2016 Academy Awards Part 1

Photo: Chris Rock, presenting at the 2016 Academy Awards, from Patrick Fallon for the New York Times.

A lot of quick things to say about the 2016 Oscars--so much, it may take a few posts.

--Not to be lost in the controversy is that Chris Rock unequivocally said that Hollywood IS racist.

--The scroll of names the winners want to thank is not working for me. At all.

--The pop-up info about the presenters works for me only if I'm interested in the presenter.

--The producers and directors of this telecast are clearly working hard to improve the ratings. The ticker of names, the pop-ups, the displays, the pictures of the nominees behind the presenters, and the tricky camera angles centering those pictures as the presenter describes that person's performance...lots of changes. Many of them aren't bad, but the presenters aren't enjoying the moving camera in front of them. They just want to read the teleprompter and get the hell offstage.

--Nominated Best Picture films I've seen this year: The Revenant; The Martain; Bridge of Spies; Mad Max: Fury Road. I really wanted to see Spotlight, and I wouldn't have minded seeing The Big Short.

--Ten films can be nominated for Best Picture, but only eight were. Two of the many overlooked: Sicario and Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Those two, and The Revenant, were the best ones I saw.

--Anyone see Andrew McCarthy in the many ads for his new TV show, The Family? It's been a long time since Weekend at Bernie's and Pretty in Pink, I guess.

--Lots of good cinematography this year, more than usual, from my movie-going experience. Emmanuel Lubezki's third consecutive win for Best Cinematography is unheard of. Probably the first time ever, in Oscar history. But his work in Gravity, The Birdman, and now The Revenant makes him worthy.

--By the way, Mr. Trump, the past three Best Director Oscar winners--all Mexican. Just sayin'.

--It's been long-predicted that Mad Max: Fury Road would sweep the technical awards. Well-deserved.

--I like the music the Academy chose to play to shut down the winner's over-long speech: The Ride of the Valkyries.

--I also like seeing celebrities taking selfies with their celebrity fans.

--I blogged about Mark Rylance's performance in (the otherwise underwhelming) Bridge of Spies earlier this year, and I've said he deserves the Award for Best Supporting Actor. (Full disclosure: I have not seen Creed.) Rylance had not received a single award from the other places (Screen Actors Guild; New York Film Critics, etc.) and I didn't expect him to get this one. Neither did anyone else--except for all the Academy's actors who didn't vote for Sylvester Stallone here. I thought this award, the Best Actor to Leonardo DiCaprio and the Best Actress to Brie Larson were all locks tonight.

--DiCaprio and Larson are still locks, though.

--And Stallone won't have another chance to win another Oscar.

To be continued...

The Revenant -- Movie Review

Photo: from the film's Wikipedia site

Very gripping, in-your-face film with fine performances and great directing and cinematography. The setting is really the main character of the film, and there are long stretches of it, with little action or dialogue, so you'd better like it. I did, like I do watching Terrence Malick films, but if you don't, this film may be an ordeal for you. (It's supposed to be an ordeal, but more on that later.) This scenery does for beautiful negativity what Malick's does for gorgeous serenity. It's all supposed to be taking place in the northern climes of the Louisiana Purchase in 1823, though most of it was actually shot in the Canadian Rockies and in Argentina. But I'm gonna call it the Arctic, 'cause that's sure what it seemed like to me. Unless you're an expert hiker and really know your landscapes, it'll seem that way to you, too.

There are so many shots of snow, trees, rivers and streams that it'll either strike you with awe or with annoyance. These shots are supposed to be metaphysical; yet they're also supposed to nail the point home that this is a beautiful, but desolate and unbelievably harsh landscape. The movie is more about survival in this setting than it is about revenge or anything else.

In no particular order, DiCaprio's Hugh Glass has to survive the greed of his fellow trappers; the anger and desperation of Native American tribes (three of them are mentioned in this movie); the unlawfulness of French trappers and traders (which includes murder, kidnapping and rape); the freezing temperatures; the blizzards and snow; starvation and dehydration.

And, oh yeah--that bear.

Photo: Hugh Glass (or an 1800s James Cromwell?) and DiCaprio, from The Telegraph's article of the real Hugh Glass

This is not a film for the squeamish, though the bear attack was not as bloody and brutal as we've heard. (Or maybe I'm just battle hardened.) More disconcerting is the frequent brutality of many forms. You know how in most movies guys get one bullet to the head or one stab in the chest and that's it, they're done? Not so here. And violent things happen to CGI bears, bear cubs, moose, elk and wild dogs, too. And a horse, from that cliff clip we've all seen, when Leo and Horse go over. And Leo uses that horse like Han Solo did to another creature in Jedi, but even more so here. Yuck!

And it's all very realistically written, acted and directed. If you've seen last year's Best Picture winner, Birdman (and if you haven't, you should), then you know that Innaritu--last year's Best Director--really likes close-ups. And I mean, close. So much so, so often, that the frozen wilderness will seem claustrophobic, though it's all open space and wide expanses. But the camera is right on these guys. Not in their face, exactly, but closely above them, or beside them, or under them. There aren't too many distant shots of these actors. If they're on screen, they're taking up the whole screen. So be ready for that you-are-there feeling that this type of direction generates. You'll feel like you're in the Arctic with them--and you'll feel like you can't wait to get the hell out of there. An interesting achievement, that: You'll be glued to the screen (no small feat, since it's over two and a half hours long), but you'll be so overwhelmed by the brutality and the conditions that you want to be able to leave. I got the feeling, somewhat, that I was trapped.

Which was the director's goal, of course, and he succeeds. The film is an ordeal, and I mean that in a positive way. You suffer along with everyone--and everyone does suffer. This movie is about suffering and survival, and it does not have a solid, clear, winning ending. Consider yourself warned.

Photo: The director, Alejandro Inarritu, and Leonardo DiCaprio, from the same Telegraph article

DiCaprio deserves his nomination, and I'm not sure I saw a better leading performance this year. I don't mean that negatively, but nobody has stood out for me in terms of an obvious win at Oscar-time. I suppose DiCaprio is that guy.

Tom Hardy also deserves his nomination, as did Mark Rylance, whose performance I liked a little bit better. He didn't have the conditions to play off of, as Hardy does, and he says a lot more than Hardy does. (Tom Hardy, since his performance as Bane, seems to have specialized in roles that require minimal verbosity. He says more here than he does in Mad Max, but not by much.) I still feel Benecio del Toro deserved an Oscar nomination for Sicario, which itself was also not nominated. His was the best supporting performance I've seen this year. It's hard, as I mentioned in another entry, to compare his performance to Rylance's, because they're so different: his is exceptionally harsh and cold, and Rylance's is very powerfully quiet and nuanced. But del Toro's role and Tom Hardy's role are actually quite similar--though Hardy evoked quite a bit of Tom Berenger in Platoon for me here--and they both play guys who are cold and evil to the core, and who don't change. This was a nice change, by the way. Hardy says some very memorable things at the end of Revenant that you may not soon forget.

So go see this film if all of the above sounds like your cup of tea. Speaking of that, you will want something hot to drink after you see this, because the surroundings are so much the main character of this film that you will feel like you've just spent two and a half hours in the frozen, bloody Arctic.

P.S.--I always sit through the credits, so here I saw a name I haven't seen since the early-80s: Lukas Haas. Can you guess the movie? He was the little boy with Harrison Ford in Witness. Yeah, my mind works like that--I didn't even have to look it up. It hit me in the theatre. It's an illness.

My Top-10 Films of the Year (So Far) Part 2

This is Part 2 of my favorite films of 2015. For Part I, please click this link to read it.  Thanks.

As before, where I've written a blog entry of the movie, the title will be linked so you can go there. Thanks again.

5. Tie: Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part II and The Martian

Far better than Part I, because this one has a sense of fate, of finishing up, of ending a war and moving on with life. Its themes and messages are more mature than the other films, on purpose. And it makes a point to choose humanity over war, of even winning a war, which is dubious to me, but carried out well here. It asks: How barbaric are we willing to be to win a battle, or a war? That depends on the war, I suppose, and it's easy to make sweeping platitudes, but it all works here, anyway. It's directed better, too, though all the Hunger Games movies have the same director. A minor bone to pick is how Coin was situated right behind Snow at the end; I didn't read the books, but I didn't have to in order to know what was going to happen there. It couldn't have been telegraphed more than it was. But it all wraps up well, and meaningfully, and I'll repeat here what I said in the blog: Kudos to the filmmakers for making an action movie where a woman is the main character, the one kicking ass, and the one who has to save the rather short-sighted and dim-witted (or tyrannical) men. And for showing that a woman can be just as tyrannical, just as cold and evil. Not a single stereotypical female role here. That's rare.

The Martian is a very gung-ho, optimistic movie from Ridley Scott, who's not known for being that way. Like, at all. An astronaut gets marooned on Mars, and is forced to grow food from his feces and to listen to bad disco music before he's saved by his crew, which comes back for him, thereby sacrificing another year of their lives in space. The martian, for his part, loses a ton of weight and endures a few catastrophes, but never loses his smile or his extremely positive outlook. A friend of mine found this excessively unrealistic and therefore didn't like the movie. I disagreed, saying that the movie was purposely optimistic about space, space travel, and our role in space. It was Ridley's way of saying, "Let's fund NASA more, because Earth is screwed and sooner or later we're going to need to leave." Ridley is known to be fascinated by space, about living in space, about the optimistic and positive attributes of being in space. This despite Alien and Prometheus, very pessimistic movies about the horrors of space--though both do end with an optimistically intellectual attitude about space, and about our ultimate creation. Well, Prometheus does, anyway. So IMO The Martian has to be seen with this in mind. It's not unrealistically positive, exactly, because it's whole point is to be very positive about humans in space. Think, Robinson Crusoe on Mars.

4.  Jurassic World

Extremely exciting and hyper-visual movie that was lightyears better than Jurassic Park 2 and 3. In some ways, this even exceeds the original. Yes, it's still what David Letterman infamously called "mechanical lizards," but here there are flying ones with razor-sharp teeth, and the gigantic whaleshark, and the velociraptors and T-rex are back, plus one more...All of them very scary, and very real. These all existed in the past, unlike a few of the original movie's lizards, especially that annoying fan-shaped thing. Real danger, real menace, and a couple of characters--especially Bryce Dallas Howard's--who might also exist in real life.  It doesn't focus on the kids as much as the first one did, which worked better for me. So, yes, again, just a romp with CGI lizards, but an exciting, eye-popping one, guaranteed to please and make you wish for popcorn. An almost perfect summer action / special effects popcorn-chewing visual experience, that must really be seen on the big screen.

3. Mad Max: Fury Road

About this film I ca say almost the same thing as Jurassic World, but without the dinosaurs. An unbelievably awesome action romp, it's basically two very long action sequences, or a movie-long car chase. The most inspiring thing about it is that it's NOT CGI-heavy. George Miller wanted all the stunts and all the cars to be real, and they all look it. There are Cirque du Soleil performers, real cars on top of tanks, explosions and sand and jumping and so much precision it'll make your head spin. It's perhaps the best action movie ever made. That's not just me saying so, but most of the critics, too, all of whom have put it on their own Top 10 of 2015 lists. And the National Board of Review named it the Best Picture of the Year!!!

Perhaps as equally impressive is the message. First, it's an action movie with a message, a rare thing in of itself. That the message is of female empowerment and freedom is even more rare--in all of film, never mind in an action film. But don't lose sight of the fact that the cargo driven in the movie's War Rig is not gasoline, but the five women who are escaping with Charlize Theron's Furiosa to a better place, a world of green where they are not slaves, where they can be free. Think of the women worldwide, who live in cultures where they are not free, where they are subservient to men in absolutely every way (and I do mean every way) and I think you'll agree that this is no small thing.

2. Sicario

I have misgivings placing this here instead of at #1, and went back and forth about it. My reason is simple: It has hardly any special effects to speak of, and is all acting, writing and directing. It excels at all three, plus the score to boot, which I listen to on YouTube all the time, and will probably buy soon. Benicio del Toro gives a performance that is memorably chilling, and Emily Blunt gives a performance that is easily the best of her career. I hope they're both remembered at Oscar time--and Mark Rylance should be, too, for Bridge of Spies. (His performance was as quietly nuanced as del Toro's was loudly menacing, so it's tough to know who should get it. This shows the Oscars are often a crapshoot.) Anyway, this movie is exceptional in every way, and relevant, and a dirty little corner of America's politics and its (failed) War on Drugs. It's an important movie done dirty, menacing and well.

1. Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Of course. A huge movie that makes it all relevant again, and it sets the mark for the remaining movies. Makes you wonder why George Lucas went for the prequels and Vader, rather than the sequels, and Skywalker / Leia / Han Solo, plus the newcomers. My only caveat, as mentioned above, is that Sicario is all about acting, writing and directing, and does not count a lick on special effects. This movie has very good acting and directing as well, but it of course counts very heavily on its technical side--but how could it not, since it all takes place in space? Having said that, I don't know what else I have to say about it that I didn't say in my blog entry, so without further ado I'll direct you there.

Well, thanks for reading my two Top-10 Movie List blogs! What movies did you like the best this year? How would you rank the ones I mentioned?