88th Annual Oscar Winners

Well, the dust has settled from what turned out to be a surprisingly decent showing.  Chris Rock hosted and did a much better job this time, mostly by playing to his strengths.  The Academy overcompensated for not having any black nominees by inviting pretty much every famous black person to be a presenter, a variation on the old standby defense of "I'm not racist, I have a black friend."

The idea of having a thank-you crawler at the bottom of the screen was interesting.  I don't necessarily like it as a trend because it seems like a push to just get the winners off-stage faster, but seeing as the ceremony ran half an hour long, I understand it.  They also had little pop-ups about the presenters, listing upcoming or recent projects, which reminded me of the Westminster Kennel Club dog show for some reason.

Only the three commercially popular songs rated a musical number.  Sam Smith was uncharacteristically awful.  The staging for "Earned It" was sexier than the entirety of the movie in which it was featured.  I'm pretty sure the only one people will be talking about is Lady Gaga's emotional performance of "Till It Happens to You", which brought tears to the eyes of the assembled.

I was wrong on nearly every single prediction I made, which is why I am not a gambler.  Winners are below.

Best Picture:  Spotlight  (I know, right?  Came outta nowhere.)
Best Director:  Alejandro Inarritu (Guessed this correctly.)

Best Actor:  Leonardo DiCaprio  (I was hoping for Matt Damon but I figured it would have been Eddie Redmayne again.)
Best Actress:  Brie Larson (This one I actually got right.)
Best Supporting Actor:  Mark Rylance (I really wanted it to be Tom Hardy.)
Best Supporting Actress:  Alicia Vikander (I'm happy about this but I thought they were going to give it to Kate Winslet again.)

Best Original Screenplay:  Spotlight
Best Adapted Screenplay:  The Big Short

Best Animated Feature:  Inside Out (Really, this was a gimme.)
Best Foreign Film:  Son of Saul (I only saw one in this category but I knew the Academy wouldn't pass up a chance to praise yet another movie about fighting the Nazis.)
Best Documentary Feature:  Amy (I was really hoping for Winter on Fire.)

Best Cinematography:  The Revenant (I thought for sure Mad Max.)
Best Editing:  Mad Max:  Fury Road (And for this I thought The Revenant.)
Best Production Design:  Mad Max:  Fury Road (I said The Martian, which didn't end up winning anything.)
Best Visual Effects:  Ex Machina (This one I guessed right.  It was damned impressive effects.)

Best Costume Design:  Mad Max:  Fury Road  (I said Cinderella.)
Best Hair and Makeup:  Mad Max:  Fury Road  (I said The 100-Year-Old Man.)

Best Original Score:  The Hateful Eight  (I said Star Wars Episode 7.)
Best Original Song:  "The Writing's on the Wall" from Spectre  (This one I knew.)
Best Sound Mixing:  Mad Max:  Fury Road  (I said Star Wars.)
Best Sound Editing:  Mad Max:  Fury Road (Again with Star Wars.)

Best Documentary Short:  A Girl in the River  (I didn't see any of these so I abstained.  Louis C.K. was the best presenter because of this category, however.)
Best Animated Short:  Bear Story (I said World of Tomorrow but this was Chile's first win ever so I can't be mad at it.)
Best Live Action Short:  Stutterer (I thought it would go to Ave Maria but I'm pleasantly surprised because I liked Stutterer more.)

So I got 6 out of 24.  That's 25% accuracy.  I suck at this game.

Theeb (2014)

Nominated for Best Foreign Film    Well, at least I got one of the foreign films in before the ceremony.

A young Bedouin boy named Theeb (Jacir Eid Al-Hwietat) and his brother (Hussein Salameh Al-Sweilhiyeen) lead an Englishman (Jack Fox) and his interpreter across the Hejaz Province.  They are ambushed near a well with Theeb and one of the bandits (Hassan Mutlag Al-Maraiyeh) the only survivors.  Theeb must decide whether or not to trust this man in order to get back home.

This is set during World War I and it's not a perspective I have often seen.  The boy and his tribe are so removed from the actual fighting much less the politics behind all of it that you can really feel their isolation, even though the events would go to drastically change their world.  I suppose you could say it was a metaphor for the modern Arab states being shaped by foreign powers and struggling to come into their own, if you wanted to go all film school on it.  Otherwise, it's a beautifully shot coming-of-age film.

I didn't really feel one way or another about this but if it interests you, feel free to wrangle up a copy.

OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies (2006)

  After the horrible experience of Youth, I needed a palate cleanser.  Fortunately, this movie was hilarious.

French Secret Service agent Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath, codenamed OSS 117, is the nation's most suave, debonair spy.  He's also a total idiot.  Sent to Cairo to investigate the disappearance of another agent (Philippe Lefebvre), OSS 117 blunders into multiple nefarious plots including the disappearance of a Russian arms ship, the rise of fanatical religious insurgents, tensions between the locals and foreign interests, and a very angry deposed Egyptian princess (Aure Atika).

When you hear the phrase "French film" you don't necessarily jump to comedy but this was one of the best spy parodies I have ever seen.  Imagine if Inspector Clouseau took over James Bond's job for the day.  That is Agent OSS 117.  This was exactly what I needed to see after all those pretentious dramas.

Youth (2015)

Nominated for Best Original Song   Yet another horribly boring movie from the same guy who directed and wrote The Great Beauty a couple of years ago.  Based on the subject matter, I would have figured him to be 108-years-old but he's only 45.  That mid-life crisis must be kicking in like a motherfucker.

A retired composer (Michael Caine) and his best friend, a screenwriter (Harvey Keitel), go on vacation to a spa in the Swiss Alps.  The composer is bored and jaded with life, avoiding engagements and coasting on his retirement but soon becomes interested in the lives of the people around him at the hotel.

Shoot me in the head.  There was no point to this movie whatsoever.  Just boring rumination on the meaning of life, legacies, what it means to be an artist, prostate troubles, and letting go.  Also, a nude Miss Universe and an old couple fucking in the woods.  Awful.

Thankfully, this is the last entry in the Best Original Song category.  I hated the song as much as I hated the movie.  I'm pretty sure "Writing's on the Wall" is a lock for the statuette.  This year I'm going to put together an actual guess sheet and see how many I get right.  I'll post the results when I do my wrap-up of the ceremony tonight.

Cavalleria Rusticana/Pagliacci (1982)

  I really enjoy opera but I don't get the chance to go see one as often as I'd like.  Fortunately, there's Netflix.

Cavalleria Rusticana stars Placido Domingo as Turridu, an Italian peasant having an affair with Lola (Axelle Gall) who is married to Alfio (Renato Bruson), a wealthy carter.  Alfio finds out about his wife's infidelity on Easter Sunday from Santuzza (Yelena Obraztsova), a woman in love with Turridu.    He calls Turridu to a duel.

Pagliacci is a play within a play about a clown named Canio (Placido Domingo) who flies into a jealous rage when his wife (Teresa Stratas) has an affair.  In the comic play, Pagliaccio catches Columbine with her lover Harlequin and offers a humorous sermon.  In the production, Canio stabs his wife and her lover (Alberto Rinaldi) to death.

All the more reason you should never trust clowns.

These are both short operas, only an hour each and directed by Franco Zeffirelli, who is most famous for his Shakespeare adaptations.  Obviously, opera is intended to be experienced live but the next best thing is a video adaptation in the hands of a master director.

Room (2015)

Nominated for Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay    This movie was utterly fascinating to watch.  With this, I have now seen all the nominees for Best Director.  It's either going to George Miller or Alejandro Inarritu and I just don't know which.

A woman (Brie Larson) and her five-year-old son (Jacob Tremblay) have been held captive inside a tiny room for his entire life and two years of her's before that.  It is all the boy has ever known but he is willing to help his mother formulate a plan to escape from their kidnapper.  Once free, they both struggle to adapt to a world that has no limits.

Did I enjoy watching this?  In parts.  Would I watch it again?  No.  Almost certainly not.  But I was totally riveted by what was happening.  I felt this movie on a deep, visceral level.  And that's about the highest praise I can give anything.  Honestly, I would be hard pressed to call any other film this year better than this one and I hope it pulls an upset and takes home Best Picture.  I enjoyed The Martian, Bridge of Spies, and Fury Road.  I felt Room.

Steve Jobs (2015)

Nominated for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actress    I really didn't want to see this movie.  It looked like it was going to be boring and I didn't care about the subject matter.  But I watched it anyway and it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought.

The movie follows Steve Jobs (Michael Fassbender) through three product launches in 1984, 1988, and 1998 and his interactions with various people in his life, from his long-suffering marketing executive Joanna Hoffman (Kate Winslet), his former CEO/mentor John Scully (Jeff Bridges), and founding partner Steve Wozniak (Seth Rogan) to his estranged former lover Chrisann Brennan (Katherine Waterston) and daughter, Lisa (Mackenzie Moss, Ripley Sobo, and Perla Haney-Jardine).

I can't really explain why this movie was good.  It was a bunch of people standing and talking.  There was a magic to it, though, that kept me from looking at my phone for the entire running time.  I think I was afraid this was going to be another Social Network but I didn't hate this, even though it too showed a public figure sacrificing personal relationships at the altar of genius.  I'm beginning to think that says more about Aaron Sorkin than it does about either Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs.

Also, can I take a moment to really appreciate Michael Stuhlbarg?  This man is in two of the Oscar nominated films for Best Actor and has standout performances in both.  I really hope his star is on the rise because he is excellent.

Operation: Endgame (2010)

  I had never heard of this movie, not so much as a whisper, despite the fact that it has an assload of talented people.  According to IMDb, it's an action comedy but I found the comedy to be seriously lacking.

On the inauguration of President Obama, a man (Joe Anderson) begins his first day at The Factory, a building hosting two teams of rival assassins --the Alphas and the Omegas-- in a bureaucratic stalemate.  He soon learns that his ex-girlfriend (Odette Annable) is on the opposing team and that the head of both teams, codenamed The Devil (Jeffrey Tambor), has been murdered just after setting the failsafe that will destroy the building.  Alphas and Omegas battle time and each other to find an exit.

This was a terrible movie.  On paper, it seems kind of cool but it fails miserably in practice.  The dialogue is crudeness masquerading as humor and is not handled well.  The character development is nonexistent.  It tries way too hard to make the "twist" at the end seem relevant, witty, or in any way not telegraphed from a mile away.  The love story between the two characters seems tacked on and the overarching message is that this assassin program was a legacy of George W. Bush and that Barack Obama's presidency would sweep away the need for all covert operations in a shining beacon of government transparency.  I don't care what your personal politics are, that's just stupid and ham-handed.  I hope everyone involved in this got a decent paycheck because there is no other reason for them to be involved.

Racing Extinction (2015)

Nominated for Best Original Song    Another day, another depressing fucking documentary.  Ugh. 

Produced by Discovery Channel, this documentary explores the various ways humans are causing a mass extinction event as well as ways to reverse the damage already done.  More and more species of birds, amphibians, fish, and mammals are dying around the world from overfishing, climate change, deforestation, and ocean acidification.  Conservationists across the globe are struggling to keep a minimum standard of biodiversity.  This isn't as harrowing as The Cove, which fucked me up for days, but it's still depressing as hell to think about.

Apparently, there were way too many good documentaries this year for the Academy so they're sticking some into the Best Original Song category.  I didn't like the song they picked -- "Manta Ray" -- as much as I liked the other original song for this film, "One Candle" with a vocal by Sia.  I don't think it will win in either case.  It's just not strong enough to compete with Sam Smith and Lady Gaga.

Oscar Short Films 2015

This was supposed to have about 13 entries, since my On Demand promised all the Oscar-nominated shorts in one location.  Lies.  They had all the Live Action shorts and 3/5 of the Animated.  Total ripoff.  Still, I suppose it's better than the paltry two I managed to see on my own.

Nominated for Best Live Action Short

Ave Maria (2015) 
This was a super cute, funny short about a Jewish family trying to get home for Shabbat who crash into the statue of the Virgin outside a nunnery in Palestine.  The nuns are under a vow of silence, the Jews are under their own religious mandate, and all parties realize that sometimes rules have to be broken for everyone to get what they want.

Shok (Friend) (2015)
  This was not funny.  This was very sad and based on true events, which is much worse.  A man sees a bike on the road and remembers his childhood in Kosovo just before the civil war, specifically about him and his best friend trying to navigate their way around partisan soldiers.

Alles Wird Gut (Everything Will Be Okay) (2015)
  Ugh, everything is not okay.  Parents, please don't kidnap your own children.  It's fucked up.  A divorced man picks up his daughter for his scheduled weekend, then attempts to get her to leave the country with him.  She's young but she's smart enough to know when something is wrong.  This is one of those movies where you just feel awful for every character.

Stutterer (2015)
  Now we're back to something adorable.  A man is trying to overcome a lifetime of nervousness in order to meet his online girlfriend.  He has a severe stutter and face-to-face interactions are frustrating and embarrassing, especially because his inner monologue is clever and witty.  This was super cute and very relatable for all the shy people out there, myself included.  I can't tell you how many times I've wished I could have pretended to be deaf so people wouldn't try to talk to me.  And I don't have a speech impediment.  Also, the lead actor in this is super hot.

Day One (2015)
  An interpreter for the U.S. Army starts her first day in Afghanistan with a roadside bomb, an arrest, and a breech birth.  Okay, I was an Army interpreter and I have to tell you, even in a war zone, I did not deal with any of that shit.  Except for the bombing but that's an everybody problem, not an interpreter problem.  I mostly had really positive experiences but if my first day on the job was like this one, I would have reconsidered my life choices.

Nominated for Best Animated Short

Historia de un oso (Bear Story) (2014)
  I don't even know why depressing animation exists.  What the fuck.  A bear tells the story of his life and how he was kidnapped, sold to a circus, and forced to do humiliating tricks when all he wanted was to escape and return to his family.

Prologue (2015)
  This was only six minutes long but the animation on display was stunning. It's a completely wordless skirmish between a pair of Athenian warriors and a pair of Spartans.

Knights of Badassdom (2013)

  This was the second half of the Mean Girls double feature.  This one might require some explanation.  I'm going to start with the assumption that everyone reading this has at least heard of Dungeons and Dragons, the tabletop game where you roll dice and pretend to be a barbarian.  Sometimes there's figurines involved.  That is a dramatic oversimplification.  I am aware.  Calm down, nerds.  Well, when people decide to take the game out of the back room of the local comic shop and put on costumes and hit each other with foam weapons, that is called Live Action Role Playing or LARPing.  With me?  Okay.

Joe (Ryan Kwanten) gets dumped by his girlfriend Beth (Margarita Levieva) and is broken up about it.  His two best friends decide that the only way to get Joe out of his funk is to get him wasted and then shanghai him into joining their LARP adventure out in the woods.  Unfortunately, while attempting to add more authenticity, Eric (Steve Zahn) accidentally conjures a succubus who takes Beth's form.  Demon Beth wanders the woods, making mincemeat out of the defenseless role-players.  It's up to Joe, Eric, and requisite token hot chick Gwen (Summer Glau) to send her back to Hell where she belongs.

This is very much in the B-movie category, despite the fact that it stars people whose names you recognize.  The special effects are cheesy and the dialogue is deliberately awful.  It is funny mostly if you have any experience, first-hand or tangental, of that world.  Then there are absolutely people you recognize, like the guy who is on a power trip.  The guy who memorized the rulebook and tries to scam every single point allowable.  The guy who never breaks character even when it gets weird.  This movie does pay homage to all those people and more.  It's also definitely a movie that improves the more you drink.

Mean Girls (2004)

  This is Heathers for a new generation.  I would put it right next to Clueless as far as being an instant classic.  It's not for everyone.  Men, for instance, would probably not be able to relate to a lot of Girl World scenarios.  Everyone should still watch this movie because it's hilarious and endlessly quotable.

Cady Heron (Lindsay Lohan) joins high school after being homeschooled in Africa by her zoologist parents.  She soon finds that navigating among wildlife predators is totally different than their human counterparts as she is caught by the Plastics, a clique of popular girls led by the spiteful and manipulative Regina George (Rachel McAdams).  Cady is convinced to become a spy in their midst by outcasts Janice (Lizzy Caplan) and Damian (Daniel Franzese) but discovers that it's much harder to stop being Plastic than to start.

My friend, Hollie, had gone her entire adult life without having seen this movie.  Obviously I had to fix that.  This is just one of those movies that must be shared until it is a seamless part of popular culture.  Plus, it's always nice to remember what Lindsay Lohan looked like before all the drugs, rehab, and plastic surgery.

The Good Dinosaur (2015)

Nominated for Best Animated Short   Mostly, I bought this because I didn't think I was going to get any other chance to see the accompanying short, Sanjay's Super Team, which is Oscar-nominated, but it's a Pixar so there's a pretty decent chance I would have bought it anyway just for that.

Let's do the short first.

  Sanjay is a little boy torn between the bright, shiny superheroes on TV and the traditions of his heritage.  While meditating with his father, Sanjay begins to realize that the Hindu gods could be just as badass as an comic book character.

This is cute but I was expecting more of a "wow" factor.  I don't see this taking home a statuette.

On to the dinosaurs.

53 million years ago, the meteor that was supposed to cause an extinction event didn't happen.  So dinosaurs remained and learned to adapt.  Some became farmers, like the family of apatosaurs central to this film.  Young Arlo (Raymond Ochoa) has been charged by his father (Jeffrey Wright) to trap the critter eating their winter supply of corn.  Unfortunately, the critter is much feistier than Arlo was prepared for and both end up washed down the river.  Arlo knows he has to be back before the first snowfall to help his mother (Frances McDormand) bring in the crops, so he sets out to find his way home.  The critter, Spot (Jack Bright), proves to be very handy and loyal, once you get past the feral bloodthirstiness.

This was such an adorable movie.  I get why Inside Out got the nomination.  It's a much more complex story, but the animation in The Good Dinosaur was amazing.  The water looked photorealistic and the scenery was beautiful.  Story-wise, it's not anything you haven't seen but there were little moments here and there to keep it fresh.  I enjoyed this very much.

Dragonslayer (1981)

  Chalk this one up to "random films I saw part of once then tracked down because I am obsessive".

A young wizard's apprentice named Galen (Peter MacNicol) finds himself on the hook to fulfill a quest after his master (Ralph Richardson) dies.  The quest was brought by a handful of villagers from a distant land being plagued by a dragon.  The king (Peter Eyre) has made a deal with the beast to feed it two maidens a year, drawn by lottery but the villagers are tired of seeing their daughters go to their deaths while the nobility is exempt.  It now falls on Galen to slay the beast but his magic is untried.

I saw this a long time ago and was not impressed.  I think I was expecting it to be a comedy or more child-friendly since it was produced by a Disney subsidiary.  It is a straight-up sword-and-sorcery adventure movie.  Watching it now, I can appreciate that distinction.

The special effects, especially the dragon, do not stand up as well as I would have liked.  It is a nice reminder of how far we've come with CGI and even practical effects.  All in all, not a film I would strongly recommend to people who are not already nostalgic about it.

The Witch (2015)

Get ready for an assload of posts starting today and probably all weekend.  It's my big push to the Oscars.    This was one of the worst movies I have seen in recent memory.  After a day or two to think about it, I recognized that maybe only I would think it's an awful film because I am a practicing witch and this is exactly the type of negative propaganda that is so hard to live down.  Then I remember that I saw this with my friend, Megan, a Catholic, and she also thought it was fucking terrible.

A family in New England is banished from their community and forced to live on the edge of the woods.  After the baby goes missing, suspicion of witchcraft falls on the oldest daughter, Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy).  The family struggles to hold it together as weirder and weirder shit happens to them.

Again, this is a god-awful movie.  It is slow, dark, and has no real plot.  It honestly seemed like the filmmakers had taken every folktale about witches in the 17th century and stuck them all in one movie.  You could have called it Malleus Maleficarum and I would not have blinked.  But maybe you haven't read the same folktales as I have.  Maybe you would enjoy seeing family members accusing one another of consorting with the devil in the form of livestock, infanticide, and changing shape into woodland familiars.  If that is your bag, hey, go see The Witch.

Deadpool (2016)

  Oh, you guys knew this was coming.  I had to wait an extra week to see it because my friend wanted to do a group thing.  That pretty much makes me the best friend ever since I wanted to see this the day it came out.

Wade Wilson (Ryan Reynolds) is a mercenary diagnosed with terminal cancer.  He accepts a hail mary offer from a mysterious organization claiming to have a cure but finds himself being tortured by a sadist named Francis (Ed Skrein).  After escaping, Wade takes the name Deadpool and begins hunting for Francis so he can reverse the hideous side effects of his transformation and once again be with the woman he loves (Morena Baccarin).

That description tells you nothing about how fucking hilarious this movie is.  From the opening credits all the way to the post-credit sequence, this was amazing.  I forgive Ryan Reynolds for Buried and Green Lantern now.  (But not Origins:  Wolverine because there is nothing that will make up for that movie's existence.)  There isn't anything else I can say.  Every scene in that movie was pure gold.  GOLD.  I can't wait to own it.

Trumbo (2015)

Nominated for Best Actor    This was a very entertaining film about a very dark time in Hollywood and America, in general.

Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston) is a successful screenwriter and a member of the U.S. Communist Party.  When the Cold War starts rolling, all communists are suddenly suspected of being spies for Russia.  Trumbo and his friends find themselves called up for Congressional hearings and forced to either name other communists or be blacklisted in a drive led by legendary gossip columnist Hedda Hopper (Helen Mirren).  The Hollywood 10 chose to stand up for what they believed and not be snitches.  Now unemployable, Trumbo strikes a deal with D-list studio owners Frank (John Goodman) and Hymie King (Stephen Root) to write a variety of scripts under dozens of aliases.  The crushing workload and societal pressure combine to strain his family and friends to the breaking point.

This was incredibly well-acted.  The entire cast was amazing, especially Michael Stuhlberg as Edward G. Robinson and Louis C.K. as Arlen Hird.  Bryan Cranston is a phenomenal actor but everyone knew that from Breaking Bad so it's less of a surprise.  It's shocking to see Helen Mirren being such a stone-cold bitch, though.

Fun fact:  did you know that John Goodman has never been nominated for an Oscar?  Not just never won, but never even been nominated?  That man is an industry legend and he has never been recognized for it.  Think about that the next time you forward some meme about how Leo DiCaprio "deserves" an Oscar.

The Omega Man (1971)

  This is the first adaptation of Richard Matheson's short story "I Am Legend".  You will no doubt be familiar with the Will Smith version of the same name.  Sadly, both adaptations fall short of the true power of the original work.  The Omega Man is still a good film, though.

Army Colonel Robert Neville (Charlton Heston) is the lone survivor of a biologically engineered plague that wiped out most of humanity and turned the rest into mutated fanatics intent on destroying all remnants of the previous society, including Neville.  When he accidentally comes across another survivor (Rosalind Cash), Neville's hope for finding a cure is renewed.  But the mutants' leader Matthias (Anthony Zerbe) is not going to stand idly by and let that happen.

This was made at a time when people were very angry and distrustful of their government and boy, does it show.  **SPOILER ALERT FOR A 45 YEAR OLD MOVIE** Even the ending, where the future is left in the hands of a group of children, points to how the people of the 70's felt like there was nothing even they could do to change their world, that change would have to come from the next generation.  **END SPOILERS**  Heston is charming here in a brash, alpha male sort of way.  He makes Neville charismatic enough that I cared what happened to him.  The special effects aren't great but it's still worth a watch if you can get it.

The New World (2005)

  Another month, another Christy Experiment.  We've moved now from movies she loves that I've never seen to movies she disliked/didn't understand that I've never seen.  The background on this is that she bought this particular movie without knowing anything other than it was a real-life Pocahontas.  She was unprepared, therefore, for it also being a Terence Malick film.

When English settlers arrive to the coast of what would become Virginia, they are ill-prepared for what this new world has in store.  Captain John Smith (Colin Farrell) is charged with exploration of the surroundings and natives by the leader of the expedition, Captain Newport (Christopher Plummer).  Smith is captured and saved from death by Pocahontas (Q'orianka Kilcher), the youngest daughter of Chief Powhatan (August Schellenberg).  When Smith returns to the settlement, his countrymen are steps from starvation and festering with anger.  His association with the natives has made him an outsider.  Pocahontas, too, is ostracized by her tribe for helping the invaders survive the winter.

I am not a fan of Terence Malick.  I've never been interested in his subject matter and I fast forwarded through most of The Tree of Life.  I got through The New World but it took three days.  It was a deadly boring film masquerading as historical drama.

The Revenant (2015)

Nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Costume Design, Best Hair and Makeup, Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing, Best Visual Effects, and Best Production Design    Good lord, this thing is nominated for fucking everything.  I have now completed the Best Film Editing category, which I'm definitely not qualified to judge but I was most impressed by the cuts in The Big Short.  The Revenant is also the last one in the Best Hair and Makeup category but I didn't find it very impressive.  As much as the Academy loves old age make-up, I think this one will go to Mad Max:  Fury Road.  Best Sound Mixing should go to Star Wars:  The Force Awakens and Best Sound Editing to Mad Max.  Best Visual Effects goes to The Martian, hands down.

I wasn't terribly impressed with this movie.  It's not that I didn't think DiCaprio didn't do a good job but more that I couldn't connect with his character at all.  I was watching someone suffer to survive but I didn't care if he made it or not.  If the Best Actor race truly is between DiCaprio and Matt Damon, Damon has it sewn up shut for me.  I was on the edge of my seat throughout The Martian and there was a point near the end where I seriously considered pausing the movie and looking up what happened online because I didn't think I could take it if Mark Watney died.  That's how real he was to me.  I felt nothing like that during The Revenant.

Except cold.  Jesus, God in Heaven, this movie was so cold.

Glass (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a scout for a bunch of fur traders.  After an attack by angry Native Americans, Glass sets their course over very rough terrain, forcing them to abandon all their furs.  This doesn't sit well with Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy), a permanently disgruntled man harboring a grudge against all Indians for nearly scalping him.  He particularly dislikes Glass's half-Pawnee son, Hawk (Forrest Goodluck) and takes every opportunity to needle the boy.  Glass does his best to stay under the radar, but after he is mauled by a mother grizzly, the crew has to decide who will stay behind and care for him until he dies of his injuries.  Fitzgerald volunteers but has no intention to actually care for the wounded.  Interrupted in the process of smothering Glass, Fitzgerald murders Hawk to keep the boy from raising the alarm and then drags Glass into a shallow grave.  Glass survives, pushing himself to follow Fitzgerald's trail through freezing cold, infection, and starvation to get justice for his murdered son.

This was officially the worst camping trip ever.  It reminded me a lot of Jack London's novels, for the bleak man-vs-pitiless-nature theme.  Tom Hardy was amazingly evil here.  Not mustache-twirling evil, but real, honest, sell-you-out-to-make-a-buck evil.  I have not seen the last nominee for Best Supporting Actor but he is definitely out in front for me.  Sylvester Stallone would have to be pretty fucking impressive to top this performance.

Crimson Peak (2015)

  This isn't nominated for anything, which is a pity because it's gorgeous.

Edith (Mia Wasikowska) is a young woman dreaming of being a novelist.  She has no interest in being a proper nineteenth century woman, consumed with being a wife and mother.  She is fully prepared to live as a spinster until she meets the penniless but titled Brit, Lord Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston).  Despite herself, she is drawn to his air of mysterious tragedy and accepts his proposal.  They return to his ancestral home, a moldering heap known as Crimson Peak for its viscous red clay.  Edith soon suspects there is more going on than she was previously aware, for the ghosts of Crimson Peak are rising.

This is a Guillermo Del Toro film and you can see it in every frame.  Jessica Chastain is so much better here than she was in Mama and I love Jim Beaver in everything he does.  This was an impulse purchase when I was shopping but it far and away exceeded my expectations.

Olympus Has Fallen (2013)

  I don't know if I've ever mentioned it before, but my ex-boyfriend, Rob, used to work in the White House.  As such, he was very interested in films and TV shows that portrayed the building so he could point out every singe inaccurate thing.  He saw both the White-House-under-attack films that came out in 2103, this one and White House Down.  Of the two, this one is supposedly the more accurate.  So there's a semi-expert opinion for you guys.

Secret Service Agent Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) failed to save the First Lady (Ashley Judd) a year ago and has been languishing at a desk job in the Treasury Department since.  But when a North Korean terrorist (Rick Yune) leads an assault on the White House and holds the President (Aaron Eckhart) hostage, Banning leaps into action, infiltrating the building in order to find the President's son (Finley Jacobsen) before the boy can be used as leverage.

It's essentially Die Hard in the White House but man, is it impressively violent.  I haven't seen Antoine Fuqua's most famous movie, Training Day, but I have enjoyed all of his films that I have seen.  He's very gifted at creating taut, believable action sequences and gritty but not nihilistic atmospheres.  I probably wouldn't buy this film but it was good enough that I'll watch the upcoming sequel, London Has Fallen, when it comes out on Netflix.

The Fugitive (1993)

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone!  Here's a movie about a dead spouse.  This is a modern classic in some circles.  At the very least, it was hugely popular when it came out and added to the careers of Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones.

A respected surgeon, Dr. Richard Kimble (Harrison Ford) seems to have a perfect life until his wife (Sela Ward) is murdered and he is convicted and imprisoned for the crime.  He maintains his innocence but the police are not interested in his tales of a one-armed man who did the killing.  When the chance arises, he escapes to search for the real killer himself.  This puts U.S. Marshal Sam Gerard (Tommy Lee Jones) on his trail as an escaped fugitive.

I guess it's surprising that I had never seen this until now.  I was very young when it premiered and we didn't get cable until I was a teen, so my odds of catching it on TV were low.  This is why Netflix was created, to give people like me a chance to catch up to any and every movie we didn't see from the comfort of our homes.

This retains a shocking amount of watchability.  Ford and Jones are both at the top of their game and the tension is really strong.  In fact, the chase is so good it almost feels like the resolution was tacked on just because they had to end it somewhere.  I would definitely recommend it for movie night.

The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared (2013)

Nominated for Best Hair and Makeup     This is one of the very few comedies actually nominated for anything.  It comes to us from Sweden and is basically Forrest Gump with an accent.

Allan (Robert Gustafsson) is turning 100-years-old but isn't ready to just give up on adventures yet.  He escapes from his nursing home and makes his way to the bus station, where a biker is struggling with a very heavy suitcase.  The biker (Simon Sappenen) hands the case to Allan to watch but Allan just takes it with him.  The biker is very upset because that bag was full of money that was to be delivered to a very influential drug dealer (Alan Ford).  Allan has no idea that a gang of thugs is after him.  He just wants to see the world and remember all the good times in his life, like when he met dictators, scientists, a U.S. President, and Albert Einstein's idiot brother, Herbert (David Shackleton).

There are cops and guns and explosions and it really made me rethink my aversion to Swedish cinema.  It's streaming for free through Amazon Prime so if you have an account, you should give it a try.  You're not going to die of laughter but it's entertaining.

Kiss Me Deadly (1955)

  So most of the rest of my Oscar nominees aren't available on video yet.  A bunch drop March 1, which is too late, but what can I do about it?

Private investigator Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker) picks up an underdressed hitchhiker (Cloris Leachman) and is then run off the road.  This makes him more curious than anything so he begins unraveling the mystery surrounding the girl only to discover that this case is a far cry from catching cheating spouses.

This doesn't have the all-star cast that some of the films noir do but it made up for it by being a really interesting story.  One that sadly makes a lot less sense in this day and age than it did in the 50's.  I think that's what I found fascinating about it.  I haven't seen a lot of detective stories that feature this kind of McGuffin.  Your mileage will vary, of course, but if you like the hard-boiled-private-eye-with-a-shady-reputation thing, I heartily recommend this one.

Odd Thomas (2013)

  I love this book series by Dean Koontz.  Therefore, I was very nervous when I heard they were making a movie.  The reviews were mostly pans, so I resolved not to see it at all rather than be disappointed.  Then two years went by, it showed up on my server, and I thought "fuck it, what's the worst that could happen?"

It's not the worst.  It's not great but it's not the worst.

Odd Thomas (Anton Yelchin) can see the spirits of the dead.  They compel him to hunt down their killers and grant them justice.  He can also see other malevolent entities he calls bodachs.  Their presence indicates something very nasty is coming, since they feed on carnage.  When Odd sees a host of bodachs swarming around a stranger (Shuler Hensley) in town, he knows something bad is going to happen and it's up to him, his soulmate Stormy (Addison Timlin), and the sheriff (Willem Dafoe) to stop it.

This is a great cast in a middling movie and they are probably the only reason it is as good as it ends up being.  Anton Yelchin is one of my favorite young actors and Willem Dafoe can really do no wrong by me.  They are both excellent here but the script seemed to be missing some vital component that would have elevated it from mediocre action film to excellent supernatural film.  Maybe more of a sense of build-up, more menace from the villains -- I don't know, but something more.

If you've never read the books, maybe you'll like this more.  Christy did.  Like I said, it's not a bad film.  It's entertaining.  I just wished there could have been something that made it spectacular.

Gnomeo & Juliet (2011)

  This was nominated for a Golden Globe a few years ago, if I remember correctly.  I thought it was going to be middling at best but it turned out to be really cute.

Star-crossed garden gnomes Juliet (Emily Blunt) and Gnomeo (James McAvoy) are trying to see each other on the sly without getting caught by their feuding parents.  But after an accident involving bully Tybalt (Jason Statham) and a lawnmower, the two despair of ever being able to love each other openly.

Obviously, this is a well-worn story no matter that it is spiced up with a soundtrack by Elton John.  This is probably my least-favorite of Shakespeare's plays but I didn't mind this adaptation.  They at least recognize that the original ending is crap.  Also, Juliet is given a lot more spirit this time around, instead of just being a sighing flower on a balcony.  The animation is excellent and the voice cast is instantly recognizable but so suited for each character that it doesn't pull you out of the story.

Oblivion (2013)

  I'm officially out of available Oscar nominees for the time being.  You'll just have to make do with our regularly scheduled content.

Jack Harper (Tom Cruise) is a drone maintenance technician on an abandoned Earth.  He and his teammate Victoria (Andrea Riseborough) are supervising the collection of seawater before they are recalled back to the human colony on Titan.  But when a mysterious ship crashes and Jack recognizes the lone survivor (Olga Kurylenko) from his dreams, he starts to question everything he knows.

This isn't a particularly good movie.  It's okay, the visual effects are good, but it's not mind-blowing.  It felt like Edge of Tomorrow-lite, even though it came out a full year before.  It's not going to rot your brain but I wouldn't put any real effort into making sure you see it before you die.

The Hunting Ground (2015)

Nominated for Best Original Song    This is less of a review and more of a rant.  Be ye warned.

This was not nominated for Best Documentary and that irritates the shit out of me because it was the most informative by far.  It was nominated for Best Original Song, a Diane Warren and Lady Gaga-written ballad called "Til It Happens to You".  Personally, I think that the Academy is just desperate for more Gaga and is looking for any excuse to give her an award.

This documentary focuses on the underreporting and general occurrence of rape and sexual assault on college campuses.  I'm not going to quote the statistics; watch it for yourself.  Seriously.  You need to see this movie.

This movie made me so angry I couldn't see straight.  It also made me really sad and disgusted.  For all the gains we have made in equality and all the talk about how things are so much better now for women, there is still so far to go that sometimes I think it's completely hopeless.  We still prioritize men's education over women's and money even more over that.  Many of the girls interviewed for this film were told by their administrations that their aggressors would not be punished, they were interrogated and strongly encouraged to drop their complaints, and in some cases ostracized and harassed to the point of dropping out of school.  Many of the aggressors were part of the Greek system, were known to be violent repeat offenders, and were not addressed in any way because colleges fear losing huge alumni donations.

I have always been critical of the amount of attention and acclaim lavished on athletes.  I think it creates a culture of infantilized men acting as war proxies instead of producing anything worthwhile for society.  Because I am definitely in the minority for that opinion, I cannot escape exposure to sports and sports news.  The number of professional athletes who have been accused of violence against women is staggering.  The fact that they are protected from an early stage so that their careers won't be harmed by these allegations is sickening.  Every time this happens, it sends the message that their actions are excused because they are financial commodities.  The few instances where athletes were punished was after the sports season, a tacit admission that they are only valuable while winning.

I doubt this documentary will change college culture.  I doubt women will be any safer until there are enough of them to not be ignored.  And I shudder at the thought of how many more will endure trauma to make that happen.

The Look of Silence (2014)

Nominated for Best Documentary    And now I have also seen all the nominees in this category.  Winter on Fire is my pick for winner.

This is a companion piece to The Act of Killing from a couple of years ago.  Director Joshua Oppenheimer once again takes viewers to Indonesia, this time focusing on Adi, an optometrist whose brother was murdered during the regime change.  Adi goes around with the documentary crew to interview the men responsible, looking for any sign that they regretted killing so many people.  It's a mixed bag.

I thought The Act of Killing was interesting because it was something I had never seen before, a part of the world's history with which I was not familiar.  The Look of Silence is less interesting because it does feel very much like a retread.  If this had been made first, I might have felt more for it.  The idea of a man confronting the people who ordered his brother and a million other innocent people killed would have been more visceral.  This even reuses footage from the first movie, showing Adi watching Act of Killing and filming his reaction.  If I want to watch reaction videos I'll go to YouTube.  I just felt like this was going back to the well one too many times.

Bridge of Spies (2015)

Nominated for Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor, Best Original Screenplay, Best Original Score, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Production Design    I have now seen all the nominees in the Best Original Screenplay category and Straight Outta Compton would be my pick as winner. 

That's not to say I didn't enjoy watching Bridge of Spies.  Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg rarely make bad films alone, combined they're practically guaranteed a stellar product.

Insurance lawyer James Donovan (Tom Hanks) has a happy successful life.  Then he is chosen by the Bar Association to represent accused Russian spy Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance).  It is only supposed to be an appearance of justice just so the Russians don't have an excuse to cry foul.  Donovan, however, actually attempts to provide a decent defense for his client.  This diligence doesn't go unnoticed on the other side of the Iron Curtain.  Donovan is specifically requested to broker a prisoner exchange in East Berlin:  Rudolf Abel for downed U2 pilot Gary Powers (Austin Stowell).  Operating outside official government parameters, Donovan must navigate the murky waters of Cold War politics in order to mediate a successful resolution.

This is the first time I've heard about this story.  I knew that Gary Powers was one of the first U2 spy plane pilots and that he was shot down over Russia and exchanged, but I didn't know anything about the guy who did the negotiations.  I had assumed it was some schmuck from the State Department.  Imagine my surprise to learn that it was a DC lawyer -- an insurance lawyer, no less.

This is a quiet film, very deliberate, with no flash bangs or big action pieces.  That could have made it a boring slog in less capable hands.  But it's Spielberg so of course it's good.  It's not a movie I could watch over and over, so I won't buy it but it's definitely worth a rental.

Nine (2009)

One of my very first blog posts was about this movie.  I decided to give it another shot instead of just deleting it off-hand from the server.  I was hoping my tolerance had improved now that I had over six years to think about it.

It has not.  I still enjoyed the musical numbers and it still fell flat in every other aspect.  I just couldn't connect with it at all.  Originally posted on 27 Dec 2009.    Yesterday, I bestirred myself from my warm cave to brave the crowds of after-Christmas movie goers and saw Nine. I wanted to love it.

I know the story through its history on the Great White Way. It began as a musical based on Fredrico Fellini's seminal classic of Cinema Italiano 8 1/2. It premiered in 1982 starring Raul Julia as Guido Contini. Antonio Banderas won a Tony for the revival. The soundtrack is amazing, full of rich performances.

Initially, I was super-excited because the rumor mill had cast Javier Bardem as the lead. I approved. Then, I was told No, they're getting Daniel Day-Lewis to play Guido.

...

That's when I became worried. It didn't so much bother me that they cast an Irishman to play an Italian. Hell, Sean Connery has played just about every nationality there is. I'm sure Day-Lewis is a great actor. Everyone's told me so. Just because I've never liked a single movie he's ever been in doesn't mean I won't like something he might do in the future. My question was could he sing? It's a musical, after all.

I didn't worry so much about the various women. Throw enough satin lingerie at the screen and nobody is going to notice that Penelope Cruz sounds like a rusty muffler. (She doesn't, btw. She sounds perfectly fine.) My point is that women are an easy fix. Hell, Britney Spears has sold millions of albums.

So I was apprehensive sitting down in the theater for this film. I wanted to love it, I really did. I wanted it to be the flash of Chicago with the gritty heart of ... something with heart. I'm not really a girly-girl so I kind of blank on anything to do with romance. Oooh! I thought of one! Last of the Mohicans. Yeah. Cause everybody died in that movie.

Anyway, it was much more flash than grit. The story was still there but it lacked all the subtlety of the musical. Take for example: "A Phone Call from the Vatican"

Musical: Guido Contini is shooting a movie while his life is basically falling apart. He takes a sexy phone call from his mistress, Carla, while in the same room with his wife. When the wife, Luisa, asks who's on the phone, he lies and says it's a priest from the Vatican calling about the movie.

Movie: Guido Contini is shooting a movie while his life is basically falling apart. He takes a sexy phone call from his mistress, Carla, while in the same room as a nameless doctor treating him for anxiety. When the doctor asks who's on the phone, he lies and says it's a priest from the Vatican calling about the movie.

See the difference? There is a VAST disparity between lying to a stranger about having phone sex and having phone sex with your spouse sitting ten feet from you. One of these two characters is a man whose life is unraveling, and the other is just an asshole who likes lying.

The musical performances were all beautiful, fantastical showpieces. One stand-out that I'd like to recognize is Kate Hudson. She ended up having a smoky, caramel-like quality to her singing that was just husky enough to be flattering but didn't lose that bright youthful quality that makes her accessible. Day-Lewis didn't sink the ship but he wasn't terribly memorable as a singer.

Overall, I give it a solid "Meh." 3 out of 5 stars.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011)

  This was surprisingly fun to watch.  I didn't know if I would like it (even though the cast is incredible) because it is targeted outside of my age bracket but it's very good.  I would compare it to Love Actually in tone.  I couldn't say for sure why because they don't have anything in common really, except Bill Nighy, but that's the association that's strongest in my mind.

A handful of British seniors decide to cash in their retirements and live out their days in the charming Best Exotic Marigold Hotel in Jaipur, India.  Muriel (Maggie Smith) is only going to get a cheaper hip replacement surgery, despite being staunchly racist.  Graham (Tom Wilkinson) is trying to reconnect with the country he loved as a child.  Madge (Celia Imrie) wants a rich husband.  Norman (Ronald Pickup) just wants sex.  Evelyn (Judi Dench), a widow, wants an experience that is just hers and the Ainslie's (Bill Nighy and Penelope Wilton) want a luxurious escape.  When they arrive, they discover that the Marigold is sorely wilted and its optimistic but hapless manager (Dev Patel) is in way over his head.

Ensembles live and die on the strength of the cast's chemistry.  All of these actors are well-respected consummate professionals and this film sparkled because of it.  Maggie Smith was hilarious so she gets the shout out from me.  Every line she delivered was a bullseye.

Spotlight (2015)

Nominated for Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Director, Best Original Soundtrack and Best Editing    Why are Oscar movies so depressing?  I came out of this movie really needing a hug but suspicious of anyone who might have offered.

The four-person Spotlight team of the Boston Globe are used to finding their own stories and spending however much time they need to research and write them.  But when a new editor (Liev Schreiber) comes in and tells them to follow-up on a story about a priest accused of molesting children, leader Walter "Robby" Robinson (Michael Keaton) has no choice but to comply.  The resulting discoveries of systemic cover-up by the Catholic Church of many more cases shocks the entire team.  Soon, loyalties are tested and personal beliefs challenged.

This is an important story and a very well-done movie, but Jesus is it ever painful to think about.  Especially when they start throwing numbers at you.  The sheer volume of information is overwhelming.  This is another one where I can't exactly say that I liked it but I'm glad to have watched it.

When Marnie Was There (2014)

Nominated for Best Animated Feature   This was a very pretty film, very clean animation, and exactly what I expected from Studio Ghibli.

Anna (Sara Takatsuki) is a lonely, depressed foster child desperate for connections but just unable to establish them.  She is sent by her adoptive mother to the country for the summer, in the hopes the cleaner air will help with Anna's asthma.  While there, the little girl makes a secret friend in Marnie (Kasumi Arimura), a mysterious child living in a mansion only accessible at low tide.  The more Anna finds out about Marnie, however, the stranger situations seem.

Honestly, I'm probably not going to remember any but the vaguest details about this movie this time next year.  It's elegantly drawn but there was nothing in it that really gripped me.