Oscar Nominees 2015: Part 5 of 12

Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4.
Part 5 of 12:

Guardians of the Galaxy

2 Nominations

• Visual Effects
• Makeup

Director: James Gunn

Cast: Chris Pratt, Zoë Saldana, Dave Bautista, Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel, John C. Reilly, Djimon Hounsou, Lee Pace, Glenn Close, Karen Gillan, Benicio Del Toro

This was an awesome movie and I loved it. I loved all of its jokes; I loved the way it sent up the seriousness (unintentional campiness) of the Marvel universe; I loved Zoë Saldana; but most of all I loved Chris Pratt. Now, I know everyone loves Chris Pratt these days so this is not any big news or anything, but he is just so lovable! As for Guardians of the Galaxy itself, its use of '80s music, and its interest in anti-heroism make it fun and action-oriented without any of the deadly sentimentalism and nobility we have come to expect from Marvel Studios movies. I can't recommend this enough. It's one of the best action movies of the year.

Will Win: Makeup

Could Win: Visual Effects

My Rating: #33 out of 78

Still Alice

1 Nomination

• Actress: Julianne Moore (The Hours, Far from Heaven, The End of the Affair, Boogie Nights)

Director: Richard Glatzer, Wash Westmoreland

Cast: Moore, Alec Baldwin, Kristen Stewart, Kate Bosworth, Hunter Parrish, Stephen Kunken, Shane McRae, Erin Drake

Julianne Moore is finally going to win an Oscar. And it is about time. She has been nominated four times before (and got close to winning in 2003 for Far from Heaven), but this time it is for real. And one of the things that's great about this is that Still Alice is such a good movie. This isn't a picture that was especially tricked out so that Moore could win awards, this is a sensitive, well-made picture directed by the independent-film directing team who made The Fluffer and Quinceañera. In any case, I loved this movie, and I loved Julianne Moore in it, and I even loved K-Stew.
Will Win: Actress

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #21 out of 78

Gone Girl

1 Nomination

• Actress: Rosamund Pike

Director: David Fincher

Cast: Ben Affleck, Pike, Carrie Coon, Neil Patrick Harris, Kim Dickens, Missi Pyle, Patrick Fugit, Tyler Perry, Lola Kirke, Boyd Holbrook, Sela Ward, Emily Ratajkowski, David Clennon, Lisa Banes, Casey Wilson

A badass thriller that I found totally shocking at times. This is also a really interesting feminist film about the ways that women are forced to behave in certain ways and become objects that men can love ("cool girls", the film calls them). But the best part of Gone Girl is watching the nooses tighten around people's necks, watching the plots thicken, and the pleasure of squirming in your seat while someone does something you know is going to turn out really, really poorly. This is a well-shot, well-acted, exquisitely scripted tough-as-nails picture that got totally fucking ignored by the Academy for reasons I don't really understand. Was it too sexy for them? Too much about their television-addled lives? Too hard on its male characters? In any case, Rosamund Pike got a deserved nomination here, even though the film's director, screenwriter, composers, cinematographer, and editor all also deserved nominations. This is one of the great fuckups of this year by the Academy, if you ask me. This movie isn't in my top ten (there are too many good movies this year – not that Oscar is paying attention to many of those) but I know quality when I see it, and this deserved better. It's excellent.
Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #14 out of 78

Deux Jours, Une Nuit (Two Days, One Night)

1 Nomination

• Actress: Marion Cotillard (La Môme)

Director: Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne

Cast: Cotillard, Fabrizio Rongione, Catherine Salée, Baptiste Sornin, Timur Magomedgadzhiev, Christelle Cornil, Myriem Akheddiou, Olivier Gourmet, Serge Koto, 

One of the year's absolute best. Cotillard plays a woman who is trying to go back to her job. To do this she needs the people who work on the floor of the plant with her to vote that she can have her job back. But if they vote yes, their boss has decreed that they will not get their bonus; the bonus will be used for her salary. It's a capitalist nightmare (i.e. real life) staged in human terms. Cotillard is superb and she just barely squeaked out a nomination here over Jennifer Aniston in Cake (whose movie could have gained steam if it had come out earlier). The film itself was submitted by Belgium in the Foreign Language category, but didn't make the January shortlist. The Dardennes, although they make near-perfect films every time they make one, have never been the Academy's particular cup of tea. They've never been nominated before. But, hey, Haneke finally got nominated for Amour two years ago, so maybe it's just a matter of time before the Dardennes are honored. Go see this movie, though. It is another one in my top ten for the year.
Will Win: N/A
Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #3 out of 78

Still Alice

Still Alice played in Los Angeles for only one week: an Academy-qualifying run in two theatres beginning on December 5th before it is released more widely on January 16th. So I had to drive rather far to see this movie, but I was glad I did. It is an excellent film and, perhaps more importantly for my timeline:

With Still Alice, Julianne Moore is finally going to win a Best Actress Oscar.

Still Alice also contains beautiful performances by Kristen Stewart and Alec Baldwin, but the star here is Alice herself, Julianne Moore. The performance is beautiful. She is terrified and angry and defiant, and then lost and confused. It is a sensitive, humane portrayal of someone fighting to stay herself from an actress who has done consistently good work since her big break in Robert Altman's Short Cuts in 1993. It's about time Julianne Moore had a Best Actress Oscar in her hands, and her performance in Still Alice is so good that everyone is going to feel happy about giving it to her.

This film is not Oscar bait, though. I had read in certain places on the interwebs that Still Alice is a) a star vehicle or b) Oscar bait. And it is neither of those things. Instead, it is a fascinating, beautiful movie about Alzheimer's disease that is complicated by its multiple perspectives.

As the film begins, we meet Alice, a professor at Columbia who has just turned 50. She's a leader in her field and she has begun, ever so slightly, to forget things. She describes these moments of forgetting as though something has just "dropped out" when it should be there. Still Alice plays close attention to these early moments of understanding Alice's condition. We see this from Alice's perspective, and as a very educated, independent woman she explores these moments at her own pace without telling her husband what is happening. Everything is from her point of view here. At her first visit to the neurologist the camera doesn't look at him a single time. We get only Alice's face as she answers his questions and processes what he's telling her.

We stay in Alice's perspective for a long, long time. And then, in act three, as we move forward and Alice begins forgetting a lot more, the film subtly but deliberately switches from Alice's point of view to her husband's, and we see Alice's condition not as her struggle to remember things or accomplish tasks but as his struggle to cope with her condition. (He doesn't cope very well.) And then, finally, we switch to Alice's daughter's perspective as she cares for and loves her mother, even when her mother seems as though she is totally unaware of her surroundings.

The filmic switch between Alice's perspective and her husband's is one of my favorite moments in the film. Alice's Alzheimer's has progressed quite far, and the film conveys this total lack of a past by focusing very tightly on the toppings at Pinkberry. And they're beautiful: a tight, focused shot of Fruity Pebbles and then another, similar shot of a different topping. This is all Alice can focus on: the present moment. So she looks at the prettiest thing in the room – mounds of brightly colored frozen yogurt toppings – and then she focuses on the next one. There is no past or future, there is only this beautiful image in front of her, and it is what she can take in. Directing team Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland have made their best film to date. Highly recommended.