Oscar Recap

 Well, wasn't that exciting?

We'll get to it, don't you worry.  But first, can we just acknowledge the utter irony of ABC trying desperately to raise ratings by adding stupid audience participation categories and taking out long-established ones when they could have just hired a couple of Real Housewives to mud wrestle?

So Ariana DuBose won Best Supporting Actress, which was nice, and she gave a lovely speech.

Dune won Best Sound, Best Cinematography, Best Visual Effects, Best Original Score, Best Film Editing, and Best Production Design.  Not bad for a plucky little... mainstream box office smash that made over $400 million.  But the Academy doesn't reward popular films!

Encanto won Best Animated Feature.  

The Windshield Wiper won Best Animated Short.  

The Queen of Basketball won Best Documentary Short.

Troy Kotsur won Best Supporting Actor with another stellar speech.

Zach Snyder's Justice League won Most Cheer Worthy and probably Most Likely to Sign Your Yearbook "See You Next Year" Even Though You've Never Spoken to Him.  (They're adding that category next year.)

Drive My Car won Best International Feature.

The Long Goodbye won Best Live Action Short.

Cruella won Best Costume Design.

Kenneth Branagh won Best Original Screenplay for Belfast.

Sîan Heder won Best Adapted Screenplay for Coda.

And here's where it all went off the rails.  To present the award for Best Documentary Feature, Chris Rock came out and told a couple of off-the-cuff jokes.  One was about Jada Pinkett-Smith auditioning for G.I. Jane 2.  Pinkett-Smith had shaved her head (and looked great, btw) because she has alopecia as a result of an autoimmune disorder.  Her husband, Will Smith, walked on stage and open-handed slapped Chris Rock in the face.

Chaos ensued.

(Mostly on Twitter.  The actual audience did not really react.)  Hell, Chris Rock barely reacted.  

I thought it was faked but the lightning reporters of international Twitter posted the uncensored clip where Smith can clearly be heard telling Rock to "keep my wife's name out of your fucking mouth" and film Twitter was just as quick to post stills showing The Slap.  

Summer of Soul won, by the way.  

The broadcast cut to commercial and everything resumed as normal.

Billie Eilish and Finneas won Best Original Song.

Jane Campion won a historic second Best Director Oscar as a female director.  

Probably could have been smoothed over if Will Smith had not subsequently won Best Actor.  He gave a highly emotional speech where he apologized to everyone except Chris Rock, launching a second flurry of tweets.

So, to recap, a 53-year-old multimillionaire actor slapped a 57-year-old multimillionaire comedian on live television, over a lame, ableist joke, then defended himself in a speech awarded by a multibillion dollar industry invoking the chivalric practice of defending his woman with violence.  And they said no one watched The Last Duel!

The Eyes of Tammy Faye won Best Hair and Makeup, Jessica Chastain won Best Actress, and Coda won Best Picture.  All of which were overshadowed by the elephant in the room.

But I would like to also point out that Chris Rock was not the only comedian there playing whack-a-mole with low-hanging fruit.  Host Regina Hall had a gag where she, as a desperate horny lady, "frisked" presenters Josh Brolin and Jason Momoa.  That was probably scripted and I would hope that both actors agreed ahead of time, but I could not help thinking that A) that was a tired, overused joke and B) if it had been a male host feeling up two female presenters, they would have tied him to the bumper of a limo and dragged him down Hollywood Boulevard (but still invited him to the Vanity Fair party after, because you don't want to be rude.)

Anyway, what a total fucking trainwreck.  Can't wait for next year!

Three Songs for Benazir (2021)

Nominated for Best Documentary Short     Hey, remember Afghanistan?  That place we lost a war in?  Yeah, so people still live there and it is not great.  

This short follows young husband Shaista as he tries to find a better life for his wife, Benazir, and their children.  Shaista is 22 and has no education.  He wants to join the National Army but his Taliban-controlled village won't sign sponsorship papers.  The elders want him to harvest poppies instead, a much more lucrative venture, but one with hidden strings.

This is a depressing ass short.  I hope it wins.  Though I think the Academy will vote for Audible.  But this had a complete thought, was edited for brevity without sacrificing clarity, and was structured more solidly than the other two I saw.  

It's streaming on Netflix so that's something.
 

Lead Me Home (2021)

Nominated for Best Documentary Short    This short doc is about the rise of homelessness in Seattle, Los Angeles, and Portland.  There are interviews with people where they discuss some of the issues that led them to become homeless, ranging from abuse and domestic violence to mental health issues, disability, and the high cost of living.  

It's a very short doc and I don't think it does a particularly good job with its message.  I think it was too broad a topic.  They'd have been better served to pick an aspect of homelessness:  its cause, impact on an individual, opposition to social projects designed to get people off the streets, anti-homeless architecture, etc. than just "homelessness sucks and these people should be seen."  People don't want to see the homeless.  They don't want to be reminded that they themselves are probably only two missed paychecks from living under a bridge.  People like stories about billionaires because it feels aspirational.  They want to believe they could make an astronomical fortune.  They don't want to believe they could end up living in a tent in constant fear that cops will come in the middle of the night and force them to move.  

I was working in an office and I remember overhearing a co-worker (middle-aged white man, for reference) raging about having to see homeless people on his drive in to work.  He said, "Can't they just go somewhere else?" which initially made me furious, because it's such a stupid dick thing to say, but then it made me laugh because that is the literal definition of homelessness.  They have nowhere to go.  Anyway, I hope you will not be like that tone-deaf middle-class asshole.  The film's website https://www.leadmehomefilm.com/learn/ has more information about what causes homelessness and ways to mitigate and even end it, if you're interested.  The doc is streaming on Netflix but there are better ones out there.

Audible (2021)

Nominated for Best Documentary Short    Content warning:  discussion of suicide

Did you know the Maryland School for the Deaf has one of the best high school football teams in the country?  I didn't.  This 30-minute doc follows Amaree, a senior and football player, who grew up the only Deaf person in his family after a childhood bout of meningitis.  His team is trying to bounce back from a loss, breaking their seasons-long winning streak, before homecoming while also still struggling with the loss of one of their teammates, Teddy, who was moved to a hearing school and then bullied until he killed himself.  

Let me repeat that.  A high school sophomore, a child, was bullied by his peers for being Black, gay, and Deaf until he committed suicide.  

The doc glosses over anything more than the briefest of explanations for Teddy, even though he was clearly a huge impact on Amaree.  It has a maybe ten-second clip of an interview with one of the coaches talking about the discrimination Deaf people face in the world outside of protected bubbles, like the School for the Deaf.  Since Deafness is the cause célèbre of the Academy this year (next year it'll be Ukraine again), I would have liked to see a little more of an in-depth treatment.  

It's currently streaming on Netflix.

Ascension (2021)

Nominated for Best Documentary Feature    Presented with no commentary, this documentary acts as a core sample of China's consumer society.  Beginning with factory workers, then moving up through the service industry, corporate cogs, influencer hustlers, and upper class aspirants to professional butlers and bodyguards to the wealthy, the film is a scathing indictment of consumer culture.  

Okay, sure, China but also, any one of these scenes could have been filmed in America.  There's almost no difference in terms of the desperation to have more of everything.  Having it presented like this, however, it's even more of an eye-popping realization.  

It's streaming on Paramount+ and is worth watching if only for the scenes with the assembly of custom sex dolls.  One had elf ears.  I fucking screamed.  And the bodyguards with the random baby goats.  So cute.

Attica (2021)

Nominated for Best Documentary Feature    Content warning:  graphic violence, police brutality, dead bodies, racial slurs

So two years after Summer of Soul, there was the Attica prison riot.  Attica was a maximum security prison in upstate New York and in 1971 for five days in September, the prisoners overthrew the guards and took control.  They had 31 hostages and requested an observation panel comprised of journalists, lawyers, and elected officials to witness negotiations between themselves and the prison commissioner.  Their demands were very simple:  they wanted to be treated like human beings, not animals.  They wanted better food, better conditions, and an end to the violence perpetrated upon them by the guards.  For a while, negotiations seemed to be going well.  Then a guard injured in the initial riot died and everything fell apart.  The police staged an armed recovery of the prison.  In the ensuing firefight against unarmed prisoners, 28 prisoners and 10 hostages were killed.  

The documentary uses actual footage from police surveillance and news reports as well as interviews with first-hand witnesses.  This was a race-motivated massacre and none of the guards were ever held accountable.  The state of New York shelled out $12 million to the families of the dead hostages and another $12 million to the surviving prisoners in 2000 and 2005 as a "please shut up about this" gesture.  

This is a very hard watch.  It is important to see because the more of these instances we drag into the light, the harder they are to run away from and bury.  It's produced by Showtime but it is streaming for free on Amazon Prime.  If you can, please try to watch it.

Summer of Soul (2021)

Nominated for Best Documentary Feature    This is a concert doc of footage from the Harlem Cultural Festival of 1969, interspersed with interviews from attendees and performers.  While televised, it never aired and was left unseen in a basement for fifty years, overshadowed by Woodstock.

1969 was a year of incredible tension in the United States and the Harlem Cultural Festival was intended to provide somewhat of a cooling effect.  Six weekends of performances covering the entire summer were held in Morris Park, the center of Harlem, that featured themes every week of contributions by the Black and Latin community to music.  Gospel, soul, funk, psychedelics, jazz, Motown, the Blues, Latin, Caribbean, African: artists of all types gathered on stage to perform.  

If you're tired of seeing stories that only highlight the struggle of African Americans, this is a great film showcasing Black excellence and joy.  These are never-released performances thankfully saved for posterity finally getting the views they deserved.  It's currently streaming on Hulu and Disney+.

Coming 2 America (2021)

Nominated for Best Hair and Makeup    Here's the biggest surprise of the Oscar nominations, but you know what?  It deserved it.

Crown Prince to the throne of Zamunda, Akeem (Eddie Murphy) has everything he could have wanted:  the love of his life, Lisa (Shari Headley), as his wife and three beautiful daughters (Kiki Layne, Bella Murphy, and Akiley Love).  He also has a belligerent neighbor, General Izzi (Wesley Snipes), who has not forgiven Akeem for throwing over his sister, Princess Imani (Vanessa Bell Calloway), for an American commoner.  What Akeem does not have, however, is a male heir, which Zamundan law is very clear about regarding the rules of succession.  Then, his faithful servant Semmi (Arsenio Hall) mentions that Akeem might very well have a son in America, the result of a drug-induced one night stand with Mary (Leslie Jones).  Akeem flies back to Queens, New York, and tracks down Lavelle Johnson (Jermaine Fowler), whom he believes to be his son.  Lavelle agrees to fly to Zamunda and undergo the tests of the prince to ensure his worthiness to the throne.

Did this sequel need to exist?  Probably not.  Is it worth watching?  Yeah.  You don't even need to have seen the original (though you really should because it is a stone cold classic) because they intersperse scenes as flashbacks in the sequel.  Which I generally frown upon as a terrible idea.  Don't show clips from better movies in your film.  It just invites comparisons and you will not win.

Murphy and Hall reprise many of their secondary characters in the film, as well as adding new ones.  The makeup is incredible and frankly, the original should have won back in 1989, if only for Murphy's makeup as Saul, the barber shop patron.  (It lost to Beetlejuice.)  But it's never too late to fix a mistake.

Coming 2 America is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.

King Richard (2021)

Nominated for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Original Screenplay, Best Original Song, and Best Film Editing    Ah, the obligatory sports movie. At least it's not football again.

Richard Williams (Will Smith) has a plan for getting his five daughters out of poverty-stricken Compton, California.  For two of them, Venus (Saniyya Sidney) and Serena (Demi Singleton), the plan involves becoming tennis superstars.  Richard and his wife, Brandy (Aunjanue Ellis), have done their best to train the girls but they know a professional tennis coach is a must-have.  Never one to skimp, Richard immediately reaches out to the top professionals, first landing Paul Cohen (Tony Goldwyn), then Rick Macci (Jon Bernthal), who had coached number one Juniors champion, Jennifer Capriati (Jessica Wacnik).  But parent and coach soon clash over the best method for creating champions.  Richard is adamant that his girls have a real childhood while Rick worries that if they don't fully commit to tennis, they won't achieve their potential.

Venus and Serena Williams produced this story, choosing to center it on their dad and not themselves.  Smith gives a solid performance, and while Ellis doesn't have nearly the same amount of screen time, what she does have is well used.  Saniyya Sidney is a breakout star.  I hope she has a fabulous career.

As far as the Oscar categories, I think its best chance is Original Screenplay.  Best Actor is not out of the picture but I'm still pulling for Andrew Garfield.  

It's not currently streaming so I had to buy it, but it's coming to HBO Max on March 24.

Drive My Car (2021)

Nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best International Feature, and Best Adapted Screenplay   This is the one people are hoping will be this year's Parasite.  I think it's definitely the frontrunner for International Feature and probably going to get Adapted Screenplay.

Recently widowed Kufuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima) accepts a theater workshop in Hiroshima.  When he arrives, he is told that due to liability issues he is not allowed to drive himself, but really it's because they found out he has glaucoma.  The theater offers him a driver, Watari (Tôko Miura).  Initially reluctant, Kufuku agrees to let Watari drive his car.  Compounding issues, his dead wife's (Reika Kirishima) most recent lover, Takashi (Toshiaki Inomata), is auditioning for the same play Kufuku is directing, a production of Chekov's Uncle Vanya.  

This has a lot of passive aggressive politeness, which I understand to be quintessentially Japanese.  Kufuku and Watari are both trying to process their complicated feelings about grief and the inherent dichotomies in loving someone and trying to know them.  Does that sound like something you want to spend three hours exploring?  If so, hooray!  It's currently streaming on HBO Max.  If not, no worries.  There are tons of other international features to try.

West Side Story (2021)

Nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actress, Best Cinematography, Best Production Design, Best Sound, and Best Costume Design    A disclaimer:  I hate West Side Story.  I've never liked it.  I don't like Romeo and Juliet and I've never liked any of its permutations.  It's just not my bag.  So I'm going to focus on the other aspects and leave the story alone.  Content warning:  racist slurs (PG-13 but still), transphobia, and attempted rape

Tony (Ansel Elgort) is on parole for nearly beating a kid to death in a gang fight.  He is trying to turn his life around with the help of his boss and mentor, Valentina (Rita Moreno), but his journey is hampered by the insistence of his best friend, Riff (Mike Faist), that Tony step back in to his former gang, the Jets, and help them defend their territory from a rival gang of Puerto Rican immigrants, the Sharks.  Tony goes to a community dance to set terms for an upcoming rumble, but then sees Maria (Rachel Zegler), the younger sister of the Sharks' leader, Bernardo (David Alvarez).  Tony is now more determined to stop the incipient warfare than ever but Riff and Bernardo only see one path ahead.

Steven Spielberg is a legendary director.  This is a beautiful movie and the cinematography and production design are phenomenal.  Everyone can sing and everyone can dance.  Ariana DuBose is great as Anita, a traditionally star-making role, and Mike Faist probably should have gotten a Supporting Actor nom.  

This version touches lightly on gentrification as a flash paper that ignites the violence between the two groups, which the original did not, and works a little harder to provide more inclusivity.  The character Anybodys is now presented as trans and played by a nonbinary actor.  It still feels like lip service but that's a story for another day.  The Jets are depicted as violent racists much more than the original, which culminates in a much more obvious attempted rape of Anita when she goes to Valentina's store to talk to Tony.  Overall, it feels harder and meaner than the '61 version.  Whether or not that is good is strictly up to you.

It's currently streaming on HBO Max and Disney+.

The King's Man (2021)

  This isn't nominated for anything.  Tyler just wanted to watch a movie and this was the newest one.  Content warning:  animal death, animal abuse, gun violence

Having lost his wife (Alexandra Maria Lara) to the violence of war, Orlando Oxford (Ralph Fiennes) swore a vow to protect his son.  But now Conrad (Harris Dickinson) is 18 and desperate to enlist in World War I.  Oxford tries everything he knows to keep Conrad from the front, including taking him on a mission to Russia to neutralize the Mad Monk, Rasputin (Rhys Ifans), but Conrad cannot be persuaded.  Oxford learns that Rasputin is only one of a handful of pawns led by a mysterious man hellbent on destroying England through worldwide warfare and puts together a team of trusted operatives to do what their government could not.

It's not the movie's fault, but the whole thing seems rather in bad taste at the moment.  First it was delayed because of plague and then it came out right before a European war.  It's got a lot stacked against it.  Should you watch it?

Eh.

It's not the worst movie ever made.  The action sequences are good, the cast is good, and it's impeccably tailored.  This is the third entry in the Matthew Vaughn Kingsman franchise and it feels like it is definitely running out of steam.  So your enjoyment is directly correlated with how much you liked the first two.  If you were on the fence, probably just save your time and watch something else.  Loved the first two?  Go ahead and give it a go.  

As a side note, there is something much more nihilistic about this film.  The zany, cartoon-like antics have been dramatically reduced in favor of poignant irony and I don't know that it improves the film at all.  But that may just be me projecting.

It's currently streaming on Hulu.

House of Gucci (2021)

Nominated for Best Hair and Makeup    The way I see this happening was like this:

Ridley Scott: Hey, Joel, you making another movie?
Joel Coen: Yeah, doing The Tragedy of Macbeth.
RS: I could step in, help you out.
JC: Um, I'm all good, Rid. Thanks, though.
RS: Fine! I don't need you! I'm gonna make my own Macbeth! With espresso! And hookers!

Patrizia (Lady Gaga) marries Mauricio (Adam Driver), one of the heirs to the Gucci clothing empire.  She is immediately drawn in to the family business, reluctantly dragging her husband with her.  Things are all good until Patrizia's cutthroat ways alienate Mauricio, who benefitted tremendously from them, and he decides to cut her loose.  Incensed, Patrizia hires a couple of hit men to revenge herself on her ex.

It's all very messy and Shakespearean and tacky in that 1980s way.  Your mileage may vary depending on your tolerance for such things.  Gaga does a good job.  People made a lot of noise about Jared Leto but I think it's mostly because Leto is a polarizing figure.  I'm pretty sure he's kind of a douchebag in real life but honestly, he's not a bad actor.  He's playing a pathetic clown and it's believable.  Everybody else was mostly tasteful, living up to their reputations.  

It's not streaming anywhere so I had to buy it on DVD.  It's definitely not worth shelling out for blu-ray but a rental wouldn't do you wrong.