Oscar Nominations 2019: Part 10 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: Never Look Away, Mary Queen of Scots, Isle of Dogs, The Wife.
Part 6: Detainment, Marguerite, Skin, Madre, Fauve.
Part 7: At Eternity's Gate, First Reformed, Shoplifters, Capernaum.
Part 8: Spider man: into the Spider-verse, Incredibles 2, Mirai, Ralph Breaks the Internet.
Part 9: Bao, Animal Behaviour, One Small Step, Late Afternoon, Weekends.
Part 10:

Avengers: Infinity War

1 Nomination

• Visual Effects

Director: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo

Cast: Josh Brolin, Chris Hemsworth, Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Zoe Saldana, Benedict Cumberbatch, Scarlett Johansson, Don Cheadle, Paul Bettany, Elizabeth Olsen, Chris Pratt, Tom Holland, Bradley Cooper, Karen Gillan, Anthony Mackie, Chadwick Boseman, Sebastian Stan, Tom Hiddleston, Peter Dinklage, Danai Gurira, Benedict Wong, Pom Klementieff, Dave Bautista, Vin Diesel, Letitia Wright, Gwyneth Paltrow, Benicio Del Toro, William Hurt, Winston Duke


There are a million people in this movie. Ok. So, honestly, I started watching this movie, got five minutes in, and realized I had no idea what was going on. In order to understand this film, one needs to have seen three movies that I had not seen – Captain America: Civil War, Thor: Ragnarok, and Avengers: Age of Ultron. I've seen tons of these Marvel movies, and had seen the most recent one – Black Panther – but apparently this was not enough. This was a behemoth of a thing. There were way too many plots, and most of the time I felt myself wondering why I was supposed to care about what the filmmakers were asking me to care about. One of the central problems with this universe is that the characters in these films all have magic powers, but it is not really clear how much power the, you know, beams of light that come out of their hands or whatever are actually worth. Is Hulk and his muscles more powerful than Captain America's shield? Why are the evil zombies who work for Thanos apparently stronger than Dr. Strange who literally has one of these infinity stones around his neck? This just doesn't work for me. Someone needs to explain to me why so many superheroes are so weak and can't defeat 2 or 3 bad guys, but that same number of people can put up a series fight against Thanos and his 4 magic stones. I don't get it. A bright spot in this movie, though, is Tom Holland. His Spider-man is really wonderful. He has tons of great lines and he delivers them brilliantly. His last scene in the film is the most heartfelt sincere moment in the entirety of this monstrosity.
Will Win: N/A
Could Win: Visual Effects
My Rating: #62 out of 70

Solo: a Star Wars Story

1 Nomination

• Visual Effects

Director: Ron Howard

Cast: Alden Ehrenreich, Woody Harrelson, Emilia Clarke, Paul Bettany, Joonas Suotamo, Donald Glover, Thandie Newton, Linda Hunt, Erin Kellyman

I honestly thought this was cute. I love Alden Ehrenreich, and he's great here. There is not too much to complain about with this. It's honestly identical to the rest of these Star Wars movies, and I don't think I have any objection to this. No one liked this movie, apparently? Or maybe that's just, like, crazy Star Wars fans (whom I do not understand). I think everyone's dislike for this film, though, is really just because Solo foolishly was released in summer instead of in December, which is when Star Wars films are usually released. Audiences just weren't ready for a summer Star Wars picture.
Will Win: N/A
Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #41 out of 70

Ready Player One

1 Nomination

• Visual Effects

Director: Steven Spielberg

Cast: Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Ben Mendelsohn, Lena Waithe, Mark Rylance, T.J, Miller, Simon Pegg, Philip Zhao, Win Morisaki, Hannah John-Kamen, Ralph Ineson, Susan Lynch

Oh jeez. Well, I want to say that I still love Tye Sheridan, but this movie is really, really bad. The script is just terrible. I think Lena Waithe is also pretty awful here. Her performance is strangely flat, and all of her scenes have a lot of trouble. But mostly it's just the writing. The visual effects look cool, but the world-building kind of sucks (I expect that's better in the book...?), and I was super bored.

Will Win: N/A
Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #65 out of 70

Christopher Robin

1 Nomination

• Visual Effects

Director: Marc Forster

Cast: Ewan McGregor, Hayley Atwell, Bronte Carmichael, Marg Gatiss, Oliver Ford Davies, Jim Cummings, Brad Garrett, Nick Mohammed, Peter Capaldi, Toby Jones, Sophie Okonedo, Sara Sheen

I mean, honestly. Why does this film exist? In case you're wondering, the moral of the story is that you shouldn't lose sight of the magical being that you are when you are a child. Adulthood isn't all its cracked up to be, and your relationship with your imaginary friend is actually much more important than your life as a grown up. Adulting is hard, this movie seems to say, and who can argue with such a statement? The ham-fisted clunker of a lesson here is that the "important things in life" are actually family, fun, and a childhood sense of wonder. And you shouldn't become a stodgy old person who only cares about "success" and "work". No one needs to learn this lesson, so I can't imagine why anyone thought this dumb film was a good idea. I will say that I really love the voice of Pooh. There's something about it that is comforting and sweet. Not sweet enough for me to enjoy this stupid film, but sweet nonetheless.
Will Win: N/A
Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #61 out of 70

The Warmest Color - A Queer Forum

I asked a couple of fellow queers to have a little conversation with me about Blue Is the Warmest Color (La Vie d'Adèle). Here it is:

Aaron: I can start since I loved it. I think it is the best thing I've seen this year. And I think there are numerous reasons for that. I think what stood out to me most was Abdellatif Kechiche's emphasis on pleasure - eating gets lots of screentime. I loved that. I was also, obviously, in love with the way blue itself is simply everywhere in the movie.

Ms. Exarchopoulos & Ms. Seydoux

Blayze: I adored this film overall. A combination of a coming-of-age tale and a love story, the intensity and brutally honest story telling is what makes it successful. The tight close ups on Adèle to mark her journey, the sound design of the sex scenes (sweet Jesus), and even the length of the film itself add an incredible, tangible vitality to a perhaps simple plot. And yes, Aaron. The pleasure from food and eating was very effective. I loved it.

Kirsten: I thought this movie was the most successful in its telling of Adèle's initial discovery of her sexuality. The emotionless sex with that dude, the kiss on the stairs at her school, and that beautiful fantasy sex scene were all really succinct and powerful moments. After that first act of the movie, it kind of lost my love. What I liked about the first lesbian sex scene – the one where she's masturbating and fantasizing about Emma – and didn't like about the later sex scenes was the psychological element of sex. We had a point of view in that initial lesbian sex scene. The marathon sex sessions later in the movie felt kind of toothless. Also, simpleton that I am, the jumps in time were kind of confusing. I felt like I didn't know enough about the characters to feel for any of them. And I didn't like the eating stuff. I liked that Adèle was kind of a mess, but I did not like that she ate like a savage.

Blayze: My biggest problem with the film is actually hearing interviews from the two actresses (Adèle Exarchopoulos and Léa Seydoux) and their "approach" to playing these queer characters. But I was completely swept up in the movie to care too much.

Aaron: I haven't read anything about the actresses, though I loved them both. But what about queerness in the film? I thought that the film seemed to understand desire as multifarious, and approached pleasure in an interesting way. If Adèle doesn't enjoy sex with Thomas (the Jérémie Laheurte character) that doesn't mean she wouldn't enjoy it with Samir (Salim Kechiouche) or Antoine (Benjamin Siksou), right? To say nothing of the pleasure of flirting or kissing or other pleasures that needn't necessarily be gendered. I think the reason I was so taken by the (as Kirsten calls them) "marathon" sex sequences (and there were also a great many of them) was that this, for me, is the awakening into sexuality and personhood. And in real life that awakening doesn't happen instantly (as it does in so many movies) but it takes a while, and it happens during sex – which can be a lot of work, incidentally. It is also a kind of accretion. One gets used to having sex, and things begin to make a kind of sense, right?

Kirsten: Yeah, I can get behind that idea. Coming into oneself as a queer-identified person has to involve sex. That's an important thing to recognize. That's what's awesome and awful about being queer. Sex is front and center.

Blayze: I also loved that her awakening was gradual. I don't know if I buy that their first sexual experience was all that natural for Adèle, but it definitely verified her queerness at least at that carnal level. It is front and center as Kirsten put it.

Aaron: Right. Not "natural". Not at all. It's not about insisting on a naturalness, but rather on a gradual awakening. And I feel like we do see this in movies about straight people every once in a while (I am thinking particularly of Monster's Ball and Unfaithful), but rarely in movies about queer people. In other words, although sex is front and center in terms of coming into queerness, it is often elided or euphemized in film.

Ms. Exarchopoulos & Mr. Laheurte

Kirsten: Absolutely. Blue Is the Warmest Color does confront that piece of queerness well. Just in the fact that they show all that sex. But about her being with men later in the film, while I like that her sexual expression is fluid and driven by her vulnerability, it always annoys me when a woman in a lesbian relationship cheats with a man.

Aaron: Yes, of course. Me too. Although I was so mad at Emma at that point, particularly because Emma made it seem like cheating with Lise (i.e. cheating with a woman) is somehow better/cleaner/purer than cheating with a man. That whole part was really cruel.

Kristen: I know! Frankly, I didn't like Emma very much throughout the film, but I really hated her when she threw out Adèle right on the spot. Also, why did she meet her at a restaurant later when she was in a happy relationship? And later, why invite Adèle to the art show? Typical lesbian psychological bullshit.

Blayze: I don't know if Emma implies that cheating doesn't count as much with a woman – I think she throws her out and gets so incredibly cruel because she is simply hypocritical in the moment. This is a great love for both of them, and the cheating hurts more when it's you that are cheated on, not vice versa. Emma's reaction is human, not specifically because she's a lesbian.

Kirsten: Also, what the fuck about oysters?

Aaron: Ha! What do you mean What the fuck about oysters?

Kirsten: It's an ongoing tongue-in-cheek thing about the texture of oysters being like eating "something else". All the forty-something lesbians in the audience cackled with delight. Leading me to worry about what's going to happen to my vagina as I age...

Aaron: Hahaha. But they're tasty!

Blayze: Can I also just say that I hate that it all ends with her being chased by a man?

Aaron: But it doesn't! It ends with her walking away. No?

Blayze: I'm just still cracking up over this oyster conversation...

Force Fields and Fields of the Dead

Elysium is the action-movie of the summer, in case you hadn't figured that out yet.

Neill Blomkamp certainly knows how to do a bleak dystopian future. Elysium is a totally action-packed adventure film, filled with lots of great set pieces, tons of explosions, firepower, and insanely advanced and fascinating weaponry.

Not only is the film totally fascinating from a "look what these badass weapons can do" perspective, Elysium – because this dystopian future contains machines that can achieve all sorts of medical miracles – also contains some really exciting images of the impact of those weapons on the human body.

In fact, Elysium's entire focus is the human body. This is a movie about healthcare: who has access to it and who does not (and why). But the film also makes a point of detailing and examining what happens to bodies that have been shot, that suffer explosions, that are poisoned by radiation, that are malnourished, that are given steroids or other medication. This and more make the movie a fascinating must-see.

My favorite part of the movie (amid several things I loved) was the way that the movie is paced. Elysium feels short – it is paced so that fast-moving action sequences are followed by slower-paced but still tension-filled sequences that allow for the intensity of Blomkamp's movie to build over time, heading toward a totally awesome finish that feels completely earned.

I'm not gonna say too much more about it, but I thought Elysium was better than World War Z, Pacific Rim, and Star Trek: into Darkness, and I liked all of those films a lot. Amid a great summer for action movies, Elysium is a stellar finish.

Zombies!

I never watch zombie movies, really, so I am a totally uninformed and uneducated person when it comes to approaching World War Z. But I really enjoyed it.

World War Z is a bit of a strange amalgam of a film, really – each act feels very different from the others – but the whole was exciting and, while I would not quite call it suspenseful, the action was fun, the zombies were cool, and the movie was shot beautifully. Frankly, I would go so far as to say that for me the star of the film was Ben Seresin's photography.

In truth, the first thing that must be said about World War Z is that it is basically unrelated to Max Brooks's novel of the same name, a novel which reinvented the zombie genre through its innovative storytelling, and the audiobook of which won an Audie in 2007. The friend of mine who is the most expert in zombie lore called the book "one of the seminal pieces of zombie lit [...]. The book is incredibly harrowing. When you're reading it in a public place and someone sneezes you want to die." So, let's be clear and say that this film is not that.

But... it's exciting. And shot well, and the zombies move both very quickly and rather like a swarm of ants (as you can see in the poster), scrambling on top of one another as though they are basically of one mind, moving at the behest of some kind of interior collective pulse. All of that is fun.
 
The movie is strangely assembled, though, and we go from save-my-family action sequences in close quarters to James-Bond-style action sequences set in the public streets and airport of a city in Israel to a (really awesome) plane crash sequence to what becomes, finally, a rather standard zombie picture in a medical facility. Oddly enough, this works. World War Z has several very exciting set pieces, excellent special effects, and never has the over-saturated look of a standard Hollywood picture by (say) Jon Favreau, J.J. Abrams, or Joss Whedon. I was into it.

Smart about Race

So, on the way back from Chicago this summer, Julien, Becky and I were talking about The Help. The movie hadn't been released yet, but both Becky and I were skeptical. Julien asked about our skepticism. Do you think the movie will be racist?

The point, I said, was not that the movie would be racist. Most everything is racist. Hollywood itself, for that matter. But when I think about films, I told Julien that I think some films are smart about race and some films are stupid about race. I assumed from the trailer that The Help would be stupid about race.

I was right. The Help is actually extremely stupid about race. From its total ignorance about the state terror under which black people lived (and continue to live) in the South to its insistence on black women's love for the white children they're forced to raise to the almost total absence of black men in the film to the humorous way The Help deals with black women's fear of white men, The Help is just dumb about race.

Any film with a magic negro in it falls in the category dumb-about-race for me.

But all this got the three of us to thinking about what films are smart about race. I might need some feedback on this. I could not think of that many. These are the films I could think of:

Two films by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck: Sugar and Half Nelson. The first is about a baseball player from the Dominican Republic who comes to the U.S. and is transplanted to a midwest farm team. The second is about a teacher who is addicted to crack. Half Nelson in particular taught me about my own racist prejudices when I watch a film. That film stars Ryan Gosling and Anthony Mackie. So good.

I also recently watched the film Claudine from 1974 with Diahann Carroll and James Earl Jones and found it funny and moving and extremely smart about race.

I always thought Monster's Ball was pretty smart about race, too, but it's been a while since I saw it, so I can't remember that all that well.

Of the films I've seen in the last ten years:
Precious.
The Class.
The Visitor.
The Last King of Scotland.
Caché.
Junebug.
Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle.
Dirty Pretty Things.
Raising Victor Vargas.

There are probably a couple more that I am missing here. Anyhow, the point is: the list as such is not very long.

Thoughts?

Some More Spring Break Movies

I liked Marc Forster's The Kite Runner better than his last film Finding Neverland, but like that film, The Kite Runner is also rather a sentimental mess. Mind you, I cried about six times. It's a sad story, but it isn't moving, if you know what I mean. It's a kind of surface sadness based on situations. I haven't read the book, but I bet it's really good. Not to stray too far from my thesis topic, too, The Kite Runner contains a scene of male rape and the film's villain, in addition to the Taliban, is a kind of homosexual pervert who looks like an Afghan John Lennon. I should mention that I loved two things about the film: the credit sequence, which is beautiful, and the score (which was Oscar-nominated) by Alberto Iglesias, which is complicated and intelligent as well as very pretty.

Pascale Ferran's French film Lady Chatterley of D.H. Lawrence's novel John Thomas and Lady Jane is a long one (2 hours 40 minutes) and a rather boring one. The most interesting thing about the film is the way that it subvert's the male gaze. This is a film made by a woman about a woman and I'm not sure I can explain exactly why but it feels like it. Everything is from Lady Chatterley's point of view. This is not a film where the central female is still an object. Lady Chatterley is a sexual subject. Still, the filmmaker makes a lot of bad decisions: title cards to show passage of time and to tell us things she can't figure out how to show us. She also yadda-yaddas what could have been a beautiful sequence in the film, Lady Chatterley's trip to Paris and Italy. The director uses a kind of hand-held home video camera to relate this period in the book and it makes her journey abroad seem unimportant in her transformation. It's a very bad decision. The performances are good in Lady Chatterley, but this is not a very exciting movie.

I really, really liked Paris, Je T'aime, though. This film consists of 21 short films by world-renown directors (the Coen Brothers, Olivier Assayas, Gérard Depardieu, Gus Van Sant, Alexander Payne, Tom Tykwer, Richard LaGravanese, Gurinder Chadha, Wes Craven, Alfonso Cuarón, Christopher Doyle, you get the drift) all about Paris, and the film stars about a million people you know and love: Gena Rowlands, Juliette Binoche, Willem Defoe, Nick Nolte, Gaspard Ulliel, Miranda Richardson, Steve Buscemi, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Natalie Portman, Javier Cámara, Hippolyte Girardot, Bob Hoskins, Fanny Ardant, Ludivine Sagnier, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Elijah Wood, Emily Mortimer, Rufus Sewell, Alexander Payne (as Oscar Wilde), Ben Gazzara. I pretty much loved almost every sequence, and none of them lasts very long. The best short film among the troupe is Oliver Schmitz's sequence Place des Fêtes about a would-be romance and tragedy. It's a perfectly contained little story and it's excellent. Anyway, this one is definitely a renter: romantic, lovely, filled with good miniature movies.

Haters

Okay, I'm going to stop hating on Jan A.P. Kaczmarak's score for Finding Neverland. I'm listening to it right now and it's beautiful.

Sorry I've Been Away

Kinsey is an above average biopic with some fairly good performances. It will probably end up getting it's share of awards and nominations once the National Board of Review kicks off awards season within the next week. My favorite is Peter Sarsgaard. His performances in Kinsey and Garden State this year hopefully mean he'll get some attention. He's also completely naked in the film. Cheers. Kinsey itself is only an okay film, though. I think it lacks something in the direction. It just seems to throw facts at us. There doesn't seem to be much of an actual plot, and there are very few "money" scenes, if any at all. There is a lot of discussion of sex, and most of it is quite frank, unfortunately, I thought very little of it was compelling. The last scene in the film is wonderful, but I think it's really the only great thing in Kinsey.

I really liked Finding Neverland, but I didn't love it to death or anything. I certainly don't think I liked it as much as I liked last year's Peter Pan adaptation. That little boy who plays Peter is quite remarkable, and I quite liked Johnny Depp, Kate Winslet, Julie Christie, Dustin Hoffman, and even Radha Mitchell (okay, the whole cast), but it's really just a little melodrama. It has its magical moments, but, I don't know, I guess the film just didn't blow me away to any huge extent. I certainly cried (we all expected that) but not nearly as much as I expected to. I think it's because Marc Forster introduces us to the magic way to early. I can't think of how else to do it, but the magic should have been something that he earned. In other words, he didn't make me believe, he just assumed I already believed.

Thanksgiving went okay, I suppose. I made macaroni and cheese; sausage, spinach and mushroom dressing; and whole cranberry relish. My mom made the turkey and the mashed potatoes and there was broccoli salad with cranberries and almonds and someone must've heated up some corn, but I stayed away from that starchy nonsense. The family was aiight. We had a few games; talked a little... I dunno. It was unremarkable, I guess.

But today I shopped. I went to Express where they were giving away scarves with any purchase. I bought two shirts and got a scarf for free. Cheers. Then I went to Expo Design Center. They are waaaay understaffed at this store, I have to say. It was impossible to find help. I bought a chandelier, though, and it looks beautiful. PLUS it was really cheap as chandeliers go. Then I went home and installed that shit.
Yes, I know how to install electrical fixtures. I was quite proud of myself, actually.

Christmas shopping? What's that about? I shop for myself.