If you’ve followed this site for the last year or two, then first and foremost, thank you for existing. You are truly God’s greatest miracle. Second, sorry for the infrequency of the updates. I was washing my hair. And third, you know I’m puzzlingly invested in the results of the annual gala thrown by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, sometimes referred to as the Oscars.
However, even I’m not susceptible enough to the show’s charms to claim that this is a strong year. It is not. No movie captured the public zeitgeist the way The Social Network did last year. There’s nothing as innovative as Pulp Fiction, as immersive as Fargo, as concussive as The Hurt Locker, not even a huge commercial success like Gladiator or a spirited underdog like The Full Monty to root for.
Take a look at the Best Picture nominees, or more specifically the people who made them: Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Woody Allen, Alexander Payne, Terrence Malick, Stephen Daldry, Bennett Miller. All former Best Director winners or nominees, all legitimate auteurs, yet each of them has made at least one better movie (and in some cases, several) than the one they’re currently nominated for. It seems like, even more so than usual for a show with a history of rewarding harmless, ball-less films over riskier, more visionary fare (Entertainment Weekly put together a nice list of examples) the 2012 incarnation of the Oscars is playing it safe.
So why am I still watching? Since there was no clear cut audience favorite, it’s as fun as ever to have unwinnable arguments with your friends about the movies. It’s still a cultural touchstone and the only awards show with any kind of conversational cache. Studios have been funneling unlimited money into award campaigns for years, so they make super PACs seem quaint. Someone might make a drunk speech. Sacha Baron Cohen might get Tasered. Billy Crystal as host should be… well, at least he’s not James Franco or Anne Hathaway. And, as you’ll see, there was one nominee I genuinely loved and think could contend in any year.
Still, undeniably, it’s hard to shake the feeling that these movies were culled together mechanically, as if they got on the ballot by scoring a high percentage on an Academy pop quiz. It just so happens I know what that quiz looks like, and here’s how each flick broke down. (Ranked in order of quality as I see them, not as how I think the Academy will see them.)
9) Hugo
Is it a period piece? Yes. (Post-WWI Paris)
Are there British accents? Yes—which is confusing, because everyone is supposed to be French. It’s Hollywood math: Accents from anywhere in Europe = British accents. See: Valkyrie, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
Is it based on a book? Yes. (Brian Selznick’s novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret)
Is one of the leads a spunky, precocious kid? Yes—two of the leads, actually.
Is one of the leads a spunky, precocious animal? No, although Sacha Baron Cohen’s guard dog logs an appropriately menacing amount of screen time for a kids movie.
Does it teach you a lesson about your family? Yes: You don’t have to be born into it.
Is it a love letter to the movies? Oh, yes. It’s all, Hey golden age of cinema, do you like me? Check Yes, No, or Maybe.
Is it a talkie? Yes, though silent films get their own montage.
Does it feature Jessica Chastain, Viola Davis, John Goodman, Tom Hiddleston, and/or Brad Pitt? No.
Is Nicolas Cage in it? Of course not.
After his father dies tragically, a resilient boy with a knack for solving problems must find the key to a lock that he believes will reveal a message his father sent him from beyond the grave, all with the aid of an old man who’s lost the ability to feel. This led the pack with 11 nominations overall, and I’m still trying to figure out why. It’s the kind of movie that you see midday and have already forgotten about by dinnertime. The 3D is superfluous and distracting (like pretty much all 3D), it’s at least a half-hour fat, and some plot threads lead nowhere. It could’ve been a charming enough kids movie if it hadn’t, an hour in, veered in the direction of languishing sloppy kisses on the silent film era and redeeming a brilliant but forgotten film director played by a pointy beard with Ben Kingsley attached to it. In a year, again, of so-so nominees, this is the one I’d be the least excited about watching a second time. Cool automaton, though.
8) The Tree of Life
Is it a period piece? Yes—everything from the dawn of time to the afterlife, with a heavy dose of 1950s America (Texas?).
Are there British accents? No. There’s barely dialogue.
Is it based on a book? No.
Is one of the leads a spunky, precocious kid? There aren’t any “leads,” per se, but the character who comes closest is a boy who looks nothing like Sean Penn but grows up to be Sean Penn.
Is one of the leads a spunky, precocious animal? No, but the dinosaurs do steal their scene.
Does it teach you a lesson about your family? Yes: Nature is your family.
Is it a love letter to the movies? More like a ransom note.
Is it a talkie? Ostensibly, though you could watch it on mute and not miss much.
Does it feature Jessica Chastain, Viola Davis, John Goodman, Tom Hiddleston, and/or Brad Pitt? Yes. (Chastain and Pitt)
Is Nicolas Cage in it? Of course not.
This should rightfully win for cinematography—between the magnificent visual non sequiturs of the universe and the lovely, luminous vignettes of Pitt and his family (shot entirely in natural light, without so much as a desk lamp for ambiance) the movie demands to be watched on a big screen or in HD. So why so low on the list? Because it’s not a movie, it’s the year’s best screensaver. Nothing connects the scene you’re watching to anything else in the movie, outside of the idea that everything is already connected and you’re just not seeing it. But if you buy that argument, then you probably bought it before you saw the movie, so why do you need to reinforce that idea by seeing it? I do think there’s a great movie buried deep in all the visual noise—apparently in its earlier incarnations, there was a narrative pushing the whole thing forward. But that was dropped in post-production, much to the chagrin of star Sean Penn, who told reporters after he saw the finished product that he had no idea what the movie was about or why he was in it. Hear that, ladies? Sean Penn and I are exactly alike.
7) Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
Is it a period piece? Yes, if we consider 10-12 years ago to be a period (and we do).
Are there British accents? No.
Is it based on a book? Yes. (Jonathan Safran Foer’s novel)
Is one of the leads a spunky, precocious kid? Shit, yeah. The precociousest.
Is one of the leads a spunky, precocious animal? No. Pity, too. The kid could’ve had a hamster sidekick that climbed around in a vast network of little plastic tubes piped all around the apartment and I wouldn’t have thought twice about it. Seems like that kind of kid.
Does it teach you a lesson about your family? Yes: You miss it when it's gone.
Is it a love letter to the movies? No.
Is it a talkie? Yes, though Best Supporting Actor nominee Max von Sydow’s character is mute and sports the most effective hand tattoos this side of Cape Fear.
Does it feature Jessica Chastain, Viola Davis, John Goodman, Tom Hiddleston, and/or Brad Pitt? Yes. (Davis and Goodman)
Is Nicolas Cage in it? Of course not.
After his father dies tragically, a resilient boy with a knack for solving problems must find the lock to a key that he believes will reveal a message his father sent him from beyond the grave, all with the aid of an old man who’s lost the ability to speak. Thomas Horn, as Oskar, is phenomenal in his first acting role—his only other media credit is winning an episode of Jeopardy! during Kids Week, which makes sense, considering the detail-oriented mind of his character. And the movie does pull a couple of interesting moments from its deep supporting cast, particularly von Sydow and Jeffrey Wright. Yet it’s easily the most polarizing movie on the list, with audience opinion ranging from powerful and cathartic to opportunistic and cruel. I’d say both ends of that spectrum are too generous—the movie is neither believable enough to move you nor shrewd enough to do harm. It’s kind of clumsy, in fact, too cluttered with literary idiosyncrasies (constantly calling 9/11 “that day, the worst day,” Oskar wearing a gas mask on the NYC subway without raising alarm) that probably made the novel a good read (I haven’t read it) but don’t translate well to film. The revelation at the end is ridiculous, but the fatal flaw is that the story is in no way specific to the very specific moment it’s trying to evoke. A son could cope with his father’s unexpected death without a national tragedy as the backdrop and you’d get the same effect. In short, it doesn’t earn the tears it wants to jerk from you. And while it’s not as manipulative or cynical about its audience as something like Remember Me, it’s still a 9/11 movie that doesn’t justify being a 9/11 movie, and that’s a burden too heavy for one great child actor to overcome.
6) The Help
Is it a period piece? Yes. (Mississippi in the 1960s)
Are there British accents? Nope. In fact, I think the only non-Southern accent is Mary Steenburgen’s, and she’s barely masking her real-life Arkansas twang.
Is it based on a book? Yes. (Kathryn Stockett’s novel)
Is one of the leads a spunky, precocious kid? No, though not for lack of effort. One toddler is given way too many lines in the final scene.
Is one of the leads a spunky, precocious animal? No.
Does it teach you a lesson about your family? Yes: It can look different from you.
Is it a love letter to the movies? Maybe a Facebook poke to Steel Magnolias.
Is it a talkie? Yes. This movie loves a monologue.
Does it feature Jessica Chastain, Viola Davis, John Goodman, Tom Hiddleston, and/or Brad Pitt? Yes. (Chastain and Davis)
Is Nicolas Cage in it? Of course not.
The Help promises to delve further than skin deep (see what I did there?) into the Jackson, Mississippi, of half a century ago and tell you what it’s like to keep a community running while being denied access to that very community. It’s a fruitful premise and a tall order that the movie doesn’t seem interested in exploring in an honest way. We get very little substantive insight into anyone’s character outside of Davis’s Aibileen—which is almost enough, quite frankly, because she’s so wonderfully in control of every moment. The Help suffers from Crash syndrome, where characters are either monsters or saints with almost no middle ground; the bad guy with the comically oversized head in Green Lantern is more subtle than the villains here. Only Davis and my favorite undercover jackal Allison Janney get to show any sort of nuance or confliction. At times, the dialogue is cringe inducing (Aibileen’s repeated affirmation to the child in her care, “You is kind, you is smart, you is important”) and at others, it’s outright insulting—I audibly groaned when Minny (Octavia Spencer) proclaims, “I love me some fried chicken.” I know the movie’s set in the 60s, but it’s still 2012, right? Then why does this movie feel like a big step backwards in our understanding of race on film? Do we really still need to be making movies whose ultimate point is that black people are people, too? And where the only way to prove that point is to have an idealistic young white girl show them the light? This movie is actually kind of dangerous in a way, because instead of showing us the way we live now, it allows us to settle for being content that we’re not as bad as we used to be. And this needs to be said even though I suppose it’s a SPOILER ALERT, but if any movie wants to be taken seriously, there’s no way the lynchpin of the entire story can be someone eating a shit pie. They kept going back to it, over and over again… it was basically their Rosebud. Not even American Pie leaned that heavily on a befouled pastry. END SPOILER ALERT. Even with all these fundamental problems, I’ve got this at #6 because, and I might’ve mentioned this already, this is a weak year. And also because the actresses are terrific. From Davis and Spencer to Chastain and Janney, they do sensational work with iffy material.
5) War Horse
Is it a period piece? Yes. (Europe during WWI, with a heavy emphasis on Ireland)
Are there British accents? Tons.
Is it based on a book? Yes. (Michael Morpurgo’s novel and the subsequent stage play)
Is one of the leads a spunky, precocious kid? The lead grows from childhood to adulthood over the course of the movie, and we meet some other prominent kids and young adults along the way.
Is one of the leads a spunky, precocious animal? Holy fuck! You’d better believe it. Besides Joey, the title equine, there’s also a surly goose filling the comic relief role.
Does it teach you a lesson about your family? Yes: Sometimes it has more than two legs. And possibly a giant horse dick.
Is it a love letter to the movies? No, but more than any of the other nominees, it’s perhaps the most consciously a capital-M Movie, if that makes sense.
Is it a talkie? Yes. Sadly, none of it comes from peanut buttering-up the horse’s teeth a la Mr. Ed.
Does it feature Jessica Chastain, Viola Davis, John Goodman, Tom Hiddleston, and/or Brad Pitt? Yes. (Hiddleston)
Is Nicolas Cage in it? Of course not.
War Horse is one I had to drag myself to, mostly because I thought I knew everything that was going to happen from the trailer (and I basically did) but also because there’s the thoughtful, gritty Spielberg of Jaws, Saving Private Ryan, and Munich, and then there’s the schmaltzy, feel-good Spielberg of Always, Hook, and The Terminal, and I was afraid this would be too much of the latter. It definitely had those moments (everyone loves that fucking horse) but I was also pleasantly surprised at the darker textures in the mix. There are two scenes in particular—the two runaway German brothers outside the windmill in France and the two opposing soldiers cutting Joey loose from barbed wire while having a neighborly conversation—that transcended, that have stuck with me weeks after seeing the movie. If you can get past the handful of insane coincidences and the too-long running time, there are some things to enjoy, particularly structure-wise, where the narrative moves like a collection of linked short stories rather than a novel. It’s a move that allows Spielberg to keep the many intersecting characters at their sharpest and most effective, and to let his star run loose across his bonnie Irish canvas.
4) Midnight in Paris
Is it a period piece? About half the time, yes.
Are there British accents? Surprisingly, no. Lots of Americans, lots of Frenchmen, a few Spaniards, but no Brits. Even the English actor in the cast does his best pedantic prep school American accent.
Is it based on a book? Not unless you count the Woody Allen playbook.
Is one of the leads a spunky, precocious kid? No.
Is one of the leads a spunky, precocious animal? Are we counting Hemingway? No? No, then.
Does it teach you a lesson about your family? Yes: Your wife and in-laws hate you.
Is it a love letter to the movies? No.
Is it a talkie? Quite so.
Does it feature Jessica Chastain, Viola Davis, John Goodman, Tom Hiddleston, and/or Brad Pitt? Yes. (Hiddleston)
Is Nicolas Cage in it? Of course not.
Possibly the year’s biggest surprise at the box office (and Allen’s most financially successful film ever), this was touted as a return to form for the director. And while it’s not Annie Hall or Crimes and Misdemeanors, it is a minor miracle at this point in his career. Owen Wilson is Woody Allen’s surrogate for life if he wants the job—there hasn’t been an actor since the man himself to make obsessive self-doubt seem so authentic, appealing, and compelling. The action slips seamlessly from 2010 Paris back to the 1920s and beyond, and it’s fun to listen to Ernest Hemingway, Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, and Gertrude Stein rattle off Allen’s dialogue amidst lavish set designs and bottomless bottles of wine. Perfect it ain’t—the Rachel McAdams character is an utter shrew, and Wilson’s Gil doesn’t seem to be looking to replace her with much more than something beautiful, whether a girl at a flea market or a city. Yet all the actors bring their A-game, as they tend to do when they’re working with Woody Allen (he’s like the LeBron of chatty cinema that way, getting everyone involved) and I love the message about how easy, tempting, and treacherous it is to succumb to the allure of nostalgia—because doesn’t someone else’s life, or someone else’s job, or someone else’s era always seem preferable to yours? Yes, the movie is ultimately lightweight—at no point watching this did I think, This is the best movie I’ll see this year—but it was charming as hell, and this year especially, that counts for something.
3) Moneyball
Is it a period piece? Yes. (Back to the early 2000s)
Are there British accents? No. Not big into baseball over there. They probably run on the wrong side of the base paths.
Is it based on a book? Yes. (Michael Lewis’s seminal profile of Oakland A’s owner Billy Beane)
Is one of the leads a spunky, precocious kid? It’s more fun to watch if you think of Jonah Hill as a Doogie Howser-esque 13 year-old with a glandular disorder, but no.
Is one of the leads a spunky, precocious animal? No. Couldn't even throw us a token furry mascot.
Does it teach you a lesson about your family? Yes: You’re better off with a cheaper version of the one you already have.
Is it a love letter to the movies? No.
Is it a talkie? Yes, to great effect. That’ll happen when Aaron Sorkin does a draft of your screenplay.
Does it feature Jessica Chastain, Viola Davis, John Goodman, Tom Hiddleston, and/or Brad Pitt? Yes. (Pitt)
Is Nicolas Cage in it? Of course not.
You know it’s a strange award season when the repeated praise for one of the best received movies of the year is, “It actually wasn’t boring at all.” But that was the refrain I kept hearing before I saw Moneyball, as if baseball, math, and human drama were three aloof professors holding a joint lecture that people dreaded attending but were entertained by in spite of themselves. That juxtaposition is what makes it a great watch. It’s heavy on baseball jargon, but the movie has more in common with Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers than Rocky, is more about challenging groupthink than splicing together inspirational training montages. As Beane, Brad Pitt is so effortlessly Zen that it probably sinks his chances of winning Best Actor, which rarely goes to such a quiet performance—he underplays Beane’s iconoclasm, the riskiness of legging out singles in a world obsessed with hitting home runs. As Peter Brand, the stat geek who sets the whole plan in motion, Jonah Hill is more sedated than subtle and maybe a little overvalued (oh yes, I get stats), but that might just be my own sour grapes for his getting a Supporting Actor nod over Patton Oswalt and Albert Brooks. It also delivers that most necessary of Oscar qualifiers, a scene that could be transcribed and acted out in high school forensics monologues across the country. In this case, it’s the whirling dervish of Beane and Brand working the phones to try and make a trade happen, swapping big-name notoriety for value, being the smartest guys in the room and willfully ignoring the fact that they’re the only guys in the room. In that scene and throughout the movie, the dialogue is crisp, the stakes are clear, and each scene efficiently builds on the one before it in a way that would probably make the real-life characters proud.
2) The Artist
Is it a period piece? Yes. (1920s Hollywood)
Are there British accents? Not unless you read the title cards that way, which is your right.
Is it based on a book? No.
Is one of the leads a spunky, precocious kid? No, for the best. No kid could convincingly pull off that mustache.
Is one of the leads a spunky, precocious animal? Yes—Uggie the Jack Russell terrier. Do SAG dues cover flea and tick baths? I’m not just asking for Uggie. Nick Nolte wants to know, too.
Does it teach you a lesson about your family? Not really. Bonus points!
Is it a love letter to the movies? Boy, howdy! It’s a good thing, too. I was starting to forget why I loved the movies.
Is it a talkie? No, unless there was a problem with the theater where I saw it.
Does it feature Jessica Chastain, Viola Davis, John Goodman, Tom Hiddleston, and/or Brad Pitt? Yes. (Goodman)
Is Nicolas Cage in it? Of course not.
Make no mistake: This movie will win Best Picture. And Best Director. And a host of technical awards. It’s a lock, it makes sense, and I suppose I can’t argue. I hate to sound like a broken record that you couldn’t hear if it was playing in this movie, but in a year where the status quo reigns, maybe it’s the right decision to reward a movie so fundamentally different from the others. This is the age of sensory overload, so it was refreshing to go without a familiar crutch like sound for a few hours. It makes you flex different muscles as a viewer. Watching it was even laced with the thrill of discovery: The number of actors who can ably carry every scene of a film is small enough as it is, but with so much extra emphasis on what goes unspoken, Jean Dujardin excels in the most demanding role of the year. (I look forward to his eventual turn as a Bond villain.) The Artist is not the once-in-a-generation game changer it was advertised to be—it’s a very good movie and it made for a fun night out with friends, but it falls into the same dreaded hole for me that The King’s Speech did last year: I fully admire the craft behind it, the attention to detail, the technical skill it took to pull off. That’s why it’s #2 on the list. I just didn’t care about it. It was pleasant, but so is staring at clouds, and at least that didn’t have a half-hour dead spot in the middle. Not to mention the fact that it revels in the kind of wistful nostalgia that Midnight in Paris so aptly criticizes. Let me put it to you this way: In three years, when this comes on Bravo at 10:00 on a Tuesday night, how much of it will you be compelled to sit and watch? Five minutes? Ten? Two? It’s a movie built for Oscar night but with a short half-life after that. Fair enough. It’d just be nice to see something with staying power take home the big prize. Something like…
1) The Descendants
Is it a period piece? No. Which is refreshing, isn’t it? Seriously, look back over the list.
Are there British accents? No.
Is it based on a book? Yes. (Kaui Hart Hemmings’s novel)
Is one of the leads a spunky, precocious kid? Three of them, actually, and they’re all disarmingly great.
Is one of the leads a spunky, precocious animal? Just Clooney.
Does it teach you a lesson about your family? Oh, yes: It’s an equal source of love, friendship, pain, and joy. And occasionally, it’s wealthy and Hawaiian.
Is it a love letter to the movies? No. And I mean, I’m already forgetting why I love the movies over here.
Is it a talkie? Yes.
Does it feature Jessica Chastain, Viola Davis, John Goodman, Tom Hiddleston, and/or Brad Pitt? No.
Is Nicolas Cage in it? Yes, in his most layered and affecting performance since Leaving Las Vegas! Just kidding. Of course not.
Alexander Payne’s Sideways is one of my all-time favorite movies, and Up in the Air is my favorite of the last three years, so yes, I was predisposed to liking this movie sight unseen. Then again, the same could be said for the Transformers movies, and I’d rather staple my scrotum to the roof of a bear’s mouth than watch one of those. The most common knock against The Descendants is that it’s depressing, and it is at times, but it’s also deeply funny, frank, surprising, and empowering. I like a movie that doesn’t treat me like a child. That trusts me to understand how George Clooney’s Matt King, in a hospital room with his unfaithful, comatose wife, could beg her forgiveness one moment and berate her the next. There aren’t good guys and bad guys here, and Payne takes great… um… care not to manipulate your emotions for sport. (Hear that, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close?) The wide scope of the B-plot, about the catch-22 of inheritance, nicely props up the characters’ conflict without getting preachy or obtrusive, and it even adds a little bit of timeliness to the story for a country that’s starting to make the distinction between being given something and earning it. Shailene Woodley wasn’t even fucking nominated for practically stealing the movie as King's oldest daughter. I’d call it a travesty, if it were possible for an Oscar snub to be a travesty. (Luckily for all of us and the state of the world, it isn’t.) This is, I think, the one movie on the list that won’t date itself by way of a gimmick, an attitude, an era, or making 3D the center of its marketing pitch. It’s about the awful ways we lose people and the inevitable ways we endure. Also, it’s set in Hawaii and it’s, like, really pretty there.
It’s a largely predictable race for the other major awards, too. Count on Davis and Spencer winning for Actress and Supporting Actress. Christopher Plummer should win his first (!), a Supporting Actor trophy for Beginners. Let's say Clooney edges out Dujardin for Best Actor, and though I’m notoriously bad at picking the writing categories, I’ll go with The Descendants for Adapted Screenplay and Midnight in Paris for Original. And for the first time in five years, Pixar won’t win Best Animated Feature. That year, Happy Feet beat out Cars. This year, Cars 2 was the studio’s first film to not even grab a nomination. Consider it Owen Wilson’s yang to the yin of Midnight in Paris.
Let’s end this on a positive note, shall we? I feel like I’ve been a Negative Nelly about the year in movies. A Doubting Debbie. A bit of a cunt. I hate to be the guy who tells you I hate your idea but then doesn’t suggest his own alternative. (I’m not a Republican, for fuck’s sake.) So, sticking with The Descendants at the top of the list, here are eight other movies from 2011 you should feel free to swap out with the actual nominees in the Oscars of your mind.
Beginners – Witness Christopher Plummer’s brilliance. Witness it!
Bridesmaids – As good, if not better, for the spot-on character moments than the big laughs.
Drive – Love it or hate it, it should’ve been on the list strictly to get people talking.
50/50 – Affecting, honest, funny, not actually filmed in Seattle.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – There’s something to be said for having unreasonable expectations thrust upon you and actually delivering.
X-Men: First Class – I realize no X-Men movie will ever have a shot at an Oscar outside the special effects realm, but I could watch young Magneto hunt Nazis on the lam for days.
Win Win – Paul Giamatti fully infusing a character with his Paul Giamattiness. Not as dirty as it sounds.
Like Crazy – The movie that hit me the hardest and stuck with me the longest. My favorite of 2011.
Unless you’ll be watching the NBA All-Star game, The Walking Dead, or a Mudcats rerun instead (and who could blame you?), enjoy the show!
Friday, May 11, 2012