My (admittedly spotty) thoughts on the Oscars

Best Picture: Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)

This movie, above all, is a lot of fun. So much has been discussed about its originality, its creative technical aspects, Michael Keaton’s big comeback, and what it all means that seemingly few left any room to mention how funny, well-acted, and joyous it is to watch. Aside from Foxcatcher, all the other Best Picture nominees I’ve seen are solid, but none are as entertaining this one. Plus, there is the matter of everything else I just mentioned.

Best Director: Alejandro González Iñárritu, Birdman

Iñárritu’s filmmaking apparently divides critics as well as audiences. Well, Birdman is the first and only movie of his I’ve seen, and in this case, it’s a hit. The film’s much-discussed “one long take” style (for which cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki’s Oscar is also well-deserved) is exhilarating to watch, as the constant, uncut action gives every moment a palpable energy. The picture moves from scene to scene smoothly and seamlessly, and the real and surreal blend more naturally than you’d expect. What could have been a gimmick (yet another single-camera, documentary-style work) ended up being an awesome technique that only a truly talented filmmaker could have pulled off.

Best Actor: Eddie Redmayne, The Theory of Everything

This was one category where you hate to single out just one of several great performances. Redmayne physically embodied the brilliant Stephen Hawking so perfectly it’s uncanny, and yet despite the limitations of such a role, managed to convey strong emotions in a heartfelt film. Definitely one of the best performances of the year. But still, Michael Keaton threw himself into Birdman, managing to emit some real pathos while keeping up with the pace of the picture and keeping us laughing and cringing. Also, Bradley Cooper underplayed the all-American hero archetype with very real demons in American Sniper. Which of the three was best? I can’t choose, but you couldn’t go wrong with any of them.

Best Actress: Julianne Moore, Still Alice

I haven’t seen Still Alice.

Best Supporting Actor: J.K. Simmons, Whiplash

Or Whiplash.

Best supporting Actress: Patricia Arquette, Boyhood

Or Boyhood.

Snubs:

Much has already been said about the snubs for The Lego Movie in Best Animated Feature and Selma in all the major categories except a token nomination for Best Picture. These grievances are valid, however.

The Lego Movie is arguably one of the best films, animated or live action, of 2014. It’s beautiful to look at and much smarter than almost all kids and family fare (even Big Hero 6, which did win for Best Animated Feature). Some are speculating that the snub was because part of the last act switches to live action. If that is the case, it’s a really stupid technicality to disqualify a deserving film.

As for Selma, we’ll never really know how much political factors or tone deafness to diversity or just simple matters of taste eliminated the film in the Academy’s eyes. All that aside, it deserved to be nominated—Ava DuVernay for directing, and especially David Oyelowo for his fantastic portrait of Martin Luther King, Jr.—on its merits alone. Certainly more than the dry, dour, blatant awards bait that was Foxcatcher, and Steve Carell’s lazy, latex-y attempt to go serious in it.

Lastly, Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar turned out to be quite a divisive picture. I’m of the opinion that it’s a great film, one of the best science fiction movies I’ve ever seen. Everything’s subjective, but I would have put it up for more than just technical awards (which were deserved), at the very least for its screenplay and direction. Then again, since science fiction in general has a hard time escaping its genre label and being taken seriously as art, I’m not at all surprised.

Kingsman: The Secret Service

Gone, it seems, are the days when film spoofs simply poked fun at a movie or genre. These days, many parodies (the good ones, anyway) are nearly as good as any picture in the genre they’re ribbing. 

Kingsman: The Secret Service edges the dial a little further still from parody to the real thing. There’s plenty of content sending up spy pictures, savaging of current events and famous figures, and just regular bits of humor. But taken as a legitimate action film, it’s quite good. Good enough, in fact, that I’m somewhat reluctant to even call it a spoof at all. Its comedic elements aside, it’s as exciting as any comic book adaptation or summer action flick, and the plot, while (refreshingly) not as insistent on brutal realism as the genre’s been of late, isn’t bad at all.

Loosely based on a comic by Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons, the movie follows the exploits of Kingsman, a well-dressed top secret English espionage agency as deadly as they are gentlemanly. After the death of an agent (Jack Davenport) in the field, talented but troubled British youth Eggsy (Taron Egerton), the son of a former member of Kingsman, is approached by agent Harry Hart (Colin Firth) with an opportunity to join the organization. As Eggsy goes through rigorous physical, mental, and social training, the agency investigates a plot by tech billionaire Richmond Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson) to wipe out the human race.

Few clichés are left untouched, from the outlandish world domination plotting, to the ridiculous gadgetry, to the equally ridiculous near-invincibility of Jason Bourne and his ilk. The characters even know the clichés in which they’re steeped and point them out. It’s a lot of fun seeing talented actors like Firth, Mark Strong, and Michael Caine send up their serious demeanor, and Jackson is clearly having a ball eviscerating not only larger-than-life Bond villains but also the archetype of the “cool billionaire.” And as the main protagonist, Egerton has affably snarky comic chops, as well as an everyman heroic appeal.

That appeal, and the veteran cast’s skill and presence, serve the picture well when it blurs the line between spoof and actual spy movie. Scenes where the satirical bent is relaxed work rather well, particularly the training sequences in the first half. A lot of times, the wit and humor is supplemental to the action, not the focus. Much of the action scenes are aiming for parody, of the blurry slow-motion, kinetic violence of superhero fare, or the ability of superspies to take down a whole room of people with no effort or injury. But while they do succeed as comedy, they’re as good as or better than any movie playing it straight. And when they go to ridiculous and sometimes macabre extremes, the film has its sense of humor to fall back on. There’s also one sequence that reminds the audience that there’s nothing like good old-fashioned stunt work. 

Kingsman is very funny in a lot of places. However, it feels less like a comedy than the kind of film that’s gone extinct in the wake of grim and gritty spy movies like the Bourne series. It’s so much fun that it almost feels fresh and new.

Better Call Saul, "Uno"

Of all the little oddball touches that distinguished Breaking Bad from the rest of the cable drama pack, Bob Odenkirk’s turn as criminal lawyer Saul Goodman was one of the best. The character could have easily been a bland attorney archetype, a suit-filler with little characterization beyond his functions to the plot. Casting a comedic actor instead and letting him devour the scenery turned out to be unexpectedly ingenious. His comic relief never seemed intrusive, and he was quite up to the task when things got serious. So it’s little surprise that Saul got his own show (for those reasons as well as the fact that he’s one of the few supporting characters left standing).

Last night’s premiere of Better Call Saul began with a look at what happened to the lovable shyster since we last saw him. It was a wonderfully amusing riff on the flash-forwards that Breaking Bad used to great effect, and its stark black-and-white and somber score of mall music struck a great balance between funny and tragic.

From there, the story goes back to nearly a decade before Breaking Bad, when Saul was Jimmy McGill, an Albuquerque public defender struggling to launch his own practice. In addition to few clients and little money, he also has to worry about his brother (Michael McKean), an attorney from a major law firm who’s on extended leave for an unnamed ailment. Desperate for a break, Jimmy tries to pull a small, one-time scam, but it backfires and leads him into more trouble.

The episode plays very similarly to the first episode of Breaking Bad, with a lot of quiet scenes of Jimmy sulking amongst everything—the bills, the crappy job, the crappy car and office—that drives him to take actions so drastic and immoral, just as Walter White did. Breaking Bad’s DNA is apparent in other places, too, from its black comedy (the video in the first courtroom scene is sickly hilarious), to taking its sweet time to build tension ever so slowly and ending at exactly the moment where the viewer won’t even think about missing the next episode. And, of course, a few other characters fans will recognize appear, one of which comes as a big surprise in the final moments. All made for an enjoyable first hour, but Breaking Bad’s shadow could be a hindrance to the show going forward.

Maybe it’s just the similarity between both series’ first episodes, but I got the sense that Jimmy is setting out on a path just like Walter White’s. Now that he’s already entered an evil, morally ambiguous world, every attempt to get out alive will just make him sink deeper and deeper until the good man he began as no longer exists. Or maybe it’s the surprise character appearance at the end that makes it feel like they’re retreading the same territory. Either way, Walt and Jimmy’s trajectories look much the same, at least after one episode. I really hope that's not the case, because the character metamorphosis of Walter White was already so perfect (I’d argue it was the best character arc ever in the history of film or television) that even a similar one from the same people would probably suffer by comparison.

I hope that the old character cameos turn out to be just some fan service for the premiere, and that the show does away with them now and goes its own way. It’s certainly possible, because while the Saul Goodman snark and humor we know and love pervades the episode, there are also moments where Odenkirk shows some desperate pathos. We'll see if he can carry a series, but it's clear he's at least capable of more than comic relief.

American Sniper

Is Clint Eastwood’s portrait of the late Navy SEAL Chris Kyle simple rah-rah, American flag-waving jingoism, as some are suggesting? Hardly. Yes, the Americans are unequivocally the good guys while the film is not much concerned with the Iraqi point of view. An aura of patriotic reverence permeates even the most wrenching moments. But the tone is anything but celebratory. Respectful, but not celebratory, and fittingly somber for what is ultimately a tragic story.

As has been prominently displayed in the movie’s marketing, Kyle (played by Bradley Cooper) served in Iraq and recorded more kills than any sniper in U.S. military history. Based on his memoir of the same name, the film depicts episodes from his experiences at war. The straight-up combat sequences are as flawlessly edited and convincing as any of the greatest war pictures. But it’s the less clear-cut scenes, as Kyle agonizes over whether or not the people in his sites (women and children included) are a threat, that are so searing and intense. At times, dehumanization is necessary, as the immediacy of danger leaves no time for pondering the morality of killing. That doesn’t make the act any less horrific, however, and even if he can’t, the audience certainly can see an almost measurable effect on the character’s psyche as the movie goes on.

Physically, Cooper embodies the role very well, but the real strength of his performance is in the subtleties. Outwardly, he never shifts from the strong, righteous American archetype that’s existed since John Wayne movies. It’s convincing, and yet, also quite clearly only skin-deep. It’s obvious underneath the warrior shell that he’s in torment. Things as small as a look on his face or a detached disinterest in social situations speak volumes.

Those demons come to the surface in the home front scenes, as Kyle finds difficulty in reconnecting with his wife (Sienna Miller) and being a father. Here, Eastwood utilizes every plot device he can to really nail the point. Sometimes it’s because of Cooper’s understated acting. In the same sense, Miller seems little more than constantly at her wit’s end, but that only highlights the distance between them. Other times, it isn’t subtle at all and uses obvious techniques and dramatic situations of dysfunction we’ve seen before. It’s almost blatantly emotionally manipulative, but it works all the same.

Eastwood likewise uses familiar archetypes to reel us in early. The training scenes aren’t much different from about a million other military movies. A short prologue between a young Kyle (Cole Konis) and his father (Ben Reed) is almost like a Western cliché (not to mention resembles a similar scene in the 2001 film Enemy at the Gates). It almost seems like it’s going to be a conventional genre picture until it hits us with the reality of warfare, and becomes instead an incredibly tense and emotional piece of work.

The Imitation Game

The Imitation Game doesn’t so much scratch as barely graze the surface of a very interesting and historically important individual. That’s not to say it’s a bad film, and it’s not. But it very noticeably lacks the weight, detail, and depth of character that such a subject probably warrants.

The subject is the British scientist and mathematician Alan Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch), whose theories and experiments arguably laid the foundation of modern computer science. The movie focuses mostly on his work at England’s Bletchley Park during World War II, where he and others worked tirelessly to break the Nazis’ Enigma Code.

But, you wouldn’t know from the picture that they worked much at all, or even that there was a war going on. Most of the wartime content seems to be played for laughs, as the scholarly minds bicker and banter away while hitting dead end after dead end. Whenever a plot point or twist seems like it’s about to shift the tone, it turns out to be just a set-up for another laugh. It feels like a lazy school chum comedy, with the admiral in charge of things (Charles Dance) coming off less like a military man than the archetypical stuck-up dean. Even with newsreels and combat footage cutting in to remind us they’re still at war, there’s no sense of urgency or tension, and we don’t even get a cursory explanation of how they cracked Enigma. Instead, it happens in a standard Hollywood “eureka” moment.

As Turing, Cumberbatch embodies pop culture’s simplistic view of Asperger’s, which is to say the shy, lovably tactless nerd (basically, like Jim Parsons from The Big Bang Theory). Given the direction the picture chose, this is actually just fine, as he plays off his costars well and derives humor from many moments. Still, it’s a bit of a one-note performance, though this might be more the picture's fault than his.

The best moments are the chronological bookends to the World War II stuff, showing a young Turing (Alex Lather) as a troubled student, and his postwar prosecution for his homosexuality. In the former, we get at least some understanding of the pain Turing carries later, and the latter sees Cumberbatch finally drop his comedic shell and show some tortured emotional range. These two plots surprisingly tie into the wartime majority of the picture quite well, in spite of the stark difference in tone. Even though the film seems intent on making us laugh for much of its runtime, it finishes as an affecting, fairly tragic call for tolerance in Turing’s memory.

It works, and is ultimately a respectful tribute to the man. But even though it doesn’t really follow the life event bullet points structure of so many biopics, it has the same relatively low level of thoroughness. A deeper character study of Turing or a detailed, puzzling picture on breaking Enigma could have been so interesting. It’s just a little disappointing that the story was instead a springboard for a light comedic film instead.

Foxcatcher

A true crime story that rings about as true as a soap opera plotline, a character study of flat, unvarying characters, and a drama that aims to say a lot but doesn’t even manage the dramatic part, Foxcacher is one bad movie. Nearly every element of it is done poorly, turning what could have been an interesting tale (and it is an interesting story) into a sleepy, depressing bore of a picture.

The story is that of John du Pont, the heir of a wealthy family who founded a wrestling training center in the late 1980s that attracted the Olympic athlete brothers Dave and Mark Schultz. Nearly a decade later, this arrangement ended in a tragic murder. The film sets to explore why this happened (highly speculatively, I should add), focusing mainly on Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum), who despite his success still feels trapped in the shadow of his brother Dave (Mark Ruffalo). When rich fan of the sport Du Pont (Steve Carell) offers to sponsor him and provide him the space to train, he sees his chance to make a name for himself and takes it. Things start well enough, but eventually Du Pont’s demons turn the relationship toxic.

Tatum is one of the few positives in the picture, with the convincing physicality of a wrestler and a terse intensity that’s effective. His snarl and facial features convincingly convey jealousy, inadequacy, pain, and drive without even saying a word. It’s an interesting view at the darker elements of an athlete’s competitive spirit, rather than the uplifting inspirational stuff too often seen in sports movies.

Carell’s acting, on the other hand, seems to consist of little more than latex and Valium. His publicized prosthetic nose seems engineered to always look like he’s looking down it (it doesn’t help that he seems to tilt his head back in half his scenes), as if to suggest some element of class conflict (further exploration of this theme is not as unsubtle but equally simplistic). Every delivery of his is weak and tired. When it’s his character’s time to show some emotion or intensity, he comes off like Brick Tamland from Anchorman, only not funny. Except for one scene (albeit unintentionally), in which he and Tatum share cocaine, and the tone can’t seem to decide if it’s a dark turning point in the story or a tender moment between the two.

The film plays up the latter angle, that Schultz and Du Pont are sort of kindred spirits trying to escape the shadow of their families, and it just rings so false. Even if you don’t know the ultimate outcome, it’s highly obvious from the second the two meet that something about this relationship is off. Every bit of pathos between the two is empty and forced, draining the narrative of any emotional resonance and the final tragedy of any weight. And it’s kind of a moot point, but the conflict that leads to such an end—mommy issues between Carell and Vanessa Redgrave’s little-seen crusty, proper snob—is pretty passé plotting, as well.

The movie is obviously angling to be a prestige picture, and has all the aesthetic trappings just begging for award show recognition: actors undergoing physical transformation, dead serious highbrow subject matter, a somber piano score (as if relentless dreariness automatically translates to dramatic depth), those not-quite-slo-mo sequences with no sound to emphasize emotional intensity. But like Carell’s Mr. Burns schnozz, these trappings can’t conceal the fact that what’s underneath is subpar. With its bad melodrama and simplistic analysis of characters and events, Foxcatcher is the macho male equivalent of a bad Lifetime movie.

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

I guess you can’t really blame the studio for wanting to stretch The Hobbit into three high-grossing movies, especially considering the project’s hefty price tag. But from a narrative standpoint, the trilogy could have easily been trimmed quite a bit and condensed into just two films. That fact is more apparent than ever in The Battle of the Five Armies. Even though it’s by far the shortest of Peter Jackson’s six J.R.R. Tolkien adaptations, it still seems unnecessarily long and inflated.

After the first two entries, there isn’t a whole lot left from Tolkien’s novel to film besides the eponymous battle. The movie does wrap up the cliffhanger involving the dragon Smaug (voiced by Benedict Cumberbatch) from last year’s film (a little anticlimactically, unfortunately). It also brings to conclusion all its added-on prequel elements leading into the events of Jackson’s other trilogy, which are promptly forgotten once finished (makes you wonder why they even bothered with them in the first place). Otherwise, its focus is squarely on the battle, pitting the Dwarves of Erebor and their kin against the Elves of Mirkwood and the remaining citizens of Lake-town, then all of them against two armies of orcs, trolls, and other nasty servants of Sauron. When the sides aren’t engaged in combat, the characters are discussing and priming for battle, or glumly reflecting on those lost in it afterward. And any dangling subplots are either finished on the battlefield or left in the dust without a satisfactory completion.

Even Bilbo (Martin Freeman) is somewhat brushed aside. Instead, the driving character arc is that of Richard Armitage’s Dwarf king Thorin, whose lust for riches ignites the whole conflict. Herein lies the only bit of substance in the picture, exploring the character’s madness of greed. A great sequence—probably the only use of special effects that doesn’t involve fighting or destruction—hauntingly illustrates his sanity lost in (quite literally) a sea of gold. This turn, however, is more than a little jarring. Thorin was a tortured but honorable character in the first two films, but is suddenly cold and paranoid in this one. His downfall festers a little too quickly to believe. It’s little matter, though, as he just as quickly reverts back to action hero mode to join in the combat.

The battle scenes are reasonably entertaining, if not nearly as impressive as those we already saw in Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy (not sure if it’s the high frame rate or the 3D, but the armies look more obviously like CGI). Eventually, though, it gets a little tiring as it goes on and on and on. You can really feel the filmmakers reaching to expand every element they can to justify a third movie, and the final result is very bloated. And while Jackson is good at staging a memorable action sequence, a couple here—a swordfight on ice (seriously), and especially a duel inside a structure as it falls to pieces faster than a Jenga tower—reach a stratosphere of ridiculousness only someone with unlimited money and no one to tell them “no” could possibly reach. By the time the film finally reaches its end, there's more of an exhausted relief than emotional or narrative payoff.

Contrast that with The Lord of the Rings’ long but very satisfying final chapter The Return of the King (deletion of Saruman aside), and you have the biggest difference, I think, between Jackson’s two trilogies. The Lord of the Rings had an epic scope while still making time to tell strong character stories, in addition to being a great action and special effects spectacle. The Hobbit trilogy has ultimately been only a spectacle. It was an enjoyable spectacle with a lot of fun stuff (the second movie The Desolation of Smaug being the best of them). But while its big brothers are film classics, The Hobbit rings a little hollow, this entry most of all.