OVP: Best Friends (1982)

Film: Best Friends (1982)
Stars: Goldie Hawn, Burt Reynolds, Ron Silver, Jessica Tandy, Barnard Hughes, Audra Lindley, Keenan Wynn
Director: Norman Jewison
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Song-"How Do You Keep the Music Playing?")
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Admittedly I should probably be getting political today, again (and am on my Twitter page, so follow me if you don't), but my lovely travel plans for the weekend got cancelled and I'm bummed from that, so instead I am spending the weekend cleaning out my DVR in preparation for the 31 Days of Oscar that is about to bestow itself upon us all as a radiant sign of hope (my DVR, TCM, and I have a bit of a war every year over how many movies I can fit on it, and I always lose in not getting as many as I want, but I'm at least giving myself a running chance right now).  Therefore in the next week (and likely over the next month or so), in addition to politics, Oscar articles, and modern movie reviews, expect to see some pretty eclectic films come forward that have been cited by the Academy but may not be as headliner as they once were.  We'll start that list with 1982's Best Friends, starring Goldie Hawn and Burt Reynolds.

(Spoilers Ahead) It's always something I have to acclimate to when I'm revisiting movies from a previous era who were the "movie stars" of the time that didn't necessarily gain immortal status, which is always that way with Reynolds in particular, but it's worth recalling Burt Reynolds at this time was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood (career misfires, then Evening Shade, then Boogie Nights, then more career misfires, would soon follow), as was Hawn, who had enough of a role in my childhood that I don't have to remind myself of her screen presence (she's one of my favorites).  The film shows them as Paula and Richard, two successful screenwriters, friends and lovers, who decide on a whim that it's time they get married.  The film then shows them as they move into a more domestic role while meeting their parents, considerably more eccentric than they are used to in their work-powered Los Angeles existence.

The film is one of those love stories that has aged and dated badly.  The idea of marriage "changing everything" is a bit more alien now when romantic couples regularly live together without getting married, and the idea of going from a career woman to a "wife" is a bit prosaic (you can be both!), but there are cute moments in the film.  The parents (Tandy, Hughes, Lindley, and Wynn) are all caricatures of human beings, but they get some fun lines in (particularly a bawdy Tandy, miles away from what she would soon bring to Miss Daisy), and Hawn and Reynolds are both incredibly watchable movie stars.  It all feels, though, like we're expecting too little from their characters-are they so sheltered that they can't put up with the insanity of their spouse's family for a week?  I think expecting patience out of two grown adults, particularly considering that the in-laws are by-and-large quite kind (if indeed pushy) shows a plot point that I'm missing-were we expected to think that people had less patience in 1982?  Couple that with a late scene that, while at the time probably wasn't nearly as heinous as it is now, but wouldn't fly in a movie in 2017 (Reynolds smashes open a window and pushes Hawn's head through the opening so she can "get some air," a violent scene that wouldn't be fitting today in a scene where they're about to reconcile), made me not like the movie, even if I did in fact enjoy it more in the middle than the script was giving me options to do.

The movie received a sole nomination for Best Song, one of many creations from Alan & Marilyn Bergman to be such cited, and it's actually quite lovely.  James Ingram, a solid good luck charm in the 1980's and 1990's for Oscar, performs the song with Patti Austin, and it's a lovely 80's power ballad, better than you'd remember even if a bit overly sappy.  The song features throughout as a melancholy love theme, only properly playing over the end credits but also appear in snippets throughout.  It's not a bad nomination, for the record, though I doubt when we get down to it in the OVP that Oscar made the wrong call going with An Officer and a Gentleman.  We shall see then, though.

Those are my thoughts on this romantic comedy from 1982-how about you?  Anyone have a fond memory of this, and if not, share your favorite film moments of Reynolds or Hawn?  And also, which of James Ingram's many soundtrack-sourced love ballads is your favorite?  Share below!

OVP: Passengers (2016)

Film: Passengers (2016)
Stars: Chris Pratt, Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Sheen, Laurence Fishburne
Director: Morten Tyldum
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Production Design, Score)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Trailers are meant to want to get you to a movie.  I mean, that's kind of the point-put the best parts of the movie into the trailer, and hope for the best, right?  It's weird, however, to go back to see trailers to movies you know by heart and see snippets or line readings that aren't actually in the movie, that clearly were part of a last minute editing decision that sliced a slower scene that might have had one snappy line out of the movie.  This is fine.  What's not fine is when a movie completely sells you something that isn't remotely what you signed up for, particularly when doing so also resulted in you knowing how the movie was going to end.  Thus is the case with Passengers.

(Spoilers Ahead) On the surface the film is a relatively simple love story.  You have lovable Jim Preston (Pratt), a sweet engineer smitten with a beautiful author named Aurora (Lawrence).  They are stuck on an intergalactic cruise ship to another planet, but they can't get back into their hibernation pods because the ship never planned for them to not work (which feels like a huge insurance issue, but whatever), and therefore are stuck for ninety years essentially spending their entire existence on a ship where they'll die before they reach their destination.  It's a cool concept for a story-Gravity meets Titanic, in a way, and we learn as the film goes on that there's something wrong with the ship that caused Jim to wake up.  It's not Celine and Julie Go Boating or anything, but it's a giant blockbuster starring two well-loved movie stars in space.  I mean, what's not to like?

Except, there's a problem here ("there's always a problem with you lately, John" says the world).  Jim woke up unexpectedly, unfortunately, but Aurora didn't.  It was only his pod that malfunctioned-hers was fine until he, after stalking her for months (you can't send a message that won't take 55 years, but somehow you have access to the entire back catalog of Wikipedia), decided to jimmy open her hibernation pod so that he would have companionship, essentially murdering her for his own selfish reasons.  In the trailers, this is not indicated, as it seems more like it's just the two of them that have woken up from this century-long slumber, but in reality he steals her for his own out of loneliness and hormones, and the movie never properly addresses this.  I mean, yes, she's upset when she finds out, but she still chooses to stay with him for eternity and forgives him extremely quickly even though he stole her life.

It's hard to recover from that without the movie feeling like it has deeply uncomfortable sexual politics.  For starters, it sort of forgives him for being lonely and desperate, and there are worse things in the world than getting stuck on a deserted island with Chris Pratt, but when he actually puts you on the deserted island, essentially robbing you of all of your dreams-it's hard to find a way to look at this in a feminist way and not want to smack him.  Honestly-I struggled pretty furiously with this in the back half of the movie, and there was really no way that this felt okay, particularly when she decides to spend her life with him (also-side note, was anyone else worried they were going to get pregnant and we'd meet when one of their kids when Andy Garcia showed up, wordlessly, in the final moments?).  What he did was unforgivable, and she was still incredibly angry at him right up until she changes her mind about spending eternity with him.  There is tons to dislike about the movie, quite frankly (there's some gaping plot holes in knowing that a ship can take 240 years to get to Earth and back, for starters-how many voyages has this thing taken that they have pictures of the planet-what year is it, exactly, that they still have journalists and the Pulitzer Prize?), but none is as creepy as the central one that Jennifer Lawrence spends eternity with her murderer.

The film received two Oscar nominations, one for Best Art Direction (which is actually really cool-I loved some of the touches they made, crossing an elegant spacial experience with a luxury liner) and one for Score (ehh, but it's Thomas Newman so I should have seen it coming), and none for Visual Effects, which was probably a miss as they're actually interesting, even if the only really "wow" moment is Lawrence nearly drowning in a pool of suspended water.  But it's a pity that messed-up sexual politics and an abysmal finale wasted what could have been a fun blockbuster starring two of our more charismatic working movie stars.

Those are my thoughts-how about yours?  Were you like me, unable to separate the creepiness of Pratt's character to get behind what otherwise could have been decent escapist fare?  Or are you a fan regardless?  And what do you make of these two Oscar nominations-any chance it scores a win?

OVP: La La Land (2016)

Film: La La Land (2016)
Stars: Emma Stone, Ryan Gosling, John Legend
Director: Damien Chazelle
Oscar History: 14 nominations/5 wins (Best Picture, Director*, Actor-Ryan Gosling, Actress-Emma Stone*, Cinematography*, Costume Design, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Score*, Film Editing, Song-"City of Stars,"* Song-"Audition (The Fools Who Dream)," Production Design, Original Screenplay)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Since it swept the Golden Globes, the only question I've received from pretty much any person I remotely bring up the movies with is "is La La Land really that good?"  While this is a reaction pretty much every year when people turn their heads away from television and toward the movies, I will admit this year it feels more pronounced than, say, The Artist or Birdman in years past.  La La Land, with its record-breaking Globes wins and record-tying Oscar nominations is surely one of the year's most important films, and seems destined to win double-digit victories at the Oscars, perhaps even supplanting Ben-Hur/Titanic/Return of the King as the all-time biggest victor.  But that question has remained on my mind for a while now-is the film actually any good?

(Spoilers Ahead) The film really only has time for two characters, who are central to the seasonal transitions of the story: Sebastian (Gosling), a jazz-loving guy who frequently finds himself down-on-his-luck and who dreams of opening his own club, and Mia (Stone), an aspiring actress who seems to find herself constantly on the losing end of auditions.  They meet in the opening scenes, with a nasty encounter during an LA traffic jam, but then slowly fall for each other as they realize that they have that whole "wayward dreamer" thing down pat.  As the film progresses, Sebastian encounters genuine success with his jazz group (that becomes more watered-down jazz and then eventually just pop, as is the wont of mainstream music today), and Mia nearly gives up on acting, then finding a major break in the waning moments of the film, causing the two of them to give up their romance to try and pursue their passions.  In the last ten minutes, we find they did just that-showing the bittersweet reality that they don't end up together (despite an extended daydream montage showing that they did), but did accomplish their occupational goals and are happy, just not in the way that the audience initially wanted them to be.

I'll start out by saying the film looks great.  The costumes are fun, and show a devotion to a specific color palette that has been flagrantly missing at the movies lately-you can already see the parodies and Halloween costumes coming this year, but it works.  And the cinematography is gorgeous, as first-time nominee Linus Sandgren correctly got nominated, particularly for some really wonderful uses of light in Los Angeles that somehow manages to feel like both the glow of sun-dappled Hollywood and the prevalent shadow of a tall backlot alley.  And I cannot deny that the music doesn't have its moments, particularly my favorite of the bunch "City of Stars," which is a wonderful melancholy ode in the center of the piece that catches the mood of the piece better than pretty much anything else.

But I need to confess I didn't like the movie, and there's a variety of things that factor into that assessment.  For starters, the sound in the film is so terrible it's off-putting.  I genuinely thought, during the opening number, that there was something wrong with the projector, but have since read enough reviews to realize it was like that in every theater, where the orchestral music in many times drowns out the singers.  This is true in nearly every number, but most obvious in a large group number because you're used to being able to hear the lyrics.  It doesn't help (at all) that no one in this film (save John Legend) is a particularly good singer-Stone and Gosling as main actors feel more like studio casting than choosing correctly for the role.  I spent a good chunk wondering what, say, Jeremy Jordan and Anna Kendrick could have done with these leads.  I get that it might have been an intentional choice (showing that these two aren't any different than anyone else), but in a film that wants you to (regularly) go into flights of fancy, I don't buy that you can claim you need reality with the singing-that's having your cake and eating it too.  The singing wasn't good enough by-half for a musical of this scale, and I actually found myself hoping we'd just get back to regular acting in parts, something I don't know that I've ever said about a movie as I generally love musicals.

I also disliked the writing and direction.  I am a student of cinema enough to know that Singin' in the Rain, An American in Paris, and Funny Face, amongst others, all got homages throughout the movie, but there isn't enough winking to this in my opinion, and as a result it feels less like an homage and more like a remake or (at worst) a casual ripoff.  I think the best way to put it is that Chazelle feels like someone who copied off of a smarter kid's homework, and now we're expected to feel good that he gets the same grade.  The best parts of the movie feel wholly duplicative of Minnelli or Donen, and I can't help but think that Chazelle wanted to make an original musical because there's clearly been an opening for one, but didn't have a clue as to how to do it, but knew that critics would lap up a bunch of inside nods to their favorite movies.  As a result, I felt cheated out of an actual original musical-this is just borrowing from cues from the Golden Age, not giving us something meaningful or even something that compliments this era-it feels in a lot of ways like how I ended up disseminating my dislike of The Artist-a musical where people hope you've never seen another one, just like that film was for people who hadn't seen silent films and didn't know what a good one looked like.

So no, I don't think that La La Land deserved all of those nominations, and I'm going to be extremely bummed if it takes out three truly wonderful movies' records by taking a dozen trophies.  I'd be more comfortable with 2-4 nominations (Cinematography and Original Song for sure, maybe Costume and Art Direction depending on what the rest of the field looked like).  But I'm in the minority here and since discussing La La Land online is all the rage-what did you think?  Are you pro or against the likely Best Picture winner?  If you're in the middle (as so many are), is the crushing buzz helping or hurting your love?  Share below in the comments!

25 Random Thoughts about the Oscar Nominations

It has become a running tradition that, in lieu of a comprehensive list and analysis of the Oscar nominations, I simply do a mental rundown of everything that I'm thinking as I look through the nominees (don't worry-in the next 33 days or so we'll have enough analysis for ten lifetimes, so this is just the appetizer).  Without further adieu, the 25 things that first come to mind looking at this year's nominees.

1. I hated the presentation this morning-the only fun part of it was Gabby Sidibe talking about how easy it was to get an Oscar nomination, but you probably could have gotten that with her announcing live.  So, make that happen next year-otherwise this becomes too filled with pablum.

2. La La Land joining All About Eve and Titanic feels wrong to me.  I am not a fan of the movie, but had sort of come-to-terms with it being Best Picture (in a similar way to how I came to terms with The Artist winning).  Putting it into the company of all-time greats, though-not buying it.  The review of it (and as well as missing Best Picture nominees Hidden Figures, Manchester by the Sea, and Lion, none of which I've published my review of) will be coming out by Sunday.

3. Anyone else still entranced by the Moonlight poster?

4. Did anyone else catch that they put certain people (like Amy Adams and Tom Hanks) on the Oscars website briefly this morning?  Was this a technical error (they had writeups all ready to go for these two, which was probably good planning as I think they were both in sixth), or did they accidentally give a sixth place away?

5. Speaking of sixth places-seriously, who got it in Supporting Actress?  Who would be winning this if Viola had randomly ended up in lead?  Can't they have a "after 40 years we release the vote totals" situation, or at least the rankings?

6. Man that Best Actor lineup is boring...particularly with Garfield getting in for the wrong film.

7. I didn't want her in for Loving, but I do hope that Ruth Negga gets trillions of offers off of this as she's been pretty fun during awards season so far.

8. I'd say Meryl should just recuse herself from nominations, but isn't the point of seeing a Meryl film at this point for some fans just to see a film that's guaranteed to be an Oscar nominee?

9. Dev Patel is very attractive.

10. Is the Animated Films branch the most consistently strong with what they're given?  It's really hard to rail against it as an unnecessary category mostly because they generally make strong choices.  Can't wait for The Red Turtle to premiere in a few weeks here.

11. Cinematography and Score really went for the newcomers, didn't they?  Is this a new leaf, or did they just need new blood in the Academy?  And who was the person who told John Williams that for only the third time in 35 years he doesn't need to get a tux?

12. Costume Design remained pretty clubby, though, didn't it?  Colleen Atwood won't be winning, though, as there's no Sandy Powell.

13. Ugh.  Mel Gibson.

14. I am cheering for literally anyone other than OJ: Made in America, mostly because I don't think it should be eligible.  But Ava DuVernay would probably give the best speech, so let's root for her.

15. Hooray for Australia!  First nomination!

16. Oh lord, I have to see Suicide Squad for the Oscar Viewing Project.  Why the hell did I include Makeup in this project?

17. ...oh, and I have to see Passengers.  Super...

18. Justin Timberlake becoming an Oscar nominee was the low point of the morning for me.  I feel the way about him that many people do about Anne Hathaway.  But I love Anne Hathaway.  I'm going to pretend she got this nomination instead of him.  Much better.

19. Lin-Manuel Miranda on the red carpet is going to be bliss.  I know he's entered a new phase of ubiquity so the backlash will probably happen any second now, but I still can't get enough.

20. J. Ralph has now been nominated for music in three documentaries.  That has to be a record-right?

21. Stuart Craig continues to find ways to lose for the Harry Potter films.

22. How many Oscars is La La Land going to win, and are they really going to give it Sound Editing?  The sound was easily the worst element of the film-I would actually cheer for Hacksaw Ridge to take it over Chazelle's film, which is saying something as I didn't like Hacksaw, but it did have superior acoustics.

23. Call me crazy, but I'm actually kind of excited to catch Deepwater Horizon-how do you make Gina Rodriguez not enjoyable to watch?  It feels impossible.

24. With Arrival out of the VFX category race, I'm stumped over whether to cheer for Doctor Strange or Kubo, even if neither actually have a shot at winning.  Maybe Deepwater will underdog there?

25. The Jungle Book was terrible.  That is all.

Could Trump Have Beaten Hillary in the Democratic Primary?

After elections, you see a lot of Monday morning piggybacking, and after elections that no one called, you see a particularly large amount of people trying to find their own relevancy.  Part of this is reality-you learn things after an election that you didn't know.  Clearly, for example, Hillary Clinton should have had a better turnout operation in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania-I doubt for the rest of her life that a day won't go by that she won't think about those three states with regret.

But with that second-guessing, there's also a mountain of terrible theories that float around, and I want to dismiss one I read this weekend on the Washington Post.  Essentially a former Clinton aide postulated that, had Donald Trump in 2009 started planning to be a Democrat, rather than a Republican, he would have been able to beat Hillary Clinton.

It's a sexy idea, one that feels as much clickbait as theoretical postulating, so I wanted to examine it a bit since my gut reaction was "hell no!" but that's been my reaction to most things involving the new president.  After all, Trump proved in 2016 that he is able to make a strong connection with voters, and knows how to play a political game (or at least surround himself with people who do).  He's also shown a remarkable fluidity when it comes to deciding his worldview.  It's worth noting that in 2009 we hadn't had his crusade against Barack Obama over the racist birth certificate allegations, or his cozying up to Mitt Romney, or the cavalcade of xenophobic, sexist, and hard-line conservative platform ideas that came out during the primary.  At that point he was just the billionaire star of a hit reality TV show who had had a series of tabloid marriages/divorces and regularly claimed he could be president if only he were to run.

So let's assume that Trump doesn't believe anything he has said on the campaign trail and that he, in fact, had instead of attacking Obama spent most of the past eight years focused more on making Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney look like villains.  Let's assume that he never uttered the words "birth certificate" but instead focused on just his attacks on Goldman Sachs and trade deals, trying to fill the void that Bernie Sanders left in the race for the White House, perhaps even supplanting Bernie Sanders but with a bigger name recognition and a more dynamic stump presence.  Let's assume that he never uttered anything derogatory publicly about Megyn Kelly or the disabled or communities of color.  Assuming all of this...he still wouldn't have won the Democratic Primary.

Don't get me wrong-I think he could have done better than Democrats probably would like to admit.  After all, Democrats have something of a history of falling for larger-than-life, hyper-populist figures in primaries (Gary Hart, Jesse Jackson, Howard Dean, Bernie Sanders), but they never nominate them.  The reality is that at the end of the day the Democrats may "want to fall in love," but that's a recipe for winning a general election theory more than a primary.  In the primaries, they teach the establishment candidates a lesson by pulling them to the left on issues while they romance someone "outside-the-box," but at the end of the day they pick Walter Mondale or John Kerry or Hillary Clinton.  They want a progressive, but one that looks good on paper, and Democrats worry more about electability than the Republicans do, who usually let their gadfly candidates make it a bit further before they coalesce.  The last truly outsider candidate the Democrats nominated was arguably Jimmy Carter, and that was 1976-an election pretty much any Democrat could have won (and Carter did a fine job of nearly losing it in spite of himself).

Trump would have been an easier catch than Howard Dean or Bernie Sanders, quite frankly.  For starters, some of the issues that the GOP didn't care about the Democrats would have.  His history of rent evictions for African-American voters might not have mattered in the GOP primary or, sadly, the general, but it sure as hell would have mattered in the primaries, particularly when compared to the civil rights record of the Clintons.  Trump's double-speak might have helped there somewhat (saying the Clintons were worse with the crime bill), but the Access Hollywood video would have surfaced much earlier if the Clintons were in the race, as Hillary Clinton wouldn't have been as afraid of going after Trump in the primary as, say, Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio (relative political neophytes) were.  That would have destroyed Trump, a thrice-married playboy, with female voters.  Without female voters or African-American voters, you don't win a Democratic primary-you have to have at least one.  Trump would have been cooked by the things that he was able to survive the general with, mostly because those voters who were going to be most offended were already largely in Clinton's pocket in the general.  This also doesn't bring in the fact that Democrats don't care as much about "success in business" records as Republicans do (name me one Democrat who ran on his "business acumen" in a presidential primary and was successful), nor that Clinton is genuinely beloved by a large swath of Democratic voters.  One of the reasons that Sanders couldn't gain enough traction is that hitting Hillary Clinton too hard was going to have a "let's rally behind her" moment that Democrats almost always have with the Clintons.  Trump couldn't have been as vicious as he was to Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz as he was with Clinton without it costing him severely.

Now, Trump in the race could definitely have altered the race, and may have led to Clinton being defeated, but it wouldn't have been Trump that would have done it.  I suspect that if Trump's running as a populist candidate, Bernie Sanders probably doesn't get much oxygen-Trump could dispatch Sanders, who is less known than Clinton, with relative ease.  Bernie became a sacred cow after the election, after all.  If Trump were to go in for a huge negative blitz against Clinton over the emails and the Clinton Foundation, it probably would have killed his campaign just as badly as it killed hers.  This would have left room for a third leg in this race, someone of strong moral character, who has bonafides as a populist but also as a "nice guy" to counter all of the negative in this race.  Yes, I think that Joe Biden could (it's possible Hillary also still wins, though decidedly more damaged than she ended up) have won the nomination were Trump running as a Democrat.

Would this have made a partisan difference in the results of the election?  Who knows.  Biden is more personally popular with swing voters than Clinton, but he wouldn't have been facing Trump in the general-he would have faced Jeb Bush (who was the leader up until Trump dethroned him-perhaps that would have stuck as he was long expected to be the nominee), or Marco Rubio, or Ted Cruz, or perhaps another candidate entirely would have won the primary (Mitt, anyone?).  But to say that Trump would have won as a Democrat-I'm not buying it.  This was a Republicans Only situation, and they fell for his line.

Final Oscar Predictions

It has been a (it seems abbreviated-a lot more December than usual this year) Oscar season, but it is now time to look at who the nominees are going to be.  We've got a number of rather unsettled Oscar races, but the reality is that tomorrow we'll know who joins the names of immortals and who ends up being Marilyn Hack.  Without further adieu...

Picture

Arrival

Hacksaw Ridge

Hell or High Water

Hidden Figures

La La Land
Lion

Manchester by the Sea

Moonlight

The Lowdown: I'm a bit torn here, as quite frankly it feels like most of the support has pooled into a few buckets (La La Land, Moonlight, Manchester by the Sea), so much so that I could see 2016 being that rare year that only gets 5-6 nominations.  Unfortunately, I don't know what a year like that looks like yet (it hasn't happened under the rules), so I'm sticking with eight.  I had for a while Silence replacing Lion, but the DGA has me rethinking that, and I'd be willing to hear an argument hat Hacksaw should go in favor of Nocturnal Animals, but by-and-large this feels about right.

Director

Damien Chazelle, La La Land

Barry Jenkins, Moonlight

Kenneth Lonergan, Manchester by the Sea

Martin Scorsese, Silence
Dennis Villeneuve, Arrival

The Lowdown: Occasionally you have to go against the grain, and this year I am.  While Tom Ford, Garth Davis, or Mel Gibson make more sense on paper, I can't shake the idea that Martin Scorsese is a Vera Drake situation here-a deeply beloved figure in the Directors Branch who can defy the odds and manage to get a nomination, particularly against less well-known figures, or ones that might reek of controversy for the more storied branch.  If Davis, Ford, or Gibson make it in, you can point out that I was wrong but part of me thinks I won't be; keep in mind the only time that Scorsese scored with Oscar but not the DGA was over another controversial religious epic (The Last Temptation of Christ).

Actor

Casey Affleck, Manchester by the Sea

Andrew Garfield, Hacksaw Ridge

Ryan Gosling, La La Land

Tom Hanks, Sully

Denzel Washington, Fences

The Lowdown: Weird things sometimes happen in years where the lineup is decidedly weak (which it is-this is the worst Best Actor field in a decade if you look at the overall contenders list).  The obvious money here is on Affleck, Gosling, Garfield, Washington, and Viggo Mortensen, but there's a problem there as (with the exception of Denzel and Affleck, who are set)-these aren't traditional nominees.  Garfield is a pretty boy in a war film playing a pacifist (not your average nomination), Gosling is the romantic lead in a musical (not your average nomination for a man), and Mortensen has a subtle role in a very small film that isn't getting play in Best Picture.  That leaves some room for another contender, but who?  Joel Edgerton has the same issues as Gosling (romantic lead), but without the Best Picture buzz.  Michael Keaton has the right role, but has anyone even seen The Founder yet?  Warren Beatty's film bombed, Chris Pine is still in the "pretty boy" phase of his career, and while I have a sneaking suspicion he's on more ballots than you'd guess, Ryan Reynolds is playing the profane lead in a comic book movie-that seems a stretch for Best Actor.  The only person who makes sense (by AMPAS math) is Tom Hanks, but he hasn't gained traction anywhere else.  I'm betting, though, that like Tommy Lee Jones in In the Valley of Elah, this could be the acting nomination that goes off-the-beaten-track on Oscar morning and lands without a precursor, if only because right now everyone might need Tom Hanks in their lives.

Actress

Amy Adams, Arrival

Isabelle Huppert, Elle

Natalie Portman, Jackie

Emma Stone, La La Land

Meryl Streep, Florence Foster Jenkins

The Lowdown: Unlike Best Actor, this is a strong year for this category.  In addition to the five listed women, you have other performances like Emily Blunt, Ruth Negga, Annette Bening, and Taraji P. Henson that in a lesser year would have made this list (2014, for example).  I could be convinced that something crazy could happen here as well (it's a weird year for Oscar, particularly with such a late onslaught of contenders and so few films with general public buzz, so we might not be able to tell quite yet who is truly on-top of the list), but I think the frontrunners stay.  Streep was the weakest but locked this up with her Globes speech, and Huppert's win there shows a surprising strength.  The biggest question mark for me is Blunt, who has gotten way more love than I expected at precursors, and some in the Academy might just be saying "it's time" for an actress who's flirted with an Oscar nod for a decade.  If one of the above miss, I think she takes it.

Supporting Actor

Mahershala Ali, Moonlight

Jeff Brdiges, Hell or High Water

Hugh Grant, Florence Foster Jenkins

Dev Patel, Lion

Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Nocturnal Animals

The Lowdown: Like Emily Blunt, Aaron Taylor-Johnson is a candidate who makes sense due to precursors but doesn't in the sense that it's not really the kind of performance I'd expect Oscar to go toward: a nasty, sexually-charged sociopath who literally sits naked on a toilet in one scene.  Plus, it's not like Taylor-Johnson is particularly charming in speeches.  Still, the win at the Globes makes it hard for me to go with one of the other actors on the outer edges like Michael Shannon, Liam Neeson, Stephen Henderson, or (in particular) Lucas Hedges, so I'm giving it the nomination even if I don't quite get where the love is coming from.

Supporting Actress

Viola Davis, Fences

Naomie Harris, Moonlight

Nicole Kidman, Lion

Octavia Spencer, Hidden Figures

Michelle Williams, Manchester by the Sea

The Lowdown: Unlike the other acting races, I'm feeling very strongly we're not seeing a surprise here.  If Janelle Monae or Greta Gerwig or Lily Gladstone were going to stand out by now, they would have done so somewhere, and yet they haven't.  Spencer is theoretically weak (internal competition), as is Kidman (that Trump comment did her no favors), but they're Oscar-winners who are in likely Best Picture nominees-it's hard to think AMPAS will skip such work, particularly in a year that wasn't as strong as years past for this category.  And though there's some precedence (Keisha Castle-Hughes, Kate Winslet), I just can't see Viola Davis randomly getting promoted, even though I do think she'd win Best Actress this year if she were in that category (feel free to speculate who wins here in that case, but Naomie Harris and Michelle Williams are probably mumbling the most).  So this is the five.

Adapted Screenplay

Arrival

Fences

Hidden Figures

Moonlight

Nocturnal Animals

The Lowdown: The big question here is whether or not Fences will lose out on this seemingly slam-dunk posthumous nomination with the film looking to just be the Denzel-and-Viola show in terms of nominations, in which case Lion or perhaps even Deadpool (don't laugh-Shrek made it into the screenplay category in 2001) could find their way into the conversation.  However, I'm sticking with Fences over Lion as it feels like a lot of people in the writer's branch would have worshiped August Wilson and may want to mark him for finally getting a movie onto the big screen.  The rest of the nominees seem pretty much set to me.

Original Screenplay

Captain Fantastic

Hell or High Water

La La Land

The Lobster

Manchester by the Sea

The Lowdown: Oh, this category.  There are in my opinion four films locked into place here.  You have the three Best Picture nominees (Hell, La La, Manchester), and then The Lobster, which is the sort of film that gets nominated here based on it being quirky, well-done, and a way for Oscar to claim "they discovered you" when in reality they aren't at the point where they actually want you in the big categories yet.  The final nomination, however, could go to pretty much any direction.  I honestly wouldn't doubt seeing Zootopia, Jackie, 20th Century Women, or even Hail Caesar (it's the Coen Brothers, after all, never far from the writing branch's heart), but I suspect that one man's struggle to come of age with his family is the sort of thing they gravitate toward here, so I'm randomly predicting Captain Fantastic in a category it's less likely to win a nod in instead of the one where it's expected to succeed.

Foreign-Language Film

The King's Choice (Norway)
Land of Mine (Denmark)
A Man Called Ove (Sweden)
The Salesman (Iran)
Toni Erdmann (Norway)

The Lowdown: Apparently I'm feeling Scandinavian this year with a trio of choices from the region, as Oscar skipped three of the biggest titles on the map (Neruda, Elle, and Julieta) to basically make it impossible for Germany's Toni Erdmann to lose.  The rest of the list I'm filling with traditional Academy fare (who doesn't love a comecdic story about an old man...at least in this branch?) and a recent hit for the category in The Salesman, as A Separation showed that Asghar Farhadi is a force to be reckoned with on a global scale.  Still, though, this is the Toni Erdmann show provided Germany lands the nomination.

Animated Feature Film

Kubo and the Two Strings
Moana
My Life as a Zucchini
The Red Turtle
Zootopia

The Lowdown: A wonderful year for animation, there's going to be some big names left off of this list, as well as some critical darlings.  I wouldn't totally discount The Little Prince and Your Name, as they are the small/foreign films that this category seems to celebrate (this branch is weirdly good about including names outside of the norm), but The Red Turtle and My Life as a Zucchini have taken up so much of the early buzz and I think they'll land it, alongside of Laika (which has never missed so far) and the Disney double feature.  That leaves Finding Dory as yet another Pixar casualty here, though as I stated yesterday, I'm hardly sad about this turn-of-events.

Original Score

The BFG
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
Florence Foster Jenkins
La La Land
Lion

The Lowdown: Here's the deal-it is never, ever a good bet in this category to assume that we won't have mostly former nominees, particularly John Williams.  At most, you might get 1-2 first-time nominees to go alongside names you know by heart.  This year is testing that theory as most of the major score work, including in the Best Picture contenders, was done by composers who have never been invited to the club.  As a result I could be dead wrong here, but I'm sticking to the "Academy favorites" with James Newton Howard, John Williams, and Alexandre Desplat adding to their sizable nominations count alongside newcomers for La La Land and Lion, but I'm truly prepared for anything when it comes to this category.  Definitely the below-the-line race I'm most intrigued to see the results.

Original Song

"Audition," La La Land
"City of Stars," La La Land
"Drive It Like You Stole It," Sing Street
"How Far I'll Go," Moana
"Runnin," Hidden Figures

The Lowdown: Last year I had to deal with Lady Gaga, one of a quartet of pop stars I admittedly like on the radio but don't want to have Oscars because they keep insisting they can "act" getting a nomination.  Will I have to do it again this year with another leg of that quartet landing a citation with Justin Timberlake getting in for his massive hit "Can't Stop the Feeling" from Trolls?  I think it's probably more likely than not, but I couldn't bring myself to predict it, going instead for Sing Street.  Still, it's likely between those two and The Eagle Huntress for this category, unless the music branch decides to go kooky with another "Alone Yet Not Alone."

Sound Mixing

Arrival
Deepwater Horizon
Doctor Strange
Hacksaw Ridge
La La Land

The Lowdown: Lord help you all when I get to writing about this for the OVP write-ups, as La La Land's worst element in my opinion is its egregiously bad sound mixing, but it's a Best Picture-winning musical (or it will be)-no way it misses in this category.  For the remainder, it's never wise to bet against an action-inspired Best Picture contender here, so expect to see Arrival and Hacksaw Ridge, and Doctor Strange seems to be defying most conventions in terms of Marvel & Oscar, so I think this will be the franchise's biggest hit with AMPAS thanks to some more favorable elements (foreign locales and unusual color effects), so keep it in here.  Finally, I can't shake the idea that Deepwater Horizon is this year's Lone Survivor-a film that randomly lands in the sound categories even without much buzz around it (though both star Mark Wahlberg).

Sound Editing

Arrival
Deepwater Horizon
Doctor Strange
Hacksaw Ridge
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

The Lowdown: I'm going with, like I always do, four nominees from Sound Mixing being holdovers, while taking out the musical and substituting in an action adventure.  That's the recipe here, and while I'm not entirely sure about what Rogue One's status will be with Oscar, it's hard to imagine it getting more nominations than The Force Awakens did last year, so I'm guessing this and VFX are its only selections, though I could be wrong and it's Deepwater Horizon or Doctor Strange that's the film that goes for 1/2 in the sound categories.  This also feels like the place they'll give Hacksaw Ridge a trophy if they feel inclined to make it Oscar-winning (see also Zero Dark Thirty and American Sniper).

Cinematography

Arrival
La La Land
Lion
Moonlight
Silence

The Lowdown: This is the ASC list verbatim, which carries some risks even if they all feel like they're way out in front right now, as it's rare the ASC copies over completely, and it's even rarer that we have four first-time nominees in another branch that's quite clique-y.  On Oscar nomination morning, I wouldn't be stunned if one of the Oscar stand-bys like Seamus McGarvey (Nocturnal Animals), Robert Richardson (Live by Night), or Roger Deakins (Hail, Caesar!) made it in, but right now this feels about right, and a list that Oscar can by-and-large be proud of copying.  It's strange, but in a year with relatively low-level Best Picture nominees, it seems like most of Oscar's favorites took the year off as most tech categories feature a host of potential first-timers, more than is typical.

Costume Design

The Dressmaker
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
Florence Foster Jenkins
Jackie
La La Land

The Lowdown: Here's where you'll be able to tell whether or not La La Land is unstoppable or if Moonlight could perhaps pull the top prize out at the last minute.  Contemporary films almost never are nominated for an Oscar, but Mary Zophres designs here are sharp, arguably the film's best element give or take the cinematography, and such a bold, distinctive use of color that I think they could just do the trick.  There's a heap of competition this year (Allied, Silence, Hidden Figures, and Live by Night all look like nominees as well), so this isn't a slam dunk but could show that La La Land might be unstoppable.

Film Editing

Arrival
Hacksaw Ridge
La La Land
Manchester by the Sea
Moonlight

The Lowdown: Generally you just pick the four biggest Best Picture frontrunners, add in a prestigious action film, and then call it a day for Film Editing.  Considering the most prestigious action films of the year (in terms of Oscar buzz) are Hacksaw Ridge and Arrival, two movies that seem probable for the Best Picture field in their own right, this category may be even less creative than it usually is.  If there's a movie that stuns, it could well be OJ: Made in America, a movie that has no business being at the Oscars but cheated its way into eligibility, so I'm hoping for boring at this point regardless of the quality of the documentary.

Makeup & Hairstyling

Deadpool
A Man Called Ove
Star Trek Beyond

The Lowdown: I know the smart money is on Florence Foster Jenkins, and J. Roy Helland getting his second Oscar for doing Meryl's hair, but this branch is cray and they've shown a penchant for Star Trek and foreign language films in old-age makeup in the recent past so I'm going to stick to those nominations along with Deadpool, which is too much of a pop culture moment not to get in somewhere.

I also want to put in an annual caveat that we should have five nominees here-there's no reason that an element that's in every single movie like makeup (unlike, say, original songs or visual effects), shouldn't get a full list of nominees-it's not like it'd be hard to find here.

Production Design

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
The Handmaiden
Jackie
La La Land
Silence

The Lowdown: The big thing I'm wondering about here is whether or not I'm underestimating the space age for Arrival (Gravity, Interstellar, and The Martian all factored into this race-it could be a thing) and whether Dante Ferreti is beloved enough to make it for a film that people don't seem to be responding to (save me).  Otherwise this feels right, with The Handmaiden being showy work, though my allergy to Park Chan-Wook is making me hope that AMPAS ignores it, otherwise I'm going to have to OVP that thing, and Jackie being exceptional and intrinsic (who doesn't love the peaks into the White House) even if the general attitude toward the film hasn't been as rosy as I'd hoped from AMPAS.

Visual Effects

Arrival
Doctor Strange
The Jungle Book
Kubo and the Two Strings
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

The Lowdown: Oh how I want to predict Deepwater Horizon, as apparently the film went over well in screenings for this branch, but I only have room for one surprise, and I'm going with Kubo to become the second animated feature to make this list.  I'm not 100% sold that the branch won't be against Rogue One due to the controversies about recreating human beings, but if anyone's going to be progressive in that regard, it'll probably be the branch who is responsible for that technology, so it stays.  Prepare yourself for me mumbling a lot about The Jungle Book being the frontrunner here when I found the VFX there underwhelming, as it's going to happen.

And that's it-share your predictions today and then tomorrow, we all get our new nominees!

John's Top 10 Films of 2016

Yesterday we counted down the worst films of 2016, and since I don't want to leave you with the worst for very long (we get enough of that from the news right now), I am happy to start your Monday off right with a look at the best.  2016 wasn't my favorite cinematic year (certainly not when compared with 2014 or 2015), but it had a lot to say about grief, life, and the promises of humanity even when it's hard to find them in the real world.  Here (alphabetically, not in ranked order) are my ten favorite films of 2016:

Arrival (dir. Denis Villeneuve)

In a world where we regularly celebrate the mass destruction of superheroes and expect to see national monuments explode whenever there's an alien invasion, Denis Vileneuve's film finds all of the wonder of an alien encounter with none of the expected cliche.  A marvelous, precise performance by Amy Adams grounds this film about loss, sacrifice, and the benefits of peace.  Easily the best film I've seen from Villeneuve.

Everybody Wants Some!!! (dir. Richard Linklater)

I genuinely would have been fine with just a parade of these actors in baseball uniforms, but Richard Linklater doesn't play that way.  Everybody Wants Some!!! is the rare movie about nostalgia that isn't steeped in comforting the audience, but truly allowing them to relive the fleeting nature of youth, while never sparing them from the realities of time disappearing.  Plus, it does it while being insanely funny and quotable as hell.  Linklater continues his nearly impossibly-strong batting average with star-turns from Tyler Hoechlin and Glen Powell.

From Afar (dir. Lorenzo Vigas)

The best mystery film of the year, a wonderfully Hitchcockian creation.  Vigas plays with the politics of sex, class, and age in this noir that keeps you guessing right up until the end, and then beyond.  Anchored by naturalistic work from Alfredo Castro and Luis Silva, it's a pity that Oscar didn't see the necessity to nominate the year's best foreign-language movie.

Hidden Figures (dir. Theodore Melfi)

What happens when you take three of the most charismatic film stars working, put them in a film that centers around both a story you know (John Glenn circling the globe) and one you don't (the struggles of black women in the space program), have everyone involved running on top cylinders with a sharp eye on character growth, and add in some genuine old-school movie magic?  You get my favorite "Academy fare" movie since Argo.  This is the rare feel-good film that you won't be hating yourself for loving the next day.

Jackie (dir. Pablo Larrain)

I am not someone you'll find clamoring for a biopic, not least of which about one of the most famous stories of the 20th Century that's been told dozens of times previously.  And yet, Pablo Larrain had me from the opening scenes of Jackie, a movie that dares to question our understanding of one of the most famous people on the planet.  With a career-best piece of work from Natalie Portman, Jackie is that rare true story that leaves you wanting more once the credits begin to role.

L'Attesa (dir. Piero Messina)

The most obscure film on this list, L'Attesa took the most frequent cinematic subject of 2016 (the death of a family member), and turns it into a claustrophobic character study of two women struggling with grief and regret.  Juliette Binoche continues her streak as perhaps the greatest living actor with an intense naturalism, while Lou de Laage is every bit her equal as a young woman trying to understand impossible questions about her boyfriend's mother.

Manchester by the Sea (dir. Kenneth Lonergan)

Kenneth Lonergan knows better than pretty much any other writer in Hollywood the ways to finding the complicated emotions and realities of family, and the bonds that tie them together.  Here we are given a marvelous piece-of-work from Casey Affleck, a man who lives as a shell of his former self, failing with emotions that he cannot fully bear to admit to himself.  A truly devastating look at the human experience.

A Monster Calls (dir. JA Bayona)

It's rare to find a live-action children's film these days that asks tough questions for all of its audience, while still maintaining a sense of magic and discovery.  Never cloying, never false, always classic and straight-forward and intensely felt, JA Bayona's A Monster Calls is a miracle, a movie that towers from start to finish with a sheer appreciation of life, both its delicacies and its strengths.

Moonlight (dir. Barry Jenkins)

The most confident movie I saw this year was oddly about a deeply insecure young man's struggle with finding out who he is.  From start to finish, Barry Jenkins' opus shows us identity, both outward and in, and gives us performance after performance of wonderful realism and heart.  Stylistically and creatively a triumph to behold.

Silence (dir. Martin Scorsese)

It says something that at the age of 74, Martin Scorsese is not only making movies, but complicated, controversial, and difficult films that still manage to soar with meaning and strength.  Part thriller, part religious experience, and part epic, Scorsese shows the trials of faith and man's struggle with coming to terms with God's expectations in this brilliant picture, by my measure his finest since GoodFellas.

John's 5 Worst Films of 2016

It's time to start recapping the year (what?-the cinematic year doesn't end until the Oscars roll their heads into view) and as a result, we're going to look first at the worst of the year-my annual list of the five biggest disappointments.  I'm not someone that is paid to do this site (it's a labor of love...though I'm not married to this idea so if you know someone...), so you won't see films I was forced to watch like Zoolander 2, Suicide Squad, or London Has Fallen on this list as I pay for the movies out of my own pocket.  Still, that doesn't mean that I can't be susceptible to bad judgment, and as a result here are (alphabetically) the five worst movies of 2016:

The Bronze (dir. Bryan Buckley)

Somehow I'm supposed to take a deeply unlikable Melissa Rauch cussing like a sailor for 100 minutes and then suddenly supposed to root for her despite the fact that she spends most of the movie attempting to destroy a young girl's promise and dreams?  Sebastian Stan's natural charisma cannot save this dreck-truly an awful, cruel movie that never remotely attempts to be as funny as it's convinced it's being.

Finding Dory (dir. Andrew Stanton)

Oh Pixar, what have you done?  While it's probably still better than Cars 2, man was this a failure.  A movie that never should have been made as it's clear that Dory is a side character, it feels at best like a retread of the original, and at worst like a gigantic cash grab from Disney, trading in our memories of the lovely 2003 film for something cheap and disposable.  A true shame, and a major black mark on a once impeccable record that looks more filled with failures these days than successes.

The Jungle Book (dir. Jon Favreau)

Speaking of Disney...here's what happens when you make another gigantic cash grab off of a beloved film of many an adult's childhood, and then destroy it with wonky CGI, lazy casting, and thin storytelling that never really sinks the basket.  I was intensely bored for all but one scene of the movie (Scarlett Johansson's Kaa being the only reason to praise this film), and particularly with that hammy climax-wow, what a misfire.

Rules Don't Apply (dir. Warren Beatty)

What would happen if you took one of the greatest directors of the past fifty years, took him largely out of filmmaking for fifteen years, and then had him make a film about a subject an equally impressive director covered quite well during that absence?  Apparently what you'd get is a movie that takes what might be an iconic movie star's last dance at the cinema and turns it into an excruciatingly boring affair, led by two leads that lack chemistry and in the case of Lily Collins, any discernible acting talent.

Sully (dir. Clint Eastwood)

It says something about Sully that somehow it made Finding Dory the second least necessary film of 2016.  Seriously-who thought this was a particularly good idea to greenlight?  The film is comically bad and poorly drawn, with Anna Gunn playing a ridiculously over-the-top villain (Clint Eastwood's politics get in the way of his moviemaking here), while Laura Linney literally just talks on the phone in a hushed and worried tone the entire movie.  An admittedly thrilling crash scene cannot remotely save this film from being an abject disaster.

History Only Has Time for Heroes and Villains

Winston Churchill once proclaimed, "history is written by the victors."  It is, in its way, a pithy comment that probably has more truth than most of us would care to examine.  Churchill likely said it because, in terms of history, he was the victor, a fact he surely knew would stand.  This wasn't only the case in terms of the fact that his country won a pair of World Wars during his lifetime, but at the end of the day he was the man who stood strong and tall against Adolf Hitler and the Nazis.  There would be no Neville Chamberlain here-he had seen fascism's rise and showed his truth and bravery against it, and had made a stand.  A bloody stand, to be sure, one that would shape the core of diplomacy for some seventy years hence, but a principled stand.  Winston Churchill gets to be, at least at a surface level, one of the great heroes of the 20th Century.

Reading who the victors of history will be is not particularly hard in retrospect, because we know how things end up.  We know, for example, what the issues of the day that people will remember decades or hundreds of years hence will be.  History is unforgiving in that way-it doesn't care for nuance, and because it spans centuries, doesn't have a lot of time for scales of grey.  In the 1860's, either you were in the North, fighting against slavery, or you were in the South, fighting to keep slavery.  One group were the heroes in this regard, because they stood against prejudice and inequality, and the other were the villains.  The same can be said for World War II, or women's suffrage, or countless other good-and-evil portraits in history.  There is the side you want to be on, and the side you don't.

The problem with looking at history is that we want to cast ourselves as the heroes always.  We want to believe that we'd have helped the Underground Railroad or that we'd have kept Anne Frank in our attic, that we'd bravely throw tea into Boston Harbor or that we'd stand tall at Seneca Falls.  Ask any person in your life today whether or not they think they'd have been on the side of the Allies or the Germans in World War II, and they will tell you without blinking that they would have fought the Nazis.  The problem is (unless they're over ninety years of age, in which case you can take them on their word over what they did at the time), millions of people went on the side that history cast as the villains-that's why there is a history at all.  Millions of people supported Hitler, were slaveowners, denied women and black people the vote and their equal rights.  If they hadn't, we wouldn't have had to have the massive protests and wars that sprung from such events.

You see, of course, where I'm going with this-we don't entirely know who will be cast as the hero or the villain from our current time, but history is a pretty transparent indicator in that regard.  All of the above, the side that was oppressed and the people that spoke/fought for the oppressed-they're the ones that ultimately became the heroes of the story.  Those who fought to give more freedom, more choice, more opportunity to others, they are the ones that history was considerably kinder toward.  It is difficult to look at the Trump campaign, and his actions since being elected, and not realize that his supporters will be the villains of history.

Degrading women, vilifying Latinos, standing by while black men are beaten or denied the same justice as white men, espousing Muslim federal registries in a way that mirrors the start of the Holocaust, demeaning the disabled, and denying LGBTQ people their rights?  Standing against this feels very much like our current generation's civil rights issue.  Denying poor people access to education, housing, healthcare, food, employment-again, history isn't a forgiving mistress in this regard.  You can argue perhaps that people just don't care how they are treated by history, but the reality is that they do.  Call someone a racist or a Nazi, get their reactions, and tell me that people don't become upset about being seen correctly in history.

It's been said that Democrats lost in 2016 because they pointed out that Trump supporters were supporting a racist and a bigot, and ipso facto they were also racists and bigots.  There is probably some truth to this argument-no one likes being called a racist or a bigot, because those are considered universally bad things.  We all like to think of ourselves as being "one of the good people," one of the people that history will recall fondly, and some would rather deny the truth by endorsing the man who said their beliefs aren't racist than take a good, long look at what they're endorsing.  It's hard for many people to hear these realities, because they either have to condemn them themselves or a loved one who went along with Trump, wanting perhaps to be exempted from condemnation.  It's hard for me-I have people I know that voted for Trump that I don't want to become one of the pictures in a history book that are seen as the "villains," those spitting on the Little Rock Nine or armed with an insignia that will be considered vile by future generations (those Make America Great hats, anyone?).

But that's not how basic history works-it's more concrete, and it doesn't have time for the nuance of whether a person had a good heart but made a bad decision.  History in terms of mass opinion is a series of "yes" or "no" questions, and its hard not to see in 20, 30 years, the people who will read of this era and think "of course I would have voted for Hillary Clinton, it was the only logical choice," while those who ignored the cruelty of Donald Trump until it was too late will have slipped into the backgrounds of conversations, finding ways to believe that they did vote for Hillary Clinton or that they didn't vote that year, if only to give themselves reprieve from the quizzical looks of their children and grandchildren, wondering if those that came before them were heroes or villains.

OVP: Silence (2016)

Film: Silence (2016)
Stars: Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver, Issey Ogata, Yosuke Kubozuka, Liam Neeson
Director: Martin Scorsese
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Cinematography)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

Martin Scorsese has had a long enough career that his filmography means many things to many people.  To most of his present-day fans, he is a filmmaker associated with mob movies, crime films with strong male leads like Robert de Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio.  GoodFellas, The Departed, The Wolf of Wall Street-films filled with machismo, winking dark comedy, and strong acting and editing.  For older film fans, he was the provocateur behind such groundbreaking works as Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, classics in every sense of the word.  But there is a third batch of under-sung cinema from Scorsese-those based so deeply in the world of faith.  This makes sense, particularly for a man who once aspired to become a priest, and Silence is the latest installment in Scorsese's grappling with his religious beliefs.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film, set during the 17th Century, follows two Spanish priests, Father Rodrigues (Garfield) and Father Garupe (Driver) as they set out on a mission into Japan, where Christianity will frequently be punished with death, in order to find their mentor Father Ferreira (Neeson).  The film follows them as they begin a very dangerous mission, meeting with Christians in hiding all across Japan, all afraid of being put to death for their beliefs or being forced to commit apostasy in order to survive.

The movie largely focuses on two aspects of this story, one where we see a relatively routine set of circumstances executed over-and-over (the priests making some progress in pushing Christianity, then to be forced to test their faith and likely die in the process), with Garupe and Rodrigues (later just Rodrigues as Garupe drowns trying to save someone being killed as a test of faith against him), serving as witnesses, until Rodrigues finally meets Father Ferreira, who has assimilated to the culture of Japan, and is convinced that he must apostatize as it's the only way to end the heinous violence in Japan, and that Christianity cannot take hold on the island.  This is a compelling story, one that has a number of interesting characters, including a Toshiro Mifune-like figure in Kichijiro (Kubozuka), frequently finding himself at odds with his alcoholism, weak spine, but devout (if perhaps less-than-pious) faith.  I liked the way that it always felt like we were at the edges of danger until we sort of plunge into the "heart of darkness" (it's impossible not to feel the weight of Apocalypse Now! on the movie) aspects of the film.

More compelling still, though, is the way that Scorsese doesn't shy away from very heavy-handed questions of faith and humanity.  While the repetitive story is happening, we see a contrast in our central protagonist of Rodrigues, who is continually struggling with his devout nature.  The movie ends with him sticking to Christianity, as he is holding a cross as he's cremated, but we also see him wonder what sacrifices god is expecting of man.  The question of Christ, for example, is frequently ascertained but Christ is a god, while Rodrigues a mere mortal man-can he be expected to fulfill the same sort of sacrifice without doubt?  It's a fascinating set of questions posed by Scorsese, ones that he can't answer (really, truly, no one can), but ones that he poses in a complex and fascinating way.  This is a film that will have you reexamining and recalling for weeks after viewing.

Silence is not an easy film to love-this isn't a film like Carol or Gravity that needs to be seen many times over because you love it so much, but it's a challenging and remarkable masterpiece.  It's staggering to me that at such a late stage in his career Scorsese is still surprising us with a movie like this, breeding together Coppola and Bergman and a touch of Malick for a provocative film, arguably the most complicated movie I saw in 2016.  I would encourage anyone who likes him or doesn't to check it out-you might not like it (and it's a long sit), but it feels like the sort of movie that becomes essential because it's too good not to be.