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

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.