The Oscars

Well, I did it: I saw all eight best picture nominees. And I did it a week before the Oscars ceremony. Not bad for a guy with two-year-old twins. I'd like to thank Maya for allowing me to skip out on bedtime to go to the movies a few times. Couldn't have done it without her. Her, and the Academy, of course.

I'm going to present my rankings, but I do so with some reservations. I think everyone, whether they admit it or not, allows their personal rankings - of anything - to be influenced by their audience. I'll be honest: I rarely ever share my favorite this or that without factoring in how my opinion will make me look. And, though I'm not really proud of it, I often judge other people based on their estimations of films, books, albums, etc. I once had a first date come to a crashing halt when the girl admitted, with no apparent embarrassment, that her all-time favorite movie was The Addams Family (1991; rated PG-13).

This year's best picture category is divided between intellectual art films and crowd-pleasing blockbusters (or at least movies that did pretty well at the box office). If my list favors the former, with Roma or The Favourite at the top of the list, then I'm a total snob. If it favors the latter, with Black Panther or Bohemian Rhapsody at the top, then I'm an uncultured rube.

Another disclaimer before I give my rankings: these are in order of how much I enjoyed them, not my estimation of their overall quality. And another one: none of the nominees were actually bad movies. Oh, and spoiler alert.

The List

1 - Green Book

2 - Blackkklansman

3 - Vice

4 - Black Panther

5 - A Star is Born

6 - Roma

7 - Bohemian Rhapsody

8 - The Favourite

My Pick for Best Picture: Green Book

Movie I think will win: A Star is Born

Here are some thoughts on each of them, presented in the order in which I saw them.

A Star is Born was a good old-fashioned romantic Hollywood tearjerker. I think I would have used the word "old-fashioned" even if it hadn't been made three times before. I don't use it derisively, though. The movie didn't really cover any new ground, but it was hard not to get caught up the romance and, in the end, the tragedy. Bradley Cooper was great. So was Lady Gaga. (I see a lot of similarities with Cher. Lots of people were initially skeptical about both of their acting skills. And in the end, both of them silenced virtually all haters.) I'm sure lots of people disagree with me on this point (including my wife), but I found the music pretty forgettable. Even "Shallow," which everyone is raving about. Yes, Lady G can really belt it out, but I could have used more melody. Weirdly, the song that wormed its way into my head was that one she sings on Saturday Night Live - the one that's supposed to be silly and trite, and was supposed to mark her loss of agency and her loss of artistic vision. Whatever, though. Catchy is catchy. Don’t @ Me. Oh, and a lot of people have been talking about Sam Elliott's performance, which was great and all, but the guy I really enjoyed was Andrew Dice Clay. I was not aware he could be so likable.

Even though Green Book mostly earned praise from critics, it also suffered major backlash from some who accused it of being too simplistic in its view of race. An article on Jezebel called it "A movie about race for white people." Huffington Post called it "tone-deaf on race." There seems to be a consensus out there that Green Book isn't "woke" enough, and that those who liked it must be hopelessly square. At least, that's what I'm picking up on. Admittedly, I haven't read much of the negative criticism. Maybe some of it is valid - I don't know. What I do know is that I enjoyed this movie a ton. I cared about the characters. I found Viggo Mortenson incredibly endearing as Tony Lip. I was rooting for him to learn something, and I enjoyed watching the movie's central friendship grow over time. The movie had a spirit and energy - it was downright fun. I loved the scene where Tony introduces Don to fried chicken - and I don't care who knows it. I try not to criticize the PC movement, because I think it's basically well-meaning and because I think there are much better things out there to criticize and because I don't want to have anything in common with the wearers of MAGA hats. But lately, it seems like every movie that deals with race or sexuality must appear in front of a tribunal of PC police who tell the world whether that movie is sufficiently "woke." Was Green Book woke enough? I'll leave that to others to answer that. Did it keep me engrossed for two plus hours? Did I care about the characters? Did I want to see how things would turn out for Tony and Don? Yes, yes, and yes. And that's really all I care about.

I’m not a superhero movie guy, so I probably wouldn’t have gone out of my way to see Black Panther if it hadn’t been nominated for Best Picture. I’m glad I did, though. It already holds a place in pop culture, and I’d venture to guess that in twenty years, it will be the best-remembered film of the bunch. For a superhero movie, it asked some weighty questions – specifically, does a wealthy nation have an obligation to help less fortunate ones? It was fun, too. I loved the Panther’s trial by combat against the guy from the mountain tribe. I loved the war rhinos, and the car chase in Korea. I loved Andy Serkis as that big South African arms dealer guy. I loved the plot twist involving Forrest Whitaker’s character. I loved Michael B. Jordan as Killmonger, even though part of me had a hard time with him as a villain, mostly because I find the actor so incredibly likable. In the end, it was still just a super hero movie, but it will probably go down as one of the best in the genre (along with The Dark Knight).  Also, after this, Creed, and Fruitvale Station, I’m officially on board with Ryan Coogler: I’ll see anything he directs.

I love that Netflix is now a platform for serious Oscar contenders. I had heard the buzz surrounding Roma, and I made a point of checking it almost as soon as it was available. Midway through its two-hour run time, it dawned on me that I wasn’t enjoying it very much. Yes, it was beautiful and poetic, but it was awfully slow, too. And what was the plot, anyway? I can’t stand the experience of realizing I don’t enjoy a piece of art that everyone else seems to love. Critics and other people with highbrow taste raved about Roma. So if I didn’t like it, what did that make me? I will say I’m glad I stuck it out to the end. It had so much to say about barriers between social classes – almost like one of those short stories by James Joyce, in which you don’t really understand the point until the epiphany at the end. And it had no shortage of iconic scenes: the naked karate demonstration, Cleo’s pregnancy announcement in the movie theater, the big car carefully maneuvering its way into a small garage, the surreal forest fire, and of course the hospital scene, and the final scene on the beach. I’m still not entirely sure I enjoyed Roma, but I did appreciate it, and I expect it to stay with me for a while.

As a regular viewer of The Daily Show during W’s presidency, I was simultaneously repulsed and fascinated with Dick Cheney. I’m usually interested in films or tv about recent history, so I was excited for Vice, even in spite of mixed reviews. Much has been made of Christian Bale’s amazing performance – and rightly so. This man looks even less like Dick Cheney than Gary Oldman looked like Winston Churchill last year. Where did he get the audacity to think he could pull off this role? And he totally did, too. Obviously, the make-up is great, but he nailed the inflections, down to Cheney’s sinister way of speaking out of the side of his mouth. Totally overshadowed was Amy Adams, who nailed Lynn Cheney despite, again, looking nothing like her. For me, Steve Carrell was less convincing as Donald Rumsfeld. There’s an inherent danger in casting an instantly recognizable actor as an instantly recognizable public figure: it doesn’t always work. In all the conversation about bold casting and incredible acting, not enough has been said about this movie’s seriously eccentric style of direction by Adam McKay. He tries everything to shake up the traditional biopic format: fake-out credits less than halfway through, a scene in which Dick and Lynn speak in faux-Shakespearean English, a random cameo from Alfred Molina as a waiter, whose purpose is to educate the audience on political strategy. And also, a major I-didn’t-see-that-coming twist near the end (involving the story’s narrator, played by Jesse Plemons). Some reviewers thought it was a bit of a mess, and I can see why. It was an awful lot of fun, though.

Before I see a movie, I usually have at least some sense of whether or not I’m going to like it. Blackkklansman, though, was a total wild card: I had no idea what to expect. I don’t love Spike Lee. I have enjoyed movies of his – specifically Do the Right Thing and He Got Game – but it’s not like I’m rushing out to see the next “Spike Lee Joint” as soon as it drops. I rented this on Amazon Prime, mostly just because it had been nominated and, wouldn’t you know, it turned to be one of my favorite movies of the year. I’d had it in my head that it was going to be either heavy-handed and political, or else a jokey satire of a Blaxploitation film from the seventies. Instead, it was a tense, tightly structured thriller based a stranger-than-fiction piece of history. I held my breath through most of J.D. Washington’s conversations with those white supremacists. Ditto for every scene that had Adam Driver trying to pass for one of them. This was also an incredibly fun movie – a strange thing to say about a movie that focuses to heavily on Klansmen, but it’s true. The whole ending, culminating in Washington’s final conversation with David Duke, is so eminently satisfying. That means it’s extra sobering when Lee fast-forwards to the situation in Charlottesville in mid-2017. The white supremacists are more prevalent than ever. In fact, we may have elected one president.

Superficially, the two movies don’t have all that much in common, but The Favourite reminded me a little bit of Phantom Thread from last year. Both period pieces, both about control dynamics, and both tell their stories in bizarre fashion. (Hm. Actually, maybe they do have quite a bit in common.) I’ll also say that I didn’t particularly enjoy either film while I was actually in the theater, and that only after some reflection a few days later did I come to appreciate them. To me, the most interesting part of the movie was the queen’s character, and the way she was played by Olivia Colman. We would recognize her today as clinically depressed, although they probably didn’t have a word for her state at the time. She cares very little about government and, for that matter, about anything save her collection of seventeen rabbits, each of which reminds her of one of her dead children. Actually, I’m not even sure she’s a lesbian, despite having affairs with both Rachel Weisz’s and Emma Stone’s characters. To quote a phrase sometimes used by Roger Ebert, she carries on these affairs because they “may be evidence that she exists.” Did I love it? No. Too much use of fish-eye lens, too much weirdness for weirdness’ sake. And ultimately, too slow in its plotting. But certainly not without its redeeming qualities.

Like Green Book, Bohemian Rhapsody faced some backlash from the PC Police (God, I sound just like a Trump supporter) for what some called its insensitivity in handling Freddy Mercury’s sexuality. For me, that wasn’t an issue – although again, I can’t say I paid that much attention to grievances against the movie. What was more of a problem for me was that the movie was basically a standard issue musical biopic. It hit all the beats: musical genius, troubled personal life, massive success, corruption from success, turmoil leading to some major hits, and finally, a measure of redemption. I’ve seen it before in Ray, Walk the Line, Get on Up, Love and Mercy, just to name a few. (This formula is also cleverly parodied in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, a criminally underrated comedy in my opinion.) The thing is, it’s an entertaining formula, especially when you’re actually a fan of the musician being profiled. I liked seeing a young Freddy almost get rejected from Queen for having bad teeth. I liked watching the group write “Bohemian Rhapsody” and their other iconic hits. I liked the whole Live Aid concert. And I loved Mike Myers’s cameo which included his ironic comment that kids didn’t want to sit in their cars banging their heads to “Bohemian Rhapsody.” A true Easter Egg for us 90’s kids. By no means did I dislike the movie; I just think that tried and true formula, as entertaining as it is, can only take you so far.