Academy Awards - The Oscars

Once again it is time to celebrate a year of film watching. Here are my choices for the following awards along with a few thoughts about some of the selections and non-selections The Academy made.

• Actor in a Leading Role – The nominees are: Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out), Timothee Chalamet (Call me by Your Name), Gary Oldman (Darkest Hour), Daniel Day-Lewis (Phantom Thread), and Denzel Washington (Roman J. Isreal, Esq.). Who else could be on this list? Tom Hanks (The Post), James Franco (The Disaster Artist), and Richard Gere (Norman). However, regardless of who wasn’t on the list, the runaway best performance is Gary Oldman for Darkest Hour. His Winston Churchill was simply sublime.
• Actress in a Leading Role – The nominees are: Meryl Streep (The Post), Sally Hawkins (The Shape of Water), Margot Robbie (I, Tonya), Francis McDormand (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri, and Saoirse Ronan (Lady Bird). Who didn’t get nominated? Rachel Weisz (My Cousin Rachel), Emma Stone (Battle of the Sexes) and Jessica Chastain (The Zookeepers Wife). If it were up to me, I’d select Saoirse Ronan in Lady Bird because of the variety and excellent delivery of teenage emotions she effectively brings to the screen. Margot Robbie was utterly fantastic as Tonya Harding. Francis McDormand was filled with angst and fire as the woman who lost her daughter to rape and murder. Sally Hawkins was ethereal as Elisa Esposito a deaf woman who communicates with the captured creature. Meryl Streep showed the subtle development of strength as her character Katharine Graham.
• Supporting Actress – The nominees are: Lesley Manville (Phantom Thread), Laurie Metcalf (Lady Bird), Allison Janney (I, Tonya), Mary J. Blige (Mudbound). Octavia Spencer (The Shape of Water). Who is missing from this list? Melissa Leo (Novitiate), who gave one of most outstanding performances of the year. The film wasn’t seen and that is a shame. This is a strong field but choosing from the nominees, I’d select Allison Janney. Her depiction of Tonya Harding’s mother was vividly cold.
• Supporting Actor – The nominees are: Christopher Plummer (All the Money in the World), Woody Harrelson (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri), Sam Rockwell (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri), Willem Defoe (The Florida Project), and Richard Jenkins (The Shape of Water). A great set of actors. Missing? Steve Carell (Battle of the Sexes) gave us an incredibly life like Bobby Riggs. I’d have to say that Sam Rockwell would get my vote although each of the above deserve the recognition.
• Best Cinematography – The nominees are: Bruno Delbonnel (Darkest Hour), Hoyte van Hoytema (Dunkirk), Rachel Morrison (Mudbound), Dan Laustsen (The Shape of Water), and Roger Deakins (Blade Runner 2049). Great list of people creating and delivering great pictures. My vote would go for Hoyte van Hoytema in Dunkirk. I admired the multitude and type of scenes that were shot and how they were made into a cohesive feeling of awe.
• Writing (Adapted Screenplay) – The nominees are: Dee Rees and Virgil Williams (Mudbound), Michael H. Weber and Scott Neustadter (The Disaster Artist), James Ivory (Call Me by Your Name), James Mangold, Michael Green and Scott Frank (Logan), and Aaron Sorkin (Molly’s Game). My vote would go to  Michael H. Weber and Scott Neustadter for The Disaster Artist.
• Writing (Original Screenplay) – The nominees are: Guillermo del Toro and Vanessa Taylor (The Shape of Water), Martin McDonagh (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri), Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani (The Big Sick), Jordan Peele (Get Out) and Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird). This is probably the tightest category to be contested. Each of these stories is amazingly original. Therefore, I don’t have a single selection, they all are deserving.
• Film Editing – The nominees are: Lee Smith (Dunkirk), Tatiana S. Riegel (I, Tonya), Jonathan Amos and Paul MacHliss (Baby Driver), Sidney Wolinsky (The Shape of Water), and Jon Gregory (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri). All very good, however the standout in editing goes to Lee Smith for Dunkirk. This is a story based film and not a character based film and because of this the editing makes this film engaging.
• Directing – The nominees are: Paul Thomas Anderson (Phantom Thread), Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water), Christopher Nolan (Dunkirk), Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird), and Jordan Peele (Get Out). What is missing. To me there are huge gaps here. Margaret Betts (Novitiate), Kathryn Bigelow (Detroit), Craig Gillespie (I, Tonya), and Joe Wright (Darkest Hour) all had a great firm hand on their story's and told them with excellence. Out of the nominees, I’d vote for Christopher Nolan and Dunkirk because he made this event come alive. However, Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird) got amazing performances from her cast.
• Picture – The nominees are: Darkest Hour, Dunkirk, Phantom Thread, Get Out, The Post, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, The Shape of Water, and Lady Bird. All these pictures, except Phantom Thread (review in process) are films I loved to watch for different reasons. What is missing? I think Novitiate, Detroit, and Battle of the Sexes were deserving as well. However, Novitiate would be my candidate for replacing Phantom Thread which I didn’t really find likable or engaging. Who will win? My wish would be Dunkirk, Lady Bird, and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri in that order. If Novitiate was in the mix, it would be a tie between it and Dunkirk.

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The Shape of Water

First Hit:  Beautifully crafted and acted, and I didn’t find it all that interesting.

Although most of the scenes are dark and have a green color tint, they are beautifully crafted. The greenish tint is in the walls of the lab, the color of the hallways in the facility, the color of the water in which the beast lives and the van that was used to transport the beast. To break up this hue, color, like the deep dark red velvet seats in the movie theater, would be used to signify boldness.

The movie theater plays a role in the film because it is the home of Giles (Richard Jenkins) and the amazing star of the film Elisa Esposito (Sally Hawkins). They live upstairs in small apartments.

Sally is a mute and works at a laboratory as a janitor. Her workmate, friend and protector is Zelda Fuller (Octavia Spencer). One day, when they are cleaning a secret room of the lab Sally is startled by the beast (Amphibian Man / Doug Jones) when she places her hand on a chamber he's being contained in. The amphibian has been captured and is being studied by Dr. Robert Hoffstetler (Michael Stuhlbarg) who is also happens to be a Russian spy.

The US government is trying to keep the amphibian secret and has hired Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon) to keep tabs on the creature. Strickland is cruel and thinks himself superior to everyone, especially Zelda and Elisa. He shows his cruelty by carrying around a cattle prod which he uses to  control the amphibian.

Eliza’s days are monotonous and the same. After sleeping; she gets up goes into the bathroom, masturbates in her tub, makes a sandwich for herself to take to work and one for her neighbor Giles (Richard Jenkins), goes to work, cleans the lab and bathrooms, returns home and spends time with Giles in his apartment where they watch dancing films on television.

Loved the scenes when Giles and Eliza do dance routines while sitting on the couch. Sweet and touching and added a heartfelt feeling to the characters.

Dancing is nice aspect of this film and it brings a lightness to this, otherwise, heavy film. The dance routines were directly from some of the films of the 1940s and 50s.

The obvious set-up is that Eliza feels a deep connection with the amphibian partially because they both don’t speak. However, they find a way of communicating with each other. She falls in love with him and is stressed because of the cruelty Strickland imposes on the amphibian. The question becomes, will she fight for the amphibian?

One of the failings of this film were the scars on Eliza’s neck. This detail was too obvious and allowed me to see the end before it came.

This film is a love story and in many ways, it really works well. I’m not sure of the necessity of having Hoffstetler be a Russian spy and I’m not sure why the pie store owner needed to be a racist. I just didn’t think it enhanced the story.

Hawkins was perfect for this role. Her clarity of purpose, her portrayal of being mute and desire to be seen as a person, was divine.  The development of her finding the strength to act on her love was compelling. One of the best performances of the year. Just as Hawkins was purposeful in her role, Shannon was equally intense as the man who wanted to control the amphibian. His driven personality to succeed at his job, his way, was perfectly played. Jenkins was great as the scared and scarred neighbor that had been let go from his job as product illustrator. Stuhlbarg was fantastic as the Russian agent who wanted science and this discovery to prevail over the wants of the Russian Government. Spencer was great as Eliza’s friend and protector. I sensed that writer and director Guillermo del Toro wanted this film to be both an interesting and emotional journey, but I found it lacking in interesting department, except when I was thinking about how the scenes were shot and the detail of the well-crafted pictures, like the cracked tile in Eliza’s bathroom. However, the direction by him of this cadre of actors was exquisite and keep me engaged.

Overall:  Although exquisitely beautiful in its crafting, it did not leave a lasting impression of greatness.

Blue Jasmine

First Hit:  Wasn’t impressed with overall script but thought Cate Blanchett was amazing to watch.

For some reason the film doesn't delve too much into the cause of everyone's anguish; the defining event being the arrest and prosecution of Hal (Alec Baldwin) for deceiving all his family and friends with investment schemes that ruin their lives.

Therefore, I found it hard to "get" that Hal actually had the smarts to be deceitful. Despite this obvious slight of hand, the prominent focus of this film is the subject of lying and self deceit. His wife, Jasmine (Blanchett), is the cause of his fall from grace because she deceived herself by ignoring until she decided to call him out.

As Blanchett as the vehicle of the story, director and writer Woody Allen hopes you forgive the lack of background and gives you snippets of the past by having Jasmine zone out into an alternate reality to fill in the story. In much of the film, it works well enough, but in other aspects it doesn’t. Jasmine blames Hal for her current life of no money and no friends, while taking no responsibility for any of it herself.

Arriving at her sister Ginger’s (Sally Hawkins) in the semi-downtrodden neighborhood on South Van Ness in San Francisco, she is lost and wants to try to make something out of her life. The story is that she spent time in a mental hospital after being found talking to herself on the streets of New York City. The first lie she tells her sister is that she flew to SF in first class; the scene showing her in her seat we can easily see she wasn’t in the first class section at all. She cannot let go of the life she use to have.

Throughout the film we watch Jasmine fade in and out of past stories and her current reality. In the end we don't really know the truth of whether she was complicit in her husbands story or just didn't want to accept the truth as her reality.

For the most part Blanchett was very good and I also felt she was limited by the script. Baldwin wasn’t very believable as the master manipulator. Hopkins was superb. She was refreshing, alive and well suited to the role. Andrew Dice Clay, as Ginger’s former husband Augie, especially in his first scene, seemed like he was reading script and didn’t embody the character very well. Bobby Cannavale as Chili was very engaged in his character and was fun to watch. Allen wrote and directed this effort. The background was week and made believability of the story weak. He got some strong performances out of Cannavale, Blanchett and Hawkins.

Overall:  Not Allen’s best but not his worst either.

Jane Eyre

First Hit: Beautifully shot, well-acted, but there was something dramatically missing.

This story has been done many times and this version was one of the most beautifully shot of all of them.

The feeling of the cold moist damp rain of England, the moors, the stone floors, the heavy drapes, the wavy glass windows, the candle and fire lit rooms were all visually arresting and felt true to the time. Here the director got it right.

The film begins with Jane (played by Mia Wasikowska) running away from the home of Mr. Rochester (played by Michael Fassbender) where she had been governess to his child ward. Her journey there began as an unwanted child (played by Amelia Clarkson) by her guardian Mrs. Reed (played by Sally Hawkins). Reed ships her off to a boarding school where she is treated poorly but becomes educated.

Unfortunately there is no resemblance between the actresses of the young and older Jane and this obvious mismatch was troublesome. Although there was a consistent feeling of Jane through these two actresses, and both were very good, the obvious physical discrepancies (mouth, lips, eyes and nose) were disconcerting to me and kept me from buying the story.

When the older Jane arrives at Mr. Rochester’s home she is greeted by Mrs. Fairfax (played by Judi Dench) who guides her into the role as governess. Mr. Rochester is intrigued by Jane and her direct fearless openness towards him and compels him to want to marry her.

In the rush to get the wedding done, a relative of his first wife barges in to object to the marriage. Jane is heartbroken and runs away (the opening scene). She makes her way to St. John Rivers (played by Jamie Bell) and his two sisters. They take her in and give her the opportunity to begin life again as a teacher in a small countryside school. But Jane’s heart yearns for Mr. Rochester and eventually she finds her way back.

Wasikowska is very good and endearing in this role, however I don’t know if it was something her acting, in the direction or in the lack of chemistry between her and Fassbender that left me unconvinced of this story. Fassbender was good as the troubled wealthy man looking for love and peace. But as previously stated something didn’t work in this film. Clarkson was wonderful as the young Jane and despite the obvious physical dissimilarities between her and the older Jane she did a wonderful job. Bell came off as fully untrustworthy from the get go. Whether his was supposed to come off this way or not, I don’t know. But the moment he picks up Jane from his front door, he felt creepy and it bothered me that Jane didn’t see it. Dench was strong as the house head housekeeper and guiding light for Jane. Moira Buffini wrote a good script from the Charlotte Bronte novel. Cary Fukunaga shot this film exquisitely, however there was something missing, a compelling chemistry, to make this version the best ever done.

Overall: I like this film, but left the theater wanting something more compelling.