2014 Oscar Predictions

The Best Picture Odyssey series is complete, and you can find links to all the reviews right here.  There’s just one more thing to do before the big night.

Best Picture Odyssey: “Nebraska”

Well, we’ve reached the end of the series. I kinda wish I had something more bombastic to close with, but this isn’t exactly a great list of nominees. I mean, I don’t hate all the films, and a few of them even made my top 10 from last year (including this week’s subject), but for the most part this is a pretty forgettable group of films. It’s a side effect of expanding the field to nine or ten nominees. When’s the last time you heard someone talk about Beasts of the Southern Wild, or Amour? I can’t see Philomena or Dallas Buyers Club still being dissected and analyzed next February. 

Best Picture Odyssey: “Captain Phillips”

This is going to be a much shorter review than the other ones in this series, for a couple reasons. First, and probably most importantly, I haven’t seen this movie in a very long while. It came out in October, the second earliest release of any of its fellow nominees (bested only by Gravity) and it’s not exactly the kind of film that ingrains itself in the cultural zeitgeist for very long after it comes out. To be honest, I don’t remember it very well. I mean, I remember scenes and shots and moments. But if I had any in-depth opinions on it, they’re long gone. There is another reason that this is going to be a short review, though. I spent most of this week thinking about another movie, one that I liked a lot more than this and one that I have a lot more to say about. That review will go up in a day or so. But anyway. Captain Phillips. Let’s do this.

Best Picture Odyssey: “Philomena”

Ugh, do I have to?

That sounds like a negative judgment, but it’s not. In fact, I think this is a pretty good movie, all things considered. But it’s not a really interesting type of good. It’s so generically effective and engaging that talking about it is kinda boring. Well, here goes nothing.

Best Picture Odyssey: “Her”

Are we too invested in our technology?

I’ve always brushed that question off as the standard generational denigration that’s existed for as long as the concept of change. The idea that “things were better back then” has always been fallacious, because it implies that people living “back then” weren’t also complaining about how terrible things had become. The critiques of the current youngest generation have always been based on their (okay, our) perceived over-reliance on technology. “People are so attached to their smartphones that they can’t look around and experience real life!” has been the battle cry of crotchety old fogies since the first behind-the-times cable news report on this newfangled thing called “texting.” It always seemed ridiculous.

Best Picture Odyssey: “American Hustle”

When I was a little kid, I didn’t understand how keys worked. All I knew was that mommy or daddy stuck a key into the doorknob, jiggled it a little, and the door magically became openable. I didn’t understand that the turning of the key was what did it, and my brain didn’t have enough information to come up with a valid answer. So I decided that maybe if I put the key in the doorknob and shook it so that it made the same sounds that it did when mommy or daddy did it, the door would probably unlock. I tested this hypothesis, and of course it failed. I bring this up because it’s such a perfect metaphor for what’s wrong with American Hustle. David O. Russell doesn’t know how to make a thoughtful, engaging film. He just knows what one sounds like. American Hustle is him shaking the hell out of that key so that it makes just the right noise, and he gets the exact same result that I did.

Best Picture Odyssey: “Dallas Buyers Club”

Well, this isn’t a great way to kick off the series. I wish I could begin with a more positive review, but I have a lot of things to say about this film so I might as well get them out now. Dallas Buyers Club is an atrocious movie. It’s the kind of film where it seems like everyone involved was completely half-assing it. Even the title card and the subtitles appear to be in the default font from some editing software. The script is stiff and artificial, the directing is soulless and purposeless, and almost all the actors are on auto-pilot. Save for one, of course.

Best Picture Odyssey – 2014 Edition

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences just released their nominations for this year’s Academy Awards. It’s been a while since I’ve really talked about the Oscars on this blog, so I’m bringing back a feature from 2 years ago that was pretty popular. In the run-up to the Academy Awards on March 2nd, I’ll publish reviews of every Best Picture nominee. I’ve already written reviews for 12 Years a Slave, Gravity, and The Wolf of Wall Street, so that leaves the following list.

– American Hustle 

– Captain Phillips

– Dallas Buyers Club

– Her

– Nebraska

– Philomena

A review will go up every Saturday, leading up to the day before the ceremony when I’ll post my final thoughts and predictions. Get excited!

Best Picture Odyssey: “The Wolf of Wall Street”

When we complain that a movie is “too long,” what do we mean? It could be that it had too many scenes that weren’t necessary or entertaining. Maybe there was a pacing problem, and the film felt laborious and plodding. Some people complain that, in general, no movie really “needs” to be more than two hours long. There’s a great Roger Ebert quote that goes, “No good movie is too long, and no bad movie too short.” So when I walked out of The Wolf of Wall Street, I was confused. It was clearly a very sharp, smart, and enjoyable picture. But why was it three hours long? 

Best Picture Odyssey: “Midnight in Paris”

Midnight in Paris is a movie that is so charming that I can’t nitpick it. The film seduced me in such a way that I find it impossible to write down its flaws, even though they are plain as day. Damn you, Midnight in Paris. Damn you for making me love you. Really, it’s a movie tailor-made for my sensibilities. I’m not a Woody Allen “fan”, per se, but I like some of his work, and I really like the standard character that inhabits so many of his films. However, I tend to feel like he uses it as a crutch too often, and that’s sort of the case here. But I’ll give him this – casting Owen Wilson in that role was a pretty interesting choice. Wilson actually does a pretty good job, too, even if it is mostly a Woody Allen impression.

I didn’t take much away from this film, and that’s my first problem with it. I never got the sense that there was a reason that Allen was telling me this story. At least, not until the very end, when the moral of the picture comes crashing down with a force so thundrous that the Earth’s rotation was most likely thrown off as a result. It’s a shame, because the theme of this movie is pretty original and interesting. It’s doesn’t seem to be one of the many stock morals that people seem to use in every other movie that comes out today. The film’s originality is staggering, especially when you consider that it is currently part of a set of nine films that are mostly very conventional in both narrative style and thematic material. I appreciate Midnight in Paris‘s dedication to not being cliche or conventional.

The thing that I loved the most about this film by far was the appearances of famous writers of the era. They were an odd sort of celebrity cameo. Midnight in Paris walks an interesting line when it comes to these people’s place in the film. It’s never difficult to figure out who people are, but the film never goes out of its way to explain these people to you. However — and this is maybe its best feature — it doesn’t make you feel stupid for not knowing who people are. I’ll admit to not knowing who Cole Porter was when his music started playing, but Owen Wilson’s reaction to seeing him in the flesh told me everything important that I needed to know. It’s a success of the screenplay that this works. On the other hand, one of the script’s biggest failures also stems from these characters. They don’t come across as any more than caricatures of the real people. Ernest Hemingway is portrayed as a larger-than-life alcoholic (accurate), but every word out of his mouth is something about bravery or honor. There’s nothing more to him than that. He’s just a vessel for whatever the protagonist needs to hear at that moment. And some characters, such as a detective who is sent to tail Owen Wilson, have plots which literally never go anywhere. This script really needed a few more revisions.

Another problem comes with the film’s message. In a neat scene near the end of the film, Owen Wilson “figures it out”, and the message comes out. It’s a bit heavy-handed, but plot-wise I liked how it played out. I thought, “Oh, that’s a nice climax. Now the movie’s over, right?” And then something surprising happened. The movie kept going. And going. And going. It’s probably the only similarity that this movie has to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. For some reason, Allen felt the need to do two unnecessary things. First, he wrapped up the subplot about Rachel McAdams’s character (I didn’t like her performance, by the way, but it may have just been that her character was unlikeable). This scene goes nowhere and doesn’t thematically have anything to do with the rest of the film. And then he makes his most egregious mistake. The final scene of this movie has Owen Wilson’s character blatantly disregarding the message that he spent the whole movie learning. If you’ve seen the film, perhaps you know what I’m getting at, but suffice to say that it renders the rest of the story pointless.

But despite it all, despite all of the obvious flaws, I can’t help enjoying this film. I think it’s because it doesn’t take itself seriously. It’s so light-hearted, so fluffed up with joy, that I can’t hate on it. Everyone has one person in their lives who, despite all of their character flaws, is so nice that you just can’t hate them. That’s what Midnight in Paris is like for me. It’s so inoffensive that its flaws don’t matter. That seems like a backhanded compliment, but hey, that’s the best that this film is gonna get.

And that concludes the Best Picture Odyssey! Thank you all very much for reading and enjoying these reviews. In the days leading up to the Oscars, I’ll rank the nominees, best to worst, and make my final predictions about the winners. I’ll keep you posted. Adios!