OVP: Supporting Actress (2023)

OVP: Best Supporting Actress (2023)

The Nominees Were...

Emiliy Blunt, Oppenheimer

Danielle Brooks, The Color Purple

America Ferrera, Barbie

Jodie Foster, Nyad

Da'Vine Joy Randolph, The Holdovers

My Thoughts: Oscar's taste and mine are, obviously, different.  There are certain things and categories we line up on (Visual Effects, in particular, there's a lot of overlap), but others (like Supporting Actor) I usually assemble an entirely different lineup for myself.  Supporting Actress is generally a category I can count on some overlap with my My Ballot, though.  In 2023, though, that's not the case.  We have done My Ballots from 2000-22 on this blog (that's where I pick the winners/nominees without Oscar's help), and in that entire time, 2023 will become the first field where I picked none of Oscar's Supporting Actress choices for my own list, starting from scratch with my five.  While I was very different from Oscar in general (only three acting nominees total will overlap with my My Ballot), this is bizarre for me, and a sign that either I was on my own or (in my opinion) Oscar was getting lazy in 2023.

Look, for example, at the nomination of Emily Blunt.  Blunt is a fine actor, and one who should've had an Oscar nomination by now (though, as I said here, she wouldn't be someone I would complain about given I only think she deserved one nomination to date).  But she's not very good in Oppenheimer.  This is a doormat role, one that has little invention beyond darted glances and spilled cocktails.  She has one great scene, late in the picture, with Jason Clarke interrogating her, but the rest of the movie she's kind of on autopilot.  She doesn't get as plumb of a role as Robert Downey, Jr. or Cillian Murphy, but let's be real-someone like Benny Safdie is stealing scenes with less to do than her.  I think this is a pretty generic nomination, and reads as a "getting her off the 'to nominate' list" moment that happens when you're in a Best Picture nominee.

Danielle Brooks is another performer that I think is giving way less than she should.  Brooks is a great singer, and gives the best performance in The Color Purple, a misguided & overlong musical that loses a lot of the soul that was part of the original movie.  But it's too surface-level.  We know the audience is going to cheer for her, because she's that kind of character, but the insane over-reaction that this role got on Film Twitter (some proclaiming her a "lock" for a win...and don't think I don't remember who you are who said it), felt hyperbole and like they were just swept up in a good singer doing a decent job.  Comparing this to Oprah Winfrey in the original...you can't, Winfrey's just in another class, and while I judge these in a vacuum, that doesn't apply to remakes-you need to justify your existence if you want to recreate a classic.  This film never does.

I kind of have a role that I don't complain too much about actors getting their first nomination unless they're outright terrible (which neither Brooks nor Blunt are), and so I won't complain too much about America Ferrera getting a nomination.  Ferrera is a trooper, one who I used to watch & love every week on Ugly Betty in my twenties.  But this is a nothing part, more so than even Blunt.  She nails the centerpiece monologue enough that it resonated with audiences, but it's not that good, and even if it was, you need more, and there is nothing near that in this film.  This is the definition of a coattails nomination, one that is the best example of the Academy actually liking Barbie and not just giving it the required citations.

An actor who is giving more than the script demands is Jodie Foster.  This was Foster's first nomination in almost thirty years, and her first in almost 50 years in supporting, and she clearly liked getting back to the Oscars.  That honestly could've been enough (sometimes legends say "me again!" and the Oscars say "sure" even if it's for nothing special-look at Robert Duvall in The Judge), but Foster actually adds something to Nyad.  She has great chemistry with Bening (you buy them as people who have loved each other for decades, including the sort of competition that can only come from friends that used to date), and adds things that aren't necessary to the story.  Look at how deftly she handles Bening's Diana, being able to maneuver around certain arguments while choosing to take others dead-on.  I love that backstory work in a character.

Background work is also on display for Da'Vine Joy Randolph.  Randolph, like Foster, knows what it's like to be on the sides of her own life.  In this film, though, she does a good job of staking what territory in her life is hers versus what she's willing to share, and how much pain that causes when she mixes those two things up in her life.  You get the understanding from Randolph's work that not only does she miss her son, she misses being herself, being happy like she was before her son died with one of the only people she allowed herself to be authentic with.  It's really measured stuff-I honestly cannot wait to see what she does next, and I hope Hollywood has some good ideas.

Other Precursor Contenders: We had another stampede similar to Supporting Actor, so Da'Vine Joy Randolph gets all of the hardware.  For the Globes she beat Blunt, Brooks, Foster, Julianne Moore (May December), and Rosamund Pike (Saltburn), while at the SAG Awards it was over Blunt, Brooks, Foster, & Penelope Cruz (Ferrari).  I thought she might lose the BAFTA to Blunt, but no dice, as she took out Blunt, Brooks, Sandra Huller (The Zone of Interest), Claire Foy (All of Us Strangers), & Rosamund Pike (Saltburn) in the UK.  I actually called this field exactly right (which few people did), and had three names in the sixth place slot: Huller, Moore, & Viola Davis (Air).  I'll be real-any of these still make sense to me, but the one that will get me yelled at the least is Huller, so I'll go with her.

Actors I Would Have Nominated: I hate when Oscar gives a performer an Oscar, and then feels like "we're done" while that actor continues to put in great work.  That's particularly true of someone like Julianne Moore, who has spent her post-Oscar years trying a variety of genres (some unsuccessfully), but has never been as good since with her dynamite turn in May December.

Oscar’s Choice: Randolph won by a landslide, probably atop Blunt, who might've been an actual threat for a win if she'd managed to get a single precursor given her narrative as "overdue" (that tactic worked for Christian Bale).

My Choice: Between Randolph & Foster (the two best of this bunch), I will select Randolph, both because I think she has some of the best scenes and (let's be real) she's in the better movie.  Brooks is in third, which leaves yet another Barbenheimer matchup for last.  Part of the fact that we're 4-0 in favor of Barbie (with only one left to face off), almost makes me want to give it to Blunt, but there were moments in her film I thought she was giving a bad performance even if she lands her one big scene, something I never felt with Ferrera, so Barbie continues its shutout.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  I joined the season stampede and gave this win to Da'Vine Joy Randolph...was that the right choice?  I suspect that of the Barbenheimer matchups this is the one the most people will disagree with me on-anyone else favor Ferrera to Blunt?  And was it Davis, Huller, or Moore in sixth place?  Share your thoughts below!

Also in 2023: Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, International Feature Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound, Original Score, Original Song, Production Design, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Previously in 2023

Past Best Supporting Actress Contests: 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022

Jungle Cruise (2021)

Film: Jungle Cruise (2021)

Stars: Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, Edgar Ramirez, Jack Whitehall, Jesse Plemons, Paul Giamatti

Director: Jaume Collet-Serra

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

I am currently planning a trip in November to Disneyland and am hoping/praying/begging the universe to get the Covid pandemic to a point where I'll be able to actually take this trip (I cannot stress enough-find a way to convince your relatives or friends that have been holdouts that they need to get vaccinated, as they're going to kill us all).  I have been twice and at least one of those times I rode the Jungle Cruise ride in Adventureland, but I was a teenager when that happened, and I have no real memory of it other than my introverted self really wanted to ditch the friends I was with, but as we were on a school trip, we weren't really allowed to "go out by ourselves" without getting into trouble (I am that specific combination of introverted, independent, & Type-A that likely explains why I'm still single).  Hopefully this past week's viewing of Jungle Cruise the movie wasn't a preview of my trip, however, as I am going to be leaving pretty disappointed despite high expectations.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie starts with us learning of a cursed group of conquistadores who looked for a healing tree in the middle of the Amazon, but suffered a terrible fate.  Jump forward hundreds of years, in the middle of World War I, and we find Lily Houghton (Blunt) and her brother MacGregor (Whitehall) pitching the idea of a quest to find the healing tree, claiming it's real, to an adventurer's club, who doesn't want to support them because of, well, sexism.  Lily still goes to the Amazon, though, where they hire a guide named Frank (Johnson), who runs a ratty river tour in a rundown boat.  After she shows him an arrowhead that Frank (secretly) knows to be authentic, they begin the quest to find the tree, while being chased by Prince Joachim (Plemons), a deranged prince who is trying to use the tree to help Germany win the war.

The film has a few second-act twists (including one that you might not see coming even if it's somewhat obvious in retrospect), but that sort of gets you where you want to go here-it's an action-adventure film, after a mythical plant with the potential for a love story between the two leads.  And the love story works-Blunt & Johnson are not what you'd consider an obvious romantic pairing in Hollywood (he's an affable WWE superstar, she's, well, Mary Poppins), but they're fun together.  Johnson is not a great actor, but he is a winning movie star, and one of the better choices for this style of film working today, and Blunt's comic timing is impeccable.  Add in the genuinely funny Whitehall (more on the controversy surrounding him in a second, but he does know how to land a joke), and Plemons shooting for the rafters, and this has the trapping of mindless fun (and I can get behind that).

The problems, though, are that the acting can't save the film's clear pitfalls.  Jungle Cruise has been in development for decades (it was already on the docket after the first Pirates of the Caribbean), but they clearly didn't learn from that original film in terms of screenplay or visual effects.  The movie's writing is convoluted, with one too many random detours (surely trying to match some of the attractions on the rides-Disney knows nothing if they don't know corporate synergy), and a strange interlude in the middle of the film.  It's bold that Whitehall's character is meant to be gay, but the fact that they won't say the word (or give him any sort of love interest), is a bit of an eyeroll, particularly considering Disney doesn't intend for this to be a global phenomenon if it's going to put the film concurrently on its streaming platform (where, presumably, it'd be much easier to get around bans on gay characters in China & Russia).

But it's the effects that sink this ship.  The CGI in the film is garish, boring & omnipresent.  What made Pirates so magical wasn't just that Geoffrey Rush was transformed into a walking skeleton, but that he did so on real ships & in real ports.  CGI is not at the level where you can't tell what is real & what is fiction in the backgrounds, and while the film is shot on location in some sequences (Johnson regularly finds ways to film movies in his native Hawaii), most of the backgrounds appear as if they are lifeless digital recreations, which they are.  CGI is not the only solution for how to create authentic-looking sets (you need a quality art director who can actually build these), and oftentimes it feels like Blunt & Johnson are walking around in the middle of an animated cartoon...and not a visually innovative one.

A Quiet Place Part 2

Film: A Quiet Place Part II (2021)

Stars: Emily Blunt, Cillian Murphy, Millicent Simmonds, Noah Jupe, Djimon Hounsou, John Krasinski

Director: John Krasinski

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Fans of horror films wear that as a badge-of-honor, and I am admittedly jealous of this fact.  Horror films have oftentimes struggled to grain traction not just in the critical canon, but also in the pop culture zeitgeist at-large, and as a result we see people who have devoted themselves to little-seen sequels to movies or longer chapters in the tales of Freddy, Chucky, & Jason.  I just don't really have the stomach for a lot of horror, as it scares me too much, and so I tend to keep most of my horror film viewings confined to pre-1960 movies if I'm marathoning (we do a marathon on this blog in October every year focusing on classic horror films).  As a result, I miss out on the amazing cult classic culture that horror fans get to trade in, especially for sequels.  A Quiet Place Part II is one of the only horror sequels I can genuinely confirm I saw in theaters (real talk-I see hundreds of movies every year, including dozens in theaters, and I can count on one hand how many horror sequels I've seen in a darkened theater), and so while this is nowhere near as special as getting to be a horror film expert, I am excited to get a peak today into the clubhouse.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie takes place immediately after the events of the first film (you will need to have seen the first movie in order to watch this movie & understand it), where Lee Abbott (Krasinski) has just died to save the lives of his children Regan (Simmonds) and Marcus (Jupe).  These two, along with their mother Evelyn (Blunt) have discovered the secret to killing the alien invaders-a high frequency noise that will temporarily impair the aliens, allowing them to be vulnerable to a gunshot.  The three fight, though, on what to do next, potentially going to an island community that they believe exists (since the aliens cannot swim), with Regan insisting they look for it, but Evelyn resisting.  They meet up with an old friend named Emmett (Murphy), who has lost his entire family & lives alone, and after Regan escapes, he goes after her, eventually going to the island community and (after accidentally killing half of the residents, including surprise cameo Djimon Hounsou), they stop the aliens by putting Regan's hearing aid onto a radio speaker, giving all in the listening area the ability to fight the aliens.

The movie does a much better job than the initial film did with some of the elements of the picture, particularly the use of the musical score, which in the original was blaring constantly and taking away from the moody terror of a world without noise.  It's still there, but it feels more judicious, as if director Krasinski actually read the reviews about how people liked the movie, but this took them totally out of it.  The film is well-acted, with Simmonds in particular standing out as a brilliant young performer (honestly-she and Jupe might be the best child actors working currently, and that they're both in the same film series is a coup for Krasinski as a director).

That said, the movie's story isn't as resonant or tight as the original.  Murphy is a fine actor (one could argue better than Krasinski), but he serves as a proxy for Regan's lost father, and it doesn't work as well-the chemistry isn't as solid, and it feels like the writer didn't know how to handle the first film's central figure being killed off (it feels, even more so, like they made a movie without any intention of a sequel, and when it was a hit they didn't know how to extend a story that didn't really need to be continued).  There are too many little touches throughout the movie that feel like padding (Hounsou's character getting introduced just to have him disappear, the zombie-like figures that stay near the docks who try to murder Murphy's Emmett), almost as if you're trying to set up A Quiet Place 3, which while that might be inevitable, is also lazy storytelling, since movies need to stand on their own.  As a result, this is a technically-more impressive picture than the first film (the sound work, scoring, & acting are all elevated even further), but it's one with a weaker central tale.

OVP: Mary Poppins Returns (2018)

Film: Mary Poppins Returns (2018)
Stars: Emily Blunt, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Ben Whishaw, Emily Mortimer, Pixie Davies, Nathanael Saleh, Joel Dawson, Julie Walters, Dick van Dyke, Angela Lansbury, Colin Firth, Meryl Streep
Director: Rob Marshall
Oscar History: 4 nominations (Best Costume Design, Score, Production Design, Original Song-"The Place Where the Lost Things Go")
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

We live in a world of sequels and remakes.  Hollywood is learning this the hard way this summer as we watch a perpetual list of movies like Men in Black International and Shaft fail to make an indent at the Box Office (pretty much anyone who isn't Marvel has been struggling with remakes/followups this year).  But I'm more curious, as we get to a culture where we're constantly remaking films, what the role of film criticism would be in this case, particularly when it comes to classic films being remade or reinvented, but largely having the same plot as before.  Remakes are not new (this was the fourth A Star is Born movie last year, after all), but they are nearly constant right now, and one has to wonder when it comes to truly landmark films like A Star is Born or Mary Poppins or (later this year) West Side Story, what sort of curve should you be judging on when you look at the film itself compared to its classic predecessor?  How do you judge a film that's essential a carbon copy of its original?

(Spoilers Ahead) This was a question that I wrestled with when looking at Mary Poppins Returns, a movie that is lovely and pleasant on the surface of it, but it also is basically the same exact movie from 1964.  The problem is, that while I've seen the original film, it was not a cornerstone of my childhood the way that it was for so many people perhaps a few years older than me.  Julie Andrews was Maria von Trapp in my world, not Mary Poppins, and so I can understand the vast appeal of this movie to an audience that isn't enamored with the original.  The film's premise is that of a sequel even if it's basically a copy of the first film, with Mary Poppins (Blunt) returning years after taking care of the Banks children Michael (Whishaw) and Jane (Mortimer), and now must look after them again as Michael is about to lose their house and Jane is, well, in need of a man (Jane seems fine, but it's Disney so we need to throw in some heteronormative stuff rather than risk Jane being a lesbian).  She joins them as the nanny to Michael's three children after his wife dies, and they set off on a series of adventures across town with Topsy (Mary Poppins's cousin, played by Meryl Streep) and Jack (Miranda, whose character is an apprentice of Dick van Dyke's Bert) occasionally getting in on the fun.

This is a lovely little film.  The songs are not as memorable as the original, but that's a hard bar to clear, and you have such game performers all-around that you don't really notice that they aren't that good until you've left the theater.  Miranda & Blunt are a perfect odd-pair, with her cool standoffishness (a nice mirror of the original with Julie Andrews) and his unceasing nice-guy charisma working well together.  The supporting cast is lovely (Whishaw & Mortimer aren't really capable of being "not lovely") and the cameos are springy (in addition to Streep, we have Dick van Dyke playing a different character but still a true joy to see on the screen, and we also get the Balloon Lady ala Angela Lansbury).  The film won four Oscar nominations, and it's easy to see why as Disney assembled a top-notch crew to recreate one of their most seminal classics.

But it's basically the same movie as the 1964 version, albeit with less surprise and an almost constant need to make you swim in nostalgia.  This is Disney's MO recently, and I'm not inhuman-I liked it, I cried when Dick van Dyke got on that desk and started to dance, but it's also kind of manipulative.  It's objectively a lesser film than its predecessor, and it's genuinely hard to tell if it's actually any good because it only works with the previous movie, which it's wholesale ripping off.  But I liked it, so I'm going with 3 stars, which feels about right for a movie that I enjoyed, but can't really confirm if it's good or just trying to take me back to my childhood, even though my childhood didn't really feature Mary Poppins.  A conundrum of a film, but a good one for a lazy afternoon.

OVP: A Quiet Place (2018)

Film: A Quiet Place (2018)
Stars: Emily Blunt, John Krasinski, Millicent Simmonds, Noah Jupe
Director: John Krasinski
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Sound Editing)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

The trend of prestige horror has slowly (evidenced by Hereditary, too slowly) gained prominence with awards groups in the past few years, to the point where Get Out was a Best Picture nominee, only the fourth horror film to achieve that status.  Last year, A Quiet Place was at least in the running for such an honor, but like most prestige horror (even with the increased critical attention) it petered out at the end.  The film somehow, inexplicably, was one that I never got around to reviewing despite it being a big hit and Oscar-nominated, so as I continue over the next two weeks to get all of the remaining 2018 Oscar nominated films (that I haven't reviewed for posterity here), we're going to start that countdown with the movie that is most overdue a review.

(Spoilers Ahead) A Quiet Place, for those that haven't seen it yet, is the story of the Abbotts.  Set in 2020 (some people complain about this, but I genuinely like when dystopian films take place in the immediate future as it gives an extra level of creepy), the movie is about a family of four that is trying to live in a world where aliens have landed, and seem to be attracted to sound.  As a result, the film has very little spoken dialogue, with the family largely communicating through sign language, a skill they know as one of the children, Regan (Simmonds, who was also in the delightful Wonderstruck) is deaf.  The parents Lee (Krasinski) and Evelyn (Blunt), are mourning the loss of their youngest son who was eaten by the aliens after Regan gave him a toy that made noise (after Lee had taken it away).  As a result, there's a sense of animosity between the two, with Lee unable to properly express his grief and forgiveness to her.  The film unfolds with the aliens coming to their farm, with Lee eventually sacrificing himself to save his children (showing his daughter that he forgives her first, though), and Regan finds a way to defeat the aliens by using her cochlear implant to distract them while Evelyn kills them, giving the humans a fighting chance.

The film's premise is interesting, and well-acted.  Blunt had a ball in 2018 between this and Mary Poppins Returns, and has solid chemistry with her real-life husband (not always a given with actual married couples, as film history has taught us).  She plays Evelyn as a woman who likely was naturally quiet in a pre-alien world, a nice counter to Lee who was obviously the talker of the two before this happened, a smart character observation in a performance that's brimming with them.  The film got some press as an anti-abortion film (or at least pro-life-I'm still confused in 2019 how we're supposed to differentiate between these two terms as clearly the draconian laws in Alabama & Georgia are the former) as Evelyn is pregnant & gives birth during the movie, but one has to assume it's partially because there's no real access to medical care/contraception and she's living with a guy that looks like this, so girl I get it and am willing to suspend a bit of disbelief there.

But where I'm confused is some of the choices of the filmmakers.  The writers consistently feel the need to spell out things, even though we understand what's going on-the whiteboard in the basement underlining everything that we've already pieced together felt wholly unnecessary, and just lazy scripting.  Perhaps the stupidest decision of the film's creators, though, was the blaring Marco Beltrami score.  Thankfully this wasn't nominated at the Oscars, though it was shortlisted.  The score totally ruins the affect of a film where silence is supposed to reign supreme.  In many ways it feels like they're taking away or easing the fear by giving us some noise, but it also deprives a key access point into the Abbotts' lives, almost making this a fatal error in an otherwise interesting, if a little simplistic, horror film.  It also would have made the one Oscar nomination that it did earn a bit more likely to win.  The Sound Editing is good (the aliens are distinct), but it's distracted from by the score and would have been cooler if they'd have gone fully-in on their aesthetic.

OVP: The Devil Wears Prada (2006)

Film: The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
Stars: Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Stanley Tucci, Emily Blunt, Adrien Grenier
Director: David Frankel
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Actress-Meryl Streep, Costume Design)
(Not So) Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Do you ever have those Friday nights where you think "surely I have something better I should be doing with my night?"  Where you have a mountain of movies to catch up on, actual work from your office, and a dozen other chores that need tending to, and all you want to do is snuggle up and watch a movie on iTunes?  Well, that was me, and I had a hankering to catch The Devil Wears Prada, a movie that falls between the precipice for me of "movie I should probably own on DVD" and "movie that's not quite there yet for me to own on DVD."  So, well, I rented it, and as I'd never reviewed it on the blog before (and we're not terribly far away from finishing up 2006's Oscar race), I figured I'd give you a bit of a flashback to a movie you surely saw in 2006.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film focuses on Andy (Hathaway), a "serious" journalist who inexplicably gets an interview to be second assistant to the editor-in-chief of one of New York's top fashion magazines, Miranda Priestley (Streep).  Like all good movies, she starts out with most people against her, including the first assistant Emily (Blunt, in her breakout role), but is befriended by one of her coworkers Nigel (Tucci), and slowly begins to take the job seriously, in the process becoming chic and appreciative of what the people at Runway really do.  She ends up earning the begrudging respect of Miranda even though she ultimately abandons her in Paris, and all is right with the world in the end.

The film has relatively predictable plot turns (it's obvious that she'll eventually succumb to the charms of this world, but then escape it with her soul fully intact), but is impossibly charming even with such a staid plot, thanks largely to the charms of the cast.  Hathaway is given a relatively thankless role (Andy is meant to be our window into the world, but it's hard in hindsight to really like her considering her holier-than-thou attitude), and does a serviceable job with the performance, but the other three leads are splendid.  Tucci had a career renaissance after this performance, ending up getting a major hit in Julie & Julia three years later (and a totally undeserved Oscar nomination for The Lovely Bones), and is hilariously bitchy as Nigel.  Blunt got a career out of this work (and should have gotten an Oscar nomination), making what could have been a stock character into a side part you root for, with impeccable timing and line delivery.  Best of all is Streep, arguably giving her best performance of this century as Priestley, instantly iconic from her first moments onscreen.  Streep also got a renaissance after this role (though, admittedly, Meryl is never out-of-style), but despite winning an Oscar (and seven nominations) since then, she's never come close to being as pitch-perfect as Miranda.  There's a subdued nature to her, a way where Streep almost feels like she's proving herself rather than having a cheeky "I know I'm a genius" good-time.  I love Streep always, but occasionally she relies a bit too heavily in recent years on her "legend" status.  You see none of that here, with her instead giving full flavor to her work as Miranda.  It's a triumph, and probably would have won her the correct third Oscar had it not been for such a crazy good year for this category (still deciding on my ultimate victor, but really there were no bad options with Oscar in 2006).

The main problem, in hindsight, is that perhaps in a more understanding or "be yourself" sort of era as 2018 celebrates, it's impossible to look at Andy's personal and love life without rolling your eyes or actively wishing she'd stick with Runway.  Her boyfriend (Grenier) is a jerk, not understanding that this incredible opportunity is keeping her from his birthday party (like he's eleven!), and while the mild infidelity late in the film might seem bad, it was an unsolicited kiss-on-the-cheek.  Worse still are her friends, who desperately want free stuff from her and demand that she always give them attention, but give little sympathy for the fact that she's trying to pay her dues in a job that's a great opportunity.  Honestly, this ages poorly, as does the fact that there are no openly gay characters in the film (Tucci's Nigel or Rich Sommer's Doug are obviously implied to be gay, but never outwardly acknowledge it).  It's proof that you should always be as progressive as possible with the politics of your film, because you'll at the very least look forward-thinking in such a situation.  Still, though, this is a better film that I think I even acknowledged at the time, littered with great performances and a brisk, if anticipated, script.

The Girl on the Train (2016)

Film: The Girl on the Train (2016)
Stars: Emily Blunt, Haley Bennett, Rebecca Ferguson, Justin Theroux, Luke Evans, Allison Janney
Director: Tate Taylor
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

I am sitting in front of my computer right now, staring at the daunting task of reviewing almost two dozen movies that I'm wildly behind on, wondering how I can possibly have so many thoughts on so many films, but we're going to start with the picture I saw on Thursday, as while it's not the freshest (please-like I'd go a weekend without catching at least one movie), it's the one that I clicked on first and is still pushing around in the old noggin quite a bit.  After all, The Girl on the Train is that rare conundrum for a critic-poor movie, great performance-how do you judge?

(Spoilers Ahead) The film, based on Paula Hawkins bestseller, is about Rachel Watson (Blunt), a woman who spends her days taking the train from upstate New York down to Manhattan, during which time she repeatedly gets drunk and fantasizes about the lives of two people who live near her old house, Megan (Bennett) and Scott (Evans).  She wonders how their life can be so perfect, and frequently peers in, thinking about her own failed marriage to Tom (Theroux) who is now wed to the woman he had an affair with, Anna (Ferguson).  One day, Megan goes missing coincidentally the same night that Rachel was on a bender, and we see her become a key suspect in the disappearance and eventual death of Megan, and she spends most of the film trying to figure out what happened that night.

The film has so many connections to Gone Girl it's hard not to draw comparisons, which is not a favorable situation for Train as Fincher's film is vastly superior.  Both films are largely reliant on an unreliable narrator, in one case it's Amazing Amy who is actually much more complicated than she initially appears, and in this case we have Rachel who remembers inaccurately her marriage to Tom, assuming she was an abusive drunk when in reality he was a nightmare and an abuser who was gaslighting her most of their marriage.  It's a twist, though, that's relatively easy to see coming as is most of the film based on the underlined plot points and camera angles (seriously-if we see Megan having sex with a man in the woods, but we don't see the man's face-we all notice that and guess it's another guy in the movie than we assume...and since the only other guy other than her husband and therapist is Tom, we know the twist miles ahead).  Overall it's easy to see why this was a hit novel-it's a quintessential flashy beach read, and I suspect that was the appeal, but in translation to the film it comes across poorly.  The acting (with one exception) is largely absent any feeling-Ferguson and Theroux, both very good actors in other works, are not connecting with their roles, perhaps because the script doesn't really care about them as anything other than easy props in Rachel's world, and Bennett underplays Megan's big scenes.  There are exceptions (Janney and Kudrow are always welcome presences, even if these are thankless roles), but by-and-large most of the players here are saddled with a potboiler that boils too quickly.

That is except Emily Blunt.  Blunt is an actress I'm not always wild about-I feel like she under-emotes in certain roles and has never properly lived up to her potential from The Devil Wears Prada, even in work that I've enjoyed.  This is the exception-this is easily her best performance in a decade, and she is very attuned to her character.  It's perhaps a problem that she's so good-it points out how much the rest of the cast is phoning it in-but Blunt clearly knows what's at stake in her career with such a high profile vehicle.  She makes Rachel believable, a woman who clearly once had it together, but saddled with issues of infertility and an abusive husband, she finds solace in the loneliness of the bottle.  Most of the movie I felt agog at how well she was playing the part, particularly when she's selling scenes that the plot doesn't feel like the film's earned (the entire finale feels deeply anti-climactic since we've seen it coming for over an hour, a bad look for a thriller), and certain touches (like the way that she drunkenly talks to the baby on the train or the way that she over-pronounces specific words when talking about Megan, as if reenacting a soap opera) are genius. It's likely not going to push her into Oscar contention (the reviews are too poor), but I'd wager she should be in that conversation.

Those are my thoughts on this underwhelming film, one I'd only suggest if you are a big fan of Blunt.  Share yours now-if you have read the book, how does it compare?  What do you hope to see next from Blunt after such a major wave?  And why do you think the supporting cast couldn't make this jive?  Share below!

OVP: Sicario (2015)

Film: Sicario (2015)
Stars: Emily Blunt, Benicio del Toro, Josh Brolin, Daniel Kaluuya
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Oscar History: 3 nominations (Best Cinematography, Sound Editing, Original Score)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

If you have read this blog for very long, you know that I have a complicated history with Denis Villeneuve.  I first loved his film Incendies, giving it my OVP in 2010, and followed it with a complicated loathing of the movie Prisoners, and finally was fully back onboard with his cerebral Enemy last year.  Overall, though, he's at that point where I will pay for the ticket pretty much regardless of the reviews as none of his films have been short on fascination, and that's the case with Sicario, which landed somewhere in the middle for me in terms of the Villeneuve filmography.  The film's heavy on atmosphere, but light on character and works as often as it shouldn't.  It's yet another rich movie with some angles that I didn't care for, so let's get started.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film follows Kate Macer (Blunt), an FBI agent who is drawn into the world of the Mexican drug cartel to work with a CIA officer Matt Graver (Brolin), who is unorthodox but appears insistent that Kate be his partner for the mission, dismissing her current partner Reggie (Kaluuya) to the background.  As they proceed, they give Kate little information about what is actually happening, and even when his seemingly more forthcoming partner Alejandro (del Toro) comes into the picture and they are more revealing of their plans (that they are headed to Juarez, Mexico, instead of El Paso), Kate remains lost, though savvy audience members will see that clearly Kate is a bit of a pawn at this point in the plot, a reputable alibi for the seediness that both Matt and Alejandro are doing in Mexico in trying to find some semblance of balance and order regarding the deeply violent Mexican drug cartels.  The film continues along this path, with Kate doing that most classic of cinematic motifs (descent into hell), as she gets further and further outside the law and into the raw danger of this world.

That raw danger is clearly the best asset this movie has going for it  Frequently the film seems to be borrowing from films like No Country for Old Men and The Counselor, as Texas is framed not as a a welcoming desert but instead as something vast and isolated-we get a sense quickly of how the constant quiet sort of mesmerizes you and leaves you wondering what happens next door.  There is also a sense of the violence that happens in the Mexican drug cartels, and why this feels like an unwinnable war, enough so that when you realize that Alejandro is only working with the CIA to avenge his wife and take back control of the drug cartel for himself, you're almost left with a sense of justification (better the enemy we know...), even though he's going to continue to perpetrate violence on people and give people access to dangerous and deadly drugs.

Del Toro has been winning raves for the role, and it is indeed the kind of performance that Oscar notices (though you have to wonder if del Toro is tired of being nominated for playing convicts and criminals at this point in his career), and he's too strong of an actor not to excel in the role, though I do wonder if Villeneuve might have underwritten not his Alejandro (who gains from underwriting) but everything around him so that his showdown is a bit more heightened.  Del Toro is basically the lead, in reality, as Blunt's Kate is at once completely alien to this world and too little is known about her.  Kate is clearly someone who joined the FBI for the right reasons, to make a difference, but the film's interest in her is more to watch her go from naive to worldly, but we never get the sense of why she's so alone, why she's so passive, and she doesn't get Alejandro's intriguing storyline to really drive that home.  Blunt's a good actor (admittedly not as good so far in her career as del Toro), but she doesn't handle underwritten roles quite as well as she should, and I have yet to be really blown away by her as a dramatic actor (I wasn't wild about her in either Edge of Tomorrow or The Young Victoria, her too most lauded serious turns).  Kate is a character that, like Josh Brolin in No Country for Old Men, we need to see a little bit more of the turn into the dark side and her descent to get a full picture of the movie, and that is missing in Sicario.

So all-in-all I'd put this more on the Prisoners side of things for Villeneuve in the "some great moments, some frustrating, but not a classic," though I will point out the that the film has yet to infuriate me in the same way that the Hugh Jackman picture did.  What are your thoughts?  Do you feel that Sicario is one of Villeneuve's better pictures?  Do you think it has a chance with Oscar?  Do you think the sequel idea is as stupid as I do since it would give too much information regarding del Toro's Alejandro?  And what role do you think will finally make Emily Blunt live up to the potential she exhibited in The Devil Wears Prada? Share your thoughts in the comments!

Six Biggest Questions for the Best Actress Race

If there's one thing about this past year and upcoming season of movies that I am thrilled about, it's that the Best Actress field looks amazing.  Seriously-I cannot tell you the last time I was this excited about all of the gourmet prospects set to hit me in the face and the wonderful little movies that I've already had the pleasure of encountering earlier in the year. There's a plethora of names from Oscar-winning stars to longtime character actors getting their due to up-and-coming players to a newcomer that seems to be in literally every film this year.  All-in-all it's a great time if you love women at the movies (and if you don't, what the hell is wrong with you?), but it also begs a few questions.  After all, while great film is by far its own reward, it's worth pondering which of this avalanche of names manages to make it to the Kodak as one of the five lucky contenders for a shiny gold man.  I'm less concerned right now with winners (though it's also exciting that at least as of now there's no one that has clearly positioned themselves at the front of that line either), but more on nominees, which is more exciting anyway (it's only every four years or so that this category is remotely competitive).  The below six questions seem to be the most critical in deciding who will be translating their buzz and reviews into a little bit of Oscar immortality:

1. Who is Committing Category Fraud?

Recent nominees Helen Hunt, Julia Roberts, and Hailee Steinfeld can all agree that getting a nomination is easier if you lie about your role in the film, and despite appearing in a vast majority of their most-recent Oscar-blessed movies, all three of these women scored dubious nominations for their "supporting" work onscreen (Roberts in particular still sticks in my craw since she's in more scenes than Streep who did go lead, gets the final scene, and is one of the biggest movie stars on the planet and could well have gained a lead nomination if she wanted to, letting the likes of her costars Margo Martindale and Julianne Nicholson maybe have a huge career boost from such a citation).  This year seems more than open season for potential category fraud, with the likes of Ellen Page (Freeheld), Rooney Mara & Cate Blanchett (Carol), and Alicia Vikander (The Danish Girl) all oddly positioned to go either lead or supporting, though critics say they should all be competing in the lead race.  Blanchett has a bit of a history with going supporting when she shouldn't (she had nothing to say about such a thing when she did it for Notes on a Scandal), and no film has been nominated twice for Best Actress since Thelma & Louise in 1991 so Carol in particular seems susceptible to fraud.  While I'd love for some campaign to say "screw it" and shoot for the stars (trust me, it would be far better for press for a film like Carol if both Mara and Blanchett were competing against each other in lead, and probably help them much more in gaining actual votes because of the "competition" angle), I'm doubtful.  The question is which of these women decide to go supporting.  In the case of Vikander in particular, this could be a make-or-break moment for women like Kate Winslet, Rachel McAdams, and Jennifer Jason Leigh who are going to be making a play to actually win the supporting trophy (Vikander would start out with a huge advantage considering her film's buzz and the year she's had).  It's also worth noting that a confusing campaign could hurt these women (look at Scarlett Johansson's big miss in 2003) or the Academy could ignore it (Keisha Castle-Hughes and Kate Winslet in The Reader comes to mind).

2. Which Cate do we pick?

Assuming that Blanchett doesn't go supporting for Carol, the Academy is left with its biggest conundrum in this category since perhaps 2001, as Blanchett will have two films that are in contention, not just one.  Both Carol and Truth are star vehicles for Blanchett, who is probably due for an afterglow nomination after her major triumph in Blue Jasmine, but she could end up missing for both because of vote-splitting.  It's worth noting that in 2001 Nicole Kidman was skipped at the SAG Awards for her work in both Moulin Rouge! and The Others, and many people thought that Tilda Swinton or Nia Vardalos might earn a nomination by technicality as Kidman had active campaigns for both films potentially splitting her support.  While Kidman ended up with her first nomination that year, Scarlett Johansson wasn't so lucky two years later.  Blanchett could try the route employed by Kate Winslet in 2008 (pushing one to supporting), but that still only resulted in one nomination for The Reader as the Academy refused such nonsense.  How Blanchett's campaign pans out could play a major role in whether she gets to the Final Five either in lead or supporting (or both).

3. Is the Academy sick of Jennifer Lawrence and David O. Russell?

I can't tell right now whether or not the public is sick of J. Law-it's hard to know, though it's been a while since we have had a movie star that demanded this kind of polarized reactions.  Still, this could be a big moment for the Academy as Joy is clearly designed to continue Russell's amazing consecutive run of Best Picture nominees, and Lawrence could make history as the youngest actor to score four nominations, besting Jennifer Jones.  The question is whether or not this will work for her-if the slight stench coming off the X-Men and Hunger Games franchises (diminishing returns, both commercially and critically) hurts her, she could be in for a surprise snub.  However if she continues to be the star of the moment, it feels like Joy will be yet another chance to reward her (perhaps even with a second trophy).

4. Will the Buzz Translate?

Right now there are four actresses who are clearly critical favorites but who have not had their Oscar moment that could potentially change all that in a few months (again, remember that we don't really have a frontrunner quite yet).  Brie Larson (Room), Emily Blunt (Sicario), Saoirse Ronan (Brooklyn), and Carey Mulligan (Suffragette) have not won much in terms of hardware (and only the latter two have scored with the Oscars), but they're all in positions in their career where a nomination could happen, and all have strong reviews coming out of their respective film festivals.  The question here is what happens as a result of that.  People can go from festival buzz all the way to the Kodak (look at Jennifer Lawrence in Winter's Bone or Gabourey Sidibe in Precious) or they can be completely forgotten like Elizabeth Olsen in Martha Marcy Mae Marlene.  The campaigns for these actresses, as well as public reaction to their relatively small films will be critical, but I would be stunned if 1-2 didn't end up in contention later this year.

5. Time for an Oscar Favorite?

Occasionally Oscar gets a little nostalgic or repetitive, and decides it must have a certain former winner back in the fold for whatever reason.  In 2009, despite Emily Blunt making far more sense on paper (up-and-comer, real-life person, never honored, Globe nominee in Drama) for The Young Victoria, the Academy decided that it must have Helen Mirren randomly nominated for The Last Station, a nomination I am guessing even Mirren herself forgets happened.  Marion Cotillard last year trumped Jennifer Aniston for a similar sort of situation, though here she at least had better reviews.  The question becomes which "longshot" former winner might be invited back for another round in the fifth slot?  I am not counting Blanchett and Lawrence here since they seem more-than-likely to be in the conversation regardless and fifth-slots never actually win the trophy (which both of these women seem like strong possibilities to do), but instead Sandra Bullock (Our Brand is Crisis), Julianne Moore (Freeheld), Maggie Smith (The Lady in the Van), and even Cotillard again for Macbeth.  Bullock probably has the best shot considering the prestige behind her project (from the men who brought you Argo), but any of these women could theoretically make it if they get good enough reviews and Oscar's feeling it.  And then of course it's always unwise to totally discount Meryl Streep, whose work in Ricki and the Flash was light, but then again so was her performance in Music of the Heart and that still got through.

6. Will Anyone Get an "It's Time" Nomination?

One of the sadder things about the Best Actress race is that, unlike the Best Actor field where the likes of Gary Oldman, Mickey Rourke, and Frank Langella all managed to score late-in-their-career "you should have been an Oscar nominee by now" sorts of nominations, the Best Actress field rarely does this, going instead for the tried-and-true former winners/nominees and the PYT's.  This year, however, three women could be looking at their very first trophy, two of them their very first nomination.  Charlotte Rampling (45 Years), Lily Tomlin (Grandma), and Blythe Danner (I'll See You in My Dreams) all three have gotten plaudits from festivals and critics, and in the case of Danner she even got a bonafide hit.  If they were men with the careers they had, we'd likely be pushing them hard for nominations, but this year is ultra competitive and this category isn't as kind to "career achievement" style first nominations.  I suspect that all three will get pushes from their studios, but the question is will any of them catch fire?  Tomlin in particular has been having a major career moment what with the Kennedy Center Honor and a recent TV series/Emmy nomination.  Part of me wonders if she might actually be able to win the thing, if she can land the nomination.

And there you have it folks-the six biggest questions for this year's Best Actress race.  What are your answers to these questions and what five women seem most likely to succeed?  Share your thoughts below!

Everybody's Linking for the Weekend

Okay, first I want to apologize a bit for the slacking off this week.  Work, real life, and stress that I wasn't expecting all reared their head, and while they all have put me in a better place than I was at the end of the week (raring to go now!), it also meant I got a bit distracted from the blog.  However, we will be finishing up a series, kicking off a new series, and doing our sixth OVP over the next two weeks, so get pumped (I'll also be back to our regular twelve-post weeks starting again on Monday).  In the meantime, I missed a crap-ton of stuff this week so let's get this thing going!

On Entertainment...

-The fifty biggest shows of the year were released this past week, posing a few questions for me.  First off, why the hell is it that Madam Secretary isn't considered a bigger hit?  I get that the show isn't high-ranking amongst the younger 18-34 year-olds, but seriously-it's the second-highest rated new show on network television after Empire.  If this was scoring the same exact ratings with younger viewers we'd be talking about Tea Leoni winning an Emmy.  I would also like to know who are all these people watching all four NCIS's?  And finally what does it say about the state of television that reruns of The Big Bang Theory get better ratings than the vast majority of new programming?

-Everyone was talking about shoes out of Cannes (and Gasper Noe's Love, the only film from the festival so far to create a sensation-can't wait to catch it), and the ridiculous rule that women can't wear flats on the red carpet at the French film fest.  Admittedly, it's not an official rule but multiple women have been stopped and questioned for their shoe choices and though I'm disappointed that Emily Blunt, who has been very vocal about the entire affair, didn't follow through with her plans to wear flats (perhaps because she's a threat for the Best Actress trophy?), it still seems quite silly to be regulating such things.  Perhaps they should focus more on hair height?

-Admittedly I'm a bit late to the party on this one, but the internet is big and I can't always hit everything that I was hoping for right away.  Natalie Portman apparently doesn't know where her Oscar is, and not because she lost it or anything-it's just that she doesn't really care about it and called it a "false idol."  The Black Swan-star annoyed me with this comment for myriad reasons, but mostly because she campaigned extremely hard for that trophy, a trophy that I'm sure Annette Bening, Michelle Williams, Nicole Kidman, and Jennifer Lawrence all really wanted.  To pretend after-the-fact that she doesn't care about it, particularly for someone as smart as Portman (who had read the story of Abraham long before she won that Oscar), is really fake and seems to be just catering to a "hip-style" mentality that she can now adopt because she has the Oscar.  It's a big moment in your career, you worked hard for it and gave a terrific performance to get it-if you're going to take a stand, maybe five years after the fact is the wrong time to do it.

-JK Rowling is scandalized by the Attitude photoshoot of Matthew Lewis (aka Neville Longbottom) and we get the week's cutest Twitter exchange.  Also, did you see that photo shoot, because hot damn, call the police and the firemen.

On Politics...

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell

-The biggest story coming out of last night was in regard to Sen. Mitch McConnell's failure to pass an extension of the Patriot Act, with most of his caucus bucking him while he relied almost completely on Democrats to get the extension.  McConnell has been in situations like this before, but is finding there are larger issues to address with a growing group of senators, led by presidential candidate and McConnell's fellow senator Rand Paul, turning up the Libertarian heat headed into next year's presidential elections.  The Democrats are eviscerating McConnell for "ineptitude" following this debacle, but probably are gleeful behind closed doors as Republicans can't afford this kind of press headed into 2016, particularly with a slew of competitive Senate races on-deck in traditionally blue states.

-New Hampshire Republicans continue to reel from the Frank Guinta scandal, where he illegally took $355k from his parents to help his chances in the 2010 Midterm elections, which he won.  Sen. Kelly Ayotte, facing what may well be a brutal reelection in 2016, has called on her fellow Republican to resign, but as of now it appears that Guinta isn't budging.  I'm interested to see where this turns-the Republicans have a decent bench in the district, but so do the Democrats, and it's very swing-y (it's exchanged hands five times in the past decade, only sticking with the incumbent in 2008).  If the seat were to open up in a special election, a different sort of question emerges-will Democrats stick with former Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter, who has won the seat three times but lost it twice, or will they go with someone new to take on a new Republican?  If Guinta doesn't resign, will Republican anger at the "man" keep him as the nominee in a similar way to Michael Grimm, in which case Shea-Porter's victory seems quite certain and the Republicans lose a seat in the Granite State since they won't have the poor campaigning skills that Grimm chanced upon in his opponent.

-Chris Christie seems to be unraveling every day now, this past week getting involved in an expletive-filled rant against the press and his treatment during Bridgegate.  There are multiple problems with this. For starters, the press was pretty even-handed and DID in fact uncover a scandal involving Christie, which means that they did their job despite constant mocking from the governor while it was unfolding.  Secondly, the last angry man thing is not going to wear well for Christie, particularly with his approval in the toilet and New Jersey having massive buyers' remorse about the 2013 elections.  Lastly, it particularly won't work in states that aren't New Jersey, like Iowa and South Carolina, who have a different sense of what they want to see from their politicians, and a bully is not one of those expectations.

Shameless Self-Promotion of the Week...

How I plan on celebrating gay marriage in Ireland.

YouTube Video of the Week...

I had to go with the final Top 10 from David Letterman, whom I watched all through college and was decidedly Team Dave in the wars against Jay Leno (also hats off to the very classy Jimmy Kimmel and Conan O'Brien for telling people to turn away from their shows to go watch Letterman).  My favorite is Number 4:

Just One More...

-Pulitzer Prize winner Herman Wouk is writing a memoir after 100 years of life.  My first reaction to hearing this was "wait...Herman Wouk is still alive?" which is a bit of an easy joke but it genuinely was my response.  However, how great that the author of The Caine Mutiny, War and Remembrance, and The Winds of War is still alive and telling his story.  Here's to 100 more!

The State of the Race: Best Actress

It's never too early to talk about Oscar, at least in my mind, and based on some of the reactions out of Cannes this past week, journalists tend to agree.  The recent spate of buzz is from the Best Actress race,  where Emily Blunt's Sicario is gaining raves and Oscar talk.  This makes sense, of course, as Blunt is the position in her career where Oscar seems destined to call.  At 32, she's at roughly the right age for both global superstardom (most major female stars ascend sometime between about 28 and 35), and has been receiving accolades everywhere except for the Kodak.  She has the weirdly dubious distinction of having four Golden Globe film nominations without a single Oscar nomination (only nine actors in history have ever done this), and they've been all over the place, from scene-stealing in The Devil Wears Prada to playing a monarch in The Young Victoria to the lead in a major musical in Into the Woods (also Salmon Fishing in the Yemen which...was in a weak year for comedy).  Blunt seems destined to be in this year's Oscar/Globe conversation once again, and I'm starting to feel may be one of the big five.

But who else is going to be amongst one of our favorite categories?  That's the question, and like most years, it's starting to look more and more like it's just going to be a repeat of names, with Blunt being an obvious exception (and potentially, as a result, gaining a leg-up in taking an actual trophy).  Most of the names that I'm seeing pop up are former winners.  Toward the top of that list is Cate Blanchett in Carol, which she is currently making the rounds for in Cannes and is gaining loads of headlines for her lesbian sex scenes with Rooney Mara, but I suspect toward the end of the year the "daring" of those headlines will pay off when she vies for her seventh Oscar nomination.  Joining her could be another constant presence at the Oscars recently named Jennifer Lawrence, who is doing her third turn in a David O. Russell movie with Joy.  While all things are true until they're not, it's worth noting that Lawrence scored nominations for both of her most recent Russell films, and this is a period film which is something that Oscar tends to gravitate toward-three years between Oscars is actually pretty common-could Lawrence be battling it out for a second trophy?

Other former winners in the conversation include Meryl Streep (when is she not?), who has yet another musical-comedy style role in Ricki and the Flash.  The trailer wasn't my favorite, to be honest (it looked pretty damn generic), but Meryl is typically lightning and she managed to get nominated for Music of the Heart, so counting her out is ALWAYS a bad idea.  Julianne Moore would probably be at the top of the heap were she not also last year's winner, as Freeheld has lots of baity hooks (cancer, lesbian, real life), though it remains to be seen if she can be nominated as Best Actress while her equal screen-time partner Ellen Page goes supporting (no pair of actresses have been nominated for Best Actress in the same film since 1991's Thelma & Louise, though I would LOVE to see that run end this year with Freeheld and Carol both on the table).  Honestly-we could be in a weird situation where the last four winners of the category and Blunt are all competing for the actual trophy.  However, there's a few longer shot former winners in Charlize Theron (The Last Face), Kate Winslet (The Dressmaker), Angelina Jolie (By the Sea), Maggie Smith (The Lady in the Van), and Marion Cotillard (Macbeth) in the conversation as well.

Still, we could see a few former supporting nominees emerge from the top of the heap if the iron is hot. Two in particular have gained real traction, and couldn't have more diverse career paths.  Saoirse Ronan, only 21 years of age, could be looking at a second nomination to follow-up her childhood nod for Atonement (thus becoming the first actor to be nominated as both an adult and a child since Jodie Foster) for Brooklyn, a film about the Irish immigrant experience that got raves out of Sundance this past season.  On the opposite end of the spectrum is Lily Tomlin, who is definitely having a moment right now in pop culture: she just won the Kennedy Center Honor, is starring in a new series from Netflix with her 9 to 5 costar Jane Fonda, and at 75 is getting her first lead role in ages with Grandma, a movie that got her huge triumphs out of Sundance.  It's worth noting that it's been forty years since her first Oscar nomination, which is one year longer than the time span between Helen Hayes two Oscar nominations (I believe this would give Tomlin the record-someone call me out in the comments if this isn't correct), giving a lot of compelling evidence for the popular Tomlin to actually win if she manages to pull through the season with a hit.  The only other former nominee that has a decent shot at a nomination is Carey Mulligan, who is getting strong reviews for Suffragette, but it's always hard to make bets on British issue pictures, as we saw with Made in Dagenham a few years back

Rounding out the list are a few longer shots that haven't been nominated before.  Sight unseen (this is always major guesswork this early in the season) it doesn't appear like anyone has the kind of advantage that Blunt does to gain the status of "Oscar nominee," but a few women are trying.  Toward the top of the list, joining Tomlin in the "career honors" section is Charlotte Rampling, whose film 45 Years got picked up by Sundance Selects and the iconic English star won the Best Actress prize at the Berlinale this past year.  Another actor trying for "career honors" is Blythe Danner, who has had more luck in recent years with stage and television, but is an actor who has worked with EVERYONE and has the potential for a sleeper hit coming out soon with rave reviews for I'll See You in My Dreams headed to Gwyneth's mom (and you know that Paltrow would be out pushing hard for her mom with the press).  Amongst the younger set is Alicia Vikander, who could be either lead or supporting in The Danish Girl, though the actress has eight films out in 2015, so she could cancel herself out all-over-the-place or could end up doubly-nominated-it's too soon to tell.  Finally, you can never entirely count-out a musical biopic, and Zoe Saldana's portrayal of Nina Simone could be catnip to Oscar voters provided the film gets a distributor.

Those are kind of where we're at right now for Best Actress-what are your thoughts?  Who do you think emerges from this pack and makes it to the final five?  What performances are you most excited for?  And do you think this is Emily Blunt's year?  Share in the comments!

Jennifer Aniston & David Oyelowo: Are They Done with Oscar?

As part of my reaction to the Oscars, I've been thinking in particular the strangeness of Jennifer Aniston and David Oyelowo, and their surprise snubs at the Oscars, and I thought it would be interesting to put some numbers behind their particular misses, principally because of their Golden Globe nominations in the lead drama categories.

Now everyone knows that, particularly with Best Actress, a nomination in the Drama category doesn't necessarily translate into a nomination with Oscar.  Usually at least one person misses in translation, either for a lead in a Musical/Comedy or for a film that wasn't quite the HFPA's fancy.  However, from what I am gathering, most of the time the one that misses happens to be someone that either is an Oscar nominee or is about to be one.  With Best Actress, of the women that didn't get nominated for the Oscar in the past ten years, 76% of them were Oscar nominees or, in one case (Maggie Gyllenhaal) were about to become Oscar nominees; with men, it's 71%.  So adding in the preponderance for Globe nominees to make it to the Oscars, and that almost all Globe nominees either are or are eventually nominated for the Oscar, and you have to ask yourself-just how rare are Jennifer Aniston and David Oyelowo, and is this the end-of-the-road for their Oscar dreams?

It's actually extraordinarily rare to win a Golden Globe nomination for drama and not go on to win an Oscar nomination for the same role if it's your first chance, in fact.  In the 72 year history of the awards, only 18 men and 31 women have been nominated for a lead Golden Globe for Best Drama and not gotten an Oscar nomination at some point in their careers (including, now, Aniston and Oyelowo).  The bulk of these nominees, it should also be noted happened before 1984-in the past thirty years only 20 of these people have been part of this statistic.  This is partially because the modernized campaigns for Oscars make the actual field of potential nominees smaller.  We know headed into Oscar nomination morning, for example, that only 7-8 nominees have a legitimate shot at being selected, and that list almost always includes a Globe nominee for Best Drama.  Aniston and Oyelowo become even rarer when you subtract candidates such as Tobey Maguire in Brothers, Idris Elba in Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, and Maria Bello in A History of Violence, all three of whom were not considered serious candidates with AMPAS or were competing at the Oscars in a supporting category.

These 49 men and women run-the-gamut in terms of star power, though it's worth noting that most of them were giving what would be considered their defining cinematic performance.  Only a couple (such as Rita Hayworth and Jim Carrey) were superstars at the time or at any time in their career, making the bulk of those that missed more in-line with where Oyelowo is in his career rather than Aniston.  Many of them, in fact, largely gave up on their careers in film and went on to much more successful careers in television, including Rachel Chagall, Jessica Walter, and Treat Williams.  Others strayed away from dramatic acting as a vocation, moving over to comedy where they enjoyed success but where it is considerably harder to gain an Oscar nomination (Mia Farrow springs to mind).

But the question here is whether or not Aniston or Oyelowo have what it takes to get off this list and become an Oscar nominee, and while they had an incredibly bad string of luck headed to this point (being that it is unusually rare for them to have missed, statistically), they will need a solid amount of good luck to make the jump from just-miss back into Oscar's good graces.  That's because only 15 people have landed the Globe nomination, missed with Oscar, and then went on to gain an Oscar nomination for a later performance.  That's only 23%, which is not great for either of these actors.  It's worth noting that if Aniston or Oyelowo want to become Oscar nominees, they need to start cranking out the prestige fast.  60% of those nominees that made the jump from the Globes to the Oscars did it within five years, and all but three did it within ten.  The three standouts had second waves in their careers: Dean Stockwell making the leap to comedy 28 years later in Married to the Mob, Anthony Hopkins getting his scene-stealing work in The Silence of the Lambs thirteen years after Magic, and Kathleen Quinlan gaining a coattail nomination in Apollo 13 eighteen years after her schizophrenic turn as a young woman in I Never Promised You a Rose Garden.  For Aniston in particular it may also pay off to go supporting-66% of the female Globe nominees got their first Oscar nomination in supporting.

A few more things before we finish this (very technical) article.  First, it should be noted that if Aniston or Oyelowo get nominated, that doesn't mean one-and-done.  Particularly for Oyelowo, many of the male nominees have gone on to win multiple nominations in their careers, including Anthony Hopkins (4 nods), Nick Nolte (3 nods), and Brad Pitt (5 nods and counting).  This also doesn't mean that they should give up on their dreams of actually holding an Oscar of their own-just under a third of the fifteen have won Oscars, and several of them (like Maggie Gyllenhaal and Michael Fassbender) are relatively young in their careers.

And lastly, Aniston and Oyelowo aren't the only ones trying their darndest to get off of the list of 49 actors who have a Globe nomination but not Oscar.  As we mentioned above, Jim Carrey, Tobey Maguire, Idris Elba, and Maria Bello are still working constantly and could still score.  Other names such as Evan Rachel Wood, Zhang Ziyi, Emily Blunt, James McAvoy, Scarlett Johansson, and Richard Gere all appear in movies quite frequently (it's worth noting that Gere and Johansson are the only two actors in history to twice be nominated for Globes in Drama and still not be Oscar nominees).  Blunt and Johansson, in particular, have made something of a career of being nominated for the Globes and not being cited with Oscar (both have four Globe nominations for film without an Oscar citation), and are arguably the two that seem most likely to jump off the list.

But in the meantime all we have to do is speculate-do you think Jennifer Aniston, David Oyelowo, or any of these contenders will make the jump from Golden Globe nominee to Oscar nominee?  If so, who, and which will go first?  Share your thoughts in the comments below!