Oscar Movie Blitz

While the Oscars are certainly not what I'd say determines how good a movie is (the very idea that there's an objectively "best" picture is kind of anathema to how art is supposed to work,) I've been taking their nominations as a jump-start to see some movies I hadn't yet. I just got back from watching The Revenant, so let's start there.

The Revenant is a brutal movie, but beautiful. I'd be perfectly happy to see it win for Cinematography. Frankly, this seems likely to win the best picture category, and while I would not be disappointed if it won, I'm undecided on it. The biggest expectation is that this is going to be the film that finally gets Leonardo DiCaprio an Oscar. In all honesty, though, he isn't really given much to do other than bear an absurd amount of pain (my alternate title for the movie is "How the Fuck is Hugh Glass Still Alive?") However, the other acting nomination, for Tom Hardy's supporting role, is one that I think would be well deserved, as Hardy gets a character with a lot of depth and contradictions that he plays expertly.

Last night, I saw Room, which was far more watchable than I expected it to be. I was worried it was going to be a movie of wall-to-wall despair before a happy ending, but it kind of deconstructs it by having what a lesser film would use as a climax as something more like a mid-point shift (though it comes earlier than that.) It's still a pretty upsetting movie on a conceptual level (in case you don't know, it's about a woman who had been kidnapped seven years ago and is being held in a shed all that time, and her son, who was born in that shed and has never in his five years of life left it, and thus has a strange worldview in which "Room" (with no article, as if he were describing "Earth") is his entire universe. The movie is about trauma but also moving past that trauma, and is fantastically well-acted (always tricky when the main character is a little kid.)

The Big Short and Spotlight are kind of paired up, though I don't mean to de-emphasize them. Both are about horrific crises that should have been avoided if it weren't for complacency and impunity. Stylistically, though, the films could hardly be more different.

Spotlight is stripped down. We're not looking for opportunities to create false interpersonal drama. Instead, it's a story about a group of reporters (reinforcing the realism is that there's no one clear protagonist) who start putting the Boston Globe's resources into uncovering the massive sex abuse scandal within the Catholic Church. The movie is not sensationalist - it merely lays out the facts and shows the process by which people searching for the truth work to get it, despite a culture built around looking the other way. As a Boston-Area native (though only half culturally-Catholic) it's a remarkable look at the culture of the city (and refreshingly not about gangsters with thick Southie accents.)

The Big Short, on the other hand, feels like a call to arms. Adam McKay, mostly known for over-the-top improvisational Will Ferrel comedies, plays post-modern DJ to the culture of the financial world leading up to the 2008 Real Estate bubble bursting. Our heroes are only barely heroes (Steve Carrel and Brad Pitt's characters are the only ones who seem to really feel pain for the millions who are getting screwed) but there's still something kind of satisfying to seeing them win out against an incredibly corrupt, smug, counter-intuitively naive and ultimately sociopathic system. The movie attempts to "edutain," with some extreme fourth-wall breaking, including a few instances of celebrities playing themselves and explaining things directly to the camera. If Spotlight left you feeling sad at the way that so many people were abused and their abusers were the ones that the Church decided to protect, The Big Short will make you furious that so many smirking assholes who control America's finances were willing to bet innocent peoples' money on bad deals knowing that they would never be the ones who had to foot the bill, and that those people are still doing what they were doing before.

Bridge of Spies is another example, like Lincoln, of Spielberg doing the prestige pic right. It might be "middlebrow" or even accused of being "Oscar Bait," but the fact remains that Spielberg is a damn good filmmakers, and Tom Hanks is a damn good actor. Bridge of Spies does feel slightly bifurcated - Hanks' James Donovan is an insurance lawyer who is chosen to represent a suspected (and yeah, guilty) Soviet Agent named Rudolf Abel. This first quarter or third of the movie raises some interesting questions about the way that we conduct ourselves as a country. Donovan's family is threatened because he seems to be "working for the enemy" when, as Donovan (and clearly Spielberg and screenwriters the Coen Brothers) believes that only by giving the man a fair trial do they represent what makes the US better than the Soviets. The film shifts gears significantly after Francis Gary Powers is shot down in a spyplane over the USSR. With Abel convicted, the government wants to use him a bargaining chip to get Powers back before the Soviets can interrogate the secret information about his plane and mission out of him. In the midst of this, an american graduate student finds himself on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall just as it is going up. We then see Donovan - as the pinnacle of the American ideal as a plain-talking, principled man forced to try to work the geopolitics of American interests and a pissing contest between the Democratic Republic of Germany and the USSR in order to secure the release of both Americans. In a way, I think this film is undercut simply by the fact that we already know how good Spielberg and Hanks are - giving it any awards would feel redundant (though Mark Rylance stands a chance for Supporting Actor. I'd still go with Tom Hardy.) The Coens' nihilism is undercut by Spielberg's upbeat faith in good men of principle. I might be curious to see a bleaker, more Le Carré-style spy story directed by them

I also re-watched Mad Max: Fury Road (third time seeing it,) and it's really just unlike anything else out there. It has the simplicity of the original Star Wars, and could be a textbook on how to shoot compelling and coherent action. Also, the production design is utterly astounding. But I've already written about that one.

Another re-watch, I saw the Martian. Obviously, I have a soft spot for anything science fiction (or fantasy) that is actually good. I don't tend to care too much about the "hardness" of science fiction, but I remain impressed that this story feels so plausible that it almost feels like it's not even science fiction at all, but instead something like a real-world space disaster like Apollo 13.

Finally, a movie that I literally watched right after writing the previous paragraph, there's Brooklyn. After the dour gloom or ultraviolence (or both, in the case of The Revenant,) Brooklyn is a bit of a relief. It tells the simple story of a Irishwoman played by Saoirse Ronan who goes to America in the 1950s. It's not terribly plot-heavy - there's not even really much of a conflict until about halfway through the movie - but it's an effective kind of slice-of-life about the making of an American and the difficulty of forging a new life and identity when you still have people who you love in a world you've left behind.

So there you have it. If I had to guess, I'd say the Revenant is likely to win best picture, but it's by no means a lock. I could easily see Spotlight doing so as well. Mad Max is too out there (and it's a genre film, which the Academy generally tries to avoid giving the top honor to.) Brooklyn is a fine movie, but not terribly innovative. The Big Short is fun and messy, but that messiness might undermine it. The Martian has the same issue as Mad Max, though less so (given how, as I mentioned, it's hard enough sci fi to almost feel like it's not.) Bridge of Spies has the problem that unless it's Spielberg's best film yet, it's not going to have a chance to win best picture. Room's a remarkable film, but I wonder if something so relatively small scale is likely to get people to vote for it.