OVP: Supporting Actress (2004)

OVP: Best Supporting Actress (2004)

The Nominees Were...

Cate Blanchett, The Aviator

Laura Linney, Kinsey

Virginia Madsen, Sideways

Sophie Okonedo, Hotel Rwanda

Natalie Portman, Closer

My Thoughts: We continue our week devoted to the supporting nominees of 2004 with the actresses.  I remember the 2004 Oscar race for a variety of reasons, but one of the main reasons that I do was because it was the first Oscar season ever that I had seen all of the Big 6 contenders on Oscar night (I want to say I hadn't seen 1-2 nominees on Oscar nominations announcement, specifically Vera Drake and Maria Full of Grace, but my memory only serves me so far here).  As a result, I had a lot of opinions going into this race, probably some more fully-felt than I might have had in retrospect (since it was the first Oscar race where I not only followed, but could have opinions about everything).  This was truest in Supporting Actress, where two of the nominated roles standout as pretty inconsequential (and so much lesser than the other three) that I remember being actively angry at their inclusion in a way that I am not in retrospect, having seen far greater sins the further I've gotten into the Academy's archives.  That being said, we'll cover those two first as they aren't really important to the conversation of the "best" of the year.

Sophie Okonedo won her first (and to date, only) Oscar nomination for Hotel Rwanda in 2004.  This is an intense film, with very little levity & is exceedingly grim.  It's also a movie with not enough character development for my taste, and that is most evident in the role that Okonedo is supposed to play.  She is oftentimes asked to scream or cry in the movie, but otherwise there's nothing there other than a devoted wife.  She doesn't lend much more to what's happening onscreen, and feels too big for the part (the best thing I've ever seen her in was her work in the recent Broadway revival of The Crucible-her acting style is much more at-home on the stage), playing for the rafters more than providing subtlety.  It's the kind of performance Oscar oftentimes goes for regardless of quality, but it's not a worthy inclusion.

Neither is Laura Linney, a brilliant actor & one of my favorites from her generation who gets the least of her Oscar citations with Kinsey.  Linney, like Okonedo, has to play the doting wife for most of the film.  This was in the era where it felt like Linney was on the verge of an Oscar nomination (think Joan Allen in the 1990's)-not a star, exactly, but someone that you should pay attention to because this could be building to a big statue moment.  That didn't happen (though she has plenty of Emmys at this point), and you kind of get why with the Kinsey nomination, where the Academy cited her for being a warm screen presence, but nothing more than that-the script has no interest in her as we explore Kinsey's bisexuality further, and she feels less-than-consequential to the resolution.

The remaining three are all triumphs, though.  Natalie Portman plays the part of Jane, the closest thing that Closer has to a moral compass, very close-to-the-vest.  It's the toughest part in the quartet to play, mostly because she must remain unknowable (and yet knowable upon rewatch), a trick that is part the script but mostly what she's bringing to the role.  Portman doesn't make her an ingenue or try to dumb down the part, which would've been an instinctual read but taken away from the ending of the film-her Jane was in control the whole time, not just learning a lesson from the men she surrounded herself with.  It's smart, cool performing from an actress officially graduating from child star into a proper adult thespian.

Cate Blanchett has the advantage of playing Oscar's favorite leading lady, Katharine Hepburn (Meryl can say what she will, but she doesn't have four acting Oscars yet, does she?).  Blanchett owns this part, adopting a perfect Connecticut accent, and finding a way to balance Hepburn's onscreen persona.  It's very difficult to play a famous actor like this, one whose private life was hidden from us (Hepburn is not Marilyn Monroe or Elvis Presley, just as well-known at this point offstage as on), but whose public face is embedded in our memories.  She gives the movie a jolt of electricity, and a tenderness to Hepburn, a woman in love, but not willing to sacrifice herself for a man who might destroy her.  This was the exact right time in Blachett's career to get her an Oscar, so it's a treat that it's for such a great piece of work.

Similar to her costar Thomas Haden Church, nothing about Virginia Madsen's career heading into Sideways seemed to indicate an eventual date with Oscar.  Her biggest successes were in the 1980's & early 90's in films like Dune, Fire with Fire, and Candyman.  But given this role, she shows what genius can look like when you take a chance on a performer who has been under-utilized.  Her Maya is a difficult part-playing someone world-weary but not necessarily jaded is a tough balancing act to maintain, but she does it so well.  That epic monologue about the "life of wine" would be obnoxious in the mouth of someone less earnest, but she so fully commits to this role it's difficult not to root for her, easily the best part of this acting ensemble.  A total home-run.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Golden Globes stayed pretty close to the Oscars with their nominations, only excluding Okonedo in favor of Meryl Streep (The Manchurian Candidate), though their winner was Natalie Portman.  SAG went with Blanchett as their victor, and similar to Best Supporting Actor, hurt Portman's chances by not nominating her at all (there must be a story on Closer being a complete bust with SAG that I don't know about as it missing entirely with that cast feels strange) and instead favoring Cloris Leachman (Spanglish).  BAFTA also gave their trophy to Blanchett, here favoring only Portman from Oscar's lineup, going instead with Streep, Heather Craney (Vera Drake), and Julie Christie (Finding Neverland).  Conventional wisdom would dictate that Streep was in sixth place, but considering Finding Neverland's strength (and that movie's less-than-stellar reviews) I'm inclined to disagree, and think that Kate Winslet for Finding Neverland nearly landed this field (she plays a dying mother in period clothing in a Best Picture nominee...she was in the hunt).

Actors I Would Have Nominated: If the Oscars were going to take the time to cite Virginia Madsen, a product of the 1980's with a well-earned nomination, they might have continued that trend by also recognizing Darryl Hannah.  Her Elle Driver in Kill Bill, Volume 2 is perfection-the exact kind of scene-stealing work that would surely have gotten a nomination in Tarantino's later years, but warranted it even in a field like 2004.

Oscar’s Choice: Portman's momentum stalled after the SAG miss, the Oscar was Blanchett's for the taking (and she did).

My Choice: There are a few cardinal rules for the OVP, chief among them is that you don't consider any other race when picking the winner-you focus solely on the five performances at hand, and don't worry about if someone already has a trophy or if you know there's a trophy coming to them.  If I were considering such things, I might be inclined to go with Virginia Madsen, who is just superb in Sideways and I know will never get a role like this again.  But if I'm being honest, I think Cate Blanchett is slightly more successful in The Aviator, and deserves this trophy even if I know she's already got an OVP title.  Behind these two are Portman, Linney, and Okonedo, in that order.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Is everyone on Team Cate when it comes to this field, or do you want to make the case for a different lady?  Why is it that Oscar is so obsessed with the "devoted wife" role (is it just sexism, or is there something more to it)?  And which of Oscar's frequent favorites (Winslet or Streep) nearly added to their tallies in 2004 with a just-miss sixth place?  Share your thoughts below!

Also in 2004: 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 Supporting Actress Contests: 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2019

OVP: Actress (2016)

OVP: Best Actress (2016)

The Nominees Were...

Isabelle Huppert, Elle
Ruth Negga, Loving
Natalie Portman, Jackie
Emma Stone, La La Land
Meryl Streep, Florence Foster Jenkins

My Thoughts: All this week we're focusing on Best Actress nominees from years gone-by to honor this post, so I better at least get the actual post we're honoring out!  Today we move into the final acting category of 2016, Best Actress.  The lineup is noteworthy in recent years as Oscar has been a lot less likely to look outside of the Best Picture field for acting nominations, and yet only one of these nominees comes from a movie that was cited for the top prize.  The rest got a smattering of nominations (or in two cases, these were the only nominations the film got), though as we'll see when we get to the precursors, they were all hard-fought (this field had a lot of different, very viable options).

We're going to start with one of the women who probably just made the cut, an actress you should never count out when it comes to Oscar: Meryl Streep.  Meryl's nomination here (her 20th) at the time felt very vulnerable, and probably wouldn't have happened were it not for her fiery speech blasting Donald Trump (remember when he called her "overrated?), which got her huge points & quickly became a cultural touchpoint (a vote for Meryl felt like a vote against Trump, and people who love film love casting votes against Trump).  Her work here is fine.  Meryl is lovely, and her bigger scenes (like the concert scene and her final scene on screen) are great, showing the range she possesses as an actress.  I couldn't help but feel, though, that she could have made the picture more special as Streep (who seems to just be having a good time onscreen this decade, and not really "challenging" herself in the way she did from say 1978-2006) keeps the film too light & predictable.  It's good work, don't get me wrong, but this comes across as a nomination that happened more to make a statement & because Streep is a default option, rather than because she was truly in the Top 5 best of the year.

The other nomination that felt like it was probably on the chopping block that year (or at least could have gone a different direction with the precursors) was Ruth Negga in Loving.  Her work here is unusual for Oscar, who doesn't like his leading ladies introverted, and Negga's Mildred is very introverted.  Normally I am into introverted performances, and there are moments when Negga reacts with her eyes and her movements, particularly as a woman in love with a husband (who understands the parts of her relationship her husband doesn't understand) society doesn't expect.  But much of Loving is too reliant on the unsaid, and Negga's performance becomes a blank slate that none of the other actors, and in particular the director, doesn't want to write upon.  As a result, this feels too unfulfilled, too unknown, for a movie that cares desperately about Mildred's point-of-view, but is too intent on keeping it hidden to ever have it inform the major cruxes in the movie.

This is also a problem, I'm sorry to say, for Emma Stone.  Stone's work in La La Land, unlike Negga & Streep, was never in doubt for a nomination-it probably is the kind of performance that could win in most years.  But it's again too reliant on the unsaid in her performance, and here because the movie is so reliant on visuals, it pays off even less.  Loving has something to say, La La Land oftentimes feels like it's performing high-theft robbery from Vincente Minnelli & Stanley Donen, and Stone doesn't bring enough unique perspective to her character's motives to help elevate the film.  She's not bad (Stone's wide, expressive eyes can capture the emotion that Chazelle is going for even when the script can't), but between the okay singing & surface-level feeling she brings to some key scenes, it feels starved to me of depth.

This isn't the case for Natalie Portman, which is fascinating because she's playing a woman who famously had no depth in her public persona.  The genius of Portman's work in Jackie is not that she finds a soul behind a woman who was basically a Barbie doll to the American people (google Jackie Kennedy, and try to find an article where the first paragraph doesn't use the word 'glamorous,' 'elegant,' or 'beautiful'), but showing the ways the public persona was real, and when it was an illusion.  The accent work here is perfect, but it's in making an uncomplicated woman complicated, while still true to herself that is astounding to me; Portman's Jackie could be fictional, and we'd still understand the pressures she's under to remain placid, and how she slowly uses that to her advantage, even if it also means great personal sacrifice.

Isabelle Huppert is our last nominee, and is terrific (side note-am I the only one who is always a little embarrassed when acting gods get their first and probably only nomination, and then we make them lose at the Oscars...see also Charlotte Rampling for this feeling).  Elle is an intricate movie, one that will stun you & tries to upend sexual politics in a way that almost feels like an homage to Lina Wertmuller, but it works.  Her character and the complicated past she brings to this role is intriguing, and looks at an angle of celebrity we weirdly don't see in the movies, even in an industry obsessed with unexpected violence (her character is the daughter of a famed serial killer).  Again, like Negga & Stone, this is a character who doesn't reveal key emotions in critical scenes but unlike these two you feel in the acts prior that you understand why Huppert's Michele is acting the way she does, and the revenge she eventually gets (whether it's intentional or not).  Elle works because of her performance (it'd fall completely apart if it were in the hands of a lesser actor).

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes separate their nominations between Drama and Musical/Comedy, so we have ten women nominated for these awards.  Drama went with Huppert as its winner (which felt like a slight surprise at the time, and in hindsight still does, though given the eventual Oscar nominations it probably shouldn't)-she beat Portman, Negga, Amy Adams (Arrival), & Jessica Chastain (Miss Sloane).  Emma Stone won an easy prize for Best Actress in Musical/Comedy, triumphing over Streep, Annette Bening (20th Century Women), Lily Collins (Rules Don't Apply), and Hailee Steinfeld (Edge of Seventeen).  SAG bumped Negga & Huppert, putting Adams and Emily Blunt (The Girl on the Train) into the conversation, with Stone winning, while BAFTA went with the same lineup, and again a victory for Stone (it also feels weird in hindsight that Huppert couldn't get with BAFTA since that nomination would be in their wheelhouse).  I would assume Amy Adams was therefore the sixth place finisher, but it's hard to tell-Blunt had a lot of momentum at the last minute that year, but Oscar doesn't really like Emily Blunt (they've passed on chances to nominate her many times), so maybe it was just Adams left holding the bill here.  

Actors I Would Have Nominated: I know that I would have found room for Amy Adams, who I found mesmerizing in Arrival.  This is one of her best performances, way better than some of the work they have cited her for, which makes her snub all the more perplexing.  I also would have thrown in Tilda Swinton for A Bigger Splash, as her mute rock star is terrific, and a reminder that Tilda has been one of the most consistent performers post her Oscar win we've had this century.  And speaking of consistent, Juliette Binoche is so flawless so often that ignoring her for a film like L'Attesa could be considered forgivable...but it's not.  She finds ways to express grief and regret that most other actresses would leave untapped.

Oscar’s Choice: Easily Stone.  Had Portman been willing to campaign (and if she'd won the Globe) there might have been some competition there, but Huppert's work is too avant garde to win this category, and Streep had just won, so Stone, by a landslide.

My Choice: I'm going with Portman over Huppert, though both should be commended for finding rich scripts & still putting more on the screen than what is in them.  I'll follow them with Streep, Negga, and Stone, in that order.

Those are my thoughts, but now I want to hear yours!  Are you with me on Team Natalie, or are you like the rest of the awards season lining up behind Emma?  Do you think we're due for a season where Meryl is in the mix but doesn't get an Oscar nomination (I feel like it's coming)?  And what happened with Amy Adams-how'd she miss here?  Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Also in 2016: Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Original Screenplay, Adapted Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Production Design, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Previously in 2016

Past Best Actress Contests: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015

4 Mini Reviews

All right-truth be told right now, I'm in "list-finishing" mode, an article I might be writing next week if I can find the time.  But for now, I've decided that it's time to get 2018 done, and rather than just skip some of the movies that I've seen, I am going to instead do short reviews of a dozen movies that I saw in 2018, many even from that year.  I chose these movies because they were not Oscar-nominated (so they won't be referenced when we go back to those years in 2018) and because while I always find it cool to have a full review, I don't think it is as critical to give each of these twelve their own articles.  Don't worry-missing Best Picture nominees Green Book and BlacKKKlansman, as well as one of my personal Best Picture nominees (The Other Side of the Wind), will still get the full review treatment, but as I catch up on my reviews, sacrifices had to be made.  Don't assume this will be a habit-once I catch up, I plan on staying that way & we'll be back to one film to a review.  Until then, enjoy this look at some of the many flicks I saw in 2018!

(Note-I get spoiler-y about Early Man, Annihilation, Ant-Man, and I Feel Pretty-if you haven't seen them and are planning to, skip over those reviews and just read the other ones!)

Early Man (dir. Nick Park)

This was, sadly, the first movie ever that I watched entirely by myself...not just me going by myself, but no one in the theater, a record I enjoyed attributing to a movie but didn't like because I support movie theaters and because, despite its obvious flaws, Early Man has charm.  A movie depicting cavemen playing soccer, it trades a lot in the British humor that has made Nick Park a staple at the Oscars (Early Man is the rare movie that didn't compete from Park's Aardman Studios), and occasionally falls flat, but there's a lot of heart in this film, and some clever villainy as Tom Hiddleston embraces his dark side as Lord Nooth.  A passing fancy, but still pleasurable and worth a quiet night in if you've liked Park's previous work. (Ranking: 3/5 stars)

Annihilation (dir. Alex Garland)

Arguably the movie that I would have most liked to explore in a larger review (you're going to notice four 2018 movies that aren't Oscar nominees that I do give full treatment to, and if you play close attention you'll notice an odd one I highlight as opposed to Annihilation, so call me out for it when you do).  That said, while I adored Ex Machina a few years back, this one seemed to share that movie's ambitions, but not necessarily its execution.  The final third of the movie is gorgeous but makes little sense, and if the metaphor is what it's supposed to be (that we're constantly going to destroy ourselves), you can turn on the news and get that a bit more clearly.  Portman is fine, but there's not enough depth in her main character, and the same can be said for Oscar Isaac as her missing husband.  It's still got great effects (should have been cited for them with AMPAS), but there's too many moments where Garland steers into Christopher Nolan-esque "isn't this cool?" storytelling for comfort. (Ranking: 3/5 stars)

Ant-Man (dir. Peyton Reed)

The best of these four films, Ant-Man is actually one of the finest Marvel movies, period.  I loved the way that they don't necessarily feel the need to have a tragic backstory, and don't confuse comedy for weird like they did in Thor: Ragnorak.  Paul Rudd is flawless (and his abs are well-exploited in a way I wasn't expecting) as Ant-Man, a hapless loser who becomes a random superhero, but seems to genuinely enjoy his powers.  Evangeline Lilly matches well with him, but best-of-all is Michael Douglas as Lilly's father.  Douglas is one of my all-time favorite actors, and watching him latch into a proper movie star role in a genuinely good movie for the first time in (decades?) is an unabashed joy for me.  Add in truly innovative special effects, and you have the best Avengers film that doesn't have "Winter Soldier" in the title. (Ranking: 4/5 stars)

I Feel Pretty (dir. Abby Kohn & Marc Silverstein)

Amy Schumer's career since Trainwreck has been, well, the obvious title pun seems fitting.  She cancelled her hit TV show, and had two flops last year (I think technically Snatched broke even, but considering her promise in Trainwreck that feels like a flop).  I Feel Pretty was at least a financial success for Schumer, ensuring a future paycheck, but she has yet to capture the magic she exhibited with her show and Trainwreck, and seems to be losing the "Rom-Com Queen" wars to someone like Rebel Wilson, who seems a better fit for her material.  I Feel Pretty has too many obvious jokes, and feels more like a lecture than a movie.  The body positivity angles are so overdone, particularly by someone who the bulk of America wouldn't even notice as being "overweight" unless they put her next to Michelle Williams, that it is hokey.  Michelle Williams' turn as a cosmetics boss with a bizarre, squeaky voice, is staggering at first, but I wasn't enchanted by this either-it felt just like a weird decision to make rather than finding something specific to say about her spoiled-but-not-dumb manager.  Still, she's the best part of a dull movie-here's to hoping that Schumer finds her mojo again soon. (Ranking: 2/5 stars)

Song to Song (2017)

Film: Song to Song
Stars: Michael Fassbender, Ryan Gosling, Rooney Mara, Natalie Portman, Cate Blanchett, Holly Hunter, Patti Smith
Director: Terrence Malick
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Few once-lauded directors have become easier punching bags in modern pop culture than Terrence Malick.  The deeply-private (he doesn't care for being called a recluse, though it might not be far from the truth), director has a style unlike pretty much any other filmmaker's working today, creating complicated, occasionally frustrating but always fascinating visual poems for the screen.  I am an ardent admirer of his work, and am currently in the process of trying to see everything he's ever done (anyone who can point me in the direction of a way to see Voyage of Time is about to become my new best friend), and have not given into the fashion of slamming his three most recent films, considering To the Wonder to be a masterpiece and Knight of Cups to be a fascinating if occasionally (too) boundless movie.  His most recent film Song to Song seems to have been the final in a trilogy of this experimental style (Malick has stated his next picture, which is somewhere in its production, will have a tighter narrative structure, though considering this is Terry we're talking about that could mean anything...it could also mean the movie won't be out for another twenty years, though it's rumored for a Spring 2019 release).  Either way, we do have Song to Song thankfully, and as I finally just caught it, I figured it was due a review on the blog.

(Spoilers Ahead) Like so many of his pictures, trying to define this in terms of actual plot is impossible.  The movie, though it has names for its characters, doesn't really use them-I think the only time anyone uses their name is Rooney Mara's Faye, and it's simply mouthed softly rather than something you can hear.  The movie takes a look at a romance between Faye and BV (Gosling), too aspiring musical artists, the latter of whom is enjoying more success than the former.  They enter the world of a record producer Cook (Fassbender), who promises to make all of their dreams come true and shows them in lavish, impossibly-gorgeous mansions and situations, but instead their relationship starts to drag apart.  In between that time, we see all three explore relationships with other people, with BV entering into an ultimately tragic romance with a waitress named Rhonda (Portman), and Gosling romancing Amanda (Blanchett, who I believe was uncredited despite a pretty substantial role in the film by Malick's standards, certainly more so than Holly Hunter's blink-and-you-missi-it performance as Portman's mother), but ultimately he returns to both his simple life on a drilling rig and Faye returns to him, their love sustaining them in a way their musical careers could not.

Song to Song has considerably more structure than Knight of Cups, so critics being divided on this film while seeming to prefer the former on such grounds feels a bit absurd.  The dialogue here isn't as crisp or as meaningful as his previous pictures, and in many ways Song to Song proves that it was To the Wonder that started a trilogy rather than The Tree of Life, the 2011 movie that restarted Malick's career but has considerably more narrative force than any of his three later (fictional) pictures.  The movie has a heavy use of cameos, including Val Kilmer as a mentally-ill rocker and a number of real-life musicians, including a terrific bit by Patti Smith as herself, inspiring the young guitarist Faye.

The movie's best moments are when Malick is using extended visuals to tell the stories rather than his heavy reliance on narration and shorter film cuts, as it's clear the lack of a traditional screenplay forces Mara, Fassbender, and Gosling to all say things in voice-over that feel like something you'd find on a coffee mug you buy from Hallmark.  Still, there's a lot to offer here.  I think the acting is improved from both of its companion pieces, particularly Mara & Blanchett (until I wrote that sentence it didn't occur to me that this was a Carol reunion...sadly they don't share the screen at all here).  Fassbender's story gets lost, but Gosling & Mara make their relationship work.  This isn't the masterwork that Malick is capable of, but it's not the obvious, easily derided work that so many people thought it was, and Malick is distinctive enough for a proper cinephile to find certain sequences brilliant, particularly when they seem to borrow a visual style from To the Wonder and Knight of Cups to make all three feel like Warhol-esque versions of the same picture.  I do hope that his next film finds something new to say within his distinctive style, but Song to Song, like all of Malick's works, is gorgeous and worth the investment.

John's Top 10 Films of 2016

Yesterday we counted down the worst films of 2016, and since I don't want to leave you with the worst for very long (we get enough of that from the news right now), I am happy to start your Monday off right with a look at the best.  2016 wasn't my favorite cinematic year (certainly not when compared with 2014 or 2015), but it had a lot to say about grief, life, and the promises of humanity even when it's hard to find them in the real world.  Here (alphabetically, not in ranked order) are my ten favorite films of 2016:

Arrival (dir. Denis Villeneuve)

In a world where we regularly celebrate the mass destruction of superheroes and expect to see national monuments explode whenever there's an alien invasion, Denis Vileneuve's film finds all of the wonder of an alien encounter with none of the expected cliche.  A marvelous, precise performance by Amy Adams grounds this film about loss, sacrifice, and the benefits of peace.  Easily the best film I've seen from Villeneuve.

Everybody Wants Some!!! (dir. Richard Linklater)

I genuinely would have been fine with just a parade of these actors in baseball uniforms, but Richard Linklater doesn't play that way.  Everybody Wants Some!!! is the rare movie about nostalgia that isn't steeped in comforting the audience, but truly allowing them to relive the fleeting nature of youth, while never sparing them from the realities of time disappearing.  Plus, it does it while being insanely funny and quotable as hell.  Linklater continues his nearly impossibly-strong batting average with star-turns from Tyler Hoechlin and Glen Powell.

From Afar (dir. Lorenzo Vigas)

The best mystery film of the year, a wonderfully Hitchcockian creation.  Vigas plays with the politics of sex, class, and age in this noir that keeps you guessing right up until the end, and then beyond.  Anchored by naturalistic work from Alfredo Castro and Luis Silva, it's a pity that Oscar didn't see the necessity to nominate the year's best foreign-language movie.

Hidden Figures (dir. Theodore Melfi)

What happens when you take three of the most charismatic film stars working, put them in a film that centers around both a story you know (John Glenn circling the globe) and one you don't (the struggles of black women in the space program), have everyone involved running on top cylinders with a sharp eye on character growth, and add in some genuine old-school movie magic?  You get my favorite "Academy fare" movie since Argo.  This is the rare feel-good film that you won't be hating yourself for loving the next day.

Jackie (dir. Pablo Larrain)

I am not someone you'll find clamoring for a biopic, not least of which about one of the most famous stories of the 20th Century that's been told dozens of times previously.  And yet, Pablo Larrain had me from the opening scenes of Jackie, a movie that dares to question our understanding of one of the most famous people on the planet.  With a career-best piece of work from Natalie Portman, Jackie is that rare true story that leaves you wanting more once the credits begin to role.

L'Attesa (dir. Piero Messina)

The most obscure film on this list, L'Attesa took the most frequent cinematic subject of 2016 (the death of a family member), and turns it into a claustrophobic character study of two women struggling with grief and regret.  Juliette Binoche continues her streak as perhaps the greatest living actor with an intense naturalism, while Lou de Laage is every bit her equal as a young woman trying to understand impossible questions about her boyfriend's mother.

Manchester by the Sea (dir. Kenneth Lonergan)

Kenneth Lonergan knows better than pretty much any other writer in Hollywood the ways to finding the complicated emotions and realities of family, and the bonds that tie them together.  Here we are given a marvelous piece-of-work from Casey Affleck, a man who lives as a shell of his former self, failing with emotions that he cannot fully bear to admit to himself.  A truly devastating look at the human experience.

A Monster Calls (dir. JA Bayona)

It's rare to find a live-action children's film these days that asks tough questions for all of its audience, while still maintaining a sense of magic and discovery.  Never cloying, never false, always classic and straight-forward and intensely felt, JA Bayona's A Monster Calls is a miracle, a movie that towers from start to finish with a sheer appreciation of life, both its delicacies and its strengths.

Moonlight (dir. Barry Jenkins)

The most confident movie I saw this year was oddly about a deeply insecure young man's struggle with finding out who he is.  From start to finish, Barry Jenkins' opus shows us identity, both outward and in, and gives us performance after performance of wonderful realism and heart.  Stylistically and creatively a triumph to behold.

Silence (dir. Martin Scorsese)

It says something that at the age of 74, Martin Scorsese is not only making movies, but complicated, controversial, and difficult films that still manage to soar with meaning and strength.  Part thriller, part religious experience, and part epic, Scorsese shows the trials of faith and man's struggle with coming to terms with God's expectations in this brilliant picture, by my measure his finest since GoodFellas.

Knight of Cups (2016)

Film: Knight of Cups (2016)
Stars: Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Natalie Portman, Brian Dennehy, Antonio Banderas, Wes Bentley
Director: Terrence Malick
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

Entering the world of a Terrence Malick film, for me, is a religious experience.  No other director, save perhaps for Bergman or Kubrick, is such a guarantee of a visceral, gut-wrenching, provocative cinematic journey.  Malick's films are always unique upon themselves, perhaps wise, perhaps just pretty pictures, but as a deep, deep fan of his work I leave even his strangest or most limited of movies a different person, surrounded by the ethereal language of his storytelling.

(Spoilers Ahead) This is a fancy way of saying that I went into Knight of Cups with a bias that is probably not going to be easily assuaged, even though I had seen the reviews and was aware that even amongst the most ardent of Malick fans, the picture may have shown some signs of wear-and-tear.  Summarizing a Malick film into simply its plot and nothing more is a foolish, ridiculous thing, but suffice it to say we have Christian Bale as a Hollywood screenwriter enjoying intense success, but also with that a lascivious indulgence of sex, drugs, and most imperatively, gluttony.  Gluttony in every sense, as we see Bale, gorgeous, nonchalant, but ultimately shallow in his approach to life, have a dreamy, impossibly-blessed existence from which he and those around him derive little joy, even if they ultimately couldn't live without it.

In part I was reminded of the films of Paolo Sorrentino, whose near-perfect The Great Beauty has come the closest in the sea of Malick imitators in the past few years to achieving the sort of moving, profound visual dialogue with the audience that only Malick has been able to grasp in such a way.  Like Sorrentino's films, we see a world of decadence, gaudy and yet always beautiful.  Emmanuel Lubezki, three Oscars in, somehow will likely go without having ever won for a Malick film (it's hard to imagine him winning a fourth while Terry is still making movies), but man is the cinematography here on-fire.  The warehouse scenes and the sequences on an old movie lot are particularly jarring, seeing the phoniness of the world around a particularly plastic individual and the way that even human life doesn't seem to liven up the world around us.  Yes, the nature scenes are gorgeous, but I found the man-made structures, which Malick always frames in odd, almost alien ways (who can forget the Sonic station in To the Wonder and how it felt like it was encroaching on the natural beauty of the nature around it), to be the highlights visually.

The acting in his films is deeply hard to judge, partially because Malick is an unforgiving editor (lest we forget that Mickey Rourke, Rachel Weisz, and Michael Sheen were all A-listers that randomly got cut from his movies), and also because no actor, save for Bale, is given more than the tiniest smidgen of dialogue.  That being said, Blanchett and Bentley are the highlights for me, as Blanchett creates a woman that feels authentically of a world not just of Bale's imagination.  In fact, she is perhaps the only woman that doesn't feel like a part of his dream, while others like Freida Pinto and Natalie Portman lift in and out of the story to the point where you can't tell if they are just flights of fancy, so beautiful that Bale just added them to his mental aesthetic.  Bentley is equally as good as the disappointment of a brother, the one who knows the hold he has on Bale and his father, but who is too callous and perhaps even too middling to be able to do anything except prod.

The movie is not, it should be noted, anywhere as good as The Tree of Life or To the Wonder, the other two in what appears to be a biographical trilogy of Malick remembrances (early in his career, before he became a cinematic Thomas Pynchon, Malick wrote films for the likes of Clint Eastwood and Paul Newman so this is clearly that portion of his career).  The scope is too limited in focusing on the meaning of purpose rather than the broader meaning of life or meaning of love like his other more recent pictures.  There are moments in the film that feel a tad indulgent, and Bale doesn't have the prowess in his role that, say, Brad Pitt or Q'orianka Kilcher brought to previous work in Malick pictures.  That being said, this is judging on a curve and while his flights of fancy don't pay off, there are still relatively profound moments, especially with Blanchett and Bentley, that resonate far beyond what is happening just in the moments in a dimmed theater.

Those are my thoughts on this, Malick's latest for probably a while (I'll believe that Weightless exists when I see it)-how about yours?  Are you Team Malick, and if so, share a favorite film?  And where does Knight of Cups rank in his pantheon?

Everybody's Linking for the Weekend

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

On Entertainment...

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

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

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

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

On Politics...

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell

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

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

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

Shameless Self-Promotion of the Week...

How I plan on celebrating gay marriage in Ireland.

YouTube Video of the Week...

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

Just One More...

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

OVP: Lead Actress (2010)

OVP: Best Lead Actress (2010)

The Nominees Were...

Annette Bening, The Kids Are All Right

Nicole Kidman, Rabbit Hole

Jennifer Lawrence, Winter's Bone

Natalie Portman, Black Swan

Michelle Williams, Blue Valentine

My Thoughts: Wow-looking at this lineup, I'm kind of in awe of what a terrific list of performances Oscar managed to assemble.  Most of the time I have to weigh the good with the bad when I'm looking at a lineup, trying to figure out how I'm going to balance and whether I'll end on a high or a low note, but here, the notes just keep getting higher.

Take, for example, Natalie Portman, the person who somehow emerged as the frontrunner after she scored a couple of precursors (up until that point, I think you could have made a legitimate argument in favor of Portman, Lawrence, or Bening being the one who stampeded to the trophy).  Black Swan lives and dies on her shoulders, and she's given a difficult task, for a couple of reasons.  First, she has to endure, physically, the role put in front of her, which is no easy task.  Ballet, especially for someone who hasn't spent their life devoted to it, is not an easy thing to just pick up.  Secondly, and far more difficult, she has to find the weird center of this character.

Nina is a woman (more accurately girl, toward the end of the movie) who has excelled to a certain extent, and has never understood taking her own chances.  She's been controlled by teachers, her mother, her own psychotic pressures, and as she is forced to deal with this being her "chance," and not just leading up to this moment.  Portman has to find a way to keep her from falling over the precipice and yet still making us wonder if she's already gone over, into the darkness of the black swan.  The way she lilts her voice, higher and more girly as the film progresses, and the way that she slowly slips from reality into this other demon, it's breathtaking work from an actress that has always had great potential, but aside from Closer, hasn't always had the opportunities to share it.

Michelle Williams is one of those great joys of the past decade on-screen.  I'm still quite stunned, after spouting off the rambling, self-obsessed dialogue of Kevin Williamson for so many years, that there was a great actor in its midst, but she has proven time and again that this is of course the case.  As an actress, Cindy may be the most difficult role I've seen her play, and is probably the most difficult of these five nominated performances.  The trick is figuring out how to make her seem both vulnerable and caged-in by her own sense of self-doubt.  Cindy is not someone that falls in love, in true love, easily and when she does, she finds it all consuming.  Williams has to play her as someone who makes Dean her entire world, that she signs on completely to him being her life, and then, in the present sequences, she has to show not only that her feelings have changed, but how disappointed that makes her.  Williams understands the character and the emotions that come with loving someone, and then falling out of love with them-those feelings don't necessarily go away, they are just overpowered by a newer sense of where your life is headed.  The moments where it seems Cindy is considering retaking Dean back, that leaving him would be the worst decision, is where Williams shines the brightest.

We've had physically-demanding and emotionally-demanding, but there are demands that certain characters bring that few others could achieve.  Annette Bening also gets a bit of a tightrope act-she has to find a character that is both lovable (we have to believe that Julianne has fallen in love with her and stayed in love with her) and has her own baggage to weigh on the relationship.  Part of what makes Bening so great in this movie is the way she can center the character between being unlikable and still identifiable.  Think of the way she unfolds in that great dinner scene-talking about Joni Mitchell, she's the sort of person that at a party you try to avoid because they'll make things uncomfortable, but feel bad about because she's truly a good person.  She's the friend you love on occasion and drives you bonkers on others.  She finds the humanity that's at the core of her character, and brings it out, the good and the bad.  In a category where it's generally considered important to be likable, it's nice to know that Oscar can also recognize a difficult character and the wonderful work this actress brings to it.

Nicole Kidman has spent a career out of finding the unlikable characters and bringing humanity to them.  I don't always have opportunity to discuss Nicole, as she's ignored by Oscar just as often as she is cited by him, but what makes her such a terrific actress is that she throws herself at the mercy of the director's vision.  She's willing to play cold, heartless, tender, broken, all if it aids the story without a hint of vanity, which is impressive for an actress as gorgeous as she is.  Her Becca has to be incredibly vulnerable, and occasionally cutting, and she doesn't worry about going there.

I have oftentimes wondered how this play worked on-stage.  Cynthia Nixon and Nicole Kidman are both excellent actresses, but they don't excel in the same ways at all.  Nixon is born for the stage, with her superb delivery and ability to pointedly fill a room with her voice.  Kidman is more about introversion.  I know she's done theater, but the cinema is really where her powers lie-with the slightest flick of her voice, of her face, she can send the audience into her emotional pathway.

The best example of that for Kidman in Rabbit Hole is the way she handles her three primary on-screen partners.  There's her husband, whom she holds at a cold distance, wondering why he seems to have moved on from the death of their son and wondering why he hasn't reacted in the same way as she.  There's her mother, whom she resents for getting a longer life with her dead child, and hates for comparing her pain of losing a drug-addled grown man to that of losing her six-year-old boy.  And then there's the young man who accidentally killed her son, and the way that she really opens up to him.  He's the only person who is still mourning in the same way she is, and she continues to want him in her life even though he brought about the pain she suffers.  Kidman gets to the heart of these relationships, and lets her movements and actions reflect the thoughts she's thinking but not saying to these people in her life.

Finally, we have Jennifer Lawrence.  I remember loving Lawrence on the red carpet of the Oscars that year, and wondering if she was going to make it in Hollywood (clearly that fear was assuaged).  As she was so beautiful but gave such a haunted, grounded performance I wondered if she was prepared for the Twilights and Harry Potters that seem to be thrown at actors in their young twenties (clearly The Hunger Games also proved she's up for that challenge).

Ree Dolly, her first major, weighty role, shows she's very instinctual as an actor.  She understands the hard life that her character has played.  Some actors would have made her a bit more naive, a bit more stunned at what was unfolding, but you never see that in her Ree.  She's scared, of course, but she doesn't show it.  She, like her uncle Teardrop and a number of her relatives in the film, is a survivor, and that baser need to live through anything carries her through the heart of darkness to try and find her father.  I love the way she knows exactly how much more she can open up with her uncle, how she can play him a little bit bigger than she can anyone else.  I also love the way she half-expects to die, how she knows that even if she's got death staring her right in the face, the worst thing she can do is blink.  You can tell when an actor lands their first great performance, as you can't picture them playing anything else, and that's the way I felt about Lawrence in this movie.  And of course, what a superb actor does is take their next great work, and then prove you wrong over-and-over.  Which, I suspect is what Lawrence is going to do in the upcoming decades.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes found room for all five of the women in their lineups where ten actresses can fit, but since The Kids Are All Right was in the Comedy lineup, they made way for Halle Berry in Frankie and Alice in the Drama lineup (question: was this film ever actually released?  I know nothing about this movie, I think it was only released in an incredibly limited qualifier run, and despite a huge name in Berry, has never been released on Netflix).  For the Comedy lineup, you also had Emma Stone in Easy A, Anne Hathaway in Love and Other Drugs, Julianne Moore in The Kids Are All Right, and Angelina Jolie in The Tourist.  Portman and Bening won the Globes.  The Screen Actors Guild Awards wanted to go for round three of the legendary Bening/Swank Oscar feud, giving a nomination to Hilary Swank in Conviction and skipping over Michelle Williams (I have to believe that had Swank made it in over Williams at the Oscars, as I do feel she was in sixth place, that this would have only helped Bening since the media would have focused on this so ferociously, though SAG did go with Portman instead of Bening).  Like Get Low, this is another major contender that I didn't have time for because it never actually made it to the Kodak, so please share in the comments if it's worth the investigation.  And the BAFTA Awards, always doing their own thing, only had room for Portman (their victor) and Bening, instead citing Julianne Moore, Haille Steinfeld (correctly in the lead category), and Noomi Rapace for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  Rapace was definitely in the race for Oscar, a nomination that would have killed Rooney Mara's chances a year later and likely would have gotten Tilda Swinton a second nomination.  Ahh, the butterfly effect of just missing at the Oscars.

Performances I Would Have Nominated: I am deeply conflicted over my fifth place slot.  When this lineup came out, I was really torn between honoring Lawrence, Emma Stone, and Carey Mulligan in Never Let Me Go as my final nominee, and while I went with Mulligan, three years later I still have trouble figuring out which one should have been there.  This is my long-winded way of saying I think that this is one of the best lineups Oscar has ever produced in this category.  I'd like to have seen Berry, Rapace, and Swank before making this statement, but I think they may well have picked the five best eligible performances of the year when they assembled this lineup.

Oscar's Choice: Portman made good on her promise over a decade earlier as a young actress to watch, and picked up the trophy, with Annette Bening getting yet another silver (in four nominations, once could strongly argue that she's been in second place four times).

My Choice: With a lineup this strong, you kind of want to give it to them all, but that's of course not allowed.  My heart at the time said Kidman, and I'm sticking with that-she brings a level to her character that doesn't quite hit with the others.  After writing things up, though, I've swayed myself a bit (writing your opinions down makes you further evaluate them and your actual beliefs become clearer), and I'm going with Williams, Portman, Bening, and Lawrence for the rest of the line.

What about you-do you think Portman was the correct choice for Oscar, or were you more drawn to one of the other excellent ladies?  When (if ever) do you think Michelle Williams or Annette Bening will win their trophies?  Should I be seeing Hilary Swank's or Noomi Rapace's work, or are these fine to skip?  And seriously, what is the deal with Frankie and Alice and how does one get to view it?

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

Past Best Actor Contests: 2011