Oscars Preview: My Best Pic, The Best Pic, Worst Nomination, Biggest Snub

MY TOP 15 MOVIES

15. What We Do in the Shadows

14. Ted 2

13. Trainwreck

12. Brooklyn

11. Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation

10. Me & Earl & the Dying Girl

9. Montage of Heck

8. Bridge of Spies

7. Relatos Salvajes (Wild Tales)

6. The Martian

5. Spotlight

4. Spy

3. Inside Out

2. The Big Short

1. Mad Max: Fury Road

Best Picture

• The Big Short – A bit too much of an Ocean’s 2008 vibe for this vibrant romp to win. Strong 2008 crash movies keep falling short of awards; while it’s fun to imagine there’s some sinister corporate hand keeping them from winning, it seems more likely that these movies are a bit remote from Hollywood. There’s a part of me that thinks that, despite handholding everyone through the logic of the derivatives market with cameo-chorus asides, maybe the voters still don’t get it. Consider that no one has ever even bothered to make a movie about the crash of 1929. What does seem clear is that to push a crash movie over the top, they’re going to have to push another button in the great Oscars wheel of justice – say a crash movie about a mentally handicapped broker, or a Birdman-like movie about the artistic process…and mortgage backed securities. You see the problem. 
• Brooklyn – The year’s tolerable romcom, Brooklyn can’t win because it’s far too upbeat about the immigrant experience. Oscars voters want a bitter, clawing fight. They want 1920’s immigrants huddled on boats. They want broken dreams. (Although for some reason they don’t want to do a good movie about Latino immigrants now). Brooklyn spins a yarn that’s made of less tattered cloth. There’s a network of support, people want her to succeed, and ultimately the real dilemma is whether to stay in America, the place that made the main character’s dreams come true, or whether to go back home and spread the dream that America made possible.
• Mad Max: Fury Road – An aggressive visual metaphor and explosively creative universe. As a visual poem, it’s everything The Revenant is not. It has more to say, it bizarrely seems more believable, its prettier to look at, and its lead(s) are the more memorable characters.
• The Martian – What would happen if you made Gravity upbeat and didn’t kill George Clooney? Something more rewatchable and less likely to win any awards. As I said before, The Martian is the Tomorrowland Disney should have made – a science-is-fun movie that truly believes in the possibility of human endeavor. Perhaps Tomorrowland SHOULD have been upbeat. Or perhaps it should have killed George Clooney. Anyhow, The Martian isn’t going to win anything, nor should it - the dialogue is for the audience rather than the people involved and it’s all a bit unfair to make up this scenario and then pretend that it’s going to end anyway other than well. The flip side of “the cake is a lie” is that space is an uncaring murder machine that asphyxiates happy endings and explodes their heads. But this is Matt Damon and we know he’s going to survive, so there’s little drama, just fun.
• The Revenant – All of the preceding contenders have the same problem – not serious enough. The Revenant is far too serious. Its ponderous, grafted-on Native American deus ex machina sub plot is as silly as Marlon Brando’s famously dismal Oscar speech cop-out. It’s excuse for an idea is the leitmotif that all of the primary agents of the film, Leo, the bear, the Chief, are in dispute to protect their child. That’s really as far is it goes. Narratively, it has a far deeper problem – the whole time, you keep thinking that the villain, Tom Hardy, is right. Leo should have taught his adopted Native Amerian son English to help him get by. Leo’s job WAS to scout the attack on the trapping camp that touches off the plot…he WAS a failure. It was crazy to try to carry him back across hundreds of miles after a vicious grizzly attack rather than leaving him for dead. The worst part of it all is that the ending is ridiculous. After pitching this as the ultimate revenge story by adding the one major ahistorical part of the story, a murdered son, we get carried to a climactic final battle with several bizarre decisions. First, no one runs for the gun. Second, after they’ve fought to the point of death, Leo lets Tom float 20 feet over to the angry Native Americans so that they can kill him - This is Leo learning the meaning of forgiveness. That lesson learned, Leo’s angel wife descends from heaven on her visible puppet strings. In real life, Leo’s historical counterpart had no reason for revenge – there is no murdered son – and he tracked these guys down and forgave them for leaving him for dead. In other words, if this movie was to end well, it was going to end with sweet, vicious revenge. If it’s here to teach us about forgiveness, then why muddy the history of an incredible survival tale with this silly non-murder murder? An over-ambitious flop. 
• Room –The first half of the movie is oppressive, relying on a credits montage to make it watchable. The release is revelatory and intense. The second half of the movie is narratively aimless and imminently worthy of being fast-forwarded through.
• Spotlight – This is the sort of earnest, mistake-free film-making that the Academy used to throw awards at in the 70’s. The man behind us at the screening left sobbing; one can only wonder what they went through. With little to be said, I’d like to say a positive word for Lieb Shriver’s measured performance. Lost probably amongst Michael Keaton’s screentime, Mark Ruffalo’s fidgeting, and his general detachment from all of the legwork of getting the story, he’s the commanding, moral compass of the movie; a quietly great boss and someone we like to think of as the person responsible for delivering us the news. 

WILL WIN: Revenant

SHOULD WIN: The Big Short. Yes, I have Mad Max as #1. But this should win the award. Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds. 

WORST NOMINATION: Room

BIGGEST SNUB: Inside Out

WORST NOMINATION:

• Anomalisa – Best Animated Feature
• Jobs – Kate Winslet
• Room – Best Adapted Screenplay
• Room – Best Film
• Star Wars – Visual Effects

WILL WIN: Best Adapted Screenplay – Room. Takes a good book and makes it bad. Gaping plot holes (I spent the first 45 minutes devising ways to easily get out of the room. For example – the code is 4 digits. There are only 9999 combinations. If it takes 10 seconds to punch in a code, that’s a little over a day’s worth of punching in codes until the right one comes up. Or maybe just stack some stuff up and climb out the sunroof?).  And what reporter badgers a woman who escapes this horrible situation into suicide? A reporter who doesn’t want to be employed tomorrow. Dull dialogue. An almost unwatchable last half hour. This screenplay was an obstacle to greatness. 

SHOULD WIN: This is my blog. I make the rules of at least this award!

BIGGEST SNUB:

• Bridge of Spies – Steven Spielberg
• Mad Max – Charlize Theron
• Me & Earl & the Dying Girl – Best Adapted Screenplay, Jason Andrews – I blew it the first time around and forgot to credit one of the year’s best scripts for this high school movie overrun with witticisms and cute ideas.
• Montage of Heck – Best Documentary Feature
• Spy – Jason Statham – How great would a nomination for the Stath be?

SHOULD WIN: Charlize Theron.

WILL WIN: African Americans. (I don’t make all the rules).

If you didn’t believe me the first time, let me explain the real reasons the Oscars are so white. First – how white are they? Mathematically, the odds that no black actors or directors will win given just US population statistics (13% black) is about 50/50. The odds that no black actors or directors will be nominated, however, is about 3%. So once every 33 years or so, this is going to happen. But it happens more often. So why?

The first reason is the UK. The Academy has a ton of British members. They love fellow Brits. African Americans make up 13% of the US population. They make up 3% of the UK population. Run those same numbers with the UK, and you get a little less than 50/50 odds of no black Oscars winners...and closer to 5% odds of no black nominees at all. In other words, instead of this happening once every 30 years, it happens once every twenty.

That’s in a vacuum where there’s nothing preventing black actors from getting work or getting nominated. And surely some outright discrimination in even liberal Hollywood goes on.

But I’m going to propose a second reason, one I’d long suspected, and one that the Sony papers make explicit: the global marketplace is unabashedly racist with its media buck. I first got up on this issue when I saw an interview with one of my favorite actors, Denzel, in which he talked about never getting sent scripts for mainstream, not-African American roles. Sour grapes you say? It actually lays out in the Sony papers hacked by North Korea that a senior producer refused to offer roles to Denzel, the very same man even(!), not because they didn’t think he was good for the role, but because their models say that the global box office take will be much lower if the hero is black. And the models say that because it’s true – Chinese people don’t want to see Denzel.

I’ve long complained that the globalization of the marketplace has churned out blander movies. For one, most jokes and word play don’t translate. Secondly, the themes have to be universal. The over-abundance of tracking the Stages of Myth almost religiously is the most obvious example, but more broadly, it means that everything that’s not bland is financial risk.

Studios are in the business of making money first, not art first or social justice first. Competition for the global market buck is fierce and foreign revenue has made many a domestic flop a financial success. If there’s a variable in the formula that kills revenue, it gets excised.

And the reality is, the world is startlingly, unapologetically racist against black people.

Anyone who has traveled a great deal will know this. Europe has done an able job of sweeping it under the rug publicly but the migrant crisis is pulling the rug back out from under them. Go to Argentina, where black Brazilians are called monkeys. Go to Egypt, where a white woman walking with a black man will be stopped, almost block by block, by the police making sure the woman is “alright.” Go to East Asia and just ask.

We Americans like to see racism as our problem, race relations the crucible of our dedication to our noble ideals. But racism isn’t our problem, it’s endemic to humanity; as Einstein said, it’s the measles of humanity. It is our problem because everyone in America came from somewhere. It’s our problem because we imported it, literally and figuratively. Perhaps nativists in America can be brought around on this topic by looking at racism as just that – a foreign idea, as unwelcome in our republic as authoritarianism, communism, and shari’a law.

All of this is to say that the Oscars are likely to stay white, and get whiter, the more the industry relies on the global box office.

Which doesn’t explain why there aren’t any Latinos or Asian Americans either.

I take it back, maybe Hollywood is racist. Mr. Rock...you have the floor. 

Best Actor and Actress

Cate Blanchett Award for Best Actress

• Cate Blanchett, Carol – It is better to be thought the new Meryl Streep and remain making similar movies than to make Ricki and the Flash and remove all doubt.
• Brie Larson, Room – She benefits greatly from working opposite a child actor’s performance so grating, the audience starts to hope something horrible happens so he will just get off the screen.  
• Jennifer Lawrence, Joy – Supposed to be a sequel to American Hustle, this movie got swept under the rug before it could be seen…by me or by anyone. Presumably the ballots were turned in before everyone realized they had a disaster on their hands because it is not possible to dislike Jennifer Lawrence. We’ve been officially informed that she’s the real person in Hollywood.
• Charlotte Rampling, 45 Years – Annual grand ol’ dame nominee
• Saoirse (Pronounced Sersha) Ronan, Brooklyn – It's not fair if you already have the proper accent.

WILL WIN: Brie Larson. Larson only carries the first half of the film. Her breakdown in the second half remains unsupported.

SHOULD WIN: Of these 5? Cate Blanchett. She might as well make 5 movies a year and spare us the boredom of nominating anyone else.

BIGGEST SNUB: Charlize Theron – Mad Max. Furiosa was the iconic performance of the year. Theron is a huge star in her prime. Should have won…not even nominated. 

Daniel Day Lewis Award for Best Actor

• Bryan Cranston, Trumbo – Tropic Thunder instructed us “Never go full retard.” Trumbo reminds us, “Always go full communist.” So many flame out at pinko rancor with a bit too much humanity. See, for example, Will Smith's Concussion or Idris Elba in Beasts of No Nation. To borrow from Stalin, when one communist man is snubbed, it's a tragedy. When a whole race is, it's statistics. Or maybe they just weren't that good. 
• Matt Damon, The Martian – Or just go full Matt Damon...in space!
• Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant – Spends most of the movie crawling, groaning, and desperately searching for chapstick. Bill Paxton should have won for Twister by that rubric.
• Michael Fassbender, Steve Jobs – He never really tries to do a Steve Jobs impression. Neither does he create something else that would be more interesting. 
• Eddie Redmayne, The Danish Girl – Jennifer Lawrence: America::Eddie Redmayne:England. If not for this movie, we might have seen him nominated for Jupiter Ascending. At some point in their careers, Redmayne and Lawrence will make a movie together, and the resulting Third Era of Good Feelings will reunite the colonies with the Union Jack. 

WILL WIN: Leonardo DiCaprio. After years of bizarre snubs, he graduated to “should-have-won” last year with  a career-best performance in Wolf of Wall Street. Instead, he gets his trophy for a dialogue-free performance that seems earned mostly as in that he endured extreme privation. So do the actors on Survivor. Ooops, sorry, I mean reality stars. The point being, DiCaprio may have turned in this performance largely against his will. Is that acting? 

SHOULD WIN: I guess we should just give Leo the damn trophy.

BIGGEST SNUB:  Ben Mendelsohn, Mississippi Grind. Whodat character actor turned strong lead…in a forgettable movie headlined by, gulp, Ryan Reynolds. In a weak year, this was the best performance. Or maybe he was just standing next to Ryan Reynolds.
WORST NOMINATION: Michael Fassbender. This wasn't a nominee, it was a missed opportunity. 

Best Supporting and Director

The Phillip Seymour Hoffman Award for Best Supporting Actor

Christian Bale, The Big Short

Tom Hardy, The Revenant

Mark Ruffalo, Spotlight

Mark Rylance, Bridge of Spies

Sylvester Stallone, Creed

WILL WIN: Sylvester Stallone. The annual most competitive award, Stallone stands as the odds on favorite for a lifetime achievement award, spent mostly playing this same character.

SHOULD WIN: Mark Rylance. Perhaps the biggest problem with Bridge of Spies is that Rylance is too effective. Not only do we sort of like the Soviet spy, certainly a lot more than the goober playing Gary Powers…but we keep hoping there will be more of him in the movie.

WORST NOMINATION: N/A. Hardy, Bale, and Ruffalo all create convincing, fresh characters with varying levels of script support. Hardy has the worst script to work with, but does the most to turn it into something. Ruffalo once again has created someone I’ve never seen before. And Bale can’t help but always be good.

BIGGEST SNUB: Jason Statham, Spy. Statham’s extended self-parody in Spy was one of the funniest things ever put to film. Another Brit who can’t get any support from his countrymen because he worked his way up from the bottom rather than going to all the right schools. Let’s hope he always has the courage never to pretend he wants one of these trophies. Just be Statham.

Meryl Streep Award for Best Supporting Actress

Jennifer Jason Leigh, The Hateful Eight

Rooney Mara, Carol

Rachel McAdams, Spotlight

Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl

Kate Winslet, Steve Jobs

WILL WIN: Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl – A Swedish ballet dancer plucked from obscurity to star in everything – Testament of Youth, Ex Machina, The Man from UNCLE, Burnt, The Danish Girl, Michael Fassbender’s wife; that’s a busy career, let alone in one year. Life has been very good to Ms. Vikander, not necessarily deservedly, and it’s about to get nicer.

SHOULD WIN: Jennifer Jason Leigh, The Hateful Eight – Life has been less fair to the more talented Jennifer Jason Leigh. After Fast Times at Ridgemont High, she grinded parts in forgettable movies for over a decade, picking up critics award nominations but no real attention, until the Coens made her timeless in Hudsucker Proxy.  And then back to the grind for another decade plus. Leigh outshines even a great Samuel L. Tarantino part in the most memorable performance this year this side of Jason Statham. Leigh deserves the attention, and this award, that someone powerful has decided will go to Vikander.

WORST NOMINATION: Kate Winslet, Steve Jobs – Rachel McAdams was merely forgettable; Winslet was actively bad. I would compare her inconstant Polish accent to Martin O’Malley’s presidential campaign: everyone feels obligated to keep mentioning its presence even as everyone just wonders when it will go away. As each inevitably did. At least O’Malley had the grace to stay gone.

BIGGEST SNUB: Erica Rivas, Relatos Salvajes. Her Romina makes reality TV Bridezillas look like the Geico Gecko.

The Spielberg Award for Best Directing

Adam McKay, The Big Short

George Miller, Mad Max: Fury Road

Alejandro González Iñárritu, The Revenant  

Lenny Abrahamson, Room

Tom McCarthy, Spotlight

WILL WIN: Alejandro González Iñárritu, The Revenant - This follow-up to Birdman makes Mr. Inarritu out to be more a gimmick, difficult-to-execute tracking shots, than a director with a full bag of tricks. That said, the biggest revelation of my cross-country driving tour was the beauty of Big Sky Country and it’s hard to fault him for filling a dull script with high-end photography shots. The great American road trip – the original extended tracking shot.

SHOULD WIN: George Miller, Mad Max – Directing is the art of creating a world in 2 hours. No one did it better.

WORST NOMINATION: Lenny Abrahamson – Room – A good rule of thumb is to wonder, if someone else made this, what would it be like. In this case, the answer can only be...  

BIGGEST SNUB: Spielberg, Bridge of Spies – I have my issues with Spielberg’s ham-fistedness but he’s found a late career groove that suits his style. The point being, Lenny Abrahamson and NOT Spielberg? Spielberg will take his ‘un and beat your ‘un and then take your ‘un and beat his ‘un. 

Non-Best Picture Best Pictures

Pixar’s Best Animated Feature Film

• ·         Anomalisa, Charlie Kaufman, Duke Johnson and Rosa Tran – Charlie Kaufman already made a movie about writer’s block. So did the Coens – it was Barton Fink. They seem to have rebounded. The point is – Charlie Kaufman may have nothing left to say.
• ·         Boy and the World, Alê Abreu – A Brazilian movie originally released in 2013. Seriously.
• ·         Inside Out, Pete Docter and Jonas Rivera – Pixar reclaims the throne.
• ·         Shaun the Sheep Movie, Mark Burton and Richard Starzak – Semi-annual charming British Claymation entry.
• ·         When Marnie Was There, Hiromasa Yonebayashi and Yoshiaki Nishimura – Semi-annual vaguely inaccessible Japanese anime+ entry.

SHOULD WIN: Inside Out. Should be competing for the top prize.

WILL WIN: Inside Out. Instead Pixar walks away with the award created to ease the embarrassment we all feel that its animation catalogue is better than many of the winners. Seriously - you want to watch any Pixar movie at random or The English Patient? 

WORST NOMINATION: Anomalisa. The category was created in part to create interest in the Oscars among kids and family-friendly audiences. Instead Charlie Kaufman has his bad script animated and it gets nominated. I guess they have to fill out 5 nominations. It’s not like there was a nationally beloved, high-grossing, meme-inducing mega-franchise that delighted the world’s children for 80 minutes.

BIGGEST SNUB: Minions.

Best Foreign Film

I took a pass on all of these. Instead, go watch Relatos Salvajes (Wild Tales). It's a Brazilian/Argentinian series of 6 shorts, most of which blow any American variety comedy movie since Amazon Women on the Moon out of the water. Given the Academy's arcane rules about foreign release versus domestic I have no idea whether it was eligible this year or last year, and I have little doubt that it would not matter. Who cares? Not you. You want to be entertained. Go get yourself a copy of this movie. 

Best Documentary, Propaganda, or Advertisement – Feature

• ·         Amy, Asif Kapadia and James Gay-Rees – The geniuses behind Senna turn their icon-making magic to Amy Winehouse. It’s almost as good.
• ·         Cartel Land, Matthew Heineman and Tom Yellin – A surprisingly balanced portrayal of everything drug war related, from the gangs to the minutemen. The footage is incredible – astonishingly, it’s more vivid than the much more heavily camera’ed Winter on Fire. The year’s best, “I can’t believe they got that on camera,” documentary by far.
• ·         The Look of Silence, Joshua Oppenheimer and Signe Byrge Sørensen – An honest to goodness documentary sequel. That makes this the second longest running documentary feature film series, right after “Michael Moore Relentlessly Self-Promotes”. This one is not as good as the first, but is masterfully shot. Give this man a script and a budget and let's see what he can do.
• ·         What Happened, Miss Simone?, Liz Garbus, Amy Hobby and Justin Wilkes - Not a lot that was happy, that's what. Even her moment to shine during Dr. King's funeral seems oddly unemotional and unhappy. 
• ·         Winter on Fire: Ukraine's Fight for Freedom, Evgeny Afineevsky and Den Tolmor - Russia Sucks! Russia Sucks!
• 
  

WILL WIN: What Happened, Miss Simone? – Betting odds heavily favor Amy, not without reason, but I think the political pressure from #oscarsowhite forces the voters to crown the Nina Simone documentary. Part of Hollywood’s un-ending quest to document the life of every musician ever except the Beatles, this movie is poorly researched, interviewing almost no one. It’s subject matter is also remarkably unpleasant, unfortunately jumping straight into a troubled, violent woman’s descent into madness almost immediately upon becoming famous. Not recommended watching, nor in any way deserving, but I think a chastened Hollywood would rather see this win than hear Chris Rock answer the question its title poses when it loses. 

SHOULD WIN: Cartel Land – An old-fashioned documentary that lets its subjects talk and its cameras roll. Fearless journalism without preaching. It never stood a chance.

BIGGEST SNUB: Best of Enemies, Montage of Heck. Best of Enemies is a boisterous re-run of Vidal v. Buckley which manages, despite its intentions, to make Buckley seem the better man. Montage of Heck is a far more interesting two hours than any movie made about music this year – fiction or documentary. Where Amy Winehouse comes off as trite, and Nina Simone supercilious, Cobain is celebrated for being brilliant, strange, and wildly creative with a documentary that captures all of that in a wonderful spirit of invention of its own. Plus Cobain changed music. Oh well, nevermind. 

Oscars Preview: The Art Awards I Care About

Best Adapted Screenplay

• ·         The Big Short, Charles Randolph and Adam McKay
• ·         Brooklyn, Nick Hornby
• ·         Carol, Phyllis Nagy
• ·         The Martian, Drew Goddard
• ·         Room, Emma Donoghue

WILL WIN: The Big Short. I didn’t care for breaking the 4^th wall or condescending to us with Margot Robbie and Selena Gomez. But I got an MBA for fun.

SHOULD WIN: The Martian. Pitch perfect. Not a wasted word, and full of joy for science.

WORST NOMINATION: Room. From what I’m told, the book’s cleverness is to take this horrible situation and craft a world anyone could live in. The movie plays a 5 minute montage of that world at the beginning and then reels off 80 minutes of misery. It makes It's a Wonderful Life seem like it's a wonderful life. 

Best Original Screenplay

• ·         Bridge of Spies, Matt Charman and Ethan Coen & Joel Coen
• ·         Ex Machina, Alex Garland
• ·         Inside Out, Pete Docter, Meg LeFauve, Josh Cooley; Original story by Pete Docter, Ronnie del Carmen
• ·         Spotlight, Josh Singer and Tom McCarthy
• ·         Straight Outta Compton, Screenplay by Jonathan Herman and Andrea Berloff; Story by S. Leigh Savidge, Alan Wenkus and Andrea Berloff

WILL WIN: Spotlight. Taut, error-free script. All The Presidents Men for a new generation of journalists and a classic drama for any era.

SHOULD WIN: Inside Out. Underneath the hood of this high concept standout and its more obvious conceits there are potent, searing statements about our natures, about gender, and, of course youth, though not all the ones you pick up the first watching. Ex Machina barely scratched the surface of its subject matter. Compton was half a great movie but at times directionless. Bridge of Spies captures the Cold War masterfully but doesn’t leave much to the imagination. It’s Pixar that has once again buried in a child friendly film meaningful vignettes that most command re-examination and discussion.

WORST NOMINATION: Ex Machina

BIGGEST SNUB: Paul Feig, Spy. Comedy never gets the credit it deserves.

Best Visual Effects

• ·         Ex Machina, Andrew Whitehurst, Paul Norris, Mark Ardington and Sara Bennett
• ·         Mad Max: Fury Road, Andrew Jackson, Tom Wood, Dan Oliver and Andy Williams
• ·         The Martian, Richard Stammers, Anders Langlands, Chris Lawrence and Steven Warner
• ·         The Revenant, Rich McBride, Matthew Shumway, Jason Smith and Cameron Waldbauer
• ·         Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Roger Guyett, Patrick Tubach, Neal Scanlan and Chris Corbould

WILL WIN: The Revenant (A theme begins).

SHOULD WIN: Mad Max: Fury Road (Another theme begins).

WORST NOMINATION: Star Wars. I was tempted to cite Revenant’s ludicrous-looking floating angel wife. But instead I’ll double down – Star Wars looked dull.

Best Cinematography                     

• ·         Carol, Ed Lachman
• ·         The Hateful Eight, Robert Richardson
• ·         Mad Max: Fury Road, John Seale
• ·         The Revenant, Emmanuel Lubezki
• ·         Sicario, Roger Deakins

WILL WIN: The Revenant’s winter screen saver

SHOULD WIN: Mad Max’s new universe

Best Original Score

• ·         Thomas Newman, Bridge of Spies
• ·         Carter Burwell, Carol
• ·         Ennio Morricone, The Hateful Eight
• ·         Jóhann Jóhannsson, Sicario
• ·         John Williams, Star Wars: The Force Awakens

WILL WIN: Ennio Morricone – The Hateful Eight

SHOULD WIN: Carter Burwell – Carol

Burwell is the creator of some of the most memorable music, in movies or otherwise, of the past few decades. Inexplicably, this is his first nomination. Morricone had to get an honorary award a decade ago because Hollywood so foolishly ignored his main body of work. And it seems Burwell may have to keep writing for 40 years before he gets his.  

Best Original Song

• ·         "Earned It," Fifty Shades of Grey, Abel Tesfaye, Ahmad Balshe, Jason Daheala Quenneville and Stephan Moccio
• ·         "Manta Ray," Racing Extinction, J. Ralph and Antony Hegarty
• ·         "Simple Song #3," Youth, David Lang
• ·         "'Til It Happens to You," The Hunting Ground, Diane Warren and Lady Gaga
• ·         "Writings on the Wall," Spectre, Jimmy Napes and Sam Smith

WILL WIN: Lady Gaga.

SHOULD WIN: Sam Smith

WORST NOMINATION: Simple Song #3.

BIGGEST SNUB: En Las Calles (feat. Jose Cancela), Cartel Land. Don’t believe the whining for Nick Cannon’s Chi-raq song to be in this spot. En Las Calles raps Cannon off the stage. 

DAY 5 OF FILM YEAR IN REVIEW: MODEST ACHIEVEMENTS

MOVIES I LIKED MORE THAN I SHOULD HAVE

• Creep – The under-reviewed horror movie that’s not about teen sex.
• Entourage – Never watched the TV show. Straight bro fantasy surprisingly watchable.
• The Kingsman – The most Tory film ever. It even won over this Whig.
• Lambert & Stamp – Sweaty, bizarre The Who producer doc peters out because no one ODed.
• What We Do in the Shadows – An hour long, great New Zealand SNL sketch that, despite barely reaching feature length still drags on too long because there's not enough Jermaine. 

THE YEAR’S MOST TOLERABLE ROMCOM - Brooklyn

The Story of New York, with a touch of humor and a genuine love of America’s brand: the immigrant experience, the American Dream, but I repeat myself. So it’s not Shakespeare; it’s still right in my wheelhouse: Irish + Italians = The best combo since PB&J.

MOST FOREIGN MOVIE OF THE YEAR: The Assassin

A two hour haiku

Eastern Philosophy wuh?

Where’s all the kung fu?

MOVIES I WANTED TO LIKE MORE THAN I DID

• Child 44 – Because of uncomfortable associations between Hollywood, Stalin, and Blacklists we have shockingly few worthwhile movies about the Soviet Union – the gulags, the Ukranian Famine, the Captive Mind. Child 44 tries to rectify all of this at once, and the result is about as good as trying to fit Schindler's List, The Great Dictator, Inglorious Basterds, and Every World War 2 Movie Ever into one.
• Good Kill – Someone will make a good drone ethics movie. It won’t be Ethan Hawke.
• Merchants of Doubt – Pitches itself as Thank You For Smoking but really just wants to be Another Inconvenient Truth.
• Minions – It takes a hard heart to say this…it’s not that funny
• Shaun the Sheep – See also Minions. I’ve been in this game for years, it made me an animal. 

Year in Film Day 4: The TL;DR Interlude

MOST IMPORTANT UNREMARKABLE MOVIE OF THE YEAR: Beasts of No Nation

You may have heard of Netflix’s mediocre child soldier movie because it was Hollywood’s great black hope for an African American award nomination – Idris Elba finally finds the right role. There are two things standing in the way: 1) he’s black and 2) Netflix.

Elba’s problem isn’t so much that he’s black as that he’s black and British. The British vote exercises enormous influence over the Oscars – so on first thought, it should work to his benefit. But the Brit vote also clings to traditionally trained British actors who do period dramas whereas Elba muscled his way to celebrity through DJing and American TV. Still, he wouldn’t be the first British actor to force his way into stuffier halls…it’s just that there’s a problem: he can’t do British period drama. Because he’s black. They’ll probably let him do Othello…but Fitzwilliam Darcy? Apparently not yet. With Daniel Craig bowing out of Bond soon, here's my vote for Black Stringer Bond. 

The other problem is that this movie was Netflix’s first, and it’s the most important thing that happened in movies this year. Beasts of No Nation was banned from every theater in America, despite Netflix giving huge incentives to run it. Because Netflix’s entry into making second rate movies spells the end of the theater business. Oh, there will still be theaters…probably. But HD, streaming, and Wyoming-class TVs mean we don’t need them for much. Netflix doesn’t even have to produce these B+ features – it just needs everyone to realize they don’t need to spend tens of millions on distribution so AMC and Regal can take huge percentages. Movies like Beasts of No Nation, and anything Adam Sandler does, don’t need a big screen any more. 

The theaters won on this battlefield; Beasts of No Nation disappeared and Mr. Elba’s worthy performance is a conflict diamond that the Academy can’t trade in. But the war is already lost, and the theater monopoly knows it.

So those things, or maybe he just wasn’t that great.

WHY EVERYONE’S FAVORITE MOVIE SUCKED: Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens

You may have already heard from the ragtag band of haters and their plucky attempt to take down the Sci-Fi Empire's Darth Disney entry: the plot’s a retread of the first movie, Han Solo is still the only interesting character, the dialogue’s just as bad, the main characters have a backstory but no personality, the things that made Episode IV a good movie (the villain and the music) are replaced by an emo kid and a forgettable score. In summary, this was straight fan service – most of those complaints are arguments made in favor of the film by it’s 92% Rotten Tomatoes Rating.

So, in the interest of originality, and in the spirit of an award designed to challenge, I will go one further: the prequels are BETTER and TRUER to what made Star Wars great.

In the end, what made Star Wars change film wasn’t Darth Vader or John Williams; it was a giant space ship enveloping the screen at the start. It was the sense of scale, the imagination, the art direction. It was a new place, one no one had seen before. It was exotic in a world that’s seen it all. It was beautiful.

For the prequels, George Lucas pulled the same stunt. He redesigned the universe from scratch. He showed us something new so that he could take it away from us. He gave us incredibly imaginative lightsaber battles and galloping action pod races that make Episodes 4-7 dull in comparison. And he did it by casting it directly at the same audience he went after the first time: children, with the same weak dialogue and universal themes to make it easily accessible. The people who complained weren’t the kids, they were the kids he lured in the last time who had since grown old and lost the capacity for wonder…or for putting up with bad dialogue and broad brush strokes.

So they’ve gotten what they wanted in this movie and they’ve fawned over it. But I assure you, in retrospect, this will sit in the bottom third of the triple trilogy.

Just to really upset everyone, here’s how I rank the Star Wars movies:

1. Episode 5: The Empire Strikes Back

2. Episode 2: Attack of the Clones

3. Episode 4: A New Hope

4. Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith

5. Episode 6: Return of the Jedi

6. Episode 7: The Force Awakens

7. Episode 1: The Phantom Menace

I mean…Jar Jar and the Republic of Adam Sandler Stereotypes are still too much to be born. 

Year in Film Review Day 3: Bad Movies

It was a bad year for movies. So many movies were so bad, I got rid of my usual "The Year's Best Bad Movie" because there were too many bad movies and none of them guilty pleasures; just guilty. And I've gotten rid of the outright worst film for reasons that will become clear. But at least, in all of this, I came up with a good idea for Godfather 5.

MOST INEXPLICABLY WELL-REVIEWED FILM

• The End of the Tour - More artless art about art. 
• Ex Machina – The “evil robots will kill us all” movie that worked, finally convincing everyone that zombies, even zombie beavers, are not nearly as terrifying as amoral sexy machines locked up in Oscar Isaac’s basement. A decent movie betrayed by an empty ending. HAL9000 was 40 years ago and still more chilling.
• It Follows – The latest over-reviewed horror movie that is a metaphor for teen sex. We should reward movies for having ideas, but isn’t every horror movie about teen sex?
• The Gift – Whoever decided bullying was the next big issue has enough clout to turn those reviewer thumbs upside down. I am reminded that a study of bullying awareness campaigns demonstrated that they have had no effect except to teach bullies how to do their thing better. Critics can be bullies…maybe they weren’t so much sympathetic to the message as taking notes?

WINNER: Ex Machina. So if this movie isn't about technology but rather, like all movies this year, about feminism, it becomes a lot more interesting…if uncomfortably hateful. Still...ending the movie with an off-kilter shot of the lead lying on the floor...not exactly Kubrick.

THE LAST EVER ADAM SANDLER AWARD FOR SHOCKINGLY UNFUNNY COMEDY AND WORST OVERALL MOVIE:

Ridiculous Six

Pixels

WINNER: Adam Sandler. He has reached a new level of unfunny where I can’t nominate anyone else ever again. Nor can I choose between yet another “Remember the 80’s?” movies and his appalling “Remember Indians?” digital debut. One was offensive, neither was funny, both made a lot of money. The market is not the ally of good taste; Netflix signed him to do several more of these movies. I am hereby retiring the award until Adam Sandler passes away or Marvel’s Molly Shannon Plan B lands her a deal with Hulu and puts someone back in the same universe. 

BEST IDEA POORLY EXECUTED

• Focus – Will Smith and Margot Robbie do Ocean’s 11…surprisingly poorly.  
• The Intern – A retired Robert DeNiro mentors a refreshingly strong female lead CEO…plus twenty minutes of small talk that should have been edited out and a lot of missed opportunities for humor.
• The Man From U.N.C.L.E. – Two surprisingly leaden “next big stars” work for Guy Ritchie in a remake of a TV show no one remembers, hoping that 60s + British = cool squared. I'm reminded of a delightful remark that a woman at a party made to me when I spat out a mixture of champagne and grenadine. I was explaining to her, "I figured I liked each individually, I didn't expect them to not work together." "Ah," she said, "Like sex in the shower." The Man from UNCLE is like bad 60's sex in a cold British shower...with a bad Russian accent.  
• The Hateful Eight – Quentin Tarantino makes a movie with 2 great characters...and 6 others.
• Tomorrowland – The Martian without the hope. The Disney Borg tries to reassimilate a sense of Walt's original wonder and possibility about the future…

WINNER: Tomorrowland…by making a movie about a dystopian police state of environmental Cassandras. Hey kids…want to believe in the future again? Watch TV’s Most Famous Doctors square off to re-do Terry Gilliam’s Brazil!

THE SMART MOVIE FOR STUPID PEOPLE AWARD

Anomalisa – Everyone’s the same. A desperate affair to escape that sameness is ultimately unsatisfying. Cincinnati makes some weird chili. Only one of those three “ideas” is potentially novel, and yet this is not a movie about why Cincinnati puts chili on pasta...which I would watch. And which would have been much better than Claymation sex, two things which no one ever thought would go together well. 

MOST RIDICULOUS MOMENT – San Andreas unapologetically lifts the climax from The Abyss, nearly frame for frame, and does it much, much worse. 

PHANTOM MENACE AWARD FOR COLOSSAL DISAPPOINTMENT

• Jurassic World – Christ Pratt gets to have fun for 3 lines. The rest is crashing dinosaur toys together.
• Pan – Warner Brothers borrows from Disney’s fail-now business plan of robbing boomers' childhood memories by ineptly modernizing the story.
• Spectre – Merely OK Bond movies are no longer acceptable. Daniel Craig probably made 1 (ok 2) too many Bond movies. But let’s do one more just to be sure?
• Terminator Genisys – A bad enough movie that made itself worse by announcing its twist in the preview. This franchise now has more bad movies than good.

WINNER: Terminator Genisys. It’s like they made two more bad Godfathers and in the last one Al Pacino time-warps back to Robert DeNiro’s time as Vito to set himself up as a rival Don, only it’s not nearly as good as Heat because otherwise this is actually a pretty good idea for a movie.

Year in Film Review Day 2: Adventures in Bad Casting

DAY 2: The Year in Bad Casting

MOST QUESTIONABLE CASTING DECISION

Blackhat – Thor plays a genius hacker. Maybe the Hemsworth household hotly debated Montaigne at the dinner table. Maybe Chris spent his lonely junior high years reverse engineering clocks into suitcases and taking them to school to show off. Maybe. Or maybe the Hemsworths do things like date Miley Cyrus. The point is, if the Hemsworths are smart, it doesn’t translate to film. Arnold had the good sense to play these roles for laughs, which is further evidence that Chris isn’t nearly as smart as The Governator, let alone smart enough to hack the world.

Josh Gad gets two starring roles in Pixels and The Wedding Ringer. Hollywood hasn’t had a good manic fat guy since Chris Farley died and Jonah Hill dieted (Yes, I am aware of Kevin James’ work.) We moralized what we eat – obesity is an epidemic, a moral choice, and The Church of Belushi is a House of Hollywood Sin. Still, the market for low brow comedy engages in a little heresy, but SNL's tiller is empty. Enter Josh Gad.

Hateful 8 – Dough-faced Channing Tatum makes a grizzled gunslinger cameo in Hateful 8.  Tarantino’s worst, this hateful half movie desperately needed a cameo to rescue its deflating payoff. Some scene-stealing gunslinger, someone you couldn’t believe they got, or dug up. It needed Clint Eastwood. It needed Mel Gibson. It needed Chuck Norris’s beard. It needed Lee Marvin’s reanimated corpse. It needed Samuel L. Jackson’s evil twin. Instead they got the ever-available Channing Tatum.

Truth – Topher Grace is the newly cynical noir news gumshoe who tells it like it is. I once had brunch in the same restaurant as Topher Grace, an event remarkable only because I swear he was made to wait in line behind us. When these non-entities stand on their filmic pulpit to lecture us, it only makes us question the message.

Woman in Gold - Box Office Fools’ Gold Ryan Reynolds plays an earnest, skilled lawyer. Look, Marvel is about to prove that it can even make Ryan Reynolds star in a hit. I can only assume that the bad guy in Deadpool is a mutated giant turnip that does, in fact, bleed. In its next act, Marvel will make a billion dollars on Molly Shannon playing Wonder Woman. So let’s celebrate the saner world of 2015, one in which the flickering light of Mr. Reynolds’ career led him to borrow Rick Perry’s trademark “I do remember which government agencies I would cut” glasses and prove all his critics right. 

WINNER: Josh Gad stars in two major Hollywood releases in one calendar year. Plato said that justice was a compromise between the best scenario – to do injustice and not be punished, and the worst scenario – to suffer injustice without the power of retaliation. Justice in Plato’s formulation is thus something we all tolerate as a lesser evil. In a year full of questions about Hollywood’s racial justice, (spoiler alert: this year was about Hollywood answering last year’s self-posed questions about gender) Josh Gad – Movie Star is the worst scenario. We demand retaliation. 

SPECIAL ACHIEVEMENT IN APPROPRIATE CASTING DECISION COMPLIMENTING QUESTIONABLE CASTING DECISION: Katie Holmes plays Ryan Reynolds’ similarly earnest wife in Woman in Gold, because Blake Lively was busy playing his wife in real life. Katie Holmes, however, may never be heard from again. Or possibly will star in a half-billion dollar Wonder Woman because even Marvel couldn’t make Molly Shannon a movie star.

KING OF QUEENS AWARD FOR LEAST LIKELY SCREEN COUPLE

Trainwreck – John Cena & Amy Schumer - As I said, this was the year for Hollywood to talk about feminism. Paying my respects, we’re doing equal-time beefcake. I’m not sure if it’s less believable that The Jorts dates Schumer, even for laughs, or that he ends up being much funnier than she is. This is the broader problem with Trainwreck – from Lebron’s on down, EVERYONE is funnier than Amy Schumer. Presumably she wrote the film that way, but it suggests she might find more success being Judd Apatow than being Will Farrell.

The Wedding Ringer – Josh Gad & Kaley Cuoco/Nicky Whelan. It must be fought. You see, The King of Queens Award is, in a sense, a form of retaliation against injustice. Why can’t obnoxious non-entities like Josh Gad get hot girls? If only women could see under the rough exterior and find out how truly shallow Josh is! I spoil nothing in telling you that Mr. Gad spends most of this movie engaged against all odds to one hottie. When the movie decides this is too obvious for anyone to ignore, it announces that, yes, she is too hot for him and the engagement is a sham. Not to fear! A different hottie, this one a stripper, arrives to rescue Josh with true love. The lesson is: when girls are shallow, it’s evil. When boys are shallow, it’s love.

HELEN MIRREN AWARD FOR LEAST BELIEVABLE FEMALE ACTION HERO

Jesse Eisenberg in American Ultra – More equal time beefcake! OK, so Mr. Eisenberg’s waifish presence is a joke...one of the few in this comedy. The whole cast is played against type, Topher Grace a fiendish CIA agent, Kristen Stewart as someone with a future in leading roles. This only serves to demonstrate the point – when a guy can’t play a physical role, it’s a joke. But when a woman does, it’s feminism.

Rooney Mara in Pan – is a kung fu Native American pixie.

Melissa McCarthy in Spy – She looks like she could throw down. But she’s so unathletic that, despite some extremely generous editing, it’s clear she can barely move without pain.

Mila Kunis in Jupiter Ascending – Frequently female action heroes replace muscles with moxy. Unfortunately, Ms. Kunis has the charisma of Principal Skinner.

Daisy Ridley in Star Wars VII – Sorry, I liked her. She’s plucky. She’s going to be the uber-magical space arch-witch. And thus far, she’s only had to contend with Darth Twilight. I don’t care. Darth Rousey didn’t get knocked out by this person. She got knocked out by this person.

WINNER: Rooney Mara.

If you want to see female action hero and star done right, it looks like Furiosa. 

NICHOLAS CAGE AWARD FOR MOST EGREGIOUS SELLOUT

Hugh Jackman – Pan – Jackman needs to do something worthwhile other than Wolverine. It’s been over 3 years since Les Mis and his only other non-X-Men major credit since is a mysterious side part in the execrable Chappie. This is the man’s “prime.”

Eddie Redmayne – Jupiter Ascending – Back when Eddie Redmayne wasn’t the latest object of the Academy’s British fetish, and the Wachowski siblings still had some lingering Matrix street cred, this movie got greenlit for several hundred million. Justly, Mr. Redmayne will go on to twenty years of period dramas and British casting all-calls, while the Wachowskis should finally leave us all alone.

Everyone involved in Aloha – The year’s surest cure for insomnia (I fell asleep 4 different times trying to get through it!) Basically, Cameron Crowe asked a bunch of actors if they wanted to make a few million dollars by spending some time in Hawaii. I can see Bill Murray and Emma Stone saying yes to that, but Bradley Cooper? OK, yes, anyone would say yes to that.

Tom Wilkinson – Unfinished Business – I swear Tom Wilkinson was drugged up throughout the entire film and is still unaware that he appeared in this MUST-NOT-SEE. He wanders about bewildered for the better part of an hour, saying things that frequently have very little to do with events around him. He may have wandered on set after a rough night and they just kept filming – there certainly wasn’t anything interesting happening in the script.

PREFONTAINE AWARD FOR MOST BIZARRE REPETITION OF ARCANE SUBJECT MATTER – Paul Giamatti plays the same evil music agent in both Love & Mercy and Straight Outta Compton. Hollywood, having decided to make a movie about every musician ever, took the next logical step and just had Giamatti play the same role in all of them. Saves money on background. 

Academy Awards Review Day 1: The Year In Silly Movie Titles

THE YEAR IN SILLY MOVIE TITLES

ZOMBIE STRIPPERS AWARD FOR GREAT LOW BUDGET TITLE PROBABLY BEST LEFT TO THE IMAGINATION

• Bad Asses on the Bayou
• Bloodsucking Bastards
• Home Sweet Hell
• War Pigs
• Zombeavers

WINNER: Zombeavers.

To borrow from Tropic Thunder, you never go full retard if you’re going for an academy award. You never go full Zombie if you’re going for this award. But half-zombie, half ludicrous animal cum sexual innuendo – it’s like Harvey Weinstein produced a movie about Forrest Gump surviving the Holocaust. 

MOST POMPOUS TITLE

• Big Significant Things – If this was a wide-release, it might be the first ever “Most Pompous” nominee to also earn a nomination for the best inadvertent porntitle.
• I – Oh, you. Seriously, you owe me a different title.
• Infinitely Polar Bear – Bipolar…but cute. I’m totally cereal!
• Jeremy Scott The People’s Designer - In a related incident, a UCLA football player ran into a friend of mine in the laundry room our freshman year and asked, "Excuse me...can I mix my FUBUs with my wife beaters?" I mention this because Jeremy Scott, people's designer, worked for Bjork and has since moved on to designing limited edition tennis shoes for hip-hop stars and a unisex musk that comes in a teddy bear bottle. The People aren't who they used to be. 
• The Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence – If ever there was an animal to ponder not just its own existence, but its whole species, it is the irrepressible Pigeon. The following limited options came to mind as what might have occurred to our feathered friend, as he sat on that branch:
• Fly away
• Scuttle away
• Find food
• Shit on passersby
• Shit! Did you see the size of that other pigeon?
• If God is all-powerful, and there be evil ratbirds, then God is necessarily the author of pigeons.

WINNER: I.

THE BONE COLLECTOR AWARD FOR BEST INADVERTENT PORN TITLE IN A MAJOR RELEASE

• 10. Crimson Peak
• 9. Jupiter Ascending
• 8. Hot Pursuit
• 7. Mississippi Grind
• 6. Get Hard
• 5. Daddy’s Home (It may be time to admit that this is what Will Farrell’s going for)
• 4. The Longest Ride
• 3. Black Mass
• 2. The D Train

And the run-away winner, and an instant American Film Institute Top 10 for this category:

• 1. 90 Minutes in Heaven