Surveying the nominees for this year's Academy Awards ceremony reveals a certain lack of imagination and daring. Then again, this group labelled Green Book the Best Picture of 2018 when stronger works like Roma and The Favourite were right there for the crowning. Never underestimate the appeal of feel good bullshit that gently strokes privilege while not asking it to unpack the thornier subject matter.
I guess that's why so many of this year's nominees are White Dudes Eulogizing the Glory Days.
Here we are again with a ceremony that I'm greeting with an underwhelming shrug of acceptance that the truly engaging and interesting material is probably going to lose to a movie that's essentially a 4chan thread writ large. Or maybe the one that's about two guys aging in Hollywood and remembering when they controlled everything. Or maybe The Most Dad Movie to Ever Dad Movie. Or maybe a really good and emotionally engaging war movie that I'd be cool with winning.
Sorry Lulu Wang, Marielle Heller, Greta Gerwig, maybe another year. The old white dudes of the Academy have to bestow some prizes onto films that reflect back their reality. Plus, you had the audacity to make movies about girls and feelings, and they don't understand why there wasn't more explosions.
2019 was a truly stellar year for movies, and still the Academy managed to pick the safest, blandest choices possible. Oh well, at least there won't be a host again. One must accept small victories where they can get them.
PICTURE
The Nominees: Ford vs Ferrari, The Irishman, Jojo Rabbit, Joker, Little Women, Marriage Story, 1917, Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood, Parasite
Best Picture is the only category to use a weighted ballot, so you rank the nominees from favorite to least. Typically you rank only five of them, but I've gone ahead and ranked all eight. So here would be my ranking of the nominees:
- Parasite
- 1917
- Little Women
- The Irishman
- Marriage Story
- Jojo Rabbit
- Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
- Ford v Ferrari
- Joker
There's not much enthusiasm I can muster up for Ford v Ferrari. I don't care about cars and it's nearly three hours of "just guys being dudes." It hits that sweet Dad Movie spot that Bridge of Spies and The Post hit in previous years.
Meanwhile, Once Upon a Time Quentin Tarantino Had a Midlife Crisis Set to Film. I was with the film for the first two hours or so and then that ending.... I'm not alone in this feeling as any quick search through reactions to the film reveal a large divide between Tarantino devotees and everyone else, including people having a mixed reaction to the climax. I think Richard Brody summed it up best when it called it a celebration of "white-male stardom (and behind-the-scenes command) at the expense of everyone else."
Jojo Rabbit and Marriage Story have similar problems in that the tone seems to wander around a bit. Jojo is an anti-hate satire, which it sometimes pounds out with all the delicacy of a chainsaw through Jell-O, that took a while for me to catch its wavelength. Once I did I found myself enjoying the film, but there's a reason that reactions to it seem so polarizing. It's a bit hard to laugh at the Holocaust.
Marriage Story clearly wants to be an adult drama but there are times when the tone meanders into quirky comedy. Thankfully these moments are brief, but one extended bit called too much attention to itself and nearly snapped me out of the film. Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson, Laura Dern, Alan Alda and Ray Liotta all turn in consummate work. It's beyond refreshing to watch a movie about divorce where both parties are actively trying to remain civil and mature adults even as violent emotional eruptions occur.
Everything from here on out is a masterpiece in my estimation. The Irishman finds Martin Scorsese getting the band back together for one last spin through the gangster genre. This time the mood is incredibly somber and dark as Robert De Niro's aging gangster word vomits his life for our consumption. Anna Paquin's largely silent role is the film's moral compass and her placid face is one that casts judgment upon her father with the smallest movement of her lips.
If I hear one more person ask "Did we really need another Little Women" I am going to scream. We don't complain about the inevitable roll out of Jane Austen adaptations that occur with each new generation, or the fact that James Bond gets rebooted with the same frequency. If a writer/director has a fresh angle on the story then let them do it. Gerwig has that and her love for the material shines throughout. I laughed, I cried, I marveled at the ways she managed to make this hoary story feel fresh and new. This is probably my favorite film adaptation of the book.
While the Academy is made up of plenty of members who could look at 1917 and go "that's not how it happened," this movie is so much more than its gimmick. Yes, there's a lack of deeper meaning to the story as it is essentially a survival tale with a ticking clock, but that doesn't mean it's bad. Praise be to George MacKay for carrying 1917 upon his shoulders with such grace and existential trepidation. It's a damn shame that Best Actor was so crowded this year that a spot couldn’t be found for him. MacKay's stark face in several scenes is a blank space for Mendes to remind us of the cruelty and chaos of war. The haunting imagery is reflected from MacKay back to us just as often as the pauses and emotionally stingy finale.
Yet Parasite is an out-and-out masterpiece. It isn't just the best movie nominated for Best Picture, but it's one of the best movies of the just completed decade. If I didn't write rapturously about it then let my brevity speak louder. Parasite was the best movie of 2019, hands down.
The Nominees: Martin Scorsese (The Irishman), Todd Phillips (Joker), Sam Mendes (1917), Quentin Tarantino (Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood), Bong Joon-ho (Parasite)
Huh, I wasn't aware that copying someone else's homework was worthy of prestige and awards consideration, yet there's Todd Phillips. Phillips just stitches together disparate parts of Martin Scorsese's canonized films without understanding his depth of feeling, sophistication, or sense of poetry, so we've got a dudebro remaking and remodeling something that lacks substance and artistry.
Frankly, Tarantino and Scorsese feel like they've been down these roads before. While Scorsese adds a funereal mood to his gangster epic, Tarantino goes both one step forward and two steps back with his work. Sometimes the Oscars confuse the most razzle dazzle for the best. Just look at how the directing prize has terraformed into a technical prize over the past decade. It's rare that something smaller and more personal bags the award over something technically dazzling.
What I'm saying is that Sam Mendes is probably going to win his second Oscar for 1917's gimmick of appearing as one long take. He manages to find moments of quiet grace and haunting imagery like a descent into what can only be described as the mouth of hell. It's not an underserved award but does Bong Joon-ho's less audacious more artistic style stand a chance? Not really, but he should walk away with this thing for his intelligent use of space, control of tone, and creating performances that challenges our sympathies throughout. His directing isn't the flashiest but it's the best for my money.
The Nominees: Antonio Banderas (Pain and Glory), Leonardo DiCaprio (Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood), Adam Driver (Marriage Story), Joaquin Phoenix (Joker), Jonathan Pryce (The Two Popes)
Look, Joaquin Phoenix is going to win but it's the showiest role in the worst movie nominated in the major categories this year. I just can't muster up the enthusiasm for it or his eventual win. There's nothing particularly "Joker" about his performance or the film as a whole. It's a generic insane dude going full "white male rage" with a little bit of Juggalo makeup.
Everyone else is far better and I'd love to see an upset. DiCaprio is reliably great as an actor in full panic mode about the state of his career, and he manages to reveal vulnerabilities and fractures in his psyche that haven't been explored just yet. It's lovely to see Jonathan Pryce finally get an Oscar nomination after one of the strangest, most diverse careers out there. His Pope Francis requires him to speak Spanish, Latin, and accented English while being by turns playful, saintly, and tortured.
Adam Driver in any other year would've walked away with my vote as its nearly impossible to imagine Marriage Story working as well as it does with his and Johansson's immaculate work, but.... Antonio Banderas. While he can give off a cheesy vibe in his English films, a case of American cinema not quite knowing what to do with him, he's exemplary in his Spanish work. Of course he's brilliant in Pain and Glory as he explores the frailty in his aging director, a proxy for longtime collaborator Pedro Almodóvar. His work is masterful and layered as gentle and vulnerable as he is stylish and improbably handsome.
The Nominees: Cynthia Erivo (Harriet), Scarlett Johansson (Marriage Story), Saoirse Ronan (Little Women), Charlize Theron (Bombshell), Renée Zellweger (Judy)
Cynthia Erivo is the type of talent that is going to EGOT one day, and she's only an Oscar away. Sadly, this year is not her year as Harriet is a jumbled mess that lets down its stellar leading lady with its combination of patently phony narrative contrivances and routine biopic beats. She deserves so much better than this, and so does Harriet Tubman. Who knows, she may achieve EGOT status this year still given her nomination in Best Song, but it won't be for acting.
With that out of the way: I loved every other nominee in this category. Saoirse Ronan is due for an Oscar any day now at the tender age of 25. This is her fourth nomination, in case you wanted to feel like an underachiever, and she's absolutely fabulous as Jo March in a way that's both acutely intelligent, tomboyishly active, and proto-feminist in her quest for knowledge and forging her own identity.
Then there's the pair of performances playing real life figures. Charlize Theron as Fox News' toxic blonde Megyn Kelly is a conflicted portrait. The hair and makeup team transform her so completely that it takes a minute to recognize Theron underneath it all. Theron doesn't go for big showy performances as she instead calibrates acutely to reveal what's swirling beneath the surface. While Renée Zellweger did her homework to portray one of cinema's greatest legends, Judy Garland. Zellweger's makeup team also transforms her into a near clone of Garland, but it's the physicality she brings to the role that's unmistakably Garland. While she cannot recapture the exact genius of Garland as a performer she gives a strong enough approximation that's fascinating to watch.
But I loved Scarlett Johansson in Marriage Story. I've long said that she's an actress that operates best in independent films or roles that require a slow burn instead of large personality, and this just proves me right. Johansson is an actress that forsakes her career and identity for a man and is now in the process of reclaiming them both. She and Driver give finely calibrated performances that reveal the human cost of a relationship dissolving.
The Nominees: Tom Hanks (A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood), Anthony Hopkins (The Two Popes), Al Pacino (The Irishman), Joe Pesci (The Irishman), Brad Pitt (Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood)
If Brad Pitt's placement here is patently category fraud, and it is, at least it's deserving category fraud as Pitt gives one hell of a performance. His stuntman accepts that the sun is going down on his glory days and knows that he's squandered every chance and relationship but the one he has with DiCaprio's flailing actor. His performance is made up of a laconic cool, a movie star charisma that cannot be denied.
Does that mean that Anthony Hopkins is also a case of category fraud? Not really. The Two Popes is clearly a story about Pope Francis while Pope Benedict is merely there as something for Francis to stand in contrast against. Hopkins is reliably solid as he wraps his keen intelligence into a controversial papal figure and manages to make something recognizably human out of the icon.
Then there's the grindlock of Joe Pesci and Al Pacino in The Irishman offering up what can only be described as performances that exist as the inverses of each other. Pesci's minimalism has maximum effect while Pacino gives another of his big, aggressively masculine performances. It's impossible to imagine the final product without either one of them and they're a package deal, a bit like Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone in last year's The Favourite.
"Are you really about to bestow a third Oscar on Tom Hanks?" Well, he's a culturally beloved figure and one hell of an actor/movie star. You're also assuming that I would've voted for one of his winning performances, and I very much would not have done so. (Forrest Gump is schmaltzy garbage, fight me.) But his transformation in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is a perfect marriage between two public figures as Hanks' wholesome nice guy act wraps itself into St. Fred Rogers so invisibly that the two blur in an instant. I was enchanted by him from the first frame on, and cried more than once as he offered healing balm and benedictions.
The Nominees: Kathy Bates (Richard Jewell), Laura Dern (Marriage Story), Scarlett Johansson (Jojo Rabbit), Florence Pugh (Little Women), Margot Robbie (Bombshell)
Being unable to find Richard Jewell on any site and refusing to pay money to see it in theaters, I freely admit to not seeing Kathy Bates' nominated work. I'm fine with this as I mostly have an indifference towards Clint Eastwood's work, some of it is great and some of it is clearly a pass at a first draft. Given her relatively small amount of awards notice and haul, Bates' presence feels like the group rewarding a beloved institution with a late career nomination in an otherwise unremarkable work.
In any other year I'd be singing the praises of Johansson's conflicted mother or Robbie's true believer-cum-agnostic assault victim, but they're surpassed by the other two nominees. Florence Pugh manages to make Amy, the most hated of the March sisters, into an understandable and empathetic figure by tracing her self-awareness about her limited options and not apologizing for her grit and urge to get what she wants. Mark my words: Pugh's going to win one of these things some day and it'll be well deserved.
Yet this things has long belonged to Laura Dern for a variety of reasons. Not only is she Hollywood royalty, not only is she a muse to David Lynch, not only is she overdue for one of these, but she suffuses her divorce lawyer with a toughness that recalls the likes of Rosalind Russell at her steeliest. Yes, she gets a big speech about the impossibility of modern motherhood, but she's even better when sparring with Ray Liotta or coaxing the backstory out of Johansson. It's a confluence of a deserved award and "she's due" that happens fairly routinely.
The Nominees: The Irishman, Jojo Rabbit, Joker, Little Women, The Two Popes
How and why is Joker even in this category? Ah yes, a re-skin of King of Comedy with a patina of DC Comics thrown over is definitely worthy of an Oscar nomination. With that out of the way, let's look at the other nominees in contention.
The Two Popes is hardly a case of adaptation as the final film feels like a filmed play for PBS' Great Performances. While The Irishman manages a neater feat of crafting a wraparound device where the aged gangster is seemingly asking for absolution by confessing his crimes while never quite able to go deeper into introspective and redemptive territory. Then there's the strange case of Jojo Rabbit, a film that took me a while to vibe to its rhythms and one that spells out its themes in a heavy-handed manner that can feel like a mistrust of the audience's intelligence.
There was only ever one choice for me: Greta Gerwig's remixed Little Women. If taking a well-known text and managing to not only make it feel fresh but provide further autobiographical detail and adding meta-textual commentary isn't award worthy, then what is? Gerwig's Little Women is a film that deserves all the accolades it's been given and then some.
The Nominees: Knives Out, Marriage Story, 1917, Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood, Parasite
Once Upon a Time When White Dudes Ruled Everything and Wasn't It So Much Better? I've never been much of a fan of Tarantino, but his alternative history lands with a thud. I was with the plaintive tone of Once Upon a Time for the first two hours and then the casual misogyny that's been creeping up in his work got an extended workout as did his penchant for exploitative violence.
While I'm not sold on 1917's major virtues being that of its screenplay, I also think the entire thing works like clockwork without an ounce of fat. Meanwhile, Noah Baumbach's Marriage Story lets both sides have it out without presenting anyone as the "bad guy" in the dissolving of a relationship, and that's pretty mature. There's just a few instances of the tone going sideways, mainly a visit from an evaluator that is just bizarre.
Which leaves me with Knives Out and Parasite, my two personal favorite films in this category and probably of the year. Oh, if only Knives Out had made it into Best Picture, but I digress. Parasite has some wild twists that I didn't see coming and has some smart things to say about the ways in which capitalism makes parasites of us all. Knives Out takes the framing of an Agatha Christie mystery and adds in a layer of social commentary that transforms it from traditional genre exercise into something weirder. It's a coin toss between the two, and Knives Out won. Ask me about it on another day and I'll probably give it to Parasite.
The Nominees: How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, I Lost My Body, Klaus, Missing Link, Toy Story 4
Color me surprised (and disappointed) to find that Laika's entry, Missing Link, is the weakest one of the bunch. Not only is it the weakest nominee this year, but it's the studio's weakest effort to date. The more colorful palette is as nice as the more action/adventure thrust is a nice change of pace from the studio's usual macabre fare, but it's better in concept in execution. It's fine if unmemorable.
I Lost My Body is a strange one. A very European film, it's essentially an animated arthouse film. I appreciated its daring even if I found its ambitions larger than its grasp. While a pair of franchise closures (maybe) provided an interesting contrast. How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World is all about growing up and knowing when to let go, and it's a uniformly enchanting and emotionally satisfying to DreamWorks best, most mature franchise. It's a shame none of the films managed to pickup an Oscar and this one isn't about to change that losing streak.
Toy Story 4's announcement was met with trepidation on my part. The trilogy of films were so inspired, creative, and absorbing that picking up after this many years risked depleting the good will of those films and delivering a stinker. Consider that crisis avoided as this fourth entry manages to take the franchise into unique territory that leaves the door open for more films, be that features or shorts. Part of me hopes they leave well enough alone at this point as the rust around the joints is starting to inhibit the films. Just how many times can Buzz and Woody fight and/or try to remind each other of their true purpose?
The real surprise for me was Klaus, a smart re-imagining of the origin of Santa Claus. At once vibrant and warm in its watercolor-like imagery, Klaus also possess a mischievous side that emerges in twisted visual jokes and major plot points. The sight of a group of kids treating a snowman like a stabbing victim still makes me giggle. Klaus also manages to engage your heart with its use of magical realism and heartbreaking backstory for the benevolent and jolly gift bringer.
That's it for this year. Same time next year.
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