Days of Thunder and Reckoning

“It’s deeply humbling. This is something that I started out of necessity and something that I thought that my community needed and it’s grown over the years, but I never could’ve envisioned it growing like this. But this moment is so powerful because we’re seeing a collaboration between these two worlds that people don’t usually put together and would most likely have us pitted against each other. So it’s really powerful to be on the red carpet tonight.”  –“Me Too” movement founder Tarana Burke at the Golden Globes

“Being brave doesn’t mean you’re not afraid; it just means you do it anyway. … My life has taken me from one cult to another: Hollywood. … It’s been really, really hard having the mind of an artist and being in a town that sells you as just a commodity. … I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: I’ve lived in a mother-fucking fun house; and the sad part is, I’m just trying to get people to stop raping and killing us.” –Rose McGowan in the first episode of her docuseries Citizen Rose

“The American Republic stands before the world as the extreme expression of masculine force.” –Illinois Association Opposed to Women’s Suffrage (1910)

“The man, for instance, who describes himself as original, as beyond stereotypes, as having a personal, worked-out philosophy of masculinity or indeed as just ordinary and average has not escaped the familiar tropes of gender. He is precisely enmeshed by convention; subjectified, ordered and disciplined at the very moment he rehearses the language of personal taste, unconventionality and autonomy, or ordinariness and normality.”
Margaret Wetherell and Nigel Edley, “Negotiating Hegemonic Masculinity: Imaginary Positions and Psycho-Discursive Practices” Feminism and Psychology 9, no. 3 (1999): 335-56

“The American idea of masculinity: There are few things under heaven more difficult to understand or, when I was younger, to forgive…. But we are all androgynous…because each of us, helplessly and forever, contains the other—male in female, female in male, white in black and black in white. We are a part of each other. Many of my countrymen appear to find this fact exceedingly inconvenient and even unfair, and so, very often do I. But none of us can do anything about it.” –James Baldwin, “Here Be Dragons” in The Price of the Ticket (1985)

“The #MeToo movement is accomplishing what sexual harassment law to date has not. This mass mobilization against sexual abuse, through an unprecedented wave of speaking out in conventional and social media, is eroding the two biggest barriers to ending sexual harassment in law and in life: the disbelief and trivializing dehumanization of its victims. Sexual harassment law — the first law to conceive sexual violation in inequality terms — created the preconditions for this moment. Yet denial by abusers and devaluing of accusers could still be reasonably counted on by perpetrators to shield their actions. … This logjam, which has long paralyzed effective legal recourse for sexual harassment, is finally being broken. Structural misogyny, along with sexualized racism and class inequalities, is being publicly and pervasively challenged by women’s voices. The difference is, power is paying attention. … The only legal change that matches the scale of this moment is an Equal Rights Amendment, expanding the congressional power to legislate against sexual abuse and judicial interpretations of existing law, guaranteeing equality under the Constitution for all. But it is #MeToo, this uprising of the formerly disregarded, that has made untenable the assumption that the one who reports sexual abuse is a lying slut, and that is changing everything already. Sexual harassment law prepared the ground, but it is today’s movement that is shifting gender hierarchy’s tectonic plates.”  Catharine A. MacKinnon, “#MeToo Has Done What the Law Could Not” New York Times, 2-4-18

Rose McGowan and Tarana Burke in Detroit

 

Spoilers ahead!

 

Supportive Women in Cinema
5. Octavia Spencer
She has a great scene with her character, the character’s husband, and Michael Shannon’s character, where she tries to stem the tide and dismisses the husband when he sells out.
4. Laurie Metcalf
I may be overcorrecting here for not liking Metcalf’s character, whom I disliked for 1) being unsupportive of, and emotionally distant from, Saoirse Ronan’s character and then 2) trying to blame her for it. There’s something to be said for provoking a strong reaction though. I like Metcalf as an actor and I wanted her to have more, and more interesting, things to do. I am looking forward to that Roseanne reboot.
3. Lesley Manville
“Don’t pick a fight with me, you certainly won’t come out alive. I’ll go right through you and it’d be you who winds up on the floor. Understood?” Understood!
2. Mary J. Blige
Quite the depiction of quiet strength.
Ought to win: Allison Janney
There’s been some criticism that she didn’t have a lot to do, and yeah, she doesn’t have a ton of screentime, but she hits those high notes of cold motherhood so well, which is difficult and crucial to the whole film.
Will win: Janney

“Emma Stone, Meryl Streep, Octavia Spencer, and More of Hollywood’s Biggest Stars Demand Equal Pay”

“Make the Case: Lesley Manville Is the Real Genius of ‘Phantom Thread’”

Deleted food-fight scene between Manville’s Cyril Woodcock and Daniel Day-Lewis’s Reynolds Woodcock

Most Supportive Man
5. Richard Jenkins
The film is very much foregrounding (views of) masculinities and Jenkins does well to shufflingly communicate the injustice and hypocrisy of the denial of his character’s.
4. Christopher Plummer
In large part a masculinity character study about trying to become a real boy in all the wrong ways.
3. Woody Harrelson
Really good use of relatively limited screentime to position himself as a fulcrum for the ethical and plot seesaw of the film.
2. Sam Rockwell
Rockwell’s character emerges as the fulcrum within the fulcrum of Harrelson’s character, with Rockwell using his “offbeat verve with gusto” to great effect. Some people–no more than enough to make up a minor and reactionary whisper campaign?–had anti-redemption feelings in response, but I think redemption is almost or totally besides the point for his or any other character in the film.
Ought to win: Willem Dafoe
Dafoe provides such beautiful ballast for the whole film, as a kind of lil’ capitalist shepherd, overseer, and observer. He’s no saint, but the coarseness and casual cruelty of the times almost make him look like one. His face at the end reads as pure subjectivity amidst greater forces, maybe getting swept away in a river of time.
Will win: Rockwell

Willem Dafoe: And great fun, because I still like to do all the action stuff.

Hugh Jackman: I do too!

Willem: I love it because it’s the kind of simplest kind of performing. You have an action and you apply yourself to it and something happens. I like it a lot.

Jackman: That’s interesting. I see it as dance. Very much like dance.

Willem: Me too. Me too. I see performing as dance.

Jackman: Yeah, right. Really?

[Willem points at him, Jackman points back, they both rev-up laugh]

Willem: What’s next, Hugh?!

[Both laugh]

Jackman, overlapping: That’s interesting though. We’re doin’ a musical man, c’mon.

[Bro shake]

Jackman: What do you think?

Willem: You didn’t know I could sing, right?

Jackman: You wanna play Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly? [unintelligible]

Willem: I’m more Gene Kelly.

Jackman: You’re more Gene Kelly? Okay. I’ll try and do Fred.

Willem: I could be Ginger, too. [laughs]

Jackman: Alright! Now we’re talking! [claps]

“Actors on Actors: Hugh Jackman and Willem Dafoe” Variety, 11-29-17

Queen of the Castle!
5. Sally Hawkins
I’ve liked the tweeness-with-an-edge nature of her previous characters, and one could argue that’s very much the nature of her character here, but embedding it in fabulism might’ve diluted it for me.
4. Meryl Streep
She’s particularly good in the scene where Katharine Graham decides to publish.
3. Saoirse Ronan
Right there with Neve Campbell’s work in Party of Five for convincing and compelling portraits of teenage female angst. We’ll surely see Ronan in this category again, probably soon.
2. Margot Robbie
A great blend of actor and character in one of the best sports movies of all time, and which should’ve been nominated for Best Picture.
Ought to win: Frances McDormand
Rockwell on McDormand: “She came in, just [makes explosion sound], you know, like Charles Laughton. It was just like, an explosion.”
Will win: McDormand

Sufjan Stevens, “Tonya Harding (In Eb major)”

“Tonya Harding is having her moment of redemption. Now Nancy Kerrigan deserves hers.”

“The love that flowed to Frances McDormand this year was partly because we are so unused to seeing a woman that age be complicated, difficult and angry – as seen in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri – to not be defined by what is considered ‘sexy’. The actual process by which women age remains largely taboo, which is why I Got Life is a breath of fresh air. The onscreen invisibility of the menopause is a form of denial. Women often feel very isolated at this time, for where can they look to see their experience represented? Is the menopause something only to be dreaded, hidden, medicated away and denied? How, in 2018, is it still embarrassing to speak of it? … This is an awful lot of women suffering in silence, then: physically uncomfortable and feeling unsupported. As long as we don’t have any kind of representation of menopause, in all its glory, then it will continue to be seen as a sign that a woman is somehow redundant because she can no longer reproduce. If we were to talk more openly, we would find instead that many women feel liberated, full of energy, able to take on the world, and finally free from the demands of a society that values only youth. As the heroine of this movie kicks off her shoes, dances, gardens, makes love, becomes a grandmother and hangs out with her friends, life in its messy way continues. The idea that women may indeed be less concerned about how others see them and eventually become more of themselves remains a story rarely told.”  Suzanne Moore, “Let’s see menopausal women on screen – in all their glory” The Guardian, 3-15-18

Best Baby Boy
5. Daniel Kaluuya
Nothing wrong with the performance, but it’s lost to a fatally-flawed film.
4. Gary Oldman
I don’t like Oldman’s voice and have struggled to care for his theatrics, which seems churlish of me, considering, if nothing else, his technical proficiency. Oldman has been accused in the past of hamming it up and there are some thick slices here, but it’s the historical inaccuracies of his Churchill that really costs him points.
3. Timothée Chalamet
If we adjust for age, he wins. Really delivered the yearning down the stretch. Like Ronan, we expect him back in the noms down the road.
2. Daniel Day-Lewis
Hard exterior, soft interior.
Ought to win: Denzel Washington
Almost making it look too easy with these fatally-flawed characters he’s been playing. This one is like one part his Philadelphia character (the law), one part John Q (Principles, goddammit!), and one part his Flight character (smart and occupationally excellent, but fatally flawed).
Will win: Oldman

“‘My dream is to move to Paris in my 60s and eat like this all the time,’ she says. ‘My kids say, “Jeez, Mom, just eat like that now.”‘ Dern’s face contorts into an expression of adolescent sarcasm. Her emotive elasticity is one of the pleasures of watching her onscreen; her ‘cherished cry-face,’ as Entertainment Weekly once deemed it, reminiscent of Lucille Ball’s, has spawned a meme. ‘When I was 23,’ says Dern, ‘right before a close-up on Jurassic Park, Spielberg said to me, “People will tell you what you could do to your face years from now. Don’t you ever touch your face.” He was saying, “Your face is perfect, it’s female, it’s emotional.”‘ Age has been her friend, thanks in part to, as Spielberg advised, avoiding plastic surgery. ‘I am determined to be human in my acting, and when you own your power and your womanhood, you grow into your beauty. Your face finds you.’ She raises her glass. ‘So here’s to telling the whole story.'”  Mary Kaye Schilling, “Fierce at Heart” Vulture, 12-27-17

Sound Editing
5. The Shape of Water, Nathan Robitaille, Nelson Ferreira
4. Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Ren Klyce, Matthew Wood
3. Blade Runner 2049, Mark Mangini, Theo Green
2. Baby Driver, Julian Slater
Ought to win: Dunkirk, Alex Gibson, Richard King
Will win: Dunkirk

Sound Mixing
5. The Shape of Water, Glen Gauthier, Christian Cooke, Brad Zoern
4. Blade Runner 2049, Mac Ruth, Ron Bartlett, Doug Hephill
3. Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Stuart Wilson, Ren Klyce, David Parker, Michael Semanick
2. Baby Driver, Mary H. Ellis, Julian Slater, Tim Cavagin
Ough to win: Dunkirk, Mark Weingarten, Gregg Landaker, Gary A. Rizzo
Will win: Dunkirk

Visual Effects
5. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Christopher Townsend, Guy Williams, Jonathan Fawkner, Dan Sudick
4. Kong: Skull Island, Stephen Rosenbaum, Jeff White, Scott Benza, Mike Meinardus
3. Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Ben Morris, Mike Mulholland, Chris Corbould, Neal Scanlan
2. Blade Runner 2049, John Nelson, Paul Lambert, Richard R. Hoover, Gerd Nefzer
Ought to win: War for the Planet of the Apes, Joe Letteri, Dan Lemmon, Daniel Barrett, Joel Whist
Will win: Apes

Film Editing
5. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Jon Gregory
4. The Shape of Water, Sidney Wolinsky
3. I, Tonya, Tatiana S. Riegel
2. Baby Driver, Jonathan Amos, Paul Machliss
Ought to win: Dunkirk, Lee Smith
Will win: Dunkirk

Writing Newly Born, Already Superlative
5. Get Out
4. The Big Sick
3. The Shape of Water
2. Lady Bird
Ought to win: Three Billboards
Will win: Get Out

Topmost Writing That Now Has a Second (Lease On) Life, Which You May or May Not Have Seen Coming
5. The Disaster Artist
4. Call Me by Your Name
3. Logan
2. Molly’s Game
A soaring, disturbing portrait of a woman trying to make it in a man’s world. Would’ve easily nominated the film over Darkest Hour and Get Out.
Ought to win: Mudbound
My second favorite-best film of the year, after Hostiles–which, inexplicably, wasn’t nominated for anything. Its tale of interracial cooperation speaks searingly to Eleanor Roosevelt’s observation that “Unless we make the country worth fighting for by Negroes, we will have nothing to offer the world at the end of the war.”
Will win: Call Me By Your Name

Cinematography
5. Darkest Hour, Bruno Delbonnel
Use of light and shadow felt like cheap hagiography.
4. Mudbound, Rachel Morrison
Morrison is the first woman ever to be Oscar-nominated for cinematography! Cinematography is an oppressively male field (85-91% male according to FiveThirtyEight).
3. The Shape of Water, Dan Laustsen
2. Dunkirk, Hoyte van Hoytema
Ought to win: Blade Runner 2049, Roger Deakins
Will win: Blade Runner

Original Song
5. “Remember Me” from Coco, Kristen Anderson-Lopez, Robert Lopez
4. “Stand Up for Something” from Marshall, Diane Warren, Andra Day, Common
3. “Mighty River” from Mudbound, Mary J. Blige
2. “This Is Me” from The Greatest Showman, Benj Pasek, Justin Paul
Ought to win: “Mystery of Love” from Call Me by Your Name, Sufjan Stevens
Will win: “Remember Me”

Original Score
As in a number of the categories this year, all these entries are quite worthy of winning.
Star Wars: The Last Jedi, John Williams
The Shape of Water, Alexandre Desplat
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Carter Burwell
Phantom Thread, Jonny Greenwood
Ought to win: Dunkirk, Hans Zimmer
Will win: Desplat

Directing
5. Jordan Peele
4. Guillermo del Toro
3. Christopher Nolan
2. Paul Thomas Anderson
Ought to win: Greta Gerwig
Will win: del Toro, for his body of work.

“How Mexican Directors Conquered Hollywood”

 

Finest Picture, for All Mankind

9. Get Out
This is the same kind of racial fatalism and polarization slop that’s been served up for years now, by Hollywood and others, with Peele conveniently positioning himself as a “stirrings in the jug” racial interlocutor. It’s a particular shame and waste here, since the film otherwise sports solid performances and compelling (visual) metaphors for the exploitation and holding back of black Americans. Between him and Keegan Michael-Key, he’s always been the more sullen, cynical, and fatalistic, so there’s no real surprise with his approach here. He based the film on his feeling excluded from his (white) wife‘s family, and I take those feelings at face value, but condensing white supremacy and racial inequality to a cult creates too easy, reductive, and essentialist a narrative, a literally-and-figuratively-black-and-white one. If only they were just a cult: they’d be a lot easier to deal with.

8. Darkest Hour
Classic Oscar prestige fare that doesn’t quite have the sharpness, freshness, and originality of the other nominees, though it does accomplish its main mission: making you think about leadership, readiness, resourcefulness, and making tough decisions. Loses major points for the historical inaccuracies.

“The Real Winston Churchill”
“In Winston Churchill, Hollywood rewards a mass murderer”
“Contemplating Churchill”

7. Call Me By Your Name
Was it too straight? Probably.

“What Should We Make of Call Me by Your Name’s Age-Gap Relationship?”
“Luca Guadagnino Plans to Address the AIDS Epidemic in Call Me by Your Name Sequel”

6. The Shape of Water
(Cold War) Agendas interrupted! Let the chips fall where they may, including into the sea! Women-having-sex-with-creatures-and/or-aliens is a trope that draws attention to the lack of a few good (regular) men. The Fishman love fable highlights/counterpoints the mythos and imperatives of ’50s conformity, hierarchy, and hypermasculine beliefs about social, scientific, and technological progress. It’s Closed World vs. Green World. Masculinity types featured include: Our Man Michael Shan’s hypermasculine hollow man/Organization Man/Cold Warrior, who, in the name of progress, will literally kill you if he has to; Michael Stuhlbarg’s admirably-in-over-his head nebbish assistman; Jenkins’s discriminated-against gay artist trying to swim in the mainstream; Spencer’s sell-out lump of a husband; the Fishman, who appreciates you and your boiled eggs for you, with a heart of healing to boot.

5. Dunkirk
Visually spectacular and you feel like you’re right there. Checks to make sure that we’re all in this together.

4. Phantom Thread
It’s freshly febrile about fevers both literal and symbolic. It’s a manse danse macabre. A screwball comedy core draped in the fineries of: concerns with mortality; the limits of perfectionism as a response to trauma; co-dependency; relationships as works of art; the dead-end of objectification.

“But the film is also, in its way, an argument for the enduring power of fantasy in fashion. ‘I find these superstitions and traditions to be very exciting,’ Anderson says of the different couturiers (and their quirks) he researched for the film. ‘They can make for great stories, great fairy tales.’ And indeed, fairy tales are one of the primary reasons haute couture still exists today — wedding dresses are the most frequently ordered items in the industry, fit for a make-believe princess (or a real-life one). Now, these gowns are sewn in almost the same way they were in the 1950s, the 1850s, and even the 1750s — which makes wearing couture a bit like carrying a beautiful piece of history on one’s back. And that’s the reason couture and Hollywood meld so well together — both are dream factories, spinning yarns, selling fantasies. It is also why, in the age of Netflix and fast fashion, long after either’s golden age, both couture and cinema continue to endure.” Alexander Fury, “A Film That Pays Homage to the Bygone Era of London Couture” New York Times Style Magazine, 11-28-17

“‘Santa Thread’ Trailer”
“The Dark Optimism of Paul Thomas Anderson”

“What Is the Health and Nutritional Value of Mushrooms?”

3. Lady Bird
My dislike for the mom weighed it down for me, but such a Lady Bird still takes flight. Also, Sacramento.

2. The Post
Real and robust (news). The film makes it seem as though things almost physically revolve around Graham, thus effectively setting up her decision to publish. Need I comment on the timeliness? Democracy dies in darkness.

Ought to Win: Three Billboards
The system has profoundly failed you. Begin. Continue. Warp and weave. People are getting hung up on redemption, but 1) I didn’t read it as anyone being redeemed, at least fully; this is a story about muddling through. 2) Why be dead set against redemption? Sure, we can talk about earned, unearned, partially earned, etc., but being reactionary about it feels like a disturbing sign of the stasis and polarization of our times. Redemption is one of the primary themes driving the very existence of stories and movies. Conversions like Rockwell’s might be rare, but they do happen. As far as the plausibility of the billboards, McDonagh got the idea when he saw someone had done similarly with billboards in a state in the South; also, Rose McGowan contemplated buying a shaming billboard for Harvey Weinstein after her encounter with him.

Will win: Three Billboards

 

And How Can This Be? For it IS the 90th Academy Awards; or, We Demand Better Hallucinations

I don’t know about you, world, but sometimes I just want to turn my brain on.  You know, snap on the old Videodrome Youtube Word Processor, take a load on, think about the future.  Let the mind just drift.  And so I bestow upon you, once again, that rare and most elusive treasure: ranked lists from the internet.

 

 I think, maybe, the thethirdrevelation should be taken to a doctor.

As always, the following lists are pretty gauche, mostly unintelligible, and potentially most relevant to the sort of degenerate cinephile who makes life choices such as seeing most, if not all of the films nominated for major Academy Awards in a given year.  They’re also a boon companion if you want to know who’s going to win.  Chiefly for that reason, spoilers await, sweet ones.  All nominees are loved unconditionally, and have been pre-approved for five bags of popcorn.

 

Deployed in a Support Role: All Female Edition?!

5. Octavia Spencer– The Shape of Water

Back again after last year’s nomination for Hidden Figures, Spencer is given somewhat less to do here as our straight woman and primary source of bemused incredulity among sexy, fishy zaniness.

4. Allison Janney — I, Tonya

One of the two prickly mom roles expected to duke it out for the win (I asked you to keep the children quiet today, and for Christ’s sake get them out of the garden!). It’s a fun role. And while one always ought to keep one’s perspective on what constitutes true madness, I like that she never goes softy in the end.

3. Mary J. Blige — Mudbound

One of many strong performances in a picture with a huge cast delivering all around.  A Netflix original, for what it’s worth.

2. Leslie Manville — Phantom Thread

To kick off our non-stop gushing for Phantom Thread and everyone associated, Manville expertly renders a chilly and calculated business sentinel sprinkled with notes of subdued compassion and humor.  She is not to be crossed, but as with the English Channel (Dunkirk, Darkest Hour) we must do so by hook or by crook.

 

1. Laurie Metcalf — Lady Bird

Where Janney’s mean mom is a bold stroke in a project that exults in larger-than-life characterizations, Metcalf here is an expertly tuned high-fidelity every-day person.  She’s a working class creature grasping at the bygone dream of the middle class, not struggling in any hugely cinematic way, but pathologically fixated on means and status to a tragic degree.  Of all the roles in all the categories this year, she’s the person that I meet each day.

Shall win: Laurie Metcalf

 

Most Supportive Man

5. Woody Harrelson — Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri 

Harrelson is always a pleasure to watch, but in a film which caused me to raise an eyebrow in consternation more than once*, his inclusion here (on top of Sam Rockwell!) is a little bewildering.  The latest site of writer/director Martin McDonagh’s ongoing fixation with exploding heads, it feels like Harrelson ought to be perfect in the role of a law man wringing some dark humor and humanity from multiple hopeless tragic situations.

But something about many of the film’s attempts to wring humor out of hopelessness didn’t register for me, and while McDormand manages some sort of transcendence, Harrelson and Rockwell are left in awkward positions that don’t seem to quite cohere.  Well, comedy is subjective: in my showing of Billboards, his character’s folksy suicide note musings got the biggest laughs by far.

*I grew up playing in the woods unattended and was in no way under-supervised, but in a film where the central premise is “homicidal rapist is at large,” is parking your little girls at the river for an hour while you have a bottle of wine with the wife the game plan?   Or is that the joke?

4. Christopher Plummer — All the Money in the World

Not a bad avatar of pure fiduciary ethical insolvency, but not exactly John Huston in Chinatown high holy malevolence.  I would love to see Charles Dance in a role like this, where he’s the main character.

 

3. Richard Jenkins — The Shape of Water

Jenkins is sweet but undeserved by a somewhat thinly sketched role, especially when one can easily imagine a version of this story where he has a more primary viewpoint.  He could do more with his wry delivery a lá Cabin In the Woods, another genre-mashup creature feature.

2. Samuel Rockwell — Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri 

Rockwell, too, is always an asset, and, exactly as with Harrelson, this is a role that kept me at some distance for just seeming to add up to less than the sum of the scenarios at play.  Rockwell brings his signature fun, offbeat verve with gusto, but without a good bead on his head space, I’m left with a bit of a shrug.

1. Willem Dafoe — The Florida Project

Your winner by a mile, and truly a “Supportive Man” role/category synergy champion.  From the sense one gets of hearing him speak in interviews, Dafoe may not be far from playing himself here, apparently with experience hanging out among some rough and colorful communities.  He can nearly decapitate me with a paint can any day, before scintillatingly dispatching pedophiles to the soda machine and off the premises (sorry I can’t find the scene online).  I wish I, too, had the power to sweet talk large, roaming birds from driveways.

Shall win:  Samuel Rockwell

 

Queen of the Castle

5. Margot Robbie — I, Tonya

As with Allison Janney, a fun role with some big broad strokes.

4. Sally Hawkins — The Shape of Water

Hawkins is underrated, particularly in Blue Jasmine, where she’s touching as a woman who’s on terms with a relatively happy if less than perfect life.  Here she gets a character whose dreams and fantasies can and do come true.  She does a convincing job with the ASL, and no knock, but one wonders if any deaf or mute actors were seriously considered.

3. Meryl Streep — Sweet Sheep Chronicles: What’s News is Real

The S. S. is perhaps on *auto-pilot* here, but when you’re this good, why wouldn’t you be?  She’s like the Sully Sullenberger of actors, landing planes on Hudson rivers, wondering what all the fuss is about.  Speaking of, pour a chilly one out for Tom Hanks, who is a tasty side of ham here, but alas is not invited to the party.

2. Frances McDormand — Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

For all the misgivings I have with the screenplay, McDormand is an unstoppable force, and I would imagine the single biggest driver for Billboards’s acclaim.  When you’re primarily with her and her perspective, the tone really clicks.  I feel like the best version of the film would focus even more on her character’s background.

1. Saoirse Ronan — Lady Bird

As with Metcalf, just a high-fidelity life rendering, among the best one could ever hope to see from a “coming of age” film.  She brings such an eclectic mix of emotes and reactions that most of her performance feels candidly captured, improvised, and, along with really solid editing, she delivers a film that manages to mix the funny, real, and difficult in a way that (mostly) avoids the clunky, writerly notes that so often crop up in similar fare.

Shall win: Frances McDormand

 

Leading Children of Men

5. Gary Oldman

Listen, I love Gary Oldman.  He’s practically the oldest.  But let’s bestow career awards on top career achievements.

That achievement is Tiptoes.

Otherwise it’s just awkward for everyone.

4. Denzel Washington — Roman J. Israel, Esquire

“You know, there’s a job by the ocean makes maple glazed turkey bacon donuts people sit under palm trees and eat them while the breeze is a-blowing and dolphins are playing I’m gonna go there.”

–Roman J. Israel, Esquire

If sentences like this make you smile, you are going to enjoy Roman J. Israel, Esquire.  It is a joy. This is an abundant film.

3. Timotheé Chalamet

The spotlight burns bright on the young man in a role with a pretty high degree of difficulty as he’s on screen for most of the film and in varying states of undress.  He’s charged with performing an act or two that could potentially be construed as a bit silly in less sophisticated corners.

2. Daniel Kaluuya

I would say this is also a role with a high degree of difficulty, where Kaluuya has to convey a lot without saying anything, in a way that really dovetails with Get Out‘s themes of intractable situations where you’re dammed if you do say something and damned if you don’t say something.

1. Daniel Day-Lewis

Stop bullying me, Daniel!  Seriously though, a lovely genteel shade from the world’s best that we haven’t seen in a while.  If there’s anything to be said, it’s that he isn’t given quite enough time to charm us.  But I’ll argue that’s a feature, not a bug.  The tea’s going out, but the interruption is staying right there with him.

Shall win: Gary Oldman — Tiptoes

 

Direction, in a Filmic Sense

5. Guillermo Del Toro

As I was saying to some writer on this very blog, Del Toro is at this point a dude I really like, but whose reputation has maybe gotten a touch inflated, to the point where this nomination has the narrative of being a career award.  To be sure, there probably aren’t many who would count The Shape of Water as Del Toro’s best, where set design and cinematography—his calling cards to be sure—are ahead of plot and character.

 

4. Jordan Peele

Really impressive, and I agree that he brings a unique affinity for capturing the look and feel of genres and other projects to the film.  A next level pastiche-man extraordinaire, cleverer and cleverer.  I’ll be the wet blanket who didn’t need the incredulous friend comedy side-plot.

3. Chris Nolan

Kind of thrilling to see the Prestige-man play on his proclivities and style without the signature ostentatious plot twists (though I suppose we did throw in a time passage conceit).  His actors are well served, especially Mark Rylance.

2. Greta Gerwig

We’ve said it before, great director’s film, with that pace and specificity one always craves.

1. Paul Thomas Anderson

Who also writes and directs photography.  What more can one say about cinema’s most involved, meticulous and singularly humorous director since Kubrick?  One has to say, this is a pretty impressive category overall, with all of the directors nominated being deeply involved in all aspects, and bringing an intensely and wonderfully signature style and voice to their projects. Many years only one or two nominees can say that.

Shall win: Chris Nolan

 

Finest of All Motion Pictures

1. Tiptoes

Tiptoes is a film where Peter Dinklage portrays a communist, and Matthew McConaughey is very mean to Kate Beckinsale.  I believe he is Jewish.  Aaaand a fireman.  Matthew is upset because he’s afraid the baby he made with her might be born with dwarfism.  So he abandons her and the child, but then almost comes back, but in the end, nope.

But: guess who doesn’t abandon her.  Did you guess Willem Dafoe?

That’s a good guess, but nope, it’s actually Old Gary Oldman.  Who is a little person and happens to be Matthew McConaughey’s brother.  And he shares a pretty romantic kiss with her, after she’s had the baby :).   Hey, what’s more attractive: Matthew McConaughey, who doesn’t even support you, or the most supportive AND best actor, sweet Gary of Old’?

And the thing is: it’s all real. None of that CGI bullcrap Hollywood is always trying to shove down the throats of real Americans.  Hey, you Hollywood liberal dumbos: America has spoken: we don’t like movies with a bunch of fake computer graphics.  We like practical effects, the real magic of tinseltown, and Gary Oldman: always real, always a classic.

[Editorial: at this point let us take care to point out we really do love Gary Oldman, and Darkest Hour wasn’t that bad.  It wasn’t The Theory of Everything.    But someone has to come in last.  So the rest of us can survive.]

8. The Shape of Water

The premise, reductively: E.T., but it’s the fish guy from Del Toro’s Hellboy, and also his liberator is Ariel, but she doesn’t even know she’s actually a mermaid.  And darling it is better, down where it’s wetter.

It just doesn’t have anything to do with its villain, for all the screen time it gives him.  Our man Shan is oddly wasted as an avatar of 50’s American toxic masculinity, stinky rotten fingers not being a sufficiently engaging quirk.  He’s good per se, I mean it’s Shannon, but it takes too much focus away from a deeper dive into Hawkins’ protagonist (ahem), and/or even Tim Fishman.  (Am I the only one who thought he’d be more fetching?)   To contrast with E.T., one has to appreciate Steve Spielberg’s G-men of the ’80s, who were always truly menacing in their eerie blankness and unrelenting ubiquity, even if they were pretty bloodless.  Here we’re waltzing in and out of top-secret labs with relative ease.

This is also an example of the more rote way to be “a love letter” to older films (which is likely the biggest factor propelling this Oscar campaign): here we just have actual silver screen footage that comes up with little context beyond that the protagonists seem to enjoy it.  There are evocative routines (the tap dancing, the tossed in black and white dancing sequence), but the film’s not as deeply invested in them as with something like last year’s La La Land, or even this year’s Phantom Thread.

Ding!

7. Call Me By Your Name

Who among us hasn’t frolicked through a summer in the Italian Riviera, lounging at the southern Palazzo, sun dappling our rippling nubile forms?  Danced the night away in a moonlit Piazza, drunk on a love that dare not speak its name, sweat flush with mostaccioli primavera?

Who among us hasn’t huffed the short shorts of a beloved, lungs inflaming with musky intoxicant?  Hasn’t ejaculated in a peach, or even a blueberry?  Ah yes, the maid was always cross. But kind.

In the end, you said it Michael Stuhlbarg: eventually, no one wants to look at you, much less even be near you.  But at least we’ll have the cinema.

 

6. Three Billboards Over Ebbing, Missouri

From playwright as well as In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths writer Martin McDonaugh comes a project that’s about as ostentatious as its name would suggest.  It gets as far as it does on gumption, and an admirably heady theme: that really bad things happen for no good reason, and there’s no catharsis or cosmic justice in store.  The Coen Bros. have made a career in part out of exploring that, often with scintillating dark humor (perhaps even with a certain Frances McDormand), and the screenplay seems to be reaching for that tone.

That this seems to be a potential front-runner despite no directing nomination may point to the sense that this feels a bit like a best picture sort of feature, but something didn’t line up in the end.

• The scene with a CG deer, was it not supposed to be humorously surreal? When I hallucinate deer, I hallucinate deer.  Gary Oldman does not use digital deer.

• Sam Rockwell, not detained after throwing a dude out of a window in broad daylight to the witness of many? Just turn in your badge? I feel like the movie’s trying to say something about systemic police brutality, but I’m just nonplussed here from a basic plot level.  What year is this taking place?  If this has something to say about America, why does the setting feel not particularly American?
• Why are we so viciously mean to John Hawkes’ young girlfriend off the bat? At least let her demonstrate that she’s an idiot before we assume it.
• Literally, the last thing the daughter says to her mom is to the effect of “I hope I get raped”?

If the film worked for you, most if not all of the above didn’t register as off.  Which is great!  I think this would be a pretty cool stage play.

 

5. The Post

It’s Spielberg by-the-books, but as with Sweet Sheep, it’s a warm comfort.  Soul food, one might say.  The machinery of the Press, rumbling to life, cigar chomping cowards, money-grubbers and naysayers deposed.  I was even a bit more engaged with this than Bridge of Spies, and, free of the crushing expectations that came with Lincoln, left a Spielberg film with more pleasant surprise than I can remember since War of the Worlds, which is based on a true story that Tom Cruise read to me in a dream before throwing a half-made peanut butter sandwich at a window.  I told him, hey, you should put that in the film.

4. Dunkirk

Again, nice to see Nolan apply his sensibilities and signature toolbox to a project that isn’t all twisty or Batman, or the twisty Batman where Marion Cotillard turns out to actually be Liam Neeson’s daughter.  Whom I wouldn’t take liberties with.  And you might say I’m quite taken, with this film.

Anyhow, sorry good buddy, you’ve been scooped of your own best speech.

3. Get Out

You’ve got your treachery: check.  Imprisonment: check.  Gaslighting: check.  Murder: check.  Now we’re getting somewhere.  Timely.

Pretty exciting project to come from one of the creators of Key and Peele, which deconstructed the Valley of the Unreal with the best of them.  While I can’t access the themes of specific cultural and identity appropriation as directly as black viewers, I think we can all relate to a sense of warped reality at times. I mean, a little bit.  The occasional inkling that powers mean to steal your brain, so they can put their brain in your brain pan, and control you like a doll that’s aware, but not fully aware.

 

2. Lady Bird 

Very much of the slice of life genre, sub folder coming-of-age, this manages to be a lot funnier and lighter than the vast majority.  But I do think you should really keep to your given name (the name you give yourself).

Tim Roundman

1. Phantom Thread 

Look guys, it’s not for everyone.  At my theater showing, I felt from the audience a general sense of mild disappointment as credits rolled to a lovely Jonny Greenwood score: one man remarked he wished they had seen The Post, another lady remarked in exasperation, “I don’t want to have mushrooms for dinner!”

So. Is it anti-romance or something?  This is a reasonable and probably not uncommon response: a big feature is a heavy dose of “why the hell does she put up with this guy, what exactly am I watching?”  But this is, among other things, a true throwback, and I’d argue that sentiment can be levied at quite a few if not most classic cinematic romances (we could again bring up last year’s throwback La La Land.)  I’ll admit, Anderson may have slightly overestimated the sheer charm of a dapper Daniel Day-Lewis, and could have afforded him another exhibit or two to put in the likable column.

I don’t think it’s anti-romance. Rather, it’s very skeptical of marriage as, in one respect, a sort of formal declaration of co-dependence.  One person’s takeaway: it’s about the institution’s more ludicrous, morbid presumptions, about one’s expectations and responsibilities towards one’s partner and their immortal soul, in sickness (and Woodcock is a sickly boy) and in health.   He says he will never marry because marriage would make him deceitful (sincerity also being a prime excuse for being insufferable).  Some would say a little deceit is necessary to grease the rails in a relationship.  Alma, defying our expectations by copping to the mushroom routine–both to Woodcock and some doctor, a cipher for the audience–is not deceitful. Little, if any compromise is made. And from that everlasting pause on his proposal, it’s fair to imagine she quite understands the severity of the transaction she’s entered into.

In most romances about difficult couples, one person changes the other, breaking down some barrier to them being together.  One makes the other find something “true” they didn’t know was there, or couldn’t admit, and then they can be together.  Here, marriage changes nothing, nor does either character change to suit the other.  Romantic?  Not in any way we’re conditioned to root for!  It’s a crazy sort of co-dependence, which, in an unvarnished way, is kind of what marriage is–spoken through the traditional vows, anyway.

If this is a bit fuzzy, I for one am still working through all of what’s going on here: curses, ghosts, mothers.  The most disappointing thing for me is that we’re set up to imagine this is going to have more to say about art and artists, where that turns out to be more a medium for other messages.  Maybe.  And a lot here may have been covered before, but rarely this intricately in the same film, paying off in surprisingly strange ways. For example: eccentric, successful men being obsessed with their mothers is a topic that’s common enough, but here we get a singularly spooky scene where Woodcock hallucinates his dead mother is standing by the wall. Deftly set up earlier in the film, it’s electrifying when it dawns on you that the phantom is being portrayed by a real human. Horror films, take note.

This is all to say: mushrooms are a solid choice as far as dinners go.  And if they should cause you should see a phantom standing by the wall, well, at least it’s your brain conjuring it and not The Man’s.  Right?

I hope you can trip this Sunday Oscars night with someone you love, and if not, thanks for tripping with me.

Should Win: 

Shall Win: Better be…

Dunkirk!