My 2005 Oscar Ballot

We are going to step slightly out-of-chronology here & go back to 2005 rather than continuing counting backwards into 2012 (if I'm going to give a proper final ballot for 2012, there's a movie I want to rewatch first).  We are only doing these for years I've seen every Oscar nominee, so 2005, our most recent completed ballot, felt like the perfect option.  I won't preamble too much here, as you're getting familiar with the drill, but if you're not...I viewed every one of the Oscar nominees as part of our Oscar Viewing Project in every narrative, feature-length category (all of the previous contests are at the bottom of the page).  Here I'm presenting who I would put on my ballot if I'd gotten to pick all of the nominees at the Oscars that year.  Like with the Oscar Viewing Project, I'm picking my very favorite performances of the year without considering anything else (like if an actor or artist is overdue or over-honored).  Enjoy!

Picture

Brokeback Mountain

Cache

The Constant Gardener

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Good Night, and Good Luck

King Kong

Match Point

The New World

Paradise Now

Sophie Scholl: The Final Days

Gold: Probably my favorite film of the aughts, Brokeback Mountain is a complete, compelling movie from start-to-finish, establishing us in a once-in-a-lifetime love story, and then continually pulling us back, forcing us to embrace our remembrance of that union as society & time pull Ennis & Jack into directions that lead to the film's inevitable end.

Silver: Few films feel more prescient than Cache, a movie that is part mystery, part family drama, but as the movie ages, increasingly about how we put ourselves in the spotlight, constantly shining a camera on the things we don't always understand or acknowledge in our past & present.

Bronze: While Terrence Malick has gotten some harshness in the past few years for his increasingly abstract movies, in 2005 it was still a Brigadoon-level event whenever one of his movie showed up.  A gorgeous, epic look at the beginning of Jamestown, told through a fresh lens.

Director

George Clooney (Good Night, and Good Luck)

Michael Haneke (Cache)

Peter Jackson (King Kong)

Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain)

Terrence Malick (The New World)

Gold: Ang Lee's magnum opus is a tender film, one that needs to feel both old & modern.  He achieves that through careful, selective direction, taking moments to go in on our lovers, and when to pull back & just let us appreciate the shifting landscape.

Silver: Haneke's genius as a director is knowing what to hold back.  Here, we are left with more questions than answers as the movie keeps going, but that's because he's laying out the evidence just as our protagonist finds it-he knows everything we know, which makes it all the more frightening...

Bronze: Terrence Malick's movies are so beautiful, you'd be forgiven for thinking they just happen that way through the cinematographer.  But it takes a director with a keen eye, sometimes one his own actors don't appreciate, to film something as introspective & majestic as The New World.

Actress

Joan Allen (The Upside of Anger)

Juliette Binoche (Cache)

Julia Jentsch (Sophie Scholl: The Final Days)

Naomi Watts (King Kong)

Reese Witherspoon (Walk the Line)

Gold: Star power is an underrated virtue in the movies these days, where the value seems to be more on transformations & mimicry.  Reese Witherspoon doesn't just capture the look of June Carter in Walk the Line, but through her sheer magnetism she encapsulates the spirit of a frustrated, ambitious country singer in love with a man she thinks could be better than he is.

Silver: Juliette Binoche is probably our greatest working actress, and you see that here.  Notice the way that she handles the men in her life (her husband & son), the similarities and the differences in her approach, and the way it compares to the other women in their lives.

Bronze: Naomi Watts adapts to the King Kong film with a sort of old-school glamour that I could not stop raving about at the time, and holds up just as well in hindsight.  She instills a type of Silent Era stillness to her Ann that matches perfectly with a giant ape.

Actor

Daniel Auteil (Cache)

Ralph Fiennes (The Constant Gardener)

Jake Gyllenhaal (Brokeback Mountain)

Heath Ledger (Brokeback Mountain)

David Strathairn (Good Night, and Good Luck)

Gold: My favorite performance of the 2000's, Heath Ledger gives us a character for the ages as Ennis, a man in love in the wrong time, never quite understanding himself, and finding his footing only in tragedy & loss, uncomfortable with what is in his heart.

Silver: Gyllenhaal has the trickier part of the two leads even if it's not the baitier one-he has to be louder, demanding things that he doesn't know how to articulate.  "I wish I knew how to quit you" is spit out not just at Ennis, but in Gyllenhaal's hands he hurls it at the universe.

Bronze: Daniel Auteil, like Binoche's part, needs to be both inner & outer in Cache.  He is a figure that is known for giving off himself (he's a TV show host), but always being in control.  Auteil understands the inner-anger of a powerful man forced to play a game that's not on his own terms.

Supporting Actress

Amy Adams (Junebug)

Maria Bello (A History of Violence)

Anne Hathaway (Brokeback Mountain)

Rachel Weisz (The Constant Gardener)

Michelle Williams (Brokeback Mountain)

Gold: Michelle Williams' part, like many in Brokeback Mountain, requires her to give a sense of her understanding of a situation that she can't articulate outwardly to the audience.  She does that so well by being caught between wifely obedience (something she was taught to understand) & a child's inability to comprehend why her husband seeks out another man.

Silver: Weisz has a difficult task of playing a woman so powerful, her memory can haunt over the rest of the picture.  That's a lot to put on an actor, forcing them to make a strong enough impression she drives the back-half of her film, but the actress, graduating from B-movies into the big leagues, does so perfectly.

Bronze: The movie that brought Amy Adams onto our radar still remains one of her best performances. Her Ashley would be a joke in another actress's hands, using the character's "simplicity" and kindness as humor for the audience, but Adams makes her real, earnest but never false.  That's a miracle to be able to play, and was the reason we all continue to hope Adams eventually gets that Oscar.

Supporting Actor

Maurice Benichou (Cache)

Matt Damon (Syriana)

Brendan Gleeson (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire)

Christopher Plummer (The New World)

Andy Serkis (King Kong)

Gold: In an unusual field, I am going to tip my hat to Andy Serkis, whose work as an ape (and also in some scenes as a man) is captivating.  Serkis' has become the go-to for motion-capture not just because he's a pioneer of the technology, but because he's a brilliant actor which we see in his tender Kong.

Silver: A more conventional performance comes from Matt Damon, a cynical man who must confront his own morality after he endures unspeakable tragedy.  Damon plays his Bryan as someone who cannot change who he is, but who he is might have been a more honorable man than he (and we) initially suspected.

Bronze: The acting in the Harry Potter films usually got relegated to the backend, with us not appreciating the fine (genre) character work that the Royal Shakespeare Company that the directors assembled are doing in the faculty.  In this film, Gleeson plays his Moody as a crazed, duplicitous, but intriguing individual, totally eating into the fun of the script.

Adapted Screenplay

Brokeback Mountain

The Constant Gardener

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

A History of Violence

King Kong

Gold: I have read the original story of Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx many times, and every time I marvel about how the writers of the film found such a full, complete story from such a sparse (beautiful) tale.  A perfect example of succinctness & structure.

Silver: Movies with enigmatic characters at their center frequently suffer from revealing too much or not trusting the audience will catch on to the story.  This isn't the case with A History of Violence, which is certain that you'll get to the finish line with these more-than-what-they-seem characters.

Bronze: Another thriller, The Constant Gardener is both taut & organized, the latter an unusual compliment for a script, but one that is so crucial to this film, which needs you to be vested in the tale of these characters every step of the story (which you are thanks to the writing & acting).

Original Screenplay

Cache

L'Enfant

Good Night, and Good Luck

Match Point

Sophie Scholl: The Final Days

Gold: What Hitchcock might be making in the 2000's, if Hitchcock was willing to go beyond just titillating the audience, and instead was willing to absolutely ravage our sensibilities with near constant terror.  A thought-provoking, challenging work, and Haneke's finest.

Silver: Biopics fall into such a rut that you'd be excused for thinking that the tale of Edward R. Murrow might just be another ode to impressions.  But that's not the case with George Clooney's magnum opus, a beautiful, jazzy script that pays as much homage to the Red Scare as he does modern journalism (and its decline).

Bronze: Always a dangerous game to recognize Woody Allen these days, but you cannot deny Match Point is his best script from this century, a sharp look at money, class, & what we're willing to sacrifice as we move our way to the top of the pile.

Animated Feature Film

Howl's Moving Castle

Tim Burton's The Corpse Bride

Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit

Gold: Finding a followup to Spirited Away was surely an arduous task for Hayao Miyazaki, but you'd barely be able to tell while encountering the gorgeous, fantastic work of Howl's Moving Castle, an epic & poetic look at witches, wizards, & curses.

Silver: Tim Burton was once ingenious in all of his work, but since the turn of the century he saves his most inventive work for the world of animation.  Corpse Bride rises above (get it?) its conventional plot & predictable script with splendid visuals & fun vocal work.

Bronze: Though some of the humor is a bit dated, that doesn't mean that Aardman didn't bring charm as Wallace & Gromit get their first feature-length movie.  Bonus points for the cheeky homage to the monster movie genre (ripe for parody).

Original Score

Brokeback Mountain

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

King Kong

Munich

The New World

Gold: Sparse scores sometimes falter in their execution.  While cinematic music is supposed to be a background character, it feels dismissible if it's not done well.  Gustavo Santaolalla's work in Brokeback Mountain, though, uses every inch of its canvas, giving us a rich, iconic melody to cling to in the film's tender moments.

Silver: Music is subjective, and I get that.  But I love a big score, one that invites itself in & shows off that it can have personality, flavor, and live up to what we're expecting from the filmmakers.  That's exactly what we get from James Newton Howard in King Kong, a set list worthy of its gigantic title character.

Bronze: John Williams' Munich is the better of the composer's many 2005 scores (the last year he seemed to truly be everywhere), with the action set-pieces elevated by a full-bodied orchestra & a smart reliance on string instruments.

Original Song

"In the Deep," (Crash)

"A Love That Will Never Grow Old," (Brokeback Mountain)

"The Maker Makes," (Brokeback Mountain)

"The Remains of the Day," (Tim Burton's Corpse Bride)

"Travellin Thru," (Transamerica)

Gold: 2005 was the rare respite for screen songs, as the 2000's were arguably the worst decade for this category (even if you pick your own lineup) without musicals to guide us through.  Part of that is the perfectly-felt soundtrack of Brokeback Mountain, and its haunting Emmylou Harris ballad "A Love That Will Never Grow Old."

Silver: It says something about how good of a song this is that I'm willing to put Crash not only on this list, but to have it beat one of the the Brokeback numbers AND Dolly Parton.  But that's what "In the Deep" does-it's a melancholy dirge that sums up its exact moment in Crash exactly.

Bronze: Dolly isn't far behind, though.  Transamerica has a lot of problems (in many ways, it has aged just as poorly as Crash), but Dolly brings her gifts as America's best living songwriter with this bouncy, charming ode to the road.

Sound Mixing

Brokeback Mountain

Good Night, and Good Luck

King Kong

The New World

Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith

Gold: The best trick that Terrence Malick plays in The New World is how he seems to, in the film's opening chapters, genuinely transport you so completely that you feel you're actually visiting Jamestown in the 16th Century.  Much of that is unlocked in the naturalism of his sound work.

Silver: Brokeback Mountain does a similar sort of transformation, though to a much more modern era of the 1960's, steeped in realism & accompanied by a barely-there (but still memorable) soundtrack melding into the background.

Bronze: I'm not always about the smaller sounds, though, and can acknowledge that King Kong turns things up to eleven with care.  One of the better aspects about Kong is that it doesn't cover the dialogue-we hear what the actors are saying, and it does a smart job of mixing in James Newton Howard's score.

Sound Editing

Batman Begins

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

King Kong

The New World

Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith

Gold: It's sometimes hard to tell the difference between the Mixing & Editing when it comes to King Kong, but that's kind of the point.  The movie does a stellar job of giving us distinction as it unfolds, particularly when it comes to the animal sounds & the siege of the boat.

Silver: The whirling gadgetry of Batman Begins is oftentimes forgotten in the shadow of its more successful followups, but the sounds (especially of the car & anything involving Scarecrow) in the movie click with the darkened world Christopher Nolan is inviting us into.

Bronze: Like Kong, The New World does a strong job of making its sound work blend so much that it's hard to distinguish which boats & gunshots are real & which are melding into the background.  But like I said above, the sound work is doing a lot of the time travel heavy-lifting, as we'd be able to distinguish an inauthentic achievement.

Art Direction

Good Night, and Good Luck

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

King Kong

Memoirs of a Geisha

Pride & Prejudice

Gold: The worlds of Kong are distinct and invite you in-Skull Island is properly expansive, a place out of space-and-time, while the shots of modern day New York City give a snow-covered glimmer to a Manhattan of old.

Silver: Even judging on the curve of "only honor what's new to the picture," we are in for a treat with Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, with the decadent Yule Ball being arguably the single most beautiful set design of the entire series to date.

Bronze: Memoirs of a Geisha has the easiest in of these five films (beautiful, flower-coated worlds for the audience to explore), but the overuse of red-and-brown give us a sense of the cloistered beauty in this world-not everything is as it seems.

Cinematography

Brokeback Mountain

Cache

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Good Night, and Good Luck

The New World

Gold: Possibly the most beautiful film of the 2000's (give or take...maybe scratch that "possibly"), The New World is a rich, immersive landscape, lush with green & promise in a way that makes it feel like it's all CGI, even though it's real.  Lubezki is a genius.

Silver: In almost any other year Rodrigo Prieto's intimate, almost claustrophobic camera angles in Brokeback Mountain would take the gold.  Alas it will settle for second, though the way the camera almost guides the story along makes me itch for an upset.

Bronze: Unlike the Academy, I don't automatically crush on anything shot in black-and-white.  That being said, there's something about the nightclub motif of Good Night that moves beyond mere black-and-white and gives the film an elegant aura, as if we're watching a film actually from the 1950's.

Costume Design

Brokeback Mountain

Memoirs of a Geisha

The New World

Pride & Prejudice

The White Countess

Gold: Memoirs of a Geisha probably would've gotten this nomination under literally any circumstance (it's that kind of movie), but it demands first place through the way that it gives its character's more depth.  The floral kimono that Zhang Ziyi wears to contrast the garden or the dangerous elegance of Gong Li's fur stole-this is why Colleen Atwood remains an icon in her field.

Silver: We've seen so many iterations of the Bennets & Mr. Darcy that Jacqueline Durran would be forgiven for having no new ideas over Pride & Prejudice.  She doesn't though, by giving us simple designs & enough similarity between the five sisters' gowns so that we notice the differences, accentuating the characters themselves.

Bronze: The best parts of Brokeback Mountain's costuming are when we see the clothes as extensions of the people onscreen.  The clothes feel legitimately worn, like they were pulled out of the back of a closet or drawer, and have enough distinct color similarities that you notice them when the ending of the film relies so heavily on you recalling a specific pair of shirts.

Film Editing

Brokeback Mountain

Cache

King Kong

The New World

Paradise Now

Gold: Clean lines, elegant cutting, & brevity are what define Brokeback Mountain.  A strong editor brings that out in the movie, and gives us a love story that always feels like it's slipping away, even when it's just starting.

Silver: Cache risks boring the audience into a stupor with the multiple stationery camera scenes, where you're meant to be seeing absolutely nothing (or is there more?), but the film's editors strike just the right balance between "long enough that it's jarring" and not risking you glancing at your watch.  In a thriller, that's an equilibrium you must achieve.

Bronze: The bigger action sequences of King Kong happen without any hiccups, and are constant adrenaline rushes.  Think of the showdown between Kong and the T-Rex, or Kong fighting Adrien Brody on a jagged cliffside...these are succinct & edge-of-your-seat.

Makeup

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

Good Night, and Good Luck

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

The New World

Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith

Gold: In a year brimming with franchise installments & reimagining of classic characters, an otherwise unmentioned film takes our top prize here, with Tilda Swinton's White Witch & James McAvoy's Mr. Tumnus being the standouts in a film brimming with quality iconography.

Silver: I don't always value realism this much (we go to the movies to escape), but damn if The New World doesn't totally get me on this front.  The almost virtual reality quality of stepping back in time means that the movie needs to be just right to get us signed up, and that's what the hair & makeup team bring to this picture.

Bronze: Makeup isn't always about prosthetics & aging & the unusual...sometimes it's just about making everyone look good.  This is what happens with the elegance of Good Night, and Good Luck, which clearly not only brought some sharpness to its cast, but likely was an inspiration for Mad Men.

Visual Effects

Batman Begins

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

King Kong

Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith

War of the Worlds

Gold: At a time when Peter Jackson's inventiveness was kind of the benchmark for the visual effects world (he eventually would "fall into shadow" with his next, horrible film), there was really no beating Kong.  Obviously the boat, island, & plane attacks would rate a spot on this list, but the gold goes to the way the VFX artists enhanced Andy Serkis' terrific performance.

Silver: For all that people can say about the prequels (and at this point they've said it all), they did usher in a new era of visual effects wizardry, and I cannot ignore that even when the movie surrounding them is of questionable quality.

Bronze: A very tight race here (made tighter by a recent viewing of HP4), but Batman Begins does some truly ingenious work with its practical effects & early, scrappier chase sequences (particularly the new Batmobile) that feels like it just exceeds the gigantic dragons of Goblet of Fire (but it's close).

Also in 2005: Picture, Director, Actress, Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Original Screenplay, Adapted Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Original Score, Original Song, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously in 2005

OVP: Picture (2005)

OVP: Best Picture (2005)

The Nominees Were...

Diana Ossana & James Schamus, Brokeback Mountain
Caroline Baron, William Vance, & Michael Ohoven, Capote
Paul Haggis & Cathy Schulman, Crash
Grant Heslov, Good Night, and Good Luck
Kathleen Kennedy, Steven Spielberg, & Barry Mendel, Munich

My Thoughts: It is time!  In what has been our most succinct and on-time OVP ever (sign of things to come?!?), we are at the end of our 2005 Oscars.  Overall throughout this I've found that while the 2005 Oscars get a deserved bad rap (namely for our winner today), overall Oscar didn't have a lot of great options in 2005.  Most of the best films of the year were either genre, foreign, or really unconventional (by Oscar standards), and so expecting AMPAS to get behind them might have been a stretch too far, but that being said...they deserve the shame for what they did here.  So let's revisit arguably the lowest moment I've ever encountered at the Academy Awards.

We're going to start with Capote.  Capote is the sort of film I gravitate toward.  It's about a writer, it's dark & chilly, and it's not a film with a particularly happy ending, all cornerstones of my favorite movies.  But it is completely reliant upon you loving Philip Seymour Hoffman's performance as the title character, and I don't.  It's too broad, it's too mimic-y, it's everything that became wrong with biopics after the trio of Best Actor winners from 2006-07 proved that playing a real-life figure can guarantee you an Oscar.  It feels unkind at this point to speak too ill of Hoffman (me a decade ago would have been much crueler to Capote than now), but even upon revisiting it doesn't gel-it's the sort of movie you have to be an uber-devoted fan of his to make work, and that wasn't me.

Munich is also a picture where I think you need to be an uber-fan of Steven Spielberg's, which I am to a much greater degree than Hoffman, but I'm not a "Stan" of him (always a dangerous thing to be when you're trying to be objective about the movies).  Spielberg's work here is handsome, but frequently blasé.  Munich has well-constructed action sequences, and I loved Lynn Cohen's brief turn in the movie as Golda Meir.  But it's too long, and it doesn't flesh out its characters-it's the sort of movie that relies upon real-life and our collective memories of a tragedy to fill in the gaps of what the people onscreen are feeling, but while I am aware of the Munich Olympics tragedies, I didn't live through it, and Spielberg shouldn't expect that of his audience.  This is the sort of movie that probably would have been ignored were it not from an Academy favorite.

Conversely, Good Night, and Good Luck is the best film from a director that oftentimes meanders or doesn't entirely know what he's doing in a film (Clooney's directorial work is mixed-at-best).  The movie has ambiance, and ages really well, though it feels more an historic oddity in an age of Fox News and CNN talking heads becoming key members of the Trump administration.  The movie isn't perfect-one has to wonder whether the decision not to have an actor play Joseph McCarthy deprives us of a more meaningful payoff late in the film between Strathairn and the senator, but it's much better than I remembered, and it has a cool, sophisticated motif that puts it kind of in a class its own when it comes to Best Picture nominees of the aughts.

Brokeback Mountain is thankfully no longer the only major LGBT-film that is universally-praised as a masterpiece.  In its wake are Carol, Moonlight, and Call Me By Your Name (all armed with Oscar love of their own).  But it stands apart as not only a pioneering film, but also a near-perfect one.  It is the rare epic that's best moments are held in quiet onscreen glances, like the reunion of Jack-and-Ennis, or the emotionless phone call between Ennis & Lurleen.  It's a handcrafted screenplay, a brilliant acting quartet, and a film that examines not just gay love, but the impermanence of our place on this earth, and how our decisions matter, even if they're the only ones we think we can make.  Brokeback Mountain would've been one of the best films ever honored by Oscar in the Best Picture category, one of those moments that might have yielded a watershed conversation about their relevance and direction in highlighting unsung filmmakers.  Alas, it was not to be.

Crash would be a bad movie even if it hadn't beaten Brokeback Mountain at the Oscars.  The film feels decades old in the way that it handles race in broad, uncomplicated strokes, and it doesn't co-mingle the stories of these characters in a way that feels authentic or without surprise (you can see how different characters are going to interact without thinking too hard).  That being said, it's impossible to separate such a film, one that wants to condone its racist police officer (because somehow having a dying father makes it okay to treat black people like monsters?), from its defeat of Brokeback, which was a groundbreaking movie in an era where George W. Bush was using anti-gay bigotry to defeat John Kerry.  Giving Crash the Oscar over Brokeback was ugly not just because it's an inferior movie, but because it was a way for Hollywood to plug its fingers in its ears when it came to the gay rights movement, waiting until it was less financially risky to showcase acceptance.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes split their nominations between Comedy/Musical and Drama, so we have a full ten nominees here.  Drama went to Brokeback Mountain over Good Night, Match Point, The Constant Gardener, and A History of Violence (man is that an improvement over Oscar's lineup), while the top Musical or Comedy was Walk the Line above Mrs. Henderson Presents, Pride & Prejudice, The Producers, and The Squid and the Whale.  The PGA went for an almost carbon copy of the Oscars, save for Brokeback winning and Walk the Line besting Munich, while the BAFTA's also gave Best Picture to Brokeback, this time substituting The Constant Gardener above Munich.  All things considered, I have to assume that the 5/5 matchup between Picture/Director in 2005 probably was a close call-it's easy to see a situation where Walk the Line gets into Best Picture while Spielberg competes for Best Director, making the country music biopic our sixth place.

Films I Would Have Nominated: I'm going to do something weird here and also copy Oscar when it comes to 5/5 with Best Director, but not with the same films.  I recently re-watched King Kong, and while some didn't love it (then or now), I did-I thought it was a flawed but really captivating movie, and it'd make my list.  I'd also include Terrence Malick's visual masterpiece The New World (and not just cause I'm a devotee) & Michael Haneke's best movie (saying something) Cache, which unlike Crash ages brilliantly in a way that I wonder if even Haneke could've predicted.

Oscar’s Choice: Oscar picked Crash.  It probably was a close contest, but there's no getting around it.

My Choice: No question that it's Brokeback-even a movie that I adore as much as Cache couldn't compete had it been nominated.  I'd follow that with Good Night, Munich, Capote, and in the far rear, Crash.

And with that, we close 2005, though it will carry on in the comments if you so choose.  Anyone coming to the comments ready to side with Oscar had better come prepared, but I suspect most of us are on the Brokeback train.  What's your favorite of the remaining three nominees (so often forgotten in this rivalry)?  And overall-what is your favorite movie of 2005?  Share your comments below!

Also in 2005: Director, Actress, Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Original Screenplay, Adapted Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Original Score, Original Song, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously in 2005

Past Best Picture Contests: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016

OVP: Director (2005)

OVP: Best Director (2005)

The Nominees Were...

George Clooney, Good Night, and Good Luck
Paul Haggis, Crash
Ang Lee, Brokeback Mountain
Bennett Miller, Capote
Steven Spielberg, Munich

My Thoughts: All right-we will finish up our (only once interrupted rundown) of the 2005 Oscars this week, as we address the Best Picture & Director nominees.  I will try not to be redundant, but in 2005 the Academy didn't make that easy for me as the nominees for Best Picture & Director were the same five films.  This isn't very common at the Oscars-before 2005 you have to go back all the way to 1981 to find a Best Picture field that matches with Best Director.  That year had genuine film classics like Raiders of the Lost Ark, Reds, and Chariots of Fire in contention.  It also weirdly split the actual winners, something that would also be duplicated in 2005.  But we'll get to that when we address Best Picture.

Our first contender is going to be Munich, mostly because I like the symmetry with 1981 due to that race also including Steven Spielberg.  Munich is modern-day Spielberg, where the technical achievement is all there, but we don't see the passion or creative risk we got with a movie like Raiders.  This is partially because Munich is more concerned about spreading the message of its film than about crafting a truly remarkable motion picture (it feels like it could've been an ace documentary).  The technical prowess of Spielberg can't totally be hidden-we see it in the ticking bomb action sequences, but he doesn't grow characters, and his tendency to stifle female performers is there as we get a sea of wives & girlfriends (and Golda Meir) while the men get more interesting parts.  Munich is therefore mid-level work from him, good but hardly classic.

The same can be said for Bennett Miller in Capote.  This film is sharp, and looks great-it has a cold demeanor, and Miller isn't shy about bringing out tricks that highlight his vision for Capote & the stars of the movie.  However, the fact that Miller can't get Hoffman's mimicry to jive with the chilly motif he's trying to bring to Capote is a big turnoff for the direction, and kind of makes all of the cool touches he drops feel like wasted opportunity more than something trying to elevate the movie.  Capote is entirely dependent on your love for Hoffman's work, and as I was fairly ambivalent, you can't really enjoy anything that it seems to touch, including Miller's mechanical direction.

Ang Lee's work is slightly less reliant on his chief actors, but it's helped that they have performances I can get behind.  The way that he brings to life Brokeback is best when he's showing the passage of time, as we watch these men's lives flee before our eyes, and realize as it goes how precious life is, and how easy it is to waste time.  Lee's direction is stunning: compact, judicious, but never rushed, and he brings a potentially thin initial story to life.  Brokeback works because of its director, and the way he never gives us a spare second (even when we want one).

Paul Haggis, on the other hand, drowns under the weight of his film.  If anyone was going to save Crash, it had to be the director.  This is a multi-plotline film with broad, intersecting stories, so he has to bring out the subtleties that the actors are capable of, and try to make them feel more delicate or complicated than the screenplay is willing to do.  Haggis fails in this-there is little directorial style to his decisions, and oftentimes any sort of direction cedes to the background.  There's a reason that Crash lost this prize while winning Picture & Screenplay-it's because the director is practically invisible in the shaping of the movie, it feels so much an actor's & writer's project.

The final nominee can't get such a criticism.  George Clooney more than anyone nominated this year crafts a distinct vision in Good Night, and Good Luck, giving us a motif that feels like a secret.  The ways that Clooney moves the camera or stays just a little too long on a singer or a conversation-it would fail in the hands of a lesser filmmaker.  Never before or since has Clooney been able to so well-match his sophisticated style with a film, but that doesn't mean that Good Night doesn't stand as a triumph for the director.  It's a sharp, distinctive movie.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes cheated, so we don't get five nominees from each precursor here as while they gave their trophy to Ang Lee, he beat five nominees to win in it rather than four: Clooney, Spielberg, Woody Allen (Match Point), Peter Jackson (King Kong), & Fernando Meirelles (The Constant Gardener).  BAFTA kept to five nominees, picking Lee as its winner, and replacing from Oscar's lineup only Spielberg in favor of Meirelles.  The DGA wasn't very creative either, giving the trophy to Lee, and picking Oscar's exact lineup.  Honestly-while Meirelles makes the most sense for sixth (he was a surprise nominee in this category just two years prior), I think he was a distant sixth.

Directors I Would Have Nominated: For starters, Terrence Malick is making this list.  The New World gets better with age, and is a truly triumphant comeback for the director after a seven-year hiatus.  I'd also include Michael Haneke, who finds so many creepy moments in Cache, and gives us an entirely modern spin on the concept of celebrity & privacy.  And before you think that I can't get behind popcorn fare, I'd be onboard with HFPA's Peter Jackson nod-this isn't Lord of the Rings, but Kong is epic & ambitious, and it succeeds enough to be spectacular.
Oscar's Choice: Showing few signs of what was to come, Ang Lee won an easy trophy here.

My Choice: Lee, with apologies to Clooney who would've been in the running against a different field.  Spielberg, Miller, and Haggis all follow (in that order).

Those were my thoughts-how about yours?  Does anyone dare speak aloud a nominee other than Ang Lee, or are we all behind Brokeback in this lineup?  Does anyone want to hazard a guess as to who was in second (for my money, I'm betting on Clooney rather than Haggis)?  And why wasn't there more momentum for Allen or Meirelles to create a split here?  Share your thoughts in the comments!

Also in 2005: Actress, Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Original Screenplay, Adapted Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Original Score, Original Song, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously in 2005

Past Best Director Contests: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016

OVP: Actress (2005)

OVP: Best Actress (2005)

The Nominees Were...

Judi Dench, Mrs. Henderson Presents
Felicity Huffman, Transamerica
Keira Knightley, Pride & Prejudice
Charlize Theron, North Country
Reese Witherspoon, Walk the Line

My Thoughts: There are a lot of years you could claim is the "worst" lineup ever assembled for Best Actress.  1949 comes to mind, so does 1975 & 1994.  But this century, few have been so maligned as 2005, a year where admittedly the choices were slim (we'll get to precursors below).  None of the Best Picture nominees had what we'd consider a proper leading actress in them (the closest we get is Sandra Bullock in Crash, and she was definitely campaigned in supporting).  Sometimes these lineups have hidden gems, other times they truly deserve the stench surrounding them.  Today, we'll delve into this lineup and see if popular opinion is unjustified or well-earned.

We'll start with arguably the actress whose career has most changed since 2005, and that's Charlize Theron.  At the time, Theron was considered someone who had de-glammed to an Oscar, and was either an actress who had basically just tricked the Academy (a one-trick star) or had found an unconventional way to highlight her massive talent.  It turns out that Theron, through action & comedy, would have a great knack for stardom & do well in the next 15 years, but that wasn't evident by her paltry work in North Country.  I found her turn in North Country to be paint-by-numbers, the sort of "bait-y" role that Oscar regularly cites for Best Actress but doesn't have enough depth, and oftentimes feels like she's asked to elevate a film, but a film so devoted to her that it's kind of the lead performance's fault for the film sucking.  Theron's ability to play straight drama is stretched-to-the-limit here, and she doesn't succeed in convincing as an average woman in a unique situation.

Judi Dench, at the very least, could not be accused of playing against type (or her skills) in Mrs. Henderson Presents.  I'd say this was the peak of Dench's time with Hollywood, but she'd get two more nominations after this and even headline her own franchise, so she was just in the midst of her decade of fame.  This is the least of Dench's nominations, for my money, though it's hard to actively dislike the work and of the lesser performances nominated here, it's the most forgivable as it's a fun little movie.  There's just nothing there-this was basically a nomination simply for Dench-being-Dench, and while that's great for a moviegoer, that doesn't necessarily equate to fine acting, which Dench is more than capable of achieving.

If Dench got this nomination as a continued acknowledgement of her power and Theron as a "we were right!" then Keira Knightley's nomination, more than the other first-timers, has the aura of a down-payment on future successes.  Knightley is also a brilliant actress, and has done some truly splendid (and atypical) acting in the years since, but I don't love her Elizabeth Bennett.  This is a part that's hard to screw up (the "rooting for her" is baked into the script), and I don't feel like Knightley elevated her enough.  It's a bit unfair to task Knightley with this because hindsight shows we knew she could be this charming and watchable onscreen (at the time she was known to most simply for the Pirates movies), and that we know she can do better, but this is a "good but meh" piece of work, even if we just take it on its own merits.

Reese Witherspoon's win in a lot of ways felt like Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich, Oscar giving in to popular opinion about America's sweetheart (Sandra Bullock would bookend this trio four years later for The Blind Side).  That said, this is the one performance here that feels like it belongs in a list of their great work, even for Witherspoon (who between Wild and Big Little Lies has been doing her best work in recent years).  June Carter Cash is a fully-onscreen persona.  There's no need to keep her true to real-life (though Witherspoon does), and she crafts a real character that adapts to the realities of moviedom in a way that even Joaquin Phoenix doesn't in the movie.  This is not Witherspoon's most challenging part, but she rises to it, and gives it her all, and comes out the other end with a better movie because of what she's bringing.

The final nominee is Felicity Huffman.  Huffman's professional reputation has been trampled in the past year with her involvement in the Operation Varsity Blues college admissions scandal (this is her own doing-I don't have sympathy on this one even if I'm willing to forget), but at the time this was the peak of her career, not only winning the Globe but also starring in the biggest show on the planet, Desperate Housewives.  Huffman's a favorite of mine (Desperate Housewives is one of my all-time favorite shows, and one I'm ecstatic to be revisiting this fall), so it pains me to point out that I cannot stand her work in Transamerica.  Putting aside that the entire concept of her taking on this role has soured (a conversation I'm more forgiving on than others, even if I get the point, but that's a conversation for a different day), her Bree is just a series of ticks, low vocal cadences, and feels like she's relying upon "deglam" herself to win this nomination.  There's none of the sturdy demeanor or hard-earned tenderness that are hallmarks of Huffman's best work, and, honestly, the role needs these exact skills to flourish.  A big miss for AMPAS, and a crime considering what Huffman can be capable of that this will surely be her only Oscar nod.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes separate their nominations between Drama and Musical/Comedy, so we have ten women nominated for these awards.  Best Actress in a Drama gave the top trophy to Huffman, besting Maria Bello (A History of Violence), Gwyneth Paltrow (Proof), Theron, and Ziyi Zhang (Memoirs of a Geisha), while Comedy/Musical obviously crowned Witherspoon, here over Dench, Knightley, Laura Linney (The Squid and the Whale), and Sarah Jessica Parker (The Family Stone).  As a testament to how dire the lead actress race was in 2005, both Bello & Linney would've been considered supporting in a normal year.  SAG went with Witherspoon over the Academy lineup save for Knightley (they picked Zhang instead) and BAFTA subbed Weisz & Zhang in for Knightley & Huffman (Transamerica I don't think had been released in the UK though Huffman wouldn't be nominated the following year) while also picking Reese.  All-in-all, it's kind of a pity even if her performance was middling that Ziyi Zhang didn't get in, as she was obviously in sixth place & would've made history as the first openly Asian actress nominated for Best Actress (something that to-this-day has never occurred).

Actors I Would Have Nominated: In 1975, the Oscars looked to foreign and independent films to fill out a thin field, and they would've been wise to consider that in 2005, which I'm sorry to say does live up to its "underwhelming" reputation.  Juliette Binoche (Cache) and Julia Jentsch (Sophie Scholl: The Final Days) both gave terrific performances, and would've been nice surprises here.  If they'd expanded into genre films, Naomi Watts' silent star glamour in King Kong would've been a better way to go for her than 21 Grams.  And then there's Joan Allen in The Upside of Anger, a movie that all of the precursors ignored for inexplicable reasons (at the time my favorite blog, The Film Experience, was championing her hard), despite it being an accessible comedy with a star they'd nominated three times (and came close a fourth), who was giving a home run of a performance.  This easily could've been a career-capper sort of trophy run for Allen if they'd bought into that argument, similar to Susan Sarandon in Dead Man Walking or Julianne Moore in Still Alice, but they didn't even give that a shot.

Oscar’s Choice: Witherspoon over Huffman, probably by a medium but not large amount considering Walk the Line missed in Best Picture & Phoenix never took off in Best Actor.

My Choice: Witherspoon by a country mile.  Allen, Binoche, or Watts might have made this race something I'd ponder, but when her chief competition is Knightley (silver) & Dench (bronze), you have to go with the only worthy performance in the lineup.  Theron and then Huffman round out the field.

Those are my thoughts, but now I want to hear yours!  Is everyone on Team Reese, or is someone backing another candidate (I'm genuinely curious who as this feels open-and-shut for me & I'd love to see a different take)?  Is 2005 the worst Best Actress lineup Oscar ever crafted, and if not, what is?  And why the hell didn't Joan Allen get in for The Upside of Anger?  Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Also in 2005: Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Original Screenplay, Adapted Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Original Score, Original Song, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously in 2005

Past Best Actress Contests: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016