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

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.

Two New Ones

If you care about movies, and you do, you know you do, you need to see District 9, the new film from South African director Neill Blomkamp.

It is, of course, important to remember that District 9 is kind of gross. In fact, it's actually pretty disgusting. I went with my roommates and both of them thought they would need to get up and leave the theatre at different parts of the film. District 9 is not for the weak-stomached.

But man is it good! Blomkamp's film follows a man who is working for a governmental coalition who is trying to move a group of aliens who have settled in a slum in Johannesburg. The movie begins by following this guy (who's kind of a loser) on his errands through the alien slum. Then, weird stuff starts to happen. I am not going to spoil this for any of you who haven't seen it, but for my money District 9 is the most intriguing, visually compelling, consistently inventive science fiction film since Danny Boyle's Sunshine.

Now, I have heard a lot of talk about how District 9 is a social commentary about (variably) racism, the third world, poverty, and government corruption. For me the film doesn't have much to say, really, about any of these topics. The aliens in District 9 are fundamentally (by which I mean essentially) different from the humans in the movie. They do not share DNA patterns. In this way, of course, the differences between aliens and humans cannot be likened to differences between humans of different races. I mean, white people are not biologically different from people of color. I guess for me District 9 doesn't need to be "about" anything. It is just a kick-ass film, filled with suspense and tension, interesting characters, loads of surprises, and an inventive plot.

I also saw the new Miyazaki film, Ponyo and was underwhelmed. Comparing Ponyo to Miyazaki's previous work is, I realize, setting the movie to a very high standard, but Ponyo just doesn't hold up. It is, of course, visually stunning, but the plot of the new film is basically Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid. It differs here and there, but not by much, and I just never really dropped into it.