Oscar Nominations 2024: 3 of 11

 The next three movies on our list are heavy hitters below the line:

The Substance

5 nominations

• Picture
• Director: Coralie Fargeat (1st time nominee)
• Actress: Demi Moore (1st time nominee)
• Original Screenplay: Fargeat (1st time nominee)
• Makeup & Hairstyling

Director: Fargeat

Cast: Moore, Margaret Qualley, Dennis Quaid, Hugo Diego Garcia, Christian Erickson, Oscar Lesage, Robin Greer, Edward Hamilton Clark, Gore Abrams

This movie wasn't my favorite—mostly I was frustrated with the way it kept acting like it was very deep when all of its analysis felt very shallow to me. This was especially evident in Dennis Quaid's cartoony characterization. (Which isn't to say that he's bad in it; only that his character lacks dimension.) But the news here is that a horror-adjacent movie is doing well with the Oscars and that Demi Moore has had an extraordinary, wonderful comeback. I am actually very glad that Margaret Qualley missed on a supporting actress nomination here because it just lets Demi Moore be the film's shining light. Perhaps more surprising is Coralie Fargeat's nomination in the directing category. I don't quite understand this nomination, but who can be mad about it? The Substance is an instantly iconic movie—drag queens were already doing the Demi Moore look last Halloween—and Fargeat's direction is grotesque and outrageous. This film is a fan favorite, and its five nominations (quite a haul, actually) are a way of honoring one of the year's most iconic wild rides. 

Will win: Actress

Could win: Original Screenplay, Makeup & Hairstyling

My rating: #68 out of 94

Dune: Part Two

5 nominations

• Picture
• Cinematography: Greig Fraser (Dune: Part One, Lion)
• Production Design: Patrice Vermette (Dune: Part One, Arrival, The Young Victoria) & Shane Vieau (Nightmare Alley, The Shape of Water)
• Sound
• Visual Effects

Director: Denis Villeneuve

Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Rebecca Ferguson, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Austin Butler, Florence Pugh, Stellan Skarsgård, Dave Bautista, Christopher Walken, Léa Seydoux, Charlotte Rampling, Giusi Merli, Alison Halstead

Well at least one of the best films of the year—and probably the epic cinematic event of the year—was nominated for five Oscars. Dune: Part Two is extraordinary, deeply pleasurable, visually stunning, emotionally rich, and brilliantly crafted. The acting is great, the effects are spectacular, and I've been listening to the original score since the movie came out (somehow the nepotistic music branch failed to nominate Hans Zimmer, but I guess it's ok since he already has a dozen nominations and two statues, including one for Dune: Part One). I do wonder how you get off a sand worm, though. It's one thing to board the old girl for some trans-planetary travel, but how does one dismount? Extra points for the sequences in grayscale under that planet's black sun. What a visually stunning choice!

Will win: Cinematography

Could win: Production Design, Sound, Visual Effects

My rating: #11 out of 94

Nosferatu

4 nominations

• Cinematography: Jarin Blaschke (The Lighthouse)
• Production Design: Beatrice Brentnerová & Craig Lathrop (1st time nominees)
• Costume Design: Linda Muir (1st time nominee)
• Makeup & Hairstyling
  

Director: Robert Eggers

Cast: Nicholas Hoult, Lily-Rose Depp, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Bill Skarsgård, Willem Dafoe, Emma Corrin, Simon McBurney

I've already written about my problems with the film's real lack of eroticism here (despite its ranking as #69 for me for the year), so I won't belabor the point again. But let's take time to talk about the production design and costume design, which really were breathtaking. At one point my companions and I were really stunned by how real the town looked as Nicholas Hoult walked to work. It looked to me as if it was built from scratch, and it looked absolutely gorgeous. The costumes were exquisite. The suiting was impeccable. The whole thing looked so good and perfect that Nosferatu can best be compared to a slow, vaguely scary, sexless Wes Anderson movie. Like imagine the immaculately designed intricate detail of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou but with no jokes or songs.

Will win: N/A

Could win: Makeup & Hairstyling

My rating: #69 out of 94

More 2024 posts:

1. Emilia Pérez, The Brutalist, Wicked

2. A Complete Unknown, Conclave, Anora

4. I'm Still Here, Sing Sing, The Wild Robot

5. Nickel Boys, The Apprentice, A Real Pain

6. Flow, September 5, Maria

7. The Seed of the Sacred Fig, The Girl with the Needle, Gladiator II

8. Inside Out 2, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, Memoir of a Snail

9. Animated Short Films

10. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Alien: Romulus, Better Man

11. A Different Man, Elton John: Never Too Late, The Six Triple Eight

Oscar Nominations 2021: 1 of 9

Oscar nominations are here!

Every year I post about each of the films nominated for Oscars (this year there are 34 + 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). I will hope to be able to post about the short films, too, but I am not sure I'll be able to catch them. If I am, there will be 11 posts.

This year there is a lot for me to appreciate; most of my favorite films of the year got at least one nomination, and I actually think I approve of the Academy's choices a little more than I usually do..

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, they will be listed next to their name in parentheses).

This year's nominees:

The Power of the Dog

12 Nominations

• Picture
• Director: Jane Campion (The Piano)
• Actor: Benedict Cumberbatch (The Imitation Game)
• Adapted Screenplay: Jane Campion (The Piano)
• Supporting Actor: Kodi Smit-McPhee
• Supporting Actor: Jesse Plemons
• Supporting Actress: Kirsten Dunst
  
• Film Editing: Peter Sciberras
• Cinematography: Ari Wegner
• Production Design: Grant Major (The Lord of the Rings: the Fellowship of the Ring, The Lord of the Rings: the Two Towers, The Lord of the Rings: the Return of the King, King Kong) & Amber Richards
• Score: Jonny Greenwood (Phantom Thread)
  
• Sound

Director: Campion

Cast: Cumberbatch, Dunst, Plemons, Smit-McPhee, Kenneth Radley, Sean Keenan

This movie is the frontrunner, and I know folks are kind of hoping for an upset win for CODA or some other film, I don't think anyone can move The Power of the Dog out of its place at the top here. Funny thing is: everyone is bored by this movie when it starts, but by the end of its length, the movie tends to win audiences over. This movie really tricked me. It fully got me, and I didn't see the big twist coming. It's not a gay movie, per se, which I guess is too bad, but it's deeply intriguing and unsettling, and I really enjoyed it. I especially liked the acting. I was very taken with Jesse Plemons' performance and was so glad he snagged a surprise nomination. Almost no one on this team has been nominated for an Oscar before, and Campion hasn't won (or been nominated) since the early 1990s, so this is long overdue, and everyone here deserves the accolades they're getting.

Will Win: Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay

Could Win: Film Editing, Cinematography

My Rating: #13 out of 56

Dune: Part One

10 Nominations

• Picture
• Adapted Screenplay: Eric Roth (A Star Is Born, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Munich, The Insider, Forrest Gump), Jon Spaihts & Denis Villeneuve
• Film Editing: Joe Walker (Arrival, 12 Years a Slave)
• Cinematography: Grieg Fraser (Lion)
• Production Design: Patrice Vermette (Arrival, The Young Victoria) & Zsuzsanna Sipos
• Score: Hans Zimmer (Dunkirk, Interstellar, Inception, Sherlock Holmes, Gladiator, The Thin Red Line, The Prince of Egypt, As Good as It Gets, The Preacher's Wife, The Lion King, Rain Man)
• Costume Design: Jacqueline West (The Revenant, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Quills) & Robert Morgan
• Sound
• Visual Effects
• Makeup & Hairstyling

Director: Villeneuve

Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Rebecca Ferguson, Oscar Isaac, Zendaya, Jason Momoa, Stellan Skarsagård, Sharon Duncan-Brewster, Josh Brolin, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Chang Chen, Javier Bardem, Charlotte Rampling, Dave Bautista

I loved this movie. It's my favorite of the year. I haven't written anything about it yet, but I thought it was just so fucking cool. I am kind of stunned that it wasn't also nominated for Best Director, and I cannot wait until Part Two. Villeneuve's worldview is not always one I think is enjoyable, but I thought this movie was an absolute blast: rich, mysterious, and dynamic. There's so much I didn't understand, but it always felt as though Villeneuve was taking care of me, letting the information that I couldn't get right away come to me as mystery rather than as a failure in storytelling. I fell hard for this, and I think it's going to win a slew of below-the-line Oscars on March 27.

Will Win: Film Editing, Cinematography, Production Design, Original Score, Sound, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling

Could Win: Costume Design
My Rating: #1 out of 56

Belfast

7 Nominations

• Picture
• Director: Kenneth Branagh (Henry V)
• Original Screenplay: Kenneth Branagh (Hamlet)
  
• Supporting Actor: Ciarán Hinds
• Supporting Actor: Judi Dench (Philomena, Notes on a Scandal, Mrs Henderson Presents, Iris, Chocolat, Shakespeare in Love, Mrs. Brown)
• Sound
• Song: Jim Morrison

Director: Branagh

Cast: Caitríona Balfe, Jamie Dornan, Jude Hill, Lewis McAskie, Hinds, Dench

This was, for a long while, the frontrunner for Best Picture. Now, I honestly don't think it will win a single statue. I wrote about this in my review, but I actually would have nominated almost all of the actors in this. I think Balfe and Dornan were both amazing. They both campaigned in the supporting category, and so, as it turned out, they both missed getting nominated here. Balfe was expected to get a nomination, but then the Academy went for the actual supporting actress, Judi Dench. Ah well. I think it's good when category fraud doesn't pay off. But I think the acting in this movie is wonderful. And it's a fine movie; it just so happens that Belfast is an also-ran this year and won't win anything.
Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #25 out of 56

West Side Story

7 Nominations

• Picture
• Director: Steven Spielberg (Lincoln, Munich, Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List, E.T.: the Extra-Terrestrial, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Close Encounters of the Third Kind)
  
• Supporting Actress: Ariana DeBose
• Cinematography: Janusz Kaminski (Lincoln, War Horse, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Saving Private Ryan, Amistad, Schindler's List)
• Production Design: Adam Stockhausen (Bridge of Spies, The Grand Budapest Hotel, 12 Years a Slave) & Rena DeAngelo (Bridge of Spies)
• Costume Design: Paul Tazewell
• Sound

Director: Spielberg

Cast: Ansel Elgort, Rachel Zegler, Mike Faist, Ariana DeBose, David Alvarez, Rita Moreno, Brian d'Arcy James, Corey Stoll, Josh Andrés Rivera, Iris Menas

Sure, sure. This deserves most of its nominations – except the one for Spielberg, and maybe it even deserves that. As I wrote in my review, this is a beautifully made remake that no one at all needed. I honestly do think it's weird that Mike Faist didn't get nominated. So much love for Ariana DeBose, but Riff is the star of this production of West Side Story. DeBose will win the Oscar for playing the same role that Rita Moreno won for in 1962. And that's fine too, I guess, although I find the whole business sort of underwhelming and tired. It's West Side Story. I'm over it. I will say that I am happy about Paul Tazewell's nomination. He's a stage designer, for the most part, and this is his first nomination. The costumes are gorgeous, and he did a fabulous job. So I am into that.

Will Win: Supporting Actress

Could Win: Cinematography, Production Design, Sound
My Rating: #35 out of 56

2. King Richard, Drive My Car, Don't Look Up, and Nightmare Alley
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

Oscar Nominations 2018: Part 2 of 12

Back to Part 1.

My Best of 2017.

Darkest Hour

6 Nominations

• Picture
• Actor: Gary Oldman (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy)
• Cinematography: Bruno Delbonnel (Inside Llewyn Davis, Harry Potter and the Half-blood Prince, Un Long Dimanche de Fiançailles (A Very Long Engagement), Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain (Amélie))
• Production Design: Sarah Greenwood (Beauty and the Beast, Anna Karenina, Sherlock Holmes, Atonement, Pride & Prejudice) & Katie Spencer (Beauty and the Beast, Anna Karenina, Sherlock Holmes, Atonement, Pride & Prejudice)
• Costume Design: Jacqueline Durran (Beauty and the Beast, Mr. Turner, Anna Karenina, Atonement, Pride & Prejudice)
• Makeup & Hairstyling

Director: Joe Wright

Cast: Oldman, Lily James, Kristin Scott Thomas, Ben Mendelsohn, Stephen Dillane, Ronald Pickup, Nicholas Jones, Samuel West

This is the most traditional Oscar-bait movie of the year. It's a very good movie that is beautifully directed, gorgeously designed, and finely realized with some lovely performances. Early on in the year, it seemed poised to do very, very well with the Academy, but then most awards bodies ignored Darkest Hour with the exception of Gary Oldman's extraordinary central performance. But the Academy came through after all, and Joe Wright's excellent World War II drama got 6 nominations (a ton if you haven't been counting), including a Best Picture nomination. It deserves all of these nominations – I really liked this film – and will win two well-deserved Oscars.

Will Win: Actor, Makeup & Hairstyling

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #14 out of 78

Lady Bird

5 Nominations

• Picture
• Director: Greta Gerwig
• Actress: Saoirse Ronan (Brooklyn, Atonement)
• Original Screenplay: Greta Gerwig
• Supporting Actress: Laurie Metcalf

Director: Gerwig

Cast: Ronan, Metcalf, Tracy Letts, Beanie Feldstein, Lucas Hedges, Timothée Chalamet, Lois Smith, Stephen Henderson, Jordan Rodrigues, Marielle Scott, Odeya Rush, Jake McDorman, 

Lady Bird for the win! I think that of the most likely winners of the Best Picture Oscar – and it is still very much up in the air – I would be happiest with this one. Lady Bird is an absolute delight, and most importantly: this is a hilarious movie. Unlike most "comedies" that do well during awards season, this one is actually very funny. It also feels true and honest, and at times it becomes quite moving. Its cast is absolute perfection, and it boasts excellent, very very funny performances by the entire ensemble. It's also worth saying that this cast works as an ensemble rather than all simply being good in the movie. They are in tons of scenes together, and each actor manages to steal a scene or two. They are great together. To be honest, I wouldn't have nominated Greta Gerwig in the director category. I love her, but there were many directors who did stronger work than Gerwig this year (Luca Guadagnino, Ruben Östlund, Julia Ducournau). Still, I ain't mad about it.

Will Win: Supporting Actress

Could Win: Picture, Actress, Original Screenplay
My Rating: #11 out of 78

Blade Runner 2049

5 Nominations

• Cinematography: Roger Deakins (Sicario, Unbroken, Prisoners, Skyfall, True Grit, The Reader, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, No Country for Old Men, The Man Who Wasn't There, O Brother Where Art Thou?, Kundun, Fargo, The Shawshank Redemption)
• Production Design: Dennis Gassner (Into the Woods, The Golden Compass, Road to Perdition, Bugsy, Barton Fink)
  
• Visual Effects
• Sound Mixing
• Sound Effects Editing

Director: Denis Villeneuve

Cast: Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, Robin Wright, Ana de Armas, Jared Leto, Sylvia Hoeks, Mackenzie Davis, Dave Bautista, Lennie James, Edward James Olmos, Carla Juri, Hiam Abbas, Barkhad Abdi, Wood Harris

I really really liked this movie, and thought that mostly no one else did – it didn't do very well at the box office – but the Academy really liked it, and here it is with five below-the-line nominations. Compare that with several blockbusters like Wonder Woman or Thor: Ragnarok that didn't get any nominations. So I am very happy this showed so well. You can read my review here. Will Deakins finally win his Oscar? It is well deserved, certainly, but as it does every year, it rather seems unlikely again this year, even though I am going to bet on him. It doesn't much matter, I don't think. He will keep doing incredible work, and he will be nominated again in a year or two.

Will Win: Cinematography

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #19 out of 78

Get Out

4 Nominations

• Picture
• Director: Jordan Peele
• Actor: Daniel Kaluuya
• Original Screenplay: Jordan Peele

Director: Peele

Cast: Kaluuya, Allison Williams, Catherine Keener, LilRel Howery, Bradley Whitford, Caleb Landry Jones, Marcus Henderson, Betty Gabriel, Lakeith Stanfield, Stephen Root

I was sort of baffled by all of the love this received. It's obviously clever, and it's fairly well made, and LilRel Howery is really really funny. But despite an extraordinarily awesome opening scene, I found myself underwhelmed by this movie, and I remain shocked at the way critics and the Academy have embraced it. This is a serviceable horror-comedy film. I liked it, but it also has lots of strange problems. My main take on this movie is that it is a kind of staging of the experience of black American paranoia around white people in chiefly white spaces. This fear is obviously justified – just turn on the news – but for me the movie never moves into really imaginative territory or past this initial bit of cleverness, and Get Out doesn't really have anything new to say about this experience. But that's just me, and I'm not interested in hating on a movie everyone loved. If you loved it, you go right ahead loving it.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: Original Screenplay
My Rating: #49 out of 78

Androids Dreaming of Electric Dads

Blade Runner 2049 is a long film. That is probably the first thing you ought to know about it. It clocks in at a totally unnecessary 2 hours 45 minutes. This movie is taking its time doing what it wants to do.

The next thing – and you already know this – is that the film is visually stunning. Its production design, costume design, cinematography, and visual effects are all award-worthy, awesome achievements. It just looks so good. The photography and lighting, honestly, are even better in the movie than you can tell from the trailer. There are sequences that are absolutely visually breathtaking.

And God remembered Rachel, and God hearkened to her and opened her womb. –Genesis 30.22

But Blade Runner 2049 is a self-important, pretentious movie, that expects its audience to do a lot of intellectual labor. It doesn't clearly articulate the ethical questions at the center of its filmic puzzle, either, so that if the characters are thinking through questions of right and wrong, or if they're making bold decisions that contradict their programming or their caste in society, we don't really have much access to the thought processes (or perhaps software processes) that lead to those decisions. In short, the movie doesn't really let us in to the characters. Even if I loved Ryan Gosling's character K, I only rarely felt like I understood the conundrums with which he was struggling. (Robin Wright and Carla Juri's characters are notable exceptions to this.)

More than that, the film's characters are obsessed with, and long for, natural things like wood, water, air, and animal life. But Blade Runner 2049 doesn't make this clear enough, and the audience never shares the characters' wonder at the real. So things that seem wonderful or awesome to these people in 2049 are completely ordinary to the film's viewers. And how could they be anything else? Blade Runner 2049 doesn't spend enough time setting up the world for us; it avoids allowing us into how the characters feel about the slum slash police state in which they live.

The King

There is a famous robot play by Karel Čapek – the man who invented the word robot – called R.U.R. or Rossum's Universal Robots. This is also an overly long story, and it aims at questions similar to Blade Runner 2049: viz. What if robots could reproduce? What might it mean for two androids to have a child? R.U.R. is mostly a problem play, and it spends its time talking us through the various ethical and emotional questions involved in having robots working as slaves (the word robot in fact means slave). In other words, there is much to discuss and therefore much time is needed for the play to do what it wants to do. Blade Runner 2049, by contrast, squanders its time, seemingly extending every sequence by at least 45 seconds so that the camera can drink up more of the gorgeous production design. This makes for a ponderous film that is nearly emotionally empty. (A part of this is due to having Ryan Gosling as the lead. He goes for stoic and silent in these kinds of roles – an obvious heir to Harrison Ford's famous sullenness – but this film needed emotional vulnerability in order to stop itself from being one of Christopher Nolan's soulless adventures.)

But it is visually and aurally stunning, and now that I've laid out all of my problems with the movie, all of the reasons that I know the film is not great, I can't say that I cared very much about any of these objections. I really liked Blade Runner 2049. Do I wish Villeneuve had made a better movie? I do. But I was delighted, astounded, even shocked by this one. Roger Deakins' cinematography feels completely fresh in every sequence. The neon-red-on-one-side-neon-blue-on-the-other-side visual that you can see in seemingly every movie – and about which I have complained before – never happens in Blade Runner 2049 even if it is used on the poster. Instead, Deakins' use of color feels inventive, novel, even revelatory. Now, one might easily object: but in service of what, exactly? and this objection would make sense, but for me these images were actually enough. They evoked plenty of emotion for me as colors and light: It was like staring at a Mark Rothko or a James Turrell or a Doug Wheeler.

So, I guess I can't really recommend Blade Runner 2049. If I really liked it, I know that I liked it for very specific reasons. I expect that for most people, this film's self-importance and pretenses will weigh more heavily against it, and those people are – sigh – probably right.

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 2016: Part 4 of 11

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

Sicario

3 Nominations

• Cinematography: Roger Deakins (Unbroken, Prisoners, Skyfall, True Grit, The Reader, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, No Country for Old Men, The Man Who Wasn't There, O Brother Where Art Thou?, Kundun, Fargo, The Shawshank Redemption)
• Original Score: Jóhann Jóhannsson (The Theory of Everything)
• Sound Editing

Director: Denis Villeneuve

Cast: Emily Blunt, Josh Brolin, Benicio Del Toro, Daniel Kaluuya, Jon Bernthal, Jeffrey Donovan, Victor Garber, Raoul Trujillo, Julia Cesar Cedillo, Bernardo Saracino, Maximiliano Hernandez, Lora Martinez-Cunningham, Edgar Arreola, Rio Alexander

I tried to stop hating this movie, but every time I think more about it I hate it more. It's exciting to watch, with many good performances, but what this message has to say about violence, about torture, about war, about international action, and about the violence perpetrated by our government is (to my mind) reprehensible. Still, I am glad that Jóhann Jóhannson got a nomination here. His score is interesting and creepy and metallic, and I am glad the Academy is recognizing scores like this. Roger Deakins' photography is gorgeous, as always; one day he will finally shoot a movie that people can really get behind and he can win an Oscar. This is thirteenth nomination. He's never won. But we might ask ourselves, as Judith Butler does in Frames of War, "As we watch a video or see an image, what kind of solicitation is at work? Are we being invited to take aim? Are we conscripted into the trajectory of the bullet or missile?" It is clear to me, as Butler says a little later, "that such visual and conceptual frames are ways of building and destroying populations as objects of knowledge and targets of war, and that such frames are the means through which social norms are relayed and made effective." Sicario celebrates violence, torture, and USAmerican exceptionalism far too much for me to have enjoyed watching it.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #51 out of 62

Steve Jobs

2 Nominations

• Actor: Michael Fassbender (12 Years a Slave)
• Supporting Actress: Kate Winslet (The Reader, Little Children, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Iris, Titanic, Sense and Sensibility)

Director: Danny Boyle

Cast: Fassbender, Winslet, Seth Rogen, Jeff Daniels, Michael Stuhlbarg, Katherine Waterston, Sarah Snook, Perla Haney-Jardine, Makenzie Moss

Steve Jobs! I never wrote about this movie; I kept meaning to, but I just never got around to it, I guess. The thing is I really liked it. I thought it worked very well in its own way, and I loved the performances – Fassbender and Winslet, but also Katherine Waterston and Michael Stuhlbarg. Jobs is a fascinating figure, and the movie peels him apart and demonstrates how personal life and career (for a creative type) are so intertwined. I am not sure I know why people disliked this movie as much as they did, but I will say that it's structure is really stagey. It is as though Steve Jobs was a stage play that somehow found its way to the big screen, but Aaron Sorkin didn't seem to bother to update it so that it would work for film. This is mitigated somewhat by Danny Boyle, but no one could make this screenplay less of a stage play. It's embedded in the structure itself. Each of the film's three acts takes place in basically the same location, and we begin each of the acts by jumping forward in time many years so that the audience spends the first couple of minutes of the act figuring out when we are and what has happened in the interim. And then we watch what happens with Jobs in the minutes leading up to a new product-launch. One of these happens at the end of each act. At one point in the film, Jobs complains that "It’s like 5 minutes before every launch everyone goes to a bar, gets drunk and tells me what they really think." This isn't so much a line that describes how Jobs is feeling as a line that describes how Sorkin's screenplay works. That's exactly what happens in the film. Still, in many ways this is an interesting history of the technological advancement of the last 30 years and some of the people who made that happen, and, as I said, I loved the acting.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: Supporting Actress
My Rating: #20 out of 62

Inside Out

2 Nominations

• Original Screenplay: Pete Docter (Up, WALL·E, Toy Story), Ronnie del Carmen, Josh Cooley, & Meg LeFauve
• Animated Feature

Director: Pete Docter

Cast: Amy Poehler, Phyllis Smith, Richard Kind, Kaitlyn Dias, Bill Hader, Lewis Black, Mindy Kaling, Diane Lane, Kyle MacLachlan, Paula Poundstone, Bobby Moynihan, Josh Cooley, John Ratzenberger, Rashida Jones

This is a really sweet children's movie, or, I guess, a movie for adolescents. It didn't really feel aimed at someone like me, so I have to say that I was sometimes bored in it. It was a little too cutesy and generic for me – the image above is a great example of the CandyLand way the film is designed. But everyone seemed to really like this movie, and I expect it to win the Oscar for Animated Feature. As much as filmmakers have tried to shift the perceptions of people toward animated film, most people still seem to see animated film as made for children (perhaps I include myself in "most people", as well). Inside Out strikes me as definitely not a film for adults, but adults have seemed to enjoy it, so I guess my initial impression is incorrect. I've linked above to where I have written a little about this, so I won't belabor the point, but I just never bought into the geography of the world inside the little girl's brain. It seemed at all times to be arbitrary, that is, the writers, at any given moment, would have been able to fix the problem – let the train leave just a little later and take Joy and Sadness back to central command, or whatever it is called, or let Joy and Sadness jump into the little memory chute that sends memories back up to HQ like Rob Lowe's shirt getting caught in that pneumatic tube in Tommy Boy. And a few times the writers did just adjust the rules of this brain-world whenever they wanted – the sequence where Bing Bong helps Joy escape the area of the little girl's brain where things are forgotten forever might pose a few questions for us such as: why can't the writers just make the wall of that place just a little lower? and: If that location means that things are forgotten forever, how is it that one is able to leave that place at all?
Will Win: Animated Feature

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #38 out of 62

Ex Machina

2 Nominations

• Original Screenplay: Alex Garland
• Visual Effects

Director: Alex Garland

Cast: Oscar Isaac, Domhnall Gleeson, Alicia Vikander, Sonoya Mizuno, Corey Johnson

I was definitely into Ex Machina, and I wrote a meditation on what I see as the important depths of the film's amazing screenplay, that I recommend you read if you've seen the movie. I am really happy about these two nominations – I don't think it can win an Oscar in either category, but Alex Garland has written a couple of great screenplays in his career so far: 28 Days Later... and Sunshine, a personal favorite. He deserves this nomination and deserves to be more widely recognized for his work. Obviously Gleeson, Isaac, and Vikander are all having a great year, too, so that's excellent. If only there were an Oscar category for choreography: I want to nominate the dance sequence in Ex Machina for an Oscar (even if it would lose to Cinderella). In any case, if you haven't seen Ex Machina, you really must. It's an exciting, deep thriller.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #24 out of 62

Sicario

A sicario is an assassin, a title card tells us at the beginning of Denis Villeneuve's new movie starring Emily Blunt.

Sicario begins with a raid on a house in Arizona that ostensibly is holding hostages – actually, we don't know anything about what's going on. We know that Emily Blunt and her partner Daniel Kaluuya are the people we are supposed to like, and we know that people are shooting at them. We also know that Blunt's character Kate is a badass: she wastes an assassin without any trouble at all, dodging his shotgun blast and blowing him away with a machine gun. In the house that they and their team raid we find upwards of 40 corpses, hidden in the walls. There is also a huge explosion that manages to kill a couple of local cops.

From here we stay in the dark.

In other words, from the movie's opening sequence we don't really know what's going on. Kate is brought along on a mission to El Paso led by a winking, glib Josh Brolin and accompanied by a taciturn Benicio Del Toro. But what we are doing and why we are doing it is never clear. The movie traffics in this kind of mystery. The movie is, in fact, almost totally made up of setpieces in the sense that nothing that's happening is ever linked to a larger storyline. We are in a single action sequence and we follow that action sequence, but Sicario's game is keeping us uninvested in characters, in why the action is happening, and in what this action is supposed to accomplish.

It's an odd way to go about making a movie that is "serious" about drugs in America or crime in America or the real-world problems that attend dealing with crime that is both "Mexican" crime and "U.S. crime". There is no analysis of the problem, no expository information given to us so that we can try to puzzle it out or think through different possibilities for dealing with the problem: we simply follow Brolin and Del Toro along as they do "what needs to be done".

From the opening.

I found this frustrating in the extreme – not least because this means that Emily Blunt is given almost nothing to do except look confused as she tries to do what she knows how to do even though she has no idea what the rules are. The rules, you will remember, have been deliberately hidden from both her and us.

The other reason this is frustrating is that the film is fundamentally invested in violence as the solution to all problems that it presents us. Sicario enjoys violence, enjoys, in fact, staging torture for the audience's enjoyment. Further, Sicario doesn't object in any way to this torture. This is "what needs to be done". Of course, the audience has no way to know if this is true or not because the audience is never being given the full story about anything: We're not going to tell you what's going on, but hey here's a scene where we are going to torture a guy that we're telling you is a bad guy. Enjoy yourself!

And we do! The torture scenes are the most enjoyable part. And when the sicario of the film's title appears and begins to assassinate everyone in his path, we're there to enjoy these scenes and feel the thrill of having killed a bunch of people. Why? Who cares. Is it just for revenge? Sounds good.

Jeffrey Donovan in Sicario

All of this is fine, to be sure... if we're in a James Bond movie or Quentin Tarantino movie (QT's violence is always much more complex and nuanced, in fact) or if we're in a revenge movie starring Liam Neeson or Jason Statham. Revenge for the sake of itself. Bloodshed for pleasure. Fine. But Sicario pretends to be something else. It purports to be some kind of serious movie about border crime and the realities of life in Ciudad Juárez. That, however, is simply the thin veneer laid over what is essentially a shoot-em-up assassin movie. Sicario is about illegal substances being transported into the U.S. and daily terrorism in Juárez the way that Bad Boys II is about the connections between Russian gangsters and megalomaniac Cuban drug lords.

With the exception of Brolin's phoned-in performance the acting is solid. It's always good to see jobbing actors like Jon Bernthal and Maximiliano Hernández (both particularly good) getting work. And Jeffrey Donovan, Raoul Trujillo, Bernardo P. Saracino, and Lora Martinez-Cunningham are all solid in good roles.

Roger Deakins shot Sicario – he was nominated for an Oscar for Villeneuve's Prisoners – and Sicario is very big on being beautiful to look at. There is even an extended sequence shot as black-and-white night-vision. I was bored with all of this, but it wouldn't surprise me if this pleased other audience members. For me, this first-person-shooter video-game look only makes the film's pleasure at sending bullets into the nameless, worthless bodies of Mexican "criminals" all the more apparent. This film is not about educating us about border crime. It is not even about presenting us with the problem. It is about killing people without consequence and enjoying it.

Oscar Nominees 2014: Part 7 of 14

The Lone Ranger

2 Nominations

• Visual Effects
• Makeup

Director: Gore Verbinski

Cast: Johnny Depp, Armie Hammer, Tom Wilkinson, William Fichtner, Ruth Wilson, Bryant Prince, James Badge Dale, Helena Bonham Carter, Barry Pepper, Saginaw Grant, James Frain

I was too drunk actually to remember what happened in this hot mess of racism, makeup, and visual effects. Just know that I thought it was basically Rango with humans. And I hated Rango. Apparently, however, the Academy kind of loves Gore Verbinski, and they still love Johnny Depp even though he only makes terrible movies these days. Still, The Lone Ranger, is a new low, and the nominations for this film were a bit of a surprise to me. If you're going to nominate a good effects-driven film, why not Elysium or Pacific Rim? I mean, those movies are actually good. The parts I liked about this movie were probably the costume design, which was fun, and the score, which used Giacchino Rossini's music too much to be eligible for Academy consideration. Ah well. In any case, The Lone Ranger won't be winning any Oscars. Trust that.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #74 out of 80

Before Midnight

1 Nomination

• Adapted Screenplay: Julie Delpy (Before Sunset) & Ethan Hawke (Before Sunset) & Richard Linklater (Before Sunset)

Director: Linklater

Cast: Delpy, Hawke, Walter Lassally, Athina Rachel Tsangari, Panos Koronis, Yannis Papadopoulos, Ariane Labed, Xenia Kalogeropoulou

This film is brilliant. One of my favorites of the year. I still do not understand why this goes in the Adapted Screenplay category. The script is not at all adapted from anything. It makes no sense. But this film deserves every accolade it gets. It is a film about talking, about talking through the difficult periods in the life of a couple. And this couple fights and says unforgivable things, and then they forgive. It is an extraordinary portrait of love and disappointment and loss and (I can't believe I'm about to say this) heterosexuality. But it is a kind of interrogated heterosexuality. One that actively wonders about gender dynamics and feminism and expectations. It is an extraordinary picture. Beautifully filmed, beautifully acted, and shot in Greece, so, well, there's that. Could this win its big award? Looks unlikely, but it would be awesome if it did.
Will Win: N/A

Could Win: Adapted Screenplay

My Rating: #8 out of 80

Prisoners

1 Nomination

• Cinematography: Roger Deakins (Skyfall, True Grit, The Reader, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, No Country for Old Men, The Man Who Wasn't There, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Kundun, Fargo, The Shawshank Redemption)

Director: Denis Villeneuve

Cast: Hugh Jackman, Jake Gyllenhaal, Maria Bello, Terrence Howard, Viola Davis, Paul Dano, Melissa Leo, Dylan Minnette, Wayne Duval, Len Cariou, David Dastmalchian

Roger Deakins is so good! And, actually, so is this movie. I didn't really care for Villeneuve's last movie, the Foreign-Language-Picture-nominated Incendies, but this one is a tight, dangerous crime thriller in the vein of David Fincher's Zodiac. Villeneuve kept me guessing the entire time. Jake Gyllenhaal is also really, really great in Prisoners. He is just playing a detective, so it looks like rather an easy role, but Gyllenhaal fleshes his character out in all kinds of interesting ways – the acting is not this good across the board: Viola Davis is excellent, but Howard and Jackman are just playing "good father" to the hilt. Still, even with Jackman's overacting, Prisoners is really, really scary. I spent most of the film wondering who the kidnappers were, who was going to betray whom, and squirming in my seat as I worried about characters getting caught or maimed or killed or whatever. This is a really excellent watch. My roommate and I both double-checked the locks on our doors after this one. Good stuff.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #22 out of 80

Piñero

I remember reading that Piñero had problems, but I also seemed to remember that there was a bit of Oscar buzz for Benjamin Bratt at the time that Piñero was released (2001).

In any case, I will be writing about Miguel Piñero's play Short Eyes in my book, so I wanted to (finally) watch Leon Ichaso's film about Piñero. It is a disaster.

First off, the film jumps back and forth in time, beginning in Sing Sing prison in 1972 or so, jumping to 1974, jumping again to 1988, and then also occasionally back to Piñero's childhood.Now, Denis Villeneuve's Incendies, for example does this and it is not confusing, so I am not objecting to jumping around in time per se, but in Piñero most of the time I had no idea when or where we were. It was downright confusing. Now they're fighting, now he's been forgiven, now they're sleeping together, I don't get it. This actually made the film downright incoherent.

Worse, the film feels guilty for liking Piñero himself and so the movie is, more than it is anything else, a kind of apology for who Piñero was. Honestly, this made me uncomfortable. Piñero was a troubled guy, erratic, he hurt  a lot of his close friends, he was an addict, and he finally couldn't get his act together and died of cirrhosis of the liver. But... the film shows us that all of these friends loved him deeply; they are all, for example, at his funeral in the lower East Side. So why does the movie spend so much time showing us what a jerk Piñero was? Why did people love him? The film ignores this aspect of Piñero – we don't see the opening of Short Eyes, we don't see his friendship with Joe Papp, we only see the tortured side of his love affair with Sugar, his main female interest, and the film totally short changes his sexual relationship with playwright Reinaldo Povod.

The whole thing was just so strange. Piñero didn't necessarily need to be a celebration of this guy's life, but why is Piñero important? I daresay he is quite important, having founded the Nuyorican Poet's Café with Miguel Algarín, but Piñero seems much more interested in criticizing its main character than in anything else. I mean, why make a movie about a guy you don't really like all that much?

So Foreign

Last year I didn't manage to see all five films that were nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. This happens not infrequently, obviously, as many films don't find a release in the United States even if they do manage to snag an Academy Award nomination. So, last night I finally saw the last of the five and I thought I would cover these films briefly.

I rated Biuitiful my favorite film of 2010. I found it deeply moving, with a central performance by Javier Bardem that is simply incredible. This is another of 2010's films about parenting, and like the others (The Kids Are All Right, The Illusionist, Mother and Child) I felt like Biuitiful really connected to me in terms of where  I see myself right now. Biutiful is very similar in tone and style to Alejandro González Iñárritu's other films, but where those films don't quite work all the way, Biutiful works in every way. It has a sense of the mystical about it, the interconnectedness of things on a spiritual plane, but even more importantly – though both part of Iñárritu's project – a sense of the global, that the small choices we make can affect profoundly the lives of others. Biutiful manages to be about Chinese migrant workers and Senegalese migrant workers at the same time as it is about dying of cancer, discovering one's relationship to one's father. It does all of this extremely well. I have heard that this film is hard to sit through for some. I had precisely the opposite experience. I found the entire thing exhilarating.

I am not sure what Dogtooth is about any more than you will be if you get to watch it. It's incredibly violent, but it's also, well, frankly, bizarre. I found it very, very interesting. And if it didn't quite make sense to me in terms of plot or theme or whatever other so-called Aristotelian aspects a narrative is supposed to have, Dogtooth made for compelling viewing and I would definitely watch this again before watching, say, The King's Speech again. I've written more about this movie here, so I'll shut up about it now.

Hors la Loi is a movie by Rachid Bouchareb starring his usual trio of Sami Bouajila, Roschdy Zem, and Jamel Debbouze. I don't think I'm ever going to be very interested in Jamel Debbouze (I guess I'll never get his performance in Amélie out of my head), but Roschdy Zem is great in this and I am a little obsessed with Sami Bouajila. I think he is just brilliant. Hors la Loi is about the fight for Algerian independence on French soil. I didn't know this before the film, but during the Algerian struggle for independence from France, an Algerian party also planned and executed many terrorist attacks on French soil itself. This is what Hors la Loi covers. The trouble is... Bouchareb can't help but make everything sentimental. The movie spends long periods of time attempting to pluck at the heartstrings instead of simply trying to tell the story. The movie wants to be a kind of neo-noir gangster film at many points, and it is here where Hors la Loi works best. But Bouchareb is constantly distracted by a desire to also make an inspiring historical epic that has a giant emotional impact. So he romanticizes and sentimentalizes and by the end of the film I was mostly just frustrated at all of the emotional manipulation the film manages to do. The men creating the revolution aren't sentimental, so why must Bouchareb continually look at them with a sentimental eye?

I thought Incendies was a bit of a fail, as well. It is well acted, and I was with the film for about its first hour. The movie jumps back and forth between Lebanon in the 1970s and Canada in 2009, when a pair of twins is trying to figure out what happened to their mother a quarter of a century earlier. Incendies is based on a novel that I haven't read, but my main thought about this film is that it misses the story of the mother because of its need to include the story of the children. Every bit of the mother's story in Lebanon in the 1970s is utterly fascinating. Every bit of it. And every time the film jumped back to the twenty-first century I felt myself fidget in my seat. Villeneuve also makes the film into a mystery. We do not know what happened, so we must figure it out. But mysteries only work if you hide what happened well enough. Because the film jumps back and forth, we frequently know what happened before the onscreen detectives figure it out. This simply does not work, and I couldn't help but think that there was a really interesting story in here somewhere if only the novel had been adapted differently.

I loved this movie. In Another World is a Danish film by Susanne Bier (she has made at least one English-language movie now), and, like her other films, this film packs a huge emotional wallop. The movie is about violence in Africa and in Denmark both. In Denmark, the film follows the violence of adolescents as they try to figure out how to seek revenge or end a chain of violence. The film asks all kinds of interesting ethical questions about how we train our children, how important it is to be "strong" in front of them, and how best to respond to violence committed against us. This is a film about parenting, too, of course (there I go again), but even more importantly it is a movie about being a responsible citizen of the world - in the same way that Biutiful is, really. In Another World is a real achievement; it's compelling from start to finish; and it manages to unpack all sorts of questions about domestic terrorism, violent impulses, and revenge. Definitely worth seeing.