2017 OSCAR NOMINATIONS
I’ve
finally come to the realization that the Oscar nominations are no longer
something I need to fret about. It’s taken years of intense disappointment, but
it has become clear that any group that believes “Get Out,” “Call Me by Your
Name” and “Lady Bird”—to name the most egregious mistakes—are best picture
candidates is no longer “my” Academy Awards.
And I can't even look for support among the
mainstream critics; most reaction to the nominations focused on the absence of “Wonder
Woman,” an even less qualified film, from the best picture selections. That
said, I still reserve the right to complain about them.
What struck me most was the excitement stirred
over director Greta Gerwig's nomination for “Lady Bird,” while no one
noticed the biggest snub of the season was the award shutout for female
director Kathryn Bigelow, whose “Detroit” was the best film of 2017. This
powerful film, as superbly directed as her 2009 best picture winner "The
Hurt Locker," speaks to both the intense racial conflicts of the 1960s and
the current tentative state of affairs.
Also
missing in action among directors are Joe Wright for “Darkest Hour” and Craig
Gillespie for “I, Tonya.” At least “Darkest Hour” earned a best picture nod;
“I, Tonya,” easily the most inventive and daring movie of the year, was only
recognized for the performances of Margot Robbie and Allison Janney.
Among
the performers who were left off the nomination lists were Christian Bale and
Rosamund Pike, both superb in the little seen “Hostiles,” a first-rate Western
(see below) that got lost among the big-budget holiday releases; James Franco
pitch-perfect work as the crazy Tommy Wiseau in “The Disaster Artist” (turns
out an actor's off-screen character is part of the Oscar qualifications); and
Jeremy Renner from another underappreciated film “Wind River.”
The biggest shock in the supporting categories was the absence of Ray Romano and Holly Hunter, as a distressed couple dealing with their daughter's mysterious illness in "The Big Sick." Also deserving nominations were Patrick Stewart's lion-in-winter turn in "Logan" and Algee Smith's determined R&B singer whose big chance is lost in the wake of street protests in "Detroit."
But I am so pleased to finally see Sam Rockwell, an actor I've been championing since the 1990s, earn some recognition. I'll enjoy Sunday's show if Rockwell, Gary Oldman and 14-time cinematography nominee Roger Deakins all go home with their first Oscar trophy.
See my previous post for my Top 20 and selections for directing, acting, writing and cinematography.
I, TONYA (2017)
Who doesn't
dismiss upcoming movies with "that's not something I'm interested in"
or "that's not my kind of movie"? It's our way of editing down the
seeming endless string of new releases into something manageable. Even for
someone who endeavors to see any new film of note, it's simply impossible to
keep up.
But this
entertaining, surprisingly insightful and superbly made movie shows that any
subject can make for compelling cinema. I can't imagine a subject--competitive
ice skating (even at its most controversial moment)--that I have less interest
in.
Even when it
was big news in 1994, I remember thinking: who cares, it's ice skating.
This may be the
best written movie of the year as Steven Rogers (previously specializing in
feel-good films like "Stepmom" and "P.S. I Love You") has
constructed a screenplay that relies on a handful of unreliable narrators who
together offer the viewer a semblance of the truth. Meanwhile, director Craig
Gillespie expertly balances the film's tone between the hilarious idiocy and
on-going tragedy of the early life of Tonya Harding.
One minute you
are laughing at the white trash ignorance of Harding (an unforgettable Margot
Robbie), and, especially, her bitter, ruthless mother LaVona (played to
perfection by Allison Janney) and the next you are jolted into revulsion at the
cruelty and desperation of these characters' fates.
For those who
didn't live though this nutty adventure, one of the Olympic sports most
notorious soap opera, Hardy was a young girl with amazing ice skating skills,
yet, because she came from poverty and was a bit rough around the edges (I'm
being more polite than the film) she rarely received her due by competition
judges.
At one point,
she verbally assaults a judge in the parking lot after a competition to get him
to admit that she's the better skater, just not the "kind of girl"
the sports wants representing it.
Eventually,
she perfects a jump called the triple axel, which forces the judges to started
awarding Harding's performances.
Though the
plot keeps advancing toward what everyone keeps referring to as "the
incident"--when Harding's boyfriend and others (and maybe Harding herself)
conspire to injure rival Nancy Kerrigan to ease Harding chances in the
Nationals and Olympic trials.
Who was
responsible, directly or indirectly, was at the heart of the news stories with
the tough-girl Tonya vs. ice princess Nancy dominating the headlines.
In "I,
Tonya," as the title suggests, we're getting Ms. Harding's version,
portrayed in a contemporary, direct-to-the-camera interview in her kitchen,
intercut with the drama of the 1990s story.
Gillespie,
whose comic love story, "Lars and the Real Girl," was one of 2007's
best films, delivers a fast-paced mixture of docu-drama, social commentary and
screwball comedy; a feat more deserving of a directing Oscar nomination than
any of the actual nominees. And his work with the actors is just as impressive.
Robbie, who
played the sexy second wife in "The Wolf of Wall Street," gives the
breakthrough performance of the year, bringing out the humanity in Tonya while
not shying away from her white-trash roots. As she narrative her story, Harding never comes off as a victim,
even as her horrible ex-husband Jeff Gillooly (Sebastian Stan) beats her bloody
and falsely accuses her of crimes and her unrelenting mother treats her like a
prisoner of war.
Janney gives
the performance of the year as this misguided single mother who drives her
daughter to skating championships but deprives her of the simplest compliment
and any hint of love. She commands every scene she's in.
Janney has done
impressive work in the past, including in "Juno" (2007), "The
Help" (2011) and "The Way Way Back" (2013), but she achieves a
different level of craft in "I, Tonya." The sight of her sitting on
her florid-patterned couch,
attached to oxygen tank apparatus while a parquet sits
perched on her shoulder as she defends her actions during an
"interview" years after the events is nearly surreal.
Also memorable
is Paul Walter Hauser as the hilariously delusional Shawn, Gillooly's buddy who
imagines himself bodyguard and major operator while living at home with his
parents.
Maybe I'm still
under the spell of Fitzgerald--I just finished reading "The Great
Gatsby" with my students--but "I, Tonya" seems to me to be one
of the better depictions of the hopelessness of the American dream. Her past,
the system that is gamed for a select few, those who are never fully convinced
of any transformation--it all combines, as it did for Gatsby, to block her
dreams and keep her out of that elusive, exclusive club of winners.
Harding seems
like an unlikely character for such a grand, literary theme, but, as told by
Gillespie and his fine cast, this humble, tawdry tale makes for epic tragedy.
BLACK PANTHER (2018)
It wasn't hard to predict the positive
reviews this first big-budget African superhero film received, in the same way
"Wonder Women" earned raves for being a landmark of the genre.
As an old
white guy, I don't have much standing in evaluating the importance of
representation in sci-fi action films; in fact, these superheroes movies are so
far away from the kind of stories I relate to, emotionally or intellectually,
that I can't imagine anyone caring at all about the race, gender or ethnicity of these fantasy
figures.
That said, this
better-than-your-average Marvel junk is set in the fictional African country of
Wakanda that keeps secret the advanced technological society they've created
with the help of an otherworldly metal deposit of something called Vibranium.
Yet, and this is where the film started to lose me, they have a king (Chadwick
Boseman, who was marvelous as James Brown in "Get on Up") who must
wrestling any challengers to the crown
on the edge of a waterfall after the death of his father. It's like modern
British prime minister candidates fighting a duel.
In the film's
effort to melt historical African life with an advanced culture, it felt as if
it was playing right into the stereotypes it was attempting to bust. How had
this society, more advanced than any in the world, missed the lesson on
democracy or, at least, not moved on from the tribal mentality of another
century? Director and co-writer Ryan Coogler is a very talented filmmaker, but
I wonder if he thought through that aspect of "Black Panther."
The plot
involves some missing Vbranium, which leads to the American cousin Killmonger
(Michael B. Jordan) returning to Wakanda to claim the throne and shake up the
country's centuries-old policy of seclusion. (I swear, this was also the plot
of one of those Maurice Chevalier-Jeanette MacDonald musicals from the 1930s.)
But this all
turns on the incredulous idea that no Wakandian has tried to make a fortune out
in the world with even a fraction of this technology the country has possessed
for hundreds of years. I can hear you shouting: "It's a comic book movie!
Forget logic!" Sorry, I just can't.
I also wanted
to see some representatives of the actual citizens of this amazing country and
how they live out their lives, rather than just the royal family and others of
high standing. But the most interesting character in the film is the king's sister
Shuri (24-year-old TV actress Letitia Wright), who gets all the spunky dialogue
and singlehandedly--again, where are the teams of techs?--seems to keep the
country running.
Boseman's King
T'Challa, who takes on superhero status as Black Panther when he drinks a bit
of the magic formula, has the poise and look of royalty but doesn't make for a
very compelling protagonist, coming off as a bit dull compared to Killmonger or
tribal rival M'Baku (Winston Duke).
Jordon, who starred in the director's riveting
debut, "Fruitvale Station," and his first-rate Rocky-reboot
"Creed," dominates the second-half of the film and makes you seriously
question the validity of the Panther's legitimacy.
It's that
dichotomy that gives the film is heft and makes it stand out from the likes of
"Iron Man," "Captain American," "Thor" and other
CGI train-wrecks. It's not Shakespeare, or even August Wilson, but it stands
out in a shallow genre.
HOSTILES (2017)
This throwback
Western begins with a brutal scene you don't expect to see in a 21st Century
film: a Comanche war party attacks a white homestead in the middle of nowhere,
killing a father and his young children and sending his wife running into the
hills where she just barely avoids the same fate.
Meanwhile
(there's always a meanwhile in Westerns), Capt. Blocker (Christian Bale, at his
most understated), a fierce and determined killer of hostile Indians, is
ordered to escort his moral enemy and current military prisoner Cheyenne Chief
Yellow Hawk (Hollywood veteran Wes Studi)
and his family back to their homeland.
Along the way,
they come upon the burnt-out home and find the barely sane wife, Rosalie, (a
terrific Rosamund Pike) still comforting her dead baby.
This
travelling metaphor for white America's incursion into the West adds a man
condemned to die for crimes against the Native people (the always intense Ben
Foster), who is an old running mate of Blocker, after a stop at a military
outpost.
What makes this
Scott Cooper-directed film--who also penned the script based on manuscript by
Oscar-winner Donald E. Stewart (for "Missing")--so interesting is the
very believable transition that both Blocker and Rosalie make after spending days
on the road with the Native Americans.
I was surprised
that the Academy didn't acknowledge Studi with a nomination; he's been so
convincing so often as Hollywood's designated Native-American since "The
Last of the Mohicans" (1992). Here he has the chance to not only be
dignified, but instrumental in showing the whites that the Natives are as
diverse (good and bad) as any other people.
Of course, Bale
and Pike both play essentially didactic characters, yet they remain human,
filled with impossible contradictions and unforgivable flaws.
In his short
time as a director, Cooper has guided Jeff Bridges to his long-deserved Oscar
in "Crazy Heart" (2009); made the gritty urban drama "Out of the
Furnace" (2013) with Bale, Casey Affleck and Woody Harrelson; and directed
the underrated mob film "Black Mass" (2015) with Johnny Depp. But
this is his best work yet, depicting the brutal violence and hatred of the
1890s West while addressing the uncomfortable complexities that came with the
white settlement of western America.
PHANTOM THREAD (2017)
Paul Thomas
Anderson's unruly collage of sex, drugs and bad disco, "Boogie
Nights," remains the centerpiece of his reputation as one of American
finest filmmakers. Yet since "Magnolia" (1999), another crazy quilt
of a movie, his films have been overtly focused on self-centered, obsessive men
who strive to create their own private world.
"Punch-Drunk Love," "There Will Be Blood," and
"The Master" all felt like exercises in bloodless filmmaking, in which
minimal acting and ill-defined motivations robbed the stories of any connection
to real life. Anderson's other film this century, "Inherent Vice," is
the opposite, a shaggy dog comedy that is nearly incoherent.
Though
"Phantom Thread" is yet another study of one man's tightly controlled
world, the film revolves around the woman who attempts to let some air into
that world, refusing to be deterred by this haughty, 1950s London fashion
designer.
Daniel Day-Lewis,
who took home the Oscar for his over-the-top Daniel Plainview in "There
Will Be Blood," plays Reynolds Woodcock, a British clothing designer whose
demand for perfection extends from his work to his everyday life. While his
clients, the rich and famous, adore him, he goes through companions like flimsy
socks.
He demands a life so orderly that only his
humorless, sour-faced sister Cyril (a superb Lesley Manville), who handles the
finances of the business, knows how to manage him.
Then Reynolds
meets Alma (Vicky Krieps), a naive younger woman working as a waitress in a
small restaurant near his country estate and takes her in as his latest muse.
What
she finds is a very different world made almost impenetrable by Reynolds and
Cyril. But she persists, sometimes in most unusual ways, to maintain her
relationship. She truly loves him, for reasons that are difficult to phantom;
but then isn't all love nearly impossible to understand from the outside?
Of course, Day-Lewis
is the main attraction here, giving yet another precisely calibrated, nuanced
performance that apparently will be his final screen appearance. I don't think
any British actor has ever retired from the screen, let alone at the age of 60--I
fully expect a grand return in five or six years.
But if it is
his final turn on the big screen, then he goes off with one of his top
performances, in a career filled with amazing work that has earned him three
best actor Academy Awards (only Katharine Hepburn has more acting wins).
"Lincoln" and "The Age of
Innocence" are his finest performances and place him near the top in any
argument over the finest film actor of the past 30 years
What is most
impressive about his Reynolds Woodcock is the way Day Lewis makes every hand
movement, every raised eyebrow, every quick peek over his reading glasses,
every slight turn of his body into a meaningful layer of this complex, needy
man. It adds to the actor's legacy that began in the 1980s with "My
Beautiful Laundrette," "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" and,
giving him his first Oscar, "My Left Foot."
.
STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI
(2017)
In general, I
enjoy any film connected to the "Star Wars" franchise more than most
sci-fi action pictures (though episodes I-III were tough sledding), but I miss
the time when they were special.
Now that they
pop up as often as Marvel superhero films, the stories don't have that
"I've been waiting years for this" resonance. It's a simple case of
diminishing returns.
In this
episode, part XIII in the original series, the story picks up right where
"The Force Awakens" left off with Rey (Daisy Ridley) trying to
convince Luke Skywalker (a sullen Mark Hamill) to join his sister, General Leia
(Carrie Fisher, in her final performance) as the rebellion fights for its life.
Who would have guessed?
Rey also
experiences some kind of mind-melt connection with Kylo Ren (Adam Driver),
one-time Skywalker protégé and son of the late Hans Solo and Leia, along with
being the grandson of, well, you know who....
Though there is
plenty of blasting and spectacular space battles, the story of Rey and Kylo is
at the heart of this new cycle of "Star Wars." Yet, it seems to be
stretching both actors well beyond their range.
Ridley was
perfect as the no-nonsense, resourceful action figure in "The Force
Awakens," but her unending psychological confrontations with Skywalker and
Kylo feel unconvincing and forced. And Driver is worse.
Though he
gave solid performances in two 2016 films, "Paterson" and
"Silence," he comes off in his "Star Wars" role as a nerdy
high school student trying to act tough. Not once in these two films have I found
his traitorous villain convincingly
menacing or a worthy foe for the earnest rebellion. (He's not quite Hayden
Christensen bad, but that's a very low bar).
Fisher, who
died in December 2016 at age 60, has a surprisingly substantial role, a
memorable screen farewell for this child of Hollywood, while Oscar Isaac and
John Boyega return as Rey's loyal men of action, doing their best to stop the
evil First Order. Though the most spiky performance of the film comes from Benicio
Del Toro, an untrustworthy mercenary, doing a very funny Jack Nicholson
impression.
That it was
written and directed by Rian Johnson, best known for the quirky high school
noir "Brick" and the sci-fi labyrinth "Looper," raised my
hopes. Yes, it's entertaining, but then so will the one they'll release in May
and then in December and then in.....
