Oscar Nominees 2016: Part 5 of 11

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

45 Years

1 Nomination

• Actress: Charlotte Rampling

Director: Andrew Haigh

Cast: Rampling, Tom Courtenay, Geraldine James, Dolly Wells, David Sibley, Sam Alexander, Richard Cunningham

I loved 45 Years. It is one of my favorite films of the year. It still hasn't been released everywhere, so this means it is coming to a theatre near you soon. Make sure you get out to see it. It is deeply, deeply troubling. This film follows a (straight) couple who, a week away from a big 45-year-anniversary party that they're planning, gets a letter that says the authorities found the body of a woman the man loved before he met his current wife. They've been married 45 years, but the man is deeply affected by this discovery, and the woman doesn't really understand. Slowly more and more information comes out (or at least seems to come out), and both characters begin to unravel. Charlotte Rampling is astounding in this movie. It is probably the best performance in a film by anyone this year. Rampling has gotten awards buzz a couple of times – for Under the Sand and Swimming Pool – but it is a little odd that an actress this good and this dependable is only now getting her first Oscar nomination. But it is a well-deserved one. I've been thinking that maybe Rampling could actually win this award; I figured that once people saw the movie they were just going to need to vote for her. I don't think that is really true anymore – it's Larson's to lose – but hopefully this nomination does mean that Rampling gets more roles like this one and we get some more great performances in the future. It's worth noting, by the way, that Tom Courtenay, who plays her husband is also superb in 45 Years, and Andrew Haigh, the director also does an excellent job. This was in my top ten for the year: it's a great movie, not just a vehicle for a single actor.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: Actress

My Rating: #8 out of 64

Joy

1 Nomination

• Actress: Jennifer Lawrence (American Hustle, Silver Linings Playbook, Winter's Bone)

Director: David O. Russell

Cast: Lawrence, Robert DeNiro, Diane Ladd, Virginia Madsen, Isabella Rossellini, Édgar Ramírez, Dascha Polanco, Bradley Cooper, Elisabeth Röhm Jimmy Jean-Louis

This movie is a lot like David O. Russell's other recent films, American Hustle, The Fighter, and Silver Linings Playbook, which means that it is poorly scripted but delightfully character-driven, so that we don't really mind that the movie isn't about anything because we're having so much fun with the characters and their different goals. There are two very big differences between Joy and these movies, though. First of all, Joy is really only about one character. It seems like we are also going to follow Bradley Cooper's character and Édgar Ramírez's characters, but then we don't. We only really follow Joy herself as she makes, what seemed to me, ridiculous move after ridiculous move. The other big difference between Joy and other David O. Russell movies is that this one is no fun at all. Everyone in it is miserable for the entirety of the film. To be fair, he cast the always-serious-in-films Jennifer Lawrence, and she plays the role like every role she plays, as though she's never had a happy day in her life. I also can never shake the feeling that Lawrence is playing dress-up in movies. She never seems to relax into a role. She's never ever had a confident performance. I always get the feeling she's hoping we won't notice something. In the final (absurd) scenes in this movie, which has jumped forward many years, Lawrence is supposed to be a confident businesswoman and executive who has tons of power and money, but she still plays the part as though she's terrified she's gonna get chosen for the Hunger Games. Her total inability to relax, and the fact that she looks nothing like a fifty-year-old executive would have made this last sequence in the film laughable if it weren't so boring. I am not being hyperbolic when I say this, so take me seriously: I honestly think that every adult part played by Jennifer Lawrence in the last four years or so would have been played better by an actress like Kate Hudson, someone who has a lot more of a range than Lawrence, an actor who only seems able to frown. (This convinces me that Lawrence really should do a romantic comedy. Maybe she'd loosen up in one of those.) In any case, Joy is one of the worst movies of the year. Avoid.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #62 out of 64

Trumbo

1 Nomination

• Actor: Bryan Cranston

Director: Jay Roach

Cast: Cranston, Michael Stuhlbarg, Diane Lane, Helen Mirren, David James Elliott, Louis C.K., Elle Fanning, John Goodman, Stephen Root, Christian Berkel, Dean O'Gorman, Richard Portnow

And just slightly better than Joy but still awful: Trumbo. I have already written about how terrible this movie is, so I'll let you read that rather than reproduce it here. We should all be glad, at least, that this movie only got this one nomination – the Academy ignored its art direction, script, costumes, and the absurdly phoned-in performance of Hedda Hopper by Helen Mirren. But even this Bryan Cranston nomination is too much. Cranston's nomination squeezed out much more deserving performances by actors this year: Abraham Attah in Beasts of No Nation is only the most egregious example, but while I'm talking about this I want also to mention Géza Röhrig, who is amazing in Son of Saul, and Michael B. Jordan in Creed. Any one of these three actors belongs in this slot; Cranston, who is actually quite a good actor, does not. If you don't need to see Trumbo, trust me, you do not want to. Avoid.
Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #61 out of 64

Two 2015 Movies about Punching People

More boxing movies? I am not sure, actually, why Hollywood keeps making boxing movies, or for that matter, why I keep going to them, but boxing is certainly that most cinematic of sports. The camera gets close up in the faces of the pugilists; we hear the thuds and thwacks and the clang of the bell; and it really does feel like we're there. I'd definitely rather watch a boxing movie than a basketball movie (there aren't many of those, come to think of it) or a movie about, say, the 400-meter relay.

The trouble is that there have been so many boxing movies and there are, consequently, so many established tropes and clichés. I remember being totally baffled when everyone went nuts over David O. Russell's The Fighter: isn't it just another typical boxing movie? But, then, I don't know if I can tell you why I liked Creed enormously and why I found Southpaw to be mostly boring and cliché-ridden. I am going to try anyway.

 * * *

Antoine Fuqua's Southpaw is a movie about a rage-filled champion whose wife is senselessly killed and who, following this event, completely loses his mind, does an enormous amount of dangerous activity, loses his house, and gets his kid put into protective custody because he is a total mess of a parent. He must (and this is a standard boxing-movie trope) get a new trainer, straighten up and fly right, and bounce back.

Jake Gyllenhaal is pretty awesome as the film's protagonist (he's sentimentally called Billy Hope), and the actor has really been on a roll, with excellent performances in Prisoners and Nightcrawler; sooner or later critics and the Academy will pay attention. In Southpaw he has transformed physically into a completely ripped and lean beast of a man-child, and his characterization is very interesting: he mumbles and stumbles his way through the film, solidly creating an unpredictable but rather lovable figure.

Still, I found it hard to root for this character, and maybe this is because the film as a whole is so dependent on feelings. Billy Hope is pure anger, lashing out at anyone and everyone, and then, when he needs to get his daughter back, he becomes pure sentiment, weeping his way through the film's third act. Southpaw sees this transition as totally natural, and perhaps it is, but I remain rather unconvinced by the idea. Does a man with enough of a problem with rage that he gets his kid taken away from him suddenly become father of the year after a couple of weeks working with Forest Whitaker? I am skeptical.

I think the kid thing bothered me, too. I need to become the light heavyweight champion of the world because my daughter needs lunch-money isn't, after all, that exciting of a reason for a film's final sequence. Once we got to act three I really kept hoping that Southpaw wouldn't end with a big boxing match but would avoid the trope and end with Billy Hope training kids and just worrying about making ends meets instead of worrying about getting a championship belt. If one's major concern is paying the rent and feeding the family, one doesn't actually need to make a $30 million deal with HBO. But, no, Southpaw ends the way you think it's going to end; no surprises here – just lots of feelings.

* * *

Creed has plenty of feelings, too, don't get me wrong. But I was into this movie from the very beginning. Ryan Coogler's film has its share of clichés, as well – difficult childhood, disapproving mom, complicated relationship with a trainer, and phrases like the real enemy in the ring with you is yourself.

But Creed just does all of this better. Michael B. Jordan is a young office worker named Donny Johnson who fights in Mexico on the weekends. He's the son of the boxer Apollo Creed from Rocky and Rocky II, III, and IV, and Creed both plays up this history and does something interesting with it. How does a person have a legend as a father and also try to make something of himself? What does the name mean? Does it hang over one like a curse? An impossible hurdle? Or can it be something that strengthens and emboldens one? This might seem like a less interesting reason to fight than, say, the love of one's small child, but I found this an infinitely more interesting character study.

Coogler's film also has Sylvester Stallone, the Oscar-nominated star of the Rocky films, and (obviously) a huge movie star in his own right. Stallone is wonderful in this, a retired boxer who wants nothing anymore to do with pugilism and isn't interested in training a young fighter. For Apollo Creed's son, however, Rocky Balboa sets aside his resistance and starts to work again.

Here Comes Mr. Jordan

Stallone is great, but Michael B. Jordan, the film's star and the star of Coogler's first film Fruitvale Station, makes this movie. Jordan is a fine actor, who keeps getting great roles and keeps turning in great performances. His work in Creed is sensitive and angry and frustrated and confused all at once. The part must've been written for him, and he is perfect for it, allowing us into the character's personal struggle even while the character puts up walls.

The conscious, knowing tribute (it never felt like a gimmick) to Avildsen's 1976 film works beautifully because it's understated and mediated in clever ways. Donny watches his dad and Rocky fight, for example, by pulling up YouTube videos of their matches. And the famous theme from Rocky creeps quietly but unmistakably into Ludwig Göransson's Creed score. Another reason this works is that the characters in Creed are actively trying to deal with the events of the Rocky movies, even to destroy them.

These are some reasons, I guess, but I don't think I can fully say why I found Creed's use of boxing-movie clichés to be interesting and Southpaw's boring. Maybe I just like narratives about men dealing with their fathers better than narratives about men dealing with their eight-year-olds. I think, though, that Creed just really is a better movie all around – better acting, better script, better editing, better photography. I loved it.

Oscar Nominees 2014: Page 1 of 14

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 48 films this year (5 more than last year). 2013 was a really strange Oscar year, what with Argo's director missing a nomination and then winning Best Picture, but 2014 appears so far to be even stranger. Some of the frontrunners for nominations were completely passed over, and Best Picture appears still to be up in the air. Because my favorite thing about all of this movie hubbub is the surprises, I am once again loving Oscar season.

Most of the films in my top ten for the year were passed over (Blue Is the Warmest Color, Fruitvale Station, The Kings of Summer, In the House, The Past), but some scored a nomination or two (The Great Beauty, Before Midnight) and two were nominated for Best Picture (Gravity, Her). In any case, I am excited for what is going to happen.

Oh, and if you're thinking why does he even care about this? I don't blame you. But I have an elaborate set of reasons for still loving the Oscars that I've explained here.

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:

Gravity

10 Nominations

• Picture
• Director: Alfonso Cuarón
• Actress: Sandra Bullock (The Blind Side)
• Cinematography: Emmanuel Lubezki (Children of Men, The New World, Sleepy Hollow, A Little Princess)
• Film Editing: Alfonso Cuarón (Children of Men) & Mark Sanger
• Original Score: Steven Price
• Production Design: Rosie Goodwin, Andy Nicholson, & Joanne Woollard (Hope and Glory)
• Sound Mixing
• Sound Editing
• Visual Effects

Director: Cuarón

Cast: Bullock, George Clooney, Ed Harris

Gravity is my favorite of the films nominated for Best Picture. It deserves every one of its nominations. I was overwhelmed by it as I often am with Cuarón's work. It is beautiful, heartstoppingly intense, deeply troubling, and insistently philosophical. (I felt similarly about his 2006 film Children of Men.) Since I fell in love with Gravity, though, I've heard a lot of folks talk about the film's use of symbols. I'm not gonna deny they're there: if an audience member wants to place symbolic value on an image in a movie, that's what images are there for. All I can say about that is that for me the film didn't function on that register – I found the movie to be an intense action movie that also spent a lot of time allowing me to think about being alone, my own desire to keep going while facing impossible odds, and the total vastness of the universe. (I have said before on this blog that I really love the feeling of being completely insignificant and tiny that I get when I stare at the stars.) As for winning Oscars, I don't think this movie is going home with the big man. But Gravity will win nearly all of the below-the-line stuff (except for Production Design).

Will Win: Cinematography, Film Editing, Score, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Visual Effects

Could Win: Picture, Director

My Rating: #3 out of 72

American Hustle

10 Nominations

• Picture
• Director: David O. Russell (Silver Linings Playbook)
• Actor: Christian Bale (The Fighter)
• Actress: Amy Adams (The Master, The Fighter, Doubt, Junebug) 
• Original Screenplay: David O. Russell (Silver Linings Playbook) & Eric Warren Singer
• Supporting Actor: Bradley Cooper (Silver Linings Playbook)
• Supporting Actress: Jennifer Lawrence (Silver Linings Playbook, Winter's Bone) 
• Film Editing: Alan Baumgarten, Jay Cassidy (Silver Linings Playbook, Into the Wild) & Crispin Struthers (Silver Linings Playbook)
• Production Design: Judy Becker & Heather Loeffler
• Costume Design: Michael Wilkinson 

Director: Russell

Cast: Bale, Adams, Cooper, Jeremy Renner, Lawrence, Elisabeth Röhm, Robert De Niro, Louis C.K., Jack Huston, Michael Peña, Shea Whigham, Colleen Camp

I really liked this. It's a sleeper in a lot of ways: a good hustler movie with not much going for it except a stellar cast and a director who (all of a sudden) everyone seems to really love. The film's luster fades on reflection, which is why I'm betting on it not taking anything home on March 2. Call me crazy, but I just don't see it happening. I think the closest shot this has at gold is the original screenplay ("wasn't it all improv?" you may ask, to which I would say "And isn't that a screenplay?") There's also the possibility of Amy Adams winning, but the Academy hasn't awarded her for anything yet, so it would seem that while they love to nominate her, they don't actually think she's ready to win one. But, look, I could be way off base and everyone might love this film way more than I do and just give it everything: Screenplay, Director and Best Picture. This is also a distinct possibility.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: Picture, Director, Actress, Original Screenplay, Supporting Actress, Production Design, Costume Design

My Rating: #25 out of 72

12 Years a Slave

9 Nominations

• Picture
• Director: Steve McQueen
• Actor: Chiwetel Ejiofor
• Adapted Screenplay: John Ridley
• Supporting Actor: Michael Fassbender
• Supporting Actress: Lupita Nyong'o
• Film Editing: Joe Walker
• Production Design: Alice Baker & Adam Stockhausen
• Costume Design: Patricia Norris (Sunset, 2010, Victor/Victoria, The Elephant Man, Days of Heaven)

Director: McQueen

Cast: Ejiofor, Fassbender, Nyong'o, Sarah Paulson, Adepero Oduye, Benedict Cumberbatch, Garret Dillahunt, Brad Pitt, Paul Dano, Paul Giamatti, Alfre Woodard, Michael K. Williams, Dwight Henry, Quvenzhané Wallis, Topsy Chapman, Liza J. Bennett

You can see simply by glancing above that most of the folks nominated for 12 Years a Slave have never been nominated for anything before, and this goes for all of the below-the-line folks (except Ms. Norris). This always makes me want to root for a film, especially when I love everyone involved as much as I do. I wasn't totally in love with this film, but I haven't anything negative to say about it: I just didn't like it as much as I loved McQueen's first two pictures. As for Oscar, 12 Years has seemed to be on a slow decline lately, but my bet – and this is not the most obvious choice – is that when push comes to shove, the Academy goes for this film in the end. I expect it to win Picture and Director. I ought also to say, frankly, that it seems a little nuts to me that anyone is voting for Jared Leto over Michael Fassbender in their category, but apparently Fassbender is not the favorite and Leto is. It's a weird world.

Will Win: Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay, Supporting Actress, Production Design

Could Win: Actor, Supporting Actor

My Rating: #15 out of 72

On the Hustle

I liked American Hustle. It's a pretty good picture with lots of fun performances.

To my mind, any review of Hustle is necessarily tainted by all the talk surrounding this thing. I saw the movie only a week or so ago, so my thoughts are late to the party, and anything I have to say about it is influenced a priori by all of the awards-buzz surrounding this movie. (Some people are ready to hand it the Best Picture Oscar, for heaven's sake.)

So I guess I'll say a few things about David O. Russell in general instead of about this movie in particular. To my mind, ever since The Fighter (which received an enormous amount of awards buzz) Russell has simply been making excellent genre pictures. And it would seem that this is all he wants to do. It has seemed to me an odd thing for the director who made Three Kings and I ♥ Huckabees to keep making movies that easily fit generic conventions, but The Fighter was a pretty standard boxing movie and Silver Linings Playbook was a generic romantic comedy with some great performances.

So, too, is American Hustle. It's a standard grifter movie with a few twists and turns. The performances (as in Silver Linings) are very good. I thought Amy Adams, Jennifer Lawrence, and particularly Bradley Cooper were excellent.

Amy Adams heats it up.

But... well... eh. It's nothing special. I guess this is what happens when everyone spends time talking about how superb a movie is. If you get to it late, the movie can't live up to the hype.

The movie has other troubles a bit more real, too: strangely placed sequences of narration, where we follow not one, not two, but three separate narrators' points of view. The film, oddly enough, follows none of these characters as a main character, and can't quite figure out who it is interested in. The character the film's plot despises the most (Bradley Cooper's FBI agent), is often the one shown the most love by the filmmaker. And if I felt a little weird about this character getting his comeuppance at the end – he gets only what he deserves – it is because Russell doesn't find a position from which he can stand to watch his story play out. What is this movie's point of view about these mostly despicable characters? The smart ones win, and you gotta play the game better in order to get away with what you want.

True enough. And I am cynical enough to subscribe to these sentiments with relative frequency. But in Hustle the deck is stacked. This is a genre picture. And so the plot gets to twist and turn whichever way the screenwriters want it to go. In the end, none of what we're watching is much of a surprise, and none of it is very special.

Also: why are we in the 1970s? I like disco as much as the next homosexual, but I don't get it.

Dallas Buyers Club: Not My Drug of Choice

I don't think I'll have much to say about Dallas Buyers Club, although it's the kind of stuff everyone eats up. Matthew McConaughey (who I have been sincerely liking in things lately – not this) and Jared Leto both lose lots and lots of weight for the movie. Their characters are both HIV+ in 1985, and they both want to be nominated for Oscars, so the weight loss makes a lot of sense (that totally worked for the never-before-nominated Christian Bale a couple years ago).

Dallas Buyers reminded me a lot of 2011's Puncture, which I apparently never reviewed but which I disliked quite a bit. (Side note on Puncture: it wanted to be a kind of twenty-first century Silkwood, but it just never really worked.) It reminded me of Puncture because it has a similar kind of fighting-against-the-medical-establishment theme. McConaughey's character, Ron Woodroof is a homophobic Texas asshole who is used to getting everything that he wants in life (did I mention he's a white guy?), so when he contracts HIV he starts paying an orderly to smuggle him out the drugs when he can't get them a legal way.

He keeps drinking and using coke, of course, and so he passes out again - this dude is really sick. Blah blah blah. Anyway, he starts to believe AZT is killing people (it is) and that the big pharma is trying to make money off selling AZT to sick people (it is) and so he tries to bring drugs that the FDA hasn't approved into the U.S. by smuggling them in. The real goal here is to make a lot of money quickly by selling drugs to other HIV+ Texans (almost all gay men – people Woodroof continues to refer to in derogatory terms).

Ms. Leto

He learns lessons, he makes friends with a transvestite (Jared Leto, who I liked more as the film went on), he goes to court, he stops thinking about only himself and starts thinking about the community. You get the drift. The film is absolutely filled to the brim with clichés, and the point is that we are supposed to better understand the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1980s from the point of view of this homophobic white Texan, instead of the overwhelming number of gay men who are suffering from the disease (to whom, presumably, we would be less likely to relate). I found the whole thing tiresome. It's also filmed in this standard, realistic, hagiographic kind of style that isn't, in fact, a style. From a formerly exciting filmmaker like Jean-Marc Vallée, this is particularly disappointing.

One more thing: Puncture was about fixing a problem with the medical establishment that is still in existence. In other words, the Kassen Brothers were trying to make a film about a particular social problem and to correct something pernicious in our current society. It was a movie about the invention of a syringe that was designed so that you couldn't re-use it. An invention that would actually save the lives of many, many drug-users. Dallas Buyers, on the other hand, is really about rehearsing an injustice from 1985 – all good and well; I write history myself – but the film never brings us into the present day. How has big pharma changed? How does the FDA continue to support big business while getting wealthy off of sick people? If you're gonna make a realist film about social problems, it's fine to set your film in the '80s, but at least bring us all up to speed.

Toy's House

Honestly, I can't recommend The Kings of Summer enough. I found this first film (directed by Jordan Vogt-Roberts) to be a mix between two other movies that I liked very much this year – The Spectacular Now and Mud. I guess that means I am spending a lot of time recommending movies about adolescent boys who struggle with their adolescent lives and try to make sense of the world. The Kings of Summer is about a high-school age kid who is not getting along with his father and so (with his two friends) decides to move into the woods for the summer and live "like men".

In other words, even the kid at this movie's center understand that he is in a coming-of-age narrative. He is trying, actively, to become a grown-up and he knows it. That this bildungsroman theme is self-consciously obvious makes the whole thing even more enjoyable, and The Kings of Summer manages both an ironic and an empathetic perspective (a bit like D.O. Russell's gaze in last year's terribly titled but eminently likable Silver Linings Playbook). We almost never understand the main character Kings to be making the right decision – he makes childish decision after childish decision – but he is a confused, frustrated kid who I couldn't help but love anyway.

Unlike Spectacular Now and Mud, The Kings of Summer is a very funny comedy, with occasionally broad performances by comedians Nick Offerman, Megan Mullally, Mary Lynn Rajskub, and Kumail Nanjiani. Kings straddles this sit-comic approach to the suburban scenes with a Malickian approach to all of the scenes in the forest. The woods look gorgeous: the boys look out at the sunset, and play in the lake, and walk in open meadows, and it really feels like they are outside of the absurd world of suburbia that their parents inhabit. But these are two entirely different filmmaking styles, and if they don't actually belong together, their juxtaposition works very well, so that it made me appreciate the boys' forest retreat all the more. The dream of "getting out into nature" makes much more sense when it is clear how absolutely nonsensical life is in suburbia.

Toy's House (this film's former title)

I read a review of the film that called Vogt-Roberts' first feature "slight", and I can understand why someone would critique it this way. If I compare Kings to Mud and Spectacular Now, I have to say that the acting in the other two films is much better in them than in Kings; thematically, the other two films are more interesting, as well; I can even say that I was much more emotionally invested in the other two.

But I liked Kings better. It is a self-aware film that captures something of the absurdity of adolescence and the impossibility of certain modes of existence. Vogt-Roberts casts a withering gaze at masculinity, and, by way of derision, he mocks the idea that traditional masculinity is the proper telos for adolescence. This is is a very funny film, and if it doesn't quite do realism and honesty as well as The Spectacular Now or suspense as well as Mud, The Kings of Summer has an exquisite and hilarious charm all its own.

P.S. I really do feel strange about liking so many movies that center around male adolescence this year. I wonder what's come over me! Feeling nostalgia over my youth, I suppose.

Oscar Nominees 2013: Part 1 of 13

As I do every year in the weeks leading up the Academy Awards ceremony, I will be sharing my thoughts on all of the feature-length fiction films. For me that means 43 films this year (I usually exempt myself from the documentaries). 2013 is certainly the strangest Oscar season I've seen since I started watching all the films in 1999. And because the thing I tend to love about Oscar season is all of the surprises and unexpected twists and turns – in short, the drama – I am finding this year really fun, though hard to predict. Still, my favorite films of the year (Beasts of the Southern Wild, Amour, and Lincoln) all did better than expected when the nominations came out, and each is nominated for Best Picture. So I am excited to see what happens.

If the nominee has been nominated for Oscars previously, they will be listed next to his/her name in parentheses). This year's nominees:

Lincoln

12 Nominations

• Picture
• Director: Steven Spielberg (Munich, Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List, E.T.: the Extra-Terrestrial, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Close Encounters of the Third Kind)
• Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis (There Will Be Blood, Gangs of New York, In the Name of the Father, My Left Foot)
• Adapted Screenplay: Tony Kushner (Munich)
• Supporting Actor: Tommy Lee Jones (In the Valley of Elah, The Fugitive, JFK)
• Supporting Actress: Sally Field (Places in the Heart, Norma Rae)
• Film Editing: Michael Kahn (Munich, Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List, Fatal Attraction, Empire of the Sun, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Close Encounters of the Third Kind)
• Cinematography: Janusz Kaminski (War Horse, Le Scaphandre et le Papillon, Saving Private Ryan, Amistad, Schindler's List)
• Original Score: John Williams (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) 
• Costume Design: Joanna Johnston 
• Production Design: Rick Carter (War Horse, Avatar, Forrest Gump) & Jim Erickson (There Will Be Blood)
• Sound Mixing

Director: Spielberg

Cast: Lewis, Field, Jones, David Strathairn, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, James Spader, Tim Blake Nelson, Jackie Earle Haley, Gloria Reuben, John Hawkes, Hal Holbrook, Lee Pace, Michael Stuhlbarg, Bruce McGill, Joseph Cross, Jeremy Strong, Stephen Spinella

I really loved Lincoln. You can read some of my thoughts (on it and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter) here. I loved this film mostly for the beautiful acting and for the gorgeous script that Tony Kushner wrote. I felt as though it said so much about the man, his inner struggles, and his ethical principles. I also felt like it managed to capture Lincoln's sexuality, not as a desiring sexual subject, but as a sexual object. The film got at why his contemporaries and why we have found him so desirable as a personage – both as a man and as a symbol. I found it a lovely film. I did not, however, imagine it would wind up as the year's most nominated film, and I was a little surprised to see it rack up more nominations than last year's Hugo. Evidently, the Academy loved Lincoln, loved Daniel Day-Lewis, and loved Tony Kushner's script as much as I did. Don't expect an enormous number of wins, here, though. If the movie did well in terms of nominations overall, that doesn't mean it will emerge victorious in single combat. Argo and Zero Dark Thirty, I think, have it beat in several key categories.

Will Win: Actor, Adapted Screenplay

Could Win: Picture, Director, Film Editing, Costume, Production Design, Sound Mixing

My Rating: #6 out of 61

Life of Pi

11 Nominations

• Picture
• Director: Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon)
• Adapted Screenplay: David Magee (Finding Neverland)
• Film Editing: Tim Squyres (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon)
• Cinematography: Claudio Miranda (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button)
• Original Score: Mychael Danna
• Production Design: Anna Pinnock (The Golden Compass, Gosford Park) & David Gropman (The Cider House Rules)
• Sound Mixing
• Sound Editing
• Visual Effects
• Song: Mychael Danna & Bombay Jayashri

Director: Lee

Cast: Suraj Sharma, Irrfan Khan, Rafe Spall, Adil Hussain, Tabu

Wow. A lot of people liked this film. (I was charmed but not in love.) It deserves all of its technical nominations, of course – Life of Pi's most important achievement is its visual and aural splendor – but its lack of acting nominations means that it probably can't win Best Picture. Still, I think the best thing to do when gauging how the movie will do at the Oscars is to think about the categories in which Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon performed well in 2001. That movie had no acting nominations either, but people loved looking at it.

Will Win: Cinematography, Score, Visual Effects

Could Win: Director, Film Editing

My Rating: #28 out of 61

Silver Linings Playbook

8 Nominations

• Picture
• Director: David O. Russell (The Fighter)
• Actor: Bradley Cooper
• Actress: Jennifer Lawrence (Winter's Bone)
• Adapted Screenplay: David O. Russell
• Supporting Actor: Robert De Niro (Cape Fear, Awakenings, Raging Bull, The Deer Hunter, Taxi Drive, The Godfather: Part II)
• Supporting Actress: Jacki Weaver (Animal Kingdom)
• Film Editing: Jay Cassidy (Into the Wild) & Crispin Struthers

Director: Russell

Cast: Cooper, Lawrence, De Niro, Chris Tucker, Anupam Kher, Weaver, John Ortiz, Shea Whigham, Julia Stiles

This movie was the big surprise on the morning of the nominations. Not many people were expecting Russell to be nominated for Best Director, and almost no one was predicting that Jacki Weaver get her second Oscar nomination for this movie. I really really liked Silver Linings Playbook (though I am forced to admit that the title is truly terrible, no matter how related to the plot it is), and I found its direction particularly powerful. Can the film surprise us just as much on the evening of the awards? Or was the morning of the nominations the peak in this movie's popularity? I think SLP really could end up cleaning up if the love for this movie can carry through to mid-February, but... somehow I don't think it will. It's a comedy, after all, and on reflection it will seem more lightweight than Argo or Amour or even a baldly sentimental epic like Lincoln. I think the Academy will lean toward films that feel more "important" on Oscar night.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: Director, Actor, Actress, Adapted Screenplay, Film Editing

My Rating: #12 out of 61

Looking for the Silver Lining

A quick note about David O. Russell's Silver Linings Playbook. I really, really liked it.

On one level, Silver Linings is a predictable romantic comedy, with charming lead performances and the typical schemes, twists, and turns that accompany one of these heterosexual love stories that we are all so very used to seeing. Silver Linings is also a clichéd sort of movie when it comes to plot. Suffice it to say that there are no surprises in the film; one always feels slightly ahead of the characters, and the audience is always better at making decisions than the film's bumbling, messed-up characters.

Silver Linings is also a very funny movie. For its subject matter, this is no small feat. The film is about a man who went a little nuts on his wife when he found her in the shower with her lover. This man has anger issues (and all sorts of other problems) and is trying to deal with those issues while living with his parents after getting out of the hospital. In other words, the subject matter of Silver Linings is not – on the face of it – very funny.

The thing is, Silver Linings works. It works beautifully, in fact. That a movie with this many clichés and that is this indebted to the two-thousand-year-old heterosexual love plot of standard domestic comedy is still very interesting and delightful to watch is damn near shocking. But Silver Linings is great: funny, heartfelt, honest, and very clever.

And Bradley Cooper? I loved him in this. Absolutely loved him. He messes up more than a lot of characters I've seen in movies, and yet he bounces back. This character is embarrassingly earnest, frequently pathetic, totally delusional, slightly unhinged, and completely charming. Cooper will definitely get an Oscar nomination for the role (Jennifer Lawrence and Robert De Niro will get them, too), and he deserves it. The performance is brave and fun, and Cooper has no trouble navigating the sense of when things are funny and when they have to stop being funny. Cooper and Russell handle all of this so deftly that late in the film when De Niro grabbed his son and gave him a sound bit of advice, I found myself deeply moved by the quiet bit of wisdom the father shared with his son.

Worth seeing.

2011's Nominees: Part 2 of 12

INCEPTION

8 Nominations:

  · Best Picture

  · Best Original Screenplay: Christopher Nolan (Memento)

  · Best Cinematography: Wally Pfister (Batman Begins, The Prestige, The Dark Knight)

  · Best Art Direction: Doug Mowat, Larry Dias, Guy Hendrix Dyas

  · Best Original Score: Hans Zimmer (Rain Man, The Lion King, The Preacher's Wife, As Good as It Gets, The Prince of Egypt, The Thin Red Line, Gladiator, Sherlock Holmes)

  · Best Sound Mixing

  · Best Sound Editing

  · Best Visual Effects

Director: Nolan
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Tom Hardy, Cillian Murphy, Ellen Page, Ken Watanabe, Dileep Rao, Tom Berenger, Pete Postlethwaite, Michael Caine, Lukas Haas

 
The crowd favorite. That Nolan did not get a Best Director nomination is widely perceived as a snub, which it is. One of these days, Nolan is going to make a movie that the Academy really loves — Fincher should be his model, actually. But he will just have to settle instead for making tons of money. I actually found Inception kind of soulless. I mean, it's an exciting, complicated picture, but I found it difficult to emotionally drop in.
Will Win: Art Direction, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, Visual Effects
Might Also Win: Original Score, Original Screenplay, Cinematography
My Rating: #9 out of 40

THE FIGHTER

7 Nominations:

  · Best Picture

  · Best Director: David O. Russell

  · Best Original Screenplay: Keith Dorrington, Eric Johnson, Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy

  · Best Supporting Actor: Christian Bale
  · Best Supporting Actress: Melissa Leo (Frozen River)

  · Best Supporting Actress: Amy Adams (Junebug, Doubt)

  · Best Editing: Pamela Martin

Director: Russell
Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Bale, Leo, Adams, Jack McGee

 
Not sure why everyone loves this movie as much as they do; it struck me as more of a standard boxing picture. Anyway, this is an actor's movie and no one should forget that. As you look above at the nominations you see none for art direction, cinematography, or sound, though all were rather excellent for the film. My point is that those things were not why people loved this movie. They loved the film for its acting, and its three nominations (as many as The King's Speech!) are a testimony to that. Oh yeah, and it's going to win them, too.
Will Win: Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress (Leo)
Might Win: N/A
My Rating: #27 out of 41

127 HOURS

6 Nominations:

  · Best Picture

  · Best Adapted Screenplay: Simon Beaufoy (The Full Monty, Slumdog Millionaire) & Danny Boyle

  · Best Actor: James Franco

  · Best Editing: Jon Harris

  · Best Original Score: A.R. Rahman (Slumdog)

  · Best Original Song: Rahman (Slumdog x2), Dido, Rollo Armstrong

Director: Danny Boyle
Cast: Franco, Kate Mara, Amber Tamblyn, Treat Williams

 
I loved this film and I can't help thinking it got a bit snubbed when the nominations came out. It obviously deserves its editing nomination, sure, but where is the cinematography nod? sound editing? I guess I shouldn't complain too much, the Academy clearly liked the film: six nominations is nothing to sneeze at. And as much as I loved the movie, I am not expecting it to win anything on February 27th. Still, everyone should see this flick. It is Danny Boyle at his best.
Will Win: N/A
Might Win: Original Score, Original Song, Editing
My Rating: #5 out of 41

The Four Big Ones

A couple of quick thoughts about the big four mid-December releases. You may be thinking that you might want to see The Fighter or The King's Speech, but I'm here to try to convince you that your first two choices ought to be Black Swan and 127 Hours.

Black Swan is so far my favorite movie of the year. It's creepy and exciting and basically a thrill a minute. I also found it incredibly sexy and often very, very fun. The best thing about this picture—and I put a high premium on this as a movie-goer so you can take my excitement about Black Swan with a grain of salt if you like—is that I pretty much never knew what the hell was going to happen. I was never ahead of this movie. The acting is great, as well – I was particularly fond of Ms. Portman and Ms. Hershey – both of whom are basically batshit crazy in this film. Darren Aronofsky is the star here, though. Has this man ever made a bad movie? Seriously. He's awesome.

The next movie on your list should be Danny Boyle's 127 Hours. While not quite the Hitchcockian drama that Aronofsky's movie is, 127 Hours is a riveting character study of a truly fascinating guy. It's a Danny Boyle movie, so it's a film about flash and color and, well, general coolness. To be honest, though, Boyle himself is outshined in 127 by the film's actual star James Franco, who gives one of the great performances of the year. The camera is on him nonstop and his desperation, fear, and even his ingenuity, are displayed through tiny nuances, minimal action. A ham in real life (obviously) Franco focuses his energy in this brilliant star turn and only gives away a little at a time. The result is, frankly, devastating. Boyle's filmmaking takes over again as the film's focus by the end, but this is no Slumdog Millionaire. 127 Hours feels deep under all of that flashy exterior in a way that Boyle's big Best Picture-winning extravaganza never did.

The King's Speech is a good movie. And the thing of it is, I just kept thinking that thought while I was watching this picture. In other words, I never really emotionally dropped in to Tom Hooper's movie. This has to do with direction, of course, and with, I think, the subject matter. The King's Speech is, after all, about a king, and, well, I am not sure that a king's problems are really that momentous just because he's the king. Maybe it's just me. The King's Speech feels very invested in the notion of patriotism and national togetherness and big stuff like that. (This is also a rather sex-negative film, to my mind.) It was good, but, well... I had the feeling that Tom Hooper was trying too hard the whole time. The acting is good in this movie except for the bizarre caricature of Winston Churchill, which I found baffling, even in a comedy.

 The Fighter also has really, really good acting. Particularly from star Christian Bale and supporting-actress-of-the-decade Melissa Leo, both of whom give extraordinarily fierce performances, tearing into these roles and never criticizing the people they're playing. The film itself is a little uneven, however. First off, it's like no David O. Russell film I've ever seen. And, then, the center of the movie isn't really the center of the movie. The scenes that need to be in the film in order to make the main character the main character never materialize, and the emotional center of the film doesn't ever quite jell. Because of this, the end of the movie threw me for a bit of a loop. In a way, all of this is because The Fighter, as it turns out, is a boxing movie. It's not an unconventional boxing movie or a new twist on the boxing movie. It's a boxing movie: you know, like Cinderella Man or Rocky or Somebody up There Likes Me or The Champ. I was expecting something... else. So, perhaps if you go in with different expectations than I did, you will come out feeling a bit warmer toward Russell's new flick.

A Thought on Big-studio Comic Book Movies and a Review of Last Days

I'm not sure if I dig the idea of our good American directors making big-studio comic book movies, though: it makes the comic book movies smarter and cooler, that is undeniable, but are we not also missing out on stories of actual merit these directors could be telling? Batman Begins and for that matter The X-Men movies are certainly good, but wouldn't Christopher Nolan and Bryan Singer's talents be better used elsewhere? And did I just read that David O. Russell will now be hired to do a comic book movie? Really? I don't blame these guys for selling their considerable talents to the big studio machines, I just regret the studios use of these talents.

As for Last Days which I saw last night, it has a lot in common with Gus Van Sant's most recent two movies: Elephant and Gerry, both of which are superb films. Last Days has a lot of really similar elements: a love of silence, a roving eye, several points of view, and a slow, meditative pace. This film, like the other two, also goes back in time over ground we have crossed already to see things in a different light or from someone else's point of view. I think this style is very effective and interesting.
Last Days is difficult, though, because it has a main character, Blake, to which it is very tough to relate, at least from my point of view. He is a sort of doddering, mumbling crazy-man who rarely does anything we expect him to do. He is obviously a talented musician, but he doesn't seem to have much else going for him (certainly, his choice of friends is misguided), and I found this frustrating. I wanted to like the Cobain-esque Blake, but everything he did seemed drug-induced and I found it difficult to empathize. Van Sant uses sound in a lot of cool new ways in this film, though, and it might be worth seeing just for that. One of the oddest sequences of the movie is when Boyz II Men's "Down on Bended Knee" music video is played almost in its entirety. It is hilarious. Most of the audience at my screening got the joke, but I know some people were just baffled. The theatre was full at the 10:00p screening I attended, but at least 10 people left during the movie, maybe more. I guess they came for Kurt Cobain and didn't know about Gus Van Sant, but hadn't they seen the trailer?
I don't really recommend Last Days. I liked it more than I disliked it, but it isn't for the easily bored and if you haven't seen Gerry or Elephant, rent those first.

Weekend Update

I think it was a really good weekend. I don't really want to commit to "good," but it definitely approached goodness.
The Sixteenth
I took the GRE in the early hours of the morning. I studied hard and did well. I am this much closer to getting into a good graduate school. Applying would be nice. I'll get on that next week. Baby steps for the man who is slow to decide.

I visited with my Arizona friend Jamie Reynolds for a half hour or so after the big test. She seems to have taken to Arizona like a fish to water or some other metaphor less icthian. I miss this friend of mine and it was good to be able to visit her. I wish her so much good luck.

I watched the final three hours of Angels in America and there isn't much to say about this except that it is a stunning, brilliant achievement. This film/play is a seminal event in the history of the American homosexual community. The 1980s, Reagan, Roy Cohn, communism, socialism, Mormonism, Judaeism, AIDs, agnosticism, the ozone: this play has so much to say about humanity and compassion and responsibility and what it truly means to love.

Then Anna, Julie, Lisa, Jaime and I had sushi in La Verne and I'll be damned if four highball glasses were not just sitting on the trash can outside in pristine condition, if filled with leftover limes and discarded ice cubes. Well these little lovelies went directly into my jacket pockets and got unloaded directly into my dishwasher at home where they will make many of my friends happy when filled with gin or citron vodka.

I had a free pumpkin spice latté with Jai after Lisa, Julie and Anna left and it felt great when I climbed gratefully into my enormous bed in my own home.

Day 17 of This Month
Instead of watching a film (my usual modus operandi on a Sunday morning), I decided to clean. I emptied all the trash in the house, did the dishes, swept and otherwise cleaned the kitchen, and finally set up my new mixer (thanks Nancy, it rocks!).

Then. and this is huge. I finished the Sunday crossword from last week. I have never done this ever in my whole life.

I went to the grocery, spend very little money, planned my meals for the next week (unfortunately I must do this, as I have no time to myself mid-week).

Wahima was at my house when I returned from the grocery, so she assisted me up the stairs and then we headed to Old Town Pasadena, where, apparently, no one sells shelving units with wine racks on the bottom. Lame. But I bought three pairs of pants at Banana Republic on sale, and they're all machine washable. This might be some kind of miracle: seriously.

As and I walked down the street, these two women passed us and one said to the other, "she's beautiful" and the other one said "Mm-hmm." Wahima didn't hear them but I did. It was cool.

Elizabeth and Justin and I went to dinner and otherwise hung out. I love spending time with these two. I feel like I'm gushing when I'm with them because I'm so excited to see them, but I let it go and just try to enjoy myself. I had a beer called Arrogant Bastard, but it was only okay, and a really good burger with jalapeños on it.

Then we watched I ♥ Huckabees which I liked a lot more than Elizabeth and Justin did. I thought it was absolutely hilarious. It isn't Charlie Kaufman, but it's still pretty fucking funny. Mark Wahlberg is the best thing in it, honestly. He's wonderful. But I liked everyone else, too. Watching Isabelle Huppert mock her own image of "the actress who goes too far" was cool, and Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin were really funny, too.

I'm cooking now so that I have food for next week. This is my plan. I feel good and I'm going to bed in a few minutes. Cheers.

For a fun time...

Trailer for I Heart Huckabees. Go here. How much do I love David O. Russell?