OVP: Original Screenplay (1999)

OVP: Best Original Screenplay (1999)

The Nominees Were...

Alan Ball, American Beauty

Charlie Kaufman, Being John Malkovich

Paul Thomas Anderson, Magnolia

M. Night Shyamalan, The Sixth Sense

Mike Leigh, Topsy-Turvy

My Thoughts: All right, we are in the home stretch now as we enter the Big 8, and we generally start this with Original Screenplay.  Part of the reason we do that is, historically, you're more likely to find Best Picture nominees in the Best Adapted Screenplay category (so it feels more like we're climbing the mountain), but we are hardly Best Picture shy here, with two contenders (and the eventual winner) in the quintet.  This is also a category, I'll be honest, I'm not totally sold on whom I'm picking as my winner, so I'm going to kind of decide as I write this whether or not I'll give one of two films my statue.

Let's start with our last nomination for Topsy-Turvy in the discussion.  The film dominated the tech categories, and that was enough to get Mike Leigh another citation to his collection of nominations-without-wins (seriously, give the man an Honorary Oscar).  The script here, unlike the technical aspects, is just okay.  I think that it tells an interesting story, but because it's so linear, we don't get a lot of the fun meandering into the human experience that we receive in the best of Leigh's scripts like Secrets & Lies and Another Year.  I wanted more introspection, and this doesn't quite have that in the same degree as I would've hoped.  Still enjoyable, but not a Mike Leigh masterwork.

Being John Malkovich brought Charlie Kaufman his first of five nominations (to date) from the Academy, and it is an ingenious script.  I like Kaufman's movies better when he's being directed by someone else, and Spike Jonze is there to provide some restraint, which helps this script.  I think that some of my personal problems with the film are around not the script, which is really clever in its look at sexual politics, celebrity, and consumerism, and more around John Cusack being a bad casting choice in the lead.  Really good stuff here, some of Kaufman's best.

Magnolia, on the other hand, is not one of my favorite Paul Thomas Anderson scripts.  This is a controversial take (I know some who set their clock by this movie), but I did not like this film.  That is partially on me, I'll take it-the black-as-coal look at humanity is something that I can sometimes take, and sometimes it feels a bit too Joker-esque.  I'll own that it's been a while since I've seen this, and maybe as an older man I could handle what's happening...but my notes on this eviscerate the movie's meandering plot, one with too many loose ends, and nothing about my memory makes me want to relive this (though Cruise & Moore are excellent).  If you're a huge fan (I've never been so different in my take of a movie compared to my Letterboxd followers, including my brother Luke whom I rarely disagree with by more than a star-and-a-half on a film), let's blame younger John on not liking this one (even though I honestly don't think older John is going to love it either).

And then we get to the two Best Picture nominees.  American Beauty is, in my opinion, a textbook definition of a great film script.  All of the storylines work-there's no point where I'm wanting to go in for another character, wanting to just spend time, with, say Annette Bening over the rest of the cast.  The movie's shrewd look behind-the-curtain of suburbia was so influential that it became the norm in film and television in the following decades.  I love everything about this...except the ending.  I do not think the ending of this film works (it's way too sentimental), and while a movie should be more than one aspect, if we're splitting hairs, that's gotta count for something.

The Sixth Sense, of course, famously aces its ending.  If we're comparing the two, The Sixth Sense's biggest issue would be around some of the dealings with Bruce Willis's character, where the limitations of the twist ending mean that we don't explore some of his more complicated dealings with his wife and his career.  But this film is littered with really great lines ("I see dead people" became a classic for a reason) and those end monologues, particularly between Toni Collette & Haley Joel Osment, are fantastic and human, adding a real sense of feeling to a horror movie (harder to do than you'd think without it coming across as cheesy).

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes combine adapted and original into one category, and in a rare situation, all five of them would eventually get an Oscar nomination (usually at least one gets skipped by the Academy).  Three are adapted, including the winner American Beauty and Being John Malkovich & The Sixth Sense took nominations.  The BAFTA's have them divvied up like Oscar does, and their adapted field included Being John Malkovich as the winner against All About My Mother, American Beauty, The Sixth Sense, and Topsy-Turvy while the WGA went with the same winner and nominees as Oscar, except they dumped Topsy-Turvy in favor of Three Kings.  If we're being real, I don't think any of these were in sixth place.  Pedro would win this category three years later, but Talk to Her was a bigger deal than All About My Mother was at the time, and while Three Kings was a serious film in 1999 (I rewatched it as a catch-up for a reason), it might have been too controversial to get in with Oscar.  I'd theorize that Sweet & Lowdown, with two acting nominations and it being Woody Allen, was probably just out-of-reach in this lineup (I'm just going to mention that The Matrix is not something Oscar was cool enough to nominate for writing in 1999).

Films I Would Have Nominated: I'm going to be totally real here-Original Screenplay is maybe the weakest I've seen it in the years we've profiled for 1999...in the last two weeks of my My Ballot I'm on the hunt specifically for better options here.  But I do think that if they were ever going to nominate the taste-specific films of Kevin Smith for an Academy Award, Dogma's take on religion (which has aged really well) would've been the way to go.

Oscar’s Choice: Alan Ball's win here was inevitable.  The era where winning Best Picture came with matching directing & writing statues was coming to an end (3 of the previous 4 years had failed in that department), but American Beauty is the kind of movie that gets a writing statue, especially with its competition being as unusual as Being John Malkovich and The Sixth Sense.

My Choice: I said at the top that I couldn't decide who should win, and the contenders for the statue (for me) are American Beauty and The Sixth Sense.  I think that American Beauty has better plot structure, but fails its ending, while The Sixth Sense doesn't have as insightful of takes, but sticks the landing better.  I think a script needs to be a complete package, though, and so I'm going to change my mind on what I initially had at #1 and instead give it to The Sixth Sense, just barely over Alan Ball's work (both will be high on my My Ballot list).  Behind them (in order) are Being John Malkovich, Topsy-Turvy, and then Magnolia.

Those are my thoughts-what about you?  Are you getting scared with M. Night Shyamalan & I, or do you want to sell real estate over with American Beauty?  Am I the only person who really did not get the appeal of Magnolia?  And with a host of options, are you thinking All About My Mother, Sweet & Lowdown, The Matrix, or Three Kings as the sixth place finisher?  Share your thoughts below!

Also in 1999: Foreign Language Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously, in 1999

Past Best Original Screenplay Contests: 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023

OVP: Director (2004)

OVP: Best Director (2004)

The Nominees Were...

Martin Scorsese, The Aviator

Clint Eastwood, Million Dollar Baby

Taylor Hackford, Ray

Alexander Payne, Sideways

Mike Leigh, Vera Drake

My Thoughts: We are starting the final week of the 2004 Oscar Viewing Project.  We will be hitting three articles this week (I cannot promise the days that these will land as I have a very busy "real life" week ahead, but they will happen at some point between now & Saturday)-Best Director, Picture, and My Oscar Ballot, as well as kicking off our 14th season on Sunday.  You've been with us a while (and if you haven't, there's links to a bunch of our past contests below to catch you up), so let's get started with, I don't know...Clint Eastwood (movie stars tend to get first billing in Hollywood, so commencing with him feels the most natural).

Clint Eastwood's films of the past decade have been marked by political appraisals of his offscreen behavior, most notably viewing his pictures through the lens of his 2012 appearance at the Republican National Convention, but while his movies have always had an anti-establishment vibe, it does feel like they have taken on a more noted libertarian tone in the past 10 years (though, not to give away the ending of Million Dollar Baby, but this one does as well even if that's not its most marked characteristic).  Eastwood does imbue a sense of anguish as his camera moves through the story of Maggie's eventual tragedy, but it also doesn't add a lot.  Blue-tinted cinematography & thoughtful whispering next to a routine story might make for solid popcorn fare, but it never feels all that elevated, and while that's fine, if you're going to give someone an Oscar, they should be elevating the actual picture beyond what is on the page.

That's what Martin Scorsese brings to The Aviator.  Scorsese was very much in the throes of his "please give me an Oscar" phase in 2004 (he'd get more experimental in the years after The Departed), but just because you're making Academy-friendly movies doesn't mean they can't be great.  The Aviator knows that you can't have Howard Hughes without also bringing in the true glamour of this figure, and trying to show modern audiences why his final chapter was so unusual to the public-at-large.  Scorsese does that, exhibiting a rapid descent for Hughes, but also giving us a truly fully-fleshed out movie, with long insightful chapters into the figure (and side characters who escaped his gravitational orbit like Katharine Hepburn & Ava Gardner).  It's a biopic with perspective.

That's not the case with Ray.  Taylor Hackford's look at singer Ray Charles came along at a time when musical biopics were all the rage (we're in another run of that right now thanks to the recent blockbuster success of Bohemian Rhapsody), but the problem with them was that they were so cookie cutter, and while Ray was one of the most successful examples of this, it was hardly the first (most of the musical biopics of this era were clearly stealing from the very successful Temptations miniseries that aired in the late 1990's).  Hackford doesn't help Foxx bring out enough of Ray Charles, who always feels just-out-of-reach to the audience, which is a problem when the biopic is focused directly on him.  As a result, you leave the film humming a lot of great music, but not feeling like you've understood the man behind the songs in a way you don't understand all musicians.

Alexander Payne brings a better understanding to his characters in Sideways, which doesn't have the handicap of being based on a real person, and therefore can expand a bit what we're trying to understand about these figures.  Payne's approach is to let everything sit, much like a fine glass of wine allowed to breathe, and have the audience first get to know the main quartet of players before letting our opinions of them change too much.  This hands-off approach gives the film a relaxed feel, which some don't love, but I quite enjoyed because as things happen it feels more meaningful.  Conversation is an underrated way to get across key life events in a film (when we're trained to focus more on events), and Payne does this beautifully (it helps that he's also a writer), having the most pivotal perspective shifts happen simply through a conversation with someone you don't realize is changing your life.

Our final nominee is Mike Leigh, the only person we won't be returning to later this week for Best Picture.  Leigh's movies are always thoughtful & no one quite knows the power of shifting perspective like Mike Leigh.  This is true of Vera Drake, where Leigh puts the early focus on our main character, someone we're meant to think we can understand just by looking at her, and then watch as we learn things about her that we otherwise couldn't have realized.  This is a challenge that Leigh undertakes knowing the risks-if we feel like we're not alongside Vera's family, gaining additional understanding of the title character, it will feel rather conventional, but Leigh utilizes his leading lady's excellent performance to full effect to make Vera Drake feel like it's filled with surprises as we move to its conclusion.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes have always favored a movie star for this category, so Clint Eastwood began his eventual date with Oscar as the victor for the HFPA, beating out Scorsese, Payne, Mike Nichols (Closer), & Marc Forster (Finding Neverland).  BAFTA didn't go for Million Dollar Baby anywhere, so they gave their trophy to Mike Leigh, here over Forster, Scorsese, Michael Mann (Collateral), & Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind).  The DGA also went with Clint Eastwood, here over Forster, Hackford, Payne, & Scorsese.  I have to assume, considering he hit all three precursors (and was nominated for Best Picture) that Marc Forster was just out-of-reach of Oscar (honestly-how many people can claim an Oscar Best Picture nomination, as well as a Globe/BAFTA/DGA nod and still not be a nominee?).

Directors I Would Have Nominated: We'll get into the "My Ballot" later this week so I won't talk too much here about it to save spoilers for later, but I do wonder why the Academy didn't go for Zhang Yimou for a nomination.  House of Flying Daggers was a directorial achievement of the highest-order, and there was conversation leading into the Academy Awards that he might be the surprise (instead they went with Mike Leigh)...it's a pity considering he has yet to be nominated in the years since that they didn't take this opportunity.
Oscar's Choice: It was relatively close at the time, but Eastwood prevailed once again, keeping Marty in the Oscar wilderness for a few years longer.

My Choice: Scorsese, and it's not particularly close-this is the only film that feels like you watch and think not only that it's excellent, but that it's being driven by great direction.  Behind him (in order) is Alexander Payne, Mike Leigh, Clint Eastwood, & Taylor Hackford.

Those were my thoughts-how about yours?  Are you over on Team Clint or would you like to relax with me on Team Marty?  Do we think Mike Leigh, who was at one point pretty fashionable with the Academy, will ever win an Honorary Oscar or is his moment past?  And how did Marc Forster dominate the precursors but strike out here?  Share your thoughts in the comments!

Also in 2004: Actress, Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Original Screenplay, Adapted Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously in 2004

Past Best Director Contests: 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2019

OVP: Original Screenplay (2004)

  OVP: Best Original Screenplay (2004)

The Nominees Were...

John Logan, The Aviator

Charlie Kaufman, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Keir Pearson & Terry George, Hotel Rwanda

Brad Bird, The Incredibles

Mike Leigh, Vera Drake

My Thoughts: We move today into the second of the two writing categories, as we continue to track the films of 2004 (we are now destined to finish this up before Memorial Day, and will have a different year to follow all summer long).  The 2004 original screenplays are, for my money, better than the adapted screenplays (which is weird because when we get to my actual choices for 2004, the adapted field is much more my favorite).  Part of this is that Oscar picked some of the best-known screenwriters in the industry here.  While the era of the celebrity screenwriter has largely subsided (mostly because the better-known ones are also film directors), here we have at least a few that are well-known in the industry & even to casual film fans.

This description fits no one better than Charlie Kaufman, who wrote (but did not direct) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, a movie that was instantly recognized by a certain sector of film fans for its genius, but whose reputation has grown exponentially in the years since as a genius movie.  This is a well-earned evaluation, as Eternal Sunshine is a beautifully-told story about the things we understand about the people we love, the things we look past & what we cannot.  With terrific dialogue & a tough, dense central romance, Kaufman's work has never been so elegant and well-captured.  In the years since, especially in his directorial efforts, I've felt that he couldn't capture the cinematic joy he did here, but that doesn't dim the luster of this breathtaking picture.

Sunshine isn't the only film here that's breaking the mold, though.  The Incredibles is a perfectly-told story, and might be the best-plotted superhero movie ever made.  Full of wry humor (god bless Edna Mode & her litany of one-liners) and a look at the reality of superheroes ("they're just like us...even if they're gods among men"), the film is confidently told from beginning to end.  The sequel didn't match up, in the same way that Kaufman's later work didn't, but that doesn't mean that this wasn't gemlike-a perfect emblem of Pixar's renaissance phase.

These scripts are so good it'd be easy to fall short, which is a bummer because there are other scripts in this bunch worth celebrating.  Mike Leigh is perhaps my favorite living screenwriter, a man who can mine the souls of men & come out on the other side, even with an understanding that is harsh to reality.  Taking on Vera Drake, he doesn't have the same sort of leeway he'd have with later scripts like Another Year and Mr. Turner, but that doesn't mean that he doesn't have moments of great clarity in his work.  The way that he unfolds Vera, unknowable & determined, her politics taking a second place to her sense of moral duty, it's beautiful, and gives Imelda Staunton a template to behold.  The smaller roles aren't as well-developed as his different pictures, but this is only getting picky in the light of Eternal Sunshine and Incredibles-this is a solid movie.

The same can be said for The Aviator, John Logan's second of three (to date) Oscar nominations for screenwriting.  Of the bunch, this is his best work, giving us a rich, detailed history of Howard Hughes' life, successes, and personal demons.  Logan's work has sparkling wordplay from Hughes (and the rest of the high-profile names, particularly Blanchett's Kate Hepburn), and while it doesn't break-the-mold of the biopic, it plays to its best strengths, giving us scenes of Hughes' life that run coherently together, feeling like we're not just getting a lecture about a famous person, but an insight into who he was as a man.

The only letdown of this bunch, for my money, is Hotel Rwanda.  A film that was a pretty big deal in 2004, more than it is remembered for (it is almost certainly the sixth place finisher in the Best Picture field), I distinctly remember not liking the movie.  While the story itself is intriguing, it's a case of a fascinating tale from real life not translating in the movies, with not enough focus on expanding the story of the main character beyond the actions on the screen.  This is one of my biggest issues with very serious true-to-life pictures like Hotel Rwanda-they oftentimes skew toward historic accuracy at the risk of leaving their main characters a blank canvass.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes combine adapted and original into one category, and they only kept two (losing) original scripts in their nominee pool: The Aviator and Eternal Sunshine.  BAFTA splits out theirs, with Eternal Sunshine winning over The Aviator, Collateral, Ray, and Vera Drake (it's worth noting that due to release date changes, Hotel Rwanda was nominated but did not win for the BAFTA Awards in 2005).  The WGA went with Eternal Sunshine as their winner as well, besting The Aviator, Garden State (there is a very specific subset of 1980's-born Millennials who worshiped this movie if you've never heard of it...I was not one of them, for the record), Hotel Rwanda, and Kinsey.  My money in terms of predictions would be on Kinsey above Ray due to musicals' general underperformance in the writing fields, though the latter's Best Picture nomination obviously is a big point in its favor.

Films I Would Have Nominated: As I said before, most of my favorite films of 2004 tended to be adapted rather than original, but I do question why, just a few years after he won a writing trophy, Pedro Almodovar couldn't make the cut for his brilliant ode to film noir in Bad Education.

Oscar’s Choice: Eternal Sunshine, in apparently an easier win than I remembered at the time (Aviator was surely in second place, John Logan's closest brush with an actual trophy).

My Choice: I'm going to go with Eternal Sunshine in a close race over Incredibles (spoiler alert for the "My Ballot" that is to come...I will be nominating both pictures in this category), as it's so original & influential in the years that followed, but either would've made a fine winner.  Follow that with The Aviator, Vera Drake, and Hotel Rwanda in the rear.

Those are my thoughts-what about you?  Is everyone kind of onboard with the Eternal Sunshine sweep, or does someone want to meet outside of Montauk?  Why do you think it was so easy for Eternal Sunshine to dismantle a major Best Picture frontrunner like The Aviator?  And do we think it was Ray or Kinsey that was coming in sixth here?  Share your thoughts below!

Also in 2004: Adapted Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously in 2004

Past Best Original Screenplay Contests: 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2019

OVP: Original Screenplay (2008)

OVP: Best Original Screenplay (2008)

The Nominees Were...

Courtney Hunt, Frozen River

Mike Leigh, Happy-Go-Lucky

Martin McDonagh, In Bruges

Dustin Lance Black, Milk

Andrew Stanton, Jim Reardon, and Pete Docter, WALL-E

My Thoughts: After the highly-disappointing turnout for the Adapted Screenplay race, part of me was worried about what the originals had in store for me, but that worry was foolishness, as this is easily the superior of the two nominated groups.  Quite frankly, this may be the best lineup, period, of 2008, and I'm more than excited to say that, in a rare circumstance, I actually like all five of these nominated works.  If this had been the Best Picture lineup for Oscar it would rank amongst the best of the new millennium.  We'll start out with the name you're most likely to recognize up-top if you're a Millennial on Instagram: Dustin Lance Black.

Yes, Dustin Lance Black is the guy with whom most of gay America would love to body swap.  Youthful in an otherworldly sense, talented enough to have an Oscar in one hand and a pile of future Clint Eastwood scripts in the other, and of course he gets to go to bed with Tom Daley every single night.  Not shabby work if you can get it.  Still, we aren't here to admire or envy, we're just here to judge, and boy does he create something wonderful with Milk.  Unlike some of his later work (principally J. Edgar) the film doesn't shy away from being out-and-proud.  There's a sense in mainstream gay Hollywood cinema to make the main protagonists more heteronormative, but that's not the case with the flamboyant but still true-to-life Harvey Milk.  The film doesn't underwrite side characters, giving plum assignments for the likes of Emile Hirsch and James Franco, and the dialogue and story is flowing and occasionally quite funny.  A home run in every sense.

The same could be said for Martin McDonagh's hilarious In Bruges.  My best friend and I saw this together and couldn't stop texting lines from the movie weeks after we saw it, which is a sign of a strong script when you can memorize key moments in just one sitting.  The film reeks of instant classic-the interplay between the three main actors, the choice use of profanity as a blunt instrument of comedy-it works just wonderfully.  Swearing has never felt this fresh and creative, and I adore the way that it occasionally intersperses random dialogue (like Ray's conversation during his first date with Chloe) and incredibly devastating heart (Ray's little boy soliloquy) amidst the rapid-fire jokes.  This is a comedy that is consistently, constantly funny not just from sight gags and talent, but a deft and rich script.

Happy-Go-Lucky is also a script that defies expectations.  At this point going into a Mike Leigh film it feels impossible not to have your hopes up as he's so wonderful so often, but he constantly finds new ways to create meaning and re-examining of our lives.  I love the way in particular Poppy unfolds, with her getting situations that largely go her way even if we don't quite see that at the beginning-her career, her relationships, her boyfriend-we see that slowly until it sort of hits us at the close that she will receive a no-strings-attached happy ending, which is the opposite of Scott, the man who is clearly enamored with her but doesn't know how to proceed in life to find a sense of happiness.  Leigh is one of those people who juggles the warm fuzzies and the cold pricklies of existence better than anyone I know, and frequently lets the bitterness and pathetic permeate his scripts, which gives them such authenticity.  Another wonderful installment in his filmography.

Frozen River is the film that it's probably been the longest since I originally saw it, but it still burns in my memory, principally because of Melissa Leo's spectacular work as Ray Eddy.  Courtney Hunt's script is remarkable not just because it's very compact (made in under 100 minutes), but also because it never gets preachy.  Hunt's film clearly has a political message, but that's not what the script provides-it's just that she so wonderfully gives us realism and cold that it's impossible not to feel a hurt for the working poor who make their struggles through this film.  That's what the best films do, though-they demand your attention even if they aren't standing on the pulpit.

Another film that clearly has a message, though it's a little less subtle about it would be WALL-E.  It's interesting that WALL-E manages to get nominated for a screenplay award, since so many people think of screenplays simply as words on a page, and not as something like stage direction and writing the next moments of the movie, but that's really where WALL-E thrives.  So much of the film is based off of us gaining a feeling for WALL-E's loneliness, and how much of a blessing Eve is for his world, which is based entirely on the script, which gives us clear moments amidst the sea of day-to-day robot cleaning activities that WALL-E must partake in; without the writer we wouldn't have the clear emotional fulfillment brought on by these two mechanical lovebirds.

Other Precursor Contenders: As we realized in the Adapted Screenplay race, the Globes inexplicably went for all adapted so they had no contenders in this race.  The BAFTA Awards skipped most of this lineup, keeping only their winner In Bruges and Milk, choosing instead to select Changeling, Burn After Reading, and I've Loved You So Long.  The WGA Awards (which, as we should always recall have odd eligibility rules, also skipped out on nearly everyone (picking Milk as their only Oscar-related choice, and DLB won the trophy), with Burn After Reading, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, The Visitor, and The Wrestler all making the cut.  I honestly can't quite tell between Vicky and Burn for the sixth place finish since both writers are huge favorites in this category, but I am sticking with Woody Allen as this is the only recent film of his that got mad critical love and yet somehow missed out on an Oscar nomination.

Films I Would Have Nominated: As I already said, this is a superb lineup and part of me doesn't want to alter anything.  That being said, I'd probably still allow a little bit of room for Burn After Reading, a hilarious Coen Brothers entry even if not a major one, which finds the oddest of humors and gives a lot of really great actors (particularly Brad Pitt) hilariously funny things to say.  Still, I do applaud the Academy's roster.

Oscar’s Choice: As the only Best Picture nominee, it was a pretty easy win for Dustin Lance Black and Milk.

My Choice: The real winner here is the audience (oof-talk about your cliches), but the true winner is In Bruges, which is the funniest film I've seen in years and an absolute joy of a screenplay.  I would follow that with Milk, Happy-Go-Lucky, WALL-E, and Frozen River.  

Those are my thoughts-what about you?  Are you with the Academy in honoring Dustin Lance Black, or do you prefer the black Belgian comedy?  Why do you think the Globes skipped out on such a splendid lineup, and are you as excited as I am about the plethora of contenders that the BAFTA, WGA, and Oscars all found to honor for this category?  Share your thoughts below-we get into the acting categories on Wednesday!

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

Past Best Original Screenplay Contests: 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013

OVP: Happy-Go-Lucky (2008)

Film: Happy-Go-Lucky (2008)
Stars: Sally Hawkins, Eddie Marsan, Alexis Zegerman, Andrea Riseborough, Sinead Matthews
Director: Mike Leigh
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Screenplay)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Certain directors have their own signatures, whether it be a wink to themselves (Hitchcock), a series of actors that consistently show up in films (Bergman, Allen, Scorsese), or just a specific genre they tend to work in (Fellini, Chaplin).  Overall, though, rarely do they play with form and story quite in the way that Mike Leigh does and end up with a surprisingly moving result.  Mike Leigh is, in my opinion, the director who best knows how to tell a story in a way you didn't expect, at least amongst working directors today.  His films always start in one direction, and like life, end up in a different corner of the universe as a result.  This is probably why, despite his films having an improvisational nature, they consistently land nominations at the Oscars for writing.  In a world with "twist endings" Mike Leigh's film stand apart because they truly could end happily or miserably for a specific character and you have no idea whom it will be until the film's final scenes.

(Spoilers Ahead)  This is certainly true of Happy-Go-Lucky, the film that turned Sally Hawkins into a household name amongst award aficionados (she won basically every trophy you can think of short of an Oscar nod, which she had to wait five years for with Blue Jasmine).  Her Poppy is not someone that you can easily define.  At first you think she's simply a sprite, someone who doesn't give a hoot about anything except having a good time and marching to the beat of her own drum.  She's the sort of person you think in theory you want to be and be friends with, but are aware that if you actually interacted with them their sunny disposition would start to grate.  In almost any other film, except for a Mike Leigh film, she would be taught that you need to come down a peg-or-two, cruelly joining the real world, but this (one of many surprises in the film) is not Poppy's fate.  The woman who opens the film with a stolen bicycle is bound-and-determined to have the life she wants to live, being blissful as often as possible despite being surrounded with detractors like her sister (who seems miserable) and her driving instructor (played by Eddie Marsan, who also is miserable).

The film follows Poppy through several months of her life and we learn she's more than just non-pragmatic boots and random nights out dancing.  We see, in fact, that she's just a genuinely good person who has a wonderful loyalty to her best friend and is quite strong at her job.  Poppy, despite what we've been taught at the movies about frivolous-seeming people, has a good life.  She's someone who recognizes, for example, that one of her students is being abused and finds help for the pupil in the form of a handsome therapist, who ends up being her boyfriend by the film's end, when she gets pretty much everything we all want out of life: fulfilling job, nice partner, great friends, and pleasurable leisure time.  It's a role that Hawkins has to truly toe-the-line with because the scenery-chewing is just waiting there, ready for the biting, but she holds back and keeps her grounded as a real person.

The same can be said for her driving instructor Scott, who is someone that clearly has received the short end of the stick in life.  Paranoid, racist, and consistently berating Poppy and his students, Eddie Marsan makes him extremely believable as a human being, but unlike every other director, once again we're thrown for a loop.  Instead of a comeuppance or a change-of-heart, Scott gets continued loneliness.  He confesses his amorous feelings toward Poppy after nearly killing her in a driving lesson, which she receives kindly but realizes that he's not someone she's going to be able to save, and dismisses him from her life.  It's a cruel, very heightened scene in a film that's far breezier than that climax would admit (to the point where it almost feels forced), but Leigh is so good at keeping reality there that it just works.

The best parts about Leigh's films, and the thing that distinguishes them in a way few other directors have, is that his trademark is on the emotional haves and have nots of the world.  Yes, like other directors he works with specific actors and frequently works in similar genres, but he is always focused on the cruelty of life and the way we pursue happiness in the same way we pursue money or sex, but happiness is a far more fickle mistress than either of those two other end goals.  His characters frequently have the same actions in all of their films as the protagonists, but in the end they get different results, which is true of life but very rarely true of the movies.  No one frames "pathetic" characters quite like Leigh can.  Think of someone like Marsan's Scott or Lesley Manville in Another Year (still my favorite of his films) or Dorothy Atkinson in Mr. Turner.  These are people who suffer from mental illness or from low self-esteem or an unworthy station in life-they are not generally bad people.  But they are people you skip inviting to parties or pity without trying to help or try to move past when you're having a conversation.  They are the sorts of people life forgets about, and whom we would consider pathetic.  The cinema is usually exceedingly kind to these people, giving them an unlikely best mate or an unorthodox but kind love interest.  It doesn't, however, mimic real life when these people just keep existing, even if we have lost our interest in them.  Mike Leigh does that in his films, which is why his endings always crackle and buzz-you don't know who will end up getting hope and who will have it extinguished.

Overall, then, while I never quite fell into the film the way I did Another Year, the movie is highly recommendable, and I look forward to seeing it compete against Milk and WALL-E in a couple of weeks when we start in on 2008's OVP.  In the meantime, let's discuss this film-what do you think of the bitterness of Mike Leigh: are you a fan such as I or do you find it too depressing?  Share in the comments!

OVP: Mr. Turner (2014)

Film: Mr. Turner (2014)
Stars: Timothy Spall, Dorothy Atkinson, Marion Bailey, Paul Jesson, Lesley Manville, Martin Savage, Ruth Sheen
Director: Mike Leigh
Oscar History: 4 nominations (Best Cinematography, Score, Costume, and Art Direction)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

About once a year, I usually throw a caveat to the people I recommend movies to about them seeing a film on the big-screen.  The reality is that most films are better on a big screen.  The movies are created to be seen there first-and-foremost, it's more immersive and usually better quality (depending on the projectionist), and it's certainly less distracting than being at home.  Unless you're sneaking onto your cell phone or controlling your screaming children (in which case, please don't go to the movie theater), you don't get distracted by texts or the pause button.

For all of these reasons, therefore, it goes without saying that a film should be seen on the big screen if that's an option.  However, occasionally it's worth pointing out.  Usually this is driven by either visual effects (Avatar, Life of Pi) or Cinematography (The Tree of Life, The New World, To the Wonder...basically anything Terrence Malick) or perhaps both (Gravity).  This year, I implore you that if it's in a theater near you, you need to make a point to see Mr. Turner on the big screen.  Few films in recent years have made me gape in awe in the same way as this film, which loses a lot of its majesty the smaller the screen you project it upon.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is the story of JMW Turner (Spall), a legendary painter and artist who dominated the 19th Century English art scene.  The film takes place toward the latter half of his life, which is a refreshing change of pace for those of us who are sick-to-death of "come-from-nothing, suddenly-a-genius" biopics.  The entire film Turner is at the very least established, even if his departure from traditional form (Turner was one of the earliest adapters of abstract art) eventually received its fair share of clucks from the London elite.  The movie follows Turner and his relationships with three specific individuals: his father (Jesson), his housekeeper/mistress (Atkinson), and Mrs. Booth (Bailey), a landlady who eventually becomes his romantic companion.

Like all Mike Leigh films, the movie is filled with wonderful little touches in regard to the acting.  Because of the (admittedly unkind and slightly narcissistic) way that Leigh preps his actors (only giving them a character description, with little indication as to how large their part will be), we get a wonderful group of actors in supporting parts, and people like Lesley Manville and Ruth Sheen have more fully-formed characters that feel like they exist off-screen.  In the lead role, Timothy Spall is pretty much every adjective that you could think of: larger-than-life, minimalist, bloated, and delicate all at once.  The film is long (clocking in at 2.5 hours) and he's in nearly every scene, so it's not like he doesn't get a gigantic acting showcase (there's a reason this won at Cannes).  I do find that he occasionally leans too fully into the crutches of his role (Turner being a large, crude, and sexually-dominant personality), but the sprier moments when he lets Turner's genius shine (like when he goes around critiquing all of the other Royal Academy painters) are much stronger and worthy of praise, though not quite accolades in my opinion.

The film's messaging is interesting, but that's true of every Mike Leigh movie.  I've never been 100% certain how he does it, but you're never entirely sure whose story you've just seen until you actually watch the movie in full.  This was used to pitch perfection in Another Year, my favorite in his filmography, but Mr. Turner certainly has those aspects, particularly when we see the ways that the two women in his life react to his eventual death.  Mrs. Booth recalls his love and adoration, fond memories of not just her devotion to him and his genius, but also the happiness that they created together.  In the inverse, we find his housekeeper weeping, partially out of bereavement but also out of revelation, knowing that her entire life was spent devoted to a man who cared little for her, and certainly not of her personage.  No one in modern cinema crafts loneliness as well as Mike Leigh, and he does that in a sly and heartbreaking way by juxtaposing these two women who, on paper, occupy very similar roles within Turner's life.

The film unfolds with frequent allusions to Turner's paintings, though you don't need an Art History degree to appreciate the way that cinematographer Dick Pope re-creates iconic works like The Fighting Temeraire.  The reality is that this, even more so than Leigh's typically affecting plotting and the strong ensemble work, is the reason to buy the ticket.  I audibly said "wow" at least a half dozen times, and the entire film is just a master class in light and creation.  Though you can occasionally see the CGI aiding Pope's work (including in the The Fighting Temeraire sequence), by-and-large this is a film that needs natural light to work, and as a result we get some of the finest cinematography of the season.  Though Roger Deakins is always sublime and Emmanuel Lubezki's tricky work in Birdman is exceptional, Pope's going to be a hard person to beat when we get to the OVP for this film, provided he gets nominated (I can imagine literally every person who sees the movie putting down his name on their ballot).

We'll end it there for now (though the comments section is always there for discussion), though I am confident that Dick Pope's cinematography will be revisited when I have finished up the Oscar-nominated films of 2014.  Until then, however, what are your thoughts on this film?  Did you sign on for Timothy Spall's giant work in the title role, or were you a bit more apprehensive?  Do you frequently find yourself perplexed by the way that Mike Leigh can tell a story whose protagonist you can't always identify?  And what are your thoughts on the brilliance of Dick Pope?  Share by the clicking the button below!