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.