Oscar Nominations 2025: Post 2 of 10

1. Sinners, One Battle after Another, Sentimental Value

This year's nominees are:

Marty Supreme

9 nominations

• Picture
• Director: Josh Safdie (1st time nominee)
• Actor: Timothée Chalamet (A Complete Unknown, Call Me by Your Name)
• Original Screenplay: Ronald Bronstein & Safdie (both 1st time nominees)
• Film Editing: Bronstein & Safdie (both 1st time nominees)
• Cinematography: Darius Khondji (Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths, Evita)
• Production Design: Jack Fisk (Killers of the Flower Moon, The Revenant, There Will Be Blood) & Adam Willis (Killers of the Flower Moon)
• Costume Design: Miyako Bellizzi (1st time nominee)
• Casting

Director: Safdie

Cast: Chalamet, Gwyneth Paltrow, Odessa A'Zion, Kevin O'Leary, Tyler the Creator, Emory Cohen, Fran Drescher, Géza Röhrig, Abel Ferrara, Penn Jilette, Sandra Bernhard

This is tons of fun. It's a non-stop ride of bad mistake after bad mistake (in the vein of the other Safdie Brothers movies). This one feels much more fun than Good Time, Uncut Gems, and The Smashing Machine, and I think a lot of that is the way that Chalamet is able to enjoy himself and project his own pleasure through the difficulties of the character. Marty is a fantastic character, and he's played beautifully here. Which is to say that I don't normally think we associate what Chalamet is doing in this movie with "acting" as such, but I think he's doing an incredible amount of work here that doesn't come across as "honesty" or "vulnerability" or whatever else we might associate with good acting. He's, well, a star. I hope he wins Best Actor. The film has stumbled in recent days with various negative campaigning aimed at it, so I think it is probably not winning any other Oscars, but I'd still like to see Timmy take this one. I also think it should win casting. This is a kind of genius casting job. I think putting Géza Röhrig in that orgy scene with the honey was flat out brilliant. Ok also... that honey scene. Can we talk about it?

Will win: Actor, Casting

Could win: Editing

My rating: #15 out of 89

Frankenstein

9 nominations

• Picture
• Adapted Screenplay: Guillermo Del Toro (The Shape of Water, Pan's Labyrinth)
• Supporting Actor: Jacob Elordi (1st time nominee)
• Cinematography: Dan Lausten (Nightmare Alley, The Shape of Water)
• Production Design: Tamara Deverell (Nightmare Alley) & Shane Vieau (Dune: Part Two, Nightmare Alley, The Shape of Water)
• Original Score: Alexandre Desplat (Little Women, Isle of Dogs, The Shape of Water, The Imitation Game, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Philomena, Argo, The King's Speech, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Queen)
• Costume Design: Kate Hawley (1st time nominee)
• Makeup & Hairstyling

Director: Del Toro

Cast: Oscar Isaac, Elordi, Christoph Waltz, Mia Goth, Felix Kammerer, Charles Dance, David Bradley

Beautiful production design—or as a friend recently said "most" production design—and lots and lots of sumptuous, jewel-toned light. The costumes are gorgeous, the music is pretty, but this movie is fairly boring. I thought Oscar Isaac did good work in this, and David Bradley is great as the Creature’s friend, but the film itself just doesn’t have anything to add to the Frankenstein narratives we already have. Elordi is, of course, cheating by campaigning in the supporting actor category, but the Academy didn't seem to mind it here the way they minded Paul Mescal's category fraud (see below). Elordi is a rising star and everyone seems to love him. He's made a bunch of movies that have done well recently, and he's working hard, so I guess that pushed him over the edge here. I am a little baffled by this, but, then, I'm also baffled that anyone liked this movie. For something so shiny, it manages to be quite dull.

Will win: Production Design, Makeup & Hairsyling

Could win: Cinematography, Costume

My rating: #61 out of 89

Hamnet

8 nominations

• Picture
• Director: Chloé Zhao (Nomadland)
• Actress: Jessie Buckley (The Lost Daughter)
• Adapted Screenplay: Maggie O'Farrell (1st time nominee) & Zhao (Nomadland)
• Production Design: Fiona Crombie (The Favourite) & Alice Felton (The Favourite)
• Original Score: Max Richter (1st time nominee)
• Costume Design: Malgosia Turzanska (1st time nominee)
• Casting

Director: Zhao

Cast: Buckley, Paul Mescal, Joe Alwyn, Emily Watson, Jacobi Jupe, Noah Jupe, Bodhi Rae Breathnach, Olivia Lynes, David Wilmot, Justine Mitchell

My friends Kody and Dayne have been dragging me for weeks for liking this movie as much as I did. But I found this to be a beautiful meditation on grief. I liked all of the early stuff with the Agnes and Will falling in love, too. I think the real issue for me is that I just love Hamlet, so I loved all the little touches of it throughout the script – goodbye, goodbye, goodbye and other small places where it appeared. The problem with Hamnet is that it is too committed to grief and mourning; it plays this same note way too long. And you might say, yes, well, that's how grief works, but Sirāt is a film that has a similar meditation on the losing of a child, and it works much better. And when I think about it more, Hamnet is doing something as silly as giving us an origin story for an intellectual property we all love—like this is Becoming Jane Austen or something like that. Will Shakespeare reciting "To be or not to be" was way overboard. (I say this as someone who still really liked the film!) And another thing. The film really stumbles at the end. Whoever decided to use “On the Nature of Daylight”, that same Max Richter song from Arrival and Shutter Island, is a fool. In fact, I'm surprised it didn't disqualify Richter from getting his first Oscar nomination. Using old music like that is a big no-no for the Academy. Having that song at the end of the movie immediately pulled me out of the film—it belongs to a wholly different world—and of course I already know it, so rather than the ending of Hamnet feeling unexpected and new, the film moves into familiar territory. Not smart. There’s so much good stuff in this movie, though, and once I bought into the fiction of it (this does not accord with theatre history at all), I enjoyed myself. I guess I should say one more thing about Paul Mescal standing just off the medal stand over there. He's pretty great in this movie—I think he's pretty great in everything, honestly—but he attempted true category fraud. He (or his management) thought the supporting actor race was less crowded than the best actor race, and he was right about that, but it's a hard sell to say that he wasn't the lead actor in this film no matter how good he is in it.

Will win: Actress

Could win: Adapted Screenplay, Production Design, Casting

My rating: #30 out of 89

All 2025 Oscar posts:

1. Sinners, One Battle after Another, Sentimental Value

2. Marty Supreme, Frankenstein, Hamnet
3. Bugonia, The Secret Agent, Train Dreams

4. F1, Blue Moon, It Was Just an Accident

5. Sirāt, Avatar: Fire and Ash, K-Pop Demon Hunters

6. If I Had Legs I'd Kick You, Song Sung Blue, Weapons, The Voice of Hind Rajab

7. Arco, Elio, Zootopia 2, Little Amélie or the Character of Rain

8. Animated Short Films

9. Live-action Short Films

10. Jurassic World: Rebirth, The Lost Bus, Kokuho, The Smashing Machine

11. The Ugly Stepsister, Diane Warren: Relentless, Viva Verdi!

Oscar Nominations 2022: 7 of 9 (Animated Features)

 This year's nominees:

Pinocchio

1 Nomination

• Animated Feature

Director: Guillermo Del Toro, Mark Gustafson

Cast: Ewan McGregor, Gregory Mann, David Bradley, Tilda Swinton, Christoph Waltz, Finn Wolfhard, Ron Perlman, Burn Gorman, Cate Blanchett, Tim Blake Nelson, John Turturro

I loved this movie, and I think it's the best animated film of the year, but it is a Guillermo Del Toro movie, not a Disney Pinocchio tale. Del Toro's film is a very interesting and constantly surprising meditation on death, grief, loss, and the violence of war. Especially intriguing is the Blue Fairy's opposite, a terrifying and wise sphinx figure whom Pinocchio meets in the afterlife. This is also a film with songs, and I have to say that I think I would have liked it better without the musical elements, but it didn't damage my affection for Del Toro's engaging take on this old story. I am predicting this movie to win best animated feature, but I have to say I'm skeptical of my own prediction. Everyone was expecting Pinocchio to do much better on nomination morning than it did. Nominations were predicted for sound, adapted screenplay, and other categories, but it only managed this one. Even music-branch-golden-boy Alexandre Desplat missed a nomination for his Pinocchio score. All of the nominees for best animated feature this year are only nominated in this one category. This is unusual. I think, in the case of Pinocchio, it indicates that the Academy likes it a lot less than critics did. This might mean that Marcel can pull off a win.

Will Win: Animated Feature

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #13 out of 67

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On

1 Nomination

• Animated Feature

Director: Dean Fleischer Camp

Cast: Jenny Slate, Fleischer Camp, Isabella Rossellini, Lesley Stahl, Thomas Mann, Rosa Salazar

I really liked this. I liked Marcel when he was a YouTube sensation – I don't know how many times I watched that video – and I liked him again now. This is a very intriguing pandemic movie. It feels like a pandemic movie, like something made to cope with loss and grief. This is what the animated feature category is about this year – coping with mortality and trying to come to terms with grief and loss. Marcel has a very cute way of doing this, and this film is super charming. I was sort of surprised to hear how emotional people got over Marcel, though. It just didn't do that for me. In terms of the academy and its short film and animated feature branch, this movie is quite an anomaly, and it signals a new approach in considering animation. I think five years ago, this movie would not have been legible as an animated feature. This nomination, though, really opens things up for how the branch is understanding and honoring work in animation, and I think this is very positive.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #27 out of 67

Puss in Boots: the Last Wish

1 Nomination

• Animated Feature

Director: Joel Crawford

Cast: Antonio Banderas, Salma Hayek, Harvey Guillén, Wagner Moura, Florence Pugh, Olivia Colman, Ray Winstone, Samson Kayo, John Mulaney, Da'Vine Joy Randolph 

This is really fun! It's also gorgeously animated, with a witty and cleverly changing set of styles, used in various ways and for different effects. In case you haven't understood the theme, this too is a mediation on death. Puss is, for the first time, terrified for his life, and the film deals with death humorously for a time (perhaps the way most of us do) before moving into quite serious territory. The Last Wish, unfortunately, moves inexorably toward easy clichés and toward melodramatic solutions to its very intriguing problems, but for most of its runtime this is a fun, handsomely animated film, and Salma Hayek and Antonio Banderas are great.

Will Win: N/A

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

Turning Red

1 Nomination

• Animated Feature

Director: Domee Shi

Cast: Rosalie Chiang, Sandra Oh, Orion Lee, Wai Ching Ho, Ava Morse, Hyein Park, Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, Tristan Allerick Chen, Mia Tagano, Lori Tan Chinn, Lillian Lim, James Hong, Sherry Cola

I've already written about Turning Red. If you follow my Instagram, you probably know that I'm obsessed with red pandas, and so I was very ready to be in love with this. It is, indeed, very good, and I had a pretty great time with it. For me, Turning Red is, like many children's movies these days, about the child who is weird, whose desires and impulses don't accord with those of her parents', and who finds herself strange even to herself. [I explore this concept of the queer child as central to recent animated features in chapter five of my new book – link below.] I definitely liked how this movie was about turning against tradition, about deciding to follow a different path. It does have some weird choices in it, though. I am not sure why it's set in the past, and especially not sure why they didn't draw the red panda to look more like the way a real red panda looks – they have beautiful black bellies and black boots, but the animated character is all red. Mostly, this movie makes a very strange homophobic choice that just didn't sit well with me. The movie's still good, but that moment stuck with me and I had trouble letting it go.
Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #46 out of 67

The Sea Beast

1 Nomination

• Animated Feature

Director: Chris Williams

Cast: Karl Urban, Zaris-Angel Hator, Jared Harris, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Kathy Burke

This nomination was a total surprise, and I really don't know how it came to be, because this movie is a complete retread of How to Train Your Dragon. I've already seen How to Train Your Dragon, and this is the same damn plot as the first one except that they're sea dragons instead of flying dragons. Now, I'm sure that lots of kids like this movie. It's cute enough, and it's harmless. But I was annoyed with it, despite my affection for Karl Urban's handsomeness and my love for Marianne Jean-Baptiste.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #50 out of 67

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

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

3. Avatar: the Way of Water, Triangle of Sadness, The Whale, and Babylon

4. The Batman, Women Talking, Living, and Aftersun

5. To Leslie, Blonde, Glass Onion, and Causeway

6. Argentina, 1985, Eo, The Quiet Girl, and Close

More posts coming soon:

8. Animated Shorts

9. Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths, Empire of Light, Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris, RRR, and Tell It like a Woman

I'd love it if you checked out my new book Love Is Love Is Love – out March 24!

Oscar Nominations 2021: 2 of 9

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

King Richard

6 Nominations

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

Director: Reinaldo Marcus Green

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

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

Will Win: Actor, Original Song

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #43 out of 56

Drive My Car (ドライブ・マイ・カー)

4 Nominations

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

Director: Ryūsuke

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

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

Will Win: International Film

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

Don't Look Up

4 Nominations

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

Director: McKay

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

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

Could Win: Original Screenplay

My Rating: #46 out of 56

Nightmare Alley

4 Nominations

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

Director: Guillermo Del Toro

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

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

Will Win: N/A

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

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

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

Nightmare Alley #2

The new Nightmare Alley does in fact fix the problems of the original 1947 film. I had faith that Guillermo Del Toro would opt for a darker ending, and that he would make the character's decline make a great deal more sense. This new version of William Lindsay Gresham's novel is also much more violent (thankfully), and the production design, score, costuming, makeup, and hairstyling are all gorgeous.

But Del Toro has introduced some new problems into the mix, as well. [You should stop reading now if you haven't seen it yet.] In the first place – and I hate to say this because I absolutely love Bradley Cooper – I don't think Cooper works in this movie. He could work, but he's playing the part weirdly, way too close to his chest, like he is hiding everything in the world. This part needs a clearer, honest portrayal that takes in absolutely everyone, a seducer's portrayal. This just isn't that: Cooper feels hidden and terrified for most of the film, wide-eyed and surprised rather than open-faced and genuine. It's hard to imagine him tricking anyone at all. He certainly never takes us in, and I feel like he probably should do this at times. Is he a nice guy? Cooper never lets us believe that he is.

Rooney Mara and Toni Colette also both seem to be playing their parts using the most shallow choices possible. Both of their parts are slightly smaller because of the way the new screenplay works, but Mara opts for a totally guileless portrayal rather than someone with some teeth, and Colette's version of her character is barely a hustler at all – just a kind of sad horny lady. 

Cate Blanchett comes out unscathed, though. Her part was the worst of the three in the original, and not only has it been beefed up here, her character is more interesting, dangerous, and sexy than anything we saw in 1947. Blanchett plays the part like a complete diva, and she wears gorgeous gowns, has gorgeous hair, and poses in front of walls inlaid with wood while endlessly smoking cigarettes and smiling with the reddest lips possible. She's a hustler, and we know it, and it's nothing but fun. Her final scene has been expanded here, and it's a delight – best thing in the movie. 

Props, too, go to David Strathairn, who is consistent and wonderful. His character here is very different from anyone we've seen him play recently, and he's filled him with life and made distinct, intriguing choices.

All in all, I guess I didn't find this film so markedly different from the 1947 movie. It feels technically better, but it also has such a polished shine to it, and the acting is so stilted, that this 2021 version always just sort of feels soulless.

Nightmare Alley #1

A classic that's actually in need of a remake, Edmund Goulding's Nightmare Alley (1947) stars the charismatic Tyrone Power (against type!) and the excellent Joan Blondell, but the rest of the cast can't manage the power of its stars. Worse yet, Goulding's film accelerates its antihero's downfall so that it makes almost no sense that he manages to fail so badly so quickly. All of a sudden, the man's helpless and out of his mind.

And then... it actually pulls its final punches.

In any case, I was with this for a long while. It's great to see Power in something other than a swashbuckling movie (although I love him in those too), and this is very different territory from the usual noir. It's too bad that the movie's last 40 minutes or so didn't hold up to its first 70.

I admit to being skeptical of the new Guillermo Del Toro film. It just looks so glossy – but I feel pretty certain that Del Toro will give us a better ending than the one for which Goulding opted.

Oscar Nominations 2018: Part 1 of 12

Oscar nominations are here! Actually, they came out last week.

Every year I post about each of the films nominated for Oscars (this year there are 39 + 10 short films). I see all of them except for the documentaries (I am just not that interested in documentary film; I'm not sure why).

As always, a large number of the films in my own top 10 for the year were passed over (A Ghost Story, Frantz, Lady Macbeth, Raw), but some of them scored a nomination or two (Coco, The Square, Loveless), and three were nominated for Best Picture (Dunkirk, Phantom Thread, Call Me by Your Name). In other words, as there is every year, there is a lot for me to appreciate here, even if I am more impatient with the Academy's choices this year than usual.

My main complaint – and I am sure this will come up in my commentary in the following weeks – is that Academy voters (and guild voters, too) just don't see enough movies, especially films from other countries. A slate of nominees like the International Cinephile Society's list for 2018 is way better than the one that Oscar made. And I honestly think it's just that the voters in the ICS just see more movies. But I am done expecting the Academy to vote for really really good stuff. They will always skew toward the mediocre, I think. And that is just how it goes.

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

This year's nominees:

The Shape of Water

13 Nominations

• Picture
• Director: Guillermo del Toro
• Actress: Sally Hawkins (Blue Jasmine)
• Original Screenplay: Guillermo del Toro (El Laberinto del Fauno (Pan's Labyrinth)) & Vanessa Taylor
• Supporting Actor: Richard Jenkins (The Visitor)
• Supporting Actress: Octavia Spencer (Hidden Figures, The Help)
  
• Film Editing: Sidney Wolinsky
• Cinematography: Dan Laustsen
• Production Design: Paul Denham Austerberry & Jeff Melvin & Shane Vieau
• Score: Alexandre Desplat (The Imitation Game, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Philomena, Argo, The King's Speech, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Queen)
  
• Costume Design: Luis Sequeira
• Sound Mixing
• Sound Editing

Director: Del Toro

Cast: Hawkins, Michael Shannon, Doug Jones, Jenkins, Spencer, Michael Stuhlbarg, Nick Searcy, David Hewlett, Martin Roach, Morgan Kelly, Nigel Bennett

Well this is obviously the frontrunner, and I think everyone expected that it would be the frontrunner. In many ways, I have to concur with a large number of these nominations; as I said in my own review of this, for me, the design elements – the score, the production design, the costumes, the cinematography – took over the film, turning what might have been a Del Toro picture into something other than the monster movie I wanted it to be. (I love monster movies. Why can't this be one?) At first I was sort of annoyed that this got so many nominations, but looking at the list above, what you can see is that almost all of the nominees are first-time nominees. This makes me think of The Shape of Water as a little bit of an underdog, and it makes me happy for everyone nominated. No matter, everyone loves this movie, and it is going to take home its share of little gold dudes on the first Sunday of March. But not too many.

Will Win: Picture, Director, Production Design

Could Win: Original Screenplay, Film Editing, Cinematography, Score, Costume Design

My Rating: #32 out of 76

Dunkirk

8 Nominations

• Picture
• Director: Christopher Nolan
• Film Editing: Lee Smith (The Dark Knight, Master and Commander: the Far Side of the World)
• Cinematography: Hoyte van Hoytema
• Production Design: Nathan Crowley (Interstellar, The Dark Knight, The Prestige) & Gary Fettis (Interstellar, Changeling, The Godfather: Part III)
• Score: Hans Zimmer (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)
• Sound Mixing
• Sound Editing

Director: Nolan

Cast: Fionn Whitehead, Harry Styles, Tom Hardy, Mark Rylance, Cillian Murphy, Tom Glynn-Carney, Barry Keoghan, Damien Bonnard, Jack Lowden, Kenneth Branagh, James D'Arcy

I loved this movie. I do not normally care for Christopher Nolan movies – I tend to find them soulless and machine-like – but this film always chooses people over strategy, and I can't say enough good things about it. In the first place, Dunkirk is a gorgeous technical achievement. It follows three plots at three different time schemes (it wouldn't be a Nolan movie without a puzzle), and each of these plots is emotionally wrenching, powerful stuff. I was especially moved by the sequences in the boat with Mark Rylance, but each of the plots is great and each allows us to look differently at the others. What is especially wonderful about this film is the way that it gives us the story of Dunkirk from the perspective of those who lived through it on the mole (and in the air, and in the water). Darkest Hour, for example, gives us a story of Churchill and the political and military moves that Dunkirk represented for the British. But Dunkirk isn't interested in backroom politics or Hitler or even what the war might mean for the world. This film focuses on what it means to the young men who fought and lost their lives. It's deeply moving and it is, I think, Nolan's best film to date. I hope he keeps making movies like this one. The Academy does not usually like Nolan, and his nomination is a little bit of a surprise here. Expect Dunkirk to win in lots of technical categories.

Will Win: Film Editing, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing

Could Win: Cinematography
My Rating: #4 out of 76

Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri

7 Nominations

• Picture
• Actress: Frances McDormand (North Country, Almost Famous, Fargo, Mississippi Burning)
• Original Screenplay: Martin McDonagh (In Bruges)
  
• Supporting Actor: Woody Harrelson (The Messenger, The People vs. Larry Flynt)
• Supporting Actor: Sam Rockwell
• Film Editing: Jon Gregory
• Score: Carter Burwell (Carol)

Director: McDonagh

Cast: McDormand, Harrelson, Rockwell, Abbie Cornish, Lucas Hedges, John Hawkes, Peter Dinklage, Caleb Landry-Jones, Sandy Martin, Samara Weaving, Clarke Peters, Željko Ivanek, Amanda Warren

Well, this was the frontrunner for a while – the surprise frontrunner – and so it has gotten its share of backlash. I honestly can't fault too much of this backlash; the film is a very strange movie, and in its sentimentality, it throws forgiveness around a bit too easily perhaps. I really liked it on its own terms – I even liked it more than Shape of Water – but, then, I don't normally like McDonagh's work, so I am probably not liking it for the same reasons McDonagh fans like it. I guess the question now is: Can Three Billboards sustain its momentum through the end of February and pick up a ton of awards? This seems likely to a point. I expect it to win the two acting awards it has been winning (McDormand and Rockwell), and it managed to get a nomination from the film editors, too (seriously, guys???), but a lack of a Best Director nomination for McDonagh here (he didn't deserve one) seems to indicate that at least one branch of the Academy would rather give their top prize to Get Out or Lady Bird or Phantom Thread than to Three Billboards. Can't say I blame them.
Will Win: Actress, Original Screenplay, Supporting Actor

Could Win: Picture

My Rating: #25 out of 76

Phantom Thread

6 Nominations

• Picture
• Director: Paul Thomas Anderson (There Will Be Blood)
  
• Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis (Lincoln, There Will Be Blood, Gangs of New York, In the Name of the Father, My Left Foot)
  
• Supporting Actress: Lesley Manville
• Score: Jonny Greenwood 
• Costume Design: Mark Bridges (Inherent Vice, The Artist)

Director: Anderson

Cast: Day-Lewis, Vicky Krieps, Manville, Gina McKee, Brian Gleeson, Jane Perry, Harriet Sansom Harris

Love love love! And what a surprise that this got six nominations! I don't think anyone was expecting this, especially that Best Director nod. It is well deserved, and I am delighted that this has happened. This is one of my favorite films of the year. It's strange and creepy and a little bit sick, but it's also about the unicity of a particular relationship – how it might work to love someone who is very, very difficult. It's gorgeously made, of course, as PTA's films usually are. This is a film much closer in spirit to The Master and There Will Be Blood than to Inherent Vice or Boogie Nights. Other important surprises: the music branch finally nominated Jonny Greenwood for original score. His score for Phantom Thread is the most beautiful he has yet conceived: it's lush and beautiful and haunting and rich, and I've been listening to it for weeks. I think it is the best score of the year, and I also think it will win. Can Mark Bridges also win? That seems possible. The costumes here are high couture, and the Academy has had a preference for that lately. Perhaps the biggest, most welcome, surprise, though, is the nomination for Lesley Manville, who is a standout as Day-Lewis's sister. She was passed over for a nomination a couple years ago for the Mike Leigh film Another Year (the Academy ought to be embarrassed – and they ought to see more movies), but this is some kind of redemption. I will be happy with any and every Oscar this film takes home.

Will Win: Score, Costume Design

Could Win: Supporting Actress
My Rating: #8 out of 76

The Shape of Water

Guillermo Del Toro's new movie, which is getting rave reviews and winning tons of awards, is an, ambitious, romantic love story between a young woman and a sea monster.

I liked the movie well enough. The Shape of Water is set in a movie-version of the 1950s, during a movie-version of the Cold War. A young woman (Sally Hawkins) works as a janitor in some kind of aquaculture department of the government. There she meets and falls in love with a sea monster, who has recently been imprisoned by an evil masculine-identified 1950s man's man who would rather cut the monster open to see how it works than get to know the monster and learn from it.

The movie is intended to be a kind of thriller, as Sally Hawkins decides to break the creature out of jail and let him live in her apartment until she can set him free into the ocean. But more importantly, The Shape of Water is a love story. Sally Hawkins falls in love with a sea monster, and this unconventional romance is front and center in the film, taking narrative precedence over the escape plot and the 1950s-intrigue-Cold-War-Russians plot.

This is a fairy tale, but the trouble with The Shape of Water is that it never wants to wade into the depths with this central complex plot point. I perhaps didn't make it clear above, that Sally Hawkins not only falls in love with, but has sex with our friend the sea monster. And this wasn't a problem for me, but – oddly enough – this wasn't really a problem for anyone else in the film, either, and the film itself doesn't present this as a problem. What is, perhaps, strange, is that if you think about it, this is a problem. So I think what it boils down to is that The Shape of Water is not actually interested in exploring problems or questions or complexities. Instead, the film is willing to ride along the surface of a romantic plot, finding this young, lonely woman, sweet and cute and (frankly) pitying her, so that when she makes love to the sea monster, we already understand; we don't wonder what's going on with her; we don't ask ourselves whether or not she should be exploring a sexual relationship with the sea monster.

Two-Dimensional Love

In fact, my central issue with The Shape of Water is its resistance to wading into the deep end with anything in the film. Del Toro seems fine with painting two-dimensional characters and letting them alone without asking us to think about them in complex ways. This is, perhaps, most apparent with the film's villain, Michael Shannon, who plays this absurd version of a 1950s man – a racially insensitive Eisenhower voter who is easily talked into buying a Cadillac because he wants to be a "man of the future", who ignores his kids, who has unpleasurable sex with a wife he also ignores, who sexually harasses the young women who work for him, who refers to the janitors as "the help", and who would rather torture and kill the beautiful being he has imprisoned than talk to it and get to know it. He is, in short, a caricature of traditional mid-century masculinity. And Michael Shannon plays him to the hilt. But the villain is so two-dimensional that when, in the third act, the film finally asks us to think about him or care about him, we can't. He's just not enough of a fleshed-out figure.

This is also, unfortunately, true of Sally Hawkins' gay BFF, played by Richard Jenkins, a lonely older man, who knows Old Hollywood trivia about Alice Faye and pines after a handsome young white boy who works at a restaurant chain that serves bad pie. Jenkins' character is a graphic artist, and The Shape of Water gives him a little subplot, in which he is trying to get a job back in an ad agency. He is being given a small job by a man who is (I assumed) an ex-lover. But Del Toro gives this plot no resolution. We never learn what happens with these men and their relationship, and we are never told what happened with them in the first place or why Jenkins no longer has his old job. I found this strange, but it honestly went along with the shallowness of the rest of the movie. Del Toro has hastily sketched these characters and any depth they possess amounts to a set of generic conventions with which we are already familiar. (In this case, Jenkins is sad about his deteriorating good looks. He is aging, and his vanity needs a boost – he gets one, of course, courtesy of our sea monster friend.)

I will say that I loved Octavia Spencer in The Shape of Water, and I also thought Michael Stuhlbarg was charming and fun, but most of the movie (Spencer's parts included) made me think more of an Edward Hopper painting with the saturation turned up than a depiction of something existing in the real world. The Shape of Water, in other words, despite Michael Shannon's Trump-voter caricature, felt really disconnected from 2017, existing firmly in the realm of fantasy instead. It's a fantasy version of the 1950s, a fantasy version of the Cold War, and a fantasy version of a love story. All of this is fine, I suppose, but I was looking for more depth, for more groundedness. The Shape of Water, on the other hand, seems content with confirming a whole set of things I already think I know – about mid-century masculinity, about the ability of love to conquer difference, about the power of friendship, about the magic of cinema.

Skimming the Surface

The film felt like a cartoon to me, and this is aided by the film's (gorgeous) production design, the delicately charming score, and the vibrant costumes. What's odd is that at times Del Toro seems to resist the cutesy, contained movie that The Shape of Water is. There are a couple of moments where the film seems to break with its easily digestible tone and subject matter. There is a fun sequence, for example, when the sea monster decapitates a cat, and another gross-out sequence in which Michael Shannon squeezes pus from two fingers which have been imperfectly attached to a wounded hand. These grotesque moments in The Shape of Water were my favorite of its sequences. They're places where Del Toro's sensibilities seem to peek through from behind the gorgeous visuals and anodyne version of the 1950s. These are moments where the film seemed to promise more depth than it ended up providing. For the most part, however, The Shape of Water remains shallow.

This is not to say the film is not beautiful. It is that. And its use of water, as a visual and as a theme, works very well. But The Shape of Water spends so much time on the surface of things that by the time we reached its end and Del Toro asked me to be moved to tears and swept away by the movie's romanticism, I just couldn't quite connect.

Monsters and Saviors

I don't normally post a giant poster here, but, like, it's Godzilla, and he/she is one huge motherfucker. In fact, my friends and I were trying to compare Godzilla to the size of a Tyrannosaurus or a Stegosaurus and, well, they are not really comparable to Gojira him/herself. This is one enormous monster.

This movie is enormous too. In fact, that is really the most important thing to say about this movie. About six minutes of it are really, really cool. The rest of the movie is intensely frustrating. Director Gareth Edwards shows us about 3 or 4 seconds of great action at a time, and then absolutely insists on cutting away from exactly the thing that the audience wants to see. This tactic happens about 25 times (I swear I am not exaggerating), and it started to drive me crazy after about the 5th time. The whole time I was thinking why isn't he letting me watch his movie? He has hidden an awesome six-minute flick within this two hour monstrosity and gives us just a little bit of awesomeness at a time.

All of this is further complicated by the really boring family at the middle of the film. I really like both Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen, but they were both lifeless in this – staring wide-eyed and soullessly into Seamus McGarvey's camera – and waiting for something to happen. And I was too.

The original Gojira

Godzilla him/herself is, of course, totally awesome. Just totally awesome. I could have watched her/him swim around the Pacific and walk around Hawaii/San Francisco/Tokyo and eat radiation and knock buildings over with that tail for at least 40 minutes. Maybe that's gonna be in the sequel...? It sure wasn't in this movie.

There isn't much else to say, I guess, except that I was totally annoyed by the absurdly heterosexist gendering of the other monsters in the movie (they're called MUTOs). The only thing this "female" monster cares about is reproducing, and she lays her eggs (I am not sure how the eggs are fertilized or anything like that, and the film doesn't bother to try to explain that), and then she leaves them just hanging around, but then when the eggs are destroyed, the screenwriters have her keen over her unborn young in this bizarre way. The whole thing made me cringe.

And they made Godzilla into this weird Christ figure, sacrificing her/himself in order to save the world. Sacrifice is all good and well, but the film "says" that Gojira is a kind of embodiment of nature itself. In other words, he/she should actually be rather indifferent about humanity per se.

Oh, I know what else there is to say: I've seen Guillermo Del Toro's Pacific Rim (which I really liked and reviewed here), so basically the whole time I was watching this Gojira reboot I was just wondering why they even tried. Pacific Rim already did this right.

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

A Fight about The Wolf of Wall Street

Unlike our conversation about The Butler, in which we basically agreed with one another (although he made me smarter about the film than I was being), in this conversation about The Wolf of Wall Street, my friend Carlos and I are back to our usual habit of almost totally disagreeing with each other about a movie.
For me these conversations are always pleasurable, so I hope this is a fun read.

* * * * *

Carlos: I just saw the Wolf. Hoooooo.

Aaron: I'm going soon. Make me feel better about it than I do?

Carlos: I thought it was harrowing. Hilarious. Merciless and at times miserable. Unapologetic and ruthlessly joyous. It made me feel both great pride and great shame as an American. First, that whatever your feelings about the story and characters, it is a truly brilliantly made movie. And being that entertainment is our chief export, we've given the world something great. The great shame stems from the fact that we, as a country, allowed the events of the film to take place, and little has changed. I'm still unpacking it all.

Aaron: Oooooo. Thanks. This makes me feel good about it.

Carlos: Also it makes me wish I could try quaaludes.

Aaron: Haha. I've always wished that.

Carlos: But make sure you go in with the proper reservations and expectations for any post-Gangs-of-New-York Scorsese movie.

Aaron: Fear not. I always have reservations about a Scorsese picture.

Carlos: Because... you know... Hugo.

Aaron: The worst.

Carlos: Worst.

* * * * *

Carlos: So I take it you loved Wolf of Wall Street?

Aaron: No. Thank. You.

Carlos: Hahahahaha.

Aaron: But thanks for alleviating the dread at the top.

Carlos: Well, you shoulda known better if I liked it that much. It is a monument to violent excess, chiefly in execution.

Aaron: Yes, yes yes. But one might've enjoyed oneself. So is La Dolce Vita but that movie comes with a lot of pleasure and then a sucker punch.

Carlos: The sucker punch for me, in the grand scheme of things, is that this man was never fully held accountable for his actions. The last shot crystallized it for me. 

Aaron: But I was so bored by the time we got there. So bored.

God Bless America

Carlos: And the fact that the real Jordan Belfort was the one who introduced movie Belfort at the end. The implications of the film were more terrifying to me than 90% of horror movies. But it is long. And has plenty of repeat beats.

Aaron: I know it is totally cliché (and apropos of the way that people speak about pornography: it's not that it's porn, it's that it's bad art) but I honestly feel as though it isn't that I object to the film's outrageous content – to be fair to Scorsese & co. I spent a fair share of the film laughing at the jokes – but it was all just too much. There was too much! And as you say, plenty of repeat beats. Why did he have to keep yelling into that microphone? And what was the point of repeating his betrayal of his friends? Did we need to watch it twice? I understand the film is about excess. Believe me, I get that. But when you have a helipad on your yacht, and then your main character points out twice that there is a helipad on your yacht (not to mention that I can see with my own eyes that he has a helipad on his yacht, since Rodrigo Prieto's camera is pointed directly at the thing), this is not excess, this is tedium.

Carlos: For me, it was a monument of violent excess both in subject and technical execution. For all these characters too much isn't enough. So that's why we have to hear about his stupid helicopter and hot wife and giant house and and and and.... So on and so forth. I acknowledge the repeated beats, but the didn't really faze me. I thought the pacing was so strong that despite the length I never once found myself bored. Which is where I think you and I differ the most.

Mr. McConaughey

Aaron: The pacing was actually good. And stuff did just keep happening. But the things that happened were actually repetitive. You know what I think I needed? I think I needed it to get actually worse. When you start off smoking crack, when the first moment you get rich you spend $3,000 – or whatever it is – on side dishes, there really isn't anywhere else to go. Everything else is just another version of throwing people at giant targets. The whole film is that: excess after excess, but they are all the same, really.

Let me say the things I liked about it. The first ten minutes with Matthew McConaughey (who was absolutely superb) really articulated how the whole thing worked. As a mentor to Belfort, he made sense of the movie: explained how the actual money works (for those who don't understand the materiality of the stock market) and also articulated (it seemed to me) a clear moral center for the film.

Carlos: McConaughey was absolutely my favorite part of the movie. It was, I thought, really understated and subtly fierce. Like, all we got was the glimpse of the tip of the iceberg, but underneath was this coiled beast of finance. I also appreciated that after McConaughey gave us the rundown of how it all works, Jordan never had to again. Even if he was trying something new, he would spare us the explanation because frankly, it didn't matter. He did it. He got away (for a while) with it. And he made a shit-ton of cash.

Aaron: I also loved the sequence where Belfort finally quits Oakmont (or whatever his firm is called). All of that spontaneous crying from the woman in the Chanel suit and the young stockbrokers: hilarious. I am not sure what the point of it was, but it was quite funny.

Carlos: The quitting sequence was one of the best, and I love that it brought things back to the lessons he learned from McConaughey, down to the weird chest-slamming song. I don't really know how to defend the repetetive beats except to say that they just worked for me, in the same way that Spring Breakers' repeat beats and phrases worked for me. It all felt in keeping with the mise en scène. 

Mr. Hill and his chompers

Can we diverge a bit and talk performances? I gotta say, I hate Jonah Hill. Granted, I didn't see Moneyball because if there are two things I don't give two shits about it's sportsball of any type and math in service of sportsball of any type.

Aaron: Haha. So you hated Jonah Hill in this too?

Carlos: Yes and no. I thought that his performance was cretinous, disgusting, and vile. But that all felt in keeping with the character himself. So this movie allowed me to still hate Jonah Hill but acknowledge that he was well cast in this role. But those teeth. I couldn't get over them. I just wanted to kick them right in. Aside from Jon Bernthal all the cronies sort of disappeared into one another. Which maybe was the point. Well and maybe Rugrat. But I thought that Margot Robbie was just great. And maybe the only remotely sympathetic person in this film besides Belfort's first wife.

Aaron: I really liked Margot Robbie, too. Although, I am not sure how sympathetic she was as a character. She was on the hustle, too, of course. I am so with you on Jonah Hill's teeth. They drove me insane.

Carlos: Like I said: remotely sympathetic. Maybe this is why this movie... not maybe... This is why this movie is so difficult for a lot of people. There really is no one to root for. At all. And if you're rooting for Jordan you're probably an MBA who read Rand in high school and never grew out of it.

Mr. DiCaprio, Ms. Robbie, and Mr. Bernthal

Aaron: Actually, one of my favorite moments from the film is the interplay between DiCaprio and Hill during the sequence where they make fun of the dad and are joking with one another about spending all that money on hookers and sides. The improvisation worked for me there. It was silly and funny and worked.



 Carlos: Oh yes. Most scenes with Reiner were hilarious. That was a really fun casting choice. I mean, I thought the whole thing was really well cast.

Aaron: And Joanna Lumley and Jean Dujardin too. Great casting. But there was so much cartooning! Okay, like, for example. We did not need the scene when the two Roccos get to stare at the Duchess's vagina. It serves no purpose – either for the alleged theme of excess or for plot.

Ms. Lumley with Mr. DiCaprio

Carlos: I'll agree that it may just be too much. But I do think it serves a purpose. At that point Jordan is sober. And aside from the hooker dominatrix (which in the grand scheme of things is really only a minor offense) that scene serves to show us that Jordan, even without the aid of drugs and alcohol, is just as depraved, desperate for attention, and 100% self serving. So let me touch on that hooker thing real fast.

Aaron: Sigh. Okay. But, like, I got that from the film's first act.

Carlos: Well it had been two hours so maybe some of the audience needed a reminder.

Aaron: I didn't. But go ahead with the hooker thing.

Carlos: You, sir, are smarter than the average bear.

Aaron: I am not a bear.

Carlos: Otter. Wolf.

Aaron: Witty.

Carlos: But I digress. Hookers.

So at that point, I think, at least I was feeling, that bangin' hookers ain't no thang. His other offenses both against the country, and his family waaaaaay overshadowed his sex addiction. So that one in particular was serving to show us that because of his voracious appetite not being satiated by his drugs of choice he had to move on to more extreme sources of pleasure. Though that's really all subjective. I think getting whipped a bit and a candle shoved up your ass are small potatoes compared to the mountains of drugs and other debauchery he indulged in. So what I guess I'm getting at is that that scene didn't accomplish what I thought it would.

He's the king of the world.

Aaron: Am I simply desensitized to queer sexual behavior? I didn't think anything of that whatsoever.

Carlos: Nail on the head. But I think it would for people less... jaded, shall we say?

Aaron: Less... practiced?

Carlos: Ha. Yes.

Aaron: But you are agreeing with me now, Carlos.

Carlos: Yes, it just took a roundabout path. Look: for all its warts, Wolf of Wall Street is still among my top three movie going experiences of the year. Pacific Rim still wins out. Would I watch Wolf again anytime soon? Doubtful. From a logistical standpoint, who has that kind of time? The more I think about that movie the sadder I become, and not because I like it less on further reflection. I think it really crystallized a time and place in American culture where we have, as a nation, failed and continue to fail. What's saddest to me is that we even have to make a movie about this. I guess what it all boils down to for me is that I'm glad it's there. But I wish it wasn't.

Aaron: This is sort of how I feel about Gangs of New York.

Carlos: Oof.