2024 Oscar Viewing Project

For the first time ever, I finished watching all of the Oscar Viewing Project nominees before the Oscars, a huge moment for me overall.  I didn't do my official year-end awards my brother, however, until this past weekend, so I am publishing both this AND the My Ballot weeks after I finished these (and am actually writing this before the Oscars so for the first time ever I am doing this without knowing whom Oscar actually picked).  As is tradition (we will not do our 20+ articles anymore, but I will be logging every completed OVP in one giant article here when I finish, hopefully on a monthly cadence for either an OVP or My Ballot going forward), here is the Top 10 of the domestic box office:

1. Inside Out 2

2. Deadpool & Wolverine

3. Wicked

4. Moana 2

5. Despicable Me 4

6. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

7. Dune: Part Two

8. Twisters

9. Sonic the Hedgehog 3

10. Mufasa: The Lion King

Keeping with recent tradition, I saw virtually all of these, missing only Sonic 3 (is this good...I generally like Jim Carrey, so should I get caught up on these?).  In terms of box office I also missed Bad Boys: Ride or Die, It Ends With Us, and Venom: The Last Dance, but saw virtually every major awards contender (save for Lee with Kate Winslet...again, is it good?), including, of course, the Oscar nominees.  Let's look back on 2024, remembering a time when a Democrat was in the White House, when the President-Elect briefly faced justice for his crimes, and when we were all flipping for Simone Biles & the sexy nerd aesthetic of Stephen Nedoroscik.  And of course, let's remember the movies...

Note from John: When I did this series during the time when I wrote individual articles, and had this blog be a daily part of my life, I made a point of highlighting each nominee in my many write-ups.  While I will be writing these every time I complete a year (hopefully monthly going forward), I can't make that time commitment, either in terms of number of articles or in terms of giving each nominee their due with a mention.  I promise, though, that I have given each nominee their due under the confines of the specific category while making my rankings (and of course I've seen every single nominated picture), including giving higher rankings to movies I didn't like if the craft was better than ones I did like (Oscar should consider that).  Hopefully you enjoy the trimmed-down, but still devoted to the original concept version of the OVP we'll have going forward!

Picture

1. Dune: Part Two

2. Nickel Boys

3. The Brutalist

4. I'm Still Here

5. Conclave

6. Anora

7. A Complete Unknown

8. Wicked

9. The Substance

10. Emilia Perez

The Lowdown: I'll start out by saying something that I suspect gets repeated in this article-I did not think that 2024 was a particularly impressive year for the movies.  In fact, I thought it was the dullest year for movies since 2020, a combination of slavish over-praise of the Oscar fare (which was largely middling more than grand), and many of the blockbusters being underwhelming.  That said, I do really admire the first 3 films on this list.  Dune is better than the original, even if it's not quite as non-descript, Nickel Boys is an experiment that largely works, and The Brutalist is truly perfect until the intermission card comes up.  The rest...well the order speaks for itself, and because Oscar can only focus on ten movies in a given year anymore...we'll get to them all more in detail below.

Director

1. Brady Corbet (The Brutalist)

2. Sean Baker (Anora)

3. Coralie Fargeat (The Substance)

4. James Mangold (A Complete Unknown)

5. Jacques Audiard (Emilia Perez)

The Lowdown: Without Denis Villeneuve, this contest becomes considerably easier.  Corbet botches the ending to The Brutalist, but that's more an issue with the writers and one key supporting actor than the direction, which is really the cornerstone of the movie.  He deserves the win, with Baker second over Fargeat because I think that his story feels easier to get off the rails (and also I liked Anora better than The Substance even though I'll own that Anora is more a writer's movie and The Substance is more a director's picture).  I still can't believe that James Mangold, after years of attempting the same route (middle-of-the-road AMPAS fare like Walk the Line, Girl Interrupted, & Ford v. Ferrari that has no directorial signature) managed to grab a nomination.

Actor

1. Adrien Brody (The Brutalist)

2. Timothee Chalamet (A Complete Unknown)

3. Ralph Fiennes (Conclave)

4. Sebastian Stan (The Apprentice)

5. Colman Domingo (Sing Sing)

The Lowdown: This is as good of a time as any to remind you of two things: 1) The OVP is made in a vacuum, so I do not consider whether someone has an Oscar or not when handing out trophies and 2) I have a My Ballot where I pick my own nominees, and in that I also decide in a vacuum who should win.  This isn't about career awards, so under those circumstances I have no problem handing Adrien Brody a second statue for his luminous work in The Brutalist even if in real-life I might have thrown a bone to the fine work of Chalamet and Fiennes, who are both still hunting for their first Oscar.  I don't think that Sebastian Stan's film choice would impact his ranking (A Different Man would also get him 4th, for the record), though I will admit I'm excited by this direction of his career, as I love a handsome man finding his inner character actor.

Actress

1. Fernanda Torres (I'm Still Here)

2. Mikey Madison (Anora)

3. Demi Moore (The Substance)

4. Cynthia Erivo (Wicked)

5. Karla Sofia Gascon (Emilia Perez)

The Lowdown: With or without the scandal, it's an easy call to put Gascon's performance in fifth.  Emilia Perez is a dreadful, cinematic abortion of a movie (virtually nothing redeemable in it...the worst nominee since Bohemian Rhapsody), and she is not up to snuff as the lead.  For the actual win, I'm going with Torres, whose quiet determination in I'm Still Here has the added bonus of a script that always knows where she's headed, which you cannot say for Madison's (solid) Anora.  Demi Moore's role in The Substance has a lot of fans, and while I think she's better than the movie (which badly overshoots its ending), she can't carry it through & makes Elizabeth too unknowable.

Supporting Actor

1. Yura Borisov (Anora)

2. Kieran Culkin (A Real Pain)

3. Guy Pearce (The Brutalist)

4. Jeremy Strong (The Apprentice)

5. Edward Norton (A Complete Unknown)

The Lowdown: This is a quick reminder that I will always dock a point for any actor who is obviously the lead but is committing category fraud to improve their Oscar chances.  If I was judging based on total performances, I might give it to Culkin's really strong work as a broken man filled with overflowing charisma, but under these rules, there's no way he takes out Borisov's sensitive, brooding security guard in Anora, a scene-stealing performance that makes the movie.  Guy Pearce is the only actor who seems capable of holding together The Brutalist in its back half, but I have him in third both because his competition is good (expect a few repeat names when we get to the My Ballots tomorrow), as well as because I don't think he lands the final moments of the picture quite well enough.  I didn't get what Strong or Norton were doing, and feel like this was a nomination for being showy more than being good.

Supporting Actress

1. Ariana Grande (Wicked)

2. Monica Barbaro (A Complete Unknown)

3. Isabella Rossellini (Conclave)

4. Felicity Jones (The Brutalist)

5. Zoe Saldana (Emilia Perez)

The Lowdown: Once again, Saldana loses a point because she's the lead (without that I think she is ahead of Jones given she at least understands the film's tone).  You could make an argument that Grande is also the lead, but because there's an argument I keep her in first, and honestly even without that I might keep her there due to a weak field.  Barbaro's Joan Baez looks the part, but I wanted a bit more of the ambition of someone who is more famous than Dylan having him usurp her throne, and the lack of resolve there shows how difficult a Dylan biopic was always going to be.  Grande's work is in her wheelhouse, and sometimes borders into parody of Kristin Chenoweth (who is the better actor), but she's so good it's hard to fault feeling indebted to the original.

Adapted Screenplay

1. Nickel Boys

2. Conclave

3. A Complete Unknown

4. Sing Sing

5. Emilia Perez

The Lowdown: I have not read Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer Prize-winning source material (though a copy of it is sitting behind me...the eternal nagging of the books on my shelf that I've never read continues to haunt my dreams), but what comes across on the film is spectacular.  A meditative, thoughtful look at how hard it is to beat the system, and how life can find a way...and a plot can find a way even as you mine Terrence Malick for inspiration.  Conclave would make a worthy winner as well, giving us a really scrumptious 1990's-style thriller that is virtually impossible to find in 2024.

Original Screenplay

1. A Real Pain

2. Anora

3. The Brutalist

4. The Substance

5. September 5

The Lowdown: Jesse Eisenberg's look at how we keep certain people in our lives and in our hearts years after they stop feeling like they fit into whom we became is really wonderful.  I know the focus is on grief, and the mourning that happens when we lose someone we can't replace, but that juxtaposed against the question mark of the friendship that's core to the film is really why this is something special.  Anora and The Brutalist both have wonderful sections, but they don't know how to inform key characters (specifically their female leads) and The Brutalist doesn't know how to make its ending work (which is not the case for Anora-that ending lands the film), so I can't seriously put them against A Real Pain in this field (Eisenberg wins handily).

Animated Feature Film

1. The Wild Robot

2. Flow

3. Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl

4. Memoir of a Snail

5. Inside Out 2

The Lowdown: It's become depressing how predictable this category is, with even the off-beat or independent films heavily telegraphed the entire season so there's no surprises on nomination morning.  One of many reasons why I wish this was only a three-wide like I'll do at tomorrow's My Ballot for 2024.  But taking that out of the equation, this is a solid list, particularly the top two which are completely different looks at how nature cannot endure the touch of humanity.  I went with The Wild Robot because I felt its story more, but either would make a worthy winner.  I will note, that in the first 19 years of this category, Disney/Pixar only got the #5 slot once (2002's Lilo and Stitch)...in the past five years it's gotten it 80% of the time.  This is not an appealing trend for the Mouse House.

International Feature Film

1. The Seed of the Sacred Fig (Germany)

2. Flow (Latvia)

3. I'm Still Here (Brazil)

4. The Girl with the Needle (Denmark)

5. Emilia Perez (France)

The Lowdown: As I said above, I wrote this before the Oscar ceremony, so I don't know any winners, and this is the category I'm most curious to see where it landed (it might not be the most shocking win, but it's the one I am trying to guess if the Emilia Perez buzz has died enough to allow for a different Best Picture nominee instead).  Really, though, this shouldn't be a contest.  While I admire I'm Still Here's look at how sins shouldn't necessarily be forgiven if they're heinous enough (and sure as hell shouldn't be forgotten), and the gorgeous computer game aesthetic of Flow, The Seed of the Sacred Fig was one of the best movies of 2024, full stop.  An engrossing look at fascism and the way that it strips away any shred of humanity you have...assuming you had much to begin with (because fascism also numbs you to such horror).

Sound

1. Dune: Part Two

2. The Wild Robot

3. A Complete Unknown

4. Wicked

5. Emilia Perez

The Lowdown: I still miss when the Sound categories were split in two, but honestly...I get why looking at this.  I will own that I am not giving these statues to the same movie, but it's hard to argue with Dune being the dominant choice here, its gorgeous elevation of the sounds of the deserts of Arrakis combined with new special effects and great crowd work.  Behind it are The Wild Robot (I love the nature sounds, combined with strong music & vocal work) and the concert recreations of A Complete Unknown.  Solid lineup overall, honestly, and I want to say that as most of it I don't repeat tomorrow-lots of good choices this year.

Score

1. The Brutalist

2. The Wild Robot

3. Conclave

4. Emilia Perez

5. Wicked

The Lowdown: This is the first of only two times that an Emilia Perez nomination isn't in last place (the next category is the other one), and there's a reason for that-the musical score of Wicked is lovely, but it's not original...I can't pinpoint anything in the score that isn't borrowing from Stephen Schwartz's fabulous Broadway composition, and so this nomination feels like a cheap way to up Schwartz's (and the film's) Oscar count, even if the actual score is better than Emilia Perez.  That said, the other three scores are all wonderful, and will show up tomorrow with my My Ballot, best of them being the atypical, confrontational work of The Brutalist.

Original Song

1. "Like a Bird" (Sing Sing)

2. "Never Too Late" (Elton John: Never Too Late)

3. "El Mal" (Emilia Perez)

4. "The Journey" (The Six Triple Eight)

5. "Mi Camino" (Emilia Perez)

The Lowdown: I do not think the music in Emilia Perez, even the lauded numbers like "Mi Camino" is any good.  The singing is not strong, the music feels too conversational, and the lyricism is dreadful (the best of the bunch, "La Vaginoplastia" is at least catchy and visually interesting).  That said, "El Mal's" problems are more so the way it's staged (bad lighting & dance direction) than it being a bad song.  Honestly, none of these are that good, both because 2024 wasn't a great year for film tunes, and because Oscar needed to get creative to come up with a decent lineup in a year where there weren't many good choices.  I picked "Like a Bird" because it's fitting to the film and doesn't feel as disposable as Elton John's "Never Too Late," a song that has his great vocals but feels like a cheap ending after hearing so many actual classics in the documentary.

Cinematography

1. The Brutalist

2. Dune: Part Two

3. Maria

4. Nosferatu

5. Emilia Perez

The Lowdown: We'll get into the Best Picture nominee that I can't believe didn't make this lineup tomorrow when we discuss the My Ballot, but for today let's all be thankful for the two deserved nominees that DID make it.  Between The Brutalist and Dune: Part Two, I'm favoring The Brutalist more so because it's truly inventive and it pays off...getting experimental with a movie can always be a risk, so when that risk pays off, you need to use it to break the tie, but both are sensational.  That Emilia Perez is nominated here, given that they literally couldn't even get the lighting cues right during the centerpiece musical number, is insanity to me-other than Best Actress, maybe the worst nomination from the film?

Costume Design

1. Wicked

2. Conclave

3. A Complete Unknown

4. Gladiator II

5. Nosferatu

The Lowdown: Best Cinematography is my favorite of the My Ballot lineups I pulled together, while Costume is unfortunately my least favorite.  That isn't meant as a slight to the winner here, Wicked, which I have made room for in tomorrow's My Ballot, but it is a sign that the costume work here wasn't as great as it could've been (I would've loved us to maybe stray a bit more from the pink-and-green motif, which is why one of my favorite costumes last year was Michelle Yeoh's celestial lilac-colored gown...but this is still great & Wicked's worthiest tech nomination).  Conclave's repeated costumes and twists on the cardinal outfit are a worthy runner-up, and lovingly-detailed.

Film Editing

1. The Brutalist

2. Conclave

3. Anora

4. Wicked

5. Emilia Perez

The Lowdown: The invisible art, film editing for me came down to the quick plot-pacing of Conclave, and then the avant garde approach of The Brutalist.  Of the two, I was most smitten with the sheer scale & confidence of The Brutalist, a movie that I liked better, and while I will quibble with the ending, I don't think you can blame that even a little bit on editing, as even in the worst scenes I was struck by how it kept pulling the viewers into the movie, cavernous in its approach.  The nomination for Wicked, given that it's only half a movie, feels odd & maybe the most confounding (and coattails-driven) citation in 2024.

Makeup & Hairstyling

1. The Substance

2. Wicked

3. A Different Man

4. Nosferatu

5. Emilia Perez

The Lowdown: Horror so rarely gets into this category (which is odd because An American Werewolf in London was the first film to win the statue), and given how quintessential makeup is to the success of the genre, it's kind of exciting to see its return (the last horror film to be cited was 2010's The Wolf Man).  But it's more exciting to be able to give it the crown because it's genuinely good.  Whatever issues I had with The Substance, the makeup wasn't one of them, giving us the ruthless destruction of poor Demi Moore's Elizabeth Sparkle, which is more impressive than the "borrowing from past experience" work in Wicked or the drawing a real-life comparison in A Different Man, which take the runners-up positions.

Production Design

1. The Brutalist

2. Dune: Part Two

3. Conclave

4. Nosferatu

5. Wicked

The Lowdown: In my opinion the best lineup that Oscar pulled together in 2024, none of these are stinkers, and while I won't copy this list verbatim to my My Ballot tomorrow, every one of these feels like an appropriate Oscar nominee.  I am not immune to the Oscar crutch of honoring a movie because it's about a specific production aspect, and indeed, the gorgeous work in The Brutalist (inexplicably on a $10 million budget) is hard to deny.  Dune: Part Two does a great job of expanding this world, and I was in awe of the (also weirdly inexpensive) palatial estates of Conclave, but I have to hand this one to the team from The Brutalist.

Visual Effects

1. Dune: Part Two

2. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

3. Better Man

4. Alien: Romulus

5. Wicked

The Lowdown: I grade these on a 5-star system, and I generally dock a star whenever a lead performance is in supporting or an end credits song with no presence otherwise in the movie is up, so as to even the playing field without sacrificing the nominee's chances entirely.  I think I will start to do that for movies that use dead actors without their permission (I don't care if the estate said yes...I still think it's morally repugnant).  Much of Alien: Romulus is gorgeous, and it would be higher-ranked (possibly in My Ballot territory) if they hadn't used Ian Holm the way they did (both uncanny valley and using a dead man in this way is gross).  Certainly above Better Man, which tried to cover its VFX budget with dark cinematography.  The Top 2 are indisputable-two of the most spectacular franchises around living up to their reputations once again.

OVP: The Midnight Sky (2020)

Film: The Midnight Sky (2020)

Stars: George Clooney, Felicity Jones, David Oyelowo, Tiffany Boone, Demian Bichir, Kyle Chandler

Director: George Clooney

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Visual Effects)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

I hate to make everything about Covid & the annus horribilis we have all just endured, but it's impossible to watch movies, particularly films like The Midnight Sky, without thinking about how we saw them.  The Midnight Sky is a Netflix film, but it was originally intended to be screened in theaters, and was even shot on a specific type of 65mm camera so that it would play well on an IMAX screen.  This isn't how we're going to see this, and while there are movies like Soul or Tenet that might eventually get re-releases in theaters in the future for retro screenings, Midnight Sky is not important enough to get such a distinction.  As a result, as you'll see, it's hard for me to fully grasp director George Clooney's message here, since I didn't get to see it the way that he intended, and in an era where people will not always see a movie the way the filmmaker intended, how do we acknowledge this gap?

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie takes place in the days after a cataclysmic event, one that has slowly started to make the planet inhospitable.  Augustine (Clooney), a chief scientist in the Arctic, stays behind to communicate with manned space missions, warning the people on them to stay in space, and he eventually comes in contact with a craft named the Aether, communicating with Sully (Jones), a pregnant astronaut who has been on a hospitable moon of Jupiter.  While he's contacting her, Augustine encounters a young girl who cannot speak & has been left behind.  The two of them venture forth, fighting the cold, trying to stave off the cataclysm while properly helping the Aether reverse cold.  As the film ends, we understand that this young girl is not real, but a figment of his imagination of the daughter he abandoned, and that Sully is the daughter that he abandoned, and thus by venturing forth into the wilderness (and eventually dying), Augustine has finally given a part of himself to his daughter.

This is exactly the kind of movie I love.  I am a big fan of prestige SciFi dramas, I adore adventure epics, and I love movies so directly plotted like this (where we understand quickly the big stakes, and there will be sacrifices that will need to be made to achieve them).  Which is why I was so bummed this didn't work out.  Clooney is hit-or-miss for me as a director (Good Night, and Good Luck being the one movie of his that I loved, and also the most atypical of his films), and he doesn't give this movie gravitas-there's not enough balance in getting to know either Augustine or Sully on a significant level (from a story perspective it would've been smarter to make one of them the sole lead, rather than alternating back-and-forth), and as a result neither story feels properly complete.  This isn't a bad movie, but it pales in comparison to other films like Gravity, First Man, and Ad Astra, amongst the best of the last decade, which it is clearly trying to compete with.  I'm going with 2-stars because it doesn't succeed, but this is right between 2 and 3 stars, and if you like this kind of film I would recommend checking it out.

The effects are interesting, and honestly part of me wonders if I'd have given this a 3-star rating if I'd seen it properly on a big screen.  The Jupiter's moon sequence is a glorious invasion of color, and there's one fantastic scene involving Tiffany Boone's Maya as she understands she's been injured, with a drip, drip, drip of blood floating in particles in space that is harrowing & the best-constructed action scene in the movie.  It will probably receive a few Oscar nominations with limited competition, but you have to wonder if it might've deserved them even in a normal year, as the production design and effects work is seamless.

On the Basis of Sex (2018)

Film: On the Basis of Sex (2018)
Stars: Felicity Jones, Armie Hammer, Justin Theroux, Kathy Bates, Sam Waterston
Director: Mimi Leder
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Liberals have few living superheroes quite as beloved as Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  Though there are complicated aspects of her legacy (namely the risk she put her seat in by not resigning in 2012), it's impossible to look at the actual substance of her career and not marvel at what she has meant for women.  Watching On the Basis of Sex I was reminded of this fact, not just from the multitude of women of all different walks of life sitting with me in a darkened theater (one of those rare non-premiere films that got applause after the film ended), but also looking at my own mother next to me, sobbing uncontrollably as she witnessed the final moments of the picture unfold.  On the Basis of Sex isn't nearly as groundbreaking as its subject, but it is very much a populist hit that's harder to make than you'd think-Leder's film is interesting, swiftly-paced, and proof that biopics don't have to be awards bait to still be fun to watch.

(Do you need a spoiler alert for a movie like this?) The film follows Ginsburg (Jones) during the earliest days of her time as a Harvard law student through her first major gender-discrimination case in the early 1970's.  The film does a pretty decent job of balancing out Ginsburg's professional woes (and successes) with her family life, with a lot focused on her storybook marriage to Marty (Hammer).  The movie's central case involves Charles Moritz, a man who was denied caregiver's rights because the law presumed only a woman would want to be a caregiver for an ailing parent.  Along the way, Ginsburg butts heads with the ACLU (despite them teaming up), with Justin Theroux's Mel being a leery ally of her movement, and properly fights former Solicitor General Erwin Griswold (Waterston) in court.  The film ends with her winning this case, and a very moving transition from Jones as a young Ginsburg walking up the Supreme Court stairs to be followed briefly by a present-day Ginsburg wearing the same outfit, a bit of a shock I'll admit as I had no idea she had blessed the film in such a way.

It's good to see Leder behind-the-camera here in general, considering that sexism played no-small-part in how her career eventually capsized.  Leder, who received a bum's rush after the disastrous performance of Pay It Forward (this is her first theatrically-released film in the United States in 18 years), surely would have been given a second chance were she a man considering she also had the successful Deep Impact on her resume (Andrew Stanton, Tim Johnson, & Guy Ritchie still work, and unlike Leder, their films were proper bombs...Leder's at least turned a profit if you don't count publicity, plus it's not like she wrote the damn thing).  You can see in the way she approaches this film a lack of a distinctive touch, playing it safe with Ginsburg's story and letting it be the central focus.  This may make some critics snooze, but I found it oddly refreshing.  Too often we see something dreadful like Vice, where the director's instincts are consistently missing the point or Bohemian Rhapsody, where a jumble of approaches to the film's lead results in a messy picture.  On the Basis of Sex isn't breaking ground (this is the sort of film that just as easily could have been made with Barbara Stanwyck or Ali McGraw or Ashley Judd...it works in any era), but it is eminently watchable.  Leder's approach is to give the audience story beats that are familiar, but with strong acting from the leads that makes up for the fact that you know this story by heart.  In an era where every director requires their individual stamp on a movie, this feels retro.

The leads are really fun in these roles.  Hammer, in particular, stands out as the supportive spouse.  His Marty borders into manic-pixie-dream-guy (from stories they have told about their lives, this might have just been the truth), but you can see his struggles to be a modern man with a wife who will overshadow him, while only occasionally falling into the trappings of his privilege.  It feels authentic to show him as someone who genuinely adored his wife, something we don't really see onscreen enough-there are countless people who love and admire each other and have relatively successful marriages, but it's not something that makes for compelling drama.  Here it feels truly watchable, though, and hats off to Hammer & Jones for being able to pull this off.  It's easy to sigh knowing the film is trying to curtail sexism, but were the roles reversed, it's impossible to imagine Jones not getting Supporting Actress heat for such a supportive spouse, but since it's a man playing this role, AMPAS isn't going anywhere near the film.  Even in 2018, we still have a long way to go when it comes to sexism.

A Monster Calls (2016)

Film: A Monster Calls (2016)
Stars: Lewis MacDougall, Sigourney Weaver, Felicity Jones, Liam Neeson
Director: JA Bayona
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

There are few movies where I go into the film and feel like it was staggeringly different than what I anticipated.  I generally avoid trailers if I can, particularly full trailers ("why can't all trailers be teaser trailers?" is a subject I have trod many times before, so we won't get into that), but with major movies it's kind of inevitable.  If anything else, I end up seeing these because I like my regular seat at the movie theater and get there before the movie started.  In 2016, by-and-large trailers were relatively accurate in depicting movies and their plots (with the notable exceptions of Zootopia and Passengers), so my favorite films of the year list featured few films that really stunned me that I liked them, save one: A Monster Calls.  I cannot remember the last time I had such a gut-wrenching, visceral experience from a film that on-the-surface looks like a standard fare popcorn movie.  Easily one of the best films I saw in 2016,  A Monster Calls was decidedly the biggest surprise for me personally in 2016.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film centers on a young man named Conor O'Malley (MacDougall), a middle school-aged young man who lives a relatively depressing life.  His mother (Jones), is dying of some sort of illness (it sure looks like cancer but it's never specified), and he is forced to live with his stern grandmother (Weaver).  During the night, however, he is visited by a monster at 12:07 who tells him a series of three stories, each showing morally ambiguous situations.  Slowly, Conor realizes he must tell his story, about a recurring dream that he has where he cannot save his mother from falling over a large cliff.

The film's center is around growing up, and realizing that people are not black-and-white, but internally complicated and frequently at odds with their baser instincts.  As it's a children's movie, it's quite obvious that the moral of the fourth story is that Conor must let go of his mother, that he must admit he wants her to be out of her pain even if that means he'll have to live without her, but the way it is presented and acted is so gorgeous it is hard to fault the picture for such an obvious moral.

Indeed, it is in that presentation that A Monster Calls summons all of its strength.  I cannot remember the last time Liam Neeson, such a commanding if occasionally staid presence onscreen, has been used so well.  His monster shows few cards, and his narration is wonderful.  The highlight of the film are his stories, particularly the first two, where an enchanting and rich animation sequence takes over-think "Tale of Beadle the Bard," but better in my opinion.  I genuinely said "wow" out-loud at least a couple of times during these stretches, it was such an impactive moment in a movie filled with grief but hope trying to get to the surface.

I also have to say, though, that while the animation was a highlight, I was struck by how raw and excellent the rest of the live cast was.  Felicity Jones gets the showiest part, and admittedly her mother remains unknowable, but through the eyes of a young man who will never properly get to know his mother, that seems appropriate, and she lands that "you break them" speech with a ferocity that I had yet to have seen from the young actress.  I personally think this is her best work, and while I can't quite say the same for Sigourney Weaver, this is certainly the first time I've seen her challenged as an actress in a while.  The scene where she comes across her home, broken by her angry, belligerent grandson and wordlessly breaks down in pain over her daughter dying, not over her broken things as we'd expect from the way Conor frames it-it's a magnificent scene.  Honestly, in a year where dying parents seemed to be a regular occurrence (Manchester by the Sea, Moana, Other People), this movie in my opinion stands apart as the one that finds a new approach to grief, showing its devastation and the way that life forces us to move on when we cannot imagine that it's possible.  It's incredibly moving, life-affirming, and spellbinding-the rare children's movie that feels made to be a classic.

Those are my thoughts on this staggering picture (like I said, genuinely one of my favorite films of 2016)-how about yours?  Considering its box office, did you even see it?  If so, share if you were surprised or if you found it more run-of-the-mill...I'm interested to discuss!

OVP: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

Film: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Stars: Felicity Jones, Diego Luna, Ben Mendelsohn, Donnie Yen, Mads Mikkelsen, Riz Ahmed, Forest Whitaker
Director: Gareth Edwards
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Visual Effects, Sound Mixing)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

I have seen every live-action Star Wars film in theaters.  It's something I try to remind myself when I kind of also remember that I'm a casual fan (in the case of almost all entertainment-based pop culture phenomenons) when I'm usually an ardent and obsessed one of such cinematic undertakings.  After all I have so much Harry Potter merchandise in my library you'd think you'd actually made it into a Hufflepuff's dorm, and I can tell you nearly every episode title of Lost without looking them up (seriously-test me sometime).  But Star Wars, while I appreciate it and in the moment, really love it, is one of those areas of pop culture where I can become objective about what is "good" versus what is "bad."  I haven't become so steeped in nostalgia that it clouds my judgment.

(Spoilers Ahead) This is all to say that Rogue One was not a movie that I particularly enjoyed.  The movie follows Jyn (Jones), the daughter of a scientist (Mikkelsen) who will one day build the Death Star.  She is raised largely as an orphan as she escapes the burgeoning Empire and is raised by Saw Gerrera (Whitaker), a family friend who increasingly goes mad as the film progresses.  The movie follows her as she attempts to find a way to connect with her father, and then as she, along with a motley crew that includes Cassian Andor (Luna) tries to find the plans to the Death Star, which she knows has a vulnerability in it (which of course any fan of the original series also knows), to transmit to the Rebel Alliance.

There are admittedly a few things to enjoy in the film.  Luna stands out to me as the best-in-show of the actors, but it's also kind of cool that they have a leading woman that doesn't really need a love interest to catapult her through the movie (I'll believe it when I see it for Daisy Ridley's Rey), and there's a wonderful finality of the penultimate scenes on the beach (which are beautifully rendered in terms of the special effects-I love the minimalist, high water production design of the planet); you don't have to worry about a sequel since you've already seen one and these characters aren't going to be coming back since, well, they all died.  The movie's score is robust and though it never quite hits the iconography of John Williams, perhaps that's for the best as it hums and drums in a slightly darker way that works in select sequences of the movie.  Plus, I like a sequel/prequel (whatever this is) that actually fills in some of the gaps rather than just creates new ones or stretches them out to make more money.

But all-in-all this was not as much fun as The Force Awakens.  The film suffers from that "reinvention" issue that plagued The Phantom Menace (it's not THAT bad, mind you), in that it is too reliant on super-fans to fill in the gaps rather than the plot, and there's way too many characters all at once.  For a while it feels like we're just hiring dozens of well-known character actors to randomly come in and be a part of the Star Wars movies, as if Gareth Edwards had a list in his house of every person he's ever wanted to turn into an action figure.  This causes too much busy-ness in the first half of the movie from which it never really recovers, and he hires actors that are a bit too naturally hammy (Mikkelsen and Whitaker being the chief culprits) to be able to deal with what they're doing onscreen.  Whitaker in particular crosses the line into "bad acting" toward the end-his character being too filed with ticks and clicks.  It's kind of dull when you take the Star Wars adventure out of it, and in particular it never really recovers from the "we know how this ends" aspect of the movie, even if the ending actually works.

The other problem I had here was the visual effects.  While certain parts of the art direction and the matte work were divine (like I said, the water planet in particular was really cool), the Peter Cushing/Carrie Fisher stuff was deeply off-putting.  I felt like every time that Cushing's CGI creation was onscreen I was supposed to be seeing some version of a cartoon, or that my eyesight was messing with me; the technology is not there yet to believe he's a human alongside actual humans.  It was less a supremely cool effect and more like a Robert Zemeckis animated work (the same can be said for Fisher, though that's only one scene so it's less of a callout).  Putting aside the moral dilemma here (and that really should be a factor since Cushing himself never consented to being in this movie), it's not a good effect.  The sound work, art direction, and music are all strong, but I'm going to be deeply disappointed if this gimmick lands the movie an Academy Award on Sunday.

Those are my thoughts, and yes, I'm definitely The Force Awakens>Rogue One, but how about you?  Where does this land in the Star Wars pantheon?  Who is best-in-show in terms of acting?  And do you think Rogue One can take the VFX Oscar on Sunday?  The comments are below!

100 Years of the Landmark Uptown

Over the next week, the Landmark Uptown theater, an icon of the Minneapolis landscape and one of my personal meccas as a longtime resident of the Twin Cities who has a penchant for the movies, will celebrate its 100th anniversary.  It's hard to imagine that 100 years ago a movie theater stood in Minneapolis, still a relatively young city, just a few years after the advent of the movies in general, and yet has still survived today.  I wanted to make sure and honor the theater in some way on the blog, so I figured the best way to do this would be to recount five of my favorite memories through the years at the theater (these, it should be recalled, are my favorite memories in the theaters, not necessarily the best movies I've seen there).

1. Milk on Opening Night

Still my favorite night, ever, in a movie theater.  I went to the film early, hoping to catch one of the biggest Oscar movies of the season before a trip to see my family (I knew my brother would want a full verdict on one of the big AMPAS movies that year).  It was an incredible experience-a theater full of gay men, energized and moved by what was happening in Gus van Sant's picture.  Not only were there cheers in the audience when it was announced that Minneapolis would be the first city to ban workplace discrimination against gay and lesbian people, people actually got up and applauded (the film also got a standing ovation at the end of the film).  It's worth noting that this was in the specter of Proposition 8 and Minnesota has several key moments in the film, but sitting near the front of a packed theater with this much energy-it was truly movie magic.

2. Academy Award Short Films

The short films used to be in the Lagoon, but in recent years have come to be in the Uptown, and I see them all each year, so this is definitely something I'm thankful for in the theater.  It's hard to pinpoint a favorite one, though I'd probably go with the above short, if only because my mom couldn't stop laughing during it (it's also one of the many movie traditions I have with my parents-our annual trip to see the animated short films at the Uptown).

3. Seating Arrangements at The Invisible Woman

Okay, even Felicity Jones probably doesn't remember this movie, but I recall vividly that this was my first trip to the Uptown where I sat in the balcony (I'm almost always a floor-seat person) after the renovations, but a friend of mine wanted to sit upstairs since she'd never been there before, so we pick the seats, and not only are we one of the only couples not upstairs clearly "on a date," but we accidentally picked one of the theaters' love seat chairs.  For the entire first ten minutes of the movie, a somber onscreen affair, we could not stop giggling to each other.

4. In F@#%ing Bruges

My best friend from college and I initially bonded over his desire to learn more about movies, and my desire to watch movies with him.  One of the best times we ever had at the movies was while watching this Colin Farrell comedy, which repeatedly and profanely disparaged the Belgian city.  For weeks after this we couldn't get through a conversation without randomly saying "fucking Bruges" to a series of mass laughter.  Perhaps the balcony is the best place to get the humor out of Uptown movies, as I also saw this upstairs since he hadn't been before.

5. Wild Tales Second Date

I always know that I like a guy when I propose we go to one of the Landmark theaters for a date, as it's about as close to home for me as anything in the Twin Cities.  I distinctly remember really liking the guy I went to Wild Tales with but I wasn't sure if he liked me back.  About twenty minutes into the movie, he whispers over to me and said, "this movie's awesome-I'm having a great time" with a smile.  Needless to say I got another date (and a kiss in the parking lot) afterwards.

Those are my favorite memories of the Landmark Uptown-what are yours?  Share in the comments and make sure and celebrate by visiting soon if you're in the Minneapolis area!

OVP: Actress (2014)

OVP: Best Actress (2014)

The Nominees Were...

Marion Cotillard, Two Days, One Night
Felicity Jones, The Theory of Everything
Julianne Moore, Still Alice
Rosamund Pike, Gone Girl
Reese Witherspoon, Wild

My Thoughts: Like it or not, 2014 is going to be one of those years in this category, much like 1975, 1994, and 2005, where we always raise an eyebrow over the nominations.  I'm not saying that the nominees here are bad (they're better than any of those three, and in the case of one actress, she's doing career-best and decade-best work), but this was a weak-sauce year if you look past the nominations.  The Academy was struggling to come up with contenders, and did that thing they usually do in such a circumstance-went to the foreign language well, honoring an actress with her second foreign-language nomination (only the second woman ever to accomplish such a thing).  Because she was the shock of the acting nominations that morning (I recall gasps), we'll start out with one Marion Cotillard.

Cotillard is arguably the greatest actress working right now, give or take some Blanchetts and Chastains.  Every film feels like an event, something to be celebrated and treasured because we all know streaks like this rarely last.  Two Days, One Night is a strange situation for me here because we've come to expect so much from Marion Cotillard that the performance feels very good, but not the "career-best" that so many were trumpeting.  Her naturalism is impressive, and I love the uncomfortable and occasionally dislikable ways that she treats her Sandra, but the film itself is so much structure, rarely working in some of the more emotional scenes, especially as Sandra is dealing with her mental illness on-top of her quest to win back her job.  This cuts a little bit into Cotillard's work, and I feel like (while she's better here than her first bout with Oscar), AMPAS keeps missing the boat on her most impressive work, particularly something like Rust & Bone which has emerged in my memory as a favorite.

While Cotillard was the surprise inclusion here, the dominant force of the Best Actress race in 2014 was surely Julianne Moore.  Becoming only the second woman ever to win this category while in her 50's, the longtime celebrated actress made her impression as Alice, a brilliant woman dealing with Alzheimer's much earlier than your average person.  Moore is a woman who knows the inner ticks and clicks of a character, and you find that in Alice, particularly the conversations, plans, and mechanisms that she has with herself.  Moore herself is hampered by relatively weak costars (save Kristen Stewart), as she risks, particularly in her scenes with Baldwin, overacting, but as a general rule this is fine stuff, and she truly comes alive toward the middle when she no longer has control over her decisions, but is emotionally aware enough that something is wrong.  It's a staggering performance in a not particularly great film, which is always difficult to judge, but while it's also not career-best stuff (it's worth noting, of course, that the entire point of the OVP is to not judge based on other films in ones career but simply the five performances that Oscar put in front of me and nothing else), it's still very strong work from Moore.  There are select scenes of the film that you find yourself rooting for the character, which is always a feat for an actress this famous to transform into that person on screen.

The same could be said for Reese Witherspoon, whose Cheryl Strayed is a truly unique and splendid creation.  Witherspoon hasn't been this strong since at least Tracy Flick fifteen years previously, possibly ever.  While most films of this nature (that is, in nature) usually show a man struggling with his own personal demons but not being willing to admit that the nature is a metaphor, Witherspoon's film largely drops that metaphor (save the fox scene) and we get simply someone doing something she doesn't understand because she doesn't understand her life.  Witherspoon gets a true gamut of emotions to deal with: grief, lust, shame, revenge, hate, and occasionally even love, but what she most has to deal with and which struck a chord with me ferociously (this is easily my favorite movie of these five pictures) was the way that loneliness sets in as you get older when you either don't follow the traditional spouse/children path or when you do, but you feel empty inside for doing it.  Reese creates something magical on that trail, giving herself wholly over to the character-no vanity, no need to prove herself an actress, but just an authentic, grand gesture of a movie.  Since she's a movie star we don't see it examined as closely, but were this a new actress or in a foreign language (or, let's face it, a man), it would have been hailed as a landmark.  Considering how many terrible movies she's made since her last Best Actress nomination, this is a big way to say "I'm back."

Speaking of relative ingenues, we have Felicity Jones who has been at the outer rings of AMPAS with films like Like Crazy and The Invisible Woman in recent years, but generally I've left those pictures underwhelmed.  Her onscreen beauty (those green eyes are ridiculous) is not to be challenged, and I'm rather intoxicated by her inflection, but her acting ability-ehh.  She always seems to underplay her role, and in particular what the part calls for-she's staid when she should be vivacious, and blase about her romantic entanglements, leaving too much inside without emoting in other ways (or letting the script do that for her).  For the first thirty minutes or so of The Theory of Everything she escapes that, and we get a glimmer of what casting directors clearly have wanted us to see-she's vivacious, and has genuine chemistry with Eddie Redmayne, but as the film progresses to sadder territory, she keeps everything on the inside, giving us an English stiff upper lip but no sense of what's going on inside.  Some may say this is naturalism, as surely Jane Hawking wasn't a particularly expressive person with her feelings, but in a movie that is so reliant on her to be an audience surrogate, it feels lacking, and makes me wonder if I'll ever truly get on-board with a Jones performance.

In the final slot we have the one film that everyone saw of this bunch.  Gone Girl, the only $100 million hit domestically, was a major talking point and a book everyone needed to bring to the beach, and it kept its secrets relatively close to the vest.  Rosamund Pike had a few extremely difficult tasks in the movie, and not just because Amazing Amy has such a specific place in literary minds everywhere.  She has to find a way to make her both believably sane at one point and also a nutcase (but a nutcase with a believable enough case against her husband to not alienate her completely from the audience).  In many ways she borrows from Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs-you find her daunting and occasionally vile, but you can't look away, and you get why people fall for her trick as she's too fascinating to ignore.  The "cool girl" monologue, that fantastic opening narration when her big reveal hits, and the way that you see her deep frustration whenever one of her decisions or plans doesn't happen the way that she hoped-it's all incredible fun.  I know that for some Pike's performance, particularly her deep-throated delivery, wasn't to their liking or imagination, but I was a huge fan.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Golden Globes started off the uniform train with Best Actress in a Drama, where Cotillard was skipped for Jennifer Aniston (Cake), but the rest of this lineup held, as did Julianne Moore as the victor.  That left a surprisingly weird lineup in Best Actress in a Comedy/Musical of Emily Blunt (Into the Woods-makes sense, even if it's kind of default), Helen Mirren (The Hundred-Foot Journey-they do tend to have a thing for her), Julianne Moore (Maps to the Stars-did this film ever actually get released or was it just randomly on DVD one day?), and Quvenzhane Wallis (Annie-all right, I'm out of ideas here).  It's no wonder Amy Adams pulled it off for Big Eyes-it was the only one remotely looking at an Oscar nomination, even if it's about as funny as a root canal.  SAG smartly stuck to the Best Drama race lineup entirely, favoring Moore for the win while BAFTA couldn't quite bring itself to honor Aniston in the Cotillard spot, instead picking Amy Adams, while giving their trophy to Julianne Moore.  It's quite obvious that Aniston or Adams was the sixth place finisher, and while I predicted Aniston at the time (it being a more traditional drama), I was honestly flummoxed, and that's probably why Cotillard was able to make it in-it was likely a weak, close race for fifth that had enough room for someone with a fervent first-place fanbase.

Actors I Would Have Nominated: I know that it's popular to bag on her, but I actually really liked what Jennifer Aniston did in Cake (Amy Adams in Big Eyes-not so much), and was genuinely bummed that in a year like 2014 they didn't decide to give her one of those random rom-com queen nominations for a very watchable performance (even if the film doesn't live up to that adjective).  Even better than Aniston, though, was Scarlett Johansson's other-worldly work in Under the Skin, a performance that showed the great promise she had early on not in Lost in Translation, but Girl with the Pearl Earring.  An alien, difficult piece-of-work that hopefully will develop something of a cult following as the year's progress.

Oscar’s Choice: I think sometime early in the 2014 awards season the public randomly realized that Julianne Moore didn't have an Oscar and they all thought she did, so that needed to be rectified immediately.  It's questionable who would have won had she not been in contention (much like 2009's Supporting Actress race, I wonder if it would have been Adams or Aniston in sixth place gaining a Sandra Bullock-style run or a "six nominations without a win is long enough" plea), but Moore clearly was an overwhelming favorite.

My Choice: Witherspoon, no question.  This is my second favorite performance of this decade, and an absolute triumph from start to finish.  Following her would be Pike, Moore, Cotillard, and Jones in a distant fifth.

And now it's your turn-are you on Team Reese with me or are you clutching the pearls over me skipping out on Julianne Moore?  I've seen most of her work, but is there a Felicity Jones performance that will make me a convert?  And I'd love an impassioned plea over whether it was Aniston or Adams that was the true sixth place finisher in 2014.  Share your thoughts below!

Also in 2014: Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Original Screenplay, Adapted Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Art Direction, Costume, Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Documentary Short, Live Action Short, Animated Short, Previously in 2014

Past Best Actress Contests: 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013