Movies – Handicapping The Best Picture Oscars 2019

Chadwick Boseman in “Black Panther.” credit: movieinsider.com

It’s Oscar time again, and here’s my annual project of catching up with mainstream Hollywood, taking a break from my usual older foreign films and giallos. There are many throwback projects represented here this year: biographies, period pieces, only a few outrightly fictional – my favorites, of course, made a point to move things along rather than work familiar territory.

A Star Is Born – for his feature-film directing debut, Bradley Cooper chose a tried-and-true boilerplate show-biz melodrama. He wisely didn’t try to make the next Citizen Kane or Maltese Falcon; he chose a genre and a style that would tend to itself while he worked on the foundations and detailing, and fashioned an acceptable piece of middlebrow mainstream Hollywood schmaltz entertainment. That the film is regarded as several leagues above this modest but admirable accomplishment is baffling to me, but Warner Bros is, of course, promoting the hell out of it. Lady Gaga is always very good at being Lady Gaga, but the actressin’ otherwise is a little thin. She needed a better director. I saw Bohemian Rhapsody soon after this, and was relieved to find involving narrative dynamics combined with a genuinely thought-out visual plan, two things conspicuous in their absence here. I wish cinematographer Matthew Libatique all the best, but he could have shot this in his sleep. And, as co-writer of the adapted script, Cooper didn’t get much help from Eric Roth or Will Fetters in creating a remotely interesting character. The script says he’s famous, so there’s that, and there’s some nice-guy lip-service early on, but there isn’t much else to care about here. It’s doing good business, and lots of people like it, but I don’t see much of a shelf life here past the next few weeks, even if it wins.

Black Panther – It’s ironic that this was the year the Academy tried to establish a “Best Popular Film” category, and gave the idea up. This film hits all the buttons – well-written, well-structured, well-shot, well-performed, thrilling, smart and fun, critically praised and a box-office hit. It does everything it aspired to do, and a fair amount more. It’s tough to make comparisons to Roma or The Favourite – they’re completely different stories for completely different intended audiences. Nonetheless, it’s one of my two favorites this year (with BlacKkKlansman) for those very reasons. The usual CGI onslaught threatens to bury the last 15 minutes – that just comes with Marvel/DC superhero territory – but Coogler and his writers orchestrate the action and the narrative mythology well; it’s as exciting and engaging a film as I saw all year. I think we all know why this was a watershed release for an enormous swath of the moviegoing public considering what’s come before, but, honestly, I hope we can just acknowledge that, without qualification, on its own, it’s just a big fun great movie.

BlacKkKlansman – Spike Lee, a true reliable veteran, has always been able to flush out and illuminate particular characters, particular environments, the intersections of various cultures, and work a big range between instructive gravity and flat-out entertainment. I suspect he found Ron Stallworth’s book almost irresistible – Colorado Springs’ first black cop (played by a terrific John David Washington), working in the intelligence office, sees a recruitment ad for the KKK in the local paper and calls it. Is it really that easy?! Well, not so much later, as Ron and his fellow undercover cop Flip (Adam Driver) (Ron’s white alter-ego) discover. But what a story. Spike keeps a great George-Romero-like balance between showing us why “the organization” is ridiculous while taking them absolutely seriously nonetheless. And there’s fun and joyfulness peppered in as well, including a great dance sequence, all cohesively orchestrated. But Spike’s not shy about speaking truth to power, either. He illustrates the toll that racism takes on all of us, not just the perpetrators or victims. I don’t suspect it will crack the favorites, but it’d sure be great if it did. And Spike’s a serious contender for Best Director. It’s superb.

Bohemian Rhapsody – one of the critics for the Chicago Reader lamented a while ago that most of these musician / performer bioflix lazily draw from sports movie templates – disappointment, success, escalate, disappointment, success, rinse and repeat. The story of the formation of the wonderful rock ‘n’ roll band Queen is, as previously mentioned, very professionally presented – well-conceived by director Bryan Singer, and well-shot by Newton Thomas Sigel (Singer’s preferred cinematographer). Peter Morgan and Andrew McCarton are genuinely talented screenwriters who took care to keep Brian May and Roger Taylor happy, but, aside from the particulars of Freddie Mercury’s story, we’ve seen this all before. It’s well-executed formula, but it’s, y’know…  In many ways, the aforementioned got lucky with Rami Malek, who, it must be admitted, owns the best sequences of the film. The writers have some trouble balancing Freddie’s personal dynamics – the musicianship seems irreproachable, but some critics aren’t happy with how much credibility Paul Prenter (Freddie’s personal manager) is given (a convincing Allen Leach); others will still resent Mercury for not being forthright about his eventual HIV status. And, outside of the film itself, there are solidly disturbing reports of director Bryan Singer’s own abusive sexual behavior over a long period of time. It’s a very good movie for what it is, and it has a few tear-inducing shots of right-minded nostalgia, but it just doesn’t successfully do justice to Freddie or that great band. You’ll have to make up your own mind about director Singer and if he’s debased his own previous work. Nonetheless, I will continue to assert, at least, that his film blows A Star Is Born out of the water.

The Favourite – I’m delighted to immerse myself in the high-rent-district aspirations of this quite wonderful film. Like good Shakespeare treatments, we accept the larger-than-life historical context of royalty and command while also appreciating the humanization of those characters – one doesn’t diminish the other. The screenplay by Tony McNamara and Deborah Davis is densely packed, involving and naturalistic, but extraordinary amounts of dark fun are had at the players’ expense in the course of relating what eventually becomes a profoundly sad story. Director Yorgos Lanthimos has been in this class for a while now, but the a-list talent he acquired for this project really brings it home – all of those acting nominations are richly deserved, Robbie Ryan’s cinematography is a master-class of composition, color, lighting and what can be done with lenses, and veteran costumer Sandy Powell delivers impeccable work, again. I love the film for all the reasons I love Black Panther; I just don’t believe it’s going to get comparable love from the Academy voters. I’d love to be proven wrong…

Green Book – A number of the films here are throwbacks of a sort to the sixties and seventies. This is a film that I wish had been made in the sixties or seventies by, say, Norman Jewison or Stanley Kramer, where its context and novelty might have been less problematic, and softened overall by its anachronism. But spending the film’s length watching a white man teaching a black man about black popular culture, regardless of how endearingly or historically accurate that black man is portrayed, is a real test of our suspension of disbelief. The film’s terrific actors, Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali, have flushed out the material as graciously and creatively as possible, eschewing the overt sentimental trade-offs with which the script is booby-trapped. But there’s a clearly unearned nostalgia for racism here – “hey, remember back when this stuff was a big deal?” Yes, we do, and not enough of that has changed, and many things that got better are losing ground, and I’m not sure this film is helpful. Narratives, in film, books, theater, TV or whatever, don’t come hermetically sealed – they are absorbed into the larger world in which they are told. Peter Farrelly and Nick Vallelonga no doubt had many good intentions towards telling this story as a narrative time-capsule or an inspirational story of friendship, and that’ll be enough for many viewers. But, despite their apparent affections, Dr. Don Shirley (Ali) comes off as a talented, harmlessly-eccentric outsider while Tony the Lip (Mortensen) shakes his head and sighs and chuckles, oblivious to his own deeper advantages. You simply can’t be this myopic about the audience the film is intended for. Not any more.

Roma – Alphonso Cuaron has real storytelling chops when he chooses to display them. But his films since Children Of Men (2006) tend to be overwhelmed by his technical geekery; that film had a terrific story, but the visuals were a constant parade of stopwatch-defying tracking shots and sea-sick Steadicam. Gravity (2013) succeeded brilliantly as a very different kind of technical thrill ride, but couldn’t illuminate Sandra Bullock’s character for us along the way, despite her best efforts. Now we have Roma, and if you’re all about the gorgeously detailed black-and-white images to be produced by the Arri Alexa 65 digital camera shooting 70-millimeter film, then Cuaron is serving up a feast. But the novelty of the rich visuals wears off surprisingly quickly, and you realize that, despite whatever personal connection he has to the story being told, Cuaron has a pretty formulaic soap-opera here underneath it all. The housekeeper who helped to raise him, here named Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio, God bless ‘er), rarely rises above more than a very nice person to whom lots of discouraging things happen. There’s a nice cathartic feel to the ending, but it’s a long haul to get there. One of the wagering favorites, but I wasn’t big on it.

Vice – 2015’s The Big Short was one of the more pleasant surprises of that year, and successfully moved Adam McKay into another tier of creative respectability. That film, and this one, are wallpapered throughout with amiable black humor, but McKay adroitly builds on a foundation of dead-sober ethical and political gravity. Big Short’s structure was more segmented, more outrightly episodic, with fourth-wall breaking cameos from Margot Robbie and Selena Gomez and the rotating stories of Jared Vennett, Michael Burry, Mark Baum and Ben Rickert (Ryan Gosling, Christian Bale, Steve Carell and Brad Pitt). Here, there’s an insistent through-line, the character (or lack thereof) of Dick Cheney, and Christian Bale’s astonishing manifestation of him. McKay keeps the glib, elbow-in-your-ribs tone, but expresses it with his character arcs rather than narrative interruptions and asides. Amy Adams, Steve Carell and Sam Rockwell pick two or three specific traits of Lynne Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and W., and hammer them home, just enough towards the truth to avoid outright cartoonishness, but in oversimplified secondary orbit to Cheney’s tight-fisted acquisition of personal power, exemplified by his epiphany towards the “unitary executive.” McKay convinces us that Cheney’s a masterful and soulless schemer, but he hedges his narrative bets in ways that separate the man from the system he can so easily exploit. By the time he has Bale and Adams reciting Macbeth, and documents Cheney’s heart surgeries in forensic detail, we’ve lost any real cumulative sense of the passage of time or what came after. Worth seeing for Bale – otherwise, meh…

Best Picture –

Should win: BlacKkKlansman or Black Panther

Will win: Roma or Green Book

Best Director –

Should win: Spike Lee, BlacKkKlansman

Will Win: Alfonso Cuaron, Roma

I would have traded out Adam McKay for Ryan Coogler. Oh, well…

Best Actress –

Should win: Glenn Close, The Wife or Olivia Colman, The Favourite – too close to call.

Will win: Glenn Close, The Wife or Melissa McCarthy, Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Conspicuous in her absence: Emily Blunt, again…

Best Actor –

Should win: Willem Dafoe, At Eternity’s Gate or Christian Bale, Vice

Will win: Christian Bale, Vice or Rami Malek, Bohemian Rhapsody

Best Supporting Actress –

Should and will win: Regina King, If Beale Street Could Talk

Best Supporting Actor –

Should win: Michael B. Jordan for Black Panther. Wait, he’s not nominated? Oh, well…

Will win: Sam Elliott, A Star Is Born. This is the wrong movie, but he’s due, and it’s fine.

Movies – Handicapping The Best Picture Oscars 2017

Ashton Sanders in ‘Moonlight.’ credit: A24

Generally embroiled in foreign films, I like to check in on mainstream Hollywood once a year and look at the Oscar-nominated films. The few U.S. films I see, and like, are rarely represented here, but I always run into pleasant surprises I might have otherwise overlooked. They’re kind of humorless this year – no big-award love for Deadpool or The Force Awakens apparently. The Scorsese Silence snub’s a surprise (only cinematography), but you didn’t really expect American Honey or Paterson to be here either, did you? And perhaps we should celebrate how great so many films looked this year, and the invasion of really good Scandinavian and Australian cinematographers, not to mention Frenchman Stéphane Fontaine, who’s earned himself a well-deserved vacation (Jackie, Elle, Captain Fantastic). I say bring ‘em – pros are pros.

Arrival – Fans of the story upon which this film is based, “Story of Your Life,” admire the depth of emotion and compassion that author Ted Chiang is able to plumb without compromising the rigorous science at the heart of the story. Denis Villeneuve’s film, and Chiang’s story, is less about the mysteries and potential hostilities of the other and far more about the mysteries and potential hostilities of our own limited senses of time and memory. Applying the roller-coaster-vs.-haunted-house standard, Arrival is a haunted house; even the aliens here are sadder-but-wiser-types, not unlike Dr. Louise Banks (a superb Amy Adams, this year’s best-actress sacrifice to The Khaleesi Streep), their Earthling- appointed liaison into mutually-beneficial communication. Villeneuve’s visual strategies, too, are more luminist landscape than cartoon-panel, and thanks to cinematographer Bradford Young for that, but ultimately Villeneuve fails to impart any other larger importance than to this particular protagonist. Her story, involving some tricky contexts concerning love, knowledge and loss, is pretty interesting, and there are a few ooh-and-ahh moments in the larger story, but what’s this got to do with us? A nice cinematic experience, but nothing that’ll stick to your ribs…

Fences – This is the kind of well-constructed American tragedy I wish Manchester By The Sea had aspired to. As a theater script, August Wilson’s play is one for the ages, and Denzel Washington (who also directed) and Viola Davis give epic, own-the-joint performances. I think some of the more cinematic-on-purpose transitions are awkward and forced (especially near the end), but Denzel’s staging of the work is otherwise so straightforward and uncluttered that it’s hard for me to find fault – he makes no apologies for the dialogue-heavy, two-shot theatricality of the work. Danish cinematographer Charlotte Bruus Christensen does nice work here as well. Perhaps not the best film of the year, but certainly a heavyweight worth respect.

Hacksaw Ridge – If you have any familiar knowledge of films directed by Mel Gibson (Braveheart, Passion Of The Christ, Apocalypto), you know subtext or subtlety will be in short supply. If you have any familiar knowledge of war movies from the 50s and 60s, you know Robert Schenkkan and Andrew Knight’s stations-of-the-cross approach isn’t really anything new, but they’ve adapted a terrific true story, and the skilled Gibson, the Jimmy Cagney of directors, has no problem yanking us in. Luckily for us Andrew Garfield is in the lead – it’s tough to glean from Spider Man movies, but Garfield’s the real deal as an actor, as, by now, Martin Scorsese can attest as well. This is a very good war movie – I’d rank it well behind Saving Private Ryan, but much better than 2014’s American Sniper. The depiction of Desmond Doss’ pre-war life is a little old-school syrupy, and the usually reliable Hugo Weaving teeters perilously close to Graham Chapman territory here. But the film’s thrilling last half, as superbly orchestrated as it is, doesn’t spare you from any of Gibson’s gore-slathered grand guignol tendencies, non-violent-protagonist notwithstanding. You’ll have to make your own mind up about whether Gibson-the-person’s work is worth your support, but the man’s a real-live director.

Hell Or High Water – There should be 10 or 12 of these intelligently written, professionally-shot, admirably performed genre films every year. Clearly we tend to run short of that, so don’t neglect these few when they come around. Scotland’s David Mackenzie is kinda hit-or-miss (Young Adam, Starred Up), but he does nice work here with Taylor Sheridan’s efficient script, and he’s clearly fascinated with all of those Texas white boys havin’ all of those guns. Chris Pine and Ben Foster, as bank-robbing brothers with at least one heart-of-gold between them, do good work with good parts, and Mackenzie knows to just let Jeff Bridges be Jeff Bridges. A good film worth seeing, but Best Picture? Not so much…

Hidden Figures – Writer / director / producer Theodore Melfi has been cinematically chipping away and switching hats over the last fifteen years, getting a leg up with Bill Murray’s St. Vincent in 2014 and flat-out nailing it with this terrific film two years later. The eponymous book it’s been adapted from, by Margot Lee Shetterly, comes highly recommended as well. For the most part, Melfi tells the story in unadorned fashion: these women succeeded because of who they themselves were – smart, diligent and self-sufficient – not because anyone else allowed them to.  Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monàe are all excellent, and the film overall is refreshingly free of Valuable Lessons™. I didn’t expect to like it as much as I did, but I put it in the top 3 here.

 La La Land – a sophomore misfire by the talented Damien Chazelle (Whiplash). His visuals are impressive (Linus Sandgren shoots here, and he may win Best Cinematography), and a few stylish showcase scenes – the freeway opening, the observatory dance – express some of the good ideas he had in mind, but he’s just not screenwriter enough to tie it all together in compelling fashion – yet. Homages to Stanley Donen and Jacques Demy are scattered throughout (not to mention Nicholas Ray, of course), but the characters are woefully underwritten. Emma Stone fares better than Ryan Gosling, but she has the more interesting arc, while Gosling is saddled with Chazelle’s own static conceits about jazz, selling out and long-view sacrifice. I just didn’t believe they were in love with each other, even though they have many swoon-worthy moments with which to convince us, and even though Stone and Gosling knock themselves out. And can we please get over the notion that Real Singers are somehow unnecessary in filmed musicals? Musical theater characters aren’t sensitive and precious and conversational, they’re passionate and impulsive and expressive.  Real singers and dancers, and/or real singers who at least move well, are far more convincing. Chazelle will make many other excellent films from here – I’m glad he got this one out of his system.

 Lion – The Weinstein Company’s annual entrant is also Garth Davis’ feature film debut, and it’s good on both counts. Another compelling true story, featuring a terrific child’s performance by Sunny Pawar, it tells the story of Saroo, separated from his family as a child and forced to survive with thousands of other homeless children in Calcutta until he’s adopted from an orphanage by a loving Tasmanian family. As an adult, the capable but still-haunted Saroo (now Dev Patel) decides to look for his original family back in India. Davis keeps things narratively efficient – he’s got a good commercial eye, and keeps visual interest without imposing. And Luke Davies’ screen adaptation of Saroo Brierley’s book balances squalor and intrigue well – the journey’s compelling, but the hardships aren’t softened. My only problem was a muddled middle sequence with adult Saroo that lost so much of the rhythm Davis had otherwise established.  The actors clearly liked Davis as well – all do very good work. Another that’s worth seeing, another just shy of being actually competitive.

 Manchester By The Sea – A slow-motion human train crash that never transcends its vicarious-therapy intrigues to become genuinely universal tragedy. There are dysfunctional-family dramas that aspire to larger things – hubris, catharsis, wrong choices for the right reasons, etc. – and have a universal resonance within our own lives. Sam Mendes gets this (off the top of my head…), Scorsese… and there are certainly others. I’d like to put Kenneth Lonergan in that league, but I see this as a big step backwards from You Can Count On Me and Margaret. The world is full of people just like these, chasing their own emotional tails, dragging their heartbreak behind them, but making a really long movie about them, especially one with so little rhythm or dynamic variation, doesn’t compel me to care about them. August, Osage County might have been the last straw for me – well-written, well-acted, but enough already. Obviously, many disagree – this was one of the highest-rated critical successes of the year, and is the likely favorite. Additional points off for being this year’s standard-bearer for White People’s Problems; the casting of the reliable Steven Henderson in a tiny role must have been an oversight.

 Moonlight – My favorite of these nine. Director Barry Jenkins and writer Tarell Alvin McCraney find a fierce common wavelength, and deliver a complex and compelling personal history. Many filmmakers would feel obligated to fill in the local and cultural backstory, and introduce the characters within that context; but here the focus is always interpersonal, always intimate, all about faces and conversations, which paradoxically describes their larger world far more effectively. Simple visual choices abound – well-orchestrated, purposeful Steadicam, subtle but deliberate colors (it is Miami, after all…). Every scene unobtrusively describes the room, the place, the specifics of each environment, with oddly graceful 360° movements – cinematographer James Laxton does such good work here it may save him from ever having to work for Kevin Smith again. Every actor here does fully committed work, starting with the three who play three ages of our protagonist (Alex Hibbert, Ashton Sanders (so good) and Trevante Rhodes), the three Kevins (his friend, and then some, across his life) (notably Jharrel Jerome), and outstanding support from Mahershala Ali, Janelle Monàe, Patrick Decile as a disturbingly charismatic bully, and Naomie Harris, who does astonishing work for only having been on set for three days. A long shot for Best Picture, sadly, but you shouldn’t miss this.

Best Picture –

should win – Moonlight.

Will win – La La Land or Manchester By The Sea.

 Best Director –

Should win – I like Barry Jenkins best here. I guess Gibson’s

my number two, but, y’know, that’s problematic …

Will win – Kenneth Lonergan.

Best Actor –

Should win – Andrew Garfield or Denzel Washington.

Will win – Denzel.

Best Actress –

Should win – Isabelle Huppert or Natalie Portman.

Will win – Emma Stone, but Huppert would be a well-deserved surprise.

Best Supporting Actor

Should win and will – Mahershala Ali

Best Supporting Actress

Viola Davis should walk away with this, but don’t underestimate the love for Michelle Williams. She should win at some point – just not here. Naomie Harris – wow… This category could really be any of the five, though it’s a shame Taraji P. Henson couldn’t squeeze in here somewhere.

Best Foreign Film – One of the best films of the year, Paul Verhoeven’s Elle (France) is conspicuous in its absence here; hell, it’s conspicuous in its absence from Best Picture. Also deserving were Sieranevada (Cristian Puiu – Romania) and Neruda (Pablo Larrain – Chile).

Should win – Land Of Mine (Under Sandet) (Martin Zandvliet – Denmark), though I must confess Tanna (Martin Butler and Bentley Dean – Australia) is an impressively close second. Asghar Farhadi’s The Salesman (Forushande) (Iran) is a political favorite, but isn’t as good as his last two (A Separation, The Past).

Will win –Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade – Germany) is the clear favorite here, to my unpleasant surprise. The American remake is already brewing.

Movie I didn’t expect to like so much (Last year this was The Big Short.):

Jackie – Natalie Portman’s affectations take you by unpleasant surprise until you head over to YouTube and check the real Jackie – Portman nailed it without flat-out impersonating her, a tall order with such a loaded historical figure. But Pablo Larrain’s rigorously stylized film about her is also about cultural contrivance, hierarchies of loyalty, personal branding, managing legacies and ‘What Becomes A Legend Most?’ May be the most genuinely modern film of this year’s whole batch.

Movie I wanted to like but didn’t (Last year this was Spectre.):

A tie!

Manchester By The Sea – I found watching this film to be hard labor. Hard, unrewarding labor.

Toni Erdmann – a complete whiff from my end. Nothing interesting, nothing engaging, nothing even remotely laugh-inducing other than my exasperated gasps that he was pulling out those f***ing fake teeth again… You get it or you don’t – Toni Erdmann and I aren’t even in the same zip code. Another interminably long, critically-beloved head-scratcher.

 

Movies – Handicapping The Best Picture Oscars 2015

Ralph Fiennes, Saoirse Ronan and Tony Revolori in ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel.’ credit: premiere.fr

Most of the year I’m disposed to ignore most domestic new releases in favor of covering new releases and revivals of  foreign films, but I’m slowly starting to stretch out more in that regard. A few years ago I decided to at least watch the Oscar Best Picture nominees to balance things out. Regular readers already know my ardent feelings about James Gray’s The Immigrant, so I won’t belabor that here.

Best Picture

American Sniper – Clint Eastwood (like John Huston) likes to leave his lead actors alone to do their own work while he surrounds them with what they need to do that work well. He’s handed over this film to Bradley Cooper (who also co-produced), and Cooper’s big-simple-consistent-strokes performance anchors the entire film. Eastwood shapes each and every sequence as a showcase for heroic resolve and a lesson in the price that’s paid for maintaining it. It’s true to how modern warfare works without promoting or condemning it, and he’s filtered almost any trace of larger religious or political considerations from the tunnelvision Chris Kyle experience – it’s all through Kyle’s eyes, from Kyle’s worldview. I suspect a lot of people will find that somewhat unsatisfying, but Clint’s always been about troubling moral incongruities. It’s a story told with extraordinary professionalism and class, but, with no disrespect to Chris Kyle or Clint Eastwood, we’ve seen all of this before; unless you have more to show us than Mark Boal and Kathryn Bigelow, or Mark Bowden and Ridley Scott have done, it’s ultimately just a pretty good genre exercise circa 2014. It’s made a LOT of money, and LOTS of people have seen it, so the point/counterpoint media rhetoric is escalating wildly. It’s a war movie. If you don’t like war movies, don’t see this one. If you like war movies, this is a pretty good one. If you’re conflicted about war movies, you’ll be conflicted about this one. This isn’t the year’s best film, but that’s not to say that it might not win this anyway. (Although no Eastwood directing nomination would indicate it’s unlikely.)

Birdman (or The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) – Full disclosure:  I’m not much of an Alejandro González Iñárritu fan. Our first dose, Amores Perros, was impressive, in its mean-spirited way, but Babel, 21 Grams and Biutiful were all insufferably earnest and punishingly humorless, shoving Bitter Irony™ down our throats. (And Biutiful convinced me to not just blame Guillermo Arriaga.)  Iñárritu and his other writers here have brought more genuinely humorous energy to things, dark as it still may be, but Birdman’s one-continuous-shot conceit feels more like a hamster wheel the actors are compelled to keep turning rather than a constructive storytelling strategy – the endless urgency gets monotonous. Michael Keaton’s work is admirable here, and nomination-worthy. I’m also a huge fan of Emma Stone, but her nomination here (and Norton’s) is baffling. I thought all of the women in the film were distressingly misused, and Norton’s role is facile caricature, albeit well-executed. If Iñárritu actually likes any of these characters, there’s no evidence of it on display.  I even felt bad for Maurice Ravel. I think Iñárritu and his writers are trying to describe a tragic sociocultural narrowing of the options for any free expression, from fine art to pop culture to personal intimacy. And it’s certainly entertaining, in its smart-assed eager-to-please way. But his films always leave me with the same question; you’ve put some terrific actors through hell again, Alejandro, but what’s your point?

Boyhood – a very likable movie, but that revelatory slice-of-life masterpiece that everyone else is gushing about escaped me. Like much of his work, Boyhood showcases Richard Linklater’s writerly skill in fashioning behavior and environment out of the accumulation of well-chosen details, rather than hitting bullet points on a narrative outline. I don’t think the film is more about its own making than the story being told, as some have opined, but I do think that creating X amount of footage, intermittently, year after year, made Linklater (and editor Sandra Adair) too generous in deciding how much of it they could constructively use. The film is easily 30-40 minutes too long, and the latter stages of the almost-three-hour-slog aren’t nearly as interesting as the film’s first half. For all of Linklater’s gifts as a writer and director of actors, his visual narratives are workmanlike at best, and the film has no real rhythm or dynamic. Arquette, however, is rock-solid, deserving her nomination and the win (she’s the only reason the last half-hour is sufferable). Overall, I was happy to have seen it; I suspect this and Birdman are the favorites, but, honestly, if these are the best of the year, then it’s been kind of a lame year. They’re both singular films in their way, but both will be all but forgotten five years from now.

The Grand Budapest Hotel – Wes Anderson’s usual visual conceits are liberally brandished in his best film since The Royal Tenenbaums; more so than ever, though, the stylistic flourishes are in direct service to the plot and the characters, rather than just odd but clever framing devices. M. Gustave H. (Ralph Fiennes) is the legendary concierge de l’hôtel of the Grand Budapest, as well as a gigolo to its fantastically wealthy clientele.  The plot’s engine is a series of dark and comical intrigues concerning the murder of one of M. Gustave’s most devoted clients, but the overall tone chronicles the end of an elegant era, and the fate to which its post-era participants reconcile themselves. It’s telling that M. Gustave and the beloved Agatha (Saoirse Ronan) don’t so much die at the end as vaporize into memory – their deaths are told of rather than shown – much like Anderson’s inspiration here, Stefan Zweig, who killed himself believing that high European culture couldn’t possibly survive the Nazis. I put this in 4th or 5th place Academy-wise, but of these eight, this and Whiplash are my own favorites.

The Imitation Game – All of the ingredients for an engaging, challenging and evocative film biography of Alan Turing are here, but Graham Moore’s screenplay veers away from almost every complexity, scientific or psycho-sexual, that it brings up. Bouncing around between three distinct time periods in Turing’s life, Moore resorts to a great many Tortured Gay Nerd stereotypes, which, with many of them being at least partially true, renders Benedict Cumberbatch’s earnest but too-tightly-wound presentation of them even more melodramatically cloying. Director Morten Tyldum previously directed the dark and thrilling Headhunters; here he and Moore choose to emphasize Turing’s isolation rather than his accomplishments, yet without the thrill of the code-breaking mission, the rest of the story would get old pretty quickly. Bullied by schoolmates, bullied by his military intelligence superiors and bullied by his fellow code breakers until he meets his Magdalene (Keira Knightley as fellow cryptographer Joan Clarke), Alan then turns things around, winning friends and influencing people until the script tells him to stop doing that and become the Tortured Gay Nerd again. Knightley is good – her usual crisply functional work, neither showy nor sneaky – but her nomination is a stretch this time, God bless ‘er. I have a feeling detective inspectors weren’t nearly as affable as Detective Nock (the terrific Rory Kinnear), nor did they just stumble on to Turing’s ‘indecencies’ by accident. The last ten minutes of the film almost feel like an afterthought: “Oh, yes, and then this other thing happened. Tut, tut, poor fellow…” This was a film I wanted to like, but just couldn’t. Tyldum’s film is well-structured, and looks great, but could have used a lot less hand-wringing and a bigger dose of straightforward-ness.

Selma – many berate American Sniper for its tunnelvision view of the war, seemingly pre-empting other populations and philosophies, but Selma is just as tightly focused in its way. It’s easy now to see the righteousness of the Civil Rights movement and the Voting Rights Act (and the flat-out wrongheadedness of current attempts to weaken them ), but at the time those ideas went against more than just one aspect of entrenched American culture, and not all of those resistant to change were just racist. History shows that George Wallace and J. Edgar Hoover deserve any lumps they receive, but LBJ was not a Stubborn Cracker Wheeler-Dealer Who Just Didn’t Get It, and we’re misleadingly close to that here.  I have little quarrel with the film’s presentation of events in and around the actual Selma marches, though; director Ava DuVernay and screenwriter Paul Webb strike a nice balance between flat historical documentation and stomach-lurching personal drama, and those characters who are focused on are richly detailed, fascinating people (whether from her own efforts or DuVernay’s regard, Carmen Ejogo’s Coretta is wonderful here.) DuVernay, technically and aesthetically, is undeniably good (as is her talented cinematographer, Bradford Young), but the film loses steam late on; the third march seems oddly anticlimactic, when it should be a triumph.  I liked this movie very much, and recommend it highly, but it’s too narrowly focused to make the leap from An Inspiring True Story to The Definitive Chronicle (which I suspect it aspires to be).

The Theory of Everything – Much like our other British production, The Imitation Game, we have here another biography of admirable craft and structure, but enervating conventionality. You don’t miss the science as much here, though, since A) it’s clear early on that the love story will be at the forefront, and B) the performances by Eddie Redmayne (as Stephen Hawking) and Felicity Jones (as Jane Wilde Hawking) are world-class. Jones has the more elaborate emotional arc to survey; we’re not surprised when she falls in love with the young Stephen, we never question her loyalty and resolve to create a strong and loving family with him, and we completely understand when Jane’s love and resolve start to exhaust themselves. Redmayne’s work is astonishingly detailed and expressive – much of it admittedly physical, technical, but you can’t rehearse the clever gleam that Redmayne puts into Hawking’s eyes, or diagram which particular smiles are going to express which complex feelings. Redmayne’s Hawking is solidly illuminated from within, and I think there’s a good chance he may pick Michael Keaton’s pocket on Oscar night. A pleasant, middling film of admirably consistent humor, unobtrusively directed by James Marsh, but the acting’s worth the admission price.

Miles Teller and J.K. Simmons in ‘Whiplash.’ credit: Daniel McFadden / Sony Pictures Classics

Whiplash – if emotional engagement is the measure of a rewarding film-viewing experience, then I freely admit that this film hooked me, reeled me in, chewed me up and spit me out. It establishes a fascinating, conflicted, unhealthy co-dependent relationship, and then surreptitiously pinches your shirtsleeve and pulls you into the thick of it. Even after you’ve decided that neither of these people are very likable anymore, you stay with them. The film is artful exaggeration of director Damien Chazelle’s own experiences as a music student under a similarly draconian instructor, and J. K. Simmons’ Terence Fletcher is a deep and dark whole-new-league of punishingly manipulative alpha-dog – there’s no close second for the Supporting Actor Oscar. But Miles Teller holds his admirable own here as Fletcher’s allegedly-bound-for-greatness drumming student. This is the one film I was able to see on its release; “Does greatness, in any vocation, come from a place of love and encouragement and available resources? Or should it come from conflict, from adversity, from challenge that disrupts all of the other aspects of our lives? Is greatness worth anything to ourselves if we haven’t gone through hell to achieve it?” Actual working musicians, and teachers, will roll their eyes at some of Chazelle’s conceits, but this is a very skillful well-oiled-machine of a film, and my other favorite (with Grand Budapest Hotel) of these eight.

Best Director

Should win: Wes Anderson or Richard Linklater.

Will win: Richard Linklater or Alejandro González Iñárritu.

Conspicuous in their absence: Ava DuVernay (Selma), Damien Chazelle (Whiplash).

Best Actress

Should win: Marion Cotillard – if she does, I suspect she’ll thank the Dardennes and James Gray. Felicity Jones isn’t a completely crazy longshot here, though.

Will win: Julianne Moore – in Oscar tradition, it’s her turn, and once again, it’s for the wrong movie. But since she’s one of the best actors on the planet, I have no big problem with this. And make no mistake, she’s one of the best actors on the planet in this movie.

Conspicuous in her absence: Emily Blunt, for either Edge Of Tomorrow or Into The Woods. She had a great year. She’ll win in a few years for the wrong film, too.

Best Actor

Should win: Eddie Redmayne.

Will win: Michael Keaton. These two are very close, and both were very good.

Conspicuous in their absence: Ralph Fiennes (Grand Budapest Hotel), Jake Gyllenhaal (Nightcrawler).

Best Supporting Actress

Should and will win: Patricia Arquette (although God bless Laura Dern…).

Conspicuous in their absence: Agata Kulesza for Ida, Carmen Ejogo for Selma.

Best Supporting Actor

Should and will win: J.K. Simmons.

Conspicuous in his absence: I thought Stephen Kunken’s work in Still Alice as Alice’s neurologist was rock-solid perfect, regardless of actual screen time.

Best Foreign Language Film

Leviathan – Russia – a terrific film. The Russian government either has lots of tolerance for films about what a corrupt soulless wasteland their country has turned into, or they’re simply not paying attention. This was at the Music Box a few weeks ago, but I suspect it’ll replay at the Film Center April- ish, and should be streamed thereafter whenever and wherever it can be. Bleak, but very impressive.

Ida (Poland) – the overwhelming favorite, but I, and maybe five or six other people on the planet, weren’t big on it. It’s very beautiful visually, and there’s a powerhouse supporting performance by Agata Kulesza, but the title character, to me, was completely absent from her own story.

Tangerines – A compact, conventional, unsentimental, well-acted, well-told story. I love watching pros work. Two wounded soldiers from opposite sides are nursed back to health by an Estonian living in war-torn Abkhazia. This and Wild Tales are my favorites here, but it’s all about Ida this year.

Timbuktu – demonstrates what most of us already know; that the vast majority of Muslims are pretty normal folks, while the tiny minority of armed jihadi extremists are swinging-dick bully morons. The extremists here (in Mali) aren’t financed with hundreds of millions of dollars from rich Saudi Arabians and Kuwaitis, but they still do a fair amount of damage. A beautiful film about honest resilience in the face of thuggery (with a surprising amount of humor sprinkled throughout). There are two stories here though, and, for me, they clanged against each other awkwardly.

Wild Tales (Argentina) – one of the most purely entertaining films I’ve seen all year, an anthology of six short stories – dark, funny, technically impressive – and the only one of the five without a sad ending. I liked it immensely, but it’s just not serious-minded enough to win over the Academy.

Movie I didn’t expect to like so much (Last year this was Dallas Buyer’s Club.):
Nightcrawler, which I believe is only up for original screenplay. For yet another dark-toned pop culture/mass media critique, there’s some genuinely subversive red meat here. I liked everything  – Dan Gilroy’s writing and directing, Robert Elswit’s stunning imagery and camerawork, Jake Gyllenhaal and Rene Russo’s spot-on performances… I hope it already did a fair amount of box-office, ‘cuz it ain’t gonna get much love from here.

Movie I wanted to like but didn’t (Last year this was Her.):
The Imitation Game, a mawkish and manipulative soap-opera, infantilizing Alan Turing’s struggles with his sexuality while overmystifying his mathematical breakthroughs, squandering an otherwise fascinating biographical subject.

The best movie on the planet in 2014 that everyone’s tired of hearing me talk about: James Gray’s The Immigrant. (It’s on Netflix!)

Movies – Mix

As I am, frustratingly, only a part-time critic, there are a lot of movies I’m forced to miss due to other practical work and real-life obstacles. Every once in a while I make a point to catch up with some of them. They’re probably not actually showing anywhere, but these are certainly worth tracking down on DVD or on other streaming venues.

Lola Créton and Sebastian Urzendowsky in ‘Goodbye First Love.’ credit: unifrance.org

Goodbye First Love (Un Amour De Jeunesse) (France, 2011) is Mia Hansen-Løve’s third feature; it was widely praised, and rightfully so. Any time a French film concerns itself with bildungsroman character study through the prism of amorous relationships, they’re reflexively compared to François Truffaut, who was superb at this sort of thing. But instead of Antoine Doinel, here we view things through the smart, sensitive, estrogen-driven eyes of young Camille (Lola Créton, quite wonderful here). The love of her life seems to be Sullivan (Sebastian Urzendowsky), an honest charmer, to whom she’s immoderately, perhaps self-destructively, devoted. Sullivan loves her dearly as well, but takes a longer view concerning the shape of his life. He’s decided to take a year to travel South America with a few like-minded friends – his impending absence is emotional panic-time for Camille, and she’s at a loss. Sullivan stays in touch pretty faithfully for a while, but how you gonna keep ‘em down in Paree after they’ve seen the farm the rest of the world? Despite her insecurities and resentments, Camille soldiers on, and creates a pretty rewarding life for herself as an architect’s assistant, which leads to a pretty rewarding marriage to a talented and loving older man. But, a few years later, Sullivan reappears, and the memories and second-thoughts arise again. Hansen-Løve shares Truffaut’s talent for finding hundreds of little informative and emotional details that don’t seem like much when they occur individually, but that create an enormous cumulative foundation under the characters’ lives. They also both know to let their good actors stretch out according to their own rhythms, and to trust the script (written, reportedly somewhat autobiographically, by Hansen-Løve as well). This is an extraordinarily intelligent, gracefully emotional film that I loved and enthusiastically recommend.

Zac Efron , Matthew McConaughey, Nicole Kidman and David Oyelowo in ‘The Paperboy.’ credit: sbs.com.au

Lee Daniels’ The Paperboy (USA, 2012) is a steamy, lurid slice of pulp that features an interesting mix of performers (Matthew McConaughey, Nicole Kidman, John Cusack, Zac Efron and Macy Gray, among others…) executing Pete Dexter’s own adaptation of his novel. It’s very dark and gleefully mean-spirited, a glary, sunlit noir that could be favorably compared to similar works by James Lee Burke, or even James M. Cain. It’s Tarentino territory, but with none of Quentin’s sense of sociocultural continuity – we suppose people like this act like this, but the film provides a stylized safe distance from their curdled carnality, cold opportunism and thoughtless nihilism. The art direction and some featured performances almost distract us from the fact that Lee Daniels has no blessed idea what to do with the camera (cinematographer Roberto Schaefer’s photography is superb, but he seems to have thrown up his hands on creating an honestly consistent mise-en-scène or ongoing visual narrative). McConaughey is Ward Jansen, a small-time crusading reporter who has returned to his swampy hometown to research the impending execution of Hillary Van Wetter (John Cusack), a white-trash ‘alleged’ cop-killer who makes Byron De La Beckwith look like Alan Alda. Eager to assist Ward in his investigations is Charlotte Bless (Nicole Kidman), who has become engaged to Van Wetter through being his conjugal pen-pal. And Ward has enlisted his beefcake layabout younger brother Jack (Zac Efron) to act as his driver and legman. McConaughey is his usual reliable self, and Kidman and Cusack stretch their talents considerably. Kidman is over-the-top tawdry, trashy and unapologetically carnal – it’s her best performance in years, perhaps because it’s the exact opposite of who she is in real life – converts make the best zealots. It’s less a craft-constructed character than primal therapy freak-out, and she gleefully races to the bottom, leaving Sharon Stone choking on her dust. I found it oddly admirable. Cusack, as well, takes his against-type casting out for a sweaty, sordid, almost nauseating ride. The highest praise I can manage here is that I flat-out forgot I was watching John Cusack. Others fare less well – Zac Efron is well-cast here, but he’s WAY out of his league, and his presence becomes increasingly negligible as the engine of the rest of the story hums along. Macy Gray is likable because it’s Macy Gray, God bless ‘er – again, well-cast, but there’s absolutely nothing resembling Acting going on with her. Daniels’ film will drop your jaw more than a few times, but it’s Dexter’s script and the adventurous actors who hold this sordid burlesque together. It’s a pretty involving provocation, and following the snail-trails of these invariably nasty characters is good prurient fun. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s a remotely good movie, but it’s never boring, and as an adult-themed carnival ride, those with a high tolerance for trash will be indulgently rewarded.

Emma Stone in ‘Easy A.’ credit: patrickwillems.wordpress.com

Will Gluck’s Easy A (USA, 2010) doesn’t quite attain the popular mainstream heights of such American teen epics like Clueless, Risky Business, Heathers or the landmark status of the works of Martha Coolidge (Valley Girl, Real Genius) or John Hughes (…your favorite here…). It’s more in that second-tier occupied by the likes of Fast Times At Ridgemont High,  Pump Up The Volume, Mean Girls or Juno, which isn’t a bad place to be. Bert V. Royal’s script is a little too self-congratulatory about its own cleverness, most evident in his woefully underdeveloped grown-ups. Thomas Hayden Church, Stanley Tucci, Patricia Clarkson and Lisa Kudrow do their professionally appealing damndest to create real people here, but Royal leaves them short of meaningful ammunition. The real reason to see this film, and it’s a glorious one, is to watch Emma Stone gleefully chew up this script and spit it out in an astonishingly confident star-making turn as Olive Prenderghast, who plays the malleable extremes of high-school (and popular-culture) morality like Rosalind Russell‘s Hildy Johnson played the politics and politicians of 1930s Chicago. Yeah, you heard me – she’s that good here. I’ll say no more. Watch this movie and have a great time.

Movies / A Rant – Superbad

I think I’ve offended the powers that be. I think Ned Beatty thinks I have meddled with the primary forces of nature. Was it too many french films? Did I go overboard in my praise of ‘Jules and Jim?’ I seem to be serving penance for a sin I’m unaware of committing.

First, the egregiously overrated Lifetime-movie-with-sperm-everywhere ‘Squid and the Whale’. (Thank God for the too-infrequent sightings of the always classy Anna Paquin). Now here’s another movie I wouldn’t have lasted a half hour into if I had paid ten bucks. I’ve rearranged my Netflix queue – ‘The Kingdom’ and Jason Statham’s ‘Crank’ are now next. Bring me the blowing up of shit. Bring me the big budget. Bring me the hack directors. Please save me, Netflix.

But first, a rant. I’m perfectly willing to admit that I may have turned into an old, cranky, humorless killjoy. I may have completely forgotten what it was like to be an adolescent growing up in America. Years ago, I saw ‘Y Tu Mama Tambien’, and thought “Well, I see where he wanted to go here, and it could have been a good idea in the long run, but those two guys are insufferable tools. Who likes these guys? Who identifies with them? Only in the most exaggerated Cloud-Cuckooland testosterone circle of hell could these two characters exist. What the hell is Maribel Verdu doing with these guys? They’re supposed to be endearing? They’re behaving naturally? We should relate to these masturbating monkeys just because Gael Garcia Bernal has dreamy eyes? I don’t feel any empathy for her because she’s stupid enough to spend all this time and sexual energy on them. I don’t care if the end of the movie gives her a supposedly better excuse. I was at a loss. I didn’t get it. People loved this movie.

Because (Oh, boy, here we go…) when I was a kid, when I was that age, we thought about girls a lot. We thought about pussies a lot. We thought about our dicks a lot. We all had the hormones writing checks our brains couldn’t cash. But it wasn’t all our lives were about. In fact, the few kids I knew back then who Were all about the pussy and Were all about their dicks and Were all about getting into a girl’s, any girl’s, pants, and were all about being shitface drunk before any of it could happen, WERE FUCKING CREEPS! If those guys grew up to be like that today, THEY’D BE FUCKING CREEPS! I see that side of my own experiences in characters like this, but when the whole movie is about characters for whom that’s all it’s about, then it’s a fucking creepy movie about fucking creeps!

So it is with sadness that I must inform all of my friends with differing opinions ( and God Bless You All!) that the characters in the mega-hit, mega-hip Superbad, to me, were virulently unsympathetic, in fact, nauseatingly pa-thetic, and incapable of delivering one single funny moment. The only, one, single time I laughed was at the drawing of the erect penis standing in front of the tank in Tiananmin Square. ‘Porky’s’ is a better film than ‘Superbad’. ‘Bachelor Party’ is a better film than ‘Superbad’.

I felt only sadness for Michael Cera’s character, having to tolerate this pestilence of ‘friends’. I guess having Any Conscience Or Tact Whatsoever makes you not only an endearing everyman, but a good sport, too. McLovin is amusing for about a minute-and-a-half. The cops are a sloppy and unfunny live-action cartoon. All the drunk chicks egging on Becca the drunk chick – ‘Blow that cute drunk guy, Becca! You go girl!’… Been there? Done that? The sober girl is slobbered over and insulted by the surrealistically neurotic, brain-dead, mouth-breathing, practically insane excrescence that is Seth, and we sure hope they hook up anyway? So he’ll be saved from himself by the love of a good woman?

Shit is funny when you establish a reality, and then break it’s rules. It’s funny when you have How Life Is in common, then take liberties and say stuff and do stuff that We Sure Wish We Could Say And Do. We like to see the little guy put one over on The Man. Schaudenfreude can be funny – pratfalls, slapstick, Larry David.

For me, this film utterly failed at establishing any reality, alternative or familiar, that I might identify with in order to share, or even locate, humor in. It was all so exaggerated, so in-your-face, so ‘Hey, you get this, right?!’, so simultaneously eager-to-please and eager-to-offend, so FUCKING CREEPY, that I will now take a goddamn shower. Yeeeee-uckkkk!!