Belfast – this will be a tough film to beat. Kenneth Branagh wrote and directed this memoir of his youth in Belfast, Northern Ireland, chronicling the loving and tight-knit family of the exuberant young Buddy (Jude Hill), and their struggles in the face of violent Protestant extremism. Most inhabitants of their mixed Protestant / Catholic neighborhood co-exist agreeably with each other, but Catholics negotiating for Irish independence are nonetheless persecuted and attacked by Protestants who feel that leaving the UK will irreparably diminish their home country. Branagh balances the joys of Buddy’s youth in his beloved city, his parents’ grown-up issues of contending with scarce work and relentless debt, and the benevolent influence of his grandparents, Granny and Pop (Judi Dench and Ciarán Hinds). The industry understandably loves Dench and Hinds, but Caitríona Balfe as stylish and fearless Ma and Colin Morgan as Billy Clanton, one of the Protestant unionist enforcers, both give nomination-deserving performances as well.
There are hard boundaries between the varied episodes – we don’t necessarily give ourselves over to the drama as much as observe it from a structural distance. Branagh’s made some simpler narrative choices for clarity, while jazzing up his visual compositions and crowd sequences a bit ostentatiously. Haris Zambarloukos’ black-and-white cinematography is flawless nonetheless (he’s been Branagh’s go-to for a while now), and the film is genuinely intelligent, good-humored and artful enough to render these complaints negligible. And I award bonus points for it being the rare film under two hours. Make no mistake, this may be the Best Picture of the Year.
CODA – right-minded and full of inspirational heart, CODA (child of deaf adults), like King Richard, is smart, professionally presented and easy and comfortable with the narrative and subject-matter. Ruby Rossi is the only hearing member of a deaf family of four who operate a fishing vessel off the coast of Gloucester, MA. They’re good at what they do and make a fair living, but money is tight. Federal observers are aggressively regulating the fishermen, and soon decide that unless Ruby is always on the boat with Dad and brother to respond to radio messages, distress reports or other kinds of supervision, the other two won’t be allowed to go out to work. Dad Frank (Troy Kotsur) and brother Leo (Daniel Durant) decide they’ll sell their own fish and set up their own market (with Ruby, of course) to sidestep the overregulation. But Ruby has other plans – she already knows she loves to sing, and the new choir director at the school, Bernardo Villalobos (Eugenio Derbez), thinks she’s talented enough to earn a scholarship to the Berklee College of Music. Ruby is paired with fellow student Miles (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) to work on a duet, and they fall in love in the process. Can Ruby reconcile her musical aspirations with the needs of her family?
The film is a remake of the French film The Bélier Family (La famille Bélier) – the family are dairy farmers producing cheese, but the rough plot outline is the same. I haven’t seen it, but I suspect it had less of an inspirational movie-of-the-week feel to it. Director Sian Heder’s background is in television (Orange Is The New Black, Little America, GLOW), and relies on short, punchy episodes to build the narrative and establish characters. Having said that, it’s still very good for what it is, and well worth seeing. I’m surprised Marlee Matlin didn’t get Troy Kotsur’s supporting award opportunity, but they’re both very good. It’s pretty formulaic, pretty manipulative, with very good acting; a feel-good movie with a tear-inducing happy ending. No wonder it’s the Vegas favorite for Best Picture at 2/3.
Don’t Look Up – Adam McKay’s star-studded salvo at climate denialists and political opportunism is conceptually well-structured and undeniably funny. Dr. Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) are university astronomers, professor and student, who discover an asteroid on an undeniable direct-hit trajectory for Earth. They’re eager to share the facts and help prepare for what seems to be certain devastation, but politics, the media, academia, corporations and the court of public opinion predictably stretch the bare facts into their own more individually advantageous shapes and scenarios. Cate Blanchett and Mark Rylance, especially, work hard to bring more to their characters (a news/talk show anchor and a new-age billionaire CEO), but it’s basically a 21st-century partisan version of It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Again, it’s too long at over two hours, but it’s big fun, well worth seeing, and no threat whatsoever in this category.
Drive My Car – There are films to be cited about how art can transform life, in the witnessing as well as in the creating. And there are films to be cited about grief and loss, and the possibilities of lives reconstructed, and tragedy somehow borne. Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s film is an artful and serious examination of both.
Based on a Haruki Murakami short story, we first meet Oto (Reika Kirishima) telling a story in bed to her husband, Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima), and eventually learn that they are both storytellers in their own unique ways. After his wife’s tragic death, Kafuku halts his acting career, and a few years later is invited to Hiroshima to direct a production of the Anton Chekhov play Uncle Vanya, a role he was renowned for as an actor himself. There he meets the young woman assigned to be his driver, Misaki (Tôko Miura); the theater requires it for guest artists, and he begrudgingly accepts her services at the theater’s insistence.
During auditions, a familiar face appears – Takatsuki (Masaki Okada), a young protégé of Oto’s from her television writing work; Takatsuki hopes to reignite his creative juices after his own period of sadness over Oto’s death, and is looking forward to working with Kafuku here.
The theater work is rewarding for Kafuku, Takatsuki and the others involved – Kafuku’s production is international by design, mixing Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Indonesian and even a hearing-impaired actor. But other resonances also manifest themselves between Kafuku, Takatsuki (in their relations and recollections of Oto) and Misaki (as we learn about her life and family as well).
Alain Resnais explored some of these ideas as well; where are the boundaries between art and our lives? We see our own lives in our own context, but how might another view those same circumstances? What might another make of them, or create from them? How might we recreate ourselves given the chance? Or, given that unique outside perspective, still contentedly choose not to?
Ryûsuke Hamaguchi is clearly a very talented filmmaker who isn’t afraid to take the time he needs to express his ideas, but is still capable of creating the narrative and visual rhythms and dynamic that keep things compelling. This film is three hours, but there doesn’t seem to be a superfluous minute. It’s superb, and recommended eagerly. But it’s not the narrative fireworks show that Parasite was two years ago, and is unlikely to challenge the favorites. Nonetheless, it’s nice to see great foreign films starting to crack this category consistently (pre-Parasite, there were only nine over 83 years, three since 2000).
Dune – an involving and thorough telling of the Frank Herbert classic, this is Part 1, concluding with the retaking of Arrakis and Paul and Jessica finding sanctuary with the Fremen. Visually, it’s far more cohesive than David Lynch’s unique blend of art nouveau and forensic pathology – both versions are loyal to Herbert’s original, but pick their spots on particular style-based revisions. Stretching out the narrative while reducing the screentime of some supporting characters (Shadout Mapes, Piter DeVries) allows the three writers a more linear, deliberate pace.
Denis Villeneuve’s impressive film is superb on storytelling fundamentals and his own larger-scale visual style, but curiously indifferent to many small details. For instance, Hans Zimmer’s typically bombastic soundtrack thrums insistently, but long stretches of dialogue are oddly undermixed. Villeneuve emphasizes environments over individual locations and set pieces: the lush, gothic look of Caladan, the blue-grey metallic fog of Giedi Prime and the arid desert world of Arrakis. But once these basics are established, the scene-to-scene camerawork is pretty conventional, and the rest of the film falls into a visual sameness. Greig Fraser is a terrific cinematographer, but one wonders what Villeneuve-veteran Roger Deakins would have done differently. I liked Dune a lot, and it’s a contender, but I think a few of these other films are ultimately more successful at what they tried to do.
King Richard – this biopic of the father of Venus and Serena Williams is a genuinely inspiring movie that’s smarter and crankier than it might have needed to be. Audiences will have to decide for themselves how much of it is the truth and how much is manipulative image rehabilitation, but the film doesn’t shy from Richard’s chequered past or his obstinate demeanor. Will Smith’s performance is very good; he’s the same age now that Richard was at the time, but he still feels a bit young for the role to me, more earnest than wise. He’s a best actor favorite in a very evenly-matched category. Aunjanue Ellis is his second wife Oracene, a tennis coach as well, and the film credits her with both her support with the girls and her critical practicality towards Richard. Reinaldo Marcus Green is the capable director, and his work is made easier by Zach Baylin’s excellent screenplay and Robert Elswit’s camerawork. I wish they could have found a way to give Venus (Saniyya Sidney) and Serena (Demi Singleton) more credit for their own natural talents – Richard trained and inspired them, but he didn’t do it all, and was in many ways incredibly lucky with both the girls, and Oracene. Like most of these nominated films, it’s a half-hour too long, and in a second tier among these, but I still enjoyed it.
Licorice Pizza – each year there’s a movie I expect to like and find disappointing, and each year there’s one I’m indifferent to that ends up being blindsidingly good. The disappointment is the next film here. The wonderful surprise is this one. Paul Thomas Anderson’s smart and endearing tale of young love in the San Fernando Valley in the 70’s is remarkable. Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman, Philip Seymour’s boy) is a fifteen-year-old high schooler, generally wise and mature beyond his years, who’s done some child-acting gigs, but is still enterprising enough to pursue his next get-rich-quick scheme. Alaina Kane (Alaina Haim of the musical group Haim) is an aimless but forthright twenty-five-year-old currently employed as a student-wrangler for the guy who takes all of the high-school pictures. After a few remarks to each other while he’s waiting for his picture, the two lock on to a mutual wavelength that rarely falters throughout their subsequent meetings and adventures. They meet again, and again, Gary takes her to New York for a promotional gig on a talk show (he’s done bit-part work on a Brady-Bunch-ish TV show called Under One Roof), and they eventually partner up to run a waterbed store. The narrative follows a kind of logic, but there are many conceptual and character-type non-sequiturs (including the film’s title) – a weirdly racist Japanese restaurant owner (John Michael Higgins), Gary’s eccentric agent (Harriet Sansom Harris), action film star Jack Holden (Sean Penn) and his pal Rex Blau (Tom Waits), and an impossibly absurd and hilarious scenario that starts with the delivery of a waterbed to Jon Peters (Bradley Cooper). You can sense Anderson’s fondness for the bits and pieces of his own experiences that repeatedly make there way into his other films – mattress sales, child actors, mismatched romances and an L.A. that no other filmmaker captures in quite the same way. Some won’t have much patience for Anderson’s meandering, Robert Altman-like string of small episodes within a seemingly plotless whole, but the incremental accumulation of singular evocative details, and the consistently committed performances kept me inexplicably and rapturously riveted. CODA and Power Of The Dog are the favorites, with Belfast contending, but Licorice Pizza, far and away, is my favorite of these.
Nightmare Alley – This is Guillermo del Toro’s remake of Edmund Goulding’s 1947 original, based on William Lindsey Gresham’s 1946 pulp-fiction novel. As a young man, Gresham was fascinated by the carny life on display at nearby Coney Island, and met another sideshow veteran while serving as a medic during the Spanish Civil War – between the two, he had plenty of material for his first book. An incorrigible philanderer and alcoholic, his marriage (with two children) eventually disintegrated; his estranged wife, Joy Davidman, moved to England and subsequently married C.S. Lewis. At 53, Gresham committed suicide.
The first film was made quickly, less than a year after Gresham’s book had been published. Goulding’s film preserved a great deal of the squalid tone and escalating betrayals inherent in the book, but backed off on a few lurid details; an additional scene was tacked on so the film wouldn’t end with the same bitter bleakness as the book (and del Toro’s version). It is, however, an enduring classic film noir.
A man, Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) commits a crime, goes on the run, and finds employment as a carny for a traveling sideshow. As he meets and ingratiates himself with his fellow showpeople, he learns their tricks and methods, becoming the assistant to Zeena, the mind reader and fortune teller (Toni Colette), and accelerating the death of her now-alcoholic husband and lifelong accomplice Pete (David Strathairn). Having learned Zeena’s trade, and all of Pete’s verbal codes for her, he sets out on the road with his own assistant, the comely but impressionable Molly (Rooney Mara) and adds enough flourish and embellishment to the act to draw crowds into larger clubs and theaters. One night, a mark from the crowd produces a gold watch; the blindfolded Carlisle describes it, but the mark’s analyst, Dr. Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchett) interrupts Molly’s patter and produces her own object to be identified. Carlisle describes it perfectly, then reveals uncomfortably intimate details about Dr. Ritter to the audience. The mark turns out to be a wealthy judge who wants Carlisle to speak to his dead son in the beyond. Dr. Ritter has many more rich clients like Judge Kimball, and she’ll partner with Carlisle to deceive, and, if necessary, blackmail them, for the unimaginable amounts of money they’re willing to give them for feeding their hopes.
My feelings towards del Toro’s remake are similar to my reaction to Martin Scorsese’s remake of Cape Fear; a really good director brought a great deal of technical mastery, more contemporary psychological complexity, a much higher budget and some genuine A-list actors to the roles. And, for all of that, the film is still utterly superfluous. Like a lot of del Toro’s recent work, it’s a compelling theme park of B-movie tropes and monster movies, even, as del Toro himself has said, “Here, all of the monsters are human.” But I honestly didn’t buy a minute of this, and that seems like an almost impossible thing to say to actors like Toni Colette, Willem Dafoe and David Strathairn, let alone Bradley Cooper. Cate Blanchett works incredibly hard on her role, Dr. Lilith Ritter, but all I saw was the acting – I never once fell into the character she was playing. Between her and Helen Walker’s 1947 portrayal it’s not even close. And that, ultimately, is del Toro’s failure.
The original story itself is sinister and fabulous, and del Toro has stayed admirably true to it. The Danish cinematographer Dan Laustsen’s work is gorgeous (though I’m still rooting for Ari Wegner this year), as is Tamara Deverell’s production design. But it’s all just too slick, too calculated, too ostentatious, and too clean around the edges. The original came in at 110 minutes. This one is an overlong 150. This was a real disappointment for me.
The Power Of The Dog – In her first feature film since 2009’s Bright Star, Jane Campion has delivered an intriguing western drawing on familiar tropes, but with a thoroughly modern undercurrent. Brothers Phil and George Burbank (Benedict Cumberbatch and Jesse Plemons) own and manage a successful cattle farm in Montana, keeping the family business going through canny management (George) and rough-and-ready crews led by Phil. Phil loves his brother, but he’s clearly the alpha, with no f***s given for ceremony, politics or social graces. Widow Rose Gordon (Kirsten Dunst) runs a traveler’s inn that’s one of the meal stops for the wranglers on Burbank cattle drives. She’s aided by her frail but smart son Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee), who strikes the cattle crew as an irretrievable nerd. One particular day, Phil is particularly cruel to Peter, sending him to the kitchen in tears, with Rose, knowing how Phil is, becoming upset as well. After the crew has left, George speaks with her to both settle up the tab and console her over Phil’s indifference. Soon after, George and Rose are wed, she moves into the ranch house, and a battle of wills ensues between Phil, Rose and Peter.
Based on a 1967 novel by Thomas Savage, Campion has written and directed a terrific adaptation. Savage was aware of the psychology behind what we now refer to as toxic masculinity, and the darker consequences of repression, and Campion has fashioned a suspenseful and unpredictable narrative from Savage’s only-now-back-in-print novel. Another genuine Best Picture contender, it also features impressive work from cinematographer Ari Wegner, only the second woman ever nominated for a Best Cinematography award (Rachel Morrison, in 2018, was the first ever, for Mudbound), and another superbly evocative musical soundtrack from Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, who is the go-to composer for Lynne Ramsey and Paul Thomas Anderson. All of the nominated actors are superb, with Cumberbatch providing real competition for Best Actor. It’s in my top three here.
West Side Story – the idea of remaking this landmark musical isn’t a bad one. I liked writer Tony Kushner’s and director Steven Spielberg’s selective revisionist touches – putting the Puerto Rican community on equal footing with their white counterparts, contextualizing how politics and commerce can keep minorities at a structural disadvantage despite our haughty “melting-pot” rhetoric, turning “There’s A Place For Us” into a plea for coexistence and comity, and even turning the role of Anybodys (Iris Means) into a legitimately transsexual person. The musical numbers featuring Justin Peck’s astonishing choreography are exhilarating, and Spielberg’s own “choreography” of camerawork (with his go-to cinematographer Janusz Kaminski) begs the question of why, after all this time, this is his first musical.
I recently saw the live theater production of Daniel Fish’s version of Oklahoma; I found his dissection of the darker side of the musical, with original book untouched, to be fascinating and well worthwhile. But I also understood those who felt that Fish should have worked to create a new musical addressing those cultural and philosophical concerns instead of turning Oklahoma inside-out. Spielberg’s production of West Side Story doesn’t change the context of the original as much as Fish’s Oklahoma does, but I still question what he and Kushner’s specific motivations were to bother remaking Robert Wise’s original, which is of its time but has still aged pretty well. They had some specific ideas they wanted to put across, and found good places to explore them, but overall they’ve stuck to a pretty standard production, leaving the basic relationships unchanged. As epic entertainment for people who love musicals, or for those who are too young to recall the original, go see this film and watch true pros at work. Spielberg may win the directing award, and Ariana DeBose owns best supporting actress, but I have trouble even putting this in the top five.
Best Picture
should win: Licorice Pizza or Belfast
will win: CODA or Power Of The Dog
Best Director
should win: Paul Thomas Anderson
will win: Jane Campion
Best Actress
Should win: Penélope Cruz
Will win: Jessica Chastain
conspicuous in their absence: Alaina Haim, Caitríona Balfe and Renate Reinsve
Best Actor
Should win: Denzel Washington or Benedict Cumberbatch
Will win: Will Smith
Best Supporting Actress
should and will win: Ariana DeBose,
though Jessie Buckey was great as well.
conspicuous in her absence: Marlee Matlin
Best Supporting Actor
should and will win: Troy Kotsur
International Feature Film
should win: The Worst Person In The World
will win: Drive My Car
Periscope In The Bathtub 