Oscar Predictions (Updated with Winners!)

4/26/21 Let's see how I did.

So I've never done a predictions post, mostly because I completely suck at making predictions.  But I thought I'd give it a shot this year and then update tomorrow with the winners.  So you guys can see how much I suck at making predictions.

Best Picture - I mean, Nomadland is kind of the shoe-in but I think Minari might pull off a surprise upset.

Actual winner:  Nomadland.  I have to tell you, when this was announced before Best Actor and Best Actress, I almost flipped my shit.  I was googling, trying to find out if I had fast forwarded over them or something, but no.  Just a dumbass idea by the show producers that completely backfired.

Best Director - Chloe Zhao, for sure.

Actual winner:  Chloe Zhao.  Yay, me.

Best Cinematography - I only got 3/5.  Of those three, probably Nomadland.

Actual winner:  Mank.  Understandable.  It also won the Cinematographer's Guild Award, so.

Best International Feature - 3/5.  Another Round, for sure.

Actual winner:  Another Round.  Too easy.

Best Actor - Chadwick Boseman.  Slam dunk.

Actual winner:  Anthony Hopkins.  What a fucking twist.  Everybody thought it was going to be Boseman.  

Best Actress - Could go to Frances McDormand but for my money, Andra Day.

Actual winner: Frances McDormand.

Best Supporting Actor - 3/5 and it's probably going to be Daniel Kaluuya whose performance I haven't seen yet, but he won the Golden Globe so it seems like a safe bet.  Of the three I saw, Sacha Baron Cohen.

Actual winner: Daniel Kaluuya.  One of the funniest speeches of the entire night, even though I'm pretty sure his mom is going to beat his ass for bringing up her sex life on live TV.

Best Supporting Actress - 4/5 but Yuh-Jung Youn, 100%.

Actual winner:  Yuh-Jung Youn.  With the other funniest speech.  And the Brad Pitt thirst.

Best Animated Feature - Should be Wolfwalkers, but it'll probably be Soul.

Actual winner:  Soul.  Pixar remains the juggernaut.

Best Animated Short - 2/5, not a great sample size this year.  Probably go with If Anything Happens I Love You just for the topical nature.

Actual winner:  If Anything Happens I Love You.

Best Live Action Short - 4/5 Two Distant Strangers

Actual Winner: Two Distant Strangers.  And best dressed duo for their coordinating gold and black tuxedos!

Best Documentary Short - Hunger Ward though it could also go to Colette.

Actual winner:  Colette.  I should have known the Academy would never pass up a WWII film.

Best Documentary Feature - Collective

Actual winner:  My Octopus Teacher.  Literally the most inoffensive of the nominees.

Best Costume Design - Emma.

Actual winner: Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

Best Makeup and Hairstyling - If Hillbilly Elegy wins anything, it'll probably be this.  But Pinocchio had surprisingly great practical effects, so that's my vote.

Actual winner: Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

Best Production Design - 3/5 I think Mank.

Actual winner: Mank

Best Film Editing - 4/5 The Trial of the Chicago 7 but in a perfect world, Da 5 Bloods.

Actual winner: Sound of Metal

Best Sound - Sound of Metal

Actual winner: Sound of Metal

Best Original Score - Soul but I'm really hoping for Da 5 Bloods.

Actual winner: Soul.  And whoever did Jon Batiste's makeup should be commended.  His looked fresher than most of the female presenters.

Best Original Song - 4/5 God help me, Eurovision Song Contest

Actual winner: "Fight for You" from Judas and the Black Messiah.  Apparently, the song performances were aired before the broadcast, so I missed all of them.  But this was definitely the best dressed table.  That white suit with the ostrich trim?  Gorgeous.  That blue caped jumpsuit?  To die for.

Best Visual Effects - 4/5 I'm going to say The Midnight Sky because the Academy fucking loves outer space.

Actual winner: Tenet.  A surprise.  I thought for sure it would get shut out.

Best Adapted Screenplay - 4/5 One Night in Miami

Actual winner: The Father.  The one I didn't see, of course.

Best Original Screenplay - 4/5 Minari

Actual winner: Promising Young Woman.  Also kind of a surprise.

And they gave out two Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Awards, one to Tyler Perry (wholly deserved) and one to the Motion Picture Television Fund, accepted by its CEO, Bob Bietcher.  That one felt a little more gross.  I don't love the idea of giving an Oscar to a company, because it seems like a slippery slope to awarding corporations and that's a terrible idea.

Okay, so there's only a about an hour and a half left until the ceremony, so I'm going to go ahead and push this now.  I'll see you guys tomorrow with all the winners.

So I got 11 out of 22.  I'd have had probably the same luck picking them at random out of a hat.

The ceremony itself was kind of a bust, as well.  A lot of "telling" and very little "showing," no jokes, no host, no musical numbers, a DJ instead of an orchestra, and almost no real glamour.  They might as well have just let people present from their houses.  

Pinocchio (2019)

Nominated for Best Costumes and Best Hair and Makeup    Before I watched this, I would have told you that there was absolutely no need for another Pinocchio movie.  I would have been wrong.  This thing is beautiful.

Gepetto (Roberto Benigni), a starving woodworker, carves a puppet and names him Pinocchio (Federico Ielapi).  The puppet comes to life and Gepetto is overjoyed to have a son.  But Pinocchio is uninterested in being a good boy.  He wants to have fun.  So instead of going to school, he goes to the puppet theater, but is kidnapped by the Puppet Master (Gigi Proietti).  After hearing Pinocchio's tale of woe, the Puppet Master takes pity and lets him go.  Pinocchio immediately falls into bad company, and is saved by the intervention of the Blue Fairy (Alida Baldari Calabria).  Pinocchio returns home only to find that Gepetto has gone looking for him.  In his search for his father, Pinocchio meets the Blue Fairy once more, only to find that she's grown up (Marine Vacth).  She tells him that if he is good, he can become a real boy and grow up too.  Once again, a poor choice in companions sees Pinocchio in trouble.  

This sticks pretty close to the source material, but dresses it up in gorgeous effects and high-end production design.  It's a stunning film.  It's currently available for rent on Amazon, Vudu, Google Play, and Apple+.

Promising Young Woman (2020)

Nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Film Editing   Of all the nominees, this was the one I was looking forward to the most.  That's probably why I found it a little disappointing.  I try and moderate my expectations but sometimes, I just can't.  

Content warning:  sexual assault, discussion of rape

Cassie (Carey Mulligan) seems like a stunted flower.  She is 30-years-old, still living in her parents' house, dropped out of medical school, and works in a coffee shop.  To all appearances, she is a failure.  But when one of her med school friends, Ryan (Bo Burnham), drops by the coffeeshop, Cassie sees a chance to make some amends.  Well, to make the people who wronged her make amends anyway.

This is probably as far into the Rape Revenge category as the Academy is willing to look, and that it got nominated for Best Picture is seriously an achievement.  That being said, it's incredibly fucking tame for the category.  I could get into specifics but then it's pretty spoilery, so I will refrain this time.  Honestly, it feels a little like the nominee that Hustlers should have been last year.  None of which is to say it's a bad movie.  Far from it.  It's extremely entertaining and Mulligan and Burnham are both great in it.  It's just not as bloody as I would have liked.

It's currently available for rent on Amazon, Vudu, Google Play, and Apple+ for $6, which is much more reasonable and totally worth it.

MInari (2020)

Nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Original Score    This is one of the frontrunners, for sure.  It's got a decent shot at an upset for Best Picture, depending on how contrary the Academy is feeling.

Jacob (Steven Yuen) moves to rural Arkansas with his family in search of a new, better life.  His wife, Monica (Yeri Han), is not convinced buying a plot of land that nobody could make profitable is the way to go.  She's also concerned about how far away from a hospital they are because their son, David (Alan S. Kim), has a heart murmur.  To pacify her, Jacob agrees to move her mother (Yuh-Jung Youn) in with them from Korea.  David is not impressed with his new grandma, who gambles and swears and doesn't know how to bake cookies.  

This is a very specific coming-of-age, slice-of-life story and it was not meant for me.  I recognize that.  It's a very good movie, if you like those kinds of stories.  It's an important movie if you see yourself in any of these roles.  I don't.  If anyone, I totally empathize with the mom.  I, too, wanted the fuck out of my sleepy, Southern town and I didn't care who knew it.  But that's literally where the comparison ends.  And that is okay.  Everything is not meant for everybody and representation matters.

As a child actor, Kim is great.  Youn blew her performance out of the water, however, and handily beat the shit out of Glenn Close as a grandma.  Seriously, not even close.  Minari is what Hillbilly Elegy was trying to be and failed.

So now I'm going to get into some spoilery shit as I lay my case on what would have made this a perfect movie to me.  **SPOILERS  This would have been such a perfect horror movie.  You have all the elements:  isolated setting, fish-out-of-water family, Jesus-freak "helper", Old World/New World conflicts, Garden of Eden symbolism complete with a fucking snake.  Hell, there's a literal exorcism performed!  This could have been an Amityville Horror/The Conjuring meets Bedeviled, except better.  And they didn't do it.  Which again, is fine.  The writer/director wanted American Dream, not American Nightmare. Maybe next year.  **END SPOILERS.  Minari is currently in theaters (don't) and available to rent (for $20, highway robbery) on Amazon, Vudu, and Apple+.

Farmageddon: A Shaun the Sheep Movie (2020)

Nominated for Best Animated Feature    This is the last nomination in the Animated Feature category and also the last free* nominee.

*Free as in on a service I already pay for, versus to rent.

Shaun (Justin Fletcher) is just a sheep looking for a little bit of fun and circumventing the overprotective dog (John Sparkes), when he discovers a lost alien (Amalia Vitale) hiding in the barn.  Lu-La has lost her ship near the local pizza place and needs Shaun to help her navigate back to it.  But her UFO has sparked a lot of interest from a shadowy government agent (Kate Harbour) who wants to capture Lu-La and her ship.  It is up to Shaun and the flock to get Lu-La home safely.

This is a very cute movie and if you liked previous Aardman stop-motion films, this will be another winner.  There are a ton of sci-fi references for all ages, from the obvious (Alien) to the obscure (Mac & Me).  A fun, easy watch for the whole family.

It is 1000% not going to win.  I'll try and do a post for predictions later today, if I can, but no way does this win.  Very cute, though, and streaming on Netflix.

The Life Ahead (2020)

Nominated for Best Original Song    This is basically just The Kid with a Bike, except with a Holocaust twist to make it more sad.  The song is very pretty, though.

Momo (Ibrahima Gueye) is a 12-year-old troublemaker looking for a place to belong.  After he is caught stealing, his guardian, Dr. Coen (Renato Carpentieri), sends him to live with the woman he robbed, Madame Rosa (Sophia Loren), a Holocaust survivor who runs a day care for the children of prostitutes.  Dr. Coen think's Rosa's tough love is exactly what Momo needs.  But Rosa isn't getting any younger and her past traumas begin to catch up with her, threatening to destabilize the only home Momo knows.

Honestly, I had a lot of problems watching this film.  It shortcut through any real emotional development between Rosa and Momo and spent way too much time on the drug dealing subplot.  Also, really concerned that neither of the children in the film knew what Auschwitz was.  I don't know that there's a good age to bring up the Holocaust, but I'm also not super comfortable letting kids try and discover that shit for themselves.  The Life Ahead is currently streaming on Netflix.  Watch The Kid with a Bike instead.  

Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution (2020)

Nominated for Best Documentary Feature      People.  People, we are so close to the finish line.  The Oscars are tomorrow.  TOMORROW.  And I swear to God, I will get the DVR function on Hulu to work this time.  

This documentary chronicles the advancement of civil rights for the disabled, starting with the revolutionary treatment at Camp Jened, a summer camp for disabled youth, that dared to treat kids with disabilities as kids, not just as their disability.  

As a child, my brother was diagnosed with a learning disability.  He and I went to the same high school, four years apart.  We went to most of the same classes with the same teachers.  He was not allowed to graduate as a full student, because he was Special Ed.  This was in the '90s.  Twenty years before that, he wouldn't have been allowed to attend at all.  He would have been institutionalized.  I am a disabled veteran.  My disabilities are mostly invisible but they are no less real.  Any and all accommodations he and I have gotten have been because of the people in this movie among countless others and the struggle they went through just to be treated as people.  It's depressing and it may be an uncomfortable watch for some, but this is one of those Important films.  

You know someone disabled.  You may not know it, but you do.  And even if you didn't, do you really have to have a personal experience to understand that people are more than their limitations?  Crip Camp is currently streaming on Netflix.

Pieces of a Woman (2020)

Nominated for Best Actress      Well, I've now seen Shia LaBeouf's penis more than I have ever wanted or needed.  This is definitely one of those "I watched this so you don't have to" movies.

Content Warning:  dead baby

After a home birth gone wrong, Martha (Vanessa Kirby) struggles to cope.  Her partner (Shia LaBeouf) and mother (Ellen Burstyn) want her to prosecute the midwife (Molly Parker) in criminal and civil court.  Nobody cares what Martha wants, even if she were capable of articulating it.  

So I get what the movie is trying to say.  I understand on an intellectual level that grief affects everyone and what a crushing blow it would be to lose a child you wanted only to then have people turn around and blame you for surviving that loss and tell you you're doing it wrong.  But all I felt watching this was disgust at every single one of these characters.  I just hated these people and I didn't care what happened to them.  I was actively rooting against them succeeding.  And it reminded me of the (only) psych class I took in college, which was Psychology of Good and Evil.  On the nose, I know, but how am I not gonna take a class called that?  

Anyway, the salient point is that you can actually push too many emotional buttons and people will refuse to empathize.  The example my professor gave was the Sarah McLachlan dog rescue commercial.  The combination of that sad fucking song with images of brutally abused pets caused the opposite intended effect.  People didn't donate, they turned it off.  It literally made them feel too bad to be helpful.  That's what this movie does for me.  Your mileage may vary.  It's currently streaming on Netflix.  Hope you have a strong stomach.

Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga (2020)

Nominated for Best Original Song     I'm so mad I had to watch this movie.  I'm even madder that I kinda liked it.  I think I've only seen 3 of the 5 Best Song nominees but this was definitely the best of the lot.  I'm so annoyed.

Lars Erickssong (Will Ferrell) has wanted to win the Eurovision Song Contest for Iceland since he was a little boy.  His partner and probably not his sister, Sigrit (Rachel McAdams), wants Lars to win because she thinks after that he'll finally see her as a person and want to marry her.  The problem is their band kind of sucks.  But a random chance sees them elevated to the national competition, and a strange "accident" sees them as the only survivors and headed for Edinburgh and the Eurovision stage.  Faced with a world of competitors, far out of their comfort zones, Lars and Sigrit must figure out who they are and what they're really fighting for.  

This is a profoundly dumb and predictable movie.  Everything you think is going to happen, happens.  AND YET... all of the music is amazing and totally worth watching.  There are a ton of cameos (obvi) from pop stars and Dan Stevens is hilariously weird as always (though he doesn't do his own singing, which was a disappointment) and Pierce Brosnan doesn't do any singing at all (a profound relief).  

I am not a Will Ferrell fan for the most part.  His movies just aren't the kind of humor I like and he comes across as shrill to me.  McAdams is criminally underrated as a comic actress, so maybe watch it for her?  And the soundtrack, which I cannot stress enough, is fantastic.  Even if I had "Jah Jah Ding Dong" stuck in my head for two straight days.

It's currently streaming on Netflix.

Feeling Through (2020)

Nominated for Best Live Action Short    This was very hard to find on YouTube.  It turns out, you can actually watch the whole thing on the film's home page.  Which I would have loved to have known while I was on YouTube.

Tereek (Steven Prescod) is trying to find shelter for the night when he sees Artie (Robert Tarango), a deafblind man, trying to get home.  

This is the first film to feature a deafblind actor, which is great.  It's a sweet little film about empathy and living on the margins of society.  Prescod does a lot of emotional lifting in the film and I look forward to seeing his career take off.

The Midnight Sky (2020)

Nominated for Best Visual Effects     This was so fucking depressing, but it gets worse when you think about what happens after the credits.  We'll talk about that at the end, so thar be spoilers ahead in them waters!

After a catastrophe renders Earth uninhabitable, a scientist with terminal cancer (George Clooney) volunteers to stay behind at a remote Arctic observatory in the hopes of making contact with a crew of astronauts on their way back from a fact-finding mission on one of Jupiter's moons to warn them away from the lethal radiation.

Yeah, fucking dark, right?  It was like somebody said "hey, let's take the horrific loneliness of isolation from Solaris, some generalized space horror, and stick it in The Grey."  And then some Netflix executive said "Holy shit, no," then looked around at 2020 and went, "Eh.  Can't be worse than reality.  Greenlight that bitch!"

Okay, but it actually can be worse.  Here's where we're going into spoiler territory, so highlight the text in white to read only if you don't care how this movie ends.  **SPOILERS**  Okay, so the human race is fucking doomed no matter how cute and hopeful little space Adam and Eve are because Kyle Chandler and Demian Bichir's characters are fucking selfish and decide to commit suicide instead of staying with their crew.  So Felicity Jones is pregnant which is supposed to be all "life finds a way" but no.  There's no genetic diversity.  This kid is just going to be alone on Jupiter's moon.  Or there's some Blue Lagoon bullshit about to happen.  So the whole movie is a waste and George Clooney died for nothing.  **END SPOILERS**  This total downer is currently streaming on Netflix.

Two Distant Strangers (2020)

Nominated for Best Live Action Short    And we're back from our brief interlude to Hard-Hitting, Topical Movies that Make a Point.

Carter (Joey Bada$$) just wants to leave his hookup (Zaria) and go home to his dog.  But he keeps getting killed by a cop (Andrew Howard) and waking up to do it all over again in a Groundhog Day/Twilight Zone horror show.

The concept works extremely well.  No matter what changes he makes, bag - no bag, turn left - turn right, comply - resist, the result remains the same: death.  It almost feels too on the nose.  But the level of exhaustion I felt watching is approximately one molecule compared to the exhaustion of having to live this roulette game every day.

So, yeah, defund the police, and Two Distant Strangers is currently streaming on Netflix.

Ava (2020)

  There comes a point in every Oscar season where I lose my tiny mind and have to watch something, anything, that isn't a nominee.  We have reached that point.

Ava (Jessica Chastain) is a damned good assassin, when she's not being a recovering addict asking her victims questions about what they did to deserve being murdered, to the exasperation of her handler, Duke (John Malkovich).  After a particularly bad incident, Ava returns to her hometown to lie low, but finds that family is much harder than killing people for money.

This is a very straightforward assassin movie elevated only by its cast.  Seriously, this is A-list talent in a B-list at best film.  Chastain is clearly angling towards more physical action roles as opposed to love interests and I think that's wonderful.  Please inundate me with all the badass women my TV can hold.  Love love love.  This is currently streaming on Netflix.

Quo Vadis Aida (2020)

Nominated for Best International Feature    Hey, we're starting to get around to war atrocities committed during my lifetime.  Progress...?  

Aida (Jasna Djuricic) is a Serbo-Croatian translator for the U.N. during a crucial moment in the Bosnian war.  Her hometown of Srebrenica has been captured by a Serbian general (Boris Isakovic) and only a small number of the town's inhabitants can be safely housed within the U.N. camp.  Her husband and two sons are not among them.  Over the course of a desperate couple of days, Aida does everything she can to get her family safe harbor in the face of a looming genocide.

I don't remember a lot about the breakup of Yugoslavia and the Bosnian war because I was around ten-years-old but I remember it's what turned the U.N. into a joke.  A peacekeeping body that was so bureaucratic, it hamstrung itself and probably caused more damage than it helped.  That is on full display here, as is the horror of having to subsequently live next to the unpunished monsters.  You know I'm big on double features, and you could easily pair this with The Act of Killing.  It would be depressing as hell, but you could.

It's currently streaming on Hulu and my only real complaint is that there's no option for subtitles for the English parts and the closed captions actively obscure the subtitles for the Serbo-Croatian and Dutch parts.  I know it's probably because closed captioning is added as a secondary service later but it's really annoying because the English parts are super quiet and subtitles would very much have helped me.

Hillbilly Elegy (2020)

Nominated for Best Supporting Actress and Best Hair and Makeup     This is an extremely bad movie.  It is misery porn disguised as Oscar bait.

J.D. Vance (Gabriel Basso) is a Yale Law School student looking for a placement with a prestigious law firm when he gets a call from his sister (Haley Bennett) saying their mom (Amy Adams) has OD'd on heroin.  J.D. returns home to Ohio to try and get his mom care while remembering via flashbacks his tumultuous upbringing by the violent, unpredictable mom and the rough but caring Mamaw (Glenn Close).  

I thought I had read somewhere that the author whose memoir this is based on admitted that it was fiction, but I can't find anything about that in any reputable site.  I did find that the book was considered controversial because of the generalizations of people and situations in Appalachia that offended people who were actually from there and people who spent a career studying those people.  The writer would not be the first mediocre white dude to take a personal situation and try to extrapolate it out to a greater population in an attempt to universalize the issue.  But we're not here to talk about the memoir (because I didn't read it).  We're here to talk about the movie.

It's still not good.  Even if you take away the controversy, it's just not a very good movie.  It's extremely heavy-handed while incorporating every cliché about addiction and poverty you've ever seen before.  Its only two nominations are for "uglying" up Adams and Close, and Close's performance.  Adams has already tried this back for The Fighter and it didn't work then.  Glenn Close has been nominated for an Oscar eight times but I just don't see this being the one that wins.  If she should have won, it would have been for Fatal Attraction, her breakout role, or Albert Nobbs, not without its own controversy because she played a trans man.  

Just to clarify, she shouldn't get an Oscar for playing a trans man, she should have gotten it because the role was difficult and she played the character well.

Over the Moon (2020)

Nominated for Best Animated Feature     Finally, an Oscar nominee that doesn't make me want to die!

Fei Fei (Cathy Ang) has always loved stories of the goddess Chang'e (Philippa Soo), who lives on the moon with only Jade Rabbit for company after her true love, Houyi (Conrad Ricamora), died tragically.  So when her widowed father (John Cho) is ready to move on with a new lady (Sandra Oh) and her irritating son, Chin (Robert G. Chiu), Fei Fei is determined to prove love is eternal.  She decides to build a rocket to the moon, to prove Chang'e is real by getting a selfie with the goddess (as one does) but she doesn't count on Chin stowing away or Chang'e being kind of a bitch and demanding Fei Fei present her with a gift so she can bring back her true love.  

This is a very cute animated musical that highlights an underseen mythology.  It's never too early or late to get your kids (and yourself) some awareness of other cultures.  I fully admit, I don't know shit about Chinese mythology.  This was all new to me and I quite enjoyed it.  The songs were pretty, the animation was beautiful, and the characters felt fully realized.  It's currently streaming on Netflix.

The Letter Room (2020)

Nominated for Best Live Action Short     Oh my God, this is so much more wholesome than I was expecting.

Richard (Oscar Isaac) is a prison guard hoping to move into a more positive role when he is assigned to the letter room.  See, all correspondence into and out of the prison is screened for contraband, inciting activities, or gang-related information, in theory.  In practice, it's just one more way to dehumanize.  Richard reads the letters but finds himself growing more emotionally involved with the sweetheart (Alia Shawkat) of one of the death row prisoners facing execution (Brian Petsos), to the point where he begins to question what moral obligation he has to someone outside the system.

Another day, another free trial.  This one was for a streaming channel called Topic, which I had never heard of before and still don't know anything about, offered through Amazon.  This is honestly the most heartwarming short of the whole lot, so far, so it might be worth it to you.  Plus, Oscar Isaac is always a treat to watch.

Da 5 Bloods (2020)

Nominated for Best Original Score     It is ridiculous that this was only nominated for original score.  In a perfect world, Delroy Lindo would have gotten one for best actor, Spike Lee would be up for best director, and Newton Thomas Sigel would have a nom for cinematography.  At the least.  But the Academy decided Judas and the Black Messiah was their one Black film this year.

Four African-American Vietnam vets return to the country that shaped them, ostensibly to find the remains of their fallen squad leader (Chadwick Boseman), but also to recover millions of dollars of gold bullion "lost" by the CIA.  Each man has his own scars and secrets, none more than Paul (Delroy Lindo), whose untreated PTSD threatens to ruin the relationships with his friends and his son, David (Jonathan Majors).

This is an incredibly powerful move about not just the experiences of war, but of expendability.  Lee peppers the film with statistics in a surprisingly fun way for such dark subjects, while Lindo gives a performance that echoes Humphrey Bogart in Treasure of the Sierra Madre, who also didn't get fucking nominated.  It's currently streaming on Netflix.

Do Not Split (2020)

Nominated for Best Documentary Short     This was on Facebook, of all godforsaken places.  

An on-the-ground look at the 2019 and ongoing protests in Hong Kong from the students and activists determined to carve a democracy from the burgeoning control of mainland China.

The protests were mainstream news for a hot minute and then the pandemic hit.  I think silence is often used as a tool to crush opposition, so I'm glad to see this documentary getting passed around, even if it is through goddamn Facebook.  We might be halfway to a failed state ourselves, but we can still support the concept of democracy elsewhere.  

The White Tiger (2021)

Nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay     I cannot overstate how much I loathed this film.  It took me four days to watch it and it was a complete slog.

Balram (Adarsh Gourav) recounts his rise from a driver to a rich family to a business entrepreneur after his employers attempt to force him to take blame for a drunken hit and run by the boss's son's wife (Priyanka Chopra).  

According to the Netflix description, Balram uses his wits and ambition to move up in the world.  This is not what happens.  This is not "plucky underdog rises from obscurity."  This is "fucked over dude games system to fuck over others in turn."  There are no innocents here.  Balram is naive with an entire system stacked against him.  The son and his wife are wannabe crusaders who mouth progressive policies while standing for the exact opposite, and the rest of the son's family are greedy and amoral, bribing political candidates to maintain their status quo.

They could have cut a solid half hour of whinging out of this movie and it would not have lessened the impact.  It's so repetitive in its misery porn.  But hey, maybe you're in a Burn It All Down kind of mood.  If so, it's currently streaming on Netflix.

Greyhound (2020)

Nominated for Best Sound    I managed to get both Apple+ nominees watched in the 7-day free trial, and if you're interested, I encourage you to do so as well.  

Captain Krause (Tom Hanks) receives his first Naval command of the the destroyer Greyhound, the lead for an international convoy of ships to deliver troops and supplies to a beleaguered Britain.  They convoy must run through a section of the Atlantic called The Pit, where no air cover is available and German U-boats prowl.

I don't know that we needed another rah-rah WWII movie but I will say that this was a brisk 91 minutes that didn't overstay its welcome.  Rob Morgan out-acted Tom Hanks in the quiet dignity department, which is no mean feat.  Otherwise, this was a completely typical war movie with heavy religious overtones.  It wasn't even as good as The Finest Hours.

Wolfwalkers (2020)

Nominated for Best Animated Feature     This is by the same studio that did Song of the Sea and The Secret of Kells.  I love them and I will watch anything they make.

When Robyn (Honor Kneafsey) moves with her father (Sean Bean) to Ireland from England, she assumes that she will help him hunt the wolves outside the town walls.  Instead, she finds she must commit to a Puritanical life of drudgery in the scullery, trapped inside those selfsame walls.  She sneaks out into the forest, determined to prove herself, and discovers that the wolves are under the control of Mebh (Eva Whittaker), a Wolfwalker who can heal with a touch and turns into a wolf when she sleeps.  Mebh's bite turns Robyn into a Wolfwalker as well, which forces an immediate perspective shift.  She learns Mebh's mother (Maria Doyle Kennedy) had gone off in wolf form to look for a safer location for the pack but hasn't returned.  Now Robyn must use her new powers to find Mebh's mom before the Lord Protector (Simon McBurney) burns down the wolves' forest while also trying not to get killed by her own dad.

This is a beautifully animated movie.  The story is sweet, the performances are good, the music is beautiful.  A++.  The only drawback is that it's currently on Apple+, which meant I had to sign up for another free trial.  This one I will probably not keep; there's just not enough programming to make it worth it to me.  Your mileage may vary.  It is 100% worth a free week just to watch this, though.

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (2020)

Nominated for Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Production Design, Best Hair and Makeup, and Best Costumes     August Wilson has never written a happy play.  Sometimes it's nice to know before you go in.  You can kind of prepare yourself.  

Ma Rainey (Viola Davis) is a hugely successful blues singer.  She didn't get that way from being a pushover.  She has no problem firing back at disrespect, whether from her weaselly manager (Jeremy Shamos), the recording studio owner (Jonny Coyne), or her own trumpet player.  Levee (Chadwick Boseman) has high ambitions papered over a lot of trauma and sees Ma as his jumping off point to fame and fortune of his own.  He thinks Ma is a fading relic of the past.  Over the course of one recording session, tensions escalate as disappointments loom.

Okay, so Boseman is pretty much a shoe-in for a posthumous Oscar.  I haven't seen Da 5 Bloods yet, but he wasn't nominated for that and the Academy loves to lump performances together.  Plus, you know, he was incredibly talented overall, and died tragically early.  It would take a fucking ghoul to vote against that.  Production Design, Hair and Makeup, and Costumes are longer shots, to be honest.  It's set in a single location, the design is pretty minimal, and it's up against all the other period pieces.  Viola Davis is a luminous performer, as always, but I think she was overshadowed by Boseman.  For me, the standout performance of the film was by Colman Domingo, who played the band manager, Cutler.  He was the connective tissue around which the entire film revolved and I'd like to see him get more recognition.

This is an absolutely soul-crushing film to watch.  It's slow-paced and it's very talky.  It's currently streaming on Netflix.

Hunger Ward (2020)

Nominated for Best Documentary Short    You know how the last couple of years, all the documentaries have been about Syria?  Well, get ready to shift down to Yemen!  Its civil war and on-going humanitarian crises are ripe fuel for Western performative sympathy.

This short follows Dr. Aida Alsadeeq and nurse Mekkia Mahdi as they do their best to help severely malnourished children survive in two of the most active therapeutic centers in Yemen, one urban, one rural.  

Content warning:  dead children, dying children, starving children

It is a hard watch but attention absolutely needs to be put to this issue.  If you don't want to watch, but just throw money at something, the link is hungerward.org.  It's currently streaming on Paramount+.  I signed up for a free 7-day trial just to watch this, but I'm thinking about keeping it for at least another month.

The Present (2020)

Nominated for Best Live Action Short     So far this is the only one from this category I've been able to watch.  I might have to sign up for a free trial of some niche streamer to get another one.

Yusef (Saleh Bakri) is a Palestinian living in the West Bank.  For his anniversary, he takes his daughter Yasmine (Mariam Kanj) to the market so he can buy a new refrigerator for his wife (Mariam Basha).  A simple errand made Kafkaesque by the hostility and disregard of the access guards.

I don't know that there's anything I am less qualified to talk about than the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts.  Bureaucratic nonsense enabling petty tyrants, however, is universal.  Remove the geographical minefield and what you have here are the Haves and the Have Nots.  Reductive?  Maybe.  But this is the perspective the filmmakers wanted shown.  The Have Nots struggle for basic dignity while the Haves sneer and toss crumbs.  

If you wanted to be depressed for 24 minutes, it's currently streaming on Netflix.

Mank (2020)

Nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Director, Best Supporting Actress, Best Sound, Best Production Design, Best Original Score, Best Makeup and Hair, Best Costumes, and Best Cinematography     Well this is definitely Netflix's prestige picture.  Ten nominations!  

In 1941, screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz (Gary Oldman) is hired by then-24-year-old Orson Welles (Tom Burke) to write a scathing indictment of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst (Charles Dance) in the thinly veiled Citizen Kane.  To do so, Mank must think back on his own interactions with Hearst in the '30s as a guest at the lavish San Simeon ranch/palace, Hearst's political machinations, and his Hollywood obsession with his mistress, Marion Davies (Amanda Seyfried).  

This is 1000% Oscar catnip.  It combines a modern (and therefore safe) censure of old-time corruption, which allows the Academy members to nod virtuously while ignoring their own gross missteps, peppered with knowing little winks and nods to the process of creating movies.  It briefly mentions WWII and is a biopic of a (white, male) Oscar winner.  That's bingo right there.

It is probably the most fun Best Picture nominee so far.  Tom Pelphrey was my standout performer.  I also think it's got Best Original Score in the bag.  I think the other categories are too close to call right now (or I haven't seen enough of the nominees yet.)

It's currently streaming on Netflix.

Collective (2019)

Nominated for Best International Feature and Best Documentary   This isn't the most accessible of the documentaries on offer this year, but it is an important one.

After a tragic fire in the Collective club that killed 27 people because there were no fire exits, mass protests against government corruption forced the Social Democrats party of Romania to step down and an interim government be put in its place until elections could be held.  In that time, 34 more burn victims died from bacterial infections received in the hospital.  The investigative news team of Sports Gazette received documents from whistleblowers that showed the hospital disinfectants were arriving diluted way beyond what their label said, making them effectively worthless.  This investigation led to discovery of widespread corruption in the medical sector.

Minor spoiler for people not up on international politics (me), this does not have a happy ending.  Don't get sick in Romania, I guess?  One of the more horrifying stats was that their ICU mortality was 90%.  By contrast, the US ICU mortality is 8%-19%, depending on where you are.  You'd be more likely to survive a medieval hospital stay than a modern Romanian one.  Corruption kills, people.

Also, as a warning, this shows actual footage of the fire inside the club that killed those people.

It's currently streaming on Hulu.
 

Another Round (2020)

Nominated for Best Director and Best International Feature    I don't know who needed this movie.  It's 2020.  How many people need to be told that alcohol is only good in moderation?

Four Danish schoolteachers decide to perform a social experiment on themselves to see if maintaining a constant alcohol buzz improves their work and lives.  Results are positive, so they expand the parameters to adjust for individual tolerances and then to maximum limits.  Predictably, this is where it all goes wrong.

I will say in its favor that Another Round focuses on the causes of addiction (in this case, loneliness and lack of fulfillment) rather than browbeat watchers with the recovery, which American films are wont to do.  Also, this one has Mads Mikkelsen doing a dance routine at the end.  Which is the most unbelievable part, because the students are just celebrating and not freaking the fuck out.  If I even saw one of my high school teachers in the grocery store, I would have been mortified, much less seeing them leap off a park bench like Gene Kelly.  I would have died on the spot.  And these kids are just like, "oh ho, that Martin.  Such a cut up."  

It's currently streaming on Hulu.

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm (2020)

Nominated for Best Supporting Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay    I cannot begin to tell you how much I loathed this movie.  No, I didn't see the first one.  No, I will never see the first one.  I respect Sacha Baron Cohen and I see the work he put in and I get what he was doing here, but I fucking hated it.  It's not funny to me.

Kazakhstani journalist Borat (Sacha Baron Cohen) is given a chance to redeem himself after his last foray to America.  He is to present Vice President Mike Pence (himself) with a gift of a trained chimpanzee.  He is dismayed to find that his daughter Tutar (Maria Bakalova) has shipped herself to the United States and eaten the chimp, so he decides to offer Tutar to the Vice President instead.  Through a makeover and a series of heartfelt encounters with residents across the Southern states, Borat slowly comes to realize that his daughter means something to him other than a political pawn.

Maria Bakalova was an incredibly good sport but if anybody deserves a fucking Oscar, it's Jeanise Jones, the non-actor babysitter who put up with so much shit from these people.  What a phenomenally warm-hearted, genuine human being.  I hope she gets every good thing in life.

Anyway, that's the only positive thing I can say.  I hated every part of this movie.  None of it was funny and it filled me with the deepest despair.  It's currently streaming on Amazon.