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.

The Fits - the world is unsettling and beautiful through a child's eyes

The Fits is a stunning and engrossing study of a young girl’s desire to belong. It tells the story of Toni, a young boxer, who trains with and helps out her brother at a local gym. Toni becomes intrigued by the dynamic and raucous girls’ dance troupe that trains at the centre. She joins the group just as an epidemic of unexplained fits affects one girl after the other, affecting the close knit dynamic of the group and making the unaffected Toni feel like an outsider all over again.

The Fits has all the ingredients to be an excellent film anyway, but it is truly elevated by a phenomenal performance from Royalty Hightower.  She perfectly captures Toni’s confused emotions, desire to belong and committed intensity but also beautifully portrays lightness and joy and imagination. It is not just a wonderfully nuanced performance but also a physical challenge which she meets superbly.

In the post-film Q&A, director Anna Rose Holmer explained that the film-makers had expected to cast an older girl than Hightower, who was around 9 years old at the time of filming. Not only is it near impossible to imagine anyone else in the role, but has the added benefit of allowing a curious child eye’s view into the film, a very different perspective to a teenager’s.

Hightower’s performance is surrounded by a poetically beautiful and deeply intriguing and mysterious film. The direction by Holmer is wonderfully assured, with the fits themselves shot stunningly and evocatively. The dancers and boxers amazing physical prowess is beautifully and viscerally captured. The pacing of the film adds to the otherworldliness.  The film deliberately gives no simple answers, instead we fully get Toni’s sense of mystery of the new world she has entered and it’s suddenly strange goings on.  The story takes place almost all in one location and much of it is seen from Toni’s perspective behind a door, through a window or otherwise slightly physically isolated. It is an incredibly effective way to create the contagious and oppressive atmosphere as the fits spread and to capture Toni’s emotional journey.

The Fits is a unique and beguiling film which suggests a very bright and brilliant future for both actress Hightower and director Holmer. 

Sparrows - taking a bad turn in small-town Iceland

Sparrows

This review contains spoilers about upsetting topics towards the end of the film.

Sometimes you’re enjoying a film and then a scene doesn’t work, but overall you still have a positive reflection of the film. Unfortunately Sparrows wasn’t one of these films.

For 80% or more of the film, it was really excellent and then there was one misjudged scene but it was starting to win me back. Unfortunately, the concluding sequences were so spectacularly misjudged that there was no way back.  Using extreme sexual violence against a young woman as a plot point for character development for a male character is rarely acceptable. The way in which Sparrows does this is in the most awful, insensitive and risible way, coming out of nowhere, and leaving me disgusted with how it is resolved. This comes after a scene earlier in the film where the lead character appears to be sexually assaulted and which left me uncomfortable, but which the film could almost cope with. But someone should have stopped the final sequence. Whatever vague point the film seems to be trying to make about young people being out of their depth and corrupted by their surroundings could have been made in a dozen other ways, without resorting to where the story goes.

Leading up to this, there was much that was good about the film. It was beautifully shot and was a really interesting take on a troubled father – son relationship. The character development of both was interesting up to that point and the performances were good. The sense of place of small-town, isolated Iceland came out really well, especially teenage boredom in such a setting. What a shame that this was all thrown away, presumably because of some senseless desire to shock the audience rather than by being true to the characters and the film.

A Flag Without a Country - dreaming of the future while the present holds you back

This unusual documentary is an interesting tale of Kurdish celebrity, mixing doc footage, scripted scenes and reconstructions of past events.  It cuts between the life of pilot Nuriman and singer Helan (aka Helly Luv), recently returned to Kurdistan from Finland where her family fled during her childhood.

It’s a charming film, and a different take to what you might expect to a film about a place looking after thousands of refugees and with the fight against ISIS creeping into view as the film progresses. But instead of focussing on the dark and tragic, the message here is of unusual characters seeking achieve their dreams and serve their people by inspiring them against the odds.

The best sections are undoubtedly those about indefatigable pilot Nuriman, whose determination and geniality stop their being anything laughable about his slightly madcap schemes – this is a man who first gained fame in Kurdistan by building a homemade plane and being a self-taught pilot, in order to fly to visit a long lost love in Iran during the Iran-Iraq war – and surviving! His spirits are a little lower after a plane crash during an election stunt, but he is determined to inspire refugee kids by building another plane with them and teaching them the basics of being a pilot. His journey is wonderfully and affectionately told.

The mixture of recreated scenes and documentary worked slightly less well on the scenes about singer Helan, as they had a bit of reality TV feel rather than the more sincere tone of a documentary and the contrast between her current showbiz life and the harshness of her childhood sometimes jarred rather than strengthening the power of each story by providing contrast to each other. It might not have helped that her story opens with her scavenging and borrowing AK47s, a lion and some Kurdish refugee children from Syria. It turned to be for a music video, but it was a very unnerving start! But Helan also shows an indefatigable spirit and it is hard not to warm to her eventually.

This is a film trying to show the power of the belief of a people without their own state through two very individual characters and maybe occasionally overdid the national pride rather than being fully objective. But it is understandable give the context of the film as the consequences of the conflict in Syria and the rest of Iraq spill over into Kurdistan and the Peshmerga organise to fight back. All in all this is a different and interesting look at Kurdistan and a portrait of a place growing in confidence and success just before calamity starts to seep through its borders.

Slash - coming of age can be a very out there experience

Slash is an amiable coming-of-age movie that captures teenage confusion and alienation really convincingly.  Two disaffected teens, Neil and Julia, share a secret hobby – writing fan and slash fiction. For Neil this has been entirely private, Julia is immersed in the online world and when she discovers Neil’s writing, convinces him to join in as well.

The film has all the elements you want from this type of film – it’s fun and funny, takes it’s leads emotional confusion seriously without ever being indulgent or po-faced. And of course there is a loud mouthed, sarky best mate and comically unhelpful parents. Ok that’s not the most original thing to have in a coming-of-age drama, but I’m not complaining – sometimes things are near-mandatory in a genre for a reason! It has just the right amount of affection for sci-fi and fan fiction without undue reverence.  It feels like we’re laughing with the main characters rather than at them, but of course with the odd eye-roll for some pretentious extremes.  It also realises that online communities can be more important for a lot of people – teenagers and adults – without forgetting that there is still a real, offline life to be lived as well and one in which there can be real consequences.

There are really good central performances, particularly from Hannah Marks as Julia. If I had one criticism, it felt that Julia was occasionally relegated to Neil’s cheerleader by the script, which the performance and character development done by Marks didn’t deserve. It would have been really great if these characters could have been joint protagonists to a greater extent, rather than Julia being the foot on the accelerator for Neil’s story. But this is just a minor quibble to a very enjoyable witty and emotionally realistic film.

Go Home - digging up the unsettling ghosts of childhood wartime trauma

Go Home is the story of Nada’s return to her grandparents’ in Lebanon after the war drove her family to France.  The house is long abandoned and misused by the neighbourhoods and tensions from the war still run deep in the present.

Go Home is a psychodrama that is focused on Nada’s conflicted feelings and suppressed memories about her childhood during the war. She is clearly traumatised without fully understanding why. She wants to restore the house to restore her grandfather’s legacy but also can’t really remember him enough to know what she is fighting for. The film has some interesting ideas about memory, forgiveness and legacy, particularly in the context of when terrible things have happened and have never really been resolved.

I liked the way that the film approached this psychological trauma by using horror tropes. The wintry spookiness and chillingly neglected home, combined with a clever use of sound led to an intense and unsettling atmosphere in which the drama plays out for much of the film. The fragmented flashbacks of Nada’s childhood act as ghosts slowly revealing the mystery at the centre of the film.

What lets the film down slightly is a bit of lack of context for why Nada has decided to come back now and why she had decided now is the time the house and her family’s reputation must be restored – it isn’t clear whether this is a random decision on a trip to Lebanon or if other things have driven here. The lack of context makes Nada a slightly alienating character rather than understandable or relatable. She is so determined to carry on against her family’s wishes and active rejection by the local community.  It sometimes seems she is only motivated by stubbornness (or because the plot of the film needs her to) than a clear motivation to be so determined in the face of such strong opposition.

Still, the film brings to life well how hard it can be to leave the past behind and how the actions of one generation can impact the next and the film is genuinely unsettling at times. It is a shame that in not developing Nada as a character further that it didn’t quite deliver the emotional punch that it needed to. 

Parched - the funny, frank and moving lives of a wonderful group of Indian women

One of the best films I have seen at this year’s Edinburgh Film Festival is Parched, a story of women in a conservative village in rural Rajasthan. Parched is funny and moving, frank and frightening.  It is brilliantly and beautifully directed by Leena Yadav with stunning, heartbreaking and hilarious performances.

Although a deeply affecting and often genuinely shocking story of women’s oppression, it is also vibrant and life-affirming. Yadav has also managed to make this story feel both universal and very specific to a single place, somewhere whose traditions, customs and social structures are meaningfully brought to life.

Like Sand Storm, the film is partly about the clash between the new and traditional. It shares that film’s authenticity, which is probably because both films were constructed from real stories related to the film makers and told unflinchingly and sympathetically, never making the characters stereotyped or victims but genuine heroines of their own stories, regardless of their choices.

For all the beauty of the film, and warmth and wit of the script, this is above all a film marked by three stunning central performances.  Radhika Apte brings out Lajjo’s bottomless warmth and determination to find happiness. Her joys are infections and her sorrows deeply impactful. Bijli might have been some ‘tart with a heart’ cliché in the hands of a less sensitive story teller but the film refuses to go there. Instead Surveen Chawla brings her to life as fearless and brittle, showing someone who makes the most of the limited choices and agency that she has and someone who refuses to ever give up ownership of her own life, however dark and frightening it gets.

But even beyond these two excellent performances, Tannishtha Chatterjee stands out. She came up with the original concept for the film whilst talking to women in a similar village while on location for another film. Perhaps this connection adds to the amazing depth and passion of her performance. Chatterjee brings to life the tug between tradition and duty, between modern ideas and empowerment. She creates in Rani an endless fascinating and moving character, who the audience is utterly tied to, even when she’s acting in a less sympathetic manner to her new daughter-in-law.  It is an utterly convincing and believable performance and she is the film’s heart and soul, with the most moving journey of all.

There are many things that make Parched a joy – the humour, the insight, the emotion, the gorgeous cinematography, the confident and convincing storytelling. But above all it contains a trio of wonderful performances that deserve to be widely seen.

Sand Storm - how do you choose between freedom and damaging family duty?

Sand Storm is an excellent and interesting depiction of family life in a community I knew next to nothing about – a Bedouin village in Israel, starting to become more integrated with the modern world and facing challenges adapting to this.

The film focuses on student Layla, who has a somewhat stormy relationship with her traditionalist mother and a deteriorating one with the father who allows her to go to college and is teaching her to drive, but whose limited progressivism doesn’t run too deep as he has also just married a second wife.  Layla’s determination to be in control of her own life, and her misjudgement of each parent’s views will go on to cause a storm within the family and a huge dilemma for Layla with her beloved younger sisters possible collateral damage.

The characters of Layla and her mother Jalila are really well developed. It is not at all clear how they will react to any situation but the choice they make is always believable and feels true to the character.  Both these lead actors pitch their performances superbly and one of the fantastic choices that director Elite Zexer makes is allowing the actors to have several wordless exchanges, understanding that sometimes things are more powerful if not said out loud.

In the Q&A following the film, Zexer describes how she gathered the story from her long friendships with Bedouin families, over ten or so years. Although an outsider, she is clearly passionate about the status of Bedouin families and villages, and this connection helps the audience be immersed in this family’s life. She brings out the characters without judgement and in a way that doesn’t feel like she is treating them like some exotic other, but someone’s whose internal world she is familiar with. She is particularly good at drawing out the impact on a closer relationship with the modern world and the turmoil that brings to tradition and social structures, particularly when it comes to the place of women.

In researching what films to see at this year’s festival, I came across a review praising this film but noting that the reviewer felt they’d already seen this story because there had been a few films about women in conservative Middle Eastern societies recently. I suspect that the number of women in conservative Middle Eastern societies isn’t that different to the number of white men in the US, and I’m pretty sure we’ve had more than a few films about them in the last few years, many with roughly the same story and roughly the same setting. But anyway, enough of the snark! One of the great things about Sand Storm and Elite Zexer’s storytelling is that this feels like a story I haven’t seen before, with characters who were new to me. There are millions of different stories about women in that and every other region waiting to be told. Sand Storm was a wonderful character drama, that was gripping and beautiful, funny and sad, and that’s what matters about it. It was a fascinating insight into a world I didn’t know about and, in Layla, a character as vital and interesting as any you’ll find in most films.

Mother - a twisted and darkly comic small town mystery

Like The Homecoming, my first film at EIFF 2016, this is a comedy drama with an unusual central story, although the humour here is much dryer and darker and the setting is Estonia.

It is confidently written and told with a brilliant central performance from Tiina Malberg that holds the film together. And amidst the deliberate absurdist tone, the film makers are careful to make the characters, their faults, and flaws, and motivations realistic rather than extreme and exaggerated.

The central story is that Elsa is caring at home for her comatose son Lauri, with no help from her insensitive husband, cleaning obsessively and making endless cups of coffee for the stream of visitors who come to see Lauri, including his hungover doctor and a small town police officer more at home looking for stolen jumpers. It soon emerges that Lauri is in the coma because of a mysterious shooting and his life savings are missing.

The film takes place almost entirely in the family home, and the director uses this location really well to emphasise and as a stand in for both the claustrophobia of a small town and Elsa’s feeling of being trapped by circumstance. Malberg is excellent in capturing all of Elsa’s complicated feelings, her frustration and concern, her passion and her greed, all with a real dry and subtle comic undertone.

The filmmakers use the repetitive structure of the home visits really well to gradually reveal more and more of the mystery of the shooting and the missing money, taking a cynical view of human nature and maintaining the black humour throughout.

Perhaps with a bigger budget, the film could have set up the backstory more and weaved even more of a web, giving us a few more glimpses of life outside the family home. However, this film is really effective story-telling and the stripped down feel gives the film a real individuality. It is focused, deliciously dark and a very enjoyable film.

The Homecoming - amusing family misadventures in Iceland

I almost picked ‘The Homecoming’ on the tagline alone – ‘The best Icelandic incest comedy ever’. It certainly sounded like bold film-making. It turned out the story line isn’t quite as alarming as that sounds (although still occasionally uncomfortable) – Gunni discovers his son’s new girlfriend is the daughter he abandoned before she was born.  It is also more of a comedy-drama than pure comedy – though it does have its very funny moments, including three of the most progressively awkward dinner table scenes you will ever see.  The last one in particular was an impressive mix of dramatic tension, farce and family drama.

The acting is excellent, particularly from the actors playing the parents.  Hilmar Jonsson brings out a Dad lost in his own life and is the crucial part of the film. Although a little hypocritical and all the mistakes of the film are of his own making, he just about keeps Gunni sympathetic and stops the farce becoming losing too much credibility.  Harpa Arnardóttir as mum Herdis is a fantastic mixture of brittle and optimistic, providing excellent support to the main character.

The tonal shifts between comedy and drama are generally handled pretty well, including within scenes, without feeling forced.  Maybe on occasion the emotional impact doesn’t land as hard as it could as the scene has up to now been played for laughs.  However, as well as being hysterically funny at times, it is a real drama - the mistakes that the characters do have real life and hard hitting emotional consequences.

If I had one criticism, it would be that the film took a little while to get going and, although I appreciate this is partly for scene setting and to establish Gunni and Herdis in their wider world, I wasn’t sure that delaying the meat of the story added as much as it could. Once Gunni’s spiral of deceit starts though, this is an enjoyable, funny and sometimes moving film. 

The Academy didn’t nominate Inside Out. They are obviously idiots.

I feel like this blog post should be titled ‘The Academy didn’t nominate Inside Out. They are obviously idiots’. Oh wait, it is.

Still, I will handle it to the, they did manage to nominate eight good films without nominating something as awful and racist as American Sniper. So you know, one in the plus column with one in the minus column for the Academy there.

My take in alphabetical order on the nominees is below , a bit of a whistlestop because I’m being last minute again! But if you really don’t want to read through it all, I guess I would rank them thusly:

Brooklyn

The Revenant

Room

Spotlight

Bridge of Spies

Mad Max: Fury Road

The Martian

The Big Short

Which means, we are starting with my least favourite, The Big Short. Least favourite is definitely relative here, because I really, really enjoyed The Big Short, even if they did give Ryan Gosling a stupid haircut and a bad fake tan. Oh wait, that’s not what I’m supposed to be factoring in is it….

The Big Short definitely has a lot going for it, good performances, a well-crafted, witty and interesting script and some fairly snappy direction. But somehow, despite taking its subject reasonably seriously at the same time as being very entertaining, it all feels a bit hollow and flippant. It styles itself as pulling no punches, but its maybe not as brave as it could be. It dazzles and sizzles but doesn’t really get to the heart of the matter, leaving a bit of an empty, helpless anger rather than landing a killer blow. But hey, it’s still a good film, and an interesting way to tackle the story, it just seems to make The Wolf of Wall Street have considerable emotional depth. A movie I would definitely recommend to people, but Best Picture of the year (which it has an outside shot for), hmmm let’s move on.

Bridge of Spies is proper good grown-up Spielberg, if not quite in the same league as Lincoln. This is a film that is perfectly crafted, exciting, morally interesting and dramatic. But it is in the bottom half of my list because what makes it so good is also what means it doesn’t feel particularly groundbreaking. The joy comes from a fantastic story brilliantly, rather than innovatively told. I’ve already described just how good Rylance is, and Tom Hanks is the perfect movie star in the lead role.  It does mean that there aren’t really any more characters that really stand out, but those two more than make up for that. It feels like this year’s Argo (it’s probably a slightly better film on balance) but I don’t really see it winning.

I can’t put my finger on why Brooklyn is my favourite film of all those nominated. I’m sure a good 80% of that is down to Saoirse Ronan’s utterly amazing performance. There isn’t anything overtly special about it. But maybe that’s the thing, of all the things it is most rooted in ordinary people having ordinary experiences, yet it brings to life how much these can be the most interesting stories. It is universally well acted, with particular shout outs to Julie Walters  and Eva Birtwistle who makes a brief and memorable impression. It is also beautifully scripted and filmed, subtle and gorgeous at the same time. Eilish’s story feels universal and unique and it brings out every little emotion and heartbreak from human life without ever being introspective or indulgent. It is high class film making to carve out something so perfect as Brooklyn, and I really need to read the source material as I can only imagine that it had to originate out of a truly special book. So yeah, I liked this one, but sadly it’s got no chance of winning.

I’m not sure I have words for Mad Max: Fury Road. I feel like I should just review it with words like Boom! And Wow! And Crikey! (ok not crikey, crikey is an awful word). It is a visual and audio experience like little else and if it doesn’t win Best Editing, the Academy are officially the wrongiest.  It is a massively impressive cinematic experience that is properly mind-blowing. I suppose the only problem was occasionally it has to take a breath (definitely needed) and the script is a little ropey at these points, but it doesn’t really matter when there is a big car chase or spectacular stunt five seconds later. Best Film of the Year, hmmm not sure what it would be like in repeat viewing, and it’s probably one for the big screen only, so maybe not. Visual achievement of the not just year but decade. Maybe!

Ah, The Martian, how fun you were, a proper Hollywood blockbuster, an overstuffed cast of fantastic actors (please in future give the likes of Kristin Wiig and Jessica Chastain something real to do….), a proper adventure of a story and an enjoyable central performance. I don’t really have much bad to say about it (well one thing, what was with all the random crowd back on earth shots? They were so cheesy!), but I have to say I can’t say it stayed with me in the way that Brooklyn, The Revenant or Room did, and it didn’t have the wow factor of Mad Max.

It looks like The Revenant is going to win Best Picture, and there are definitely worse films that have won in the past – this is not last year when a really very good Inarritu film beat an absolutely incredible film. Much as I loved Birdman, The Revenant is 10 times the film. Epic and wild,  at every level full of the danger and rawness of the wilderness depicted. Even if it really does stretch the ability to suspend your disbelief to the limits (it has a gritty realness, but frankly Leonardo DiCaprio should have hypothermia about 17 times by the end of the film!), it is utterly compelling. It is proper film making with flair. From that opening attack on the camp onwards, my heart was in my mouth and it was a gruelling endurance test in the very best way. I think rarely has a film brought its environment in such a tangible way and it was as visually stunning its own way as Mad Max. If it lacked something, it was perhaps a real emotional connection or hook, particularly if compared to Brooklyn or Room, but the ambition and scale of the film makes it hard to criticise this. If it is to win Best Picture, then it is really deserved.

The fact that the makers of Room made such a dark film not feel as grim or gruelling as the Revenant is probably one of the reasons that it is one of the best films this year. I don’t think it is quite as uplifting or life-affirming as some critics suggested, I think the reality of the story is just too awful for it to be that. But it is a film that manages to find the hope in the darkness without seeming shallow, disingenuous or schmaltzy. The two leads are utterly compelling, and backed up by a wonderful supporting cast. Instead of going for the hysterical take on such a story, it grounds it in a very convincing portrayal of a mother and son and their relationship, in a way that makes us really see both the small world of ‘Room’ at the beginning, and the bigger wide world later on, as Jack must see it.  To see the world from the eyes of a child is a hard thing for a film to pull off, and to do it so believably from the eyes of a child who is in a situation none of us have been in, is something really special instead. It has an outside shot, and would be a worthy winner.

Finally, Spotlight, another film about a difficult, dark subject and also one about an important contemporary subject that provides a compelling, dramatic and interesting story.  It’s a complicated story to tell, but one that the filmmakers tackle in a direct and fearless way making best use of an excellent ensemble cast (to me the standouts are Michael Keaton and Stanley Tucci). I think what it does so well (perhaps unlike The Big Short) is show the inter-complicity of the different institutions and how institutions and individuals can come together to perpetuate evils, but still allows for complexity and for a belief that things can actually change if they are properly addressed and confronted. Its ability to look at things in a complex but clear sighted way is what makes it such a good film and an important one. It’s another that has an outside shot at winning in what is a much wider field that in most years, and although not top of my list, it would be hard to say it didn’t deserve it.

Here's my take on which of those 20 white people most deserve to win an Oscar in 2016.

So here it is, my annual blog posts where I decide I know better than that random (and apparently super white, super male and super middle aged) collective known as the Academy (of something Motion Pictures or something else. Can’t be bothered to Google it). Yep, it's a bit long, but the performances are worth talking about this year, for ever so many reasons.

I’m going to start with the Acting categories in this blog and give the run down on Best Picture in the next one.

So let’s start with Supporting Actor, partly as it’s the best place to discuss the biggest issue of this year’s Oscars - #Oscarssowhite

The nominees are:

Christian Bale - The Big Short

Tom Hardy - The Revenant

Mark Ruffalo - Spotlight

Mark Rylance - Bridge of Spies

Sylvester Stallone – Creed

First thing to say is the favourites are Rylance and Stallone and I didn’t see Creed so I can’t comment on whether Stallone deserves this.

Mark Rylance is absolutely brilliant and it is really difficult to believe anyone was better than him. Mesmeric, fascinating and unpredictable, basically exactly what you’d hope for from Mark Rylance, but also adjusted to fit the film. It let Tom Hanks do his big Jimmy Stewart all-American moral conscience thing and ensure that both parts fitted together really well.  It truly supported the film, and was a critical part of the film – Rudolf Abel is not the big villain of the piece, but nor is he or should he be entirely sympathetic. It’s a fine line to tread and one that Rylance does superbly.

To me, the next best performance is probably Mark Ruffalo who, as he so often does, pitches just the right mix of sincerity and cynicism. He is very effective in the role, but also less memorable or interesting that Rylance. Mark Ruffalo is always excellent in pretty much everything I can think of, and will surely win, and deserve to win, an Oscar one day. But on the scale of Ruffalo Performances (it’s like the Richter scale but less earthquakey) this isn’t exactly a stand out one. Very, very good, but it is such an ensemble piece, and my favourite performance was probably from Stanley Tucci who stole every scene he was in.

Christian Bale is fine in another ensemble piece, The Big Short, but again, this wasn’t one of Bale’s best performances, nor does it feel particularly Oscar worthy. And to be honest, it occasionally felt a little mannered and forced. Most of the wisecracking bits of The Big Short are in the other segment with Steve Carell and Ryan Gosling, the latter of whom is the one who narrates and breaks the fourth wall. Bale’s story line is largely separate to them, and sometimes it felt like he was upping the social awkwardness and oddball nature of his character to fit with the tone of the film, rather than it coming naturally from his character. I have to say I’d be pretty disappointed if he won.

As for Tom Hardy, of all the many awards worthy performances that he has given over the last few years, this is the one you nominate him for? The Revenant is a wild and epic film, and like Bale it occasionally felt like Hardy was forcing his performance to fit with the scope and tone of the film. It was still a very good performance, I don’t think Tom Hardy can be anything other than watchable (ok maybe I’m just careful about what I choose!) but he just occasionally felt a bit too over the top, a bit too overtly villainous. Hardy is so good at conveying a hidden dangerousness (for example in The Drop) that the slightly more cartoonish dangerousness here was a little jarring. I don’t want to suggest it was a bad performance, he was frequently chilling and was able to project a nastiness that drove the narrative. To me, it just contrasts with the way in which Rylance pitched his performance so that it made all the other parts of the film work as well.

There will always be people missing from categories, overlooked performances and perceived snubs, and it seems the most egregious here were Idris Elba and Benicio del Toro, both nominated for the Bafta. I haven’t seen Beasts of No Nation as I don’t have Netflix, but given that he seems to have been nominated for, and in many cases won, so many awards leading up to the Oscars, it seems shocking that he wasn’t nominated.  Del Toro was fascinating in Sicario, you never knew what the character would do next or what he would be further capable of. It was his continual unknowableness (I’m sure there is a better word than that) that gave the audience an additional way into Emily Blunt’s character and how out of depth she was. We were out of our depth with Del Toro and the uncertainty he inspired mirrored hers as the film progressed.

I know many people will think in the scheme of things that it doesn’t matter that much that only white actors were nominated for the Oscars but I really feel it does on so many levels. #Oscarssowhite is in many ways a symptom of a much wider, and much more serious diversity problem in Hollywood, in entertainment and frankly in life in general. Some have said that Idris Elba wasn’t nominated because his film was made by Netflix and the establishment are not keen on Netflix. But his film was on Netflix because despite having a well-known and well-respected director, and a big star in Elba, they couldn’t get it financed traditionally because it was an African story with an all-black cast. Congratulations Idris, have your doubly-discriminated against card, collect ten and get a free coffee at Starbucks.

Why is it important? Well the Oscars is sold to us as giving an idea of what denotes ‘quality’ film making, but what it is giving us is a reasonably homogenous membership with tastes that say it is white, male, straight, rich that is important and good. And that does influence us culturally, It keeps telling us that these are the important people, these are the important stories. It influences how people see the world and how they think the make-up of the public world. I think film and other culture is incredibly important in reinforcing how wonderfully varied the world is, about helping us empathise and understand people who have a completely different background, to making all humans be valued as humans. Anytime I read a book or seen a film or listened to a song that allows me to see a completely different perspective, see the world in a different way is always special. But the Oscars is putting a mark of quality, giving a funding boost or additional exposure to only certain groups and it seems to be getting worse than getting better.

Yes it is a much, much wider problem than just the Oscars, but if Academy members were willing to look further afield, stop seeing things through only the lens of what they can identify with personally, be more willing to reward the brave, the unusual, the new perspective, that will give those film makers and actors the cachet and prestige to be able to make more films that give something other than the same white, male perspective that we have had for decades. We can’t just keep hearing the excuses that the parts aren’t there – who wins an Oscar influences who gets cast, who can open a film, who we expect to see in a film. It might stop sorry excuses from people like the Coen brothers (who I love, and who are too talented to need such a stupid excuse) that writers set out to write characters, rather than deliberately write a black character or a Chinese character. Because what’s happening is they and others are writing the default white man with every character, deliberately but perhaps subconsciously. If Academy members could think a bit further afield than the same narrow section of films, then maybe they will start to realise that characters don’t always default to white, just like people don’t.  The Academy can’t change things by itself, but hopefully diversifying the membership will stop a repeat of what has happened the last two years. Because if I ever see as crap a performance as that by Bradley Cooper beat out as astonishing one as David Oyelowo again, my head might explode.

I’m writing this in a hurry and diversity in film both in front and behind the camera is such a big topic, I can only scratch the surface. As I think I’m becoming more rambling and less coherent by this point, probably time to move on to Best Supporting Actress.

Now this is a weird one, there doesn’t seem to be a clear favourite but the nominees are:

Jennifer Jason Leigh - The Hateful Eight

Rooney Mara - Carol

Rachel McAdams - Spotlight

Alicia Vikander - The Danish Girl

Kate Winslet - Steve Jobs

Two of these, Rooney Mara and Alicia Vikander are clearly co-leads, but it says a lot about the strength of the Best Actress race this year that they have been put forward for the supporting award.

To me, Vikander’s performance is the outstanding one here. Her performance seems to run the full spectrum of human emotion, managing to make Gerda a brilliant character both big and warm and exuberant in the more public scenes and nuanced, and emotionally subtle in the scenes with just her and Lili. She balances a character who is trying to be supportive but has her own needs and gets the balance right. Like with Mark Rylance, her performance is critical in allowing the character of Lili to take the path she does in a way that works for the audience, and balancing the film between Lili and Gerda instead of allowing either to overshadow the other. Had she not pitched this right, the film would have been undermined. It is an excellent performance, although it is so central, it really does feel like the co-lead performance.

Rooney Mara on the other hand, also giving a co-lead performance, does feel a little overshadowed by Cate Blanchett’s brilliance. I mean, of course, most actors do tend to be, as Blanchett is as good as any actor out there. Maybe it is the contrast, but Mara’s performance was one that feels like a good performance while you’re watching the film, but afterwards it’s hard to remember what, if anything, was particularly good about it. She’s not particularly charming, or enigmatic, or mysterious, or compelling. It just all feels a bit detached, which I suppose Therese is meant to be, but it’s not clear if this is deliberate or down to a lack of charisma and spark in Mara’s acting. It may be that I need to watch the film again to appreciate it, but where I remember the complexity of Carol, and Blanchett’s brilliant performance several weeks ago, Mara’s performance feels forgettable.

Kate Winslet is certainly not forgettable in Steve Jobs, and she is clearly having a lot of fun. She manages to just about stay in control of Aaron Sorkin’s script and let the character be more than just the lines she says. She is the part of the film for the audience to identify with, and the perspective that her character gives the audience on Steve Jobs is critical for understanding what Sorkin is trying to say about him. It’s not the most subtle performance, but perhaps that isn’t what is called for. It doesn’t have the emotional depth or range of Vikander’s performance, so although I wouldn’t be upset if Winslet won it, I’m not sure she really deserves it.

Jennifer Jason Leigh also gives a big fun performance in the Hateful Eight, and does a brilliant job of not allowing Daisy to slip into caricature, which would have been easy. It’s such a no-holds barred performance of grim spite that she makes sure the audience both loves and hates (or loves to hate) Daisy, which is exactly what the story needs. We have to hope both that she survives and doesn’t survive at different times as our sympathies switch between characters and Leigh really balances it right. It won’t win, but it is a very different performance from the others on show, that again, it would be hard to be disappointed if she did pull off a shock.

I haven’t got a huge amount to say about Rachel McAdams here. She was very solid, sympathetic and determined but I literally have no idea what about her performance made anyone say this is the best supporting actress of the year. She isn’t given much to do, but does well enough with what she’s given, and that’s all that there is to really say about it!

On to Best Actor, which it almost seems pointless in discussing because Leonardo di Caprio is going to win for the Revenant. He’s been nominated for better performances, but for sheer commitment to a role he probably deserves it. Unlike Tom Hardy, di Caprio does a better job of meshing the wildness of his performance with the wildness of the film, somehow capturing something between human and animal that can survive in an unforgiving wilderness, but that even at his starkest and most lost, still maintains some humanity.

There are other nominees and they are:

Bryan Cranston - Trumbo

Matt Damon - The Martian

Michael Fassbender - Steve Jobs

Eddie Redmayne - The Danish Girl

I didn’t get around to seeing Trumbo, but hey it’s Bryan Cranston, I’m sure he was good!

And in brief the others are:

Matt Damon – excellently cast and a lot of fun. It’s not easy to play the hero or indeed any part when you are mainly talking to yourself but this is one of the best, if not the best, performance I can remember Matt Damon giving (well up there with The Informant) and he gave the performance that was needed to stop what could have been a very bleak story becoming to bleak, but without venturing into silliness or flippancy.

Michael Fassbender – committed, steely and a decent job with a thankless task. Steve Jobs is a strange film, trying to say something without being completely sure what that is. But Fassbender does his best to bring to life a character that Sorkin is trying to sell as too brilliant for his time and also too flawed for the real world. He absolutely disappears into the role, and even if I don’t think it was his best performance ever, it makes up for Fassbender not getting nominated for Shame.

Eddie Redmayne – emotionally sincere and well-crafted. I’m in a bit of a weird position with the Danish Girl since I found out that it was based on a novel that turned Lili Elbe’s life into a bit more of a stereotypically unhappy one that it was in real life, which has made me feel a bit uncomfortable about the film when it is selling itself as a true story, but then stealing much of Lili’s happiness from her. And there remains the fact that a lot of trans people are understandably upset that such an important trans role didn’t go to a trans actress. Still this isn’t Redmayne’s fault really, and it shouldn’t take away from what was a moving performance that really matched perfectly with Vikander’s and brought a relationship that felt true and deep to life. Even before the character starts more overtly presenting as female, I did feel like I was watching a female character on screen, however she was dressed or styled, and it is an achievement to do that convincingly. But it is hard to separate it from the context and therefore hard to hope that Redmayne gets a second win in a row.

And finally onto Best Actress (yes finally!), where the nominees are:

Cate Blanchett - Carol

Brie Larson - Room

Jennifer Lawrence - Joy

Charlotte Rampling - 45 Years

Saoirse Ronan – Brooklyn

I’m going to try keep this short, or I may still be writing next week.

Cate Blanchett is brilliant in Carol, bringing a complex and not always obviously sympathetic character to life in a way that make you really care for her and want her to find happiness, she is gloriously elegant and witty but also emotionally brittle in a sometimes destructive way. Few people other than Cate Blanchett could have played this role and it was a memorable performance, with small echoes of Blue Jasmine given the character’s social background, but distinctive and compelling in a completely different way.

Jennifer Lawrence is definitely the best thing about the slightly odd film that is Joy, and as usual somehow manages to play a character of a completely different age to her in a convincing way, creating someone careworn and exhausted but also determined and creative. But it’s not her year, and she isn’t one of the standouts.

Charlotte Rampling is undoubtedly very good in 45 Years but I don’t think I’ve ever watched Charlotte Rampling without being aware that I’m watching Charlotte Rampling Acting and it wasn’t that different in 45 Years. That doesn’t mean that she wasn’t interesting or compelling, it’s just compared to what the remaining two actresses were doing, I just don’t think it was that special, or ever felt like as real as person as the people played by Brie Larson and Saoirse Ronan.

Well I certainly don’t envy voters their choice between Brie Larson and Saoirse Ronan, and although Larson is almost certain to win, I know I would give it to Ronan 99 times out of 100.

Brie Larson is so good, not only in her own performance but in drawing out such a brilliant one from Jacob Tremblay too. The character evolves through the film, and she is utterly convincing, even when the character acts out in a way that the surrounding characters might not want her to do or expect her to do. She absolutely carries the film, and it really is a masterclass in emotional realism.

But, and it’s a big but, there is Saoirse Ronan. There is no way I can capture how good her performance is here. I’m putting it up there with Julianne Moore in Far From Heaven and Lesley Manville in Another Year in my favourite performances of recent years.  Eilish is not a demonstrative person. She isn’t given to outbreaks of emotion or big speeches, Ronan doesn’t give big speeches telling you what’s she’s thinking. But Eilish is caught up in her life pulling her in so many directions, so many conflicting loyalties, duties and emotions, between Ireland and America and the myriad of people in her life. She could have been passive, cold, uninteresting, unsympathetic or boring. But Ronan does something I’ve rarely seen. She conveys one, or two, or three emotions at once, just by changing her expression slightly, by changing her tone slightly, by moving slightly differently. You instantly know exactly what she’s thinking, the emotion she is trying to suppress, the decision she is struggling with, just by how she is, not what she says or what she does. It really is extraordinary, technically astounding and utterly and heartbreakingly moving. An actress as brilliant as Saoirse Ronan will win an Oscar or perhaps several in the future and I just hope she gets dozens more chances to play people as real and interesting.