Academy Awards Preview: Big Awards, Biggest Snub, Worst Nomination, and my Top 10

Harvey Weinstein Presents the Best Picture:

• American Sniper – As we all shuffled out of this strong but unspectacular film, no one in the audience could say anything. It was my most memorable audience watching experience of the year, despite the breathless despair with which the woman next to me gasped at every potential moment of violence. There’s something interesting happening in the cinematic lore springing up around Iraq, Afghanistan, and the war on terror. Vietnam gave us a litany of brilliant anti-war films that were critical and financial successes. Those same attempts on these fights have failed badly. Instead, we have now three core films to discuss: The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty, and American Sniper. They share many of the same attributes: an earnest regard for soldiering and personal sacrifice, the lead's personal addiction or obsession with the conflict that is out of place on the homefront, and a savage moral war of peace over the rightness of the war and involvement in it that ends up becoming background noise. It has taken a few years, but I think Hollywood is on to something.
• Birdman – Birdman-haters dismiss this film’s critical success as so much film-industry navel gazing. I think that’s unfair, there’s a lot going on underneath this movie’s hood: even if it’s staring at a bellybutton, there’s a lot in there. Of the two main contenders, it’s technically flawless, well-acted, smart, funny, and a good watch. It lends itself to further analysis.
• Boyhood – The other prime contender is none of those things. Boyhood has very little to say and says it very little-ly. It sets itself up as an archetype for being raised right now…if it captures something in that sense, it is the banality of the American childhood. The success of Big Hero 6 can tell you much the same. Much like Avatar’s 2D plot crumbles in a world with 3D, Boyhood has nothing to recommend it when watched over 2 hours rather than ten years.  
• The Grand Budapest Hotel – Two hours of smile on my face.
• The Imitation Game – Brilliantly conceived and, if it ended 2 scenes earlier, a worthy contender for winning outright. Absent the animus that war movies and race engenders, it’s gone unnoticed that the history here is often weak for the sake of drama. But again, movies are fiction and the debate is boring. No one cares if Henry V is good history. What the movie succeeds at is raising the AI question that other, bigger flops keep whiffing on by going back to its origin and then drawing out a parallel story about a man who is in some ways more computer than man and in other ways more human than the people around him.
• Selma – Let’s dispense with this LBJ nonsense – yes it’s Oprah level politics, but as far as Hollywood history goes, it’s not bad. As eager as I was to lecture about the Director’s bizarre repudiation of objective historical truth, this is a misdemeanor at worst. The problem with the LBJ sections isn’t their historical inaccuracy, it’s that they are written and shot horribly. The director is so uninterested in them that they probably should have been cut entirely in favor of keeping the drama in Alabama. The politics of SNCC are better drawn than those in DC. In fact, I would have preferred that there was less historical accuracy; Dr. King’s marital faults should be left out as well – they add nothing to the movie narratively or symbolically. This choice is symptomatic of where Selma misses: it feels as though it’s trying to make too many movies: one about Dr. King’s whole life, one about civil rights politics in Washington, and one about this march. The first two movies aren’t good. The last one is terrific. If Selma had been only used to frame Dr. King at a certain point in his life, it would have soared. The murders that touch events off are brilliantly staged to shock. The confrontation on the bridge is the year’s most moving scene. The strength of the lead’s performance is how he doesn’t even try to sound like Dr. King for much of the movie; it’s as though he’s literally finding his voice. However, there are flaws. The King family has sold the film rights (to Steven Spielberg) to Dr. King’s speeches, which it has no right, moral or legal, to do – Dr. King’s words belong to all of us. The absence is deafening; we spend the movie longing for more of Dr. King, and maybe a little Malcolm too. Indeed, Denzel Washington’s searing Malcolm so overshadows this performance that we both wonder if Mr. X is the more compelling historical figure and know that Mr. Washington is the better actor. The Dr. King we are given does not capture the public magnetism that made him so transfixing; he doesn’t come across as someone we must hear. Worst of all, the obsession with celebrity, most notably Oprah’s desperate part, distracts from what should be Dr. King’s megawattage. The question has been rightly posed – can you make a bad holocaust movie? The same would go for civil rights, only the dismal Mandela and The Butler already answered in the unfortunate affirmative. This is not a bad civil rights movie. But we still wait for a defining MLK bio. Which apparently Stephen Spielberg owns the rights to.
• The Theory of Everything – Suffers from the same problem of every biopic – it flits rapidly between life plot points and never stops to get to know any of them.
• Whiplash – A self-contained gem that never wastes a second of screentime. It has far more interesting things to say about parenthood than Boyhood, far more insightful things to say about genius than the movie about the handicapped genius, and at least as much to say about art as Birdman. Replete with unexpected virtues. 

SNUBS: Fury, Gone Girl, Nightcrawler

WILL WIN: Boyhood

SHOULD WIN: The Grand Budapest Hotel. There’s deeper commentary in Birdman or Whiplash but this is the movie that I most enjoyed watching and will most enjoy rewatching someday.

WORST NOMINATION: Boyhood, The Theory of Everything

Daniel Day Lewis Award for Best Actor

• Steve Carell – Foxcatcher – The kind of nod that says, “This is as far as this goes. We take you seriously. Please go back to comedy.”
• Bradley Cooper – American Sniper – Making a strong push to be actor of the decade
• Benedict Cumberbatch – The Imitation Game – My personal favorite of the five
• Michael Keaton – Birdman – Welcome back. Why were you gone?
• Eddie Redmayne – The Theory of Everything. Rehashing the fete of My Left Foot with the smarts of A Beautiful Mind makes him the favorite. Besides, he’s so very British.

BIGGEST SNUBS: Ralph Fiennes making The Grand Budapest Hotel surreal tragic fun, Jake Gyllenhaal making Nightcrawler a different kind of surreal tragic fun, and Jude Law transitioning from full-haired heartthrob to openly-balding British acting royalty in Dom Hemingway.

WILL WIN: Michael Keaton

SHOULD WIN: Jude Law. If you strip away all of the physical transitions, the politics, the questions of whether a caricature is acting or whether a script makes a great role…if you just ask who did the most with what he was given, Jude Law had the best performance of the year. So the movie is not good. And so I might be sympathetic to one of my dopplegangers. This was a new and daring role for him, way outside anything he's done to date, and he was terrific in it.

Cate Blanchett Award for Best Actress

• Marion Cotillard – Two Days, One Night – One of the Academy’s more bizarre infatuations. They keep telling us that, if we won’t think of her as a star, then she must be a genius. She is neither.
• Felicity Jones – The Theory of Everything – Token British nomination, totally undeserving.
• Julianne Moore – Still Alice – A movie so obsessed with its performance that it never has a chance to be anything more than Julianne Moore. Most of the other characters are largely undeveloped or, in a worse choice, played by Kristen Stewart. Also, some fairly egregious American Alzheimer’s Association product placement for a serious movie.
• Rosamund Pike – Gone Girl – Ms. Pike has long been unjustly ignored as just another Bond girl too hot to be relatable in lead roles. Finally she gets a break…and now she may forever be Amazing Amy. It’s that kind of role and she’s terrific in it. Hopefully it doesn't kill her career all over again.
• Reese Witherspoon – Wild – Walden, brought to you be REI & Snapple. Ms. Witherspoon has astutely noticed, probably through her agent, that no one in Hollywood is making strong female lead movies, so she decided to make her own: Wild and Gone Girl. David Fincher was able to convince her not to ruin the latter by forcing her everygirl innocence on the conniving and intelligent Amy, a decision which has led to two award nominations that would not have happened otherwise. So I don’t want to be cruel – she’s shown pluck, humility, and some skill. But for a passion project, this movie has an astonishing amount of unrepentant marketing. Entire scenes exist only to extoll the virtues of the film’s sponsors. The subtext about Walden was that Thoreau was never far from safety and civilization - it was always more a cry to his neighbors than a cry to the heavens. So here, what's indie and Wild is never too far from a fresh pair of boots and a loving corporate embrace.

BIGGEST SNUB: Rebecca Hall - Transcendence – Johnny Depp turned in such a dud performance that he must hate not only the Director and artificial intelligence, but the whole concept of transcendence as well (Remember, he's owned by Disney, not REI). Ms. Hall took the title to heart and deserves to be a name that people know.

Sienna Miller – American Sniper – I don’t know whether to put her in actress or supporting actress, but she was a great addition to this movie and she deserves the role in Hollywood that Ms. Cotillard is getting instead.

WILL WIN: Julianne Moore

SHOULD WIN: Rosamund Pike

WORST NOMINATION: Felicity Jones, Marion Cotillard

Biggest Snub

• Damien Chazelle – Best Director - Whiplash
• Gone Girl – Best Picture
• Eva Green – The 300 2 - Best Supporting Actress
• Shia LaBeouf – Fury – Best Supporting Actor
• The Lego Movie – Best Animated Feature

WINNER: The Lego Movie. The category was already a questionable hand-wave that the Academy does not know how to deal with animation in the context of awards. And that it needs to reach out to kids. Why heap further scorn on it by deliberately snubbing the clear winner?

Worst Nomination Nomination

• Boyhood – Best Picture
• Felicity Jones – Best Supporting Actress - The Theory of Everything
• Richard Linklater – Best Original Screenplay - Boyhood
• Meryl Streep – Best Supporting Actress -  Into the Woods
• The Theory of Everything – Best Picture

WINNER: Richard Linklater – Best Original Screenplay - Boyhood. He had over 10 years to write a hymn to boyhood and it’s still mostly ad-libbed, poorly. It’s an open question whether that even qualifies for nomination. 

MY TOP 10

1. Grand Budapest Hotel
2. Gone Girl
3. Whiplash
4. The Interview
5. Birdman
6. 22 Jump Street
7. Guardians of the Galaxy
8. The Imitation Game
9. Edge of Tomorrow
10. Fury

HONORABLE MENTIONS: American Sniper, The Hobbit 3, The Judge, Lego Movie, Nightcrawler

Oscars: Best Supporting Actors, Best Director

Phillip Seymour Hoffman Best Supporting Actor

• Robert Duvall – The Judge – He seems to keep getting these “surely this is his last role” nominations, only to come back for more.
• Ethan Hawke – Boyhood – Other than Linklater’s directing, perhaps the most justifiable nomination from this weak movie. I haven’t liked Hawke since Dead Poet’s Society but he carries this movie when everything else, from the pace to Patricia Arquette's boobs, was sagging.
• Edward Norton – Birdman – Putting in his claim as heir to Hoffman’s titular ownership of this category. His role is to be the actor who CAN act, which is a lot to act up to. He does.
• Mark Ruffalo – Foxcatcher – Like Hawke, Ruffalo is not someone I usually enjoy. But also like Hawke, he’s pretty game for his part. That said, Tatum has a bigger role, has no chance as Best Actor given that this was Steve Carrell’s movie, is actually better than both Ruffalo and Carrell...but has no chance because he’s Channing Tatum.
• J.K. Simmons – Whiplash – One of those instances where it’s hard to distinguish the role from the script, as well as from the question of whether Simmons is even acting or just being himself. Terrific obviously but great acting?

WILL WIN: J.K. Simmons

SHOULD WIN: Edward Norton

SNUBS: Ryan Gage i.e. the uproariously abominable-for-laughs Alfrid in The Hobbit 3, Shia LeBeouf – Fury, Channing Tatum – The Foxcatcher

Both Simmons and Norton are deserving. I picked Norton just to be contrary. Speaking of just-to-be-contrary,  a word in favor of Mr. LeBeouf. Yes, his anti-Hollywood antics make him persona some grata for the moment: the bag on the head, the anti-celebrity message, the possibly pretending to be raped. It’s all a bit desperate to be seen as disdaining to be seen. He’s like my girlfriend’s dog – if you don’t give him positive attention, he’ll do something just a little bit bad to get negative attention. But on the screen, he put up one of the year’s best performances as the first religious guy in war movie history since Sergeant York who doesn’t go crazy. As a performance, fully worthy. Besides, don't you want to see what he’d do?  My girlfriend’s dog just ate a used tampon to get attention. I wouldn't put it past Mr. LeBeouf to do the same.

Meryl Streep Best Supporting Actress Award

• Patricia Arquette – Boyhood – Nominated for reminding lecherous Academy voters how big her tits used to be. Their slow deterioration over the course of Boyhood is like a decades-long timelapse of a melting snowman, a comment on human fragility, and the deepest thought to ponder in Linklater’s overrated gimmick film.
• Laura Dern – Wild  - A surprisingly memorable performance in a forgettable film.
• Keira Knightley – The Imitation Game – Meekly present in a contender.
• Emma Stone – Birdman – Solidly present in a contender
• Meryl Streep – Into the Woods – As if to underscore the loss of her naming rights to best actress to Cate Blanchett last year, Ms. Streep’s annual token nomination is relegated to Best Supporting Actress.
• WORST NOMINATION:  Patricia Arquette, Keira Knightley, Meryl Streep.
• SNUBS: Eileen Atkins - Magic in the Moonlight, Marielle Enos – Sabotage, Eva Green – The 300 2.

WILL WIN: Patricia Arquette

SHOULD WIN: Eva Green. (Of those nominated, I’d prefer Laura Dern).

Most of these nominations are straight chalk – throwing in famous names from good movies without consideration of the performance. It’s another testament to Hollywood’s inherent sexism that so many of these nominations are off-base: the favorite’s best work was in her bra, Keira Knightley is present mostly for being the token beloved-English actor/actress nominee, and voting Meryl Streep in January is more automatic for Tinseltown royalty than voting Democrat come November. The message is: you’re just the dame. Pity. 

With that in mind, I scoured the movies I watched for the best actual performances and came up with a few much better performances with almost no hope of being recognized. Eileen Atkins would make a much more charming beloved-English actress nominee, especially since Judy Dench took the year off. Marielle Enos had a terrific time as the secret bad girl in Arnold’s Sabotage (I would say spoiler-alert but you will never see Sabotage. Call it spoiler awareness). But hands down the performance of the year was Eva Green making The 300 2 her personal playground, perhaps the hammiest, most remarkable performance yet committed to film by someone not named Kevin Spacey. To borrow from that old Texas put-down,“he’s all hat,” Ms. Arquette’s performance was all bra, Ms. Green’s all tit. Figuratively as well as literally.

Best Director

• Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu – Birdman
• Richard Linklater - Boyhood
• Bennett Miller - Foxcatcher
• Wes Anderson - The Grand Budapest Hotel
• Morten Tyldum - The Imitation Game

SNUBS: Damien Chazelle – Whiplash, Ava DuVernay – Selma, David Fincher – Gone Girl,

WORST NOMINATION: None.

WILL WIN: Inarritu

SHOULD WIN: Inarritu

A category dependent on choices. I already covered Tyldum’s poor choice to stick to the script and end The Imitation Game, a movie in minor key, on an off-key major adagio. Linklater deserves credit for choosing a gimmick a decade ago and managing to see it through; most of the art must have taken place off-screen in forcing everyone to keep showing up. Miller’s biggest choice was to leave the sexual misconduct aspect of his story almost entirely off-screen, a tension of guessing which makes his movie much better than it otherwise would be. Anderson would stand a better chance if the studio hadn’t released his movie in the post-Oscar deadzone nearly a year ago – it’s a testament to how fun it is that everyone remembered it a year later. That leaves the favorite and deserving winner - Inarritu’s choice to gin up the whole film as though it was a single shot gives Birdman a kinetic energy that has its actors and ideas slamming into each other, one after another, like a two-person game of billiards played concurrently. Not the best film of the year, but certainly the best direction.

Oscars Preview: The Now-Annual Embarrassment Categories

Animated Feature Film

• Big Hero 6
• The Boxtrolls
• How to Train Your Dragon 2
• Song of the Sea
• The Tale of the Princess Kaguya

SNUBS: The Lego Movie

WILL WIN: How to Train Your Dragon 2

SHOULD WIN: The Lego Movie

The category that Pixar built remains an albatross outflown only by the disgrace that the Documentary Feature category has become. It seems an annual tradition now that the Academy simply cannot nominate the clear winner.

Documentary Propaganda & Advertising Feature

• CitizenFour
• Finding Vivian Maier
• Last Days in Vietnam
• The Salt of the Earth
• Virunga

SNUBS: Red Army, Tim’s Vermeer, Life Itself, An Open Secret

WILL WIN: Citizen Four

SHOULD WIN: No one.

The four films I listed as snubs are all traditional documentaries, i.e. films that document. The five films that the academy nominated document the outsized ego of the filmmakers and the conformism of the Academy’s politics. All are propaganda at best and advertisements at worst. Or perhaps advertisements at best and propaganda at worst. It’s hard to determine which is a greater offense – the shopping network sales pitch in Finding Vivian Maier or the Comintern propaganda tactics of the rest. They all approximate the truth in equally inaccurate measure. The Academy has lost all semblance of what a documentary is or should be in its mania for self-congratulation over its political passions. Perhaps most problematic, in each of these tropes, the documentarian(s) go(es) out of their way to market themselves as bit, even central, players in the reality they concoct and the merchandise they’re hocking. What a foul irony that the core tool set of socialist documentarians is uninhibited self-promotion and unbridled materialism.

Oscars Preview: The Art Awards I Care About

Writing – Original Screenplay

• Birdman – Alejandro Inarritu et al
• Boyhood – Richard Linklater
• Foxcatcher – E. Max Frye and Dan Futterman
• The Grand Budapest Hotel – Wes Anderson
• Nightcrawler – Dan Gilroy

WILL WIN: The Grand Budapest Hotel

SHOULD WIN: The Grand Budapest Hotel

WORST NOMINATION NOMINEE: Boyhood

Wes Anderson irrepressible creativity lifetime achievement award

Writing – Adapted Screenplay

• Jason Hall - American Sniper
• Graham Moore - The Imitation Game
• Paul Thomas Anderson - Inherent Vice
• Anthony McCarten - The Theory of Everything
• Damien Chazelle – Whiplash

WILL WIN: The Imitation Game

SHOULD WIN: Whiplash

The problem with the otherwise brilliant Imitation Game script is that it does not know how to end its story. The jail cell moment would have been perfect - it's emotive, it's complex, it pulls everything together. Instead, we get a post-script about a broken Alan Turing that is somehow supposed to feel upbeat because it retreads better parts of the script. I blame Harvey Weinstein -  he knows mediocrity when he sees it but he can't stomach an unhappy ending. Chop the ending and this is an easy pick. But where The Imitation Game fails with too many words, Whiplash’s stirring, nearly wordless ending succeeds.

Music – Best Song

• Everything is Awesome – The Lego Movie - Shawn Patterson 
• Glory – Selma – John Stephens and Lonnie Lynn
• Grateful – Beyond the Lights – Diane Warren
• I’m Not Gonna Miss You – Glen Campbell…I’ll Be Me - Glen Campbell
• Lost Stars – Begin Again - Adam Levine 

WILL WIN: Glory

SHOULD WIN: Big Eyes by Lana del Rey in Big Eyes

BIGGEST SNUB: Big Eyes, The Last Goodbye from The Hobbit 3.

Glory would be fine if it wasn’t the worst song on the soundtrack, (if the only original release). Trying to impose events in Ferguson as a proxy to events in the Jim Crow South only demonstrates how much less the former matters. Similarly, slating John Legend + rap solo into an album of 60’s spiritual classics only underscores that modern music matters less. At least on race we’ve made progress – in music we’ve regressed. So my vote goes for serial snubbee Lana Del Ray, who appears to have committed whatever crime Leonardo DiCaprio did against Oscars voters that bans him for life from consideration. My best guess is ethnic cleansing…apparently even rampant sexual abuse is palatable. 

Music – Best Score

• Alexandre Desplat - Grand Budapest Hotel
• Alexandre Desplat - The Imitation Game
• Hans Zimmer – Interstellar
• Gary Yershon – Mr. Turner
• Johann Johansson – The Theory of Everything

WILL WIN: Alexandre Desplat - The Imitation Game.

SHOULD WIN: Alexandre Desplat - The Grand Budapest Hotel.

However, where great music is being written is still at the movies, it’s just the score, not the solos. The Imitation Game is favored to win but I prefer another Wes Anderson irrepressible creativity lifetime achievement award here for his many collaborations with Mr. Desplat, all of them joyful. Perhaps Mr. Desplat can take to the award podium to excoriate his rival – himself.

The Art Category I've Given Up On

Best visual effects. Every movie has them and they're all incredible. Only a master craftsman can tell the difference. 

Cinematography

• Birdman
• The Grand Budapest Hotel
• Ida
• Mr. Turner
• Unbroken

WILL WIN: Birdman

SHOULD WIN: Ida

Ida is a slideshow posing as a film about a Polish nun. It is exceptionally successful at two things: 1 – cinematography and 2 – accurately portraying the boredom of being a Polish nun. Also, I'm done handing out Wes Anderson lifetime achievement in irrepressible creativity awards. Have to give him something to aspire to. 

Oscars Preview: Modest Achievement Awards

Best Comic Book Movie

• Captain America Hates America – Afraid to have Captain America be, you know, patriotic, and risk foreign bank and domestic reviews, Marvel did the least courageous thing it could do: make a “courageous” movie where the foe is domestic. Reviewers obligingly swooned, always hip to criticisms of a straw man majority that hasn’t existed since Captain America was first fashioned. Worst of all, taking the coward’s route meant abusing the worst nonsense plot in the Hollywood canon – “they sent their best agent to do the job no one else could do…now they have to kill him.” Why not send the second best agent and then have the best agent kill him? Why not just not betray your best agent in the first place? Mainstream movies embrace absurdist anti-American conspiracy when they don’t have the courage to let their audience decide. That, or take on someone who will fight back; America, unlike North Korea, doesn’t hack back or, like China, restrict market access. Perhaps we should. Pitching conspiracist tripe to impressionable children is worse than showing a few vaginas and the film ratings board should start giving it the NC-17 rating it deserves.
• Edge of Tomorrow – The rare high-concept sci-fi that works.
• Guardians of the Galaxy – Marvel loves the stories you don't know.
• Spiderman 2 2 – …And hates it’s licensing deal with Columbia Pictures ruining the property you do know.
• X-Men: Days of Future Past – I'm confused still - is Richard Nixon the good guy? As a comic book this was fun but as a voice for ideas it was just weird.  

WINNER: Edge of Tomorrow. OK, fine, Guardians of the Galaxy. Because Chris Pratt. 

Most Appropriate Career Disaster

Cameron Diaz – Annie, The Other Woman, Sex Tape. When last we saw Ms. Diaz, she was humping a car windshield. This year, she managed to make Kate Upton seem like a viable actress.

Cable-Worthy Comedy of the Year

• The Interview – I still can't believe that Dennis Rodman wasn't involved.
• Let’s Be Cops – The script is the perfect framework for improv greatness, letdown by casting two guys who just aren’t that funny.
• Neighbors
• Pride – The annual charming British comedy with Bill Nighy, this has a gay protest group joining the anti-Thatcher mining strike. Even if it doesn’t care enough about the miners, it’s still charmingly British. Or Welsh rather. Charmingly Welsh...auto-correct keeps trying to correct that to "Grittily Welsh" because nothing Welsh is charming. 
• Ride Along – Kevin Hart is successfully less annoying than Chris Tucker.

WINNER: The Interview. Yes it’s funny. More than that, let’s hope this leads to more direct-release to digital. One overrated North Korean mammal and five craven movie theater CEO’s shouldn’t be allowed to tell us what to watch. The internet is our bulwark; low-brow comedy wants to be free.

Tolerable RomCom of the Year

Magic in the Moonlight – One of the downsides of Woody Allen forcing himself to grind out movie after movie is that he rarely pauses on a moment of inspiration to give us a full two hours of genius. The last twenty minutes of this movie are brilliant and the solid set-up just needs some touching up. There are two critical flaws that prevent this from becoming a classic: the magic and the moonlight. What’s wrong with the magic is that the talented Emma Stone cannot do Jazz Age period work. She is firmly of the here-and-now and without the magic in his paramour, Colin Firth seems oddly overinspired. The problem with the moonlight is that the big love scene at the observatory is less a Starry Night to love and more blurry from a lack of flash.

Movies I Wanted to Like More Than I Did

• A Most Violent Year – It shocks and allures with its lack of violence. And then disappoints with a Mystic River-level bad denouement. This movie needed the kind of Long Good Friday unhappy ending that satisfies.
• America: Imagine a World Without Her –If the movie had stuck to its premise and just elaborated on its counter-revisionist points, it would have been a nice entry in the diatribe-cum-documentary field. But the last 20-30 minutes are a political dead zone filmed with the subtlety of the daisy commercial.
• Big Hero 6 – Sanfransokyo is the pinnacle of focus-group-tested, CEO-approved art that inspires a generation of children to grow egg-shell souls.
• Dawn of the Planet of the Apes – Too bland in its competence to merit comment.
• Godzilla – Inexplicably they kill the good actors and keep the cypher. An intellectual property in need of The Rock’s loving care.
• Inherent Vice - The Big Lebowski without the charm
• Nightcrawler – Has the artful misery of Raging Bull that makes you wonder, “Who wants to make these movies?”
• St. Vincent - Can we convince ourselves that Bill Murray is secretly a good person? In a movie maybe. In real life, no. Because, in real life, Bill Murray is insufferable. To quote Richard Dreyfuss, in response to the question ‘What about What About Bob?’ “It’s a testament to how funny Bill Murray is that I can still see him on TV and laugh having worked with him.” But instead he keeps making semi-serious films. Perhaps he’s learned from Jim Carrey that you can’t be funny forever. Also, I’d ask what Naomi Watts is doing here but Harvey Weinstein is the producer. If he wants you to be a Russian hooker, you’re not allowed to argue.

Movies I Liked More Than I Should Have

• About Last Night
• The Judge
• Locke
• Robo-Cop

Oscars Preview Day 3: Dubious Achievements Abound

Dubious Achievement Awards: Genre

Most Ridiculous Moment

• 300 2 – Eva Green gets naked and stays naked and sort of rapes the hero general pre-battle
• Bears – When uncle bears attack the cubs, trying to kill them in the middle of a children’s movie
• Belle – A Bronte-esque period drama full of actors who can’t and won’t do English accents…and Marxists before there was a Marx…and it’s based on a painting.
• Draft Day – The most implausible trade in NFL draft history. Even in fiction, the Cleveland Browns are a factory of sadness.
• Heaven Is for Real – Greg Kinnear has a crisis of faith…because of a miracle?
• The Judge – When we find out Robert Downey Jr. may have gone to 2^nd base with his daughter

WINNER: Bears. Imagine if Bambi had killed mommy deerest. In the words of the only sadistic child who might have enjoyed watching a grown pair of bears try to commit double cub-icide, “Then Bambi could do whatever he wants.” 

Stallone – Make It Stop! Award for Least Necessary Sequel, Non-Animated

• Begin Again - i.e. Once 2? Twice? Three Times a Lady to follow. 
• The Expendables 3 – It would be better if someone in this series ever was actually expendable. Game of Thrones has made a legend off of killing characters. You have an endless supply of washed up action stars lapping up on the shores of believability every year. Expend some.
• Into the Storm –Twister 2. Somehow manages to make Twister, the movie whose dialogue consisted almost entirely of “Look out!”, seem sophisticated.
• Sharknado 2 – It’s just good enough to no longer be bad enough. Self-stimulative to the point of running out of cum.
• Sin City: A Dame to Kill For – Bad comic book writing posing as noire.

WINNER: Begin Again. In an upset…because no one in The Expendables ever loses. The Voice tries to do Once. It doesn’t work. If you make a movie about music, you have to love music. This movie might love music…which is just the kind of McCartney-balls timidity that makes this a bad era for popular music. Worse, if this movie does love music, it loves bad music. It pits Keira Knightley’s emo-folk music against Adam Levine’s pop and then purports to let us think that the folk music is purer. Only whoever wrote the music sucked and the corporate pop version, in Mr. Levine’s vocal chords, is better. So, perhaps this is a Levine-vehicle, his big middle finger to everyone who says he’s making corporate drivel: see, it’s better than “real” music. If all we’ve got is sterile pop, at least do it well. And to underscore the point…as contractually obligated, an empty T-Pain cameo. I guess Mr. Levine is all we’ve got for the moment. Where have you gone John Lennon? Our nation turns its lonely ears to you. 

Special Achievement in Worst Idea for a Movie

When the Game Stands Tall – Are you the sort of obnoxious frontrunner who just bought a Patriots hat from Lidz? Ever felt bad for the team that never loses? Then we have the prohibitive favorite underdog story for you!

Michael Bay’s Best/Worst Laughably Bad Movie

• Hercules – Annual The Rock entry. 
• Horns – Harry Potter and the Role Way Outside His Range. 
• I, Frankenstein – How to breathe life into this story? Remake every Goth film ever: choral music, dark pastels, cathedrals, hard rock finale…and ridiculous Ferenghi demon makeup? Gorilla-suit zombie army? Then they take all of that and try to play it straight.
• Non-Stop – Honorable mention for special achievement in spontaneous hatred of America. Why don’t more thrillers go with the Clue plural endings – all of which are bad, but at least it puts the emphasis on a solid set-up?
• Pompeii – Instead of being about a volcano, it’s about freeing slaves, because every movie that doesn’t know what to be about has to be about freedom. You can see careers being smothered in the ash.
• Sabotage - Arnold goes all Cowboy Commando at the end, takes a shot, smokes a cigar, and dies. In other words, a strong contender.
• Transformers 4 – Marky Mark, copious unnecessary hotties, and dinosaur robot battles. Two notes: 1) not enough dinosaur robots. 2) Couldn’t the main hottie be 18? You’re making us all a little uncomfortable.
• Winter’s Tale – A plot so meandering I wondered if the writer had Alzheimer’s. One only wishes we could put this on one of those Eskimo ice floats and let it die out at sea.

BEST: Transformers 4. When it comes to blowing up, no director is his equal.

WORST: Pompeii.

Special Achievement in Possible Cult Classic Because It’s So Bad

Ping Pong Summer – I have a special place in my heart for Ocean City, it's the closest thing to bodysurfing I have on this coast. Susan Sarandon must as well, because she appears to have stumbled out of Seacrets drunk onto the set of the worst movie ever. In other words, I loved it.

Adam Sandler Award for Shockingly Unfunny Comedy

• Blended – Not content to ruin our remaining respect for him, Adam Sandler is now reprising his good movies and making them worse.
• Dumb and Dumber To – Funnier than Dumb and Dumberer.
• Machete Kills - …the joke.
• Tammy – Melissa McCarthy is barreling through her prime and heading straight for dreadful.

WINNER: Tammy. Mr. Sandler, you are on notice. 

Best Idea Poorly Executed

• Big Eyes – A great cast and an interesting topic with a built-in, can’t miss finale…that is completely ruined by giving away the secret from the start. This is like making a mystery film and then tracking the perpetrator instead of the detective.
• Neighbors – Perfect set-up, perfect cast. Should have been funnier than just funny.
• The Skeleton Twins – Put two funny people in a movie and then make it miserable. The most eminently hateful movie of the year.
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – Michael Bay, terrific villain, one great action sequence, Will Arnett being funny, Megan Fox totally miscast as an irrepressible ‘journalist’…there was so much promise. And still, after 3 ninja turtle movies, they make Rafael the star. Rafael’s the worst. Ask any 30-something who his favorite turtle was, no one EVER says Rafael. 
• This Is Where I Leave You – So much talent doing so little. Disappointing even in the scope of the disappointment. A minor flop.

WINNER: Big Eyes.

Special Achievement in Retread Novelty Concept:

Million Dollar Arm – Once you’ve created the fake event, make a fake movie about the fake event. Unsurprisingly, Disney was involved.

Most Inexplicably Well-Reviewed Film

• John Wick – Keanu has one of the great boom-or-bust careers in Hollywood – for every Johnny Mnemonic, there’s an Excellent Adventure. For every Walk in the Clouds, there’s Point Break. Perhaps we just don’t know what to do when he’s in something average?
• Snowpiercer – An overlong high-concept sci-fi pic with an over-the-top ending and uneven tone.

WINNER: Snowpiercer. Of course, there is an explanation. Hollywood Kingpin Harvey Weinstein had a Korean director work this property, then demanded that he edit it to reasonable length, because only good movies get to be long. The director refused, and Weinstein killed the distribution and marketing as a result. An online campaign of fanboys responded with the usual FREE WHOMEVER campaign. The lesson here is that Weinstein may not be a patron of the arts, but he does know something about movies. This wasn’t good. All of the spirit of taking on the man that made everyone want to like this movie cannot change the fact that the man is often right.  

Why Everyone’s Favorite Movie Sucked: The Fault in Our Stars

The Fault in Our Stars – Everyone loved the fullhearted lovestory of two terminally ill teens. Except me. Overwrought, overwritten, saccharine, it steals liberally from the much better 50/50 and Juno and adds hefty doses of human cruelty to the genetically-hexed leads. The lead actress is terrible at everything but crying. The implausible Amsterdam trip is foisted on the movie to score a cheap link up to Anne Frank…because, just in case eternal love and cancer weren’t enough, we’re throwing in the Holocaust at half price. That's supposed to cheer us up after Willem Dafoe crushes their dreams as their favorite alcoholic author turned insufferable dick. All that would be bad enough, but the worst part? With all the misery of child killing Nazis, brutish role models, and certain death hanging over the plot, the savagely cruel lead waits an act plus to say, “I love you too.” Just what this crushing misery needed: false rejection!

Phantom Menace Award for Colossal Disappointment

Noah

Exodus

Transcendence

Interstellar

WINNER: Interstellar. The problem with any sci-fi pic is that the payoff is always underwhelming. When you live in a multiuniverse of infinite possibility, nothing is as disappointing as having to commit to one possible outcome. If it has one saving grace, at least there’s no Mass Effect star child lecture at the end. Nothing is worse than the star child.

Prefontaine Award for Annual Bizarre Duplication of Subject Matter: Exodus and Noah

With a lot of money getting made by mediocre New Testament biblical pics aimed at a religious audience, Hollywood reacts in a way so stereotypical it feels offensive to type-it out: by veering toward the Torah, and then banishing the religious significance in favor of a new age “what might actually have happened.”

Darren Aronofsky took on the challenge of the Noah story, trying to twist it into an environmentalist paean. Which would have been fine if not for the Claymation rockmonsters and extinct species on-a-stick moments. Of course, the Noah story is especially hard because not much happens, and then it ends with the prophet getting drunk and naked. How do we get there? By cutting and pasting the story of Abraham into the middle!

So Noah was bad, but at least it was creative about being bad. Exodus was just typically bad. Ridley Scott has completely given up. And yes, God is the star child.

Year in Movies Review Part 2: The Year in Bad Casting

Nicholas Cage Award for Most Egregious Sell-Out

• Kevin Costner – (Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, 3 Days to Kill, Draft Day, Black or White) – This is one of those “he must really need money” lineups that makes you worry he did something worse than blow it all on coke. The genius of bankruptcy is that you can at least start from zero. How much could he have possibly owed? Did he short-sell Apple stock? Invest in a Saudi lumber factory? Try to solve the Gulf Oil Spill? OHHHHHHHHHHH...right. That.
• Angelina Jolie – Maleficent – The set-up is genius – Angelina plays the evil queen. It’s the role she was born for. And then she spends none of the movie being evil.
• Michael B. Jordan – That Awkward Moment – this movie has a lot of awkward moments. For example, when Zac Efron tries to have a feeling – his heart is the little engine that just quite couldn’t. Or when it dawns on the 3rd wheel friend that he's a poor man's Steve Guttenberg. But most of the awkward moments come when serious African American actor Michael B. Jordan tries to pretend he hangs out with these people socially. 
• Jennifer Lawrence – The Hunger Games Part 3a. Contractual obligation is no excuse when you’re a star.
• Legos – The Lego Movie – The  movie is good. Lego deftly positions itself as the corporation against corporations, which allows reviewers to embrace a genuinely good movie despite its rapacious marketing ploy. Given how dominant product placement has become in funding movies, we should at least credit legos for being honest. So is this even a sell-out? Of course it is. To do it, Lego sold out its biggest fans – those guys, generally engineers, who really do love complete lego sets and immaculately constructed lego temples. In order to get the reviews it needed, Lego had to tell them, “You’re doing it wrong.” I wasn’t a Lego kid, but I have to ask the question: are they? Isn’t there beauty in perfection just as well? Lego has embraced the conformity of non-conformism. This was shrewd in selling its movie but I question the wisdom of the business plan that tells your best customers to stop.

WINNER: Jennifer Lawrence. Each individual cash grab seems modest. By its nature, The Hunger Games is a tawdry teen reader cash shamwow. It helped launch Ms. Lawrence from rare bloom to pre-packed corsage and for that we’re thankful…thus far. Splitting up the finale has become a fashionable way to make more money, and when you divide something that’s less than one by two, you’re bound to come up with a bare fraction of a movie. The result is a film so devoid of action or consequence that we have to point the finger at its star. The producers will still make their money on the real finale; it’s too late for the audience to bow out. The only one diminished here is Ms. Lawrence; left to founder with no action, no script, and no consequence…for the first time, she’s just not any good. We are told she is starting a revolution, but following the script of the first two movies, a revolution is sold to us as a youtube channel and a makeover. They've turned Catniss into a poser.

Helen Mirren Award for Least Believable Female Action Hero

Given annually to the waifish starlet whose punch inexplicably lands harder than a Strella missile

• Emily Blunt – Edge of Tomorrow – This is a shaky nomination because she kind of pulls it off by bulking up and donning a giant machine fighting suit. Thanks for hitting the gym hard!
• Eva Green – 300 2 – Another shaky nomination because her primary fighting skill is gratuitous nudity, and oh what a skill it is. Somewhat believable.
• Scarlett Johanssen – Lucy AND Captain America 2 – At least in Lucy she’s supposed to have mental super powers…which is equally difficult to believe…but drug induced.
• Kiera Knightley – Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit – OK, so it’s not an action role, but this demands attention. In the space of 20 minutes, real time, we are expected to believe she goes from naïve wife of secret agent to master spy. Ridiculous.
• Jennifer Lawrence – Hunger Games 3A and X-Men: Days of Future Past – If ultimately her character can shift into any form, then just have her look like Jennifer Lawrence and hire an MMA girl to do the blue mutant.

WINNER: Scarlett Johanssen. She wins because she is neither believable as an action star nor, in these roles, even believable as an actress in a community college sketch. After spending last year taking roles like Her and Don Jon that made her seem like a real actress, Lucy and this Marvel character make Keanu Reeves seem like Lawrence Olivier.

The King of Queens Award for Most Ridiculous Pairing of Goofy Male and Attractive Female

Neighbors - Rose Byrne & Seth Rogen

Classic tubby goof married to smart, hot goddess. At least Knocked Up pretended to have an explanation.

Most Questionable Casting Decision

• Megan Fox is an irrepressible journalist – Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
• Neil Patrick Harris is a loyal semi-creepster – Gone Girl
• Kevin Sorbo is a Professor of Philosophy – God’s Not Dead
• Keifer Sutherland is a Roman - Pompeii
• Aaron Taylor-Johnson is still employed as a lead  – Godzilla

WINNER: Kevin Sorbo. The former Hercules cannot even pronounce the names of the philosophers he’s brutalizing in this appalling Christian apologist triumphalist strawman film. Sorbo plays the arrogant professor of philosophy who bans God from his classroom and then turns his semester over to a random student with the temerity to protest. One guesses that casting Sorbo was the only way to make the moist, doe-eyed student’s inevitable triumph believable. And oh what a triumph – not only does Sorbo return to the flock, but so too does everyone else…the entire philosophy class converts!

Sorbo was obviously hired because he’s Christian, and not at all an arrogant philosophy professor, missing the opportunity to create some dramatic tension about the outcome. This is the perfect role for an actual arrogant prick like Steve Coogan. But the script is cast at too low a brow to have an interesting debate on this topic.

While I’m on the topic of this movie, it’s shockingly, Old Testament-y cruel. A girl gets cancer? Welcome to DUMPSVILLE! Muslim girl wants to convert in the only moving plot-line in the script? Time for a family beating! The death bed conversion is usually the cruelest argument for belief, but this movie poses the “convert if you want to bone your hottie student” argument as an earnest competitor. Until…no…YES! They combine them by killing Sorbo while he’s trying to chase down the hottie – that’s right, it’s a dying-in-the-street-trying-to-track-down-hottie-student-to-bone conversion. 

Cruder still, this movie is littered with tits and ass. There are multiple tracking shots that open scenes with gratuitous women’s booty shots. The only real philosophical question the movie poses is, “Can non-hotties be Christian too?”

The North Korean Regime Made Me Do It Award for Big Star in Terrible Movie

We are suspending this category indefinitely. After what happened to The Interview, let us all hope that the North Korean regime never makes anyone in Hollywood ever do anything against their will again.

Year in Movies Review Part 1: The Year in Silly Movie Titles

The Zombie Strippers Award for Great Low-Budget Release Title Probably Better Left to the Imagination

• Free the Nipple – Reject the tyranny of shirts, bras, and that milksop, the pasty
• God’s Pocket – Little known fact - original name for hotpockets. “New Testament God-pocket: Now with less sulfur! Gawwwwwd-pocket!”
• Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas – In the sequel, perhaps he can save his career?
• Knights of Badassdom – “My badassdom for a horse!”
• Southern Baptist Sissies – The Baltimore Convention Center once booked the Southern Baptist convention the same week as Comicon and an LGBT event. I like to think this movie re-enacts the bar scene afterward.

WINNER: Knights of Badassdom

“He’s Just Not That Into You Award” for Special Achievement in Gratuitously Borrowing a Title from Slightly Stale Pop Culture Phrases:

That Awkward Moment.

Most Pompous Title

• A Fantastic Fear of Everything – Perfect pomposity right down to the indefinite article
• Le Week-End – Special points for the French definite article and unnecessary dash
• The Past is a Grotesque Animal – The present we’ll keep in the yard when company comes over. The future just needs some grooming.
• The Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears – It’s just the hot yoga. I start to sweat bile.
• You’re Not You – Hmmmmm…I disagree?
• Glen Campbell…I’ll Be Me – You be you…oh, right, you’re not you. You’re Glen Campbell.

WINNER: The Past is a Grotesque Animal.

 Most Annoying Title Phenomenon: Month/Season Juxtaposition

Summer in February, Cold in July, and May in the Summer are all distinct movies united in the same indistinct titling. Individually, none of these dares to dream of “Most Pompous.” May in the Summer tries the hardest, dangling on the Mayan edge of calendarial correctness.  Honorable mention must also be made to “November Man,” which, though churlishly foregoing the obvious title: November, if by Spring, made the curious decision of going wide-release in August. And also of casting Pierce Brosnan as a spy as if to remind everyone, “Remember when Bond got so shitty we thought it was done? Let’s do that again.” 

 Least Interesting Title

• 7 Boxes – At my business school residency, we were told we were taking a field-trip to a candy-making factory. When we arrived, it was a box factory in which candy was to be placed. This was also the plot of a Simpsons episode about 4th grade field trip disappointment, which is surprisingly similar for working professionals. In our case, it ended with a lot of embarrassingly happy grown-ups discovering a bag of candy waited for them at the end of the tour. The point is, boxes are not interesting. 
• Boy Meets Girl – It’s a classic boy meets girl…boy…no, nothing else happens from there?
• The Butterfly Room – The Butterfly Room is the Champagne Room of zoos. You think you want to go in the butterfly room. Butterflies of all colors are going to Technicolor dreamcoat you and fill your heart with childish whimsy. Then you enter the Butterfly room and it’s just a bunch of moths, cruising slowly in their devastatingly beautiful patterns and…nevermind, the Butterfly room is awesome.
• Empty Hours – This was the working title for The Hunger Games 3A
• A Field in England – Part of Ken Burns’ 8-part series on the great fields of northern Europe
• In No Great Hurry – Good, in that case, I’ve got some Empty Hours to fill
• Listen Up Philip – I will let him know if I ever meet a Philip.
• What Now? Remind Me – I think you’re confused. You’re the one telling the story. 

WINNER: In No Great Hurry

The Bone Collector Award for Best Inadvertent Porn Title in a Wide-Release Feature Film

• As Above / So Below
• Big Hero 6
• The Nut Job
• When the Game Stands Tall
• Winter's Tale

WINNER: When the Game Stands Tall