Oscar Nominations 2018: Part 5 of 12

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My Best of 2017.

Coco

2 Nominations

• Animated Feature
• Song – "Remember Me": Kristen Anderson-Lopez (Frozen) & Robert Lopez (Frozen)

Director: Lee Unkrich

Cast: Anthony Gonzalez, Gael García Bernal, Benjamin Bratt, Alanna Ubach, Renee Victor, Jaime Camil, Alfonso Arau, Herbert Sigüenza

This is easily the best animated feature of the year (I'll talk more about the scraping of the bottom of the barrel that this year's nominations are in another post). But, don't let the lack of competition fool you. Coco is actually brilliant. It may look like a retread of The Book of Life; it's not. This movie is breathtakingly gorgeous, vividly imagined, and the story is told beautifully. The songs are lovely, the acting is wonderful, and I cried several times. There was a moment in the middle of the movie when Miguel, the young protagonist, has his guitar taken from him by his abuela, and I reacted so strongly and violently that I realized I was completely in love with Coco, and that was before little Miguel reached the land of the dead and I realized that this was going to be the most finely realized Pixar movie yet. The animation is stunning. This is in my top ten films of the year. It's better than The Shape of Water; it's better than Three Billboards; it's better than Lady Bird; it's better than Get Out. And it deserves to win both of the Oscars for which it is nominated.

Will Win: Animated Feature, Song

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #9 out of 80

Roman J. Israel, Esq.

1 Nomination

• Actor: Denzel Washington (Fences, Flight, Training Day, The Hurricane, Malcolm X, Glory, Cry Freedom)

Director: Dan Gilroy

Cast: Washington, Carmen Ejogo, Colin Farrell, Lynda Gravátt, Amanda Warren, Tony Plana, Hugo Armstrong, Amari Cheatom, DeRon Horton, Sam Gilroy, Ludwig Manukian

This isn't terrible, honestly. Denzel is quite excellent, and I'm glad he got nominated (especially since I pregamed this movie), but this movie has serious script problems. I rather liked it for much of its running time, and watching Washington make the acting moves he makes is very interesting. As I said in my longer review, he is constantly surprising, and the part is really different from parts he usually plays these days, but I think that is really the only selling point this movie might have. It is a clunkily told story about ethics in Los Angeles that can't quite ever seem to focus on its themes because it is too obsessed with its plot – a plot which is not as well thought-out as it might have been in the first place. Washington can't win this year, even though most people agree he was a close runner-up to last year's award. He'll need to be part of a movie more widely loved in order to win this trophy again, but this nomination is well-deserved.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #45 out of 80

Molly's Game

1 Nomination

• Adapted Screenplay: Aaron Sorkin (Moneyball, The Social Network)

Director: Sorkin

Cast: Jessica Chastain, Idris Elba, Kevin Costner, Michael Cera, Jeremy Strong, Chris O'Dowd, Bill Camp, Angela Gots, Brian d'Arcy James, J.C. MacKenzie

I thought this worked really well and I liked it a lot. It moves quickly and with purpose, and it only gets slowed down twice. (There's a stupid sequence in which we learn about Molly using drugs and another slow sequence in which she heals from a violent attack. Both of these sequences break the contract the narrator and filmmaker have made with the audience.) But actually – and this surprised me – I thought Sorkin's direction was mostly great. This is perhaps not too surprising, and it is also true that this film might have been better with a more experienced director reining him in at certain times, but I confess that I like this snappy Sorkin dialogue, and if I wasn't completely on board with the film's ethical arguments (which quote Arthur Miller directly), I had fun at this movie. It felt like a window into something I know nothing about, and the lightness of the whole thing was amusing throughout.
Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #31 out of 80

The Disaster Artist

1 Nomination

• Adapted Screenplay: Michael H. Weber & Scott Neustadter

Director: James Franco

Cast: Franco, Dave Franco, Zac Efron, Seth Rogen, Alison Brie, Jacki Weaver, Ari Graynor, Paul Scheer, June Diane Raphael, Megan Mullally

I've written about this film and its drawbacks already, so I won't rehearse all that again. What I didn't say is that this film does feel like a kind of extension of Franco's work. I think Franco is building a kind of film directing oeuvre that makes sense, or at least he is making films that hang together in some way. The Disaster Artist is, in many ways, very similar to Interior. Leather Bar., for example. Mostly, though, I think The Disaster Artist falls short of what it could have been. It doesn't explore Tommy Wiseau deeply enough to be really interesting, and it is too busy laughing at him to get under his skin. Is Wiseau gay? Is Wiseau an obsessive? Is he clueless? In love? Terrified? Desperate? Who is this dude? It isn't enough to say "no one knows", but that is what this film chooses to do.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #55 out of 80

Darkest Hour, Roman J. Israel, Disaster Artist, and the Best Actor Oscar

Last night I saw Joe Wright's Darkest Hour, the Winston Churchill-leading-up-to-Dunkirk movie, and I am here to tell you it is really, really strong.

Gary Oldman plays the cantankerous old Prime Minister, beginning his fight against fascism, and his performance is just pitch perfect the entire time. He's under a large amount of makeup, of course, but this doesn't seem to get in the way of the work he is doing at all. Churchill emerges as a rich, nuanced, fascinating figure filled with doubts and attempting to balance two warring political factions at home while making the right decisions about the soldiers fighting the Nazis in France and Belgium.

Oldman is superb, and he is definitely the best part of the film, but this is only because he is so good. Wright's filmmaking is also just excellent, the script is smart if it occasionally veers off into the overly sentimental, and the camerawork and editing are wonderful. Oh, Dario Marianelli's score is great, too, keeping the mood intense even when what we're watching doesn't seem to be about the stakes of human lives in peril.

Darkest Hour is also total Oscar bait. It's a WWII movie with a great performance at its center. It's (obviously) way better than The King's Speech (in fact, Darkest Hour has it's own King George VI – Ben Mendelsohn – who is great), and it maintains a sort of regal, important tone throughout.

It earns all of this, though, and the movie works very, very well. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I hope Oldman does win his Oscar.

* * *

While I'm talking about this year's Best Actor Oscar, let me just go all the way in. The SAG nominees are out, and the Golden Globe nominees are out, so that means the field is pretty well established.
Here is how it looks to me.

The Screen Actors Guild nominated:
Timothée Chalamet for Call Me By Your Name,
Gary Oldman for Darkest Hour,
James Franco for The Disaster Artist,
Daniel Kaluuya for Get Out, and
Denzel Washington for Roman J. Israel, Esq.

The Golden Globes doubles up its nominees. To the list above they added the following five names:
Tom Hanks for The Post,
Daniel Day-Lewis for Phantom Thread,
Steve Carell for Battle of the Sexes,
Ansel Elgort for Baby Driver, and
Hugh Jackman for The Greatest Showman (haha).

I think the Golden Globes Drama list – Chalamet, Day-Lewis, Oldman, Hanks, Washington – is the top five. I would say there only really two alternates for those top five spots and those are Daniel Kaluuya and James Franco. But the SAG skews young, and it is also going to skew toward films that have come out earlier. It makes sense that movies like The Post and Phantom Thread, which are only now just being seen by everyone, are not on that SAG list. I don't see either Kaluuya or Franco breaking into that top five. It could happen, but I don't see it.

* * *

As for Roman J. Israel, Esq., it's surprisingly good! I was sort of expecting it to be just a star vehicle, but Dan Gilroy (who also made Nightcrawler a couple of years ago) is trying to deal with ethics in Los Angeles, and he has crafted a script that explores social justice and law in the U.S. in interesting ways. The movie is too long, and it has an oddly uplifting, hopeful ending, but perhaps this just reflects the fact that Gilroy believes in the possibilities of change a bit more than I do.

And Denzel Washington is great in this part. It is a really beautiful performance that often feels new and intriguing, and Roman J. Israel, Esq. is very different from other parts that he has played recently. It's a de-glammed, non-powerhouse part that (paradoxically) packs an interesting punch. I really enjoyed the film, and after seeing the performance really feel confident that he will get nominated.

Oh! And Colin Farrell is also in this movie, doing his usual excellent supporting work. He is just a fantastic actor. I am glad he works so much. At some point, I am sure people will wise up to just how good he is, but for now I guess he can just keep churning out great performances.

* * *

I have also seen Franco's The Disaster Artist, and I can tell you that I also think Franco is great in the movie. The movie itself is... well, I think it is for people who really like The Room. I'm not one of those people, so I didn't think the film was nearly as funny as it thought it was. Also, and this is the part that doesn't really sit well with me, The Disaster Artist's treatment of Tommy Wiseau strikes me as mean-spirited, even ugly. For all of the brilliance of Franco's mimicry – and it is brilliant – The Disaster Artist thinks Wiseau is a total fucking joke. So the entire film, which is about the making of a terrible film, is busy making fun of Wiseau. The film thinks he's a sexual deviant; it is baffled by how rich he is but also happy to cash his checks; and it is laughing at him to his face.

What is fucked up about The Disaster Artist is that this is all done under the pretense of really loving Wiseau. The movie even begins with various actors speaking to the camera in documentary style about how brilliant the film is. We love Tommy Wiseau, everyone in the movie seems to be saying.

The Disaster Artist, in other words, wants to have it both ways. It wants to make fun of Wiseau while pretending that it is paying tribute to him or some such business. It all feels disingenuous to me. The Disaster Artist isn't really interested in getting to know Wiseau, in exploring what's going on with him or how he works or what he thinks. It's content, instead, simply to look at him as a curiosity, a bizarre, wealthy clown. It reminded me a bit of the way last year's Stephen Frears's film looked at Florence Foster Jenkins: this person is a freak and nothing more. We might feel a little bit sorry for these people, but we certainly can't identify with them. Both of those films allow us to believe that we normal people are nothing like those weirdos.

I didn't dislike the film, really, but it definitely left a bad taste in my mouth.

* * *

My own preferences for Best Actor this year lean toward Robert Pattinson, Claes Bang, Harris Dickinson, and Jeremy Renner – but that's another story, and I haven't seen Call Me By Your Name, The Post, or Phantom Thread yet, so the jury's still out.