OVP: Picture (2021)

 OVP: Best Picture (2021)

The Nominees Were...

Laura Berwick, Kenneth Branagh, Becca Kovacik, & Tamar Thomas, Belfast

Philippe Rousselet, Fabrice Gianfermi, & Patrick Wachsberger, CODA

Adam McKay & Kevin Messick, Don't Look Up

Teruhisa Yamamoto, Drive My Car

Mary Parent, Denis Villeneuve, & Cale Boyter, Dune

Tim White, Trevor White, & Will Smith, King Richard

Sara Murphy, Adam Somner, & Paul Thomas Anderson, Licorice Pizza

Guillermo del Toro, J. Miles Dale, & Bradley Cooper, Nightmare Alley

Jane Campion, Tanya Seghatchian, Emile Sherman, Iain Canning, & Roger Frappier, The Power of the Dog

Steven Spielberg & Kristie Macosko Krieger, West Side Story

My Thoughts: We are officially finishing off 2021, the year that brought back the "ten-wide" rule (thank the lord...it should be ten or five, not this floating number each year), and the year where movies returned to theaters.  We'll get to the My Oscar Ballot tomorrow (where I pick my nominees), but for today, we've talked about all of the films for weeks (links to all past contests below)-let's crown a winner!

Dune is a movie that plays as a half of a film.  This isn't the first time this has happened (Empire Strikes Back and Back to the Future II come to mind), but even in a world where sequels are inevitable, I don't know that I love that it's not a complete vision, as it's hard to gage without seeing the second half.  That's really the only complaint I have about an otherwise magical film.  The effects, cinematography, and writing are all top drawer, playing with visual space onscreen by showing grandeur against a limitless nothingness on the planet of Arrakis, and featuring solid turns from Rebecca Ferguson & Charlotte Rampling.

Speaking of movies that feel incomplete, we have King Richard.  This has a solid lead performance from Will Smith, but it's too glossy for me.  This happens when you have portrayals of real-life figures, especially when those real-life figures still have a lot of power to shape their narrative (the Williams sisters are not signing off on a movie that makes their dad look bad).  As a result, you get an unrealistic look at a man who the film insists is always right, and late in the film tries to give you some of the complications of his parenting without actually articulating them.  The tennis scenes are well-edited & timed, but the film itself can't claim the same.

Licorice Pizza was marred in some critical debates by conversations about its content...largely from young critics who don't really understand that movies aren't supposed to be literal reflections of life.  The film itself is meant to be a suspension-of-reality, and it pays off.  We get Anderson's most cinematic movie yet, a dreamy look at the coming-of-age narrative, with terrific performances from Cooper Hoffman (very much doing his dad proud) and a star-is-born turn by rocker Alana Haim.  Throw in fun cameos by Bradley Cooper & Harriet Sansom Harris, and you've got yet another "W" in the PTA column.

The Power of the Dog is a slow-burn enigmatic tale that never stops surprising the audience.  That lack of expectation & the way that we don't know what's next is really a testament to Campion's ability, decades into her career, to come up with one of her best movies to date (have to clarify with "one of" when you made The Piano).  Benedict Cumberbatch's weird accent work and unusual delivery is somehow the perfect fit for his Phil, an enthralling, dangerous man who knows the best way to make all of the people in his life (ably played by Kirsten Dunst, Kodi Smit-McPhee, & Jesse Plemons) on edge, and feeling like they have no way out.

Drive My Car got most of its press from its length and the shocking moment 40 minutes into the movie where they decided to start the credits, showing the audience they're in for the long haul.  But that's not a problem for the movie, whose in-depth story of grief & loss doesn't play as a dirge, but instead something you want to continue watching.  The movie overdoes it with the connections to Uncle Vanya and some of the side characters (specifically the owners of the theater company) feel a bit stilted, but overall it's a strong movie, and features a great lead performance from Hidetoshi Nishijima.

West Side Story is one of those remakes I insisted I didn't need...until I saw it and realized "this one gets a pass."  Of course Spielberg has possibly the greatest musical score of the 20th Century to play with, but he reinvents characters (Mike Faist comes out as a STAR in this), gives us unique takes on the film's original text (it isn't afraid to point out the racial politics at play that were underdone in the 1961 film), and during many of the musical numbers, you're reminded why he's one of the great filmmakers of all time (that scene at the dance!).  There are quibbles (the choreography is too repetitive, the cinematography feels a bit too heightened in some scenes), but overall this is Spielberg's best work in decades.

The films of Adam McKay have gotten increasingly off-track, and utterly ridiculous (giving a man an Oscar does not make him Quentin Tarantino).  That's more-than-true with Don't Look Up.  Listen, nothing in this film isn't true-the absurdity of the media, the inability of the political establishment to do anything about major issues without needing to be pushed to the brink...this is literally what is happening with climate change.  It's appropriately terrifying.  But it's broad as a barn, and with a call sheet that boasts five Oscar winners (not to mention Timothee Chalamet & Melanie Lynskey!), he does nothing with this godsend of a cast, making Mark Rylance & Meryl Streep give maybe the worst performances of their careers.  A sloppy, gross mess...that admittedly makes some decent points.

CODA is the sort of movie that if you take it out of the context of the Oscars, would age very well.  The movie is strong if formulaic, with a decent roster cast (best of the bunch is Daniel Durant as a sexy, sullen older brother caught in his sister's shadow), and it does what it is attempting to do well.  Simple is not always easy, and it plays at warmth & heart without feeling saccharine or like you're watching a third act speech on a 1990's sitcom.  Giving it the Oscar made it an easy target for potshots, but if we're being honest-it's a good movie, and better than a lot of its competition.

The same can be said for Belfast, a wonderful spin on the Cinema Paradiso trope that gains a lot of its strength through the casting department, as the entire team is working well here, particularly Jamie Dornan in the film that gets him out of his Grey doldrums and proves what a fine actor is underneath his chiseled-from-marble exterior.  In a different life, this would've been a feel good, word-of-mouth hit thanks to the way that it plays on the importance of family set amidst the tragedy of violence, and while it doesn't stick the ending...after a joyous ride it's hard to care that much.

The final nomination is for Nightmare Alley, arguably the big shocker of this slate, and like West Side Story, a remake I didn't really want but was happy to receive once it came on my doorstop.  Like WSS, the movie does things the original couldn't, particularly sticking to the original book ending (which I won't spoil here, but it's better than what we get in 1947), and playing with the nastiness of the darkest film noir of the Golden Age.  Bradley Cooper has never been better, and the ways the gothic cinematography play with space are super inventive.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes separate their categories into Drama and Musical/Comedy (and in 2021, they separated their awards from an audience given the HFPA boycotts), so you have The Power of the Dog taking Drama over Belfast, CODA, Dune, and King Richard, while Musical/Comedy went in the predictable direction of West Side Story against Cyrano, Don't Look Up, Licorice Pizza, and Tick Tick Boom.  PGA goes ten-wide, and picked CODA atop Oscar's lineup save for Drive My Car & Nightmare Alley which were replaced with Tick Tick Boom and Being the Ricardos.  And BAFTA is still five-wide so while they went with Power of the Dog as well, it was only over Belfast, Don't Look Up, Dune, & Licorice Pizza.  Eleventh place has to be Tick Tick Boom, given its precursor run, lead actor citation, & (most crucially) a nomination for editing with AMPAS.

Films I Would Have Nominated: You'll find out tomorrow!

Oscar’s Choice: In a victory that I predicted but still shocked, CODA took it over the more critically-acclaimed Power of the Dog (I also wonder if in future years we'll think about this as the year Dune lost in the way we think of Star Wars losing in 1977, depending on that franchise's legs).

My Choice: In a pretty solid field, Power of the Dog stands on top as the champion.  Jane's look at the western is too strong to ignore, and I'm not going to make the same mistake as Oscar.  Following it will be (in order) Dune, West Side Story, Licorice Pizza, CODA, Nightmare Alley, Belfast, Drive My Car, King Richard, and Don't Look Up.

And there you have it-another OVP in the books.  Are you joining me in Jane's uncomfortable western or do you want the heartwarming tale that Sian brought with CODA?  What film was most vulnerable to an attack from Tick Tick Boom?  And overall-what is your favorite movie of 2021?  Share your comments below!

Also in 2021: Director, Actress, Actor, Supporting Actress, 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 2021

Past Best Picture Contests: 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020

OVP: Director (2021)

OVP: Best Director (2021)

The Nominees Were...

Paul Thomas Anderson, Licorice Pizza

Kenneth Branagh, Belfast

Jane Campion, The Power of the Dog

Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Drive My Car

Steven Spielberg, West Side Story

My Thoughts: We are on the penultimate contest of the 2021 race, and, in a testament to the films of 2021, I'm still not tired of these movies yet.  Usually when I write these, I get kind of exhausted.  Especially in the past 15 years (which has been the bulk of our focus for the OVP), the Academy is so repetitive with their nominees (the same 8-10 movies in every category) that it's hard not to get bored.  But in 2021, they picked such a worthy vintage, as is evidenced by this fine crew of filmmakers, that I can't really get mad even if we've been to all of these places before.

The movie we have discussed the least of the bunch is Drive My Car, which is only on its third of four nominations (I anticipate we'll hit Best Picture & My Ballot in the next 48 hours to close out this season).  I have discussed this before, but I think that the film's steady hand and some of its risks with length really work.  It takes its time, especially with our two leads' journey, and while it short-changes the side characters, that feels more a fault of the writer than the director.  Hamaguchi's work here is measured and disciplined, and worth the payoff.

Jane Campion is one of those filmmakers that you breathe a sigh of relief when they win a directing Oscar, as you know she'd join Hitchcock, Kubrick, & Altman on the list of "embarrassing misses" for AMPAS.  That she won for such a wonderfully-controlled western is icing on the cake.  Power of the Dog is very much a product of its director.  She has to incorporate the vast wilderness (admittedly, not the American frontier it's implied to be, and it shows) of this world that swallows many of its characters without making the audience get too distracted.  It helps that she remains disciplined & focused on the four primary characters, her camera rarely moving off of them.  It's a triptych told as a quartet, and the direction is appropriately calculated.

Kenneth Branagh's Belfast is also quite controlled, and briefer than you'd expect for a biopic about a filmmaker who is not known for his brevity.  That choice to bounce & quickly give us snippets of his young life rather than drawn out treatises is so wise-the best asset Branagh has as a director is his cast, wonderfully brimming with chemistry.  I do feel like this film, more than any other cited by Oscar, is borrowing from previous films (you can't help but think the phrase "Cinema Paradiso" on repeat throughout this movie), and the way the film occasionally crosses into the present time feels unnecessary.  But I don't mind that too much, nor am I really torn up that the movie isn't darker (not all coming-of-age films need to be insanely depressing, even when they're about tough historical eras).

Steven Spielberg at once had the most difficult task of the five directors here, bringing to life the greatest musical score of the 20th Century (easy) while living in the shadow of one of the most beloved Best Picture winners of all-time (hard).  He almost completely succeeds, doing so by adding in just a little bit extra around side characters the first movie short-shifted (namely Riff & Valentina), and giving us inspired restaging of a number of the musical numbers.  Not all of them work ("America," in particular, feels like it's not up to the original, and the Jets choreography in the beginning is too repetitive), but when it dazzles (like the scene at the dance), you almost forget the Wise & Robbins outing.

Paul Thomas Anderson is (kind of) the only one of these five without an Oscar (it's so stupid they don't give the International Feature Film Oscar to a person instead of a country).  You know he'll get one eventually, though, and hopefully it'll be for a movie as good as Licorice Pizza, his most autobiographical film to date.  The decisions of the film are so smart-giving us a dreamy world largely in the perspective of Cooper Hoffman's charming leading man, the sort of story that plays not as reality but instead as a memory you think back upon as an adult.  The staging of some of the scenes (especially those with Bradley Cooper) are done for maximum comic effect-a really well-designed movie.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes went with Campion, here atop Branagh, Spielberg, Denis Villeneuve (Dune), & Maggie Gyllenhaal (The Lost Daughter...HFPA loves their celebrities!), while DGA picked a near carbon copy (including winner) of Oscar's lineup except they subbed out Hamaguchi in favor of Villeneuve.  BAFTA was doing its own thing in 2021, and that didn't stop with directing, with Campion winning against Anderson, Hamaguchi, Audrey Diwan (Happening), Julia Ducournau (Titane), & Aleem Khan (After Love).  In terms of sixth place, it was clearly Denis Villeneuve...this category was basically invented for big-scale epics like Dune, and it's wild he didn't get a nomination for it given Oscar has liked him in the past (and no, future Oscar historians, it wasn't CODA-all that buzz happened later).

Directors I Would Have Nominated: Yeah, I don't get the Villeneuve snub either-he'll make my ballot when I do it this weekend.
Oscar's Choice: You can always wonder whether Sian Heder might've taken this if she'd been cited, but without her, this was the one trophy that Power of the Dog took, and likely won in a landslide.

My Choice: Campion-she's on a different level, and makes the fewest mistakes.  There are no duds here, though, and I'd follow her with a solid Spielberg, Anderson, Hamaguchi, & Branagh.

Those were my thoughts-how about yours?  Are we all kind of on the same page that this was the right time to give an Oscar to Jane Campion?  Do we think the moment has passed for Spielberg to get a third directing trophy, or could it still happen?  And would Sian Heder have been a real threat here had she snuck in through the Hamaguchi slot?  Share your thoughts in the comments!

Also in 2021: Actress, Actor, Supporting Actress, 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 2021

Past Best Director Contests: 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020

OVP: Adapted Screenplay (2021)

OVP: Best Adapted Screenplay (2021)

The Nominees Were...

Sian Heder, CODA

Ryusuke Hamaguchi & Takamasa Oe, Drive My Car

Jon Spaihts, Denis Villeneuve, & Eric Roth, Dune

Maggie Gyllenhaal, The Lost Daughter

Jane Campion, The Power of the Dog

My Thoughts: Similar to the Original Screenplay race (links to all past contests are at the bottom of this page), Best Adapted Screenplay had four Best Picture nominees and one additional citation, in this case a film nominated for two acting trophies.  As a result, this isn't the most creative bunch of contenders, with Oscar thinking outside of the box.  It is, however, a pretty good list of options.  2021 was a solid year for movies in terms of quality even if it was clearly a growing pains year in terms of box office, with the streaming vs. box office debate raging (for no good reason...streaming was always a dead end for the movie industry).

We're going to start with CODA, which is bizarre because this is easily the longest we've gone without discussing a Best Picture winner in the my ballots.  Nominated for only three categories (and winning them all), I was one of the rare people to see CODA in a regular, first-run theater (not in a festival or on AppleTV)...in fact I saw all of the Best Picture nominees of 2021 in theaters.  I'm also one of the people (on Film Twitter, at least) to genuinely like it.  This film is not breaking any new ground, and winning Best Picture was too much prestige/pressure to put on it, but this is a solidly-structured film & heartwarming.  That feels like more of a credit to its acting ensemble than its writing, but this is a script filled with humor & strong touches (Kotsur & Matlin's horny, endearing relationship...Daniel Durant's excessive hotness played for maximum effect), so it's very hard to be mad that it did so well.

That said, Jane Campion's work on The Power of the Dog, which missed as a result of CODA's victory, is playing in a different league.  A three-act play that unfolds like that's both necessary AND not too overly-plotted, the movie positions its characters like chess pieces, but ones whose abilities you don't understand until the very end.  Cumberbatch's great soliloquies throughout are credited (appropriately) to the actor's strange dialect and unnerving demeanor, but they're also a credit to Campion, knowing the right way to have him speak the truth (about Bronco Henry) while also terrifying any man who dares to challenge him.

The Lost Daughter, like CODA, is also getting its first mention here, and is penned by the rare person to be nominated for both acting & writing, Maggie Gyllenhaal.  The movie is very good at wringing the unusual tension of everyday life and escalating it to the point where you feel like you're in a horror movie...there's something bizarre in how it treats white lies & unusual social situations in such a fashion that you are gripping your chair.  But the flashback scenes are underwritten, as if we're being left out of things on purpose to make the present more ambiguous.  I feel like this takes you out of the film more than it does keeps you on edge.

Drive My Car is in a similar boat.  The way the movie is structured and how it uses key aspects of the plot to drive additional emotions (here, instead of tension, it becomes grief), is brilliant, and I think the script needs some credit for sticking to that framing device, particularly the ingenious use of the credits a third of the way through the film.  But the movie, if we're being picky (and this is for an Oscar, we have to be), doesn't flesh out side characters enough (the theater owners, for example, are poorly inserted), and I don't know that all of the Uncle Vanya motif works.

The final nominee is Dune, which is partially an unusual nomination given that SciFi rarely shows up here.  But as someone who tried to get through Frank Herbert's slog of a book (I had a boyfriend who said it was his favorite book so I was reading it because I am that guy who genuinely reads your recommendations if he likes you, but the second we broke up it went back on my bookshelf to collect dust as it was SO needlessly dense), I was impressed at how well the film adapts.  It has a difficult task of both not making the film feel like Star Wars (George Lucas heavily borrowed from Herbert's novel), but also trying to engage in fleshing out a relatively thinly-plotted story.  It does that with both, giving us clear stakes, and enigma without it feeling annoying that we won't resolve until the second film.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes combine their writing categories so there is no adapted or original distinction, and in this case most of the nominees were originals, so we just had one (losing) nominee in The Power of the Dog.  WGA splits the categories, so we had CODA as the winner against Dune, Nightmare Alley, Tick Tick Boom, and West Side Story (WGA has weird eligibility rules, so I would assume that's why we aren't seeing The Power of the Dog), while BAFTA also went with CODA (I had no memory of that), against the exact Oscar lineup.  In terms of sixth place, it was West Side Story.  At the time I was over-confident of it (proof that you can't always trust Oscar narratives retroactively), but apparently it being a musical was too big of an obstacle even with a Best Picture nomination & Tony Kushner writing it.

Films I Would Have Nominated: As I said above, there's no bad nominee here-all of these are good movies and thumbs up screenplays.  But that's not to say that there's not room for improvement.  West Side Story, for example, modernizes the script without making it feel inauthentic or "catered" to a modern audience, which is hard to do for a film whose racially-insensitive initial casting felt like something for which the filmmakers wanted to overtly compensate.

Oscar's Choice: If they'd liked Power of the Dog better, it'd be easy to see Jane Campion getting multiple Oscars.  But given she already had a Best Director statue hand-wrapped for her, CODA prevailed in a big way.

My Choice: The Power of the Dog, and it ain't close.  Dune is my second, and it's a good script (it'll medal from me), but come on now-Campion's script is so much better her loss will confound future Oscar historians.  Behind these two I'll do Drive My Car, CODA, and The Lost Daughter, in that order.

Those are my thoughts-what about you?  Do you want to go with Oscar's feel-good CODA or you more inclined to the escalating stakes of The Power of the Dog?  For those who have read Frank Herbert's book, are you as impressed as I am by how well they brought it to the screen?  And do you think Oscar's aversion to musicals in this category is fair?  Share your thoughts below!

Also in 2021: 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 2021

Past Best Adapted Screenplay Contests: 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020

My Top 10 of 2021

Yesterday we went through my Top 10 favorite first-time viewings in 2021 (that weren't 2021 releases).  Today, we'll get into the 2021 releases.  This isn't a popular sentiment to share in certain sections of the internet, but I was generally bored by cinema in 2020.  While I'm not someone that always needs a lot of happy endings or giant effects, having all small, independent films got to be a bit monotonous, and perhaps more damning, there simply weren't that many truly spectacular movies, and the ones that were suffered from not getting the bright pop of a big-screen (think of how much better Mank or Nomadland would have looked in your local cineplex).  That wasn't the case in 2021.  Not only do I think this year was an improvement over last year, I am thrilled to say I saw eight of the below (10, err, 11) films on the big-screen, which in at least a couple of cases made all of the difference.

I am a one-man operation here with a full-time day job, and so there are inevitably a few films that I missed here.  I have every intention of seeing, specifically, Drive My Car & Flee (arguably the most critically-lauded movies that I didn't have the chance to get to), but weather and sheer exhaustion meant they missed the cutoff by a few days.  I did, however, see over sixty movies from 2021, and below are the ten best (alphabetically) of the bunch.  

Honorable Mention

Bo Burnham: Inside

dir. Bo Burnham

In an era where streaming overlaps so frequently with film it's hard to grasp the difference between what is and isn't cinema.  My gut says, by the strictest definitions, that this was intended to be "television" and as a result I'm not going to rank Bo Burnham's vital, bold, revolutionary comedy special in this Top 10, but know that if it was a movie it surely would've not just made this list, but would've sat at the top of it.

My Top Ten

Bergman Island

dir. Mia Hansen-Love

Part Certified Copy, part The French Lieutenant's Woman, with just a sprinkling of Scenes from a Marriage to stay on theme, Bergman Island is a thoughtful look at how we are haunted by art, and the way the tales we create for ourselves mirror our real-life relationships.

CODA

dir. Sian Heder

Takes a formulaic story and fills it with warmth & heart in unexpected ways.  The entire cast shows up (it's difficult to single out a member of the main quartet, though you'll crush hard on Daniel Durant) in the year's best ensemble.

Dune

dir. Denis Villeneuve

Oh yeah, that's what I've been missing.  Big-scale moviemaking of the highest-order, Villeneuve brings Frank Herbert's seemingly unfilmable movie to life with excellent world-building, superb effects, & a slew of superstars ready to embrace the picture's iconography.

Encanto

dir. Byron Howard & Jared Bush

Lin-Manuel Miranda's score is of course the centerpiece here ("We Don't Talk About Bruno" became a pop culture phenomenon for a reason), but what left me invested in a way I haven't been for the Mouse House since Coco was the myriad details the filmmakers put into every corner of the picture-it's a familiar story, but it feels anew with such well-drawn side characters.

The Green Knight

dir. David Lowery

The Green Knight plays a lot with form (this is less Howard Pyle and more Terrence Malick), but it truly shows what the meaning of honor is (what it's worth and its artificial constructs).  Dev Patel is marvelous (and sexy as hell) as our lead hero, and Alicia Vikander proves all of her Oscar naysayers wrong with a complicated (but perfectly executed) dual role.

Licorice Pizza

dir. Paul Thomas Anderson

By far the year's most "cinematic" movie.  I am always intrigued with PTA, but am not always in love...Licorice Pizza is one of those times where adoration is involved.  Alana Haim sings onscreen (excuse the pun)...a born actress from the opening scene.

The Power of the Dog

dir. Jane Campion

Completely enthralling, a slow-burn enigmatic tale that will keep you guessing right up until the final moments.  Benedict Cumberbatch takes what could've been a fatally miscast role and gives the performance of his career, and Kirsten Dunst & Kodi Smit-McPhee are up to the task of aiding him to that chilling finale.

Quo Vadis, Aida?

dir. Jasmila Zbanic

Quo Vadis, Aida? is at its best when it's showing the cruelty of fate.  A real-life story that plays with the tension of a high-stakes thriller (you will grip your armrest), it captures the immediateness of war in a way that few films before it have been able to achieve.

West Side Story

dir. Steven Spielberg

I never had a doubt that Steven Spielberg would make a good remake of arguably the 20th Century's greatest musical, but what I was unsure of was if he'd make it feel "needed."  Turns out, Spielberg is able to bring a modernness (without it ever feeling tacked on) to this tale, and is aided by a solid ensemble cast, particularly Mike Faist & Ariana DeBose.

The Worst Person in the World

dir. Joachim Trier

Trier captures one woman's life, the up's and down's in amazing detail.  But what makes Worst Person's story so mesmerizing is the way that he doesn't take time to let us second guess.  Like real life, Worst Person gives us a story about people who aren't ready to make decisions that they must make, and will affect the rest of their lives.  Few films can give us such stakes without feeling manipulated.

OVP: The Power of the Dog (2021)

Film: The Power of the Dog (2021)

Stars: Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons, Kodi Smit-McPhee

Director: Jane Campion

Oscar History: 12 nominations/1 win (Best Picture, Director*, Actor-Benedict Cumberbatch, Supporting Actress-Kirsten Dunst, Supporting Actor-Jesse Plemons, Supporting Actor-Kodi Smit-McPhee, Adapted Screenplay, Score, Sound, Production Design, Cinematography, Film Editing)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

The western is possibly my favorite genre (give or take film noir, though that's so much a time-and-place genre that it feels like a cheat) not because I enjoy John Wayne proclaiming "pilgrim" repetitively (though, it's worth noting, the film that inspired that Wayne joke on Family Guy is a marvelous western), but because it's such a claustrophobic genre.  The best westerns aren't about taming the land or driving cattle, they're about fighting against the loneliness of the prairie, the reality that the time of the cowboy comes-and-goes, making way for a different, more permanent way of life.  I wouldn't have name-checked Jane Campion, the New Zealand directing icon, as someone who would have one of the most compelling recent installments in this constantly down (but never out) genre, but I should've known Campion, a master of the human experience (and bringing it to to the screen) would have something as sharp as The Power of the Dog up her sleeve.

(Spoilers Ahead-and I mean it, so stop & bookmark if you haven't watched yet as we're discussing the whole movie) The movie takes place in five acts, focusing principally on four characters.  The first are Phil (Cumberbatch) and George Burbank (Plemons), two brothers with an uneasy relationship with each other.  Phil appears to be the alpha of the two, to the point that when George falls madly in love with the recently-widowed Rose Gordon (Dunst), he has to marry her in secret for fear that Phil might find a way to stop it.  This makes sense, because in the opening scenes we see Phil make Rose cry, not because of how he treats her, but how he treats her son Peter (Smit-McPhee).  Peter is "different," preferring books and making his own paper roses to the rough-and-tumble life of the Burbank brothers.  He is meant to read to modern audiences as gay, but as the film goes it's clear that Phil is the one who is attracted to men.  His obsession with the deceased Bronco Henry, another cowboy who took hold of Phil when he was young, becomes a driving conversation for him, something he won't stop talking about (it's clear from the opening scenes that an uneasy George knew of the relationship, but has said nothing through the years due to the strange grasp his brother has on him).

The film's second half, though, doesn't take the twists you'd think.  Rose, at one point a teetotaler (we learn late in the film that her husband was a drunk who killed himself), becomes an alcoholic under the weight of Phil's constant pressure, tormenting her & making her feel less than while her son is away at school.  George doesn't know how to fix this, but strangely Peter does, though we don't know it right away.  When he returns from school, he understands that his mother whom he adores has become ill, but instead of confronting Phil, he starts to meticulously seduce him.  He emulates the likely behavior that a curious young Phil experienced with Bronco Henry, sending off signals that Phil might finally be able to express himself once more.  What we find later, though, was that Peter was using his sexuality to seduce a tempted Phil (it's never actually confirmed if Peter is gay or not), only to kill him.  Peter convinces Phil to use rawhide and water that he provided, and with that, we get a callback to an earlier scene where Peter carefully skinned a diseased cow.  Phil, always careful in other moments, with his libido up and his guard down, uses the skin and dies from anthrax poisoning, thus freeing Peter's mother from Phil's bind.

The story is perfectly executed.  Much of The Power of the Dog is about an impending crescendo, which lesser writers might falter under-there's intense amounts of buildup to the climax, to the moments where we will see what happens to these four intertwined figures.  I called pretty quickly that we were leaving a lot of enigma around Peter, that much of what Campion's screenplay was providing on him was the impressions of him that others were providing, not any sort of data we got from the character himself, but Smit-McPhee plays him well enough that even as he unfolds his plan, we still don't know what happened, and that works here (ambiguity is this story's friend).  We don't know if Peter is gay, or if he on some level found Phil's offer attractive (Benedict Cumberbatch has never been hotter, the camera lingering over his chiseled frame & unkempt beard almost as if it wants us to get caught staring)...Peter remains a mystery even as everyone else's motives become clear.  The only hint we have in those final moments is that we know he knew what he was doing, a telling pair of gloves being worn as he handles the rope that Phil made for him, something he pushes underneath his bed for unknown futures.

Power of the Dog, helped by this script, is a universal triumph.  The cinematography is spectacular, with Ari Wegner understanding the beauty of a longshot; frequently there are two different things happening onscreen in the same shot, something you rarely see in movies today but it works because it's indicating to the audience that there are multiple wheels going on in this story.  The Jonny Greenwood score is yet another marvel from one of the most distinctive composers in movies today, and the editing is judicious and riveting.  

Of course, the acting needs mention as well.  Benedict Cumberbatch is not an actor whom I love, and he feels on-paper to be an ill-fit for this story (that posh London accent doesn't feel at-home on a Montana ranch).  But the actor totally uses that to his advantage, foraging a specific, unique figure that defies all convention & feels so uneasy with his own world that a British accent would be the least peculiar aspect of his Phil Burbank.  Kirsten Dunst is appropriately tragic; you can practically see the happiness drain from her body the further into the movie we get, the life force aching for someone to help her.  And Kodi Smit-McPhee gets the movie's toughest part but keeps it appropriately chilling...only in the lit cigarettes do we finally understand the grandness of his long con, and after that it vanishes, potentially never to be seen again.  All of these actors combine to a spellbinding good time, one I hope you see in theaters, as all westerns are better on the big-screen.