Oscars Preview: Best Documentary and Best Animated Feature

Best Animated Feature

I watched one of the movies (Despicable Me 2)and regretted it. Chances are if you saw more than one, you share my remorse.

• The Croods
• Despicable Me 2
• Ernest & Celestine
• Frozen
• The Wind Rises

WILL WIN: Frozen

SHOULD WIN: Anything not called Despicable Me 2.

WORST NOMINATION NOMINATION: Having this category.

With each passing year that Pixar fails to live up to its pedigree, this category becomes less and less justifiable.  Perhaps one of the foreign films is tolerable for adults, or perhaps they are all just kids' movies. Meanwhile, Disney keeps churning out sequels from the lower-range of Pixar's catalogue. It's as though Disney bought Pixar just to make it average, so that Disney could retake the crown of the animation genre. The Academy has obliged, voting for The Croods and two foreign flicks that no one could have possibly seen instead of Monsters University. I don't have the heart to even call it a snub. If we are going to indulge a demographic this way, why is Best BroCom or Best ChickFlick unworthy?

Best Documentary

I watched these so you don't have to. 

• The Act of Killing - Surreal to the point that I openly question if this was staged or scripted. The premise is that a bunch of Indonesian paramilitary thugs make a movie about their former exploits. The documentary is about that movie. Their lack of self-awareness is so ludicrous that, given the sketchy premise, my bullshit geiger counter is registering lethal doses.
• Cutie and the Boxer - A charming if slow sales pitch for an almost famous Japanese/American artist and his wife, a lesser genius but perhaps a greater commercial success. There are moments of blinding insight about the artistic process, most especially a moving archive clip where the struggling artist sobs out his love of life and his defense of his failing career. And we are supposed, at times, to be in on a joke in that he calls himself the genius while her work about his genius appeals more to gallery-goers. The problem is that it feels like we are being sold both of their work through the movie. It's like a high-brow episode of Coco Loves Ice or Duck Dynasty where they're really just marketing a cook book. 
• Dirty Wars - The monument to a journalist and his ego, told against the background of the war on terror.
• The Square - An in-depth but flawed post mortem of the Egyptian revolution. There are two basic problems with the film - one is that it does not spend enough time setting up the fall of Mubarak. There is none of the furious elation of that moment; instead it's the start of the movie, and it's not captured well. But more importantly, there just isn't enough footage. This is one small morality play from one cameraman telling us that the revolution may not be televised but it will be on social media. Thing is, this revolution was televised and the footage was astounding. Making a documentary without the camel charge, the lines of men praying against the water cannons on the bridge into Tahrir, the ominous fireworks of the second revolution...it seems to have missed the epic drama by humanizing it too much.
• 20 Feet From Stardom - Of these five, the one to watch. This is the story of the best back-up singers in the business. They are not back-up singers, they are the stars you should have heard of. They are the voices who owned Jagger in "Gimme Shelter" and who parried with Joe Cocker in "With a Little Help From My Friends." And all of the stars, or those who didn't fry their brains with drugs, are willing to go on camera and say, "You should know these ladies as well as you know me." 

WILL WIN: The Act of Killing

SHOULD WIN: The Gatekeepers

BIGGEST SNUB: Blackfish

WORST NOMINATION: Dirty Wars

Obviously my favorite of the nominees was 20 Feet From Stardom. But last year was a much stronger year for documentaries and The Gatekeepers was all but unavailable for watching prior to the Oscars. It is an astonishing watch and far more nuanced and believable than The Act of Killing.