Oscar Nominations 2019: Part 5 of 11

Part 1: Roma, The Favourite, Vice, A Star Is Born.
Part 2: Black Panther, BlacKkKlansman, Green Book, Bohemian Rhapsody.
Part 3: Mary Poppins Returns, First Man, Cold War.
Part 4: Can You Ever Forgive Me?, If Beale Street Could Talk, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.
Part 5:

Werke ohne Autor (Never Look Away)

2 Nominations

• Cinematography: Caleb Deschanel (The Passion of the Christ, The Patriot, Fly Away Home, The Natural, The Right Stuff)
• Foreign Language Film: Germany (Toni Erdmann, The White Ribbon, The Baader Meinhof Complex, The Lives of Others, Sophie Scholl: the Final Days, Downfall, Nowhere in Africa, Beyond Silence, Schtonk, The Nasty Girl)

Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

Cast: Tom Schilling, Sebastian Koch, Paula Beer, Saskia Rosendahl, Oliver Masucci, Cai Cohrs, Ina Weisse, Evgeniy Sidikhin, Mark Zak, Ulrike C. Tscharre, David Schütter

This is one of two films that I'm not going to be able to see this year. I'm very sad about it because, in the first place, I loved Donnersmarck's The Lives of Others and in the second place I love Max Richter's beautiful score for Never Look Away. And then there's the brilliant Sebastian Koch, who gives excellent performances every time he is onscreen! I truly do not understand why this film isn't playing everywhere right now. Sony Pictures Classics scored two Oscar nominations with this movie, and yet no one has seen it and no one can see it because it is only playing in a few theatres in the country. This makes no sense to me, honestly. In any case, I don't think Never Look Away will be winning any little gold men, but it sure would have been nice to be able to see this movie before Oscar Sunday.
Will Win: N/A
Could Win: N/A
My Rating: TBA

Mary Queen of Scots

2 Nominations

• Costume Design: Alexandra Byrne (Elizabeth: the Golden Age, Finding Neverland, Elizabeth, Hamlet)
• Makeup & Hairstyling

Director: Josie Rourke

Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Margot Robbie, Jack Lowden, Joe Alwyn, Guy Pearce, Martin Compston, David Tennant, Adrian Lester, James McArdle, Ismael Cruz Cordova, Brendan Coyle, Gemma Chan, Georgia Burnell

I believe I've already said my piece about this movie and its absurdities. It was pointed out to me since I wrote my review that the movie operates with a certain theatricality, that it is operating using many conventions of the theatre – the cross-racial casting, the lack of attention to accuracy with regard to accents, the self-conscious artistic quality of some of the sequences – and I truly do buy this as one of the film's goals. The problem here is that Mary Queen of Scots does not actually lean into these devices. Why is this film theatrical? might be my question here. What is this film trying to say about theatrical pageantry or English history or the lives of kings and queens? And if this film is about theatricality, and I am beginning to think it was trying to be just that, why not really take that idea to its maximum? Why not show us the sets as sets? Why not let us see the process of makeup or costuming? Why not show us behind the theatricality rather than simply showing us the face of it? In any case, I am glad that Alexandra Byrne got this nomination. She definitely deserved this.
Will Win: N/A
Could Win: Costume Design
My Rating: #61 out of 67

Isle of Dogs (犬の島)

2 Nominations

• Score: Alexandre Desplat (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)
• Animated Feature

Director: Wes Anderson

Cast: Bryan Cranston, Rankin Koyu, Edward Norton, Bob Balaban, Jeff Goldblum, Bill Murray, Nomura Kunichi, Takayama Akira, Greta Gerwig, Frances McDormand, Ito Akira, Scarlett Johansson, Harvey Keitel, F. Murray Abraham, Yoko Ono

This is cute and I really liked it. I am, however, annoyed with Alexandre Desplat's current domination of the best original score category at the Oscars. It's started to really bug me. He has two statues already and Isle of Dogs marks his tenth nomination. The score to this movie is fine, and Desplat has been good at doing scores with drums in them since Birth all those years ago, but I am impatient with his work at the moment. As I said when I first saw this movie, I am also getting impatient with Wes Anderson's twee brand. I am looking for something a little more serious from him. The insistent irony of his movies is wearing thin with me. Still, Isle of Dogs is better than four of last year's best animated feature nominees, and although it is my third choice for this year, it definitely deserves its nomination. This is a very good, if minor, film.

Will Win: N/A
Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #25 out of 67

The Wife

1 Nomination

• Actress: Glenn Close (Albert Nobbs, Dangerous Liaisons, Fatal Attraction, The Natural, The Big Chill, The World According to Garp)

Director: Björn Runge

Cast: Close, Jonathan Pryce, Max Irons, Christian Slater, Annie Starke, Harry Lloyd, Elizabeth McGovern, Johan Widerberg, Karin Franz Körlof

It's the Glennaissance (as one of my graduate students keeps calling it)! It is looking like Glenn Close is finally going to win an Oscar, and we should all be delighted that this is happening. The movie that she is starring in does not deserve any awards at all, but Close is fabulous in the movie, and everyone loves her, and I am excited to see her win. This is Close's seventh nomination since The World According to Garp in 1982, and she has never won, despite turning in extraordinary performances for decades. It's worth saying that these seven nominations don't even count the ones she just barely missed, like say, Jagged Edge in 1985 or Reversal of Fortune or Hamlet in 1990 or her brilliant comedic turn in 101 Dalmations in 1996. It's her time, and I can't wait for her speech.
Will Win: Actress
Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #48 out of 67

A Messy Queen of Scots

Let me say first that Mary Queen of Scots deserves Oscar nominations for its costumes and for its hair and makeup. I also think Max Richter's score is beautiful and deserves a nomination, but it isn't on the list of finalists, so we won't be hearing Richter's name on January 22.

Margot Robbie & Joe Alwyn

I suppose it can also be said that there are a bunch of great performers in this version of the Mary Queen of Scots story – Saoirse Ronan plays Mary and Margot Robbie plays Elizabeth, but the cast also boasts Joe Alwyn, David Tennant, Adrian Lester, Guy Pearce, Simon Russell Beale, Martin Compston, James McArdle, Brendan Coyle, and Jack Lowden. And all of this is for nothing because Beau Willimon's script is a pile of absurdities.

There will be spoilers here, so be warned. But also you don't want to see this movie, so just go ahead and read on.

This Mary Queen of Scots seems to think it is a film about sisterhood, about misogyny and the ways that various groups of men conspired together so as not to be ruled by two women. This Mary Queen of Scots would have us believe that Mary and Elizabeth admired each other mutually and (worse yet) that Mary was some kind of devoted ruler who cared deeply about "her people". This Mary Queen of Scots finds that Mary married herself to Henry Darnley not because he was a Stuart and it strengthened her claim to the English throne but because she loved him and – this happens in the movie – because they had really good sex. This Mary Queen of Scots also would have us believe that Elizabeth I was brokenhearted because she had no child and that the demands of her throne kept Elizabeth from a) having sex with the man she loved, b) being best friends with Mary Stuart, and c) her own wish to marry and bear children (which is, as we all know, the only thing a woman really wants).

There is much more nonsense in this film. We might begin with Mary's Scottish accent – Mary Stuart grew up in France – and we might conclude with Elizabeth's English accent – which, as performed by Margot Robbie, is hardly ever in evidence.

Jack Lowden & Saoirse Ronan

The thing that drove me the most insane about MQS, however, was this film's portrayal of sixteenth-century sex and sexual politics. My eyes bugged out of my head when Lord Darnley was led to see Mary Stuart alone in her bedchamber and then performed cunnilingus on her. This is highly unlikely as a sexual practice for a nobleman and a queen, but it is also unlikely for anyone in the 16th century – they simply didn't bathe very much. Then this same man who has given head to the queen is revealed (in front of everyone and on their wedding night) to be sexually interested in men. This interest is (the film would have us believe) exclusive. He apparently doesn't want to have sex with his queen at all even though he has already done so. He would prefer to have sex with the adult minstrel that Mary keeps in her bedchamber. The film inaccurately uses the term sodomite to describe Lord Darnley, describing what we would call a homosexual, despite the fairly well documented fact that 16th century Britons would not have understood male–male sex in this way at all and probably wouldn't have been even a little bit surprised at Darnley's interest in boys. (The idea that Darnley would have been having an affair with a grown man is sort of absurd.) I found this entire section so stupid, its historical inaccuracies so frustrating, that the movie had lost me completely by this point in act two.

The movie, of course, gets worse, however. Though the film appears to want to be some kind of feminist retelling of this historical episode, Josie Rourke's movie imagines these women as caring only for motherhood, sex, and intrigue. There's no nuance, no images of either of them governing with any skill at all. They're characters in Beau Willimon's soap opera plot, cattily trading barbs and finding that the only important thing in life is who is inferior to whom. It's misogynist schlock dressed up as feminist sisterhood, and it's nearly a complete waste of time.