OVP: Actor (2023)

OVP: Best Actor (2023)

The Nominees Were...

Bradley Cooper, Maestro

Colman Domingo, Rustin

Paul Giamatti, The Holdovers

Cillian Murphy, Oppenheimer

Jeffrey Wright, American Fiction

My Thoughts: We are now moving into the Best Actor race, and similar to Best Supporting Actress, I'll own right now that this is not a field I was super impressed by.  The actual actors in this field are kind of exciting.  We have three first-time nominees, all longtime character actors who were finally getting their due...that's always worth celebrating.  But the performances themselves (save one) are none of these actors' best.  This is what happens when you rely too heavily on biopics (three of the five), where impressions of the actors are so an ingrained part of how we judge these actors that they get surrounded by movies that can't support their work.

This is the case with Colman Domingo, who was cited for playing civil rights activist Bayard Rustin.  Netflix has sort of become the place to churn out paint-by-number biopics that get you a nomination just for wearing the right makeup & being in the right spot in your career to get the Academy's attention.  But the movies they churn out are bad, and this is not a good film.  That's not how you should judge a performance, of course, but any touches that Domingo is adding here (and I'll be real-I'm a fan, but there's very little happening here that feels beyond two-dimensional, both in the film and the performance) are drowned out by how hopelessly generic the approach is.  It's all bon mots and monologues, and not in a good way.

The same can be said for Bradley Cooper in Maestro.  It's clear (in another Netflix biopic, I might add) that this is the vehicle Cooper thought would land him an Academy Award, and he does all of the aging, mincing, & unnecessary backstory (that "years of composing lessons" story really did not help your case here, Bradley) that you'd expect from a Best Actor win for playing a gay man.  But it's all mimicry and no understanding.  We spend so much of this film focusing on his relationship with his wife, we don't really understand anything about Bernstein himself, which is crucial for the "any questions" glibness of the ending.  Cooper, like Domingo, is a good actor, but this is the first time the Oscars nominated him for a bad performance.  Honestly, given he's capable of more, I'm glad he didn't win here.

Instead it was in the third biopic where we found our winner.  Cillian Murphy is the best of the three biopic performances, as he gives more of Oppenheimer than the Netflix dramas ever could (because there's more style to his film).  I love the internalized conversation he seems to always be having on his face, the way that he won't share his thoughts with the world, but he is clearly giving them to himself over-and-over again.  I don't care about the film's politics when it comes to judging his acting, and I do think the movie does a good job of projecting a perspective on Oppenheimer even if it's not the real-life version of him.  I do wish I knew more about his romantic relationships by the end of this given that it's so crucial to the story (whom did he really love?), but Murphy nails Oppenheimer's relationship to his own creation.

Paul Giamatti's gotten a lot of flack on this blog through the years (I think of him generally as an over-actor, and he's not my cup of tea).  So color me delighted that this is the first time I've really enjoyed him onscreen since Sideways.  The script cheats him out of a great moment at the end where his character really connects with the film's arc (mostly because Payne's script doesn't really give him a full arc), but that's a small complaint when we get a lot of rich detailing prior to it.  We understand why he has devoted his life to teaching, how he has spent so much of his existence walled into his own ideas, afraid of experiencing a world that might contradict them (or, worse yet, make them murky).  This is good stuff-I want more material like this for him in the future.

Our final nomination is for Jeffrey Wright, no longer a go-to-answer for "greatest working actor without an Oscar nomination" (that would be...Carrie Coon now, maybe Sarah Paulson?).  Like Giamatti, he's playing a fictional character, and that helps because we get a lot of layers to his Monk Ellison.  I think the film overall struggles with some balance issues (the literary satire is so good that the counterweight of the family drama takes a backseat), but you don't get that in Wright's work.  He plays Monk as a very imperfect flesh-and-blood man, one who has never quite fit in (both in his life, and in his family).  He doesn't have what it takes to sell every aspect of the over-complicated ending, but that's a small quibble (and really more a task for the writers).

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes split between Comedy/Musical and Drama for their nominations, so we had 12 names in total from the...anyone know what they call this voting body now that it's no longer the HFPA?  Drama went to Murphy over Cooper, Domingo, Leonardo DiCaprio (Killers of the Flower Moon), Barry Keoghan (Saltburn), & Andrew Scott (All of Us Strangers), while Giamatti won Comedy/Musical against Wright, Nicolas Cage (Dream Scenario), Timothee Chalamet (Wonka), Matt Damon (Air), & Joaquin Phoenix (Beau is Afraid).  The SAG Awards were a verbatim copy of Oscar (winner & nominees), while BAFTA went with Murphy atop Cooper, Domingo, Giamatti, Keoghan, & Teo Yoo (Past Lives).  In sixth place, the smart money would be on Leo (he was the only one of the three campaigned actors in his film to miss in a big Best Picture), but I do think Andrew Scott was closer than him.  Leo's been in this situation a few times now (J. Edgar, Don't Look Now) where he does well all season but Oscar isn't interested, and Scott had a lot of passion at the close.  I think he was next up.

Actors I Would Have Nominated: Andrew Scott gave the best performance onscreen I've seen in at least five years.  That he was clearly so close to an Oscar nomination and the Academy chose not to honor him...shame, shame, shame.

Oscar’s Choice: The season started out with it being a horserace between Murphy & Giamatti, but once Murphy took the SAG Award, all intrigue was gone, and Oscar completed the Oppenheimer sweep.

My Choice: I'm going to be contrarian here and pick Wright (I have yet to see someone echo this sentiment in my Twitter followers).  I think he adds the more perspective to his film than his chief competition, and also has the trickiest part to balance.  Behind him (in order) is Giamatti, Murphy, Cooper, and then Domingo.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Are you all-in for the billion-dollar success of Cillian Murphy, or would you like to dare-to-be-different by sticking with Jeffrey Wright & I?  Is everyone else as sick-to-death of these hopelessly disposable Netflix biopics as I am?  And how badly is that Andrew Scott miss going to age in the coming years?  Share your thoughts below in the comments!

Also in 2023: 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 2023

Past Best Actor Contests: 1931-32, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022

Jungle Cruise (2021)

Film: Jungle Cruise (2021)

Stars: Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, Edgar Ramirez, Jack Whitehall, Jesse Plemons, Paul Giamatti

Director: Jaume Collet-Serra

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

I am currently planning a trip in November to Disneyland and am hoping/praying/begging the universe to get the Covid pandemic to a point where I'll be able to actually take this trip (I cannot stress enough-find a way to convince your relatives or friends that have been holdouts that they need to get vaccinated, as they're going to kill us all).  I have been twice and at least one of those times I rode the Jungle Cruise ride in Adventureland, but I was a teenager when that happened, and I have no real memory of it other than my introverted self really wanted to ditch the friends I was with, but as we were on a school trip, we weren't really allowed to "go out by ourselves" without getting into trouble (I am that specific combination of introverted, independent, & Type-A that likely explains why I'm still single).  Hopefully this past week's viewing of Jungle Cruise the movie wasn't a preview of my trip, however, as I am going to be leaving pretty disappointed despite high expectations.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie starts with us learning of a cursed group of conquistadores who looked for a healing tree in the middle of the Amazon, but suffered a terrible fate.  Jump forward hundreds of years, in the middle of World War I, and we find Lily Houghton (Blunt) and her brother MacGregor (Whitehall) pitching the idea of a quest to find the healing tree, claiming it's real, to an adventurer's club, who doesn't want to support them because of, well, sexism.  Lily still goes to the Amazon, though, where they hire a guide named Frank (Johnson), who runs a ratty river tour in a rundown boat.  After she shows him an arrowhead that Frank (secretly) knows to be authentic, they begin the quest to find the tree, while being chased by Prince Joachim (Plemons), a deranged prince who is trying to use the tree to help Germany win the war.

The film has a few second-act twists (including one that you might not see coming even if it's somewhat obvious in retrospect), but that sort of gets you where you want to go here-it's an action-adventure film, after a mythical plant with the potential for a love story between the two leads.  And the love story works-Blunt & Johnson are not what you'd consider an obvious romantic pairing in Hollywood (he's an affable WWE superstar, she's, well, Mary Poppins), but they're fun together.  Johnson is not a great actor, but he is a winning movie star, and one of the better choices for this style of film working today, and Blunt's comic timing is impeccable.  Add in the genuinely funny Whitehall (more on the controversy surrounding him in a second, but he does know how to land a joke), and Plemons shooting for the rafters, and this has the trapping of mindless fun (and I can get behind that).

The problems, though, are that the acting can't save the film's clear pitfalls.  Jungle Cruise has been in development for decades (it was already on the docket after the first Pirates of the Caribbean), but they clearly didn't learn from that original film in terms of screenplay or visual effects.  The movie's writing is convoluted, with one too many random detours (surely trying to match some of the attractions on the rides-Disney knows nothing if they don't know corporate synergy), and a strange interlude in the middle of the film.  It's bold that Whitehall's character is meant to be gay, but the fact that they won't say the word (or give him any sort of love interest), is a bit of an eyeroll, particularly considering Disney doesn't intend for this to be a global phenomenon if it's going to put the film concurrently on its streaming platform (where, presumably, it'd be much easier to get around bans on gay characters in China & Russia).

But it's the effects that sink this ship.  The CGI in the film is garish, boring & omnipresent.  What made Pirates so magical wasn't just that Geoffrey Rush was transformed into a walking skeleton, but that he did so on real ships & in real ports.  CGI is not at the level where you can't tell what is real & what is fiction in the backgrounds, and while the film is shot on location in some sequences (Johnson regularly finds ways to film movies in his native Hawaii), most of the backgrounds appear as if they are lifeless digital recreations, which they are.  CGI is not the only solution for how to create authentic-looking sets (you need a quality art director who can actually build these), and oftentimes it feels like Blunt & Johnson are walking around in the middle of an animated cartoon...and not a visually innovative one.

OVP: Supporting Actor (2005)

OVP: Best Supporting Actor (2005)

The Nominees Were...

George Clooney, Syriana
Matt Dillon, Crash
Paul Giamatti, Cinderella Man
Jake Gyllenhaal, Brokeback Mountain
William Hurt, A History of Violence

My Thoughts: We move now into the acting races.  The Best Supporting Actor race wasn't always a drag.  At one point performances like Joel Grey in Cabaret or Robert de Niro in The Godfather, Part II were winning here-performances that might qualify for the best of the year.  In the mid-aughts, though, this changed as we saw leading men slum it in this category to try and score nominations or co-leads get nominated, leaving out some of the more intriguing character work that under-sung actors might enjoy.  Nowhere is this more apparent than in this category, where we have five leading men (some of yesteryear, but still), getting into the category.  One of these men, in particular feels like a pretty big offender of category fraud, even if it's undoubtedly my favorite performance in the lineup.

Jake Gyllenhaal gives a heartfelt, beautiful performance in Brokeback Mountain.  While Ledger gets most of the credit in the years since, it's Gyllenhaal as Jack Twist who receives the most heartbreaking scenes during the relationship.  He finds something so powerful in the way he wants to push for a proper life with Ennis, not just something that he gets to have happen once every few years when they see each other.  Think of the anger & power that he puts into his Jack, especially when he lets rip more at the world than Ennis (but Ennis is the only one who knows), all of the frustrations about living in the closet.  But the thing about Gyllenhaal's performance is...it's 100% lead.  This is a co-lead romantic drama.  I've given one of our trophies to a lead (see here), but I am docking at least a star off of Gyllenhaal's ranking for category fraud so don't assume because I like him best that he's going to win.

Weirdly, George Clooney is, while obviously a leading man, not committing category fraud in his film (at least for my money-some others might consider it borderline), as he's part of an ensemble.  Clooney isn't doing as nuanced of work as Matt Damon is in this film (he's the standout for my money), but this was during that stretch where he was doing proper movie star work in thrillers & dramas (something he seems to have not been able to do successfully for roughly a decade now).  His Bob Barnes is intriguing because he's a man that so easy could do the wrong thing-everything is there, and he feels in attitude the same as the other characters.  Clooney sells him convincingly as someone we will learn to trust, not someone that we trust implicitly.  It feels bizarre that George Clooney's only acting Oscar is going to be for Supporting Actor, but he's one of the highlights of Syriana.

Matt Dillon is also part of an ensemble, though a much larger ensemble so the argument that he's supporting is even more muted.  It's hard to play a truly unlikable character, and there are moments he does it, but the sense of understanding that he gets...it just doesn't feel believable.  I remember the big scene he has with Loretta DeVine, where we're supposed to feel sympathy for his plight, that his father was a "victim of affirmative action," but Dillon's not able to sell the hate in his heart as justified (perhaps because no actor could have pulled off such a character arch), and his later open-mindedness feels off as a result.  Dillon is better than Crash, but Crash gives him a character that is impossible to play, and it's hard for me to give credit for elevating when the actual performance doesn't rise above passable.

Paul Giamatti gets an easier character arch, but he overplays his hand.  Giamatti is a strange actor because he plays the same performance so often, and it rarely requires him to be that "Paul Giamatti" type (and yet he works very consistently).  He is angry, hyper-masculine, and feels more like he's doing a parody of Burgess Meredith here than crafting his own new character.  Giamatti appears to have won this nomination solely based on the assumption that he should have been nominated for Sideways the year before, and as a result this is a career citation that doesn't hold up unless you are considering the bulk of the actor's work onscreen (we're going to hit more of these the further back we go as this was very common in the 1980's & 90's).

On the opposite end of the spectrum from Gyllenhaal is William Hurt.  Hurt, while a leading man of the 1980's, barely registers in this movie (he's in less than 10% of the film), making what amounts to less of a supporting role and more an awesome cameo.  Hurt's character arch is therefore nonexistent, but that doesn't mean he isn't doing superb work.  Think of the climactic "you could die Joey" scene, where he angrily, soullessly goes after his brother.  This role only works with someone of Hurt's caliber-it's the sort of cameo that requires a well-known actor to make it land, but he's superb and a great close to a good thriller.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes gave the trophy to Clooney, and dismissed both Gyllenhaal & Hurt for Bob Hoskins (Mrs. Henderson Presents) and Will Ferrell (The Producers).  The SAG Award went to Paul Giamatti, and here only picked one new name (Hurt was taken out for Don Cheadle in Crash), and the BAFTA Awards went with Gyllenhaal for the win, beating Dillon, Cheadle, and George Clooney (twice-he was cited for both Syriana and Good Night, and Good Luck, likely costing him the trophy-he's never won an acting BAFTA as a result).  All-in-all, I know the evidence points to Cheadle, but I'll be real-at the time there was a lot of sentiment that this would be a double nomination year for Terence Howard.  Those happened more often in those days, and so either of the Crash guys probably make the most sense.  That neither made it makes this one of the rare places where the "we should have seen Crash coming" lights weren't flashing.

Performances I Would Have Nominated: I shouldn't entirely get mad at Oscar in 2005 for having a pretty lackluster lineup-it's not like this year was crawling with worthy performances.  As I said above, Matt Damon is my favorite part of Syriana, and for sure I'd put him into the lineup.  I'd also have time for Andy Serkis in King Kong, because even in motion-capture he is able to find a soul in the characters he plays.  And finally, I'd add in two unorthodox performances: Brendan Gleeson's genre-lifting Mad-Eye Moody in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Christopher Plummer's Captain Newport in The New World, both of which add a strong element to their movies.

Oscar’s Choice: A genuine horserace between Giamatti & Clooney, but Clooney's boffo year (and the fact that it was clear he wasn't winning any other categories), probably brought it home for him here.

My Choice: As I mentioned above, I'm knocking Gyllenhaal down a star for his category fraud...but that still puts him above the rest.  William Hurt (silver) and George Clooney (bronze) both put in a good fight, but they're not good enough to match Gyllenhaal, who gets my trophy.  Bringing up the rear is Dillon & then Giamatti.

Those are my thoughts-what are yours?  Are you with me in Team Jack Twist, or do you find his category fraud Jack Nasty?  Will George Clooney ever win a Best Actor trophy?  And which guy in Crash was in sixth place here?  Share your thoughts below in the comments!

Also in 2005: Original Screenplay, Adapted Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Original Score, Original Song, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously in 2005

Past Best Supporting Actor Contests: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016

OVP: Cinderella Man (2005)

Film: Cinderella Man (2005)
Stars: Russell Crowe, Renee Zellweger, Paul Giamatti, Bruce McGill, Craig Bierko
Director: Ron Howard
Oscar History: 3 nominations (Best Supporting Actor-Paul Giamatti, Makeup, Film Editing)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Boxing has long been Oscar's favorite sport.  In many ways, it might be the only sport that Oscar really cares about.  After all, while AMPAS occasionally has dalliances with baseball, track, or basketball, it's boxing that they return to most frequently, and is the only genre that would normally be considered "Oscar-bait."  It's not hard to see why this is; the Academy loves stories about one person overcoming obstacles and achieving some sort of personal & professional triumph.  The boxing motif has been tried-and-true, used countless times from Rocky to Raging Bull to Million Dollar Baby with consistent success, but it also means that it's predictable, and frequently a snooze unless the filmmakers can find some way to spice up the action on screen with some artistry or compelling performances.  Sadly, Ron Howard is not a director who is good at letting artistic license best conformity & an old-school Hollywood story, and as a result Cinderella Man is what happens when you put some talented actors in a room and give them nothing unique to say or do.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is the true story of boxer James J. Braddock (Crowe), a man who was once considered an up-and-coming contender, who has fallen on hard times.  We're at the height of the depression, and he breaks his hand in the ring, depriving him of a chance to make a living, and in many ways nearly ruining his chances of even being a dockworker.  His wife Mae (Zellweger), seems relatively happy he's out of the sport even though she knows they need the money, as she's spent most of their marriage worried he'll kill himself in the ring.  They struggle, and have to move their kids out of their house because they can't afford to pay the bills or rent, but one day a random opportunity has Braddock taking on World Number 2 Corn Griffin (who needs practice before a big fight), and Braddock beats him, as the breaking of his right hand has made his left much stronger.  Soon Braddock has become a major contender in the ring again, and has a chance to take on the reigning heavyweight champion Max Baer (Bierko), but Mae is worried that Baer (who has supposedly killed two men in the ring) will do the same to her husband.  They fight, but ultimately he ends up in the bout against Baer, and in an upset wins the title away from Baer, getting to live happily-ever-after with Mae and their kids in a house he buys from the winnings.

The film is uplifting, and it's kind of fun to see Crowe & Zellweger, who have in the years since seen their stars completely disappear (despite being a modest hit, this feels like sort of the end of their short reigns as two of the biggest names in Tinseltown) be proper movie stars once more, but it's not very good.  The movie is too conventional and too long.  The lead actors are fine, but they don't rise above this material, and after both had won three Oscar nominations a piece in the six years prior to this movie, we know they can do better than just sturdy.  Howard crafts a handsome tale, but he doesn't have much heart, and neither of these actors distinguish their characters enough for us to care about them more than a middling movie.

The film won three Oscar nominations, including one for Best Supporting Actor Paul Giamatti.  If you re-watch George Clooney's Golden Globes acceptance speech from that year, he started it out with "I thought Paul Giamatti was gonna win."  Indeed, at the time it looked like it'd be a race between Giamatti & Clooney for this trophy (Giamatti would win the SAG), thanks in large part to the belief that Giamatti had been robbed the year before of an expected Oscar nomination for Sideways.  Watching this performance, though, Giamatti's work here feels a bit ancillary, and much the same schtick that he's been doing for the past fifteen years-a bombastic, larger-than-life guy infused with a masculine energy that feels like it's over-compensating to compete with his more famous male lead.  Giamatti's work here is easily forgettable, if pretty loud, and I'm thankful he didn't pick up a trophy for it.  We'll eventually get to the Oscar Viewing Project of 2005 (we'll be back into 2016's races in a few days), so I won't go too far in on Giamatti's work here, but I will say this is fine if they wanted to give a long-time character actor a random nomination (that happens with the supporting categories on occasion), but it's not groundbreaking or really rising above an already limited film.

OVP: The Illusionist (2006)

Film: The Illusionist (2006)
Stars: Edward Norton, Paul Giamatti, Jessica Biel, Rufus Sewell
Director: Neil Burger
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Cinematography)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

Were you to make a list of actors that I was forced to sit through one of their movies, you would be hard-pressed to find a group that would make me groan louder than Edward Norton, Paul Giamatti, and Jessica Biel.  The first two, by-and-large, I've never actually enjoyed in a movie.  I can get that there might be some technical skill there, but it's so bloated and wasted in most movies they're in, and I'm usually trying to get past them in the few films that are actually well-done.  Biel, on the other hand, is an actress of such limited abilities that I'm not entirely sure what she does in cinema anymore, she so quickly fades into the back of a movie.  The three of them together, without any redeeming actor to help (sorry-Rufus Sewell doesn't count enough to make that argument), made me wonder how on earth I was going to survive The Illusionist.

(Spoilers Ahead) While I lived, it was more based on dogged determination than actual enjoyment, for this film, the poorer brother to The Prestige, is hardly worth anyone's time.  The film's focus, on a magician who performs daring feats of illusion that seem impossible to those around him, is bloated, tired, and predictable.  For a film that is completely reliant upon continually wanting to surprise you, I didn't miss a beat coming.  It was impossible, for example, to assume that the movie wouldn't end up with Biel and Norton running away together from the comically evil Prince Leopold (Sewell), and that their breakup wouldn't require them faking her death in some capacity.  I mean-everyone saw that coming five minutes in, right?

A film with a predictable plot can sometimes be saved by some other redeeming factor; after all, 90% of movies we see every day are going to be easy to spell out, but we end up liking them thanks to cool effects or fine acting, but none of these actors escaped my reputation with them.  Norton is more subdued than you'd imagine, but when the bombast is called for, he shouts like he's Richard Burton trying to steal a scene from John Gielgud (for the record, that's not a compliment).  Nowhere in the film is there any sense of who this man is, and while some could argue that aids in the mystery, so much time is spent on his backstory that this is a pretty specious line of reasoning.  Worse still are Biel, playing a role that might as well be called "noble girlfriend" for all she grows the character, and Giamatti, who is terrible as the inspector whose true intentions shift every single scene like he's in a Ryan Murphy show.  Honestly-Giamatti is not a good actor, no matter how much you may have liked Sideways-everything he's done since has been a travesty of half-hearted turns and angry enunciation.  In college I would group him alongside Hilary Swank and Philip Seymour Hoffman as the three actors that were Oscar-beloved but I couldn't see the appeal, but in hindsight that's not entirely fair.  Hoffman and Swank are uneven depending on the film, but occasionally find greatness. Giamatti is just playing the same tired cartoon over and over and over again.

The film received one nomination for the Oscars, which is why I ended up seeing it in the first place, but even that is questionable.  Dick Pope is a wonderful cinematographer, and there are moments that feel quite strong-some of the scenes that veer into a canary yellow are striking, even if they feel like they wash out the actors themselves.  However, the lighting in the climactic magic scenes leaves too much to be desired-it's too straight forward, too dark, and there are other scenes that feel entirely straight-forward.  Pope would, eight years later, create his magnum opus with Mr. Turner, a film that lives up to his strong artistry, but The Illusionist is merely occasionally striking with too many moments that feel blase.

Those are my thoughts on this film, one of the few 2006 nominees I had left to see.  What are your thoughts-do you remember this, or do you confuse it still with The Prestige?  Anyone want to defend it, or are we all in agreement this is pretty bad?  And will Paul Giamatti ever be an easy sell for me?  Share in the comments!

Cosmopolis (2012)

Film: Cosmopolis (2012)
Stars: Robert Pattinson, Sarah Gadon, Paul Giamatti, Samantha Morton, Juliette Binoche, Jay Baruchel
Director: David Cronenberg
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

"Weird for the sake of weird" is something that I, as a filmgoer, am far more forgiving of than your average movie attendee.  I celebrate films that try to play with form and that are willing to go to different heights for a movie.  I do occasionally find them hard to grade (I'm still not sure if The Counselor was a good movie or not), but generally I try to at least see what the point of the weird was, because if there's a point or a larger purpose, I can get onboard with the movie.  Sadly for me and for my Thursday night, Cosmopolis is simply a film that's weird for the sake of being weird, rarely actually trying to make a strong statement that resonates outside of robotic, intense dialogue even though it has polished literary roots and a fine enough cast.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film, based on the novel by the acclaimed Don DeLillo, essentially follows Eric Packer (Pattinson), an obscenely wealthy but deeply neurotic hedge fund manager who spends most of his day in his state-of-the-art limousine.  We see Eric, recently married to the beautiful but largely uninterested Elise (Gadon), struggle with both his hypochondria (he literally gets a medical exam everyday, including a prostate exam that is both deeply disturbing and wildly erotic early in the picture), and his enormous sex drive, sleeping with multiple women and making sexual release a huge part of his day.  The film takes a turn late in the picture when Eric gets his inner Patrick Bateman on by randomly killing his head of security and then coming face-to-face with a man who has been threatening his life Benno Levin (Giamatti).  The movie's progress is steep, with him losing everything but still seemingly favorable to the life of Benno, and the film ends with Benno attempting to kill Eric, but we don't ever see if he pulls the trigger, and a series of Rothko paintings over the end credits in a callback to an earlier scene where Eric tries to buy the famed Rothko Chapel in Houston.

The film succeeds on occasion, it's worth noting.  Robert Pattinson's ability as an actor is definitely there (he's not Taylor Lautner) but he's not really as strong as he could be (he's not yet Kristen Stewart).  However, the role seems tailor-made for him, as few other people could play someone so deeply disturbed, but yet through money and unattainable beauty every person, including the audience, remains drawn to him even as he becomes a murderer and someone who is less and less concerned with his own welfare.  The other actors can sometimes play into the movie, particularly Juliette Binoche as a randy art dealer, seemingly screwing Eric not for the job but because he's actually good at sex, and Samantha Morton as an employee of Eric's who can command the screen just with that wonderfully firm voice.  Both Binoche and Morton are in the film only fleetingly, but they are great cameos and something the film could have used more of as it progressed down the rabbit hole.

The problem is that these few pluses don't make up for the myriad subtractions in the cast.  For starters, the dialogue, while clearly stylized to the point of incomprehension, borders that line between "a fascinating departure" and "how cool am I?" to wobbily and especially in the final showdown with Giamatti it gets far over the top, to the point where you almost wish it were a silent picture.  Cronenberg is a fascinating director when he wants to be, but I'm not sold yet that he's a great screenwriter, and that's true here, as the dialogue isn't quite sharp enough in its "autre" mode to actually be profound.  Combine that with the worst scenes of the film being toward the end (Paul Giamatti is one of my least favorite actors, and this is hardly his The Master moment of redemption as he hams it up and is actually playing a character that plays into all of his worst acting tics).  All-in-all, a boring movie that is interestingly shot and I truly wish he'd found a way to amp up the directorial flourishes, perhaps never actually leaving the limousine as the picture all falls apart when he takes away that insulation from a restless, disruptive outside world.

Those are my thoughts on this film, one I've wanted to see for a while and Netflix gave me a mailed reason this week.  How about you-are you a fan of Cosmopolis or the films of David Cronenberg?  Is there ever going to be a film of Paul Giamatti's where I actually love him in the role?  And Robert Pattinson-is he ever going to have an undisputed critical triumph?  Share your theories down below!

OVP: Straight Outta Compton (2015)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Love & Mercy (2015)

Film: Love & Mercy (2015)
Stars: John Cusack, Paul Dano, Elizabeth Banks, Paul Giamatti
Director: Bill Pohlad
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Ugh, I was not pleased when I found out that this was going to be an Oscar contender, and was admittedly avoiding it like the plague.  Musical biopics are pretty much my kryptonite in recent years, with all of them following similar formulas.  Don't get me wrong here-Brian Wilson is a titan of the world of popular music, and had the sort of life that was kind of destined for the big screen, but yet another tortured genius who eventually finds redemption, all the while having a soggy, predictable script propped up by a soundtrack of warm, wonderful classics?  Again?  Throw in three actors that arguably would be at the top of the "Movie Stars I Avoid" list give or take Terence Howard (it says something that Elizabeth Banks, an actor I am largely indifferent toward, was a godsend on this call sheet) and you have arguably the OVP contender I was most hoping to avoid.  However, with Dano in serious contention for the film, I couldn't stay out of Bill Pohlad's meandering look at two different phases of Brian Wilson's life, and finally, bravely, got the Netflix disc off my desk.

(Spoilers Ahead) And I will fully admit I was "meh" at best here.  Like I suspected, the film is rife with meaty, intense scenes.  I was thankful to Bill Pohlad for largely ignoring the hellish childhood that Wilson endured at the hand of his tyrannical father, even though we could feel that pain in his adulthood, particularly in the film's scenes surrounding Paul Dano.  The film alternates between two key moments of Wilson's life: the creation of Pet Sounds, the Beach Boys' initially unsuccessful album that would later be hailed as a landmark, and is quite frankly one of the greatest records ever made, and later in his life during the throes of Eugene Landy's control over Wilson and his mind, which eventually resulted in Wilson's family going to court to get Landy to stop his practice with Wilson.

The film's story is very well-known to anyone who has followed Wilson's career, and so I wasn't particularly surprised by any new information here.  Everyone who has read a tabloid knows about Wilson's problems, and I remember reading about the insanity that followed this moment in the troubled rock star's life with a gaping mouth.  As a result, I was pretty bored here, as the execution never really rises above the story.  This is potentially unfair (it's not the movie's fault that I knew what had happened to Wilson), but other biopics such as Milk or The Social Network found ways to rise above such situations.  In many ways the film felt, though, like Truth earlier this year-hollow and a bit one-sided even if the subject itself is insanely compelling, and definitely held back by being a story we know too well.

The acting is what has been cited by champions of the movie, but I saw nothing here to challenge my perceptions of the main actors.  Paul Dano is someone that I actually thought was fascinating and maybe even good in There Will Be Blood, but his penchant for overplaying his hand in films since has made his name in the credits something I dread.  Here he thankfully underplays certain moments of Wilson's life, and there's a charm there in the lighter scenes that I wouldn't have expected, but this is merely getting the job done and not a performance I considered remotely special.  The same could be said for John Cusack and Elizabeth Banks-both get meaty parts and I think that the critical community is eager to validate these two as "actors" rather than just a former movie star and a game performer, respectively, but I wasn't wowed by anything here and I felt that Cusack especially couldn't find his footing with Wilson as a character.  Paul Giamatti, though, is truly awful-while the other three are merely forgettable, Giamatti's Eugene Landy, a seismic figure who had a bizarre place in entertainment history (he was also linked to Oscar winner Gig Young, who died in a horrible murder-suicide in the 1970's), is a showcase of bad acting.  Giamatti, who came to all of our attention in Sideways over a decade ago, is someone that cannot resist any opportunity to wipe away nuance and find shading in favor of a big, gaudy diatribe.  His work in the movie is terrible.

All-in-all, I think that this is less a bad movie and more a boring one.  I can't bring myself to give it one-star, so I'm going to go with my typical two-star "unimpressed" bucket, though it has very little to lend itself to other than fine music and occasionally interesting scenes with Jake Abel (in my opinion the best performance in the film) as a combative Mike Love.  Instead of seeing the movie, do yourself a favor and buy Pet Sounds.  That'd be an experience worth raving about, and be worthy of the year-end awards that this movie is unfortunately eliciting.

Those are my thoughts-let's get yours.  Were you a fan of Love & Mercy, or did you leave as unimpressed as I did?  Do you think Dano or Banks have a shot at the Oscar?  And what is the appeal of Paul Giamatti anymore?  Share below!

OVP: Saving Mr. Banks (2013)

Film: Saving Mr. Banks (2013)
Stars: Emma Thompson, Tom Hanks, Colin Farrell, Paul Giamatti, Jason Schwartzman, B.J. Novak, Bradley Whitford
Director: John Lee Hancock
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Original Score)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

I sometimes feel like I should take Prozac right before Oscar season, considering the complete depression that is about to set in from all of the movies.  I mean, just look at last year’s Best Picture lineup: hurricanes, slavery, strokes, mental illness, terrorism, and constant death.  It’s rough out there for an OVP-writer.  I also have to admit that I occasionally have trouble in my writing finding the greatness in a small or pleasant film-the crowd-pleaser was such a jovial part of Oscar’s history in the 1940’s through the 1960’s-films like It’s a Wonderful Life, An American in Paris, Gigi, The Sound of Music, that it’s worth celebrating a bit when a fun film like Babe makes it into the Oscar race.  Of course, for every excellent Babe, there’s an awful Seabiscuit, so I will say that I was nervous headed into Saving Mr. Banks, this year’s feel-good Oscar contender.

And yet, I totally buy into it.  The cross-promotion with Disney crossed the line into obscene during Emma Thompson’s hotel scene, and we still had an hour’s worth of the happiest place on earth, but it works.  Disney is fun-I have no problem with it at the movies.

And this movie is fun-genuine, complete fun.  There’s nothing wrong with that, particularly when it’s filled with strong performances from everyone involved.  Emma Thompson, who has received the bulkload of the hosannas, is deliciously watchable-this is the Thompson we always see in interviews but rarely get the chance to enjoy on-screen.  She’s full of vigor, candor, wit, and as the film goes on, deep substance.  Thompson’s Mrs. Travers (never Pamela, and we eventually learn why), is someone who has been disappointed by life.  She had a deeply traumatic childhood, which unfolds in flashbacks throughout the film.  This device threatens to be cloying (telling multiple stories is always a risk, because the film rarely gets the balance right and one of the stories is generally more interesting than the other), but since we are well aware of the endings of both, the balance seems quite right.  Toward the end of the film, when the clearly depressed and traumatized Thompson has to deal with her demons, Mrs. Travers’ hard-earned tough exterior melts in a scene that again, should be cliché, but isn’t.

That might be the battle cry of this movie, which improves in your memory the further you get from it: “it should be cliché, but isn’t.”  Tom Hanks, playing a jovial, uncomplicated Walt Disney, should be grating and saccharine, but he comes from such a genuine place that I found myself rooting for him just as much as Thompson (after watching this film, one of the great mysteries of this year’s Oscar race remains how he never got any traction considering he is very much her equal in terms of quality).  The scene where he puts his hand on her shoulder while she is weeping, watching her on-screen father walk away during the Mary Poppins premiere-it’s practically perfect in every way.  Only Hanks has that sort of instant warmth and resonant tenor to pull off such a moment without risking hokum.

Honestly, though, the casting director of this film deserves a reward of some sort (is there a Casting Directors’ Guild Awards?  If so, someone nominate Ronna Kress for it).  B.J. Novak and Jason Schwartzman sink right into their fraternal composers effortlessly and Rachel Griffiths has exactly the right dose of magic to inspire a beloved children’s character without ever stretching believability.  And, though he doesn’t have the prestige that Thompson or Hanks inspire (despite the fact that he probably should considering his work in In Bruges), Colin Farrell as young Mrs. Travers' drunken, magical father is so strong.  It’s not quite fair to say that he’s been ignored (every review I’ve read adds in the same caveat that “no one is talking about Farrell, but he’s quite good”), but in terms of talking about him in the Oscar conversation, he is unfairly being skipped over in favor of Hanks, and they both should be in the discourse.

In terms of Oscar, I don’t know where this ranks (I try not to discuss too much with Oscar chances because it so horribly dates a review, but they’re less than two weeks away so I’m going there).  If the Weinsteins were behind a film like this we’d already be calling it a theoretical spoiler for the Best Picture race, but Disney isn’t a major player with AMPAS when it comes to their live-action fare (worth noting, the original Mary Poppins lost to My Fair Lady in the Best Picture race).  I do think that if they see it, Thompson will make it, and I wouldn’t be stunned if Hanks managed dual nominations, but we shall see.

And speaking of seeing-have you (with Mr. Banks, that is)?  What were your thoughts?  Were you surprised how much you enjoyed the film?  Share in the comments!

OVP: Barney's Version (2010)

Film: Barney's Version (2010)
Stars: Paul Giamatti, Dustin Hoffman, Rosamund Pike, Minnie Driver, Rachel Lefevre, Scott Speedman
Director: Richard J. Lewis
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Makeup)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Part of reviewing movies is being able to separate the idea from the execution.  Sometimes, there are movies that are beyond mundane in their ideas (yet another meet-cute, yet another biopic, yet another superhero saves the world), that can work if the acting, writing, and direction stay sharp.  On the other hand (on the Barney's Version hand), you can have a clever, well-rounded story idea that never quite gets to where it's going because it meanders and loses focus.

Barney's Version tells the tale of Barney Panofsky (Giamatti), a Canadian TV producer with a massive womanizing and drinking problem, and during the first half of the film, we see him through the eyes of the three women he chose to marry (not necessarily the three women he chose to love, however).  It's unclear at first what the goal of the film is, and it becomes hazy as to why Barney is randomly remembering certain things, and the first third is horribly edited (the film cuts from a confrontation with a detective to a flashback that is wholly and completely unrelated to what the detective is talking about), though after a while you start to catch on, though the random editing is a bit opportunistic when you find the "explanation."

(Spoilers ahead) The film takes us through the three marriages of Barney's life, first his unfortunate one to a mentally ill woman (Lefevre, and yes, I believe this is the role that cost her that plum part in Twilight Saga: Eclipse) whom he assumes he knocked up, and whom he is mildly responsible for the death of (the woman had just given birth, to a baby that was clearly not the child of Barney, and in this act of betrayal he completely abandons her despite his knowing her mental health issues, and she commits suicide).  Barney moves on from her, and meets his second wife, the daughter of a wealthy Jewish family (Driver) who interestingly enough doesn't have a name (again, this works into the ending a bit), and her character comes across as a spoiled, shrill stereotype (to Driver's credit, she does what she can with the role, but over-the-top obnoxious is hard to dampen).  Of course, being that Barney has already shown himself to be a massive cad, he actually tries to run away with another woman at the ceremony named Miriam (Pike) who does end up being the love of his life, and eventually becomes his third wife.

His rampant infidelity doesn't end there, though, and while he tames it for a while, he eventually becomes jealous of Miriam's relationship with another man (whom she eventually marries, but didn't cheat with), and has a one-night stand with a fan who ends his wonderful marriage.  He spends the final third of the movie trying to win back the love of his life, and as the film starts to close, we see that he has been suffering from the early stages of dementia as the film progresses, and all of these memories are about to be gone.

Again, it's an interesting concept for a movie, but it doesn't work for a couple of reasons.  For starters, the dementia angle is hinted at way too quickly-it's very obvious from the beginning that he is starting to lose it, and the "big reveal" doesn't quite work because it's more of a "duh" moment.  Secondly, it doesn't work because when a movie completely shifts focus two-thirds of the way through, it risks making the previous two-thirds of the film seem totally unnecessary.  Why, for example, is such a huge part of Barney's life spent on his being accused of murdering his best friend (Speedman) when in the end there is such little connection between Barney and his best friend?  If it's a commentary on how we don't know what things mattered while we were doing them, that gets lost completely on-screen and is too big of a leap for the audience to credit the writers.  The film is based on a novel, and it feels like a number of things got lost in translation.

There are some solid performances throughout the film, particularly Hoffman as an aging, abrasive cop who has had a good life but nothing particularly special about it.  Paul Giamatti won the Golden Globe for his performance, so he may not have been entirely out of the running for his second Oscar nomination, and he does have his moments.  However, his persistent shift from zero to a thousand with all of his characters wears a bit (how come every single one of his characters have the exact same rage issues?), and though he probably deserved it out of one of the weakest lineups in Golden Globe history, there is nothing really special about this turn. Caveat: seriously, I've never seen anything quite that lineup before-The Tourist and Love and Other Drugs and Alice in Wonderland and Casino Jack are your competition?!?  Where was Michael Cera for the delightfully absurd Scott Pilgrim?!?

With this cast you'd assume the film received an acting or a writing nomination to be included in the OVP, but in fact it was in the Best Makeup category that it was featured.  While it is impressive and subtle that they kept the same actors throughout the movie and just aged them frontwards and sideways, I feel like this is done in almost every other film, and while more is more is typically the way the Oscars go in this category and one should be proud of a less is more sort of situation, the reality is that this is a less is less sort of scene: hair dye, new hairstyles, and a couple of prosthetics do not an Oscar nomination make.  I've still got one more to go in this category, but I have to believe that Rick Baker's going to be earning his first OVP Oscar if The Way Back doesn't get in the way (terrible, I know, but it's early).

What about you-what'd you think of Barney's Version?  Do you wish that Paul Giamatti would be able to play a different style of character?  What sort of role would spice up Minnie Driver's career?  And what would have been the correct lineup for the Best Actor in a Comedy category at the Golden Globes?