March 2021

2020 OSCAR NOMINATIONS

     As often as I’ve complained through the decades about the failure of the Academy Awards to recognized what most film critics had identified as the year’s best movies, it was jolting to see the 2020 nominations. Essentially, once you take away box office and audience buzz (which COVID-19 did), the Academy voters become aggregators of the accepted critical assessments of the year’s films.

     In a normal year, does anyone imagine that a black-and-white film about a screenwriter from the 1940s would score 10 nominations; or that an episodical movie about a woman living out of her van, featuring mostly non-actors, would be the favorite for best picture and best director?

    Movies such as “Judas and the Black Messiah,” “Sound of Metal” and “Minari” might have scored screenplay nods in most years, but best picture? And for “Judas” and “Sound of Metal”: two acting nominations? There were a handful of typical picks: Anthony Hopkins scoring his sixth nomination, here for “The Father” and 2018 best actress Olivia Colman was nominated for the same film; “The Trial of the Chicago 7” would be Oscar-worthy any year; and Gary Oldman, Frances McDormand and Viola Davis now make semi-annual appearances at the awards.

   Yet maybe it isn’t all the pandemic’s fault. The emergence of streaming started a few years ago and clearly will be permanently changing the Oscars, as more films earn nominations without wide theatrical distribution. This year, unless you subscript to Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Max and Disney+—not one or two but all of them—you won’t be seeing most of the nominees.

    For that reason (I only have Netflix), I am in no position to critique the selections. I’m happy to see that “Nomadland,” “The Trial of the Chicago 7” and “Mank” earned nominations but I don’t understand how the voters missed “I Care a Lot” and star Rosamund Pike or Sidney Flanigan and Talia Ryder from “Never Rarely Sometimes Always.” Maybe in two years, I’ll be able to offer a pointed argument on which films and performers deserved recognition in 2020.

    In the meantime, here’s my list of the best films I saw on my computer screen. Please take little note of this list as I haven’t seen half of the most acclaimed films of the year; I’ll admit to strongly admiring only the Top 4. In most years some of these films wouldn’t have made my Top 20. It’s been that kind of year.

 

  1. Nomadland (Chloe Zhao)

  2. The Trial of the Chicago 7 (Aaron Sorkin)

  3. The Midnight Sky (George Clooney)

  4. I Care a Lot (J Blakeson)

  5. Mank (David Fincher)

  6. Never Rarely Sometimes Always (Eliza Hittman)

  7. The White Tiger (Ramin Bahrani)

  8. Miss Juneteenth (Channing Godrey Peoples)

  9. Sorry We Missed You (Ken Loach)

10. The Old Guard (Gina Prince-Bythewood)

 

 

NOMADLAND (2020)

    Capturing a world rarely noticed by most of us, Chloe Zhao’s new film lovingly portrays senior widows who live out of their RVs or vans, scratching out a living as they roam the West.

      These unlikely successors to Jack Kerouac and Ken Kesey are on the road not necessarily because they seek to explore the world, but as the best solution to their dire financial situation. Most have lost their homes after the death of their spouse and are cobbling together a life on Social Security and odd jobs.

      Though I think there is also the lure of being on their own living out of their vehicle and the appeal of the on-again, off-again community that grows among those traveling from one RV camp to the other.

    Working from a book on the subculture by journalist Jessica Bruder, writer-director Zhao, whose previous film “The Rider” was among the best of 2018, depicts a very defined world while focusing on Fern, whose life in Empire, Nevada, was upending when the sheetrock plant closed, and her husband died. She works the holiday season at an Amazon distribution center (which apparently was a big part of the book) but spends most of her year living hand-to-mouth in RV camps. She’s just one bad transmission away from desperation.

     Most of the characters in the film are playing a version of themselves as Zhao, as she did in “The Rider,” melts real life with fiction to create some kind of hybrid genre. But really that’s just the background setting that allows this insightful writer to tell the story of Fern, extraordinarily portrayed by Frances McDormand, who seems to find deeper wells of humanity with every performance.

     One rarely thinks of McDormand as one of America’s great actresses, despite her two Oscars, for “Fargo” (1996) and “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” (2017), but this film should change that. It is a subtle, earthy portrait of a woman who has had her secure life taken from her at an age when it’s impossible to restart. She comes off as real as those real-life people around her. (Sometimes she’s performing and they are simply reacting.) She might not win her third Oscar later this month—this year is loaded with impressive female performances—but it will be the role she will be remembered for.

    The episodical film offers both heartbreaking stories of individuals along with a painterly look at the beauty and hopelessness of the American West. As a visualist, Zhao is a cut above most directors, displaying an eye for landscape that recalls John Ford’s great Western vistas. She and director of photography Joshua James Richards both deserved nominations for “The Rider” and should win for “Nomadland.” 

      You don’t have to be a socialist to lament the way our economy, geared toward the top 10 percent, is stacked against those whose savings and pensions aren’t enough to sustain them during retirement. This poignant film brings that into sharp focus.

 

 

PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN (2020)

     Confronting the disgraceful way society deals with sexual assault, be it on college campuses or at your town’s corner bar, this film holds back nothing, using its main character, the deeply scared Cassie, as a sledgehammer thrashing against perpetrators and enablers.

     While the movie has its moments, mostly by way of Carey Mulligan’s performance as the simmering, determined and calculating Cassie, writer-director Emerald Fennell’s attempt to straddle the line between dark satire and “Death Wish” vengeance undercuts the seriousness of its issue.

       We first see Cassie alone in a bar completely bombed, clearly in need of being saved. Promising to take her home, a seemingly concerned young man convinces her to instead visit his apartment where he commences to take advance of her inebriated state.  At that point she reveals herself to be fully sober and the scene ends. I’m not sure what I’m expected to imagine happened next.

    Reminded by a former medical school classmate of those who were involved in the sexual assault of her close friend Nina (which led to Cassie dropping out of school and tossing aside her hopes and dreams), she intensifies her mission to focus on those who were involved in the incident.

   This on-again, off-again crusade creates some fascinating confrontations, but also stretches the limits of believability. Fennell, previously the lead writer on the cable show “Killing Eve,” but better known for playing Camilla on “The Crown,” shows her directing inexperience (this is her debut) as she struggles to maintain a consistent tone. The change of registers—from dark comedy to probing psychological study to romantic comedy cuteness—kept me at arm’s length from the film’s message.

     Mulligan, who has always seemed to be on the cusp of stardom since her turn in “An Education” (2009) and then again with her nicely calculated Daisy in “The Great Gatsby” (2013), scored a well-deserved best actress nomination for her complex turn as Cassie, whose impenetrable thought-process is the film’s greatest strength.  

   

 

 

IT’S A GREAT FEELING (1949)

    While the film cannot match its hilarious premise, this insider satire offers plenty of laughs for fans of classic Hollywood. The setup: Warner Bros. executives are desperate to find a director willing to helm a project starring Jack Carson.

     Almost entirely set on the Warner lot in Burbank, the movie opens with the studio stalwarts Michael Curtis (“Casablanca”), King Vidor (“The Big Parade”) and Raoul Walsh (“The Roaring Twenties”) adamantly rejecting requests to direct the Carson project. Even the director of “It’s a Great Feeling,” David Butler, playing himself, makes excuses to avoid working with the popular supporting actor.

     At the time of this film, Carson was coming off high-profile roles in “Mildred Pierce,” “One More Tomorrow” and “Romance on the High Seas,” but was no stranger to scene-stealing overacting. To listen to his studio mates complain, he’s the biggest ham in Hollywood. Eventually, Carson convinces his pal Dennis Morgan to director and then, together, they lead a studio commissary waitress (Doris Day, in her third film, and about the only star not playing herself) to believe they’ll make her a star.

      At one point, a forlorn Carson laments his situation to Gary Cooper, who answers each of Carson’s question with “yep,” playing off Coop’s reputation for the sparsest of dialogue. There’s also a priceless moment when Jane Wyman, thinking she may have to co-star with Carson, faints dead away in the producer’s office.

    Among the other famous faces who have small bits are Edward G. Robinson, Joan Crawford, Ronald Reagan, Sydney Greenstreet, Danny Kaye and, in the film’s final scene….well, I won’t spoil it.

     Yes, the studio system produced most of the great American films and the biggest stars, but it also made one-off comic gems like “It’s a Great Feeling,” irresistible memento of a long past era.

 

 

THE BOYS IN THE BAND (2020)

   The last thing most movie’s need is to be remade. But this landmark Mart Crowley play that become an overheated, pretentious 1970 movies was long overdue for a second go-around.

    Set in 1968, when being gay was considered an abomination by most Americans, the movie takes place in the apartment of Michael (an impressive Jim Parsons from the long-running series “The Big Bang Theory”), who is hosting a birthday party for his long-time friend/rival Harold (Zachary Quinto), the diva of the group.

    Igniting the drama is an unplanned visit from Michael’s one-time college roommate Alan (Brian Hutchison, looking about a decade older than the rest of the group), who is going through a crisis in his marriage. When he realizes he has walked into a party of gay men, he is scandalized—or is he? It’s easy to conclude that he’s hiding in a well-locked closet.

     What bothered me about the original film, directed by William Friedkin and starring Cliff Gorman and Lawrence Luckinbill, was the anger the characters, all apparently good friends, held for one another. But watching the new version, about 40 years after I saw the original, I can see that their anger is a projection of what these men faced in the outside world but weren’t allowed to express. It all comes out when they are safely among other gay men.

      Like the 1970 film, this cast is repeating their roles from a stage production, on Broadway in 2018. Quinto, this generation’s Spock, who makes Harold amusing and repellent in his absoluteness, and Robin de Jesus, who seems to be having the time of his life as the flamboyant Emory (Gorman won an Obie in 1968 for the role) are the standouts.

      Parsons might not be an actor of great depth, but his casting plays games with the audience expecting him to be a likeable character. Michael’s almost psychotic self-loathing, mostly exhibited as he unmercifully insults a young, rather slow-witted male prostitute hired for the birthday boy and then during a phone game he foists on the guests, is the play’s spine.

     While on the most obvious levels, “The Boys in the Band” (the title refers to performing for colleagues) is a monument to another, very closed-minded time—not unlike “The Trial of the Chicago 7”--yet it also resonates as a reminder that  being perceived as “different” is rarely without its struggles.

 

 

I CARE A LOT (2020)

   Con artists make for appealing movie characters. Despite their criminality, they are inevitably fascinating, filled with self-confidence and misdirected smarts. Marla Grayson fits the role in spades. She’s immaculately slick, well spoken, impossible to ruffle and has connections up and down the legal and medical professions that enable her scam as a conservator.

     This film, written and directed by J Blakeson, offers much more substance than most movies about cons, as this scheme is a real-life problem. Newspapers over the past couple decades have uncovered numerous incidents of unscrumptious conservators who use an easily manipulated court system to put elderly people living alone into assistant living before draining their savings.    

     Marla, played with steely intensity by Rosamund Pike, pays a doctor to falsify medical records to convince a family court judge, already in her pocket, and then uses her arrangement with the manager of a care facility to keep the victims as virtual prisoners.

     Once Marla has the victim out of the way and holds the court-approved papers giving her all rights (no matter what the family has to say) she and her partner Fran (Eiza Gonzalez) sell off the home and possessions. Watching them pull this scam off boils one’s blood like few other movie set ups. I can’t remember the last time I wanted to see a character get her just deserves.

       The con women overplay their hand when they take over the life of Jennifer Peterson (Dianne Wiest), a well-off senior who seems to have no family. But unbeknownst to Marla, not only does she have a son, the ominously named Roman Lunyov (played with menacing gusto by Peter Dinklage behind a bushy black beard), but he’s some kind of mobster who will stop at nothing to save his mother from this woman’s clutches.

     And did I mention this is a comedy of sorts? The deftly written film turns in unexpected ways in the final act as it keeps delaying the comeuppance of Marla that the viewer longs for.

     Few actresses in recent years have given so many first-rate performances as Pike, starting with her noirish turn in “Gone Girl” (2014) that earned her an Oscar nomination, followed by her work in the Western “Hostiles” (2017) and as fearless journalist Marie Colvin in “A Private War” (2018), a performance that should have earned her another nomination. In “I Care a Lot,” she makes Marla completely despicable even as she makes this brazen scam exasperating real. She’s both coldhearted and whip smart.

     Dinklage, among the top character actors in the business since “The Station Agent” (2003) and “Find Me Guilty” (2006), is probably best known for his work as Tyrion in the cable megahit “Game of Thrones.” As the quirky mob boss who can’t get the upper hand on the resourceful Marla, Dinklage steals every scene he’s in; his frustration in failing to get his way deepens the film’s dark comedy.

      This film perfect captures what was made crystal clear during the Trump administration: All aspects of our system of business, government and justice are ripe for manipulation by those who lack personal morals, a group that seems to be growing exponentially. 

 

    

HILLBILLY ELEGY (2020)

       Maybe because I grew up in Western Pennsylvania, a stone’s throw from West Virginia and the world of Appalachia, I found nothing offensive or overly critical of this community in this Ron Howard film. The dismissing of this movie by critics whose beef about the portrayal of this eternally down-and-out community was actually with the J.D. Vance’s memoir of the same name.

    Having not read the book, I see the film as a classic poor boy makes good; it’s basically a Hallmark film with better acting. The story follows J.D. (Owen Asztalos as a boy; Gabriel Basso as an adult) from his youth up in the steel-making town Middleton, Ohio until he’s attending Yale Law School, all the while dealing with an irresponsible mother (Amy Adams, superb as always) whose choice in men is as bad as her addiction to meth.

     But it is his foul-mouthed grandmother (an almost unrecognizable Glenn Close) who keeps him grounded and working toward college, the escape from dysfunctional family.

     Howard does a good work capturing the Hillbilly community in Kentucky, unchanged for half a century of more, where J.D. was born and Close’s Mamaw raised her family.

      There’s nothing here that hasn’t been portrayed hundreds of times in the past century of moviemaking. Sure, it would have been great to see the film call out these Appalachia communities for their misogynistic and racist 1950s mentality, but that’s not what a Ron Howard picture is ever going to be about.