Oscars 2019 - Roma so good, Green Book so bad

No time to rant about all the pictures I wish had been nominated, just a quick skim through the actual nominees. So here in reverse order who I would like to see Best Picture

Look it’s not that Green Book is a terribly made film, I was even reasonably moved by the ending and as I said in my other post, I thought Mahershala Ali was brilliant in the film. Technically, it’s a well-made and well-paced film. But oh my god, are we really still making films which centres the story of a guy going from super-racist to accepting that black people are actually people? Do we still make films that have to show what racism is and that it’s a Bad Thing by doing it through a racist white person’s eyes? Dr Don Shirley sounds like a fantastically interesting person, and yet we barely get to know him, despite Mahershala Ali’s best efforts. Choosing to go play in segregated deep South towns to try change racist hearts and minds was an act of bravery and presumably a difficult choice, but this is barely explored because it’s more important that Viggo Mortensen’s character discovers that racism is a thing and a bad thing too. American history is full of different approaches to how to fight racism and white supremacy, dating right back to the beginning of racialised slavery, and this was possibly never more true than the 50s and 60s. But the film doesn’t engage with this discussion, or whether Dr Shirley is engaged in a form of respectability politics or something more complex. It doesn’t engage with racism and its forms and effect in anything but the most basic and shallow level and worst of all makes it about how it affects a boring racist white guy. It centres on this boring guy, but also doesn’t seem to have a clue how it wants us to relate to him either. It’s just so bizarre. And while it might have just been the screening I was in, but it seems to think that the racist humiliation of a brilliant black man is a punchline. I could go on and on, but if you want to see a film about racism in that era, watch If Beale Street Could Talk, not only because it deals with the topic a million times better but also because it is extraordinarily beautiful and affecting, neither adjectives that could be applied to Green Book.

If Bohemian Rhapsody was fictional it would be a solid, ok movie, with a reasonably interesting story. It’s just a shame to discover that the real story was actually more interesting.  It’s not a terrible movie, and the live scenes are done really well. Rami Malek is good, but the involvement of other Queen band members seems to make it obsessed with making them come out well rather than being that interested in getting any deeper understanding of Freddie Mercury. I don’t know if it’s bad casting or what, but the rest of the band come across as deeply boring and annoying and determined to share glory that possibly doesn’t belong to them. It just feels like a missed opportunity.

A Star is Born is better than Bohemian Rhaposdy but has at least 80% more Bradley Cooper than it needed. It’s solidly made, and it massively benefits from a very compelling performance from Lady Gaga who brings her scenes to life.  But I couldn’t get past how awful Jackson Maine is as a character. Are we supposed to even slightly root for him or their relationship? He is spectacularly creepy and controlling and if was made with him as the villain of the piece, then it would have been far more interesting, but it seems to think he’s a sympathetic character. This film is obsessed with Bradley Cooper when it should be obsessed with Lady Gaga. Err who directed it again? Oh right….

I’m not sure enjoyable is the right word for Vice, given the subject matter, but it certainly grabs you and takes you on a ride.  It’s well researched, well scripted and well acted, although perhaps sometimes shallower than it realises – trying to connect different issues and events, but not quite pulling it off, unless you already agree with its point of view (which I did largely, but didn’t feel that should be taken for granted).  It’s a massive step above the three films above, but not quite in the class of the films below.  Christian Bale is superb though. It just felt a bit enamoured of differing documentary styles (such as those of Michael Moore and Adam Curtis) and sometimes tries to fit the story into the style rather than the style to the story. But it’s a minor quibble for a very interesting, and terrifying film!

Some people seem to be a bit sniffy about Black Panther being nominated for Best Picture because it’s a genre, action movie. Well Avatar was also nominated and it’s a million times better than Avatar. Thor Ragnarok may be my favourite Marvel picture but Black Panther almost certainly is the most interesting story-wise, particularly given the dynamic between T’Challa and Killmonger, and visually as interesting as any of the others. It’s also achieved a place in the cultural sphere that probably goes beyond any other individual MCU movie.   It’s as good as you can hope for from a superhero movie, or an action movie, it goes beyond any of those perceived ‘artistic limitations’ and is just a damned good, interesting, visually stunning and entertaining movie.

Unlike Green Book, Blackkklansman actually understands racism and its many manifestations. It fully understands racism’s current place in the world and manages to make a historical picture that tells us a lot about today.  It shows a variety of strategies and arguments for fighting it and always shows that the fight has to continue. And yet, it’s never preachy, or boring, or cliched. It’s dynamic, funny, bold, brilliantly scripted and brilliantly acted and whereas Green Book misues humour, Blackkklansman uses it to draw you in before knocking you out emotionally. It’s quite probably my favourite Spike Lee joint so far, and would be a very deserving winner.

I have to say I have not to date been a massive fan of Yorgas Lanthimos’ films (hated Dogtooth, thought Sacred Deer was flawed but ok, and liked the first half and not the second half of The Lobster). But perhaps letting him bring his unique visual style to someone else’s script is what I have been waiting for.  The Favourite is totally brilliant. A story I have seen done very differently, and a wonderfully fresh and interesting way of telling a historical story.  I laughed, sometimes out of shock, and I was also moved. The visual flair was disturbing and disorientating in the best way. The sets and costumes were phenomenal and it revelled in the awfulness of the characters in the most wonderful way. And most of all, I was always totally gripped by three incredible central performances.  It’s quite hard to believe that such a strange, OTT, and wild film has been nominated for Best Picture, but I am so glad it has been.

But my favourite is not The Favourite, it is Roma. I’m really sad that it didn’t have a proper cinema release, as this is a film that should be seen on the big screen. Visually, it’s just gorgeous and stunning, with the black and white cinematography used to maximum poetic effect. The performances and script are wonderful and hopefully Yalitza Aparicio has a brilliant career ahead of her because we need more than one starring role from her.  But most of all, this is one of the most moving films you will see. For the first half or so, I was thinking this is a lovely, sweet, often funny, always interesting movie, but not quite getting what all the critical acclaim was about. But it is judged perfectly. That first half has made you warmly involved in these characters’ lives but then it just pulls you on the most brilliant, heart stopping emotional journey. I don’t want to give anything away, but it is truly heartbreaking and memorable. It is an exquisite and expert piece of film making from Alfonso Cuaron and I hope it wins Best Picture. 

2019 Oscars - the people on screen

Because I forgot to really bother read any Oscar previews, I've done my own. 

So here is a quick ramble around the acting categories about who I wouldn’t mind winning (and some irrational annoyance with Bradley Cooper for tradition’s sake….)

Supporting Actress:

It is stunning to me that one of the most beautiful films I can remember, If Beale Street Could Talk, only has 3 nominations. Maybe if I’m awake enough tomorrow I will put up a special post on the utter brilliance of Barry Jenkins. But I’m glad that one of those nominations was for Regina King’s incredible performance.  It is a film full of memorable performances but the quietly brilliant range of emotions that Regina King finds for her character is nothing short of stunning. There are so many difficult scenes of conflict where she finds such a perfect pitch of empathy, that you need her character to prevail – not for the other characters to fail, as they are usually complex rather than out and out bad – but because of her sincere and deep attempt to do right.   She has an incredible way of communicating this, and I would absolutely love her to win.

Of course, if either Emma Stone or Rachel Weisz won, I would definitely not object. I’m just not sure how to separate them. And they play off each other so well, it almost feels like a single performance across two actors. They are clearly having so much fun (and kudos for Emma Stone on her accent, which she just about keeps to throughout and actually sounds real, rather than almost right).  Both are brilliantly morally ambiguous, bold and funny and also do exactly what a supporting actress should do – allow the incredible lead actress to shine but create an amazing rich space around her too.

Amy Adams and Marina de Tavira are both excellent in their roles, but really their films belong to Christian Bale and Yalitza Aparaicio respectively. They both have some incredible moments but I think it’s got to be between the three above.

Supporting Actor

Let’s just say I have some, um, thoughts about Green Book…. One of them though is that a) Mahershala Ali is way, way too good for that film and b) thank goodness he was in it as I hate to think what would have happened. There are so many missed opportunities for an interesting take in that film, but I’m not entirely sure they would have entered my head, had it not been for his interesting and layered performance. I probably wouldn’t have noticed that there was actually potential for a really interesting and deep and challenging film from that story, if it wasn’t that he brought so much of those elements and created a fascinating and complex character from what seems like quite thin material.  He literally supports the film from falling into a complete hole of obnoxiousness, support it perhaps doesn’t deserve… But I’m not sure that’s quite what they mean by supporting actor.

It seems likely Mahershala Ali will win and, if he doesn’t, that Richard E Grant will. I’m pretty sure Richard E Grant already had all the fun he ever needed just making the film, but he is absolutely superb, and perhaps in another year he would be nailed on favourite, and my favourite too. It’s a witty and well judged performance, it could have been absurd and exaggerated, but he roots the character in an underlying sadness that means instead it is heartbreakingly real. Unlike Mahershala Ali, he is lucky enough to work with excellent material, in a film that certainly deserved Green Book’s best picture slot, and he absolutely makes the most of it.

 Sam Elliott is absolutely fine and very Sam Elliott, but in a rather cliched and underwritten role. Sam Rockwell is fun but overshadowed by Christian Bale in Vice and Adam Driver is very entertaining and effective in Blackkklansman, but that is John David Washington’s film, and it’s a shame he didn’t get a nomination instead. Embarrassing note, I only discovered John David Washington is Denzel’s son about three weeks ago. Well it’s a performance his dad could have been proud of giving himself, and I’m not sure there’s a much higher compliment I can give (still think Denzel was robbed a couple of years ago for one of the greatest screen performances of recent years).

Actress

This category this year could have had about 15 nominees and the quality would still have been ridiculous throughout (special nods for Chloe Grace Moretz in the Miseducation of Cameron Post, Thomasin Mackenzie in Leave No Trace and probably a load of others that I’m going to suddenly remember I’ve forgotten tomorrow).

It looks like it could be Glenn Close’s year, finally, and even if it becomes one of those sort-of lifetime achievement awards because it’s ‘her time’, it would still be well deserved for her performance in The Wife. It’s an incredible performance, full of ambiguity and emotions that are suppressed just beneath the surface – communicated in a way that really feels like only her character and the audience know they are there, whilst the other characters remain oblivious. It is a ridiculously skilful performance as well as being incredibly engrossing and moving. The fact that she is so charismatic to the audience and yet believably barely visible to those around her is such a feat of balance, that whether anyone else could have pulled it off, is hard to say.

It would be harsh on Glenn Close should she not win for that performance, but then again, how awesome is the phrase Oscar winner Olivia Colman? I would happily just give her an Oscar for her Olivia Colman-ness, all of which she brings and more to The Favourite. How the hell she made her character so utterly awful and ridiculous and yet so utterly wonderful and sympathetic is beyond me. How she had the guts to be just so wonderfully out there (any time I see her interviewed, she is so goddam lovely, I don’t know where it comes from, I know she’s an amazing actress but still how?!!) is just incredible. And we all knew she has the skill to play any character absolutely brilliantly, it’s just wonderful that she got such an incredible part in such a high-profile film to do so.

There probably are many years where Melissa McCarthy or Yalitza Aparicio would be firmly deserving to win.  Many of the adjectives I’ve used to describe Olivia Colman’s performance could probably apply to Melissa McCarthy as well. She fearlessly and unapologetically gives us a character is often bitterly awful, yet is sympathetic (and sometimes pathetic) and feels very real but also entertainingly surreal.  It’s a fantastic performance in a wonderful film, she plays off Richard E Grant brilliantly and it’s unlucky she hasn’t been more favoured.

It’s hard to believe Yalitza Aparicio was previously a teacher with no acting experience, given how amazing her performance in Roma is. It’s almost hard to talk about without accidentally giving something away.  But her quiet warmth and earnestness is so engrossing, her sweet humorousness is so endearing and she is already compelling before the emotional final third of the film where she is just heartbreakingly brilliant. It’s such a skilful performance, and yet totally natural.

Lady Gaga is by far the best thing about A Star is Born and perhaps if the film had just been about her, I might have wanted her to win. But I am punishing her by association and assuming / hoping she won’t. She’s great though, for me unexpectedly as I hadn’t seen her act before.  She’s charming, emotionally truthful and the film lights up when she’s on screen.

Best Actor

Let’s just get the rant out of the way first. WHY HAS BRADLEY COOPER NOW BEEN NOMINATED FOR FOUR ACTING OSCARS? This is getting ridiculous. That’s the same number as Mahershala Ali and Sam Rockwell put together. Uuuurgh. And he’s not terrible in A Star is Born, he’s ok, his character is horrible, Lady Gaga is way better than him, and it feels like for all her charisma, he’s draining it away. But he also is in it way, way too much. She’s amazing, why can’t she be on the screen all the time, just go away Bradley Cooper.  Umm so that basically was my internal monologue throughout the film.  So yeah, Bradley Cooper is blah, Bradley Cooper put far too much of himself in his own movie and Bradley Cooper should not have four acting nominations over his career. Does he have dirt on people in Hollywood or something, or are there loads of blah people in Hollywood who like nominated Blandley Cooper to feel better about themselves?

Oh, and just before I get on to the half decent performances, how the hell was Viggo Mortensen nominated too? I’ll go into why I didn’t much like Green Book later, but Viggo Mortensen was pretty one-note throughout and didn’t really show much depth or do anything interesting. I don’t dislike Viggo Mortensen, I think he’s a pretty decent actor, perhaps Mahershala Ali’s brilliance showed him up, but I just couldn’t see what the nomination was for. Just think, the Academy could have had fun and nominated Lakeith Stanfield for Sorry to Bother You or Joaquin Phoenix for You Were Never Really Here, but instead they went for a uninteresting performance of a racist bore who learns that – shock horror- black people are people!

I haven’t seen Willem Dafoe’s performance as I don’t think it’s reached the UK yet, so I’m assuming/ hoping that Best Actor is between Christian Bale and Rami Malek. Christian Bale is terrific, and terrifying and somehow just makes sense of a very confusing and hard to read character. But the main way I would say he is brilliant is that in the interview at the end is I thought that we had cut to real footage of Dick Cheney, right up until the minute he broke the fourth wall. It’s one of Christian Bale’s best performances, and he sets a reasonably high bar….

I don’t mind if Rami Malek wins, as he certainly gives it his all, and like Mahershala Ali is way, way too good for the film he is in.  It’s a bold and convincing performance, that is far more interesting than the film itself and he carries off the performance scenes brilliantly – they could easily have been underwhelming or exaggerated but he gets it right. But for all that he is good, I’m not quite sure whether he is being rewarded for the performance or the role. Unlike the performances in the Best Actress category, where we have interesting characters brought to the screen in remarkable, complex and varied ways, Rami Malek in some ways feels like the acting equivalent of a high-class tribute band. That’s still a really hard thing to pull off, but it’s hard to work out how much of the interest and enjoyment comes from the original, rather than the performer in front of you. But hey, at least he’s not Bradley Cooper.

It's my 90th Oscars preview....

It’s one of those years where the films are so varied, and mostly of really high quality, that I just don’t know what I want to win Best Picture. I know Darkest Hour is the weakest, and I don’t want it to win, but beyond that…. So here’s a short take on each, in alphabetical order, in the hope that by the time I get to the end I might have decided.

Call Me By Your Name

A truly beautiful and moving film that I know is one of my favourites of the nine nominees, although it took a second viewing to really love it, which might be a tiny mark against it. It’s a strange thing – the first time, although it was gorgeous to look at and emotionally involving, it felt a bit meandering and aimless, and although I knew I really liked it, I didn’t quite get why it was being so raved about. But the second viewing really worked for me (I don’t think it was because one of the women behind me was fully sobbing for about the last third). Instead of being meandering, it felt perfectly paced and languorous, capturing the feeling that a long summer holiday doesn’t feel like something that has a beginning, a middle and an end, all perfectly paced out, but actually something that might go on forever, only for the end to suddenly come into view in a way that feels like all that time that stretched along was no time at all.

What is evident from the first second is how beautiful the film looks, it actually feels like the room has got 10 degrees warmer from the Italian sunshine radiating off the screen, you can practically feel the hot sweltering air.  It is incredibly evocative and despite being an unfamiliar locale, feels instantly warm and inviting. 

It is also one of the best acted films of the nominated films.  Timothee Chalamet is superb. Elio could easily be annoying, or distant from the audience, but he is convincing, captivating and heartbreaking. Elio may not always be sure what he is feeling or how to act, but we always understand him and believe the actions he is taking.  Michael Stuhlbarg and Amira Caesar are also brilliant as Elio’s parents, perhaps a little idealised, but incredibly grounded and warm.  Armie Hammer is also very good as Oliver, and captures the know-it-all confidence that I’m sure lots of people can slightly cringingly remember having at 24. The only slight problem is he really doesn’t look 24 (I’m pretty sure he looked older than 24 in The Social Network when he was actually 23 at the time) and while it may have been partly to disguise that Chalamet was 22 playing 17, it maybe would have worked better with a younger actor.  However, Chalamet is so good at getting across a 17 year old who is sometimes so much more mature, and sometimes so very teenage, that it is only a minor issue.

Overall, it’s a long shot, and highly unlikely to win, but I wouldn’t be at all disappointed if it does.

Darkest Hour

Given I’m probably about to slag it off, I should probably make clear that I didn’t actually dislike Darkest Hour. It’s fine in a crowd-pleasing history pic type thing. It’s not badly made. The production values are very good. The acting is decent. It’s engaging, and at times it’s quite gripping. And I liked it even though I’m not exactly Winston Churchill’s biggest fan, and very much not a fan of the great man of the moment approach to history.

But it just doesn’t feel like it belongs in a list of this quality.  I mean, if it’s this year’s old white man war movie (there’s always one, it’s like they have a quota), then it is 100 times better than either Hacksaw Ridge or the utterly awful American Sniper. So there’s that. But it is, in my view, Joe Wright’s weakest film by a distance (and bizarrely the first of his to have a male lead character, although I don’t think that’s the reason).  The scene on the tube train is just ridiculous and nearly ruined the film.  Some of the interactions between Churchill and Lily James’ character also sometimes felt a little bit silly – it can just be a bit cheesy at times.  That’s not to say it doesn’t also have powerful moments.  And Gary Oldman is very impressive and committed in his performance. It’s just one of those performances where I’ve now seen the same few clips over and over again to the point that I’m remembering it as caricature. I’m sure when I watched it, there were many subtler or more powerful moments, as I remember being impressed , I just don’t remember what with. And maybe that is the film’s problem. Crowd pleasing and nicely made, yes. But memorable? Not really.

Dunkirk

I’m not sure if there has been an Oscars before where there are two films set in roughly the same short historic period. Interestingly, although these are two of the three most traditionally Oscar-type films on the shortlist, they are also very, very different films.  Darkest Hour is more traditional, Dunkirk felt, at least in terms of film making the more bold and groundbreaking (although to be fair to Darkest Hour it did do a better job of remembering that not everyone in the world is male or white – still want a film about those women’s auxiliary service telephone operators who were apparently amongst the last evacuated…. How good would that story be? Anyway moving on…._

Dunkirk is one of the more technically brilliant films on the list this year. I saw it in IMAX and it was an incredible cinematic experience.  The sound and score in particular were just utterly phenomenal. It was as visually stunning as you would expect from a Christopher Nolan movie (although I agree with those that noted his refusal to use much CGI meant it was a bit let down by beaches that were slightly emptier than they would have been).  However, the things the film did well, it did really brilliantly.  It got as close as probably a movie could in conveying the terror of the individual evacuating soldiers, the danger and bravery faced by everyone involved, from soldier, to airman, to sailors volunteering for the rescue. The intensity was incredible and I think had a real emotional pay off.  The time switch just about watched, apart from when the 1 week and 1 day segments started to overlap and one seen showed those rescued, followed by the preceding danger from which they were rescued, which caused a bit of a stutter in the tension. 

It’s hard to single out any cast members as the performances were generally really good, with Mark Rylance and Barry Keoghan on the boat over probably being the standouts. But this is very much a director’s film and it is directed superbly. Best Director looks to be heading Guillermo del Toro’s way, but Christopher Nolan would be a worthy winner.

Get Out

Even about nine months ago, if you’d said an occasionally very violent comedy-horror-thriller by a first time director previously best known as a sketch show comedian would get nominated for Best Picture, it might have seemed like a stretch. But Get Out is so damn good, it doesn’t seem strange at all.

Not only is it funny, and gripping, and pretty scary at times (it really does work on the comedy, horror and thriller levels), it is also an excellent satire, managing somehow to reference an incredible number of elements of American racial history, but without ever being heavy handed. It’s a special achievement, which comes from the excellent script, assured and clever directing from Jordan Peele and excellent performances, particularly from Daniel Kaluuya.

Kaluuya does some pretty serious acting heavy lifting in there – the film goes to some weird places and at times is brilliantly uncanny and he manages to be both surprised and horrified by them, whilst making sure everything still feels convincing, making it easier to suspend disbelief and just go with the film.  Catherine Keener and Bradley Whitford are excellent support, starting out as normalish-but-just-off and carefully and cleverly becoming increasingly sinister and creepy. Betty Gabriel and Lakeith Stanfield are also really good with reasonably small parts, a really excellent mix of strangely robotic and occasional pure, unfiltered terror.

After its win at the Independent Spirit Awards, Get Out is in with a shot of Best Picture. And I’d be very happy if it won. Very few small budget films have the huge commercial and cultural impact that Get Out has had. Even fewer even attempt to blend cutting edge satire with so many genres. I’m not sure any other has pulled that off in such an entertaining and impactful way.

Lady Bird

The only thing that probably lets Lady Bird down is the sheer amount of hype placed on it – which was pretty impossible to live up to.  But take that away and it’s a wonderful film, and (I think) the only nominee that made me fully blub. I think how much anyone likes this film may be down to how much you like the central character but I’m a sucker for films with difficult teenage leads (can’t think why….) and I found her wonderfully infuriating and sympathetic, often at the same time.  It maybe wasn’t my favourite Saoirse Ronan performance (but what could match Brooklyn) and there was the odd moment where for the first time ever I thought I caught Ronan acting, but even a slightly less good Saoirse Ronan performance is still better than 99.9% of other performances out there.  And to fair, given how much teenagers like to exaggerate, the little excesses felt true to Lady Bird’s character.

The relationship between daughter and mother was really well done – even though her mother could be unnecessarily mean, the film made sure there was enough background to her that you saw and felt where this came from, and that this wasn’t how her mother wanted to be. I also loved her relationship with best friend Julie, another relationship that could be fraught and melodramatic and not what either person meant it to be, but always real and true.

Greta Gerwig brings exactly what you want from any coming of age movie – a real sense of time and place, memorable characters, the right blend of humour and drama, and a proper emotional punch. I loved the way it was edited and flowed through the school year. It packed so much in to a film which doesn’t set out to be big or showy, but real and true and moving. I can’t wait to see it again, it feels like a film I could watch multiple times and get so much out of each time. And I think it may just be my favourite.

Phantom Thread

Of course, favourite doesn’t necessarily equal ‘best’. I can’t quite put my finger on why, but there is something about Phantom Thread that makes me feel like it is the best film this year. Maybe I was just in the right mood, but it ended and I just thought well that was extraordinary.

The easiest place to start is it is undoubtedly visually stunning – as you’d expect from a Paul Thomas Anderson film. Every shot, every bit of production design and costuming is perfect and rich and beautiful.  The performances are also incredible. Yes Daniel Day-Lewis is wonderful, when isn’t he, but his character and performance are so complex, in many and most ways, an utterly repulsive person without being a terrible one, a fascinating and compelling portrayal of the selfishness of artistic genius. And Vicky Krieps and Lesley Manville are also superb.  Both characters are not who they first present themselves to be, but as additional facets of their characters are revealed, it doesn’t feel like it’s coming out of nowhere, instead you find yourself suddenly reseeing previous interactions in a different light, utterly beguiled by these three intensely layered and complex but convincing characters.

It’s hard to describe the plot of Phantom Thread, but it certainly did not go where I thought it would.  I’m not normally a fan of cinema that tries to unsettle, usually because it feels like that is the main or only trick the director has. But in this, Anderson unsettles the viewer in order to completely pull them in and have great fun in deconstructing tropes around the male artistic genius and the put upon female support in his life. He teases out every inch of pettiness and thoughtless cruelty and then flips the film around so that you don’t know where you are, or what you want for the characters, or what you think they deserve.  It really is an indescribable film (at least for me) but left me astonished and compelled by its brilliance, even if Get Out or Lady Bird are films that I loved more.

The Post

The Post is possibly the second weakest film in the list – another historical crowd pleaser, although a much more accomplished and memorable one that Darkest Hour.  The great thing about The Post is that it does exactly what you’d want from a film about the Pentagon Papers, directed by Spielberg and starring Hanks and Streep, to do. It’s slight let down is it doesn’t really do much more.  Unlike Lincoln, which went beyond what I think I’d seen from Spielberg and felt like a really masterful film, the Post is just very good.

It feels like a proper Hollywood film, with a fantastic supporting cast, and two dependably watchable performances from the leads – although neither feel like they are particularly stretching themselves. It just about handles the message it wants to give of the importance of power to account, and that the means for doing this need to be protected, but sometimes tips over into the unsubtle.  It manages to construct a reasonably exciting plot from something that we roughly know the end to – which is not always the easiest thing to pull off.  It’s a fun but serious take, but never quite catches fire in the way that something tonally similar such as Hidden Figures does. 

The Shape of Water

I really, really liked the Shape of Water but there was a tiny thing stopping me from genuinely falling in love with it.  Having thought about it, I think it was that in being a sort of fairy tale, it did the fairy tale thing of telling you that character x and character y are now in love and this will overcome everything and drive the story, but like in a fairy tale it just tells you that rather than making you believe it. I just don’t think enough was devoted to that early on to make you really believe in this world-defying romance. But it was only a small quibble, in what is an imaginative and visually wonderful film.

Sally Hawkins is reliably brilliant in the central role, and stops her character from becoming annoyingly twee, by putting some grit and sadness and defiance into the performance.  Octavia Spencer is always watchable, but it did feel like she was rehashing her character from The Help – I suspect that was more the script than her fault.  And Michael Stulbarg in particular stood out in the rest of the supporting cast.

I would not be surprised to see The Shape of Water to take quite a few of the technical awards. The visual detail and flair is what elevates the film from a slightly strange fantasy fairy tale into a really good film. It cleverly feels both period specific and just that little bit different to the real world, which is perfect for the story it is trying to tell.  There was clearly a lot of love and care went into creating the world and the backdrop blends really well with the story, and is almost a character in of itself.

It would be one of the more unusual films to take Best Picture if it was successful, but I wouldn’t resent its success. It’s not at the top of my list, but the imagination and visual brilliance it has make it deserving of its place on this list.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

The smart money seems to be on Three Billboards winning (though I wouldn’t be surprised to see Get Out sneak it). And it is up there for me with any of the films there, even accounting for the understandable reservations people have about the way it uses racial politics as a convenient backdrop for the plot and then sort of it ignores it when convenient.

I’ve seen the odd thing suggesting people don’t like the film giving redemption to some of its characters or that they don’t like the moral of the film – which was slightly confusing to me as I don’t think this is a film which particularly trying to get a moral across or redeem any of its characters (that would certainly be new for a Martin McDonagh film….). As usual, he gives us a tableau of likeably unlikeable characters plus some slightly more innocent bystanders, which doesn’t tie up neatly, and barely resolves at all.

It didn’t quite have the sheer oh my god what is this smack in the face of In Bruges, and I slightly resent how much it was promoted as a comedy as, although it is very funny, much of the humour was in the trailer and I wasn’t quite prepared for it being more of a drama, and a very dark one at that. Still, that is not the fault of the film, and I have tried to look past it.

The script is what you’d expect from McDonagh, ridiculously black humour and no desire to stick to  mainstream Hollywood storytelling, with no-one really learning or acting particularly heroic. But at the same time, the characters are ones whose stories you really want to see and to see where they go next. With a cast as good as the one in the film, of course the acting is excellent. Frances McDormand feels like possibly the only actor who could have played Mildred and of course she is brilliant doing so. It would be nice to see Woody Harrelson getting as much recognition as Sam Rockwell – both are really good, but Harrelson’s feels like the harder one to get right, and he pitches it perfectly.

Although there’s no clear favourite this year, Three Billboards has probably had the most awards success this year, and with its at time properly nasty black humour, lack of neatness and messy characters would be an interesting and worthy winner.

So who do I want to win? Ermm, argh, I think just because it made me properly cry and because it is just so my type of film that doesn’t always get the critical recognition it deserves, Eleanor’s Best Picture goes to Lady Bird.

Oscars 2017 - Not the usual crop of Best Picture nominees

Given the brilliantly diverse selection of Best Picture nominees this year, it feels like we need to talk about tokenism. Because it it just me or is there always at least one true story of a white American man struggling, often in wartime, against some group of Others, and it feels like they get a token slot regardless of merit. Now sometimes, these are pretty good like Bridge of Spies or Captain Phillips. But sometimes you get American Sniper. Or this year, Hacksaw Ridge. Now to be fair, Hacksaw Ridge is superior to American Sniper and it is a bit less racist. But the film is based on a truly amazing story that really deserved a better telling. It has its moments, and Vince Vaughan does a surprisingly effective turn as a drill sergeant. Andrew Garfield does a pretty good job but not enough to overcome the film's shortcomings. It's trying to be too many films at once, and I could have done without the ridiculously cheesy and cringe-worthy attempt at a sweeping epic romance. I'm still not sure I really liked Hugo Weaving's performance and given how the long the film was, it could have cut down the sections with his parents as it started to feel like I was being hit over the head with them (having said that, why does his brother just disappear from the film midway through?). But my biggest problem is with the battle at Hacksaw Ridge itself. The Walking Dead likes its guts and gore, but it also knows that to be effective, you need to use them in short, shocking bursts, otherwise the impact doesn't land. But Hacksaw Ridge gives us what feels like 40 minutes of unrelenting and over the top gory violence which just completely disengaged me with the horror it was trying to portray. But the biggest missed opportunity in what should have been the apex of the film - Desmond Doss's long post-battle vigil as he finds badly wounded colleague after colleague, rescuing and caring for them in an incredible act of compassion and bravery, driven by firm religious conviction. The scene stars fairly effectively, until an awful, cloying, stirring Hollywood score interrupts it with completely the wrong emotional tone and totally undermines the power it could otherwise have.  Hacksaw Ridge won't won Best Picture. It doesn't deserve to be on the same list as these other films.

I'd probably put Lion and Hell or High Water on a slight lower scale than the other six contenders. They're both really good films but didn't quite have the same impact on me.

Lion is another fascinating story that could maybe have been told even better. The first half with the young Saroo is particularly brilliant, affecting and terrifying in equal measure. Not only is young Sunny Pawar utterly fantastic as the young Saroo, he's surrounded by a fantastic supporting case in this section who make a big impact with a tiny number of scenes.  Dev Patel and Nicole Kidman are also excellent in the second half, but the film drifts a little. Perhaps it's because of the quite disruptive jump forward 20 years. Perhaps because the story isn't quite told how I expected, seeming to overly wallow in Saroo's guilty feelings and the impact on his not-so-interesting relationship with his girlfiend rather than engage more with the process of searching for his family. It is only in the final few scenes when older Saroo seems more connected to the younger Saroo that we were so connected to. A film that was nearly there, but a bit of a missed opportunity.

Hell or High Water was another film that I did genuinely like, but which I didn't fully connect with, possibly because of its slightly off-putting unrelenting maleness or perhaps because it felt a little old-fashioned and like something that's been done before. Having said that, it is a very well-made, well-acted film, particularly by Jeff Bridges, and the story doesn't go exactly where you're expecting (although it doesn't feel that fresh either). It looks stunning, and is directed and edited very effectively.  It's one of those films that in isolation, I admired and enjoyed, but just couldn't quite understand why other people were quite so enthusiastic about it, to the point that I probably remember it slightly less fondly than I experienced it at the time.

But that still leaves us with six, brilliant, unique and different films, any one of which I would be happy to see win Best Picture. And because I refuse to rank them or pick a favourite, I'm just going to write about them in alphabetical order.

Arrival is a terrific piece of grown-up, intelligent sci-fi, centred round a brilliant performance by Amy Adams. It is beautiful to look at, with stunningly expansive cinematography and the most incredible sound and score. The story unfolds like a puzzle, in fact like the linguistic puzzle that the central character must solve. It starts dreamily and then builds and builds momentum towards a dizzying rush of emotion and story resolution. It doesn't talk down to the audience, letting each person watching get to the ultimate revelation in their own time. The moment I realised what was actually happening was such an emotional punch to the gut and I was in tears. Without preaching or over-egging its message, it says a range of things and leaves you with as many questions or answers. Arrival is a film that should probably be more in the mix for Best Picture than it has been.

Although Fences has been criticised for being too stagey (which is not totally unfair, a couple of moments don't quite work and some of the editing does give the odd scene the feeling of filmed theatre) it is a film whose excellent script and quite phenomenal acting more than overcomes any shortcomings. Quite simply, I cannot think of a better pair of performances than those given by Viola Davis and Denzel Washington. They are utter perfection. The film is endlessly interesting and moving. It's not easy and it defies you to sympathise with Troy but demands you understand him. I could go on for pages about the clever way it shows the effect of the insidious poison drip-drip of racism on the lives of Troy and his family. It is not just racism that has caused Troy to be the way he is, but it is a constantly lurking shadow, alongside Troy's inability to live up to the moral code he sets for himself and the world. The tension can be unbearable as you do not know where the next splinter of Troy's anger will land. The twisting and twisted effect it has wife Rose is emotionally devastating. Perhaps the film does not do a huge amount that seeing a filmed version of the play could have done, but it is nonetheless a compelling watch.

Hidden Figures is a total joy of a film. It may not be the most subtle or originally told film, but it takes its story and characters and just runs with it in a way that means the audience can't help but be swept along. The three central performances are universally great and wonderfully distinct, each actor holding her own and complementing the others' performances perfectly. I really appreciated that it didn't make the racism and sexism that all three encountered subtle but instead blatant and in the foreground. It felt like the film was giving the ridiculous barriers they faced the massive eye-roll that they deserve. That is not to say it doesn't show the more subtle, less easy to fight against racism and sexism too. It manages to be a film showing its time but utterly of ours and it's told in a way that appreciates that a fantastic story, smartly told and joyously acted can inform, entertain and inspire like little else in film.

I'm not sure there's much I can say about La La Land that hasn't already been said a million times (have many films been talked about this much around an Oscar season? There's been hype, backlash, backlash-against-the-backlash and I think we might now be into backlash-against-the-backlash-against-the-backlash). I've seen it twice, and although I noticed a small number of flaws the second time, it still left me with a grin on my face, a song in my head and joy in my heart both times. When done right, there can be little more enjoyable than a move about the joy of the movies. Emma Stone is just brilliant in it and the first two song and dance numbers, and the late montage, are particularly wonderful. Who can tell if it will stand the test of time, and perhaps it doesn't quite live up to the films it clearly loves, but for sheer cinematic delight, it ticks all the boxes.

Manchester-by-the-Sea managed to  be both funnier and sadder than I was expecting, perhaps sadder than I could have ever expected without ever being depressing. It's grounded in a brilliant script by Kenneth Lonergan and illuminated by terrific performances, particularly of course by Casey Affleck. It is so hard to speak about without revealing a central plot point which I will try to skirt around. What it does is be a film about a community that is not like my own particularly, dealing with circumstances beyond most of our experiences yet manages to be utterly relatable and incredibly moving. It absolutely worms into your heart and refuses to move, and I couldn't get it out of my head for days.

Finally, Moonlight, which is probably going to be the one of this year's crops that is most remembered. It is a beautiful and technically brilliant film, with an amazing all-round cast, none of whom gets much screen time but who all stay in the memory.  I perhaps didn't emotionally engage with it quite as much as many people (not that I didn't find it very moving) because I was so aware of its technical brilliance, meaning I couldn't quite turn that part of my brain off and slip totally into the film, but that was definitely my problem and not the films - I suspect if I catch it on telly in a couple of years unexpectedly I will get completely hooked and devastated. The technical brilliance is mostly in the cinematography (though a big shout out to the music and sound) which communicates to us so much of Chiron's emotions and feelings when he cannot himself articulate them. The camera moves from watchful, to frantic, to afraid, to contemplative and shows every little layer of identity that Chrion builds as he moves through his life. Mahershala Ali and Naomie Harris are particularly brilliant, but so are all three actors who play Chiron. It is a character study like few others, and a film of a visual beauty that few others reach too.

Oscars 2017 - it's time to expand the Best Actress category to ten nominees....

This year has been particularly strong for the acting contenders, so it seems fitting to start off ramble number one with the acting categories. And I might as well start in the category that I've seen the fewest of but which is so strong that there could have probably have been ten or more nominations with little dip in quality.  Mainly I'm hacked off that Kate Beckinsale wasn't nominated for Love and Friendship and that Amy Adams wasn't nominated for Arrival. If they just asked me to pick 5 performances, Royalty Hightower would have been in there for The Fits too, but I do realise that it was a very low budget film and that wasn't going to happen at the Oscars. But how was Amy Adams not nominated? Was she in 6th and 7th (with her performance in Nocturnal Animals too)? Maybe, and that's why it wouldn't be the worst thing for the Academy to do what they do with the Best Picture and allow for more than five nominees. And even better, it might have seen Viola Davis put forward for Best Actress where she belongs and which I think she would have deservedly won. 

Since I haven't seen Florence Foster Jenkins (oops, just didn't get round to it) and Elle (not out in the UK yet), I'll only be able to comment on three of the nominees. 

Emma Stone seems to be favourite for the award, and although it's a bit contradictory, she probably wouldn't make my top 5 for the year, but I also would be fine with her winning, as it's a trickier performance to pitch right than it seems at first sight. She really carries the movie, her comic timing is as usual completely on point, but she also has just the right emotional depth and intensity for the film, never overwhelming the lighter tone of the film, but also finding some real emotional punches, particularly before and during her big audition scene. 

Having said that, I feel like Ruth Negga and Natalie Portman give the better performances.  I wasn't completely taken with Joel Edgerton in Loving but Ruth Negga completely made up for that. It's a mostly quiet and unshowy but still emotionally impassioned performance, sweet and sad and strong, often at the same time, always expressive but never over-the-top. She portrays a Mildred Loving who is both believably an ordinary (in the best sense of the word) person but who quite believably can do the extraordinary when she needs to, and what she has to go through is very extraordinary and terrifying. But you always believe that Mildred can do this, and take her family along with her. Quiet strength is not the easiest thing to get across on camera, but Ruth Negga nails this.

However, in the absence of Viola Davis from this category, I think Natalie Portman for Jackie would be my preferred winner. At first, I was pretty alienated by her performance. The recreation of a stilted TV tour of the White House that Jackie Kennedy had done felt like an awkward impression. Yet, as the film went on and on, I completely forgot I was watching a performance and became more and more wrapped up in Jackie's unravelling psyche and careful rebuilding. Somehow Natalie Portman managed to show every little barrier Jackie puts up, every facade she builds, every tiny bit of control she tries to exercise and yet at the same time shows every little innermost feeling that Jackie is suffering. It's really quite an incredible technical performance, but also a very moving one that never lets you forget the horror that she has just suffered and the historical, life-changing importance of any slight move that she makes. It's not something I think I've seen from Natalie Portman before, but I hope she gets tonnes of opportunities to do as complex and multi-layered characters in the future.

In the Best Actor category, there are surely only two contenders.  Andrew Garfield was fine in the mostly terrible Hacksaw Ridge, managing to do a decent interchange between wide-eyed naivety and fervent determination. Viggo Mortensen was also fine from what I remember of Captain Fantastic and clearly had fun with a quirky, emotionally varied part, but it didn't really stick with me. Ryan Gosling is also fine in La La Land, though his comic timing didn't always land as well as it has in other films, and he was definitely outshone by Emma Stone.

So it comes down to Casey Affleck and Denzel Washington, and if you'd have told me that I would see a better performance than Casey Affleck's by a male actor this awards season, I would have been incredibly dubious. It's a performance that really deserves all the plaudits it has been getting. Lee Chandler, his character, is not someone who ever seemingly says what's he's feeling. But Casey Affleck manages to get it all across with great depth. Lee has been both imprisoned by grief but has also imprisoned himself through guilt and grief many times over. It's not something he can really let on but it is something he is doing to himself continuously. And somehow the performance gets this over in the most emotionally devastating way. The conversation with Michelle Williams towards the end of the film, and the way Casey Affleck conveys both Lee's heartbreak and his absolute refusal to let anyone feel for him, is astonishing and haunting.

But I think Denzel Washington may have managed to conjure something even better as Troy Maxson. To me, he does pretty much everything Casey Affleck does, in communicating the multitude of swirling feelings that Troy is frequently fighting against and trying to hide from everyone and yet also manages to also deftly switch to much bigger emotional outbursts without the quieter, subtler work being lost. In fact, it enhances the quieter work to an even greater degree. Perhaps this is the benefit of having previously played the character for weeks on stage - it is an absolute masterclass of a performance. Troy is very much a ticking timebomb, but not one that is just going to go off in one big explosion. Instead, he is one that has been compressed into being by his experiences and generations of racism that is fizzing away, sending off little splinters into everyone around him. Although like Casey Affleck he benefits from a tremendous script, what he does with the material is brilliant. You can see the way every little piece of his life has burrowed into him, the racism past and present, his horrific early life, his strong moral code and his inability to quite live by it, on Denzel Washington's face at all time. It never has one simple effect or response. He is flickering all the time between rage and bitter resentment, hope and despair, friendship and soul-destroying uncertainty, and about a million other emotions all playing across Troy's face. He's both a charismatic person to spend time with and a tragic and horrible figure that you can never make your mind up about because you can see all the hundreds of layers things that have affected him and made him who he was, which makes you want to empathise with him, but at the same time you sense he knows the destruction he is causing and that he both wants to continue causing this destruction and is slightly helpless in doing so. Given the source material, in any decent actor's hands, Troy would surely have been fascinating. In Denzel Washington's he is like nothing else I have ever seen on screen. I sincerely hope he wins a very well deserved Best Actor Oscar tonight. 

I've not got time to go into the Supporting categories in any depth. There is not a single less-than-excellent performance among them, though I'd argue that Dev Patel and Octavia Spencer should perhaps be in the Best Actor and Best Actress categories (though that would maybe be harsh on Octavia Spencer-s co-lead Taraji P Henson). 

But a quick word for the two rightful favourites. Mahershala Ali has only a little screen time in an incredibly strong ensemble cast and no emotional outburst but does so much with Juan. The film is always honest with exactly who Juan is, yet Mahershala Ali makes him the exactly right amount of sympathetic without letting him off the hook for the lives he is helping ruin. He radiates both warmth and control and is also incredibly important in helping us understand the near silent young Chiron and understand why Chiron develops as the person he does. And all in a few scenes.

As for Viola Davis, her performance is utterly sensational, and possibly the best of all of those nominated this year. Even with a performance as good as Denzel Washington's, we would not be able to feel any empathy for Troy if Viola Davis did not show us the ways. Troy dominates every part of her life and yet she builds this incredibly beautiful and multi-dimensional character who is both utterly entwined with Troy and also massively complex as a separate person. When the bomb under their marriage detonates, the devastating emotional power that Viola Davis finds is heartbreaking and captivating and just digs right into your heart and refuses to leave. She is the most overwhelming favourite in all the categories and deservedly so. 

Cheer Up – and, more importantly, never ever give up

Cheer Up is the sweetly told story of an unsuccessful cheerleading team from a remote Arctic Circle town in Finland over several years as they experience highs and lows on and off the floor and try never to give up.  It mainly focuses on a trio of interesting and contrasting characters – coach Miia, and teenage team members Patu and Aino.

Cheer Up offers an interesting portrait of loneliness and sadness mixed with hope and determination and does not go for any hokey Hollywood story or clinical neatness. Instead it is gentle, affectionate and heartfelt, capturing small significant personal cares that maybe don’t fit to the overall story of the team, but which are personal and feel very natural and real. There are moments of genuine sadness, particularly in Patu’s story as she deals with grief and family challenges, and also episodes of wonderfully blunt humour, most memorably with Miia’s dating adventures.

But as genuinely nice and enjoyable as the film is, and despite brimming with some proper characters – especially irrepressible Miia – the film doesn’t quite add up to more than the sum of its parts.  Perhaps it is because of a slight lack of structure and focus, we drift in and out of the team and it feels a bit more like three vaguely connected story rather than three parts of the whole.  The three individual stories could have been lost in a tighter or neater story, and it is definitely an upside that they weren’t. The film will leave you with a smile on your face, but perhaps not quite deliver the emotional punch or impact that is had the potential to do.

Bliss! - searching in all the wrong places

I genuinely don’t like to rip into a movie that clearly didn’t have much budget behind it but Bliss is a very disappointing waste of potential. It is the story of a teenage girl, Tasha, who discovers her father is not the abusive one she was brought up with and takes herself off to Norway to find him was an interesting premise that doesn’t deliver.

There were some good elements.  Freya Park’s gives a good performance with little to work from bringing out Tasha’s teenage confusion, wistfulness and determination and there is some gentle charisma in support from Lars Arentz-Hansen. The film looks pretty enough in outdoor scenes (some internal shots weren’t properly in focus) and director Rita Osei has a good eye for getting maximum impact out of a nice location.

The problem is an incredibly weak, sub-soap opera script, worsened by some really poor editing. Nearly every scene is cut ridiculously short, often four or five lines in. Tasha’s journey’s climax is at a music festival, a singer begins to sing a song and then about a minute in, it just cuts to the end, instead of giving us the full scene and a sense that we actually built to something.  The dialogue is flat and often very cheesy. This means there is no chance for the development of characters or for the story or film to breathe. The film is then further suffocated by an incredibly jarring and overwhelming score which sucks the drama out of the scenes rather than supporting it.

The fact that I did care a bit about Tasha and what happened to her, and found her believable is a credit to Parks who deserved a better vehicle than Bliss.