Best Picture nominees
Jan. 20th, 2016 05:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
avawatsonSeeing as how sometimes I turn this into a movie blog(?), and tonight last night marked my seeing all of the best picture nominees for the Oscars, I thought I should do a roundup of sorts. Not at all what I would term a prediction, by the way, because god knows the Oscar voters and me are not on the same page. But anyway, time for that later. First, the nominees.
The Big Short
I saw this filmjust a few hours ago yesterday, and so I say this with it fresh in my mind: this is the weakest of the bunch. I'm pretty boggled about how it got to be nominated at all for best picture, never mind over Carol. It just does not seem like best picture material: a sort of documentary-esque procedural featuring separate groups of uncharismatic sorts who don't really interact with one another except by accident. And they're uncinematic characters in the way that real people generally are: an Asberger-y doctor-turned-hedge-fund-manager (Christian Bale), a cantankerous Jewish man with rage issues (Steve Carrell), a paranoid, disillusioned ex-broker with almost Coen Brothers film levels of unflappability and opaque motivations (Brad Pitt), along with a couple of 20-something dorks who didn't talk or think fast enough for The Social Network (Finn Wittrock and John Magaro).
I can...kind of see something of an autur-ish hand in the creation of this film and presentation of the story. It makes some bold choices in cinematography and script (chiefly in breaking fourth wall and the faux documentary style) and it's funny and smart in parts, yes, with a capital-i Important Story that more Americans should know. The issue for me anyway is that that bold autur-ish smart vision of an Important Story is...an awful lot like Michael Moore. Which has both good and bad parts, to be sure, but the good parts don't exceed that of a Michael Moore film. (And if anything, I feel like Moore probably would've done a better job at describing the complex financial vehicles, because Moore does things like bust out animation when he needs to; this film is stuck fictionalizing everything, save for the direct-address stuff, some of which works and some of which...well, I'll get to that).
Apart from that, I'm seeing decidedly okay acting jobs (Pitt leading the pack there) in roles that are either relatively mediocre (Christian Bale) or rehashes of characters I've seen these men play before before (Gosling, Carrell). These are all better actors than this, and I don't think they do bad jobs but, like I said, the roles themselves are not that impressive, don't have a ton of range. And in particular, Pitt is billed so high and his character written so inexplicably one-note that it made me remember his blameless Canadian abolitionist character in 12 Years a Slave (who I in turn compared mentally with Saint Gus from season five of The Wire).
Which brings me maybe to something I had decided, before seeing the film, that I wasn't going to go into the movie making a fuss over. Which is the fact that this movie is basically all men (by, about, and apparently also for). It's based on a true story and all, and the banking industry swallowing its own tail does seem legitimately like a tale of man's folly and hubris. I really wasn't aware of female roles in the story on any level, and I wasn't expecting much. It's rather shit that I could be disappointed when I had such low expectations.
So at first, there was Marisa Tomei, in a decidedly middle aged, non-sex-object role, as Carrell's wife. Totally fine. She had, oh, about a scene or so, comforting or trying to calm down Carrell, who's incidentally got the most backstory of anyone in the film: an understanding wife, a brother who's committed suicide, and a childhood history explaining his questioning of the talmud. So, right, the fact that nobody else's wife really gets screen time didn't bother me.
But then, they put in, as a joke, Margot Robbie in a bubble bath, drinking champagne, to address the audience full-on to explain the mortgage crisis, and that kind of skeeved me. Pointing out that sex sells and that the mortgage crisis is boring and opaque didn't make me feel that much better about then being told about it by a naked Bond girl. Having her end her scene with "now fuck off" didn't really make me feel better about it. I cringe-smiled in the theater when she came on, and I've felt progressively worse about it as time has passed.
And it wasn't an isolated moment either. The film uses a Las Vegas stripper with five houses and a condo -- in a scene in which she only stops stripping for about five seconds -- to diagetically illustrate the bad loans people are getting. (As in, who gives loans to these idiots?) They had one and a half scenes with Doctor Who alum Karen Gillan, and the one in which she has lines is the one in which she's in a bathing suit, poolside at a securitization convention in Las Vegas, which she's only at because she's literally getting into bed with big banks despite working for the SEC (a clear conflict of interest, which Carrell points out poolside and which she shrugs off). The second half-scene with her is her saying goodbye to the banker at the hotel curb, and it's heavily implied she slept with him for a job. It's otherwise a throwaway little scene, part of a transition or montage if I'm remembering correctly.
So, you know, I felt a little skeeved in parts over some gender things, and I didn't set out to be. That didn't leave a good taste in my mouth.
And in general, I found it an un-compelling movie cinemagraphically. Shown in 4k resolution on the big screen, it was still all digital and it looked cheap. Almost a soap opera feel. This was at least partially on purpose, I know, as was the little crash-focuses to give it a more faux documentary feel. It was something I kind of got used to as the film went on, but never something I grew to actively like.
And this is the second movie I've seen Steve Carrell inexplicably play a Jewish man, which means it's the second time I'm scratching my head at that casting choice (the first was Freeheld). I mean...okay? I guess??
6.5/10. An okay procedural and comedy, but not my bag on many levels, and rather inexplicably nominated for best picture as far as I'm concerned.
Bridge of Spies
One thing helped me to like Bridge of Spies a lot more than I had, and that is that this is Spielberg's film about what it means to be American.* It isn't a courtroom procedural about the trial of Rudolf Abel, even though it goes to the Supreme Court. It isn't a film about actual spying or the Cold War or international spy negotiations, even though all that provides a framework to the story. And it isn't a film about an unlikely friendship between a lawyer and the accused, even though those were some of my absolutely favorite parts. Because any of those subjects could be the entirety of some film, but is only a slice of this one. I didn't realize how much time would elapse and how much of the court case would be brushed over, but looking backward, the bookends of this movie made sense to me under that one guideline: it's a story about what it means to be American.
*I'm told that actually Lincoln is Spielberg's film about being American, but seeing as how I haven't seen it, I have to take this on its own merits and without reference. I know I'm not alone in that, but I'd still like to revisit Bridge of Spies once I do see it.
Tom Hanks plays a good lawyer, and he does it well. So right off the bat, there may be some bias on my part, because to be very honest, good lawyer films are the reason why I went to law school. And beyond that, something I've come back to again and again about this film is that Tom Hanks is this other magical thing, this thing that cannot be taught in law school or anywhere: he's someone who gets you to change your mind. And the real kicker is that it doesn't feel...slimy. This utter talent is put on display for us (and I really loved this script for this reason) a few times during the course of the film, and Hanks delivers it with class. Gravitas. It's a very dignified part, and the closest to a modern Atticus Finch that I can think of. If that sounds a little saccharine and pointed, it's something I accept about the film. I mean, Spielberg directed it, so it's about par for the course. It's actually right what I was in the mood for, which probably helped quite a bit.
Mark Rylance is wonderful as the accused spy, Abel. If I were to advise myself before viewing it for the first time, I'd tell myself not to look for a potentially malevolent side to Abel. He's a good soldier, regardless of him being on the other side of the fence, and that makes him a good (and important) foil for Hanks' character. Rylance has quietly hilarious lines, even more hilarious looks (the sort that make you wonder what the script must say), and I'm very happy he got a supporting actor nomination for his role. It would be well deserved.
If it needed saying, this movie was very lovingly crafted, and I enjoyed that quite a lot. On the production design level, the costumes and sets are wonderful, and I loved the cinematography (see this quick google image search for what I mean). There was one scene involving the camera and door moving so that the subjects behind the door were perfectly framed by windows, and I've thought about that scene quite a bit since I saw it. It was a sort of cheesy effect, but I loved it. And scenes of seeing the Berlin wall going up also struck me immediately after the film. It's not something I'd ever seen before.
8/10. A very, very solid movie about what makes America great. Well acted, well shot, poignant, backed by a lovely score.
Brooklyn
I do not think there's hardly anything wrong with the film Brooklyn. I just think that, production design and costuming dream notwithstanding, it is ultimately a film with modest ambition. So if it doesn't go anywhere, it's because it didn't dream about going much farther than it went. And I don't really fault it for that.
Brooklyn tells an immigrant tale, one of finding love and independence and getting over homesickness. It's a story I'm familiar with and that I empathize with a great deal, and it was almost novel to me that the immigrant in this story is white, not gonna lie. This kind of story is no longer a white person's story in a lot of ways.
Anyway, a few months pass in the story, and you'd think all sorts of things could go wrong for Saoirse Ronan's character, being a girl on her lonesome in the new world, but it truly doesn't happen. She finds a nice boyfriend who seems slightly dumb but is incredibly sweet, and he doesn't have a dark past, doesn't randomly beat her one day, doesn't force himself on her, doesn't cheat on her with the other girls. A priest helps her out, her landlady favors her, her boss is understanding about her being sad at work. None of the bad stuff I thought might happen to her actually happens to her. She even gets along with her housemates, including the cattier of them, and she successfully ditches the more annoying of them -- which struck me as rather mean actually. I was fully expecting her to take the new boarder under her wing but no, she just somehow becomes confident enough to dump her when she can and the script somehow doesn't blame her. (I have some thoughts about why part of me really does want to blame her, but I'm not in a state to parse through them all now.)
Months pass and a bad thing finally does happen. Her sister unexpectedly dies, and so she returns to Ireland for a few weeks. I knew all that from the trailer, of course, but I still felt a pang of "you lucky bastard" there. Immigrants getting to go home to attend funerals are not a given, and I know that all too well. The fact that she went back by boat, that she had the money to go back, that she made it in time to mourn her sister -- part of me just shakes my head at this girl's good fortune.
There's some minor hemming and hawing about whether or not she'll stay in Ireland or return to America, but the tension isn't really believable at that point. Which rather sucks because one of the big reasons to stay is a decidedly not-as-dumb-as-the-American-boyfriend character, played by Domhnall Gleeson, who seems to be absolutely everywhere these days. He's lovely, by the way. It's bonkers how he's exploded in the American movie scene between this, Ex Machina, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and The Revenant. I walked out of the theater excited to have seen him again. Possibly more excited about him than about Ronan, so I don't know what that says about my feelings about her. Whoops.
7/10. A immigrant story with modest story-telling ambitions that are nonetheless well-executed. It's a teethless sort of story, but it doesn't aim to be anything but that.
Mad Max: Fury Road
My personal pick for best picture. A wild ride from start to finish, gorgeously envisioned, superbly executed. If Brooklyn is filmic ambition tamped down and kept looking inward, then this film is ambition exploded outward -- and it doesn't miss the mark either.
I don't know what I would change about this film. It has a one-armed female BAMF at the center of a feminist and entertaining story, and the practical effects, stunts, and action sequencing are basically perfect. There's relatively very little dialog, so maybe (?) you could argue (??) that the characters could be deeper (???), but that's certainly not where I'm coming from. I loved every moment of this movie and think it's exactly as deep, shallow, bright, and explosive as it wants to be, and with wonderful effect. I would support the hell out of George Miller getting best director.
10/10. I respect everything about this film, from the bar-setting practical effects, the insane death metal-apocalypse aesthetic, the kickass feminist themes, to the nonstop action. Wouldn't change a thing.
The Martian
This film was seriously one of the absolute best times I've had in the theater all year. It was funny and feel-good, decently paced and smartly done (as if we, the audience, aren't -- gasp -- morons!). And it filled a science-positive and family-friendly space movie niche that I didn't realize I'd even been missing. (Space is usually an unfolding horror or a fear-filled death trap; this movie actually used the line I'm going to science the shit out of this.)
And yet I think that a best picture nomination was still rather generous.
I've been thinking about this for a couple days now, and I think it's probably the lack of emotional horror in the film. It's definitely purposeful, I know; the original book material and the PG-13 rating of the film point in a lighter direction than that, and truth be told the film is very busy doing other things than take us on a space version of Castaway or Mars setting of Moon. But I think it probably comes down to the fact that you'd think that months-long isolation on Mars would really weaken the mental fortitude of Matt Damon's character, but he forges on through every setback, sarcastic and smarmy as ever. He doesn't spend much time being broken at all, but that's because it's not that sort of film. And that's okay -- but it doesn't make the film seem as deserving of a best picture nod. Or a best actor win. At least, I think. And yet I love this film and I want everyone to see it.
This lack of tragedy is something I'm thinking about a lot as I ponder Carol. Because Carol is a beautiful film, delicately acted, and an important story. It has queer representation, a gay love story, and it has a happy ending -- and gay love stories and happy endings just don't exist in the same sentence for the most part. And yet if it were a tragic love story, it might have had a better shot. (But most likely: it'd have been at least nominated and had a fair chance at winning if the Academy weren't full of 60-something year old white men.)
There's actually arguably more human drama on earth compared to Mars. It's where the rest of us metaphorically and literally are, after all, so maybe that makes sense. We're watching this crazy story come alive precisely like reality TV or a breaking news event: how Mark Watney survives, gets rescued, comes home. It's a global and stupendous effort. I cried, okay? I cried. And although a good deal of the film rests on Damon's back, it's a remarkably wide ensemble cast actually, with loads of other players with lines (!!) and screen time (!!!), many of whom I found absolutely delightful, like the poor JPL director (Benedict Wong) and astrodynamics genius (Donald Glover). (On the off chance that Hollywood itself is reading this, let me just make it clear that POC. Roles. And. Actors. Make. Me. So. Happy.) I feel like it was a sort of misstep that Chiwetel Ejiofor inexplicably played an Indian guy but...mm, for the rest of the film, I'll take it.
9/10. Fun as hell, hugely science-positive and life-affirming. I'm still struggling how to articulate why I don't think it's best picture material, but there isn't much more I could ask of this movie when it comes down to it.
The Revenant
A beautiful and brutal film. See it if Leonardo DiCaprio fighting his way out of hell sounds like it could be your bag. See it if a viscerally difficult film that might've otherwise starred a younger Daniel Day Lewis might be your thing. See it for the viscerally grueling scene in which a bear mauls a man half to death. Because I wouldn't say that any of that is my particular bag, but I still enjoyed the hell out of it and think it well deserves its best picture nomination, plus the acting nods, despite a couple problems.
To quickly recap, the film is another one based on a true story of a frontiersman and master tracker, Hugh Glass (DiCaprio), who is mauled by a bear and closer to death than to life in the aftermath. Another man (Tom Hardy) winds up killing Glass' son and leaving him for dead, but lo, he rises from the mostly-dead (hence, the title) to exact his revenge.
I enjoyed this film at least in part because I was interested in going on another journey with the director, Alejandro González Iñárritu. I really quite liked Birdman, and that's strange on a number of levels because I 100% understand a great many people's complaints about pretension surrounding that film. I get it. My own husband saw it on his own because he didn't know if I'd like it, and when I randomly wound up seeing it with a friend, he was surprised I really did like it. So was I, in a way. It might've been a mood thing, it's hard to say. I guess I was in a receptive place.
But it made me more receptive to this film. I'd mentally bought into the González Iñárritu stock, so to speak, even back when all this was was a wordless action sequence of a teaser trailer. DiCaprio's fleeing a Native American attack? There's a positively nutty mountain of skulls for some reason? He's crawling out of the dirt and screaming into the camera? Okay. Not, generally speaking, the way into my heart, but I'd bought the director and DP and acting dream team and was feeling good as of last summer when I first heard about the film. And I came out of The Revenant more satisfied than my husband, who also generally liked Birdman. So let me take his critiques as my jumping off points.
The Native Americans "move at the speed of plot." To be honest, this didn't really bother me while I was watching the film, but I recognize that it's slightly contrived when they enter the picture (and leave it) during DiCaprio's tortured trek through the wilderness. The film could also be edited more tightly. I'll grant that as well, but I was in the strange position to be pretty satisfied throughout the whole film: didn't need to use the bathroom, wasn't worried about getting to work on time afterward, wasn't hungry, wasn't in caffeine withdrawl. So for once, I didn't feel distracted or bored. And I was fairly riveted by the adrenaline of the action sequences, the Oscar-worthy performance by DiCaprio, and the beauty of the shots (shot by Emmanuel Lubezki, who also blessedly shot Birdman, Gravity, and Children of Men).
Hubs also didn't enjoy the actual man vs. nature stuff for a film that was ostensibly about man vs. nature. Which, granted, yes, hypothermia does not seem nearly the sword hanging over their heads as you might think, considering it looks like it's the dead cold of winter. But again this didn't bother me that much because I didn't see it 100% as a man vs. nature story. Rather, it's a revenge flick. The relevant comparisons here is not 127 Hours, but Oldboy and Kill Bill. Which might be a dumb thing for me to say, because to be honest I've not seen 127 Hours and Kill Bill. And here I am, recommending The Revenant anyway. It's a strange world. And as usual, I might be full of shit.
8.5/10. Not faultless, but brutal, beautiful, and superbly acted.
Room
I found this to be a wonderful, if heart-wrenching, film. It is impressively and incredibly tense in parts and also so soft and intimate and kind that it brought me back to my own childhood, as an only child, and how lonely it was, how my mother felt like my whole world at times (and I do not mean this in a negative sense either). I felt like I'd forgotten what it was like to be that young, and that was an amazing thing to me, from both a script and acting perspective. Both principals, Brie Larson and the child actor, Jacob Tremblay, deserve all the acting awards. They make the entire movie and I can't fault a single thing about either of their performances. Sign me up for literally anything else they do.
If you needed a primer or recap, Room is about a depressingly Elizabeth Smart sort of situation, in which a girl (Larson) is kidnapped and kept captive in a backyard bunker (the eponymous room). During the girl's seven years of imprisonment, her captor of course rapes her, and she has a son by him, and by the time the story joins up with them, he's five years old. Narratively, the point of view of the film is entirely the little boy's, and because of this that the film seems so resilient, I think, and hopeful. It doesn't linger overlong on the darkest parts of a dark story, even though we're seeing so much more than what he does. And it's also why when he panics, it's visceral. When he grows and trusts, it's the sweetest thing imaginable.
I don't think it's terrible spoilers to say that there is a daring escape (it's in the trailer for the film), but the story actually continues beyond the heart-pounding rescue by quite a bit. A surprising amount, I would (and did) say, but it stays until there's a sense of healing, a sense that mother and son can say goodbye to the place that held them for so long.
9/10. Carried amazingly well by the two principals, well crafted, and poignant. One hell of a movie.
Spotlight
At this point, I've heard this film being called Oscarbait, but I won't lie, along with The Big Short, this film's appearance on the best picture list has boggled me. I compare it very much to And the Band Played On. Which is...fine. It's a big complicated story that takes place over a not insignificant amount of time. The story includes many players whose personalities and parts are necessarily shallow in parts, and the most cinematic pieces of which are...not naturally cinematic, truth be told. And they're fine films, important stories, with noble intentions. Spotlight, being about the team of investigative journalists at the Boston Globe who uncovered how the Catholic church covered up and recirculated pedophile priests, has the importance of Good Journalism at its center, and I sincerely hope that people are inspired to become Good Journalists because of this film the way that Tom Hanks in Bridge of Spies encourages people to become Good Lawyers.
I just also think that they make fairly uncompelling art.
(And the Band Played On was made for TV, and so this felt to me. Not undeserving of recognition but...best picture Oscar?? Boggled, I tell you.)
I like and dislike Spotlight and The Big Short for the exact same reasons: they tell stories that ought to be told and that people ought to know, they have actors I individually like but are playing somewhat mundane real people who don't get a ton of screentime to build depth. But anyway, they're procedurals so intimacy with the characters isn't the chief thing here. And I don't find myself compelled by either film as actual works of art. I don't know what to do with this information (even for my own self) except to say sorry. They're at the bottom of the list for best picture Oscar, but I'd sign on for a miniseries, documentary, or book about either topic. As films though, I'm left wanting.
I've had many conversations with hubs at this point about Spotlight. He keeps falling back on, "It's a very solid procedural," and I keep responding with, "No, Zodiac is a very solid procedural." To which he responds that Zodiac is a superb procedural. (Zodiac also was far prettier than both films put together, and followed mostly one person around, so maybe I just have an issue with some of these things.)
And that's something I've thought about for weeks now, since I've watched this movie -- what my biases are. How difficult it seems to be to make a compelling movie about Good Journalism, when it seems I'm a sucker for movies about Good Lawyers and Good Cops. I don't have it figured out, I can tell you that much.
6.5/10. A solid procedural with an important story and a very good heart at its center. Unfortunately, I just didn't think it made for very compelling art.
And just for the record, I think Carol and 45 Years definitely deserved nominations, and I'd argue Inside Out and Sicario deserve nods as well. God knows though, the Academy's mileage most definitely varies, and so may yours.
The Big Short
I saw this film
I can...kind of see something of an autur-ish hand in the creation of this film and presentation of the story. It makes some bold choices in cinematography and script (chiefly in breaking fourth wall and the faux documentary style) and it's funny and smart in parts, yes, with a capital-i Important Story that more Americans should know. The issue for me anyway is that that bold autur-ish smart vision of an Important Story is...an awful lot like Michael Moore. Which has both good and bad parts, to be sure, but the good parts don't exceed that of a Michael Moore film. (And if anything, I feel like Moore probably would've done a better job at describing the complex financial vehicles, because Moore does things like bust out animation when he needs to; this film is stuck fictionalizing everything, save for the direct-address stuff, some of which works and some of which...well, I'll get to that).
Apart from that, I'm seeing decidedly okay acting jobs (Pitt leading the pack there) in roles that are either relatively mediocre (Christian Bale) or rehashes of characters I've seen these men play before before (Gosling, Carrell). These are all better actors than this, and I don't think they do bad jobs but, like I said, the roles themselves are not that impressive, don't have a ton of range. And in particular, Pitt is billed so high and his character written so inexplicably one-note that it made me remember his blameless Canadian abolitionist character in 12 Years a Slave (who I in turn compared mentally with Saint Gus from season five of The Wire).
Which brings me maybe to something I had decided, before seeing the film, that I wasn't going to go into the movie making a fuss over. Which is the fact that this movie is basically all men (by, about, and apparently also for). It's based on a true story and all, and the banking industry swallowing its own tail does seem legitimately like a tale of man's folly and hubris. I really wasn't aware of female roles in the story on any level, and I wasn't expecting much. It's rather shit that I could be disappointed when I had such low expectations.
So at first, there was Marisa Tomei, in a decidedly middle aged, non-sex-object role, as Carrell's wife. Totally fine. She had, oh, about a scene or so, comforting or trying to calm down Carrell, who's incidentally got the most backstory of anyone in the film: an understanding wife, a brother who's committed suicide, and a childhood history explaining his questioning of the talmud. So, right, the fact that nobody else's wife really gets screen time didn't bother me.
But then, they put in, as a joke, Margot Robbie in a bubble bath, drinking champagne, to address the audience full-on to explain the mortgage crisis, and that kind of skeeved me. Pointing out that sex sells and that the mortgage crisis is boring and opaque didn't make me feel that much better about then being told about it by a naked Bond girl. Having her end her scene with "now fuck off" didn't really make me feel better about it. I cringe-smiled in the theater when she came on, and I've felt progressively worse about it as time has passed.
And it wasn't an isolated moment either. The film uses a Las Vegas stripper with five houses and a condo -- in a scene in which she only stops stripping for about five seconds -- to diagetically illustrate the bad loans people are getting. (As in, who gives loans to these idiots?) They had one and a half scenes with Doctor Who alum Karen Gillan, and the one in which she has lines is the one in which she's in a bathing suit, poolside at a securitization convention in Las Vegas, which she's only at because she's literally getting into bed with big banks despite working for the SEC (a clear conflict of interest, which Carrell points out poolside and which she shrugs off). The second half-scene with her is her saying goodbye to the banker at the hotel curb, and it's heavily implied she slept with him for a job. It's otherwise a throwaway little scene, part of a transition or montage if I'm remembering correctly.
So, you know, I felt a little skeeved in parts over some gender things, and I didn't set out to be. That didn't leave a good taste in my mouth.
And in general, I found it an un-compelling movie cinemagraphically. Shown in 4k resolution on the big screen, it was still all digital and it looked cheap. Almost a soap opera feel. This was at least partially on purpose, I know, as was the little crash-focuses to give it a more faux documentary feel. It was something I kind of got used to as the film went on, but never something I grew to actively like.
And this is the second movie I've seen Steve Carrell inexplicably play a Jewish man, which means it's the second time I'm scratching my head at that casting choice (the first was Freeheld). I mean...okay? I guess??
6.5/10. An okay procedural and comedy, but not my bag on many levels, and rather inexplicably nominated for best picture as far as I'm concerned.
Bridge of Spies
One thing helped me to like Bridge of Spies a lot more than I had, and that is that this is Spielberg's film about what it means to be American.* It isn't a courtroom procedural about the trial of Rudolf Abel, even though it goes to the Supreme Court. It isn't a film about actual spying or the Cold War or international spy negotiations, even though all that provides a framework to the story. And it isn't a film about an unlikely friendship between a lawyer and the accused, even though those were some of my absolutely favorite parts. Because any of those subjects could be the entirety of some film, but is only a slice of this one. I didn't realize how much time would elapse and how much of the court case would be brushed over, but looking backward, the bookends of this movie made sense to me under that one guideline: it's a story about what it means to be American.
*I'm told that actually Lincoln is Spielberg's film about being American, but seeing as how I haven't seen it, I have to take this on its own merits and without reference. I know I'm not alone in that, but I'd still like to revisit Bridge of Spies once I do see it.
Tom Hanks plays a good lawyer, and he does it well. So right off the bat, there may be some bias on my part, because to be very honest, good lawyer films are the reason why I went to law school. And beyond that, something I've come back to again and again about this film is that Tom Hanks is this other magical thing, this thing that cannot be taught in law school or anywhere: he's someone who gets you to change your mind. And the real kicker is that it doesn't feel...slimy. This utter talent is put on display for us (and I really loved this script for this reason) a few times during the course of the film, and Hanks delivers it with class. Gravitas. It's a very dignified part, and the closest to a modern Atticus Finch that I can think of. If that sounds a little saccharine and pointed, it's something I accept about the film. I mean, Spielberg directed it, so it's about par for the course. It's actually right what I was in the mood for, which probably helped quite a bit.
Mark Rylance is wonderful as the accused spy, Abel. If I were to advise myself before viewing it for the first time, I'd tell myself not to look for a potentially malevolent side to Abel. He's a good soldier, regardless of him being on the other side of the fence, and that makes him a good (and important) foil for Hanks' character. Rylance has quietly hilarious lines, even more hilarious looks (the sort that make you wonder what the script must say), and I'm very happy he got a supporting actor nomination for his role. It would be well deserved.
If it needed saying, this movie was very lovingly crafted, and I enjoyed that quite a lot. On the production design level, the costumes and sets are wonderful, and I loved the cinematography (see this quick google image search for what I mean). There was one scene involving the camera and door moving so that the subjects behind the door were perfectly framed by windows, and I've thought about that scene quite a bit since I saw it. It was a sort of cheesy effect, but I loved it. And scenes of seeing the Berlin wall going up also struck me immediately after the film. It's not something I'd ever seen before.
8/10. A very, very solid movie about what makes America great. Well acted, well shot, poignant, backed by a lovely score.
Brooklyn
I do not think there's hardly anything wrong with the film Brooklyn. I just think that, production design and costuming dream notwithstanding, it is ultimately a film with modest ambition. So if it doesn't go anywhere, it's because it didn't dream about going much farther than it went. And I don't really fault it for that.
Brooklyn tells an immigrant tale, one of finding love and independence and getting over homesickness. It's a story I'm familiar with and that I empathize with a great deal, and it was almost novel to me that the immigrant in this story is white, not gonna lie. This kind of story is no longer a white person's story in a lot of ways.
Anyway, a few months pass in the story, and you'd think all sorts of things could go wrong for Saoirse Ronan's character, being a girl on her lonesome in the new world, but it truly doesn't happen. She finds a nice boyfriend who seems slightly dumb but is incredibly sweet, and he doesn't have a dark past, doesn't randomly beat her one day, doesn't force himself on her, doesn't cheat on her with the other girls. A priest helps her out, her landlady favors her, her boss is understanding about her being sad at work. None of the bad stuff I thought might happen to her actually happens to her. She even gets along with her housemates, including the cattier of them, and she successfully ditches the more annoying of them -- which struck me as rather mean actually. I was fully expecting her to take the new boarder under her wing but no, she just somehow becomes confident enough to dump her when she can and the script somehow doesn't blame her. (I have some thoughts about why part of me really does want to blame her, but I'm not in a state to parse through them all now.)
Months pass and a bad thing finally does happen. Her sister unexpectedly dies, and so she returns to Ireland for a few weeks. I knew all that from the trailer, of course, but I still felt a pang of "you lucky bastard" there. Immigrants getting to go home to attend funerals are not a given, and I know that all too well. The fact that she went back by boat, that she had the money to go back, that she made it in time to mourn her sister -- part of me just shakes my head at this girl's good fortune.
There's some minor hemming and hawing about whether or not she'll stay in Ireland or return to America, but the tension isn't really believable at that point. Which rather sucks because one of the big reasons to stay is a decidedly not-as-dumb-as-the-American-boyfriend character, played by Domhnall Gleeson, who seems to be absolutely everywhere these days. He's lovely, by the way. It's bonkers how he's exploded in the American movie scene between this, Ex Machina, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and The Revenant. I walked out of the theater excited to have seen him again. Possibly more excited about him than about Ronan, so I don't know what that says about my feelings about her. Whoops.
7/10. A immigrant story with modest story-telling ambitions that are nonetheless well-executed. It's a teethless sort of story, but it doesn't aim to be anything but that.
Mad Max: Fury Road
My personal pick for best picture. A wild ride from start to finish, gorgeously envisioned, superbly executed. If Brooklyn is filmic ambition tamped down and kept looking inward, then this film is ambition exploded outward -- and it doesn't miss the mark either.
I don't know what I would change about this film. It has a one-armed female BAMF at the center of a feminist and entertaining story, and the practical effects, stunts, and action sequencing are basically perfect. There's relatively very little dialog, so maybe (?) you could argue (??) that the characters could be deeper (???), but that's certainly not where I'm coming from. I loved every moment of this movie and think it's exactly as deep, shallow, bright, and explosive as it wants to be, and with wonderful effect. I would support the hell out of George Miller getting best director.
10/10. I respect everything about this film, from the bar-setting practical effects, the insane death metal-apocalypse aesthetic, the kickass feminist themes, to the nonstop action. Wouldn't change a thing.
The Martian
This film was seriously one of the absolute best times I've had in the theater all year. It was funny and feel-good, decently paced and smartly done (as if we, the audience, aren't -- gasp -- morons!). And it filled a science-positive and family-friendly space movie niche that I didn't realize I'd even been missing. (Space is usually an unfolding horror or a fear-filled death trap; this movie actually used the line I'm going to science the shit out of this.)
And yet I think that a best picture nomination was still rather generous.
I've been thinking about this for a couple days now, and I think it's probably the lack of emotional horror in the film. It's definitely purposeful, I know; the original book material and the PG-13 rating of the film point in a lighter direction than that, and truth be told the film is very busy doing other things than take us on a space version of Castaway or Mars setting of Moon. But I think it probably comes down to the fact that you'd think that months-long isolation on Mars would really weaken the mental fortitude of Matt Damon's character, but he forges on through every setback, sarcastic and smarmy as ever. He doesn't spend much time being broken at all, but that's because it's not that sort of film. And that's okay -- but it doesn't make the film seem as deserving of a best picture nod. Or a best actor win. At least, I think. And yet I love this film and I want everyone to see it.
This lack of tragedy is something I'm thinking about a lot as I ponder Carol. Because Carol is a beautiful film, delicately acted, and an important story. It has queer representation, a gay love story, and it has a happy ending -- and gay love stories and happy endings just don't exist in the same sentence for the most part. And yet if it were a tragic love story, it might have had a better shot. (But most likely: it'd have been at least nominated and had a fair chance at winning if the Academy weren't full of 60-something year old white men.)
There's actually arguably more human drama on earth compared to Mars. It's where the rest of us metaphorically and literally are, after all, so maybe that makes sense. We're watching this crazy story come alive precisely like reality TV or a breaking news event: how Mark Watney survives, gets rescued, comes home. It's a global and stupendous effort. I cried, okay? I cried. And although a good deal of the film rests on Damon's back, it's a remarkably wide ensemble cast actually, with loads of other players with lines (!!) and screen time (!!!), many of whom I found absolutely delightful, like the poor JPL director (Benedict Wong) and astrodynamics genius (Donald Glover). (On the off chance that Hollywood itself is reading this, let me just make it clear that POC. Roles. And. Actors. Make. Me. So. Happy.) I feel like it was a sort of misstep that Chiwetel Ejiofor inexplicably played an Indian guy but...mm, for the rest of the film, I'll take it.
9/10. Fun as hell, hugely science-positive and life-affirming. I'm still struggling how to articulate why I don't think it's best picture material, but there isn't much more I could ask of this movie when it comes down to it.
The Revenant
A beautiful and brutal film. See it if Leonardo DiCaprio fighting his way out of hell sounds like it could be your bag. See it if a viscerally difficult film that might've otherwise starred a younger Daniel Day Lewis might be your thing. See it for the viscerally grueling scene in which a bear mauls a man half to death. Because I wouldn't say that any of that is my particular bag, but I still enjoyed the hell out of it and think it well deserves its best picture nomination, plus the acting nods, despite a couple problems.
To quickly recap, the film is another one based on a true story of a frontiersman and master tracker, Hugh Glass (DiCaprio), who is mauled by a bear and closer to death than to life in the aftermath. Another man (Tom Hardy) winds up killing Glass' son and leaving him for dead, but lo, he rises from the mostly-dead (hence, the title) to exact his revenge.
I enjoyed this film at least in part because I was interested in going on another journey with the director, Alejandro González Iñárritu. I really quite liked Birdman, and that's strange on a number of levels because I 100% understand a great many people's complaints about pretension surrounding that film. I get it. My own husband saw it on his own because he didn't know if I'd like it, and when I randomly wound up seeing it with a friend, he was surprised I really did like it. So was I, in a way. It might've been a mood thing, it's hard to say. I guess I was in a receptive place.
But it made me more receptive to this film. I'd mentally bought into the González Iñárritu stock, so to speak, even back when all this was was a wordless action sequence of a teaser trailer. DiCaprio's fleeing a Native American attack? There's a positively nutty mountain of skulls for some reason? He's crawling out of the dirt and screaming into the camera? Okay. Not, generally speaking, the way into my heart, but I'd bought the director and DP and acting dream team and was feeling good as of last summer when I first heard about the film. And I came out of The Revenant more satisfied than my husband, who also generally liked Birdman. So let me take his critiques as my jumping off points.
The Native Americans "move at the speed of plot." To be honest, this didn't really bother me while I was watching the film, but I recognize that it's slightly contrived when they enter the picture (and leave it) during DiCaprio's tortured trek through the wilderness. The film could also be edited more tightly. I'll grant that as well, but I was in the strange position to be pretty satisfied throughout the whole film: didn't need to use the bathroom, wasn't worried about getting to work on time afterward, wasn't hungry, wasn't in caffeine withdrawl. So for once, I didn't feel distracted or bored. And I was fairly riveted by the adrenaline of the action sequences, the Oscar-worthy performance by DiCaprio, and the beauty of the shots (shot by Emmanuel Lubezki, who also blessedly shot Birdman, Gravity, and Children of Men).
Hubs also didn't enjoy the actual man vs. nature stuff for a film that was ostensibly about man vs. nature. Which, granted, yes, hypothermia does not seem nearly the sword hanging over their heads as you might think, considering it looks like it's the dead cold of winter. But again this didn't bother me that much because I didn't see it 100% as a man vs. nature story. Rather, it's a revenge flick. The relevant comparisons here is not 127 Hours, but Oldboy and Kill Bill. Which might be a dumb thing for me to say, because to be honest I've not seen 127 Hours and Kill Bill. And here I am, recommending The Revenant anyway. It's a strange world. And as usual, I might be full of shit.
8.5/10. Not faultless, but brutal, beautiful, and superbly acted.
Room
I found this to be a wonderful, if heart-wrenching, film. It is impressively and incredibly tense in parts and also so soft and intimate and kind that it brought me back to my own childhood, as an only child, and how lonely it was, how my mother felt like my whole world at times (and I do not mean this in a negative sense either). I felt like I'd forgotten what it was like to be that young, and that was an amazing thing to me, from both a script and acting perspective. Both principals, Brie Larson and the child actor, Jacob Tremblay, deserve all the acting awards. They make the entire movie and I can't fault a single thing about either of their performances. Sign me up for literally anything else they do.
If you needed a primer or recap, Room is about a depressingly Elizabeth Smart sort of situation, in which a girl (Larson) is kidnapped and kept captive in a backyard bunker (the eponymous room). During the girl's seven years of imprisonment, her captor of course rapes her, and she has a son by him, and by the time the story joins up with them, he's five years old. Narratively, the point of view of the film is entirely the little boy's, and because of this that the film seems so resilient, I think, and hopeful. It doesn't linger overlong on the darkest parts of a dark story, even though we're seeing so much more than what he does. And it's also why when he panics, it's visceral. When he grows and trusts, it's the sweetest thing imaginable.
I don't think it's terrible spoilers to say that there is a daring escape (it's in the trailer for the film), but the story actually continues beyond the heart-pounding rescue by quite a bit. A surprising amount, I would (and did) say, but it stays until there's a sense of healing, a sense that mother and son can say goodbye to the place that held them for so long.
9/10. Carried amazingly well by the two principals, well crafted, and poignant. One hell of a movie.
Spotlight
At this point, I've heard this film being called Oscarbait, but I won't lie, along with The Big Short, this film's appearance on the best picture list has boggled me. I compare it very much to And the Band Played On. Which is...fine. It's a big complicated story that takes place over a not insignificant amount of time. The story includes many players whose personalities and parts are necessarily shallow in parts, and the most cinematic pieces of which are...not naturally cinematic, truth be told. And they're fine films, important stories, with noble intentions. Spotlight, being about the team of investigative journalists at the Boston Globe who uncovered how the Catholic church covered up and recirculated pedophile priests, has the importance of Good Journalism at its center, and I sincerely hope that people are inspired to become Good Journalists because of this film the way that Tom Hanks in Bridge of Spies encourages people to become Good Lawyers.
I just also think that they make fairly uncompelling art.
(And the Band Played On was made for TV, and so this felt to me. Not undeserving of recognition but...best picture Oscar?? Boggled, I tell you.)
I like and dislike Spotlight and The Big Short for the exact same reasons: they tell stories that ought to be told and that people ought to know, they have actors I individually like but are playing somewhat mundane real people who don't get a ton of screentime to build depth. But anyway, they're procedurals so intimacy with the characters isn't the chief thing here. And I don't find myself compelled by either film as actual works of art. I don't know what to do with this information (even for my own self) except to say sorry. They're at the bottom of the list for best picture Oscar, but I'd sign on for a miniseries, documentary, or book about either topic. As films though, I'm left wanting.
I've had many conversations with hubs at this point about Spotlight. He keeps falling back on, "It's a very solid procedural," and I keep responding with, "No, Zodiac is a very solid procedural." To which he responds that Zodiac is a superb procedural. (Zodiac also was far prettier than both films put together, and followed mostly one person around, so maybe I just have an issue with some of these things.)
And that's something I've thought about for weeks now, since I've watched this movie -- what my biases are. How difficult it seems to be to make a compelling movie about Good Journalism, when it seems I'm a sucker for movies about Good Lawyers and Good Cops. I don't have it figured out, I can tell you that much.
6.5/10. A solid procedural with an important story and a very good heart at its center. Unfortunately, I just didn't think it made for very compelling art.
And just for the record, I think Carol and 45 Years definitely deserved nominations, and I'd argue Inside Out and Sicario deserve nods as well. God knows though, the Academy's mileage most definitely varies, and so may yours.