Australian New Wave IV

Gallipoli is almost perfect. I have so many good things to say. In addition to being a wonderful love letter to Australia – like all films in the Australian New Wave – its also a brilliant anti-war film. It does its anti-war work by not showing the war, barely even showing the fighting. This film is an obvious inspiration for both Heartbreak Ridge and 1917 – also both excellent war movies. But Weir's film is also not merciless. Most of the movie is pleasurable, even fun, and the war is made to look silly, in many ways, as, I suppose, so many people treated the war. It's so very silly... until it isn't. The third act of this movie is outright bloody genius. There was a moment, very late in the film, when I screamed at how good Weir's choices were. I literally was just cheering on the way Weir represented the violence of war. (I'm not a normal person.) And the film's end is heartbreaking, devastating. I actually just curled up and sobbed when it was over. I loved this movie.

Oscar Noms 2017: 2 of 13

Part 1 - La La Land, Moonlight, Arrival

Part 2:

Manchester by the Sea

6 Nominations

• Picture
• Director: Kenneth Lonergan
• Actor: Casey Affleck (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford)
• Original Screenplay: Kenneth Lonergan (Gangs of New York, You Can Count on Me)
• Supporting Actor: Lucas Hedges
• Supporting Actress: Michelle Williams (My Week with Marilyn, Blue Valentine, Brokeback Mountain)

Director: Lonergan

Cast: Affleck, Hedges, Williams, Kyle Chandler, C.J. Wilson, Gretchen Mol, Tate Donovan, Matthew Broderick

This is my favorite of the Best Picture nominees. Manchester by the Sea is a tragic film about a man whose brother dies at the beginning of the film. This brother, who is working as a building superintendent in Boston, is forced to move back to his hometown to take care of his brother's effects for a while and to take care of his teenage nephew, who is also, of course, dealing with the death of his father. We know that the main character, Lee, is harboring some real demons at the beginning of Manchester, and we learn those details slowly over the course of the film. Manchester is about those demons, about the weight of enormous errors in our lives, and about trying to carry those weights. In this sense, Manchester by the Sea is a tragedy in the way Aristotle describes it in the Poetics when he says that tragedy happens to "a man who is neither a paragon of virtue and justice nor undergoes the change to misfortune through any real badness or wickedness but because of some mistake". Lee doesn't have anything essentially wrong with him, he is just carrying something very, very heavy. The film asks us to carry that too, for a bit. The performances are superb – Affleck should win the Oscar, and in a year where Viola Davis wasn't running a lead performance in supporting, Williams would win one too. (I've never been totally sold on Williams, if I'm honest, but in this she is so, so excellent.) The film, in general, is assured and steady and does what it is attempting to do perfectly. This is great, sad storytelling, that doesn't opt for the "heartwarming" bullshit to which we have all become so accustomed.

Will Win: Actor, Original Screenplay

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #6 out of 85

Hacksaw Ridge

6 Nominations

• Picture
• Director: Mel Gibson (Braveheart)
• Actor: Andrew Garfield
• Film Editing: John Gilbert (The Lord of the Rings: the Fellowship of the Ring)
• Sound Mixing
• Sound Editing

Director: Gibson

Cast: Andrew Garfield, Vince Vaughn, Hugo Weaving, Rachel Griffiths, Teresa Palmer, Sam Worthington, Luke Bracey, Luke Pegler

I've already written about what a surprise it was for me to have loved Hacksaw Ridge as much as I did, and I am so happy that it did so well with nominations. Six is a lot! More than anything, I am excited for the real stars of this film, Gilbert, Garfield, and the sound guys who were nominated. You'll notice that the Academy did not nominate Robert Shenkkan for his screenplay – it is an uneven mess – and that unevenness will surely hurt the film when people get down to voting. Let's talk about Garfield, though, who is a superb actor (go back to his first big role in Boy A and prepare to be blown away) and who was great in both Hacksaw and Silence this year. He has earned a well-deserved first nomination. As for Hollywood's apparent forgiveness of Mel Gibson, don't be so sure. You can be sure that everyone still thinks he's crazy. But he is a very good director, and he has a very clear point of view that you can see recurring in his work. A nomination here is not forgiveness, just an acknowledgment of his work. You won't see him winning an Oscar any time soon.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: Film Editing, Sound Editing
My Rating: #12 out of 85

Lion

6 Nominations

• Picture
• Adapted Screenplay: Luke Davies
• Supporting Actor: Dev Patel
• Supporting Actress: Nicole Kidman (Rabbit Hole, The Hours, Moulin Rouge!)
• Cinematography: Greig Fraser
• Score: Hauschka & Dustin O'Halloran

Director: Garth Davis

Cast: Sunny Pawar, Dev Patel, Rooney Mara, Nicole Kidman, David Wenham, Priyanka Bose, Abhishek Bharate, Divian Ladwa, Tannishtha Chatterjee, Nawazuddin Siddiqui

So, I thought Lion was going to be a sentimental mess, and I was expecting to dislike it. I was also imagining that Dev Patel was pulling category fraud by campaigning in the Supporting Actor category. I was wrong on both counts. Lion is a lovely, moving film, and the lead actor in the film is a little boy named Sunny Pawar, with whom you will fall instantly in love. Lion is the story of an Indian boy named Saroo who gets very, very lost and cannot find his mother and brother. He finds himself in Calcutta, and, having spoken Hindi all his life, can communicate with no one in the Bengali-speaking metropolis. Because the movie spends so much time with the young boy and Sunny Pawar, the film establishes itself as an adventure story first and foremost, so that when we switch, near the middle of the movie, to the more psychologically inflected story of the adult Saroo looking for his family, this too functions like an adventure story. Kidman, Patel, and Wenham are all excellent, and this movie simply works. Lion is an Australian film, too, but it is also about our world in the twenty-first century, in which people in many different places are connected in so many myriad ways with one another. Lion is in Bengali, Hindi, and English, and it spends no time apologizing for its linguistic shifts – in fact they become part of the fabric of the world Lion is attempting to describe.
Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #48 out of 85

Back to:
Part 1 - La La Land, Moonlight, Arrival

Pregame: the Longshots

My November-February movie-watching is dictated by a couple of important parameters:
The Oscar nominations don't arrive until late January, but if I wait until the nominations come out, lots of things will no longer be in theatres, especially movies that don't do well. But, see, lots of bad movies get Oscar nominations in categories like Best Original Song, Best Costume Design, and Best Visual Effects. So I pick through what I think could be nominated and then basically gamble. What I don't want to happen is have a movie get nominated for something totally random like Best Sound Editing and then have it be in that period of time between theatrical release and Internet release when I can't catch it before the Oscars. This occasionally leads to some pretty egregious pregames... and to me seeing some terrible movies.

Here are some of my most egregious pregames of this awards season:

Trolls. Yes, I did see Trolls. Justin Timberlake's song "Can't Stop the Feeling!" was one of my not-so-guilty pleasures last Summer, and it was super popular. It was written specifically for Trolls, so a nomination seems sort of inevitable. This happened when Pharrel got nominated for "Happy" for that stupid Despicable Me 2 concoction a couple years ago. In truth every year some idiotic films get nominated in this country, and I am forced to figure out a way to see them (Fifty Shades of Grey, The Lego Movie, Ted, The Muppets, you get the idea). I figured I would take the bull by the horns this year and get myself to the theatre for Trolls.

The verdict? It was so totally asinine. But I honestly didn't mind. It was plenty of fun, and even though I think Anna Kendrick is annoying, the movie has Christine Baranski, as well as enough irony about its own stupidity to squeak by. Will it be nominated? I still think so, although there is a lot of competition.

Allied. I am an asshole for seeing this one. I don't know what I was thinking. I think I had in my mind that this was vaguely about World War II and that its 1940s dresses and suits and possibly even the art direction would hook a nomination even though the critics tore this one to pieces and audiences seemed soft on the thing. That costume category can be very strange. How is a person to predict a movie like Mr. Turner or The Grandmaster or The Invisible Woman? These things are difficult.

The verdict? This movie is terrible. I almost never like Marion Cotillard in movies where she speaks predominantly English, and this one is no exception. She looks awkward in almost every scene, as though she isn't quite positive that she understands what she's saying. Now, this could work for her character, who is supposed to be a foreign spy, but it doesn't. And Brad Pitt (who I have said before is a brilliant actor) is totally phoning this one in. He is dull and stilted. He's supposed to be playing a bit of a previously-unloved dork, too, which makes no sense because he is Brad fucking Pitt and is cooler than most people who have lived on this earth in all of human history. Also, the script is terrible, and it appears as though a few superfluous shootout sequences behind enemy lines were added at the last minute just to give this bland narrative some spice. But nothing could have saved it. A disaster. Will it be nominated? No way.

Doctor Strange. I went to see this because everyone was talking about its special effects and because people drunkenly recommended it to me. I know you aren't into Marvel movies, Aaron, but trust me on this one. That sort of thing. Special Effects movies can be dangerous to miss, too, because sometimes the lag between theatres and the blu-ray release can take a while. So off to Doctor Strange I went.

The verdict? Boring. Why are all of these Marvel movies exactly the same. And why is the world always about to end so that all of humanity is threatened with destruction? Can't we, in one of these Marvel movies, just be threatened with something a little less apocalyptic? Perhaps magical space-bending wizards could avert the destruction of, like, 500,000 people or simply figure out how to stop a military coup in a European (or South American, I'm not picky) dictatorship. Why not? Why do they always need to repair the fraying of the space-time continuum or some other silly thing. Like, ooooo, I wonder if the superheroes will manage to stave off the apocalypse until yet another sequel offers a new threat to human existence. Yep, turns out they did! Whew, that was a close one. Will it be nominated? Yeah, I think so. The effects really are cool.

I've already talked about Rules Don't Apply, which I thought might nab a nomination or two, and The Dressmaker, which I thought might get a costume nomination, so I won't go into those here, especially since I don't think either will get nominated for anything next Tuesday. But I do have one more:

Hacksaw Ridge. This is the new Mel Gibson movie, and I had planned to see it with a friend, but he and I had seen a couple of real stinkers in a row, and I got nervous. I couldn't bear watching another really bad one with him. I wanted to make sure the next one we saw together was really good. I also wasn't really sure what this could be nominated for – sound? sound editing? acting?

The verdict? The film's first and second acts are both rather uneven – and do not seem to match one another either – but Hacksaw Ridge is amazing. It's stunningly, shockingly good, and the presentation of the violence during the war sequences is so fast and head-spinning, so disgustingly grotesque, so absolutely horrific that I sat with my jaw dropped for most of act three. I have never seen anything like the violence in this movie. I mean that honestly. And this movie's distaste for the violence of war is not only a part of its plot – the central storyline is about a soldier who refuses to carry a weapon and do harm to anyone else – it is part of its filmmaking as well. The direction of these war sequences is so refreshingly opposed to the horrors of war. It's great.

And will it get nominated for anything? Hacksaw Ridge has emerged as one of the frontrunners in the race this year. It's one of the big surprises of the year. People are talking about Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Director, Best Screenplay. It could rack up 6 or 7 nominations next Tuesday and I wouldn't be surprised. If it does, it will have deserved them.

The Nominees: Part III of VIII

LITTLE CHILDREN

3 Nominations:

Best Actress: Kate Winslet (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Iris, Titanic, Sense and Sensibility)

Best Supporting Actor: Jackie Earle Haley

Best Adapted Screenplay: Todd Field (In the Bedroom) and Tom Perotta

Director: Todd Field (In the Bedroom)
Cast: Patrick Wilson, Kate Winslet, Jennifer Connelly, Noah Emmerich, Jackie Earle Haley, Phyllis Somerville, Jane Adams

This movie was predicted as one of the big prestige pictures of 2006. A screenplay nomination is a very big deal, so it still looks as though a lot of people paid attention to and liked this film, but it seems like reception to the film is overall more cool than anything else. This is to be expected for a film that worked hard to create distance from its audience. Still, three nominations is a lot of love and the Jackie Earle Haley nomination was a welcome surprise on nomination morning. This is Kate Winslet's fifth Oscar nomination. Make a note. She has yet to win.
Will Win: N/A
Might Also Win: Best Supporting Actor
My Rating: #51 out of 69

CHILDREN OF MEN

3 Nominations:

Best Adapted Screenplay: Alfonso Cuarón (Y Tu Mamá También), David Arata, Mark Fergus and Hawk Otsby

Best Cinematography: Emmanuel Lubezki (The New World, Sleepy Hollow, A Little Princess)

Best Film Editing

Director: Alfonso Cuarón (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Y Tu Mamá También, Great Expectations, A Little Princess)
Cast: Clive Owen, Michael Caine, Julianne Moore, Claire-Hope Ashitey, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Charlie Hunnam, Pam Ferris

This is my favorite movie of the year. Blame its weak showing at the Academy on a too-late release date (this is Universal's fault) and on subject matter (sci-fi is not usually their thing.) But a film this good doesn't need a whole lot of Oscar nominations. People are going to be talking about how great this movie is for years to come. At any rate, Emmanuel Lubezki deserves to win in his category hands down. Hopefully by then, members of the Academy will all have seen this gem.
Will Win: Best Cinematography
Might Also Win: Best Film Editing
My Rating: #1 out of 69

APOCALYPTO

3 Nominations:

Best Sound Mixing

Best Sound Editing

Best Makeup

Director: (Crazy) Mel Gibson (The Passion of the Christ, Braveheart, The Man Without a Face)
Cast: Rudy Youngblood, Dalia Hernandez, Jonathan Brewer, Morris Birdyellowhead, Carlos Emilio Baez

This is a good movie, for the most part, though its subject matter and director obviously make it a tough pill for Hollywood to swallow. Still, The Passion of the Christ got Oscar nominations and so did this film. Winning anything is a different story altogether, and the presence of Pan's Labyrinth in the makeup category means Apocalypto will go home with nothing on Oscar night. That said, the makeup in this film (as in Gibson's last film) is extraordinary and the nomination is well-deserved.
Will Win: N/A
Might Also Win: N/A
My Rating: #26 out of 69

UNITED 93

2 Nominations:

Best Director: Paul Greengrass

Best Film Editing

Director: Greengrass (The Bourne Supremacy, Bloody Sunday, The Murder of Stephen Lawrence, The Theory of Flight)
Cast: David Alan Basche, Cheyenne Jackson, Christian Clemenson, Trish Gates, Khalid Abdalla, Lewis Alsamari, Omar Berdouni, Jamie Harding

These nominations are a big surprise. Critics loved this film, and clearly so did the Academy's director's branch, which is—in general—more discriminating than the body as a whole. But audiences didn't seem to take notice of this movie, despite critical enthusiasm about it. I personally loved the film and it sat at my number one spot for almost the entire year. It's a superbly directed film. I can't wait for Greengrass's next offering: The Bourne Ultimatum.
Will Win: N/A
Might Also Win: Best Film Editing
My Rating: #2 out of 69

THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA

2 Nominations:

Best Actress: Meryl Streep (Adaptation., Music of the Heart, One True Thing, The Bridges of Madison County, Postcards from the Edge, A Cry in the Dark, Ironweed, Out of Africa, Silkwood, The French Lieutenant's Woman; she has Oscars for Sophie's Choice and Kramer vs. Kramer but hasn't won in 24 years.)

Best Costume Design: Patricia Field

Director: David Frankel (Miami Rhapsody)
Cast: Anne Hathaway, Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, Stanley Tucci, Adrien Grenier, Simon Baker

The Best Actress nomination was a given, but the Best Costume Design nomination is a big surprise. The Academy usually likes to nominate period films and fantasy films in this category. Contemporary costume work usually gets left behind. This bodes well for the future. Streep hasn't won an Oscar since 1983. It is time to hand her another trophy, people! Her work is always stellar, never even slightly sub-par, and it always feels like you never knew her before when she's onscreen.
Will Win: N/A
Might Also Win: Best Costume Design
My Rating: #47 out of 69

Apocalypto

You're probably not going to believe this, but I quite liked Apocalypto. I'm not sure that the title has anything to do with anything, but the movie's good anyway. I've heard people muttering that it's the most violent movie they've ever seen--Joe Morgenstern said so in his review--but compared to other Mel Gibson films, I don't think they're quite right about that. It's definitely violent and bloody and all of that, but certainly less so than The Passion of the Christ, Payback and The Patriot--don't get me started on tThe Patriot.
The thing is, Apocalypto is really about violence, and it's quite thought-provoking. It recalls human atrocities on all continents in a real and fascinating way. I found it very powerful in its ability to evoke things like Holocaust work camps, sub-saharan Africa, and Roman gladatorial slaughters--all in the span of about four minutes. It's quite extraordinary.
It's also visually stunning. Gibson is a true visionary. I mean, I think he's batshit crazy in real life, don't get me wrong, but no one is making movies like this. It's a very Hollywood style of filmmaking, but it's also unique and special and feels groundbreaking in a lot of ways.
It has its problems, too--a Hell of a lot of running and inopportune introductions of comedic sequences--but for he most part he stays on track and the film picks up steam. It's impossible not to root for the hero, and I can't imagine watching the movie and not thinking about Abu Ghraib or Guantánamo or Srebrenića.
If you're not into violence, of course, don't go. But Apocalypto's violence is not on the relentless, snuff-film scale of The Passion of the Christ, and the visuals are worth the ride.

Review: The Passion of the Christ

Last night I watched The Passion of the Christ.  I know everyone always says this, but the book was better.

I didn't care for the film for a lot of reasons.  I felt like the film didn't really go anywhere dramatically.  At all.  He sort of just kept falling you know.  I found myself yelling at the screen for him to "Stop falling!"  I mean, that's obviously Gibson's point with all of the falling and the torture, but it doesn't go anywhere.  The thing I yelled most frequently was "Jesus!" which I guess was inappropriate, but this movie is brutal.  It's one of the most disgusting things I've ever seen.  The final straw was a random crow pecking out a man's eye and then this shot of the crow's bloody beak and feathers: nasty.  I was so repulsed.

Aside from the sheer brutality and torturous qualities of the film, I guess what I come away with is that the Bible itself—especially the King James Version, which is what Gibson used for the English translations—is so much more magical and beautiful than this film.  There's this whole part in the scriptures when the sky goes completely black and the people can't see three feet in front of them.  The Jewish dead rise out of the ground and walk the earth under the darkness, and people think they have seen Isaiah and some of the other prophets.  The temple garment, a cloth that covers the outside of the temple and is about as thick as my car, is "rent in twain" in the King James Version: it was supposed to be impossible to have occurred and was supposed to symbolize Christ's triumph over Judaeism.

I loved the guy who played Pontius Pilate.  I thought he was wonderful.  I think the makeup might be some of the best makeup work I've ever seen on film: we'll see if the Academy can look past the film's controversial nature.  The cinematography and the costumes were boring, though.  Some color please!  I was dying for some color.  At least give the rich people some colorful clothes!  When I thought about color during the film, it occurred to me that here was a man of the lower classes being murdered by a lower-class mob.  None of them had any money.  Few had education, and what are they doing?  Killing someone.  It reminded me of gang warfare.

For me the film makes a lot of the same mistakes that Troy did.  Continually talking about gods—"Lord" in Passion seems used to excess—does not make us as an audience believe in gods.  I've read the Bible many times, and these crucifixion passages more times than I could probably count, but if you want me to believe something in a film, you have to show me.  And so, like King Priam in Troy, the Pharisees and the Jewish priests come off as religious weirdos... like the Southern Baptists of my childhood, but so do Mary and Peter and Judas and John.

I know this movie has meant a lot to people.  My brother, for one, seemed to think this movie was just the best thing since Old School, but I have to say I felt kind of tortured right along with Christ.  It was really difficult to watch, and without resolution or even emotion really.  I mean, the people were crying on screen, and I recognized the brutality of the Romans, but I didn't care.  I didn't love this man like I loved Lothaire Bluteau in Jésus de Montréal or Djimon Hounsou in Amistad or Denzel Washington in Glory.  And I wanted to care.  I felt like I probably should love him, but the filmmaker hadn't done anything so that I would.