OVP: Actress (2021)

OVP: Best Actress (2021)

The Nominees Were...

Jessica Chastain, The Eyes of Tammy Faye

Olivia Colman, The Lost Daughter

Penelope Cruz, Parallel Mothers

Nicole Kidman, Being the Ricardos

Kristen Stewart, Spencer

My Thoughts: We're finishing off the 2021 acting races with Best Actress, a category that reads as kind of weird even though the actors themselves don't.  Three former winners, a multiple-time nominee, and a promising newcomer playing a princess is the bread-and-butter of this category, but if you look at the films, these are good actresses (and largely good performances) in somewhat forgettable movies.  Featuring some films that were relegated to streaming platforms, a lot of the majesty of this lineup feels a bit underwhelming even if the actual work at hand doesn't read that way.

A good example of this is Colman, who is in a fine film, and is giving a splendid performance in a movie, well, few people seem to have seen.  Colman is marvelous here, though, so I can't quibble with the choice itself (and generally I'm fine with Oscar picking obscurity, it just feels like every film was kind of "ehh" here in a way the other acting categories didn't).  She brings such pathos to her character, even when the character wouldn't want that, and does a marvelous job of giving us a complicated look at womanhood, maturity, and the unrealistic expectations we give to mothers.  One of our best working actors, hopefully this isn't her last outing with AMPAS.

Colman's movie is good, which you can't really advertise for Jessica Chastain.  The movie brushes by huge swaths of the real life Bakkers, particularly anything involving the complicated sexuality of husband Jim.  Chastain is the best part of the movie, and does her darndest to sell Tammy Faye, a walking cartoon who is hard to make fascinating because she's so devout & has such faith in the people around her, she reads as two-dimensional even if that's basically who she was in real-life.  But Chastain can only do so much in a movie that's not interested in some of her character layering, and she's working so hard in some scenes it feels like she's trying to make a bad movie good (and she's not going to do it).

Nicole Kidman, likewise, is much better than her movie.  Kidman was such an unusual choice to play Lucille Ball, but it largely works.  She doesn't do Ball's voice & she doesn't look like her, but she gives a decent performance as a woman who spent a decade trying to get what she currently has, and feels she constantly needs to prove to herself that she's worthy of her success, she's been trying to retain it for so long.  But the movie is dreadful, and she's saddled with huge speeches that go nowhere and do nothing...a script this poor is going to hurt any performance, and I think it sometimes makes too indulgent in later scenes.

Kristen Stewart is, for the record, a wonderful actress; in my mind she already had two nominations by 2021 for Clouds of Sils Maria and Personal Shopper.  But her work in Spencer is not good.  Some of that is based on Pablo Larrain (unlike Aaron Sorkin, Larrain has proven before he's a very strong director so this came as a surprise) not knowing how to ground this film in any sort of reality (even a fantastical one).  Stewart's accent work & observation of the real-life Diana's facial expressions are to-die-for (particularly given her LA roots), but she feels adrift in a movie that's largely rudderless.  The film (and her work) just can't find a center, and this becomes a missed opportunity as a result.

The best movie of this bunch is probably Parallel Mothers, though it reads more as a classic because Pedro & Penelope have made so many good movies that you could be forgiven for forgetting that this is only "pretty good" (the third act is filled with too many swings that don't connect).  Cruz is superb, though, hanging on during all of the soap opera moves that the movie gives her titular mother, and reminding us that she's capable of greatness when given the chance.  Like Colman, one of our best working actors, and I hope she doesn't make us wait another decade for a performance this stylized & moving.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes separate their nominations between Drama and Musical/Comedy, so we have ten women nominated for these awards.  For Drama we came very close to Oscar's lineup, with Kidman winning and the only new nominee being Lady Gaga (House of Gucci) instead of Cruz.  For Musical/Comedy, Rachel Zegler (West Side Story) won against Marion Cotillard (Annette), Alana Haim (Licorice Pizza), Jennifer Lawrence (Don't Look Up), & Emma Stone (Cruella).  SAG favored Chastain for their win, with Colman, Gaga, Kidman, & Jennifer Hudson (Respect) the remaining nominees, while BAFTA went totally balls-to-the-walls crazy by giving Joanna Scanlan (After Love) the win atop Gaga, Haim, Emilia Jones (CODA), Renate Reinsve (The Worst Person in the World), & Tessa Thompson (Passing), the first time since 1987 that none of the BAFTA nominees for Best Actress also got in with Oscar.  In sixth place was surely Lady Gaga, and honestly...what a relief that Oscar went with Stewart or Cruz over a performance as bad as hers.  Gaga, I'm sorry, has yet to give a decent acting performance (she's a very good singer & songwriter, but she's no thespian), and getting in for work as bad as Gucci...ooph, that would've been a bad look for Oscar (and given her precursor support, she might well have won!).

Actors I Would Have Nominated: The name that did show up quite a bit during precursor season that would've been a great choice would've been Alana Haim, who (like Gaga) is a singer who is in a storied director's vision, but she actually seems well-matched for it, and sells the unusual duet at the top of Licorice Pizza.

Oscar’s Choice: Due to the chaos of the year, and a quick-trending "overdue" narrative that surrounded Jessica Chastain late-in-the-race (even if it's not entirely clear that was super true), she won against Kidman & Cruz, Tom Cruise's exes competing for silver.

My Choice: In a very tight race, I'm going to go with Cruz over Colman, if only because I think Colman is held back by not feeling connected to Jessie Buckley's work as her younger self.  Behind these two are Chastain, Kidman, & Stewart, in that order.

Those are my thoughts, but now I want to hear yours!  Are you fine with Chastain getting her big moment, or would you have stood with me for a second round of Cruz?  Am I on my own in thinking this lineup is kind of a shrug even if it has some world-class actresses?  And am I the only person who doesn't get Gaga: Movie Star?  Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Also in 2021: Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, International Feature Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound, Original Score, Original Song, Production Design, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Previously in 2021

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

OVP: Supporting Actress (2020)

OVP: Best Supporting Actress (2020)

The Nominees Were...

Maria Bakalova, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm

Glenn Close, Hillbilly Elegy

Olivia Colman, The Father

Amanda Seyfried, Mank

Youn Yuh-Jung, Minari

My Thoughts: On Friday, we profiled the Best Supporting Actor race (all links to past 2020 contests at the bottom of this page), and I made a statement that in 2020, there were no Supporting Actor races that I loved.  The same cannot be said for Supporting Actress.  Not only were the supporting women of 2020 considerably better than the supporting men, but Oscar noticed them.  Though, at least in the case of our first nominee, it's not like he needed to have it pointed out considering how superb she's been recently.

Few actresses have capitalized on their Oscar wins quite in the same way as Olivia Colman.  The star of The Favourite has scored two Oscar nominations in the three years since, as well as headlined a major series for Netflix (and supported in the crowdpleasing Heartstopper).  The best part is-this isn't overkill, she's just consistently wonderful.  Her work in The Father is so tricky.  She plays a woman in middle age, struggling with her own battles (notice how we can't quite tell what's been going on with her life, but it's been bumpy), but having to deal with a father who clearly was not her favorite (and she not his favorite child).  Colman trickily navigates love, family obligation, and the subtlest of impatience about wanting to live her own life as her father consumes hers-it's riveting stuff, with the Oscar winner putting all of her emotions right on her face, even when the character doesn't want her to.

The last time that Colman was nominated she wasn't expected to win, of course.  Instead, the victory was assumed to be Glenn Close's, but Close in a big surprise lost the statue.  Here, though I think there was at one point some assumption she'd get in, she wasn't nearly as much of a frontrunner, and part of that was because her movie was utter rubbish (honestly, for Close's sake, it's best she didn't win & have to be on tape thanking future-Senator JD Vance in a speech).  She's the best part of this film, but that doesn't say much-it's hard to judge great acting when you're against a cast that's cartoonishly-written and two-dimensionally portrayed.  Close is too expressive of an actor to totally whiff here, but this was an afterglow nomination that I could've done without (it's definitely the nomination from her career most people will forget).

Close & Colman both lost to Youn Yuh-Jung in her first major role.  A longtime television star in her native Korea, Youn adapts perhaps the best of any of the actors to the naturalism that director Lee Isaac Chung is going for, finding a lot of personality behind her work.  I will say that I wasn't as taken with this performance as most of my online film friends.  I think it's because it always feels like it's surface-level, never really giving us a lot of the connections I'd want between characters.  There's something lacking in this progression...it's not necessarily bad for the film (I think it works well with the movie's naturalism), but it also makes it hard to rave about a particular performance since they all work best as a collective.

This is not the case for Amanda Seyfried, who steals Mank every scene she's in.  Seyfried, who gained fame as a teenager in Mean Girls, gets her big Oscar moment playing Marion Davies, the forgotten leading lady (and lover of William Randolph Hearst) who inspires the character of Susan in Citizen Kane.  Seyfried's not afraid to coast on sheer magnetism in some of the bigger moments of Mank, like when she's in the car after leaving MGM.  But there's also some great side moments...her expressive eyes betray her worry.  She's a woman in a precarious position (she's Hearst's lover, not his wife), and Seyfried knows how to play that perfectly, always finding a way to be not just the center-of-attention in a room, but in control.

Our final nominee is one of the weirdest citations in the history of the Academy Awards.  If you can name another situation where an unknown actress gets included for an improvisational comedy sequel, I'm all ears.  Obviously to get in for something like this, Bakalova has to be special, and she does match Sacha Baron Cohen's manic energy & impeccable timing.  But it's also not really a performance-it's all instinct, but not necessarily building anything.  Any scenes where she's not trying to control the situation but instead foraging an actual character feels like it's too cartoonish, too many big swings.  I'm curious what she does next, but this nomination I can't support.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes truly went their own direction, choosing to give this statue to Jodie Foster (The Mauritanian) atop Close, Seyfried, Colman, & Helena Zengel (News of the World), making this the first time since Katharine Ross in 1976 (for Voyage of the Damned) that the Globe winner did not get nominated at the Oscars.  SAG was a bit more attuned with Oscar's choices, picking Youn as their winner while Close, Colman, Zengel, & Bakalova were nominated, while BAFTA also favored Youn against Bakalova, Ashley Madekwe (County Lines), Dominique Fishback (Judas and the Black Messiah), Kosar Ali (Rocks), & Niamh Algar (Calm with Horses).  In terms of sixth place, I honestly think Foster was a fluke with the Globes, and that it was Zengel that was in sixth (probably over Seyfried, who was fading at the time).

Actors I Would Have Nominated: Comedy is ignored by Oscar too often, so I can't really complain in a year where they swung for the fences with Bakalova.  However, Miranda Hart is so marvelous in Emma (after being a scene-stealer in the classic Spy) & I think should've gotten in for making ridiculous feel so moving.

Oscar’s Choice: Had Close or Seyfried pulled off the Globe, I think they could've stampeded to the Oscar.  Both would go with different Oscar favorite tropes (Close the living legend playing a nurturing mother figure, Seyfried the sexy thirtysomething actress playing a real-life figure), but it would've latched on.  Foster's win, though, allowed for Oscar to get creative and Youn sealed the deal the second she won the SAG.

My Choice: I'm going to very slightly go with Seyfried over Colman.  I'm aware that Colman is giving the more intricate performance, but Seyfried has to take the bigger swings with her role, and honestly takes the credit for the best parts of Mank...it's tight though.  Youn is in third, followed by Close & then Bakalova.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Will anyone join me with Seyfried, or am I standing alone, particularly with Youn & Colman as options?  Is Glenn Close ever getting a statue...and honestly, is this really how her storied career with Oscar ends after eight nominations?  And why do you think Foster was such a hit with HFPA but not AMPAS?  Share your thoughts below!

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

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

OVP: The Mitchells vs. the Machines (2021)

Film: The Mitchells vs. the Machines (2021)

Stars: Abbi Jacobson, Danny McBride, Maya Rudolph, Mike Rianda, Eric Andre, Olivia Colman

Director: Mike Rianda

Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Animated Feature Film)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Last week we hit on Vivo, a Netflix animated feature that despite its starry composer, made nary a peep when it came out months ago.  Today, though, we're going to be talking about the film that everyone seems to assume will make it for Netflix, the populist crowdpleaser The Mitchells vs. the Machines.  Coming out toward the tail end of a lot of people's quarantines, the film was a surprise hit for the platform, catching word-of-mouth despite relatively limited star power (save for Rudolph & Colman, hardly usuals in blockbuster fare), and had stayed as a probable contender for the Oscar in the months since.  As I start to collect any loose ends from the year when it comes to Oscar (I like to keep the list of films that I need to see for the OVP short on nominations morning), I wanted to get to this, and was surprised by how well I liked it...and how certain everyone was that it'll make the cut with Oscar.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is about the Mitchells, a family of loving misfits whose eldest daughter Katie (Jacobson) is about to go off to college as an aspiring filmmaker, a fact that her father Rick (McBride) is struggling with.  Rick also has issues with modern technology, something that feels warranted when a virtual assistant named PAL (it rhyming with Hal, as in HAL 9000, hardly a subtle nod to another out-of-control computer program) takes over everyone's phones and decides to send all of humanity into space.  Since they don't have their phones, the Mitchells are the last free family in America, and they use their wiles to beat PAL (eventually besting her by putting her into a glass of water, a solid comic set piece), and along the way Rick & Katie gain an understanding & respect for each other they hadn't had before.

Mitchells is long, but it never feels that way.  A two-hour animated movie would usually be a death knell, a sign of a slog, but Mitchells makes this feel full by giving us four fully-fleshed characters in each family member, not just resorting to two-dimensional characterizations.  We also get some really great asides with PAL, played by Oscar winner Olivia Colman, who steals the film wholesale (can someone please hire this woman to play a proper villain at some point, as she aces this work).  Also, the dog is marvelous and I want a series of shorts just about him.

The problem here is that Mitchells is a kitchen sink approach to animation, and I'm just going to say it-it sometimes gets ugly, as if you're watching a splotch painting of a Saturday morning cartoon.  The decisions are too manic, and it comes across as unappealing in a way that few animated films that get cited for Oscar do.  Frequently when you have a film on the edge of a nomination or trying to break through, it's something like Mirai (traditionally lovely anime) or Klaus (with breathtaking uses of lighting).  Mitchells is neither of those things, and looks cheap.  I don't think this negates from the story, and I'm not saying this is going to cost it, but if we assume Encanto, Luca, and Flee are all locks, that leaves four films (Mitchells, The Summit of the Gods, Belle, and Raya and the Last Dragon) duking it out for the final citations.  Mitchells is the least visually compelling of these four contenders-if this is a surprise upset (I'd tentatively put it between fifth & sixth place), it'll be because we ignored the animation style, which is not something Oscar tends to favor in this category.

OVP: Actress (2018)

OVP: Best Actress (2018)

The Nominees Were...

Yalitza Aparicio, Roma

Glenn Close, The Wife

Olivia Colman, The Favourite

Lady Gaga, A Star is Born

Melissa McCarthy, Can You Ever Forgive Me?

My Thoughts: We talked on Monday about how Best Actor was possibly the worst lineup in Academy history.  Best Actress, thankfully, gives us a solid grouping of women, albeit ones in completely different stages of their careers.  We have here two women making a splash in their first lead roles albeit one as an aspiring preschool teacher who had never acted before, the other as a Golden-Globe winning superstar who had been a household name for the better part of a decade.  You also had a character actress getting her first major chance at a breakout part (that would graduate her to proper headliner), the most important comedic actress of the past decade who was trying her hand at a dramatic part, and the one, indisputable classic movie star of the bunch, in the hunt for an Oscar on her seventh nomination.

We rarely start with AMPAS's choice, so let's mix it up & begin with Olivia Colman, the surprise victor on Oscar night.  Colman's work here is fascinating, because it's surely the most engaged of the three leading ladies in The Favourite, if that makes sense.  She has to play Queen Anne as a slightly ridiculous person, someone that has been so coddled her whole life (born the niece of the king, she had never known a day of financial hardship but was horribly broken up about her inability to have a child survive to adulthood), but someone that we can at once sympathize with & who can sneak up on us.  Notice how deliciously Colman sinks into the rare moments where Anne wields her power, but always knows that it's there, ready for her to command if she so chooses...and the heartbreak in Anne being aware that her power will never truly bring her companionships & love, the things she most desires.  It's a great balancing act from an actress who knew her time had come, and got the job done.

Yalitza Aparicio, like Colman, is the lead in a major Best Picture contender.  Aparicio, though, doesn't have the decades of stage & screen experience Colman brings to her big moment, and it shows.  Aparicio is good for what this part is-she's solid in the way that she can convey a studied meditation for director Cuaron to bring to the screen, but I left thinking that this wasn't all raw nerve in her performance.  First-time performers frequently suffer from not building a strong enough base inward for us to attach to their characters (they're too surface-level), but Aparicio if anything is the opposite-she's too measured, too controlled in what she's doing, and it makes it difficult for the audience to see her as more than her character-I left not knowing who Cleo really was, and as she's the central focus, that's a problem.

Lady Gaga is the opposite problem-it's all surface-level work, and her newness as an actress shows in this part.  Gaga is better in the first half than the second, but that second half is a cliff for me.  She plays Ally like an empty vessel, not able to convey the bigger moments & faltering badly when A Star is Born stumbles into cliche when other (more experienced) actresses might have been able to keep the cliche fresh.  Think of the wooden approach she takes to "it's a disease" when discussing Cooper's alcoholism, or the way she doesn't moderate her emotions to be believable as a character.  The singing is great (she's a good singer, this is not up-for-debate), but unlike someone like Jennifer Hudson, who also got an Oscar nomination for her first major role, who suffers to elevate her star persona when she's acting but brings it hard when she's singing, Gaga can't do either in A Star is Born-other than "Shallow," I felt like this was a rough, one-dimensional portrayal.

The movie The Wife got a lot of flack in 2018 for being Oscar-bait, a way for Glenn Close to finally get an Oscar in a movie that very few people had seen.  This wasn't fair (at least the last part-The Wife making $20 million hardly puts it in "lowest-grossing Best Actress nominee" territory), but the film itself isn't great, which is perhaps the reason Close lost.  This is a pity because this is one of Glenn Close's best performances, in my opinion, and a respectable nominee for Best Actress.  She doesn't give in to some of her more famous ticks (there's no grand scenery-ensaring moment from Close, a theater actress through-and-through), and she plays her character so well without us ever having to scrutinize what she's thinking (unless that's what she wants).  Colman's win will age well, but anyone who thinks Close's wouldn't have didn't see this movie-she's excellent.

Melissa McCarthy is a great actress-I would've given her the Oscar in 2011, and she just misses my Best Actress cut in 2015.  That said, it's beyond fun to see her in a stretch like Lee Israel.  She doesn't get some of her warm-hearted tenderness that has made her a star, nor does she get to engage in a lot of physical comedy, her calling card.  Instead, she plays Lee Israel as someone who is lonely, unapologetically lonely, but also as someone who is desperate to understand the next step in her life (when the world essentially doesn't want her anymore).  It's a tough movie, a bitter one, but she doesn't sentimentalize, which is tricky, especially in the late courtroom scene where she has to admit to opening herself up without losing her specific character traits.  A really classy choice by the Academy not to skip McCarthy for such an atypical, sometimes unlikable leading role.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes separate their nominations between Drama and Musical/Comedy, so we have ten women nominated for these awards.  The Drama category went with Glenn Close (in something of a surprise considering Lady Gaga would've been more HFPA's style), besting not just Gaga but also McCarthy, Nicole Kidman (Destroyer), & Rosamund Pike (A Private War), while Comedy/Musical went for Colman over Emily Blunt (Mary Poppins Returns), Elsie Fisher (Eighth Grade), Charlize Theron (Tully), & Constance Wu (Crazy Rich Asians).  SAG went with Close as well, over Blunt, Colman, Gaga, & McCarthy, while BAFTA favored Colman against Close, Gaga, McCarthy, & Viola Davis (Widows).  In terms of sixth place, I predicted Emily Blunt for the Top 5 at the time & still think she was close.  She had the one-two punch of A Quiet Place and Mary Poppins, had dominated the precursors (she won supporting for A Quiet Place in a true hindsight shock), & at this point was overdue for some time with Oscar.  I'm not sure what the holdup was here, honestly-at some point you have to assume AMPAS just doesn't like someone.

Actors I Would Have Nominated: Next week we're going to get into my final list so I'll resist again the need to provide some hints, but I will say that I understand most of Oscar's impulses here, and in particular while it's not forgivable, it's understandable in such a field why they put Stone & Weisz in supporting even though they should've had room here.

Oscar’s Choice: The precursors do point to a closer race than what we assumed at the time, but Olivia Colman pulled off the upset and took what might've been Glenn Close's best chance at an Oscar, though unlike what we thought at the time, it was not her last chance at a trophy.

My Choice: I decide these things in a vacuum, and in a vacuum, I'd give this to Olivia Colman, who gives the best performance of these five women.  McCarthy follows, with Close, Aparicio, & Gaga behind.  I will say, as a result, that this was one of the opportunities I had to give the trophy to Close (but I'm skipping it) as she's very good (she'd be in my Top 10 that year), and since I still have screenings left in 1987/88, I deny her this trophy (again, in a vacuum as that is the OVP's wont) not knowing if I might be in a similar camp to Oscar in never giving her a trophy as a result.

Those are my thoughts, but now I want to hear yours!  Are with both Oscar & myself in falling head-over-heels for Olivia Colman?  Will Glenn Close ever get an Oscar?  And what's the deal with Emily Blunt's strange Oscar drought?  Share your thoughts in the comments below!

Also in 2018: Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Score, Original Song, Production Design, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Previously in 2018

Past Best Actress Contests: 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2019

OVP: The Father (2020)

Film: The Father (2020)

Stars: Anthony Hopkins, Olivia Colman, Rufus Sewell, Imogen Poots, Mark Gatiss, Olivia Williams

Director: Florian Zeller

Oscar History: 6 nominations/2 wins (Best Picture, Actor-Anthony Hopkins*, Supporting Actress-Olivia Colman, Film Editing, Production Design, Adapted Screenplay*)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

Movies are not reality.  This is true in obvious ways (you don't encounter dragons & aliens just randomly in real life), but it also is true in the sense that our approach to reality shifts when we're trying to decipher a movie compared to real-life.  I realized this shortly into Florian Zeller's debut film The Father, which is based on the Tony-winning play.  Despite the trailers being pretty clear about what I was getting into, in a movie about shifting narrative & direction, I kept expecting twists, confusion & more of a traditional thriller.  What I got, of course, was what was promised-a devastating look at aging, told in an almost fantastical way, and a jaw-dropping lead performance from Anthony Hopkins.

(Spoilers Ahead) The Father is not a movie that fits a traditional narrative-style, but essentially it's the story of Anthony (Hopkins), a well-to-do man who lives in an elegant London flat, and frequently gets visits from his daughter Anne (Colman), who is worried that he is getting too old to stay in his flat by herself.  She intends to go to Paris with her fiancé, and it seems wants to move him into a more manageable place since he's started having memory issues & she's worried about him being on his own. Initially we're meant to wonder just a little bit if Anne is telling the truth, as Anthony, though curmudgeonly, seems pretty lucid & together, if slightly forgetful, and he does have a beautiful apartment (and presumably wealth to go with it).

As the film unfolds, though, we find this isn't a thriller, and it isn't even clear what is reality.  Throughout the movie, we stay entirely in Anthony's purview, and as a result we don't know what's happening.  Anne, in some scenes, is moving to Paris whereas in other scenes she's not, and has been married for years to her previous husband-the actress who plays Anne shifts in select scenes to Olivia Williams, and time becomes a moving construct.  As we continue, we begin to lose our sense of self & position, we can no longer understand what is real in Anthony's world & what isn't...in much the same way that Anthony can't.  The film smartly decides not to tell us truly what happens until the very last scene, and even then, we wonder if the movie is landing on the truth, or if we will continue to spin past the credits.  

It's harrowing stuff, thinking about how this is what aging can do to you, and it's made better through Hopkins' work in the lead.  There's no hints of Hannibal Lecter, of Richard Nixon, of Robert Ford.  Hopkins creates his own man here, and pulls off a tricky part-this would be easy to milk for quick sympathy or trying to make his Anthony too cruel, but Hopkins gives him round edges & shows the unfairness for those around him of "good days and bad days" (as the cliche goes).  He's coupled with a terrific scene partner in Colman, who plays her Anne as the neglected child, the sister that lived (it's not always clear how, but her sister died years earlier & was obviously Anthony's favorite while Anne was favored by her mother).  You don't oftentimes see the effects of the relationship between "the non-favorite child & the non-favorite parent" onscreen without the comparison of the "favorite" being there, but both actors bring such a rich history to these parts that you can see it in the way that Colman's Anne, likely on the verge of a better happiness & with more of her life left to live, decides between duty & a (tested) love for her father, who never saw her as the daughter he cherished the most.

In general in 2020, I've been turned off by most stage-to-screen adaptations-they haven't adapted properly to the medium, and oftentimes feel too small or like they can't push their story to the big screen without growing pains, but The Father does it masterfully, to the point where you don't see the stage roots at all.  This is helped by excellent production design & in particular A+ editing, as we see little touches on the set move or bend so that we are always in the same, familiar apartment but things aren't quite right.  The effect is one where, like the early stages of dementia, things feel familiar but also off, and that prickly feeling stays with us as we rarely leave this apartment, giving us a true idea of the claustrophobia of Anthony's world.

OVP: The Favourite (2018)

Film: The Favourite (2018)
Stars: Olivia Colman, Emma Stone, Rachel Weisz, Nicholas Hoult, Joe Alwyn
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Oscar History: 10 nominations/1 win (Best Picture, Director, Actress-Olivia Colman*, Supporting Actress-Rachel Weisz, Supporting Actress-Emma Stone, Cinematography, Costume Design, Film Editing, Production Design, Original Screenplay)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 5/5 stars

I have so far struggled when it comes to the films of Yorgos Lanthimos.  Dogtooth I hated with a visceral passion even if I recognized the artistry, while The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer I quite liked, but felt they were going to be hard for me to love.  I'm not incapable of loving cold cinema (it's kind of what I'm known for loving, to be honest), but these are hard sits, featuring the worst of humanity, and they have characters that make you appreciate the filmmaking and the acting, but it's difficult for me to feel "that's brilliant" so much as to say "that's brilliant."  This opinion, however, totally changed with my recent viewing of The Favourite.  The surprise Best Actress winner which was cited for ten Oscars (you'll notice over the next two weeks a concerted effort from me to get as many of the 2018 Oscar nominees out as possible, a promise I've made a few times but will actually back this time around as I'm feeling weirdly grounded after a lot of soul-searching this past weekend) is a riot, a wonderfully-acted and scripted feast for anyone who loves the movies, and anchored by enough depth from Colman, Stone, and Weisz to be Lanthimos's best film, and the first one I can certainly say I love without qualification.

(Spoilers Ahead, Though, You Know, It's History) The film's central focus is on a love triangle between Queen Anne (Colman) and two of her trusted aides-longtime friend Sarah Churchill, the Duchess of Marlborough (Weisz) and her cousin Abigail Hill (Stone), who is down-on-her-luck after her father literally bet her in a game of cards.  Initially Abigail is forced to do the work of a maid, and is hazed for it, but a chance encounter with the queen where she can ease the monarch's pain from gout allows her to become one of her ladies in waiting, and sets off a gigantic feud between Abigail and Sarah, particularly after Abigail finds out about the sexual relationship between the Queen and Sarah.  Abigail starts her own sexual relationship with the Queen, causing a further divide, and eventually gains her trust after poisoning Sarah and nearly killing her.  The film ends with Sarah banished from the kingdom, with Abigail showing her true colors as duplicitous while Sarah shows that she actually loved the Queen, and the Queen realizing her folly but knowing its too late.  In pure Lanthimos fashion, the film ends with Anne forcing Abigail to massage her legs, humiliating her and reminding her that all of her power is coming from the Queen & can be snatched away at any moment, but also underlining that the Queen has given up the thing that had alluded her her whole life-love.

The film sums itself up quite neatly in part because the base plot is relatively straight-forward.  There's not a lot of invention or world-building like in previous Lanthimos creations, where figuring out how the world will normalize is a critical component of the story's end game.  This actually happened, well a less-fictionalized version of it certainly happened, and as a result we are positioned in reality.

Weirdly this reality actually helps Lanthimos's direction, as the departures are clearer and stronger, in my opinion, than even something as inventive as The Lobster.  It's not often (it's, in fact, never) where I prefer real life to an original story, but I sometimes feel that Lanthimos as a writer favors shocking the audience more than he does creating a compelling finish to his story, and as a result we get a really strong ending here, as well as a showcase for the wit of the dialogue rather than always taking the plot in endless directions.

Because the script itself is the greatest star here.  Weisz, Stone, and Colman are all the best they've ever been (no hyperbole-I mean that, and I've loved them all before), but they are aided by a truly splendid script filled with clever one-liners and turns-of-phrase.  Weisz gets the best lines (my personal favorite is Stone/Weisz's: "How good to see you've returned from..." "Hell-I'm sure you shall pass through it one day."), but everyone's on fire here with dialogue that envies film classics like All About Eve.  After such a pleasurable, marvelous picture I'm intrigued to see where Lanthimos goes with his career-will the creative freedom such a critical hit affords him doom him, or is The Favourite the type of film he's wanted to make all along?  We shall see, but know I'll be there opening weekend after this movie.

OVP: The Lobster (2016)

Film: The Lobster (2016)
Stars: Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, Lea Seydoux, Ben Whishaw, John C. Reilly, Olivia Colman, Jessica Barden
Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Screenplay)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

I am single.  Very, very single.  Chronically single.  Unhappily single.  Continually single.  I needed to get that out in the open before I start to dissect (ooh, what a choice of words) the latest film from Yorgos Lanthimos, which is in the hunt for an Original Screenplay award this Sunday at the Oscars.  I have seen one other of Lanthimos' films (the controversial Dogtooth) so I knew I was in for something bizarre and occasionally ridiculous, and compared to Dogtooth, The Lobster actually stayed a bit more in the lines.  Still, though, as a single person I felt a bit more of this screenplay and these jokes than I would have had I been partnered my whole life, and actually liked The Lobster much more than my first round with Lanthimos.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film centers around David (Farrell), a man who has been sent to a retreat where he must find love or be turned into the animal of his choice (in this case, the titular lobster).  The place is run like a combination of a boarding house and the world's worst singles cruise, with forced fraternization, but with a twist.  All of the people are forced to partner with someone only when they share a seemingly superficial trait.  We meet several of David's friends, including Robert (Reilly) and John (Whishaw), the latter of which is determined to make a match with a woman even though he doesn't have any physical issues in common with her.  David eventually runs away from the hotel, joining a band of rebels including a Lonely Leader (Seydoux) and a beautiful woman (Weisz) who is nearsighted, like David.  They form a romantic relationship, which with the rebels is forbidden, and eventually come together, but at a terrible price (David likely blinding himself just as the film ends).

The movie is predicated on an absurd world, but it has enough truth to the screenplay to make you chuckle nervously rather than just chuckle.  The film's over-emphasis on dating culture being based on commonalities, rather than admiration or love or respect, is a direct connection to a web-based dating system where compatibility scores and surface-level attraction are far more important than something substantive.  The movie also shows how little value the world places on single people, especially as they age, showing, for example, the hotel manager (Colman), a cold woman with little to lend to her outward persona other than a wedding ring, being valued much higher than those more nuanced people that are in her care.  The film is not at-first a clear slap at modern culture, and the castes we place people in based on their romantic statuses, but it sure turns that way as it continues and we see rejection from both sides of people's decision (you really can't win in this world).

The acting in the film is roundly good, with Farrell, Colman, and Whishaw being the stand-outs for me.  I loved the desperation that Whishaw has to be normal, particularly when surrounded with men who clearly aren't (including himself) and Colman is almost unrecognizable as the hotel manager.  I wasn't wild about the lack of resolutions in some areas, but that might have been because I wanted to see more of this world and the ramifications of some of the actions (particularly what was the animal "that everyone hated?").  Overall, though, this is a much more coherent and succinct vision of a world we live in (even if it of course isn't) than Dogtooth was, and Lanthimos himself stays on my list of directors to follow more closely.

Those are my thoughts on The Lobster.  Considering it's been out for months I'm sure most of you have already seen it, so share below-who was your favorite character?  Who would you hope showed up to the hotel for you?  And how do you think films like this manage original screenplay nominations, but never any higher?