Thoughts on the Oscars

Best Picture: Spotlight

This is somewhat a surprise. Spotlight was pegged as an Oscar contender early on after great critical acclaim. But the glut of nominations for The Revenant and Mad Max: Fury Road suggested they had jumped way out in front of the rest of the Best Picture contenders, and the former's pre-show buzz and wins in other major categories seemed to lock it in. It's a solid choice for the top prize, though. While it may not be the exhilarating work of entertainment those other two films are (both because of its subject matter and its unadorned style), Spotlight is a superbly acted and endlessly captivating piece of work, at once palpably outraging and also a restrained depiction of journalism as a public good.

Best Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu, The Revenant

This epitomized the battle of the two big, thrilling, eye-popping spectacles, The Revenant and Mad Max. The Revenant had the advantage of being a more "safe" picture for the Academy. It's a vivd historical re-creation shot in the elements, much more the Academy's forte than Fury Road's grungy sci-fi setting. It had one of the biggest and most acclaimed actors today practically killing himself in the lead role (seriously, it looked like it). And it had a past winner known for eclectic and ambitious stuff in the director's chair (although, Fury Road's George Miller is actually an Oscar-winner, for 2006's dancing penguin flick Happy Feet). So I'm not surprised Iñárritu took this one. I enjoyed Fury Road more out of these two films (and all films in 2015), so I was rooting for Miller (as well as for it to take Best Picture). But The Revenant was amazing, exciting, and beautiful to look at, so I can't find a whole lot of fault here.

Best Actor: Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant

 

Best Actress: Brie Larson, Room

I haven’t seen Room. Or for that matter, any of the nominated films. But still, no nomination for Charlize Theron as Furiosa?

Best Supporting Actor: Mark Rylance, Bridge of Spies

Sylvester Stallone was the sentimental favorite for this one, and I almost found myself rooting for him like the final fight in a Rocky movie. But honestly, an award this late in his career for his seventh time playing the same character seems like an excuse to give Sly an unofficial lifetime achievement award (à la John Wayne in True Grit) instead of truly deserved. This would have been all the more underlined by the fact that Creed received no other nominations. Mark Rylance winning isn’t terribly surprising, as he’s a distinguished serious actor in a historical feature right up the Academy’s alley. He was solid in Bridge of Spies, but the best nominee here was Mark Ruffalo in Spotlight. Struggling to maintain his journalistic composure and detachment, something that becomes harder and harder as more heinous truths come out about the story he's investigating, Ruffalo was as good as any of his co-stars, but also the audience’s main emotional vessel. It was arguably more of a co-lead performance than supporting, but I guess it’s hard to single out any one lead above the rest in an ensemble work like this.

Best supporting Actress: Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl

I haven't seen The Danish Girl. Of the two nominees here I've seen, Jennifer Jason Leigh was about the fifth most interesting character in The Hateful Eight, while Rachel McAdams was as strong as the rest of the team in Spotlight.

Snubs:

In regards to the controversy about the lack of diversity among the nominees, I offer my opinions of some of the films that became points of contention for their snubs.

I liked Creed, but I wouldn't put it among the best films of 2015. It was an entertaining feelgood piece of Hollywood underdog comfort food. But underneath Ryan Coogler's new touches, it was still the old Rocky formula, and it takes more than that to really move me.

Concussion, I did not think was very good.

I really enjoyed Straight Outta Compton. It was well within the standard biopic parameters, to be sure. But the thing is, the Academy loves biopics. Look through lists of nominees going back decades and you'll find plenty of biopics up for at least acting categories, if not other top awards. So, why would the Academy mostly ignore one of the better ones in a while, one with some of the best musical sequences ever filmed and some still-timely cultural relevance, while showering awards on dry, blatant awards bait like The King's Speech? Some may point to race, but maybe it is just that Oscar voters are an old bunch with tastes out of step with current culture. In which case, this controversy did some good by pushing the Academy to clean house and bring in some new members (not to mention made for some very sharp and entertaining stuff from Chis Rock as host).

As for the films that were nominated, the Academy seems to have finally figured out this expanded Best Picture category. All eight films were also nominated for acting, directing, or writing, instead of one or two nominees who were there purely as an unspoken honorable mention with no shot of winning. Of the six I've seen, I can't argue against them being up there. However, some of their acting nominees I might have done differently. I think Mark Ruffalo was very good in Spotlight, but they could have just as easily swapped him for Michael Keaton, Liev Schreiber, or Stanley Tucci. Such is the conundrum of such a great ensemble effort. The Big Short similarly had a strong group of equal players, but Steve Carell is the one who really stood out more so than Christian Bale. His performance, alternately his usual awkwardness and righteous, polemical rage, showed his range is far greater than comedy (people said that about his turn in Foxcatcher last year, but I disagreed).

I was also kind of hoping Ridley Scott would get a Best Director nomination for The Martian, and then finally take home the prize that has eluded him. I realize I just sort of argued against giving out unofficial "career" awards, but you could argue he deserved it for The Martian solely on its own merits. It's a very good film.

Where to Invade Next

People probably make up their mind about a Michael Moore movie before they even see it. He appears to have taken that to heart with his newest doc Where to Invade Next.  Viewers might be surprised to find little of the anger, sardonicism, and clear, firm political stance of his films like Roger & Me or Fahrenheit 9/11. On the contrary, Moore displays an uncharacteristic restraint so as to engage, not enrage, about the subjects at hand. This works in favor of the points he presents, even though the presentation is a little staler than usual.

The picture sees the professional muckraker take his film crew abroad under the pretext of "invading" other countries to steal their best policy ideas and take them back to America (but really, he just talks to people about them). Some of the ideas he encounters are already well-known to most Americans, such as how other countries have way better schools (better curriculum, better coursework, a better deal for college-goers, even better school lunches). Or how the U.S. is the only country without mandatory paid vacation days. Or how the country of Iceland, which went bankrupt in the 2008 financial crisis, clawed itself out of the economic abyss by taking a decidedly different approach than the U.S. 

Other things he finds are quite eye-opening. One example is a visit to a Norwegian prison, the surprises in which are simply hilariously stunning. Another is how the North African country Tunisia, only a few years removed from gaining democracy in the Arab Spring, already has constitutionally guaranteed equality for women, which the U.S. does not. That turns out to be a recurring theme, the fact that the U.S. is not only behind on representation of women, but that countries with women in positions of business or government power seem to function pretty well.

Through all these travels, the attention-getting stunts and guerilla ambush interviews that are Moore’s forte are nowhere in sight, and his sarcastic comedic bent is kept to a minimum. Yes, he injects some humor into his discussions (there’s a jab at the last President that still lands nearly eight years later), and the usual suspects (i.e., Fox News talking heads) appear in snippets as the face of ineffective American policy. But Moore himself is pretty subdued. Instead, he lets his subjects do most of the talking, which makes a stronger case.

That also accounts for the movie’s relative weakness in form. The tricks and techniques Moore usually employs may be ammunition for his detractors, but they’re frankly what make his movies entertaining for the rest of us. Without them, Where to Invade Next seems a bit like his amateur vacation videos roughly tacked together into a travelogue.

Still, the central question it asks is very good. Why is the United States, the richest and most powerful country in the world, outranked by other nations in so many things? The answers Moore presents aren’t exactly ones that can be simply shrugged off.

Vinyl, "Pilot"

One of the many great skills of director Martin Scorsese is his unnaturally gifted ear for music, often popular or classic rock ‘n’ roll that fits the scene with a sublime perfection. There couldn’t be a better candidate to tackle the music biz, especially that of the era which birthed both his career and so many of his scoring choices, the era which Vinyl covers. And as director of last night’s premiere, his musical ear is there in spades, as is his skillful technical direction maybe a little less so. As for his knack for highlighting the character of immoral people in an environment where morals are few? That’s not clear, yet, though the immorality is front and center: this is a world of coked-up, backstabbing sex fiends, and it almost plays those qualities as positives.

Our guide through this world is Richie Finestra (Bobby Cannavale), the founder and head of the New York City-based record label American Century. Once a titan of the industry, the label has fallen on hard times by the series date of 1973, and is about to be sold to a German conglomerate. The pilot mostly follows Richie as he gets his house in order before the sale, amidst the beginning of New York’s punk rock scene, as well as hinting at a few other musical movements that would arise from the same time and place.

The episode is two hours long and still feels overstuffed. Richie’s workday entails quite a lot, meeting so many characters in so many places and seemingly eating up half the running time or more. There are also plenty beginnings of subplots, such as a relatively underused Olivia Wilde as Richie’s bored and melancholy wife he has little time for, and a great Juno Temple playing a label secretary determined to sign a wild young punk rocker (James Jagger, son of co-creator and executive producer Mick) and move up in the world. These smaller story threads are more interesting than the stuff following Richie. Affable and capable as Cannavale is, his demeanor is that of a hardened guy who's unfazed by any of the excesses around him. As high-energy and flashy as the show is, his disinterest is frankly a bit of a buzzkill. Also better are the flashbacks to his earliest job in the business, where his management of a blues artist (Ato Essandoh) takes a tragic turn. Oh, and there are also outside-of-time musical numbers that appear as interludes.

But, nostalgia is more the order of the day, and not just the music. The scuzzy New York Scorsese depicted as an urban hell in Taxi Driver is shown longingly here. With few exceptions, the consumption of piles and piles of drugs are depicted as a pretty good time. The industry characters Richie encounters are almost like parodies of sleazy exec archetypes played to the absolute hilt. It’s generally a lively, often funny time, and it’s kind of fun seeing real rock icons as bit players. But about three-quarters in, the pilot takes a sharp turn into GoodFellas territory, such a rough fit that the whole show nearly crosses the line from somewhat lightweight musical ear candy to kitschy popcorn cheese.

The small tad of depth beyond the surface sleaze comes at the very beginning, in the opening moment of the great sequence that bookends the whole thing. Here, a despondent Richie pathetically snorts cocaine and seems to be hit with the reality that he’s clinging to a part of his life that’s passed, that it’s time to move on. The events of the episode leading to this point reveal this is not exactly what's going on, but still, kind of an ironic note to kick off a project so dripping with nostalgia.

It’s pretty fleeting, as he happens upon a rowdy New York Dolls show that literally brings the house down. It’s a fantastically staged sequence, with the expert editing and variation of camera techniques Scorsese employs to heighten the state. It all leads to a conclusion that is at once a corny piece of rock ‘n’ roll movie embellishment, and absolutely perfect and fitting after the nearly two hours that preceded it. Best of all, it finally loosens Richie up a bit. It remains to be seen if he or his fellow travelers turn out to be strong characters under those drug-fueled 70s shells, but the prospect of more thrilling sequences like that is enough to give this show a chance. 

Deadpool

Spend a little time on the web and it’s clear everyone agrees the 1990s were a pretty bad time for comic books. But if that uber-macho, uber-gritty, uber-‘roid-y artwork-filled era was good for anything, it was that it gave the world Deadpool. Marvel’s cocky, fourth wall-breaking mutated mercenary came around at the right time, humorously tearing down the decade’s aesthetic that had become fodder for mocking, while also getting to participate in it. Likewise, this moment, with the market for comic book movies saturated to near-critical mass, is absolutely perfect for the character to give the genre onscreen the same drubbing. And he certainly does, in a film as endlessly fun as it is filthy.

One might recall Ryan Reynolds played the character before in that much-hated Wolverine prequel everyone has apparently agreed to forget. Having learned from their mistakes in that film (sewing his mouth shut is like taking Wolverine’s claws away), the studio lets him be to play the character to the fullest this time. It’s a case of note-perfect casting if there ever was one; Reynolds’ charming smart mouthy act has been perfected by this point and fits Deadpool like his costume, the particulars of which he oh-so-vulgarly describes early in the flick (which is to say, quite well). This time, though, they bothered to make the right movie around him. His persona doesn’t clash with everything else like in Blade: Trinity, or get anchored down by an unsure half-seriousness like Green Lantern (the butt of more than one joke here). Everything in Deadpool is built around him, and just as committed to getting laughs above all else.

And it succeeds splendidly, most often. The jokes are great, and the verbal rapport swift and sharp. The action scenes are frantic and goofy takedowns of industry standard CGI (but no less thrilling, and honestly maybe a little better and more coherent than the real thing). T.J. Miller is really funny as Pool’s deadpanning pal Weasel, as are the liaisons from the X-Men: a hilariously do-gooder Colossus (Stefan Kapičić) and sullen, unimpressed Negasonic Teenage Warhead (Brianna Hildebrand). Even some of the most basic movie elements are presented in funny ways. And the complete lack of a fourth wall is a huge plus, not only presenting some good gags and self-aware pop culture digs, but making the title figure seem sort of like a pleasant buddy watching the film alongside the viewer and wisecracking the whole time, while simultaneously acting in it.

But, as much as it plays like a parody of comic adaptations, a few scenes pull it off for real. The one-on-one fights between Deadpool and his nemesis Ajax (Ed Skrein) are bloody and intense, and more effective for that. And when comedic touches seep into these sequences, it all fits together seamlessly. That, as well as Reynolds selling it well in both physique and attitude, suggests that the character might work just as well if he he managed to sneak into a property playing it straight. More surprisingly, the highly raunchy scenes between Reynolds and love interest Morena Baccarin, played more for humor, are nevertheless sweet and sexy in a way that’ll appeal to the dirty-minded horny teen in everyone.

This one’s kind of a narrative featherweight (in a nutshell: mercenary gets cancer, gains superhuman healing in an experiment but also gets disfigured, seeks revenge on man responsible), but it’s many times more fun than comic book films with greater ambitions. In fact, that leads me to the only complaint I have: the fact that character ownership rights will likely limit Deadpool to his own movies (and maybe further X-Men pictures if we’re lucky). That’s a damn shame. I love Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool. I want to see him do to every self-serious comic movie out there what he did to the genre’s broad strokes here.