And we are officially finishing up our 19th season of the Oscar Viewing Project ballots as we always do with "My Ballot." I have been making a point with these write-ups to not just catch every single one of the Oscar-nominated narrative, feature-length films (see below for links to all of our 2002 races), but also trying to seek out a number of films from the year I hadn't seen in a while or haven't seen at all, and that was true of 2002. Obviously I can't see everything, but I will own that I've seen a lot of movies from 2002, and here is the list of the movies I'd vote for if I'd have been able to choose the Oscar nominations. Thanks for playing along-join in in the comments over whom you would've picked!
Catch Me If You Can
Chicago
Far from Heaven
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
The Hours
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Minority Report
The Pianist
Spirited Away
Talk to Her
Gold: The best of the three Peter Jackson Tolkien movies (best of the six if you want to extend a helping hand to The Hobbit), The Two Towers is an astounding mix of journey, cliffhanger, friendship, mystery, and battle all in one movie. It's the sort of movie you just want to rewatch the second it's done you're on such a high.
Silver: Few films shaped the way I look at movies quite like The Hours. The constant crescendo as these three women arrive at their preordained fate, and just scene-after-scene of marvelous monologues and character study-everyone is firing on all cylinders here.
Bronze: Steven Spielberg's last great popcorn film to date (possibly his last period given how rarely he does them anymore), Minority Report is a Grade-A action thriller, one buoyed by a brilliant piece of acting from Tom Cruise & totally authentic world-building.
Stephen Daldry (The Hours)
Peter Jackson (The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers)
Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away)
Roman Polanski (The Pianist)
Steven Spielberg (Minority Report)
Gold: Jackson gets this one, and by a solid margin in my opinion. He is given the impossible task of trying to create a complete story that doesn't have a beginning or an end, and not only does he do that, he shifts it dramatically so it feels like it can stand on its own, and does it with his most compelling character appearing as CGI.
Silver: Stephen Daldry's work here is at its best when you realize the symmetry. Think of how well he takes a difficult book to adapt (the main three characters almost never interact), and makes it feel like they're inseparable, each scene less connecting to the next and more falling on top of each other like layers on a cake.
Bronze: Possibly the first time I've gone with the exact same trio for Picture/Director, but do you want to deny Spielberg here? After all, this is so well-paced and sharp...there's no spare scene in Minority Report, particularly in that urgent first half.
Adrien Brody (The Pianist)
Tom Cruise (Minority Report)
Daniel Day-Lewis (Gangs of New York)
Leonardo DiCaprio (Catch Me If You Can)
Elijah Wood (The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers)
Gold: Adrien Brody brings such connection to his work in The Pianist. Think of the way we see this gregarious, outgoing musician shed so much of his humanity like (in the case of his weight loss) literal layers. He totally envelopes & makes this astounding movie.
Silver: The best performance Leo's ever given? I could make a case for it. The way that DiCaprio brings a child's wonder to an increasingly brilliant series of cons that make him no less lonely, all while never losing an ounce of that breezy movie star glamour & appeal...it's effortless.
Bronze: Daniel Day-Lewis's commitment to the role of Bill the Butcher is unbelievable, but so are the results. Saving the film from itself, he creates one of the great villains of Scorsese's filmography with a nastiness that blows everyone else off the screen.
Nicole Kidman (The Hours)
Diane Lane (Unfaithful)
Julianne Moore (Far from Heaven)
Julianne Moore (The Hours)
Meryl Streep (The Hours)
Gold: For me, this is Kidman's finest hour (I know that's a controversial take). It's not the nose, though, but the woman underneath it. There's this incredible depth that she brings to the role, showing a woman of great brilliance, unparalleled in her world, who still knows that this place is not enough for her...she needs excitement, even if it destroys her. "Richmond is death" always gives me chills.
Silver: The commitment to Todd Haynes' homage to Douglas Sirk is remarkable in Julianne Moore's Cathy. Her turn in Far from Heaven is so placid, like she's caught between realms, and it's spectacular how she never loses that disconnect, even as everyone else in her universe tears her foundation asunder.
Bronze: Meryl Streep's Oscar miss for The Hours is easily the biggest snub from a woman who can't claim with a straight face that she's been "snubbed" by AMPAS. The work here is so grounded. Look at the way she carries herself in early scenes (every conversation feels like she's already rehearsed it), and then it slips away as the day loses control.
Sean Astin (The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers)
Ian McKellen (The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers)
Paul Newman (Road to Perdition)
Dennis Quaid (Far from Heaven)
Andy Serkis (The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers)
Gold: Andy Serkis ushered in a new era of acting with his Gollum, that's how singular this achievement is. The way that he brings expression in every click of his voice, creating two characters in one (Smeagol peaking out from behind the scary facade), and playing off his costars beautifully.
Silver: Ian McKellen also has to play a second character, taking on the guise of Gandalf the White, and while it doesn't have the whimsy of the previous film, it also brings us gravitas that we need with the increasing stakes. Personally, I don't get why Oscar stopped at just one nomination for him.
Bronze: Paul Newman's swan song from the movies (not really, but it should have been) is glorious. He plays a crime boss trying to also balance a fierce, frequently unearned loyalty to a family that he sacrificed in order to see success in business. His final soliloquy is some of the best work of a long career.
Patricia Clarkson (Far from Heaven)
Samantha Morton (Minority Report)
Lois Smith (Minority Report)
Meryl Streep (Adaptation)
Catherine Zeta-Jones (Chicago)
Gold: Catherine Zeta-Jones' gives the performance of a lifetime as Velma Kelly, stealing every scene she's in, and turning the longtime Broadway show into something most of the musicals that would come in Chicago's shadow couldn't claim-a story destined for the big screen. Bonus points for proving she CAN do it alone.
Silver: Samantha Morton is a chameleon of an onscreen performer, indistinguishable from one film from the next. This gives her an unreal aspect that perfectly fits Minority Report, where she plays a woman devoid of her humanity, but literally brimming with it when given the chance to show the world.
Bronze: We're giving Meryl two bronzes in 2002, it would appear. Her Susan Orlean is also an upper-class white woman caught in a literary quagmire, but here she has to encounter aspects of herself that go beyond Manhattan, and look not into her past but into her future. Think of how well Streep frames what changes about Susan as the film goes on...and what cannot shift.
Catch Me If You Can
The Hours
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Minority Report
The Pianist
Gold: I've read Michael Cunningham's The Hours, so I know what David Hare had going for him when he decided to tackle a book that feels quintessentially destined for the page. Not only does he bring that story to life, but he also does it while making it feel cinematic, as if this is the only way you could hear these women's tale.
Silver: The Two Towers gets the difficult task of taking Tolkien's detail-rich prose and trying to make something cinematic and engrossing. This is the toughest of the three scripts because it doesn't involve finality or world-building, but instead just a central story that keeps viewers enthralled every second.
Bronze: The way that Catch Me If You Can just floats is marvelous. I'm always a sucker for a caper/heist film, and this borrows from the best in the first half of the film almost to the point where you don't realize that you've fallen in love with this protagonist, and want him to find his way in the back half.
Far from Heaven
Panic Room
Spirited Away
Talk to Her
Y Tu Mama Tambien
Gold: In a year where the adapted films are taking a lot of the credit here, one of the best films of the year was wholly original (or at least if you don't count the parts it's cribbing from Lewis Carroll). Spirited Away stands up as one of Miyazaki's best films in large part due to the originality of its concept, and how truly vested you become in its tale.
Silver: The best part of Talk to Her is definitely its script. Almodovar's film is grand, shocking, and uses its twists to shape a rich story. The structuring here is extraordinary, and the way that it all makes sense in retrospect...I loved it. Few screenwriters are so instantly cinematic.
Bronze: Todd Haynes uses Far from Heaven's visual flourishes a bit more than Talk to Her (literally the only time you'll ever catch me saying someone out-visions Pedro), but that doesn't mean his script isn't working overtime. A story of forbidden love, prejudice, & betrayal all while operating in a suspended universe is grand in its execution.
The Cat Returns
Spirited Away
Treasure Planet
Gold: It's not a contest. Honestly, if only to give Miyazaki a competitive statue, and for one of his greatest achievements, this Oscar category deserves to exist. Spirited Away is an epic tale with complicated morality, total immersion, and it sucks me in every time. A winning achievement that deserved a Best Picture nomination (which I've rectified above!).
Silver: Disney's Treasure Planet is a gorgeous kaleidoscope of color, and the best movie in an era where the Mouse House seemed to be phoning it in. The film's animation is breathtaking, the way that it combines a steam punk aesthetic to the pirate ships, and the story works well...very little to complain about in a movie that's grown on me through the years.
Bronze: Sure, The Cat Returns is considered to be somewhat "lesser" Studio Ghibli, but the studio even at its bargain basement is still the best restaurant in town. Fun, spry, and maybe in need of some development (it definitely needed to spend more time with its side characters), but a charming stop if you're a completionist for the studio.
Far from Heaven
Hero
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Minority Report
Road to Perdition
Gold: The Two Towers takes Fellowship and turns it up to eleven in terms of its sound capabilities. The movie's score is better incorporated, especially into battle sequences, and it has the very difficult work of trying to mix both Gollum and the Ents into Jackson's universe.
Silver: The same can be said for the click-click-clicking of John Williams' score in Minority Report, which adds to an already tense series of chases and great mixing of dialogue into effects-heavy sequences in the movie. Think of how well silence is used in the one-off scenes with, say, Lois Smith & John Turturro.
Bronze: The clashing swords & whooshing fights of Hero are entrancing. This is a film that was in Crouching Tiger's shadow, and rather than shy away from it, it turned the volume up to eleven & gave us a remarkable array of showdowns & battles.
Hero
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Minority Report
Signs
Spirited Away
Gold: I'm going to switch it up a bit and give this one to Spielberg's Minority Report. The creepy spiders, and the way they spin on the floor, the design of the precogs, the constant dropping of the ball...it's fascinating to come to pass. Based on the sound effects alone, you get a complete world onto itself.
Silver: Close at hand, don't worry, is The Two Towers, which like it does with mixing, brings in a new dimension to the franchise. The battle of Helm's Deep (and of course the work with Gollum & the Ents) is marvelous in this movie, and gives so much depth to an already strong auditory palette.
Bronze: I'm going to go with Signs for third, which might be unusual for some, but I think Shyamalan saves the reveal of his aliens (and the bump-in-the-night horrors that lead up to it) so well here, even if the movie itself doesn't quite work for me.
Far from Heaven
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
The Hours
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Minority Report
Gold: Philip Glass's hyper-stylized score for The Hours might be a bit too much for some, but for this moviegoer it was exactly what I wanted. You need stakes from the get-go in a movie that pronounces a main character will die in the first few minutes, and Glass gives us so much strings & violins to accompany this epic day in the life of three women.
Silver: It hurts me to no avail to put Howard Shore's The Two Towers into silver, as it's my favorite of the three scores in the movies (I'm literally breaking out in panic trying to decide when we get to 2001 between Fellowship and Harry Potter for this category specifically), and it aides us so well, especially the themes that are introduced around Gollum and Helm's Deep.
Bronze: Elmer Bernstein's Oscar-nominated sendoff in Far from Heaven is the perfect closer to an epic career. The score is tricky here because it's supposed to overwhelm the film-the movie is designed to be constantly giving Cathy (and the viewer) too much, and that works as we continue, beautiful cellos & violins drowning out her reality.
"Die Another Day," (Die Another Day)
"Gollum's Song," (The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers)
"Hey Goldmember," (Austin Powers in Goldmember)
"I Move On," (Chicago)
"Lose Yourself," (8 Mile)
Gold: About the only thing that you can count against "Lose Yourself" is that it's an end credits song, and you really wish that you could see Eminem use it to close the movie. But it also works as a coda, a confirmation of the promise our protagonist has displayed all film, and with that, the promise that one of the great rappers of his generation brought at the peak of his powers.
Silver: Forgotten by Oscar, "Gollum's Song" is the only ominous ode in the sextet of Tolkien end credit songs. It also plays into the chilling last moments of the film, when Gollum fully commits to evil & gives the audience something to be frightened of in the coming finale. Like "Lose Yourself," it's an end credits song that doesn't have that impact-it feels like it connects into the movie itself.
Bronze: Our first appearance of Madonna in the Original Song category (she'll be back-I don't have the allergy to her that Oscar had, and she had some of the best film music of the 1990's). I think her work here is better than it gets credit for, with Die Another Day (the silliest & least of the Brosnan movies) getting a techno beat to match its lighter approach to 007.
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Hero
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Minority Report
Spirited Away
Gold: Even if you subtract Rivendell & the Shire from the equation, you're still given so much newness in this film that it's an easy first place to give away. In particular, I am struck by the maze-like wonder of Helm's Deep, and the world of Rohan and its expansive, horse-riding plains. It's such fine stuff, filled with detail.
Silver: Animation has art direction & production design too, and don't you forget it. This is especially the case for something like Spirited Away, which creates its own little island away from our world, and gives us expansive castles and a city of the sky.
Bronze: I loved the futuristic aesthetic of Minority Report. You shouldn't get points for predicting the future, but honestly the soulless, modernist design of the offices combined with a mall that feels like it's plucked out of our "constantly connected" phone addiction is proof that Spielberg was onto something here.
Far from Heaven
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Minority Report
The Pianist
Road to Perdition
Gold: Edward Lachman's gorgeous ode to Douglas Sirk in Far from Heaven is the film's best asset. Awash in a sea of fall-time golds & browns, he makes every shot of this movie read like an oil painting, covered with color, light, and trying to sneak out, a bit of shadow. Contrast the almost overwhelming glow of day against the moody richness of his nighttime shots-it's extraordinary.
Silver: Conrad L. Hall's swan song (lots of legends in this write-up getting their final shots at Oscar glory), this is beautiful. There's so much use of cloud & night in this movie, but it contrasts well with the earth tone color scheme, which I love. It's also one of the best uses of nighttime shooting I've seen (my pet peeve is eternally that I want to be able to see the actors in all of the shots, even when it's dark out!).
Bronze: Andrew Lesnie gets the bronze here, but only because the competition is so fierce. His strong battle sequences in The Two Towers are spectacular, but the real achievement is the way that he does such a good job of giving us glorious New Zealand backdrops to accompany the most effects-heavy of these five nominees.
Chicago
Far from Heaven
Hero
The Hours
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Gold: I will forever be puzzled as to how Sandy Powell missed for Far from Heaven (I don't care that she made it for a different movie, this still feels weird). The movie's costuming is so glamorous, as if pulled out of a catalog that most women would only circle from in the 1950's, meticulously framed over every actor.
Silver: The Hours has the difficult task of creating looks across three different time periods that suit women with an enormous amount in common. Look at the way that sexuality bursts open with Toni Collette's low-cut dress compared to Julianne Moore's frumpier daywear, or how Meryl Streep seems to always be enveloped by her clothes like she's using them as armor.
Bronze: Emi Wada's glorious costuming in Hero is epic, using monochromatic kimonos in every sequence, oftentimes not only matching the mood of the characters, but the set design itself (think of Jet Li in solid black against the large onyx doors, or the blood red Zhang Ziyi highlights against a yellowing forest of trees). Every outfit feels like it's specifically catered for a moment.
Far from Heaven
The Hours
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Minority Report
The Pianist
Gold: I love the way that The Two Towers is structured and paced. This is a movie that is coming in at three hours (or more if you're an extended edition girl), but it never feels like you need to stop to breathe (or that you want to). It's also topping this list because one of the characters, the most memorable one, has to be sewn into the fabric of the film itself by VFX artists and the editing team.
Silver: In another world, I'd be very happy to hand this statue to The Hours, which does an equally impressive job of crafting its story together, here making the interlocking tales of three women on separate journeys feel less like they are headed for each other, and more like they are piled on top of one another, each one adding to the others' burden.
Bronze: Minority Report gets the bronze here, and that's all to do with pacing. Minority Report is a long movie that pushes the envelope, especially as you spend much of the movie on-the-run with Cruise's John Anderton. You feel the urgency in every corner that our main protagonist's life depends on running.
Chicago
Hero
The Hours
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
The Ring
Gold: As I've mentioned before, I try to grade on a curve for sequels (only putting in what's new), but the thing about The Two Towers is there's a LOT of newness here, and it's all spellbinding. Gandalf's alabaster transformation, Theoden going from old to young, the entire bloody battle of Helm's Deep-it's a new dimension to Tolkien's world.
Silver: Unlike Oscar, I don't fixate on this needing to be all about ugliness or prosthetics, and so I am very at-home with giving a trophy to Chicago here for the way they transform all of our gorgeous leading ladies & gents into 1920's flappers & prisoners, period-adjacent with just the right amount of flare.
Bronze: My friend Cody will happily remind you that horror, which is home to some of the most incredible creations in the history of movie makeup, should be featured pretty much every year in this category. So I'm following his lead with a nomination for The Ring, where our main villain takes on an instantly iconic swamp monster aesthetic that would launch a thousand Halloween costumes.
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Hero
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Minority Report
Star Wars: Episode II-Attack of the Clones
Gold: Even if I didn't love the film itself, only a fool wouldn't hand this over to The Two Towers. Gollum puts this movie in the company of films like Star Wars, Jurassic Park, Titanic, and Avatar as a total advancement that changed the industry, never entirely the same after something so groundbreaking.
Silver: Everything else kind of pales by comparison, but I am impressed by Star Wars here, and while I know some think this film is ugly, I'm not one of them. I think the matte painting is strong, and while it isn't in the same league as Gollum, Yoda's visual look here makes his showdown against Count Dooku quite stunning.
Bronze: Third place will be Minority Report one last time (its fifth bronze medal this article!). It's not as rule-breaking as our first two contenders, but it combines CGI with a lot of great practical effects. The wall of cars moving in sync, in particular, stands out as a spellbinding effect.
Also in 2002: Picture, Director, Actress, Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously in 2002
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