's desire for the moon. Chazelle's film references this repeatedly in the film. Armstrong stares at the moon and the moon stares back. But there is no wonder here, no clear communication of what is so amazing and cool about space travel. Only business-like exactitude. And I know that the point of First Man is that this is why those Apollo missions were successful: A regular, brilliant guy who did the right thing and kept his head down and got the work done is how the U.S. achieved this awesome thing. Fine. But we needed more access to the awe.

There are a few great sequences in First Man, and I liked the movie well enough, but I'm afraid it never really soars.

Oscar Noms 2017: 1 of 13

Every year in the weeks leading up the Academy Awards ceremony, I post my thoughts on all of the nominees, although I exempt myself from the documentaries because I don't really like documentaries all that much. For me that means 52 films this year (5 more than last year). This is a strange year in many ways, but perhaps the most normal in recent memory.

A while ago I posted an elaborate set of reasons for why I still pay attention to the Oscars, I want to amend this in light of a philosophy I developed regarding the foreign language films:

If you have a desire to complain about movies that were snubbed or passed over or whatever, here's what I will say: if there are movies that you loved that you are sad didn't get nominated, comfort yourself by reminding yourself that you've already seen those movies! Use the Academy, instead, to draw your attention to movies you haven't seen. Even when the Academy creates a mess, they're still going to point us toward some great movies. For example, my absolute favorite movie for 2016, Embrace of the Serpent, was mostly on my radar because it was nominated for Foreign Language Picture last year.

A good chunk of the films in my top 10 for the year were passed over (American Honey, The Innocents, The Handmaiden, Midnight Special), but some of them scored a nomination or two (Captain Fantastic, 20th Century Women, Nocturnal Animals), and two were nominated for Best Picture (Manchester by the Sea and Moonlight). In short, there is lots to appreciate here, even if the Academy and I don't always agree. And this year, there is more to be happy about then ever. The nominees this year are more diverse than ever, and the nominated class of 2017 is going to look more like it should than it has in a long time.

I will go film by film 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:

La La Land

14 Nominations

• Picture
• Director: Damien Chazelle
• Actor: Ryan Gosling (Half Nelson)
• Actress: Emma Stone (Birdman or the Unexpected Value of Ignorance)
• Original Screenplay: Damien Chazelle (Whiplash)
• Cinematography: Linus Sandgren
• Film Editing: Tom Cross (Whiplash)
• Production Design: David Wasco & Sandy Reynolds-Wasco
• Costume Design: Mary Zophres (True Grit)
• Score: Justin Hurwitz
• Sound Mixing
• Sound Editing
• Song: "Audition (The Fools Who Dream)"
• Song: "City of Stars"

Director: Chazelle

Cast: Gosling, Stone, John Legend, Finn Wittrock, JK Simmons, Rosemarie DeWitt

The Academy clearly loved this movie – 14 nominations ties the record held by All about Eve (1950) and Titanic (1997) for the most nominations any film has received – and there is actually lots to love about this movie. For me, the whole is not quite as good as the sum of its parts, but this is by no means a bad movie. In fact, it is very good. There are just a lot of better things out there. My chief problem with La La Land is that it is peddling a bunch of romantic nonsense. For the folks behind La La Land, all you need are dreams, and you can succeed. In fact, the film jumps forward five years in order to skip over all of the actual work needed to succeed in any field. La La Land wants only dreams – and it runs for the Hollywood Hills as soon as it's time to get down to business. In any case, 2016 was a rough year of all of us and maybe the Academy just needs a little singing and dancing to get them through, you know? If they want to pretend that Los Angeles is like a musical comedy, then, well, can we really blame them? Musical comedy is certainly preferable to the orange hellscape of corruption that is the United States government. But let's talk about each nomination in turn, because it deserves all of its sound nominations and its song nominations. And if the singing is terrible, Justin Hurwitz' score is gorgeous and totally makes up for that; I listen to it all the time. Production design, cinematography, and editing are indeed all well-deserved nominations. I am less sold on the above-the-line nominations (director, picture, actor, actress), Chazelle, Gosling, and Stone are all hard workers and none has ever won before, so it's hard to be mad about any of this. In fact, if you look at the list of collaborators above, you will find only won Oscar winner – Tom Cross. This is a strong team, and I am happy for them, even if the awards sweep on February 26th is going to mean for a less interesting telecast than usual.

Will Win: Picture, Director, Actress, Cinematography, Film Editing, Production Design, Costume Design, Original Score, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Song ("City of Stars")

Could Win: Actor, Original Screenplay

My Rating: #28 out of 84

Moonlight

8 Nominations

• Picture
• Director: Barry Jenkins
• Adapted Screenplay: Barry Jenkins & Tarrel Alvin McCraney
• Supporting Actor: Mahershala Ali
• Supporting Actor: Naomie Harris
• Cinematography: James Laxton
• Film Editing: Joi McMillon & Nat Sanders
• Score: Nicholas Britell

Director: Jenkins

Cast: Naomie Harris, Trevante Rhodes, André Holland, Mahershala Ali, Janelle Monáe, Ashton Sanders, Alex Hibbert, Jaden Piner, Jharrel Jerome

This movie is absolutely great, and I am so happy that it has received so much love. I have already written about it here, so I won't go into it again. When I saw Moonlight, I immediately thought that there was no way the Academy was going to pay any attention to it at all, and I have been continually surprised by the love showered on it by the establishment and by audiences everywhere. This is fabulous. It's an excellent movie and deserves its accolades. It is one of my favorite films of the year. Note, too, that this is a group of first-time nominees in every category. I think we should be most surprised by the nomination for Nicholas Britell, but his score is beautiful, and this is a very exciting choice by the music branch, who, it must be admitted, made lots of good choices this year. Moonlight is probably only going to win two statues on the 26th, but many many more people are going to see this movie because of these trophies, and that will need to be good enough.

Will Win: Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay

Could Win: Picture, Director, Cinematography, Film Editing
My Rating: #9 out of 84

Arrival

8 Nominations

• Picture
• Director: Denis Villeneuve
• Adapted Screenplay: Eric Heisserer
• Cinematography: Bradford Young
• Film Editing: Joe Walker (12 Years a Slave)
• Production Design: Patrice Vermette (The Young Victoria) & Paul Hotte
• Sound Mixing
• Sound Editing

Director: Villeneuve

Cast: Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forest Whitaker, Michael Stuhlbarg, Tzi Ma, Mark O'Brien

On one hand, it is a surprise that the Academy loved this movie so much. It showed up in a few more categories than it was expected to show (film editing, production design, screenplay), but everyone thought Amy Adams was a lock for a nomination. She is excellent in this movie, and was fully deserving of a nomination (particularly because of her great work in Nocturnal Animals, as well), but she was, apparently, not enough people's favorite actress of the year this year, and she missed out on a nomination. It was the weirdest surprise of nomination morning. Still, Arrival showed very well, even if I don't think it will go home with any statues, and everyone should be proud. This is an excellent movie with a strong feminist strain. It's a bit of a mystery film, as well as a science-fiction film, but more than that it is a feminist rallying cry, asking us to let go of traditional ideas and rethink language, as well as time, from the perspective of collaboration and circularity. I enjoyed this quite a bit, and I've been recommending it to everyone.
Will Win: N/A

Could Win: Adapted Screenplay, Production Design, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing

My Rating: #20 out of 84

Oscar Nominees 2015: Part 2 of 12

Part 1.
Part 2 of 12:

American Sniper

6 Nominations

• Picture
• Actor: Bradley Cooper (American Hustle, Silver Linings Playbook)
• Adapted Screenplay: Jason Hall
• Film Editing: Joel Cox (Million Dollar Baby, Unforgiven) & Gary D. Roach
• Sound Mixing
• Sound Editing

Director: Clint Eastwood

Cast: Cooper, Sienna Miller, Sammy Sheik, Luke Grimes, Navid Negahban, Jake McDorman, Keir O'Donnell, Eric Close, Cory Hardrict, Eric Ladin

This movie is awful. I am not sure that it is a huge surprise that a genre-picture directed by Clint Eastwood has made such a huge splash with the Academy, but it is certainly strange that a movie no smarter than, say, Predator or Rambo, a movie that is way less intelligent than a movie like Three Kings or Jarhead or this year's superb Fury should be nominated over any other film. But here we are and this movie is selling tickets like nobody's business. People seem to love this film's combination of gun-violence, anti-Arab sentiment, and video-game aesthetics. I found this combination irresponsible and deeply troubling. It's also basically little more than a shoot-em-up picture with some excellent acting. That said, Bradley Cooper really is great in the movie, and in a crowded category, he deserves his nomination as much as anyone else does. The nomination for Screenplay, however, is a bit of an absurdity; the characters speak in clichés and the script consists mostly of obvious, thudding symbols like bibles and rifles falling in the dust. This is making millions right now at the box office, though, and it should win plenty of statuettes come Oscar night. One more thing: this movie showed up very, very late to the party, and still managed to pull off six nominations, something other latecomers (Selma, Cake, A Most Violent Year) were not able to do. That it did this is mostly due to Eastwood's popularity among the Academy, but its tardiness still hurt it, otherwise we'd have seen nominations for Sienna Miller, here, and for Eastwood himself.

Will Win: Adapted Screenplay, Film Editing, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing

Could Win: Picture

My Rating: #65 out of 73

The Theory of Everything

5 Nominations

• Picture
• Actor: Eddie Redmayne
• Actress: Felicity Jones
• Adapted Screenplay: Anthony McCarten
• Original Score: Jóhann Jóhannsson

Director: James Marsh

Cast: Redmayne, Jones, Charlie Cox, Harry Lloyd, David Thewlis, Emily Watson, Simon McBurney, Alice Orr-Ewing

Well, I loved Harry Lloyd in this, and Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones are both good (I loved Jones in last year's The Invisible Woman). This movie, though, is just so similar to The Imitation Game, and that is decidedly not a good thing. Still, it seems to have staying power. Redmayne won the Screen Actors Guild Award, and he may take the Oscar, too, although I don't think he will: Oscar tends to like its lead actors older. But it is definitely possible. All of this is a snoozefest. I don't want to keep complaining about this year's season, but most of the big films bored me to tears. The Theory of Everything, does have more redeeming qualities than Imitation, and it also has a weird love triangle that is at least intriguing.

Will Win: Score

Could Win: Actor

My Rating: #56 out of 73

Whiplash

5 Nominations

• Picture
• Adapted Screenplay: Damien Chazelle
• Supporting Actor: JK Simmons
• Film Editing: Tom Cross
• Sound Mixing

Director: Damien Chazelle

Cast: Miles Teller, Simmons, Paul Reiser, Melissa Benoist, Nate Lang, Austin Stowell

Well this is an excellent film. This is one of the best of the Best Picture nominees and one of my favorite films of the year. It's riveting filmmaking and the fact that it did as well as it did with the Academy is a shock and a delight to me. I was especially pleased to see this film's editor, Tom Cross, get a nomination. He deserves it. The editing is perhaps the most exciting thing in the movie, and this in a film that is a white-knuckled ride; I left the movie raving about Tom Cross, as well as Miles Teller and JK Simmons. Everything about this movie is just great.
Will Win: Supporting Actor

Could Win: Adapted Screenplay

My Rating: #9 out of 73

Foxcatcher

5 Nominations

• Director: Bennett Miller (Capote)
• Actor: Steve Carell
• Original Screenplay: E. Max Frye & Dan Futterman (Capote)
• Supporting Actor: Mark Ruffalo (The Kids Are All Right) 
• Makeup

Director: Miller

Cast: Channing Tatum, Carell, Ruffalo, Sienna Miller, Vanessa Redgrave

This is very good, but its nominations are a little odd here – note that there is a Best Director nomination, but not a Best Picture nomination. This is an indication of respect for the movie but not affection. (My own review reflected this feeling when I saw it, as well.) Steve Carell's nomination here is unfortunate, because it could so easily have gone to David Oyelowo for Selma. Still, it's not undeserved; just unnecessary. I don't think it can realistically hope to win any Oscars on February 22, either. It's a very, very good movie, but I don't think anyone really loves it that fiercely.
Will Win: N/A
Could Win: Makeup
My Rating: #14 out of 73

Whiplash

Damien Chazelle's movie Whiplash is about the relationship between a young drummer – college freshman Andrew, played by the awesome Miles Teller – and Fletcher, the head of the studio jazz band at Juilliard (renamed Shaffer Conservatory in this movie) played by J.K. Simmons.

This might sound like a relatively run-of-the-mill teacher-student drama with overtones of oh, I don't know, Music of the Heart or Dead Poets Society, in which an inspiring teacher is able to change the lives of his or her young students, impacting them forever through access to the arts. Whiplash is emphatically not this. In any way.

On the contrary, Andrew is driven and single-minded. He's a character who doesn't have much time for anything outside of his music career, and he is willing to sacrifice all of the relationships in his life in order to succeed at this career. And his teacher Fletcher is an almost unmitigated asshole. He's an abusive, violent, terrifying man, who browbeats, insults, and emasculates every person (all male) in his studio band. Fletcher seems almost unhinged, purposely sabotaging the members of the band when he can, arbitrarily punishing them for the slightest of mistakes, and throwing things at their heads. Andrew's response to this is to work even harder. He practices for hours and hours, his hands turning raw and covering his drum set in blood.

Fletcher is a kind of perverse mentor, one who is possibly pushing Andrew to greatness but more probably pushing Andrew toward suicide. But the skill with which Chazelle manages to tell this story is really the best thing about Whiplash. This movie is one of the most intense experiences you can have at the cinema this year. It's absolutely nerve-wracking. The stakes are astounding. And, yes, it's just a kid in music school, but music is this young man's life, and his life always feels at stake throughout Whiplash. Andrew is drumming to become someone, to make something of himself. He, like many young people today, feels as though he is not worth anything, as though he is lost in a sea of success stories; Andrew sees being one of the world's greatest drummers as a way out of that. A way to be a person.

If it seems unlikely that any of us would suffer under the likes of a "mentor" like Fletcher, this seems perfectly logical to Andrew. This is how to become someone, and if one has to endure emotional abuse or even physical torture to achieve that, it is worth the sacrifice to him. Mercifully, Chazelle includes a counterpoint to this version of tutelage in the person of Andrew's father (played by Paul Reiser). Andrew's scenes with his dad are touching and sensitive. His dad doesn't understand Andrew's drive for greatness – like many parents, he sees his son as already a great person – but he loves him all the same and (quite naturally) wants to protect his son from the likes of people like Fletcher.

But Whiplash is not about a debate about which types of mentorship best prepare a young person for success. This is a film about a young man who is navigating a journey to selfhood. A kind of coming-of-age narrative about an undergraduate trying to be the best he can be. And by the end of the film, morality doesn't have anything to do with what we are watching. We watch Andrew carve a niche for himself, make something, in a contest of wills between him and his sadistic instructor.

Mr. Teller

The acting in this film is superb, and J.K. Simmons is being singled out for best supporting actor awards across the country right now. He is guaranteed a well-deserved Oscar nomination at this point. Why more people aren't talking about Teller's extraordinary work in the movie is another question altogether.

Critics and awards bodies tend to prefer male performances by older men and female performances by younger women.
(No one is talking about Channing Tatum's genius performance in Foxcatcher, either – more on that another day.)

The other star of the movie is its editor Tom Cross. The film is filled with sequences of drumming, of jazz ensembles playing together, and of Fletcher screaming in people's faces; Cross ratchets up the intensity, editing together an enormous amount of footage. The jazz sequences are stunning – gorgeous shots of horns and winds and bassists, interspersed with Andrew's relentless drumming. It's this that gives the film its high stakes and its desperate tension. This is must-see stuff. One of the best films of the year.