OVP: Steve Jobs (2015)

Film: Steve Jobs (2015)
Stars: Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet, Seth Rogen, Jeff Daniels, Michael Stuhlbarg, Katherine Waterston
Director: Danny Boyle
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Actor-Michael Fassbender, Supporting Actress-Kate Winslet)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

I have an anathema to biopics, especially this time of year where the Oscars go gaga for them and I kind of want to throw up in response.  Seriously-they're so formulaic and so rarely say something interesting about the protagonist that history or the news media hasn't already discovered.  It's usually the same sorts of stories too, as frequently we see biopics of incredible human beings who accomplish feats against the odds (after all, who wants to see a biopic of just an ordinary human being?).  I went into Steve Jobs, though, a little curious.  After all, one of about four biopics from the past five years that I genuinely admired and loved came from Aaron Sorkin, writer of Steve Jobs, and was also about the Citizen Kane-style rise of a tech icon (in that case, Mark Zuckerberg and The Social Network).  Sorkin and director Danny Boyle don't disappoint in once again finding a new mold to fit the biopic in, but here we have a less successful execution thanks to a severely-botched third act that threatens to destroy an impressively-started motion picture.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film unfolds in three different acts, centered around the launches of a trio of products: the Macintosh, the NeXT, and the iMac, all of which left an indelible print on the world of technology but in wildly different frames of success.  The film follows Jobs (Fassbender) and his right-hand woman Joanna Hoffman (Winslet) as they encounter a series of interactions with various people in Jobs' world, including his Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak (Rogen), former Apple CEO John Sculley (Daniels), and his daughter Lisa.  The film watches as his relationships with all three change, and in some cases remain the same, with him constantly having a chilly distance to his daughter, revering Sculley as the father he had but apparently didn't want, and condescending Wozniak as a friend he needs to protect.  The film's third act addresses these years of interactions, when we know Jobs is about to translate from being a genius to becoming a sort of demigod in the world of technology, reinvigorating his company in a way that changed electronics and the world forever (not for nothing, but I'm writing this article on an iMac).

The film's framing device of these three launches is interesting, and keeps us from having to see a ploddingly simplistic look at how Jobs came from humbled roots (we get that hinted enough with the conversations with his longtime Apple co-founders), but it does occasionally come with issues.  For example, with the exception of Winslet most of the side characters end up being pretty two-dimensional.  Rogen's Wozniak, without a tale of how two such completely different men were able to create something so compelling, is just whiny and seems to hero-worship Jobs and yet despise him at once.  This may well be true, but the reality is that Rogen's performance isn't enough to make us comprehend that conundrum.  The same goes for Jobs' jerk attitude toward Lisa's mother Chrisann (Waterston)-the film treats her as a one-night stand that resulted in a baby, and we get little indication as to why Jobs was interested in her in the first place.  Fassbender's performance is remarkable, wonderfully-felt and delivered and really just a joy to behold as the titular character, but no one else around him seems to be of much use to screenwriter Aaron Sorkin.  I only recluse Winslet because she's so damn good at an underwritten character here (which, admittedly, is not what I'd call her strength).  Her Joanna is a woman who is so surface-level that Winslet does a remarkable job of inserting just enough moments of depth in her relationship with Jobs (whom you can tell she views a bit as the kid brother she never had and is constantly doting upon/scolding), though I would be remiss if I didn't point out that her accent-work needed some help.  These two are the best part of the movie by a country mile.

The writing is a conundrum for me.  I have long ago realized that Aaron Sorkin is an acquired taste, but occasionally even he needs to reign himself in, and his fast-talking, hyper-intelligent creations are frequently their own worst enemy.  Sorkin, despite his protestations, is not great at writing women (evidenced by the Winslet comments above), and in particular this shows with Jobs' daughter Lisa, who in the third act is unfortunately saddled with a series of mood swings that completely betray his previous precocious attitudes toward her (plus, no woman born in the tail-end of the Carter administration could spout a Judy Jetson-style zinger with that much ease).  However, the entire third act is a mess, with Wozniak, Sculley, and Lisa all coming to Jobs to try and gain absolution, and all are granted it by him with a handsomely-wrapped bow.  The reality is that this happens with almost no real indication as to why (after all, he had been on the cusp of a great new moment in technology multiple times before and failed-the character himself couldn't have known the iMac would revolutionize the PC), since he's still a prick who has purposefully prioritized his career over personal relationships and family.  The fact that Sorkin ended with a sloppily-tied-together "happy family moment" ending is appalling and cringeworthy, and really disregards most of his previous moments with Jobs.  The ending of this film, based on the first ninety minutes, should have little to do with his daughter and more to do with his professional vindication despite a constant barrage of personal failures.  The fact that the final scene is him lovingly looking at a girl he barely knows feels like something a studio executive demanded, but it reeks of lousy writing and a directorial choice beneath what Boyle/Sorkin pulled together in the stellar first two-thirds.

I hate poor endings to movies, and part of me wants to go with two stars just because the film left me with such a bitter taste in my mouth, but I'll relent and go with three based on the excellence coming from Fassbender and Winslet.  Overall, though, I left disappointed and wishing that the man who brought us something so extraordinary in The Social Network had better stepped up to the plate.

OVP: Director (2008)

OVP: Best Director (2008)

The Nominees Were...

Danny Boyle, Slumdog Millionaire

Stephen Daldry, The Reader

David Fincher, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Ron Howard, Frost/Nixon

Gus van Sant, Milk

My Thoughts: Let's finish up this Slumdog-Benjamin train, shall we?  With just two more categories to go before we call a wrap on 2008, the Academy gave us an oddly duplicated year in terms of Oscar races.  It's worth noting that not only did blockbuster The Dark Knight not make this list, but that the Best Director lineup mirrored the Best Picture one-matching up completely for the first time since 2005 (it's actually pretty rare-before that it hadn't happened since 1981).  As a result a lot of the talking points we get to here may be a little bit duplicated in Best Picture, though that doesn't necessarily guarantee the same winner (see past contests for proof).

We're going to start out with Ron Howard, because his very recognizable face up-top amidst a sea of guys who are admittedly well-known but weren't on two iconic television sitcoms, is sticking out to me.  Howard's nominations for Frost/Nixon weren't exactly surprising at the time, but in hindsight considering the way that his film about the 37th president has sort of disappeared from public consciousness they seem like an easy target for eye-rolling.  The reality is that Howard, much like the film, does his best work re-creating the tapes themselves.  The interviews are riveting stuff, particularly if you aren't familiar with the famous Frost/Nixon debates, but the rest of the film falls short.  There's a moment late in the film when Frank Langella, acting to the rafters, calls Michael Sheen's Frost in something of a psychotic stupor but it feels inauthentic because it's largely out-of-nowhere and borrows more from other depictions of Nixon than the one we have encountered.  I liked the way that Howard keeps focused on Nixon in tight close-up (we all know the stories about how he lost his 1960 debate, and the paranoid president was more than aware of such things at the time), but the rest of the film seems too traditionally-structured and shot to merit an Oscar inclusion.

Danny Boyle's directorial habits have always bugged the crap out of me, to be honest.  I get that he has a vision, and occasionally it's a creative one, but it always seems so jumbled.  There's occasionally great beauty in the film Slumdog Millionaire, particularly during the first flashback when we see the streets of this impoverished nation, but the film is too traditional later in the film, frequently relying on cliches and overusing its Who Wants to Be a Millionaire motif.  I also feel like too many of the characters end up being 2-dimensional, particularly Freida Pinto's girlfriend role, and that Boyle allows his actors to just stay at a surface-level rather than expanding their understanding of what is going on in the film.  That creates a shallower experience for the audience.

I am a sucker for Stephen Daldry and his intense, dramatic flourishes onscreen.  I love the way that he creates a sense of permanence onscreen.  His best examples of this are The Hours, where every decision over a short period of time has a devastating and damning consequence and so you feel the need to hone in on every moment, but The Reader does this remarkably well also.  The short affair, briefly framed and shot in close, urgent, "is-this-the-end" shots creates a stamina to the rest of the picture-how will this end for these characters?  It helps that he has world-class actors like Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes driving this love story, and admittedly the first-half is better framed than the second-half, but even the second-half he pushes the actors and the story in ways unexpected.  I am still driven by the fact that Lena Olin and Ralph Fiennes play characters who have rehearsed their parts for so many years, and yet are still eager to see what will take place even though they know what they'll say-it's a wonderfully-shot film and one that I loved, critics be damned there.

The other film I latched onto was of course Milk, directed by Gus van Sant.  Here we have a director known for avant garde but also for creating a memorable but relatively traditional work (Good Will Hunting), and he finds ways to combine the two.  The film isn't neutered in terms of its sexuality and in the ways it portrays gay characters.  There's a reason I gave it Best Editing-it kept in moments that other directors would have kept out like Joseph Cross getting to third base with Emile Hirsch in a dark room or the gay campaign team drooling over the pizza delivery guy.  These sorts of touches add to the authenticity that van Sant is trying to capture, but it also lends itself well to the boldness of Harvey as a character-he's someone that doesn't back away from saying things that might make people uncomfortable, even as he stakes out a place for himself in the world of straight America.

The final nomination is for David Fincher.  Fincher, quite frankly, is my favorite director of this bunch, but David Fincher is also a director that can create mood in the way that Otto Preminger created mood in Laura, and is not someone that's great at comedy or romance, but instead at heightened tensions.  The reality is that in a movie like Se7en or Zodiac or The Social Network (undoubtedly his three finest films) you have the greatest directorial moments when we are moving into unknown territory, but Benjamin Button just slugs along, with us knowing that Benjamin and Daisy won't have a particularly happy ending, but probably a pretty sweet one (which is what occurs).  The only moments where his directorial eye is really clear and clever is late in the film, when he's finding Daisy losing her youthful upper-hand, particularly when she indulges in a much younger-looking Benjamin.  These moments betray the slightest of bitterness and as a result we get the Fincher we love, but I'll admit that those moments are few-and-far between in this a-characteristic film.

Other Precursor Contenders: Best Director is one of those rare fields where the Globes, Guilds, and BAFTA awards all have the same number of nominees (aside from the supporting actor races, this is the only OVP category where this is the case).  As a result, one generally suspects uniformity, though each group put its own little stamp on the conversation.  For starters, the Globes skipped Gus van Sant in favor of Sam Mendes, who directed Revolutionary Road (Danny Boyle won).  The DGA Awards, usually the best predictor for this category, skipped Stephen Daldry, in this case picking Christopher Nolan for one of his three DGA nominations without a corresponding Best Director nomination (a feat equaled only by Rob Reiner), while honoring Danny Boyle (didn't everyone?).  Finally the BAFTA's skipped Gus van Sant as well, and while they also honored Danny Boyle they went with Clint Eastwood for Changeling.  I know the popular sentiment in the years since is that Nolan was just south of a nomination at the time, but considering that it didn't score in either of the big categories and we don't have the usual 4/5 Best Picture split, I wonder if perhaps Revolutionary Road/Clint Eastwood may have been just as plausible for the sixth places in the top two categories, considering the one's positioned as a "woman's picture" (usually they get Best Picture without Director), while Eastwood was enjoying his last big year of success with the Oscars until his strange hiatus that would last even when he would get nominated for American Sniper (he still missed in Best Director, arguably costing the film a Best Picture or Best Actor surprise trophy).

Directors I Would Have Nominated: I surely would have included Martin McDonagh's In Bruges, which is a marvelously shot and contained black comedy, along with Andrew Stanton's epic WALL-E.  Christopher Nolan after all of these years I'm not sure on-arguably the best contained scenes in The Dark Knight are also the best of the year (the bold risk of opening the film on high-alert as we zoom into a bank robbery, as if we're still watching a trailer, is perfection), so I would pick him but subbing he or maybe one of the nominated fellas for Arnaud Desplechin's family drama A Christmas Tale wouldn't be unforgivable.

Oscar’s Choice: Like every precursor, Danny Boyle took home the Oscar over Fincher and Daldry, in roughly that order.

My Choice: I'm picking van Sant over Daldry, a more singular achievement and one that caters more to the subject at hand.  In third is Fincher, followed by Howard and then Boyle.

Those were my thoughts-how about yours?  Are you with me in favor of van Sant or were you all about that Boyle?  Does anyone else also secretly (or not so secretly after nineteen write-ups) love The Reader?  And Eastwood, Nolan, or Mendes-who was the sixth place finisher?

Also in 2008: Actress, Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Original Screenplay, Adapted Screenplay, Foreign Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously in 2008

Past Best Director Contests: 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013

Trance (2013)

Film: Trance (2013)

Stars: James McAvoy, Rosario Dawson, Vincent Cassel

Director: Danny Boyle

Oscar History: No-despite Boyle’s recent of success with the Academy, this film was on almost no one’s radar upon release.

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

We all have the things that we’re susceptible to, the filmic genres where we are far more forgiving regardless of the quality of the actual movies.  As someone who is partially recommending a film with a review (or not recommending it, when the case), I have to be aware of this for myself, and three genres in particular I tend to like more than your average person: film noir, classic horror movies, and caper/heist films.  Trance, our film of today, falls into this last genre, and when I saw the art auction at the beginning of the movie, I knew I would have to check myself before I geeked out.  Luckily for my reviewer’s side, and unluckily for those of us who wanted to enjoy the film, as the movie progressed, I couldn’t quite get into the film and it was an admittedly interesting film that fails the further along it goes.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie tells the story of Simon (McAvoy), a low-level security guard at an auction house, who decides to hatch a plan with a crime boss named Franck (Cassel) to make off with a beautiful Goya painting.  Simon for some reason we never 100% figure out (or if we do, Ahearne/Hodge’s script is so convoluted I didn’t catch it) decides to attack Franck while the heist is going on, and in the process suffers a major head injury.  Because this is a movie, this of course means amnesia, and we soon realize that the actual painting is missing and the only person who knows where it is is Simon, who of course cannot remember where he put it or why he double-crossed Franck.

This leads Simon to a hypnotist named Elizabeth Lamb (Dawson), a wily woman who figures out rather quickly (too quickly, of course, and as this is a heist/mystery film, we know not to trust her completely) that Simon isn’t there to find his lost car keys, but instead to figure out where he put the painting.  Through hypnotism (I’m never 100% on believing hypnotism is real, but I do believe people can be susceptible to it) we learn secrets from Simon’s, and conversely Elizabeth’s past, and while we do eventually learn the location of the painting, that becomes less the point as we deduce the violent places the movie is going.

The first half of the film is a standard-fare film mystery, and works quite well.  McAvoy is charming as hell, Dawson incredibly beautiful and far more talented than most of the roles she gets, and Cassel, while boxed into his usual angry bad guy role, is a sexy SOB if nothing else.  Personality is important to a film like this, as we have to stay invested in the mystery as the clues very slowly unfold, and so some sort of interest in the film’s players is vital to a successful rollout of the plot.

However, the second half goes in every kitchen sink direction-we learn that Elizabeth had a past relationship with Simon, that he was abusive, and that he had a bizarre fascination with pubic hair (in a scene that serves little purpose other than to titillate the viewers with Rosario Dawson’s naked body).  It’s hard not to see the name of the director here and mumble, “Danny Boyle” in a derogatory way.  Boyle is a much-heralded, Oscar-winning director, but I am not remotely a fan.  I feel like at some point I will see Trainspotting (it’s part of the OVP) and am hopeful that this is the film that I can finally reference as a movie I like of Boyle’s, but I hate the way he puts together his pictures.  They rely so completely on the same tropes: heavy orange-lighting, extreme low angle shots, and in particular violence and bodily functions to stun the audience.  His movie Slumdog Millionaire swept the Oscars, but what few noted at the time is that the characters are paper thin and the plot is meandering and predictable.  The plot of Trance is thick, but also muddled, and with every twist we slip slowly away from reality and further into the dreamscapes of a mad man.  Boyle may be trying to hint that we’re still hypnotized, but the movie’s ending (which is too cheeky to even mention) dismisses that notion.  Instead, we just get a series of plot twists that head nowhere.

Have you seen this relatively minor film in the Boyle canon?  Did you enjoy it?  Do you also wish someone would just write Rosario Dawson a great role to see what she could do?  And on your celebrity boyfriend list-are you more into James McAvoy or Vincent Cassel?  Share in the comments!

OVP: Picture (2010)

OVP: Best Picture (2010)

The Nominees Were...

Mike Medavoy, Brian Oliver, and Scott Franklin, Black Swan

David Hoberman, Todd Lieberman, and Mark Wahlberg, The Fighter

Emma Thomas and Christopher Nolan, Inception

Gary Gilbert, Jeffrey Levy-Hinte, and Celine Rattray, The Kids Are All Right

Iain Canning, Emile Sherman, and Garet Unwin, The King's Speech

Christian Colson, Danny Boyle, and John Smithson, 127 Hours

Scott Rudin, Dana Brunetti, Michael de Luca, and Cean Chaffin, The Social Network

Darla K. Anderson, Toy Story 3

Scott Rudin, Ethan Coen, and Joel Coen, True Grit

Anne Rosellini and Alix Madigan-Yorkin, Winter's Bone

My Thoughts: Looking at the above photos, you'd almost be forgiven for thinking this was a great lineup of Best Picture nominees.  Put together, when you see the iconic images of movie stars, soon-to-be classic scenes, and your favorites mixed amongst the ones you were relatively indifferent toward, you think "wow, what a year for pictures."  But 2010 was just an okay year for Best Pictures, in my opinion, and some of the best films of the year got overlooked (as always happens) in favor of some of the fine or mediocre.  

With 2011, the punching bag that I felt the worst about was The Artist, primarily because it's not a film I wanted to persistently rag upon-it's just that I didn't think any of its nominations were really justified.  This year's Artist easily became True Grit, a film that is better than I've been saying it is, but has to surpass a higher bar when it comes down to being counted amongst the year's ten best films, which it doesn't really do outside of its cinematography.  With ten nominations, I've discussed the film from almost every angle, but the reality is the film just doesn't have enough going for it.  Even films like Inception, which try hard and fail on plot execution, at least shot for great and fell.  True Grit doesn't even get to that point.  This is fine for just being a movie-not every film can be (or should be) No Country for Old Men, and there's something for keeping the tradition of the western (as I get older, one of my favorite genres) alive, but the Duke's films are largely interchangeable with some rare exceptions, and this movie proves that that doesn't alter when you cast Jeff Bridges.

Winter's Bone is the film that has grown on me the most since I've seen it of these ten.  Some of these movies I instantly loved, some I disliked fairly strongly when I first saw them, but Winter's Bone is the one film that I have gained a lot more appreciation for the more distance I gain from it.  I think it may be the nuances of Lawrence's performance come into a different light the more you think about the people surrounding her.  I love the complicated relationships that develop with Dale Dickey and John Hawkes throughout the film, how we never really get to understand their actions properly, but we get a hint of why they are the way they are.  Movies like Winter's Bone run a tight line between giving the audience too much (killing some of the remaining mystery of the film) and being too ambiguous (therefore leaving us alienated).  It helps that Granik keeps the focus almost entirely on Ree (I'm trying to remember if there's a scene she's not in, and I don't believe there is), therefore making her eyes our eyes, and giving us only what she would know as a character.  This helps keep the chill real, since we have our doppelganger on-screen, and have to rely on her for our journey through the movie.

Toy Story 3, as I've mentioned before, is a film that relies heavily on its predecessors, and I don't recall where I read it (if you know who you are, take your credit), but I remember a critic saying that if they ever make a Toy Story 4 they should just take back all of the awards given to this film, and I 100% agree.  This film only works as the closing of a chapter.  The film would lose something if we saw more of the toys journey without Andy, because he is the anchor of this film.  The movies are all about getting older, growing up, and finding that you cannot stay the person you used to be.  It's a message that resonates with everyone, because as you get older, you either have to close doors or realize that some doors aren't open anymore (I've been going through this crisis a bit as my thirties come charging out at me like a gun and I'm not ready to give up my twenties quite yet, and this is proof that this story hearkens to all ages).  If we get to restart, it takes away the linear aspects of the film, and makes it less relatable-the movie works because we are Andy, and have to say goodbye in the end.  The toys get to stay the same age forever, but we do not.  There's a lot more to the film (some great action sequences, terrific vocal work from Ned Beatty, Tom Hanks, and Michael Keaton), but it's the final scene that clinches the entire movie-after fifteen years, we are forced to say goodbye to these characters, and if Pixar understands what makes them special, it will be a permanent goodbye.

Since we've already tackled True Grit, it makes sense to also throw out the other film that took a (slightly less intense) beating throughout these proceedings, The King's Speech.  I've carped on and on about how this feels like a TV movie, and I don't want to mean that as an insult.  Television, and even TV movies, can hit emotional heights that only the finest of art can go toward.  I know I spend most of my television time on this blog focusing on the shows of Ryan Murphy, but I do love shows that are less divisive and ones I can defend more universally.  Lost, Mad Men, Game of Thrones-I would put these up against almost any films of the past ten years in terms of grandeur and content.

The reality is though that television and movies are very different things.  Television, when it's meant to be artistic and not some soul-sucking drivel like Two and a Half Men or 99.9% of cable reality shows, is about developing characters over time.  It's about forming a long-term bond with a character and over the years letting them into your life in a personal way.  Look at a show like Lost-you cheer on John Locke in a way that you could never cheer on a movie character, because you've spent years with him, and like it or not, when you truly love a show, you truly cheer on a character in the same way you'd cheer on a real-life friend (and let's be honest, with our favorite shows, we spend as much time with these characters as we do with our actual friends).

Film, on the other hand, is supposed to tell a finite, short tale, and is supposed to be a compact story, and should therefore find a shorter, higher arc.  The King's Speech would work better as a miniseries or a short series because it tends to gloss over too many of the scenes.  We take for granted Bertie's struggle, how difficult it is for him to ask for help, and Hooper gives us history as a crutch, but it's missing the big arcs you want from a movie, and needs more time to grow with us as an audience (think of the montages they use to keep the film a-pace).  Hooper understands television, obviously, as that is where he has been most successful, but with a film he's better off with something finite like Les Miserables, a play that has already compressed what he needs to present, rather than something larger that could go the way of television or a movie.

You can compare The King's Speech to The Kids Are All Right in this regard to get a sense of a movie that also could have worked as a television series, but clearly doesn't because the director knows completely what medium she's working in and has the good sense not to lose focus on that.  In a television series, we'd get to know a lot more about Paul, and in a TV series, quite frankly, the ending wouldn't work-we'd have spent too much time with these character not to see a happy ending for all of them (yes, spoiler alerts should be issued, but I suspect you've seen this movie by now, and would have skipped the paragraph if you hadn't).  Cholodenko knows to keep the focus on the affair, and the turmoil that invades Nic and Jules stagnant marriage, and not meander or try to gloss through certain scenes because there's a time limit.  In the end, when Paul is evicted from their lives, we realize that not everyone was required a happy ending here, and the focus was truly on the core family, and not the guy who was thrown into it.

Inception was one of the biggest movies of 2010, and probably the most-discussed film, and was a bit of the inverse of Winter's Bone for me.  I remember adoring it the first time I saw it, impressed by the beautiful visuals and the insane amount of twists and turns.  It, however, doesn't hold up as sturdily on second viewing, and is instead an artful, but flawed summer film.  Without a great performance like Heath Ledger's to anchor the movie, Nolan becomes a bit too in love with his concepts, and while they work on some levels (the entire entering your dream aspect is a doozy), the concept is too big and too full of holes to hold up when you take a closer examination of it.  Nolan would have gained from trimming a bit of the fat (cutting a couple of twists), and spending more time on, say, Mar, who is the most fascinating character in the film.  In fact, in a land of a thousand sequels, it might have made more sense to have the Mar story told beforehand, as it's a bit more intriguing than the remaining film.  The movie is still impressive, and this isn't the screenplay category, so I have to not just base my vote on the plot but also on the visual effects, the cinematography, and how they valuably contribute to the end result, but that's not enough to save it and get it Best Picture.

Danny Boyle's adventures in filmmaking are not without their risks, and I will say that this isn't my least favorite of his films (let's all brace ourselves for the shellacking Slumdog Millionaire is going to take in 2008).  The film is ambitious, I'll give it that, but it just doesn't work for me.  High concept movies should be applauded, but they should be celebrated when they actually succeed, which this one largely doesn't.  The film lives and dies on whether we want to stare at James Franco for two hours, which works (this would have been downright terrible without a star as intriguing as Franco at the helm), but the film seems more intent on us thinking about how we'd react in a scene than how the character is reacting.  It says something that the hipster Franco has so much growing to do, when in reality he seemed relatively enlightened at the beginning of the film, and the guy who randomly helps two girls in the desert without a second thought doesn't meld with the guy who didn't tell anyone where he was going.  Again, I really want to like this movie, but the stylistic choices (why does he have to do those odd Slumdog closeups in a film that's so different from it) and lack of proper character development don't add up to anything I can get behind.

If Winter's Bone is the film that grew on me the most and Inception the one that waned after a while, Black Swan is the film I forgot how much I loved.  Looking through my many awards notes from that year and leading up to writing the OVP entries, I realized how highly I had rated the film, and after re-watching scenes from the movie, I recalled how tightly wound this film was, and how it ended up in my personal Top 10 for the year.  The thing people forget about the film is that it's so much more than Portman's girly, mad-hatter performance.  People see that Best Actress trophy, and forget about the great deal of symbolism and easter eggs throughout the taut script and the "is she insane or is she being destroyed" aspects of the plot.  Think of how brilliant Winona Ryder and Barbara Hershey are in their short, tortured roles, and how we slowly begin to question if everything in Nina's world is illusion or just a twisted version of her reality.  This is a movie that stands up years later because it doesn't rely on the "twist ending" aspect as much as it relies on genuine, psychological scares and the fear of what we don't know.

David O. Russell's film I actually recalled liking better than most people, and it was due to two things, both of which we've discussed at length, but for the completist in me, I've got to recount again.  The first, as I've mentioned are the fight sequences.  I've been trying to pinpoint the reasons for this, and the biggest thing for me is that I honestly didn't know how this was going to end (despite it being a true story).  The film has the atmosphere of being about a family who just happen to love boxing, and not focused solely on the actual fighting.  Of course, they wouldn't have made the movie if he wasn't somewhat successful, but the boxing is secondary, and after a while, you feel that it could be that Mickey's dream is about to be crushed, and that he had a brief date with fame but failed.  That's an interesting story, and one intriguing enough to be made into a movie, and therefore the suspense works.

The second aspect is of course the brilliant work by Melissa Leo.  While I've discussed why Bale doesn't work for me, Leo just soars in every scene she's in in the movie.  Great films don't always house great performances, but they do know when they have one, and with Leo, they just let her attack the scenes, focusing solely on her despite her lack of star stature.  I loved the way that she moves through all of her children-that she doesn't react to her daughters as a giant set of SAG extras, but instead has different reactions for all of them and clearly knows what motivates her, and who her favorites are.  It's a great piece of work that bared mention again as we close out our discussion of this movie.

The final film is of course The King's Speech's chief rival, The Social Network.  After spending at least two hours yesterday in a social media spiral (by the end of the weekend I'll have my LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and Tumblr's all up-to-date, and I'll wonder what the hell I did that for when I could have cleaned my apartment or jumped on the treadmill), I can tell you that this film captured a slice of our lives.  The primary reason that it didn't succeed in winning the Best Picture is that it spoke (surface-level) to a very young subset of our culture.  The film resonated with Gen Y audiences in a way that it likely didn't for other audiences because of its tech pop culture references and the way that Facebook unfolded for those born between 1982-1987.

But the film is universal in the bulk of its messages, which is why the lack of knowledge about the technology is acknowledged, but not forgiven if you dismissed this movie out-of-hand.  The tale of a man who goes from having a simple life to throwing away his friends, his morals, his humanity all in the pursuit of an ambition that he's not even sure he desires is a tale that can speak to all of us.  Mark, Eduardo, and Sean may represent real people, but they show a universal message of how wealth can corrupt some and enhance others, and we only know what we want when we reflect and realize what we missed.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Golden Globes, as always, split their trophies between Drama and Comedy, and as eight of the Best Picture nominees are Dramas, there wasn't room for 127 Hours, Winter's Bone, and True Grit (in proof that the HFPA doesn't always predict the Oscars, The Social Network emerged victorious).  Toy Story 3 missed in the Comedy category (are animated films even eligible here anymore since they have their own category?), but The Kids Are All Right emerged victorious over Red, The Tourist, Burlesque, and Alice in Wonderland.  The Producers Guild Awards gave their trophy to The King's Speech, and with ten contenders, they only cut Winter's Bone for the clear eleventh place The Town.  And the BAFTA's, in a five-wide field, gave their trophy to The King's Speech, having it beat out Black Swan, True Grit, Inception, and The Social Network

Films I Would Have Nominated: If there's nothing else that you should realize from these write-ups, it's that if you haven't already seen it, it's time to go out and rent Scott Pilgrim.  The film, three years later, seems as fresh as possible, and will likely enjoy midnight movie showings for decades, but it doesn't lose anything by being watched at home and cheering on either Scott or your favorite evil ex.  Blue Valentine also plays beautifully years later, and I love the way that Gosling's fame since the film has only enhanced his sullen, broken man in the movie.  Both of these films could have toppled all but two of the nominees and I would have been fine with it.

Oscar's Choice: Much to the chagrin of the blogosphere, The King's Speech, the far more traditional choice for Best Picture, triumphed over second place The Social Network and likely third place True Grit.

My Choice: I will admit that at the time, it was a much more difficult choice for me between Toy Story 3 and The Social Network, but upon reflection it's an easy win for The Social Network, followed by Pixar.  Rounding out the contenders are Black Swan, Inception, Winter's Bone, The Kids Are All Right, The Fighter, The King's Speech, True Grit, and 127 Hours.

And we've now reached the end of 2010 and our OVP countdown.  I only have two films left in 2012 and six left in 2009, so we'll be encountering both rather soon, but I wanted to know your thoughts on the movies-what'd you think of the Best Picture lineup of 2010?  Were you in The King's Speech or The Social Network camp (or were you cheering for one of the remaining eight and wondering why your film wasn't being discussed)?  And what did you favor as the true best film of 2010?

Also in 2010: Director, Actress, Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Original Screenplay, Adapted Screenplay, Foreign Film, Animated Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously in 2010

Past Best Picture Contests: 2011