OVP: Supporting Actor (2020)

OVP: Best Supporting Actor (2020)

The Nominees Were...

Sacha Baron Cohen, The Trial of the Chicago 7

Daniel Kaluuya, Judas and the Black Messiah

Leslie Odom, Jr., One Night in Miami

Paul Raci, Sound of Metal

Lakeith Stanfield, Judas and the Black Messiah

My Thoughts: We are moving into the Big 6, and with that, we're starting as ever with Supporting Actor (we always do the same order, but we've done this 18 times now, so you probably caught that).  Supporting Actor in 2020 was weird for me.  Generally, I fall in love with at least a couple of performances each year-let's say, 6-7 roles onscreen.  It's not uncommon for Oscar, though, to skip most of them, and so I'm left with a category that I felt uninspired by.  This category, though...I can honestly say that there wasn't TRUE love for any of the performers, either the ones that Oscar chose or, quite frankly, the five I chose for our upcoming My Ballot.  While there was good work here, this was a weak year for this category, staggeringly so...which should honestly make our conversation about it a bit of a hedge maze, trying to figure the best way out.

Part of the problem with the lineup is that the best performance of the bunch (I'm showing my hands early here) is Daniel Kaluuya.  Three years after his breakout work in Get Out he got a second nomination for playing slain Black Panther leader Fred Hampton.  Kaluuya is excellent in this movie, totally inhabiting the complicated leader and making him feel both unknowable and seen.  It's a tricky part, requiring a lot of magnetism without letting the audience fully into what is bravado and what is confidence.  The problem for me is that this is 100% a lead performance-there's nothing supporting here. And per OVP rules, that means we have to knock off one star...he can still win, but he needs to play with a handicap.

His costar LaKeith Stanfield is also a lead in his performance, and one of the weirder nominations we've seen in a while.  Even Stanfield was perplexed by being nominated in the category (he famously put on Instagram "I'm confused too but fuck it"), assuming he was the lead, which he certainly is.  Stanfield's character, unlike Kaluuya's, doesn't give us enough as an audience.  Stanfield, a very gifted actor, underplays him, particularly given the addendum over the credits where it appears that his character continued to be an informant, making some of Stanfield's sympathetic portrayal of him feel juxtaposed with the message of the picture.

Paul Raci underplays his role in Sound of Metal more successfully.  Similar to Stanfield, the screenplay denies him a lot of big moments, but that honestly works better for his character here.  The subtler work allows us to project on him a little bit, and then have Raci upend that.  We're meant to assume he's a fully-supportive mentor, but he's not-he's a bit hard-nosed, which keeps their relationship and the course of this portion of the movie a surprise for me.  Notice the pacing of Raci's speeches, as if he's spent his whole life explaining things over-and-over...he's tired, and a bit worn, but still believes in what he's done.  Bravo to Oscar for not needing to go for the bombast here...because he certainly did for our final two nominees.

Both Sacha Baron Cohen & Leslie Odom, Jr. are not the best supporting actors in their films, and in Odom's case, isn't a supporting actor (category fraud abounds).  Odom's role as Sam Cooke should be the easiest of the four parts in his movie-he gets to play a cliche (a struggling musician, which is basically all biopics are these days), but he can't find a sense of this guy.  All of the other actors have given their performances & this long meditation clarity, but Odom plays Cooke too loud, too underlined, too free of evolution as a character.  You don't believe that he's changed as the film continues, as he's the emotional crux of the film's final act, the movie collapses under the weight of his bad acting.

Cohen is a better actor than Odom, and the performance in his film isn't entirely his fault.  As we've mentioned before, this is one of the worst screenplays that Aaron Sorkin has pulled together, and making him sound exactly like Jeremy Strong or Eddie Redmayne isn't really helping his cause here.  But Cohen's work is all ticks & clicks.  You can practically see him thinking of the next way to tackle this part.  An actor who has largely made his fame with improvisation, he doesn't handle the rapid-fire pace of Sorkin's dialogue well, and seems to visibly struggle under this constraint.  This honestly feels like a "we need to nominate one of these actors, and Cohen hasn't gotten an acting nomination" style mentality from the Oscars...but it doesn't work.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes went with Kaluuya (a song you're about to become familiar with) against Odom, Cohen, Jared Leto (The Little Things), and Bill Murray (On the Rocks), while SAG favored Kaluuya against Odom, Cohen, Leto, & Chadwick Boseman (Da 5 Bloods).  BAFTA went six-wide and got a bit more creative, though again Kaluuya won here atop Odom, Raci, Barry Keoghan (Calm with Horses), Alan Kim (Minari), & Clarke Peters (Da 5 Bloods).  In terms of sixth place, I am going to assume it was Boseman-there was a lot of momentum at the time to get him the double nomination as a sendoff to a rising actor brought down too young...though if you remember Jared Leto getting potentially nominated for his heinous work in Little Things was a real possibility.

Performances I Would Have Nominated: I am shocked that none of the guys in Mank were able to get off the ground here.  Particularly Charles Dance, who has that "I've been a character actor forever, but never been nominated" sort of vibe to him, and unlike a lot of the also-rans here, gets a really big "Oscar monologue" scene toward the end of his picture.  I also think that had Inside come out before Promising Young Woman, the critical acclaim would've gotten Bo Burnham a nomination for his tricky work in that picture.

Oscar’s Choice: I think initially Cohen seemed like a possibility, but once the Kaluuya train started, it was not going to stop.

My Choice: Kaluuya, as I said, is the best of this bunch, and would normally win easily, but given the category fraud, I have to deduct points.  Still, I think even with that caveat he's just a bit better than Raci, so I'll give him the trophy with Sound of Metal at silver.  Behind them are Cohen, Stanfield, & Odom.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Does everyone side with Oscar & I in picking Kaluuya, or do you want to vouch for one of the other actors?  Who do you think are the best supporting actors in the One Night in Miami and Trial of the Chicago 7 ensembles?  And when will precursors stop subjecting me to Jared Leto nominations?  Share your thoughts below in the comments!

Also in 2020: Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, International Feature Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound, Original Score, Original Song, Production Design, Cinematography, Costume Design, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Previously in 2020

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

OVP: Judas and the Black Messiah (2021)

Film: Judas and the Black Messiah (2021)

Stars: Daniel Kaluuya, LaKeith Stanfield, Jesse Plemons, Dominique Fischback, Ashton Sanders, Martin Sheen

Director: Shaka King

Oscar History: 6 nominations/2 wins (Best Picture, Supporting Actor-LaKeith Stanfield, Supporting Actor-Daniel Kaluuya*, Cinematography, Original Screenplay, Original Song-"Fight for You"*)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

As I mentioned yesterday, the Oscar nominations are less-than-a-week away, and as a result I'm spending all of this week profiling the final 2021 films that I need to see that are in serious Oscar contention (any OVP films that I haven't profiled/seen post-Monday from 2020/21 will be given top priority so we have as many conversations before the ceremony about the year as possible, as it's always more fun to discuss while they're top-of-mind).  Perhaps no film is more certain to be nominated come Monday in a major category (that I've somehow missed until today) than Judas and the Black Messiah.  Armed with a recent Golden Globe win for Best Supporting Actor, the film has gained much attention for the work of lead (yeah, we'll get to the category fraud in a second) actor Daniel Kaluuya's work, but I was curious what the film itself would be like, as there has been less attention given to that aspect of the movie.  As I found out, this might be because the film, while good, doesn't have the same stylistic daring as what Kaluuya is bringing to his performance.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is set in the late 1960's, and features Bill O'Neal (Stanfield), a car-jacker who is caught but given an out if he takes it by FBI Agent Roy Mitchell (Plemons).  O'Neal can join the Black Panther Party, and serve as an informant, specifically on Fred Hampton (Kaluuya), the organization's leader & someone whose rising popularity has scared people in the FBI who are attempting to stymie the Civil Rights movement.  Once he joins, Bill moves up fast, but also clearly develops an admiration for Hampton & his fellow Black Panthers, making the work he's doing with the FBI (which he's blackmailed into continuing to do) all the more complicated.  The FBI is misappropriating justice, killing members of the Panthers through nefarious & "in the name of the law" ways, and toward the end of the film J. Edgar Hoover (Sheen), worried about what an imprisoned Fred Hampton might do (and potentially gain even more followers), calls a hit on Hampton using information that he has gained through O'Neal.  The result is that Hampton dies at the hands of the FBI, and while O'Neal halfheartedly tries to quit the Panthers, he continues to inform for payment, and commits suicide after this is announced in a documentary.

The film is a damning indictment of the criminal justice system in the United States, and the way that law enforcement will use its power to stop nonviolent free speech if it's a threat to their power.  This isn't new-we saw that last year with the George Floyd protests & the way that police officers attacked citizens exercising their first amendment rights.  Continuing to show this through a medium as expansive as cinema is a worthwhile endeavor, and I'm glad the film was made.

This is a case, though, where the message is important but the film doesn't always succeed.  Judas has a good cast, but it doesn't use its cast as well as it ought.  LaKeith Stanfield would be one of 3-4 actors I'd list if I had to name one of the most exciting performers in pictures today-he's just a powerhouse talent, and a total chameleon onscreen.  That being said, there's not enough to his Bill O'Neal for my taste, not enough insight into what he's feeling.  This wouldn't have been a problem if they'd just ended the movie, but adding in that O'Neal continued to inform & then committed suicide over the end titles invites you to realize you don't know enough about his character to really have an opinion.  The reality is that only Kaluuya is given a proper range in his work for us to understand his motivations onscreen.  Kaluuya is the lead (this is a co-lead film, and it's laughable that he's going supporting...when he's nominated for the OVP, he'll lose a point off of his score as a result), but that's one of the only complaints I have about him being highlighted here.  His Fred is so young & so confident that you'd expect him to come across as naive or foolhardy (movies frequently confusing youthful exuberance for impetuousness), but Kaluuya plays him as a man with a longterm strategy, someone who wants to be important and give the people a better life.  This combination makes his ending even more tragic-losing not just a young man, but what might've been.

OVP: Knives Out (2019)

Film: Knives Out (2019)
Stars: Daniel Craig, Chris Evans, Ana de Armas, Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon, Don Johnson, Toni Collette, Lakeith Stanfield, Christopher Plummer
Director: Rian Johnson
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Screenplay)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

I love Clue.  I know that like everyone loves Clue, but I LOVE Clue.  I like everything about Clue, and not just the movie (which I've seen more than any other film, once watched with my brother I think every day for a month-for two cinephile brothers, I think that's the only film we ever did something like that with, and that includes Disney films, and have a poster of it in my basement).  I collect Clue board games; I have 20 versions of the game in my hobby room closet, as well as three knockoff mystery games (13 Dead End Drive, I see you), and am hoping to make it 21 this Christmas as I have "Clue Guess Who" prominently featured at the top of my Christmas list.  I've read all of the Clue books, watched the Clue VCR game, have the Clue Christmas ornament, I buy the Clue board game chocolate every year that Target has it...I love Clue.  And as a result, I'm about as good of a candidate for something like Knives Out as you can find-a silly murder mystery with a large, talented ensemble cast is exactly what gets me to a movie theater.  Even with a plethora of more plausible Oscar contenders out (though kudos on the trio of Globe nominations!), I couldn't resist last week when I had a two hour window to go and catch Rian Johnson's latest in theaters.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is not, of course, Clue, but it's obvious that Johnson has had a similar adoration for the franchise.  We start with Harlan Thrombey (Plummer), a wealthy mystery novelist, dying of what appears to be suicide in the opening moments of the film.  He had just finished celebrating his birthday party, one that had quite a bit of calamity with his family, and this opened the door for Benoit Blanc (Craig, sporting a ridiculous Southern accent), a noted detective, to be hired by an anonymous figure to investigate what could be a murder.  The film hosts a variety of suspects, from driven businesswoman Linda (Curtis), Harlan's favorite child, to her husband Richard (Johnson), who is having an affair, to his less successful son Walt (Shannon) who is mad that his father is driving him out of the business.  Add in a failed "Goop"-style guru daughter-in-law Joni (Collette) and a spoiled playboy grandson Ransom (Evans), and about the only person you don't suspect is Marta (de Armas), Harlan's nurse & caretaker.  Which means, of course, that Marta is both guilty and we're about to find out why she's guilty.

The best parts of Knives Out are arguably the parts I liked the least while watching it, because I am a mystery fan at heart, and love figuring out the clues as I'm going along.  We find out about a third of the way through what "actually" happened (it's a mystery-there's going to be a twist eventually) with Marta mixing up the morphine vile with Harlan's medication, thus accidentally killing him, and depriving her of her inheritance (Harlan decided to leave all of the money to his caretaker, cutting his family out of the will as a result).  We then see the steps that Marta will take to keep Benoit from finding out, knowing that if she had anything to do with Harlan's death, she'll lose the fortune which will go to Harlan's greedy & unworthy family.  As a result, this becomes more of a thriller than a mystery, as we're meant to take on the role of Marta as an audience rather than Benoit.

Upon reflection, this change in format generally works.  Johnson upends the mystery genre by giving us what we think is the answer, in the process showing what it's like to be an unreliable narrator, but in doing so the ending and the humor don't really resonate by putting someone as morally upstanding as Marta so central to the story.  The movie's best parts should be Curtis, Stanfield, and Collette, all having a blast with their characters, but they're forced into the sidelines to focus on sweet-as-pie Marta and over-acting Benoit, and since the only character whom we spend enough time with and is dynamic enough to be the eventual culprit is Evans' Ransom, we know eventually that it'll be revealed that he's the killer (by switching the labels on the bottles).

The film is fun, no question, but the entire time I saw it I kept thinking "this should be more fun."  It runs too long, isn't snappy enough outside of the initial interrogation sequences, and because it takes away the enjoyment of solving the mystery, it doesn't make us vested into the stories of the eccentric relatives.  As a result, we get relatively two-dimensional performances from people capable of so much more, and while de Armas has ability, she's kind of boring as Marta when you keep wanting to go back to the fun promised in the trailer & the movie's opening chapters.

Sorry to Bother You (2018)

Film: Sorry to Bother You (2018)
Stars: LaKeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson, Jermaine Fowler, Omari Hardwick, Danny Glover, Steven Yeun, Armie Hammer, David Cross
Director: Boots Riley
Oscar History: It's not that kind of movie
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Few actors working today are quite as exciting onscreen as LaKeith Stanfield and Tessa Thompson.  Both are consistently excellent in the work they put to screen, but are in that sweet spot where you know a classic role is coming, something that will become a defining part of their career, but they haven't quite gotten there yet even if they're always memorable.  This was one of the main reasons I was excited to see Sorry to Bother You, a film that I had seen in trailers but was not mentally prepared for as I sat in a silent theater (fourth time this year that I was the only person in a movie theater, a trend I'm not enjoying at all as I want theaters to succeed even if I don't love all of the movies that come out), and while neither of them come out with an iconic role, it goes to show that the faith we have in them can ground even the most unusual of material.

(Spoilers Ahead) Sorry to Bother You is the first feature film from The Coup vocalist Boots Riley, and it has the intense freshness of a promising debut artist.  The film centers around Cassius "Cash" Green (Stanfield), a kind if down-on-his-luck young man who has just taken a job as a telemarketer, lives in the garage of his uncle (who is also about to lose his house), and is in love with a beautiful artist named Detroit (Thompson).  Stanfield's goal at his new job is to someday become a "Power Caller," a seemingly made-up sounding position that turns out to be all-too-real when Cash lands it, realizing that he will now be working for a company called WorryFree, a corporation that essentially provides slave labor to companies around the globe.  In order to become a Power Caller, however, Cash must adopt his "white voice," where he pretends to be a white man on the phone (he is voiced by David Cross while doing the "white voice.").

The film is sharp, particularly in its first hour, as we look at the complicated racial politics of Cash, and in particular take a look at poverty in America that you almost never see on screen or in print.  The New York Times is often criticized for fetishizing a certain kind of blue-collar worker (you know the articles, where they profile the straight, white, middle-aged male who has no college degree, lives in rural Pennsylvania or West Virginia, and uses his economic struggles to excuse the racial politics of a Donald Trump or Roy Moore), but here we see a truly ignored branch of blue-collar worker.  There's no glamorizing Cash's life-his existence is a series of truly dive bars, living not just paycheck-to-paycheck, but overdue notice to overdue notice.  He's smart, capable, but has never been afforded any opportunity and is dismissed by most of society as someone who can be used but isn't really important.  It's not an accident that Riley puts him into a job where he's doing something most of us ignore-a field where we're free to hang up on the workers, or just pretend they don't exist through screening their calls.  Cash is someone that at best is viewed by those in power as a cog to be exploited, at worst a person that doesn't exist.

This is what leads to the bizarre second half, where we meet Armie Hammer's Steve Lift, a coke-addled CEO who is the only person in the film who has actual power, and not coincidentally, is a straight, white, handsome male.  Lift makes Cash a proposition, and here's where we leave the heightened reality of this world and enter science-fiction.  Essentially, Lift's company WorryFree, which is a corporation where you sign a lifetime guarantee of three meals a day and a roof over your head to become a day-laborer (he sells it as "opportunity," but it's obviously blackmailing the working poor into legalized slavery), is a front for a genetic experiment where you combine humans with horses to make mutant creatures that can be exploited and have the strength of a horse but still communicate like humans.  It's weird, and so far out of left field you'll be forgiven for thinking this is a bridge too far.  The film ends with the horse people coming into society, and Cash eventually becoming one of them (having been tricked by Steve Lift into taking the cocaine to become a horse person), and taking back society.

The jolt here is that while Cash risks everything to tell the public about WorryFree's true intent, no one seems to care.  There's a running theme throughout the film of people assimilating and adjusting to horrors when they don't know how to fix them.  While the film will receive comparisons to Get Out that are pretty easy, that picture was a reaction to the racist fallout of President Obama's presidency, a precursor to Trump but not a byproduct of it since the film came out only a few days after the 45th president's inauguration.  Sorry to Bother You, though, is clearly a product of our current era, an acid-hazed study of how people will do anything to normalize a man who would side against America's interests, who would keep children in cages, who would brag about assault or embrace white supremacists or continually exploit the working poor in a way that borders on inhuman. Riley pulls no punches, frequently not only showing a real person's reality in Cash, but also showing what crippling poverty can do to people's lives and ambitions.  We see Cash's uncle willing to sell himself into slavery because he cannot put a roof over his family's head, and we see an interesting look at the "Uncle Tom" trope where Cash is willing to initially sell people out, mostly because he knows he'll be next if he doesn't (until he gets a rude wakeup to this reality when they start turning people into horses, something even his mildly elevated perch as a Power Caller doesn't excuse him from).  The film is damning, nasty, and frequently truthful look at the way that capitalism has exploited people, particularly people of color, in order to create wealth for the few (almost exclusively white men), and in many ways is the most important political film I've seen this year.

Unfortunately, though, it's kind of a mess.  While it's brimming with ideas, it takes too many left turns and frequently under-writes different characters or finds too many metaphors.  Perhaps because there are too many examples of ways the working poor are exploited to count in one film, or perhaps because Riley just wanted to shove all of his ideas into one picture, but the movie is jumbled, and the second half in particular feels sloppy.  In many ways he feels like a combination of Spike Lee and Quentin Tarantino, both directors with singular vision but who frequently struggle to pull together their narratives as they expand with ideas.  The characters feel underwritten, and the casting director does a better job of filling plot holes than the screenwriters (Detroit, in particular, feels like she could have been her own movie and oftentimes only exists to serve as Cash's moral compass, which I found a bit anti-feminist considering what a great actress you have in Thompson).  The best parts of the movie, other than the random asides and obvious metaphors (the punching people in the face show that is so loved is clearly a spoof on the NFL, right?), are Stanfield & Hammer, both continually excellent and bringing more depth to these roles than the writers give them.  Still, though, this is way too interesting of a film to ignore even if it feels too full of ideas to be coherent, and Riley has a guaranteed ticket from me the next time he gets behind the camera.

OVP: Straight Outta Compton (2015)

Film: Straight Outta Compton (2015)
Stars: Jason Mitchell, Corey Hawkins, O'Shea Jackson, Jr., Aldis Hodge, Neil Brown, Jr., Paul Giamatti
Director: F. Gary Gray
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Screenplay)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

One of the biggest awards surprises last year, and one of the biggest box office surprises for that matter, was the stunning victory of Straight Outta Compton.  While the film failed to secure a Best Picture nomination (which was much lambasted in the #OscarsSoWhite campaign), it did score a nod for Best Original Screenplay, a major coup for a film about the rap community in the early 1990's, considering that most AMPAS voters had probably never heard of Eazy-E or NWA.  I will admit that most of my contextual knowledge here was pretty loose.  I was slightly too young for this period of music history (I came of age just after, and I think you needed to actually be there for this period to resonate with you considering the political ramifications of NWA and its impact on the larger culture), so my touchstones with Ice Cube and Dr. Dre are, like many Millennials, the Friday movies and overpriced headphones, respectively.  Still, I always like a good history lesson, and so I settled into Straight Outta Compton, a film that definitely provides that context, though it still falls short in its musical biopic roots, telling the same old story even when I was hoping I might get something more.

(Spoilers Ahead) The problem with this genre is that it's relatively played out.  We have seen the musical biopic so many times at this point we know the entire thing by heart-it's like a Batman origin story, all the pieces are played together in the same routine.  We'll see some star we know will make it and a relative or teacher yelling at them to get their life together, saying "you have to stop dreaming" when of course we know that that dreaming will soon entertain the world.  We get that, in fact, during the opening scenes where Dr. Dre, then a young man, is yelled at by his mother to get a real job and stop pursuing his musical career.  We see that with the origin stories of classic songs that may or may not be real, but surely make for interesting padder.  We see that in the way that you meet clearly sketchy people (really-Paul Giamatti's ability in front of the screen continues to get more and more bloated-the man doesn't appear capable of playing a character who isn't a scenery-chewing "prestige" role anymore, and it's gotten to the point where I can't understand why he was hailed as a great actor in the first place) who help build up these talented young men.  And we see that when drugs and sex bring about their downfall.

The film does all of these things we know will happen even without context, and while this may be the truth (considering that Dre, Ice Cube, and Tomica Woods-Wright were all producers as well as characters in the film I assume that we see what largely happened, or at least a rose-colored glasses version of it), it makes for relatively boring cinema.  The last time I saw a musical biopic that felt fascinating was I'm Not There, and that was partially because it wasn't an actual biopic but really a fictionalized tale of Bob Dylan's life, so you could unexpected stretches and hold parts of the truth.  The musical biopic, much like the western in the 1960's, is in desperate need of reinvention because here it's still just the same old story, told over and over again.  The acting is pretty good, particularly O'Shea Jackson, Jr. playing his father onscreen and LaKeith Stanfield, whom you'll hopefully remember from the brilliant Short-Term 12 is terrific in a bit part as Snoop Dogg (I literally didn't realize that was LaKeith Stanfield until I just wrote this sentence, and now am giddy for jotting down while watching the film that he was my favorite part).  However even the acting is just okay.  I think that Jason Mitchell underplayed his part as Eazy-E, the rapper tragically brought down by AIDS in the mid-1990s as the last thirty minutes of the film felt more like a eulogy for people who missed him some twenty years later and less like an actual cinematic experience.  The idea that no one, save Suge Knight and Jerry Heller, ended up looking bad in the end of the film might have meant that the producers of the film may have needed to look at the story a little bit more contextually-Dr. Dre and Ice Cube by far come across as in the right in nearly every scene they're pitted against another figure in the music industry.  This lack of objectivity and originality makes the nomination for writing a bit puzzling in my opinion.

The saving grace of the movie is the music, as the soundtrack to the film is electric and shows why these rappers had such a major influence over music and the hip-hop industry over twenty years ago.  Performances of some of the biggest classics from the era, including "Fuck the Police," "Nuthin But a G Thing," and the title track come alive in the movie, showing the raw energy that these songs had on an audience in a time of deep unrest in the criminal justice system (Rodney King and the LA Riots play heavily in the background of the picture).  It's become a glib cliche on my part to just say "buy the soundtrack" to musical biopics, but I genuinely recommend it as several of these songs got purchased quickly onto my iTunes library right after watching the film.  It is the saving grace, and perhaps a lasting tribute to the men behind the movie that their songs still resonate some twenty years later.  Unfortunately, the movie that frames them is not nearly as groundbreaking.

Those are my thoughts on this (very popular, so I know I'm in the minority here) movie.  What are yours?  What do you think it'll take for the musical biopic to get out of its slump?  Which of these young actors will become a household name in a few years?  And where does this rank on your original screenplay lineup from 2015?  Share your thoughts in the comments!

Short-Term 12 (2013)

Film: Short-Term 12 (2013)

Stars: Brie Larson, John Gallagher, Jr., Kaitlyn Dever, Rami Malek, Alex Calloway, LaKeith Stanfield

Director: Destin Cretton

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

I honestly don't know that I've seen a preview for Short-Term 12 yet.  I had it on my "to see" list fairly early (it was getting strong buzz well before it opened), but I knew next to nothing about the film headed into the theater.  This, I have oftentimes said, is how movies would work in the perfect world-people wouldn't need trailers.  You'd just hear some buzz and head out to a great flick cold turkey.  Of course, that is a bit kumbaya, but for a film like ST12, it really made it an enchanting and magical experience.

(Spoilers ahead) The film, while solid as an ensemble, is primarily the story of Grace (Larson), a woman in her mid-to-late twenties (I'm aware that Larson is 23 in real life, but she felt more like she was playing 27-28).  She works at a foster care center for at-risk teens along with her boyfriend Mason (Gallagher) and new coworker Nate (Malek).  As the film progresses, we get to see Grace interact with a number of the teens in her stead, and we see her bond particularly with a young girl named Jayden (Dever), with whom she shares a similar past.

The film goes through familiar territory in some ways, with Grace coming to terms with the abuse she suffered at the hand of her father when she was a teenager (he is just about to get out of prison for raping her, we learn throughout the film, and her mother is dead), but the film never feels like an after-school special or a retread of past movies.  This is largely driven by some key decisions by the director.

For starters, the story never goes into flashbacks to tell the story.  This is a powerful tool in the film, because it relies on the character's testimonials and things that we must infer from the performances on-screen.  Like real life, not all the pieces are explained, but you can put them together fairly easily if you're paying enough attention.  When you finally hear Grace admit to someone (Jayden) her abuse, it's less a surprise and more of a relief for the audience, who have been desperate for her to find some sort of tranquility in what has been a rough-and-unfair life.

Larson's performance is another huge asset for the director.  Larson has been making small waves in television series like United States of Tara and movies like Scott Pilgrim vs. the World for a few years now, but this is easily the best thing she's achieved in her short career.  She humanizes and grounds Grace quite quickly, and pulls off a tricky task: she makes Grace's realizations feel very organic to her life.  You don't get the sense that Grace as a person started the second the cameras began rolling-this is a woman who has a personal epiphany, but also clearly has been living her life for a while.  She's comfortable in her job, she's found a groove in her relationship (the chemistry between Larson and Gallagher is spectacular) and she manages to find a rich, introverted personality in this character.

While Larson is the center of the film, the supporting cast is filled with greatly felt characters.  Kaitlyn Dever's Jayden never falls into cliche-she may be an outcast with a smart mouth, but she doesn't come across in a stereotypical goth-teenager sort of way like you see so frequently in youth film roles.  Gallagher, who many may now for his work on The Newsroom or Spring Awakening (I think I was first introduced to him when he did terrific work in Jerusalem at the Music Box) somehow takes his hipster kid-in-a-man's-body Mason and gives him great soul and tenderness, underneath a toilet humor-infused goofiness.  Really, even the minute characters in the film make their moments matter-there's no performance that doesn't feel heartfelt and lived-in; casting director Rich Delia deserves some sort of raise or medal for putting this crew together.

It seems unfair to discuss this in terms of Oscar, because everyone does that and because it's unlikely to score, but it achieves something far more important; this is a truly great movie.  It's hard to put all the warmth and humor and heart and soul that it evokes into words, but it's something very special, and if you haven't taken the opportunity to see it in your town, you need to make the effort to see this in theaters so that we get more movies like it.  And if your town doesn't have it playing, start talking to your local movie theater proprietor, because that's the only way they'll learn.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Did you find Short-Term 12 to be a home run also?  What do you think will be the next career moves for Larson, Gallagher, and Dever?  And what other great Indy films are being under-advertised that we should all be investigating?  Share below!