2015 Oscar Predictions

The big day is finally here. Before we get to my sure-to-be wrong predictions, here’s my personally rankings of the Best Picture nominees, from most to least favorite.

1. Room
2. Spotlight
3. Mad Max: Fury Road
4. Brooklyn
5. The Martian
6. The Big Short
7. The Revenant
8. Bridge of Spies

Now then onto to my predictions.

1. Best Picture: Spotlight

Popular consensus seems to be a three way battle between Spotlight, The Big Short and The Revenant. I think Spotlight has the edge with more traditional story-telling and the social injustice issues that always captures a voter’s fancy.

2. Best Director: Tom McCarthy, Spotlight

If voters go hog-wild over the technical majesty of Mad Max it is theoretically possible George Miller could win, but I still stick to the tried and true idea that Director and Picture go hand in hand most years.

3. Best Actor: Leonardo Dicaprio, The Revenant

Seemingly the biggest lock of the year, Leo finally walks home with the big gold statue. The Oscars love actors playing real people and physical transformation/suffering for one’s art. I guess I’d have picked Michael Fassbender for his flashy Steve Jobs, but all five candidates were strong.

4. Best Actress: Brie Larson, Room

Another seeming sure thing, Larson’s cleaned up at the awards running up to this.

5. Best Supporting Actor: Sylvester Stallone, Creed

Slightly less of a sure thing than Larson and Dicaprio, I mean it is Sylvester Stallone we’re talking about here, but I think he wins as a sort of lifetime achievement award and the Academy always likes the redemptive story of an actor who makes crap for 30+ years doing good. My pick would have been Tom Hardy who was captivating in the Revenant.

6. Best Supporting Actress: Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl

The closest race this year. I would not be surprised by any of the five winning, but The Danish Girl is really more Vikander’s movie than it is Eddie Redmayne’s, plus the Academy will always want to look like it’s tackling tough issues, even if I’m not so sure that The Danish Girl was all that flattering a portrait of a transgendered person.

7. Best Animated Feature: Inside Out

8. Best Original Screenplay: Spotlight

9. Best Adapted Screenplay: The Big Short

Big Short had to do the most with very dry and difficult subject matter and to be able to wring some laughs out of it, and make mortgage bonds slightly less murky is a feat in and of itself.

10. Best Foreign Language Film: Son of Saul

I hope Helen Mirren presents this award like she did at the Golden Globes, if only to demonstrate her encyclopedic knowledge of countries that have won awards for film. Son of Saul is a holocaust movie, always a safe bet for any Oscar.

11. Best Documentary Feature: Amy

I have no clue, but I feel like people at least had heard of this one (it’s about Amy Winehouse) and being celebrity types, maybe even knew her, so here you go.

12. Best Original Score: The Hateful Eight

13. Best Original Song: “Til It Happens To You”, The Hunting Ground.

Look if Vice President Joe Biden is going to introduce Lady Gaga singing a song on Oscar night, then the producers have pretty well tipped their hand as to the winner.

14. Best Sound Editing: Mad Max: Fury Road

And thus begins the long string of technical awards won by Mad Max.

15. Best Sound Mixing: Mad Max: Fury Road

16. Best Production Design: Mad Max Fury Road

17. Best Cinematography: The Revenant

It’s possible Mad Max could win Cinematography too, but Revenant was so damn pretty when it didn’t involve people eating raw buffalo organs.

18. Best Makeup and Hairstyling: Mad Max: Fury Road

19. Best Costume Design: Carol

20. Best Film Editing: Spotlight

21. Best Visual Effects: Mad Max: Fury Road

22. Best Live Action Short: Shok

23. Best Animated Short: Sanjay’s Super Team

24. Best Documentary Short: A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness

2015 Best Picture Nominees: Room

There’s so much of “place” in the world. There’s less time because the time has to be spread extra thin over all the places, like butter. – Jack (Jacob Tremblay), Room

Room is my favorite movie of 2015 and the movie I would vote to win Best Picture). It is emotional, distressing, thrilling, frightening, and finally sweet with a unique voice. The movie tackles a lot of different subjects with skillful grace and delicacy, from the innocence of childhood and bond of love between mothers and children to the horrors humans are capable of inflicting on one another. No movie left quite the impression and gave me as much to think about as Room in 2015.

The powerful bond between Ma (Brie Larson) and Jack (Jacob Tremblay) forms the ultimate salvation from horror in Room

The movie opens on Jack’s (Jacob Tremblay)’s fifth birthday. Jack lives in a squalid shed with his mother (Brie Larson). We quickly realize they are in fact captors in this room, held prisoner by “Old Nick”, who abducted Ma sometimes in the past, repeatedly rapes her and is the biological father of Jack. Jack is oblivious to all this because the world of Room, equipped with a bed, toilet, television and little else is all he’s ever known, and because of Ma’s efforts to shield him from the surrounding horrors. Ma eventually feigns Jack’s death and coaches him on how to escape from Old Nick and get help. Now in the world, Jack, still oblivious to what his life was, experiences a rush of new adventures, from the horrors of a loud bright world he’d never seen to meeting his grandparents. Ma, however, has difficulty adjusting to the normal world and is clouded by anger for her abuse, for the world moving on without her and PTSD from the horrors she endured. It is ultimately up to Jack to save her.

Jacob Tremblay and Brie Larson in Room

Room tells a horrible, depressing story, but it affected me like no other movie this year. I think the movie is genius in its ability to tell its story from Jack’s perspective. His sense of normalcy, totally out of whack with reality, is touching and a real achievement in storytelling. A powerful scene, wherein Ma tries to explain to Jack how a world exists outside the world showcases his confusion and understanding in the way a five year old would. I loved the way he described things – like “Ma’s telling me in my head” means a memory of his mother or his long hair that he calls “his strong” as a reference to the story of Solomon and also inspiration given by his mother. This is an incredibly imaginative and perceptive take the “blank canvas” of a five year old’s mind and how Jack comes at problems and experiences. Jack’s lack of filter can prove painful and also touching, particularly in an amazing scene where he finally allows his grandmother (Joan Allen) to cut his hair and blurts out that he loves her.

The acting in this movie is top notch as well. Both Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay do outstanding work in capturing their characters vulnerabilities, fears and their powerful connection with one another. Larson is the likely (and rightful) pick for Best Actress while Tremblay was unfortunately left out of a Best Supporting Actor race (even though he really has lead screen time). Director Lenny Abrahamson does a great job in capturing the claustrophobic nature of the two people locked in a room (likely because it was shot in a room). Jack’s adventure to escape the Room and bring help to Ma is the most nail-biting and thrilling moment in cinema this year, above Matt Damon’s flight into space of Mad Max’s car chase. Even thinking back to Jack’s perilous situation is enough to give me goosebumps now.

Whereas Spotlight tackled human horrors with a reporters distance, Room puts its characters – and the viewers—right in the middle of the horror of a woman kidnapped and raped for seven years and kept in a tiny locked shed, with only her son for companionship. There is a lot of redemption here too. For all of Old Nick’s evil, there are good people like Jack’s grandmother and step-grandfather who love and accept him unconditionally. And it is a story about great heroics too, particularly Ma’s unyielding resolve to care for and do what’s best for her son, creating a sense of normalcy out of egg shell snakes and nights spent locked in a wardrobe.

I thought Room was imaginative, well-made, challenging, poignant and touching and for all these reasons, it is my favorite of the Best Picture nominees.

Other Nominations (4 Nominations Total): Best Actress (Brie Larson); Best Director (Lenny Abrahamson); Best Adapted Screenplay

Box Office (As of 2/25/2016): 12. 7 Million (8^th of Best Picture Nominees)

2015 Best Picture Nominee: Spotlight

This city, these people… making the rest of us feel like we don’t belong. But they’re no better than us. Look at how they treat their children. Mark my words, Mr. Rezendes. If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse one. – Mitch Garabedian (Stanley Tucci), Spotlight

Spotlight is one of the most fascinating and important movies of the year. Following the journalists who uncovered a vast church conspiracy in Boston to hide 90 priests who were sexually abusing children and allowed to operate for decades, the movie deserves praise just for its tackling of an important social injustice. But the film is also a suspenseful and compelling drama that is never exploitative or manipulative. It lays out “just the facts” of what happened and how the reporters of the Boston Globe broke the story and creates compelling, fleshed-out characters. It’s a great and important film and a likely Best Picture winner.

The central Spotlight Team: Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, Michael Keaton and Brian D’Arcy James

In 2001, at the very beginning of newspapers’ downfall, Marty Baron (Liev Schrieber) is brought in as the new editor in chief at the Boston Globe. Baron is an outsider – Jewish, not a native Bostonian – and thus faces suspicion from much of the staff. The Spotlight team, a four man crew consisting of Walter ‘Robby’ Robinson (Michael Keaton), Sasha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams), Matt Carroll (Brian D’Arcy James) and Mike Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo), is the prize of the Globe, a crew that works independently from the rest of the paper for months to craft in-depth exposes. Baron pressures the Spotlight team to follow up recent claims that a pedophile priest was not an isolated incident but indicative of a greater crisis among priests that church leaders have been working decades to cover up. The reporters, with the help of acerbic, anti-social lawyer Mitchell Garabedian (Stanley Tucci, who was criminally overlooked in an acting nomination for this film, soon realize the depth of the pedophilia priest problem is greater than they could have imagined. Even worse, the more the reporters dig, the greater number of people they realize had some knowledge of what was going on and the almost silent conspiracy mounted by the very fabric of Boston to keep this horrible secret under wraps.

Stanley Tucci as unlikely and unlikable hero Mitch Garabedian

Spotlight is a remarkable film, not just for its poignant subject matter, but for how well it weaves the story into a watchable movie. Most of the investigation occurs in in a variety of visually unstimulating ways – pulling clips, scanning old church directories, typing – but the movie weaves them together as a procedural thriller. Director Tom McCarthy deserves all the credit in the world for making a suspenseful movie where the characters actually do very little action.

Liev Schrieber and his sweet beard as newcomer editor Marty Baron, who first asks the Spotlight team to pursue the story

Despite mainly being a procedural, the movie fleshes out its characters. Each of the main Spotlight reporters come at the story with different backgrounds and vantage points: Sasha is a lapsed Catholic whose grandmother is still an ardent church goer. Mike is the prototypical journalist pitbull, ready to go after the man and buck the system. Matt is a devoted family man, who the story strikes not because of his faith but because of the real implications it has for his children. Mitch the lawyer is my favorite. He’s essentially unlikeable and obnoxious, but ultimately is the hero of the story, the whistleblower fighting even harder than the journalists to stand up for the wronged.

Besides the actual issue of pedophilia and how the church worked to cover it up, the movie takes a serious look at journalists and outsiders and the importance they possess to a society. Mitch is almost the ultimate outsider. Marty the editor takes on a similar role as it’s his outside perspective that pushes for tackling the church and finds what has gone wrong.

Spotlight is my pick to win Best Picture this year and I think it is a very deserving choice (although ultimately not my personal favorite). As a movie making exercise, its ability to make an absorbing and thrilling story out of what could have been a dry and monotonous procedural is exceptional. It also tackles a very real and troubling social occurrence and provides a chilling look at what happens when humongous institutions are allowed to run unchecked.

Other Nominations (6 Total): Best Supporting Actor (Mark Ruffalo); Best Supporting Actress (Rachel McAdams); Best Director (Tom McCarthy); Best Original Screenplay; Best Editing

Box Office (as of 2/15/2016): $35.6 Million (6^th among nominees)

2015 Oscars: Live Action Shorts

As is Oscar tradition, the Best Live Action Shorts – likely the most obscure five movies to be nominated for an Academy Award in any given year – are a mixed bag of mostly foreign, mostly depressing pieces. As with the Animated Shorts, I thought the overall quality of the five was down compared to year’s past. I will note that for all the justified talk of a non-diverse Oscar slate, you will find a variety of cultures inhabiting this list. Again, in order of least to most favorite:

1. Ave Maria is the traditional token light-hearted film, centering on a bickering Israeli family who crash their car outside a Catholic nunnery while traveling in the West Bank. The nuns, who have all taken a vow of silence, do their best to help the squabbling family, with mixed results and humorous frustrations on both ends. Luckily, a nunnery car and a skilled mechanic saves the day. This movie was just kind of there. The laughs weren’t uproarious and there wasn’t even a sweet message of cultures uniting at the end.

2. Day One is the harrowing story of a female interpreter’s first day on the job in Afghanistan. Her day sucks, as she has to interrogate bombers, help a little girl rat out her uncle and, in the longest bit, help a pregnant woman who has gone into labor. Cultural customs dictate the male doctor can’t come into the house, so the Interpreter must help the mother-to-be and ultimately must decide between the life of the woman or her baby. The story was ok, but the actual characterization of the Interpreter – why is she here? what’s her background? – are fairly lacking and the story ends a bit too rah-rah for my liking. Due to subject matter, I think this has a real shot at winning.

3. Everything Will Be OK is sort of the German companion piece to Room in that it’s about a very bad circumstance told through the eyes of a child who doesn’t understand what’s going on. A divorced father picks his daughter up for their weekend visit. Things start off innocuously enough – a trip to a toy store, then a fair – but things slowly spin out of control. The dad keeps checking his watch and tries to get a serious headshot of his daughter – suspiciously like a passport photo. Yes, indeed, the father is kidnapping his daughter. The first two-third of this movie were really tense and intriguing, but I thought it petered out by the end, where the dad, cornered after the daughter turned him in, barricades himself in his room and won’t let her go. It’s probably how things would really turn out, but it didn’t feel like a satisfying ending.

4. Stutterer is probably very shallow in terms of subject matter, but I still liked it because it was cute and didn’t leave me despairing for humanity. A young British man is hampered and isolated because of a terrible stutter that leaves him practically incapable of communicating. His only outlet to life is through on-line communication and now his potential love interest wants to meet in person. Does he dare reveal his true, flawed self? The ending is easy enough to guess but I still really enjoyed this simple story and I thought the lead actor (Matthew Needham) was very engaging.

5. Shok is the best of the bunch and a co-favorite of mine to win the award (I’ll make an official pick in a few days). In war torn Kosovo during the mid-1990s, 12-year-old Oki has saved his money to purchase a new bicycle. His friend Petrit fancies himself a smuggler and sly businessman, smuggling and selling cigarettes and contraband to soldiers, even Serbians who are opposing the minority Albanians like Petrit and Oki. Petrit’s arrogance leads to Oki losing his prized bicycle and both boys’ innocence is shattered as they lose more and more to the soldiers. This was a very powerful and depressing story about the horrors of war, especially to innocence and the youth.

Best Picture Nominee: The Martian

“In the face of overwhelming odds, I’m left with only one option…I’m going to have to science the shit out of this.” – Mark Watney (Matt Damon), The Martian

“Stranded” movies are among my very least favorite type of stories. Be they in the ocean, tropical islands or deserts, the idea of one person’s struggle against the elements are often draggy and dreary, more acting exercises than really compelling plots. The Martian is a notable exception to this rule, thanks to the Herculean effort by Matt Damon to make a movie about being trapped alone on an inhospitable planet literally years from rescue far more fun than it has any right to be. A lot of people scoffed at The Martian winning Best Comedy at the Golden Globes but it really is very funny, crammed with Damon wisecracking his way through dense science and insurmountable odds.

Matt Damon in one of The Martian’s sweeping landscape shots

In an alternative future where NASA is wildly popular and space exploration more than a niche interest mostly funded by Red Bull, Mark Watney (Matt Damon) is a botanist on a crew exploring Mars. A freak sandstorm forces the crew to abandon the planet and Watney is believed to have been killed by flying debris that knocks his biometric scanners off line. Watney however awakens and determines to use his wits and scarce resources to survive the potentially years-long wait until another mission is mounted to Mars. A chance luck viewing by one of NASA’s telescopes reveals to Earth that Watney is alive and a series of rescue and relief missions are undertaken to help him survive. Watney is able to grow crops using potatoes left behind and his own scientific MacGyver moves. But with Mars continuing to conspire against him, will help be able to reach Watney in time?

A rare shot of Matt Damon with other people in The Martian

 

As noted, The Martian is almost entirely the Matt Damon show, which is strange since there are several famous actors in the supporting role of the crew (Jessica Chastain, Kate Mara) and the NASA scientists back on earth (Jeff Daniels, Chiwetel Ejiofor). Even Kristin Wiig has a role as NASA’s PR head, which is a little off-putting since I kept expecting her to make a funny voice. Damon is always moving, explaining how to make water, grow plants, or communicate through hexadecimals in a blithe engaging manner. His extended monologues about why driving across Martian terrain makes him a pirate or psyching himself up to become “the fastest man in the history of space travel” are great, funny human moments. There are scenes of serious gravity, to be sure, but Damon is never so mopey or overwhelmed to drag the story and the audience down.

OK, so it isn’t all wine and roses for Damon

The Martian marks the second sci-fi movie to be nominated for Best Picture this year, but it is far different from Mad Max. While Max was really a spectacle with a hidden world built in, The Martian is more old fashioned in the sense of a traditional adventure survivor movie (albeit with fantastic shots of Martian scenery). Maybe the most impressive aspect to me of The Martian is how very smart it is. An effort is made to explain most of the scientific magic presented in the movie and keep it part of the story, a stark contrast to The Big Short deliberately stopping the movie to explain its complicated concepts. If a second sci-fi film was going to be nominated this year, I really feel that Star Wars: The Force Awakens should have been nominated in recognition of its cultural impact, but The Martian is probably the most fun of the nominees – an exceptional feat considering it is about a man left to die in a barren wasteland.

Other Nominations (7 Total): Best Actor (Matt Damon); Best Adapted Screenplay; Best Sound Mixing; Best Sound Editing; Best Visual Effects; Best Production Design.

Box Office: $228.3 Million (1^st among Nominees)

2015 Best Picture Nominees: Mad Max: Fury Road

“You know, hope is a mistake. If you can’t fix what’s broken, you’ll, uh… you’ll go insane.” – Max, Mad Max: Fury Road

Super sweet car chases. Post-apocalyptic wastelands. A bad-ass lady warrior with one hand. A flaming guitar player swinging off a semi while rocking out. There has never been a Best Picture nominee like Mad Max: Fury Road, the most unexpected nominee of the year. This is a bad-ass spectacle, a two hour non-stop car chase with amazing effects and stunts. Many were stunned and some appalled that a weird sci-fi movie like this could get a nomination but it is a well-deserved accolade.

Max (Tom Hardy) spends about half the movie in this mask, which is just as well since he doesn’t say much with it off, either.

In the distant future, Australia is a total desert and Max (Tom Hardy) is a wandering loner whose family, lost to tragedy years ago, still haunts him. Max is captured by minions of Immortan Joe, a warlord who controls the local water supply. One of Joe’s drivers, Furiosa (Charlize Theron), helps Joe’s breeder wives escape in a giant semi in hopes of returning to Furiosa’s long-lost home. Max, who is being used as a “blood bag” (supplying blood to one of Joe’s sick soldier boys) is hoisted along for the chase by Nux (Nicholas Hoult) and after a spectacular crash in the middle of a sand storm, Max and Furiosa form an uneasy alliance to escape from Joe. What follows is an extended chase scene of spectacular and innovative stunts as all the characters seek personal redemption.

Everyone talked about Daisy Ridley as the sci-fi feminist icon, but what about Furiosa (Charlize Theron)?

On the surface, Mad Max’s plot is paper thin: Max and Furiosa drive one way and fight some dudes, and then they drive back and fight the dudes again. But actually, there is a lot of depth here. Mad Max’s world is incredibly fleshed out including Immortan Joe’s wide ranging Viking mythology (with Joe established as God-head), the semi-function society, with fiefdom’s, each devoted to one of the three most important goods left in the world, and the modified language (“Blood bag,” “Blackthumb”, etc.) And the movie doesn’t ever stop to explain these things. It is always driving forward and expects the viewers to catch up by watching the characters interact. No one ever explains the wives’ role in society, for example (provide an endless army for Joe), but director George Miller shows us enough to fill in the gaps. Also, for a pure action movie, I have to say I was personally quite touched by the final reckoning between Max and Furiosa, where Max finally tells her his name.

The hideously scared Immortan Joe was played by the same guy (Hugh Keays-Byrne) who was the villain in the first Mad Max

That said, Mad Max is a deserving Best Picture not for the plot but for the pure spectacle of the movie. This is a movie that celebrated the bigness of movies and demanded to be watched on a big screen (I’ve seen it twice – once in a theater and once at homes and its visceral thrills are diminished in the latter). An early chase scene has all the parties driving into a fantastic dust storm of vivid sands and purple lightning until everyone is encompassed by it. Incredibly, the majority of the movie was shot with “analogue” special effects and not CGI stuff, which makes it all the more remarkable.

C’mon, this is just bad ass

If Mad Max were to win Best Picture – and I don’t think it has any realistic chance – the most comparable victor would be 1959’s Ben Hur, which, despite its religious pedigree, was a similar spectacle of sea battles and chariot races. It’s funny how different Oscars are today. Ben Hur, in its time, could cross the lines of commercial success to also win Best Picture while even nominating Mad Max today seems bizarre. But Max is an awesome movie with the best visuals of the year and surprising depth behind its car chases.

Other nominations (10 Total): Best Director (George Miller); Best Cinematography; Best Editing; Best Costume Design; Best Makeup and Hair; Best Sound Editing; Best Sound Mixing; Best Visual Effects; Best Production Design.

Box Office: $153.6 Million (3^rd among nominees)

2015 Best Animated Shorts

In the wacky world of Oscar nominated shorts, you can usually count on the Animated Shorts to be the most light-hearted fare of the bunch (a bar that is admittedly set very very low by the live action and documentary tandem). This year, however, the Animated Shorts have broken new ground by introducing bone crushing despair as a theme in many of the entries. Although it is hard for a cartoon bear to compete with a Pakistani woman shot in the head in terms of what can make you, the viewer, question the basic goodness of mankind, it is not for a lack of trying. Overall, I found this to be a fairly weak crop of contenders compared to recent years.

1. Prologue ­– Notably mainly because they actually stopped the presentation of nominees to warn parents of small children about the graphic violence and nudity to follow. Prologue is just a fight scene between four dudes in classical times with graphic detail into their wounds and deaths. Then a little girl sees it and cries. A very pretty movie with beautiful line drawings, but what it means, I have no idea.

2. Sanjay’s Super Team is about the culture clash or age clash or both. Anyway, a small Hindu child wants to watch a superhero cartoon but his father makes him pray instead, leading to the boy envisioning Hindu gods in a superhero fight. Joseph Campbell would probably enjoy this more than I did. It’s cute and all, but I wasn’t blown away by it. It is notably the happiest movie in the bunch. I predict it will win the award in the spirit of multiculturalism and also because it was the only one of the five to have any kind of wide release (It’s a Pixar movie that was shown in front of The Good Dinosaur).

3. Bear Story – Beautifully done movie that is almost unbearably sad (get it?). A sad street performing bear makes a living by detailing his life in a mechanical puppet show. The bear was living happily with his family until he was kidnapped by a circus and forced to ride a motorcycle. The bear finally escaped and was reunited with his family. However, the viewer is shown that the “real” bear lives alone, with his family missing, meaning he only gave himself a happy ending in his puppet show. A beautifully done movie with computer animation designed to look like mechanical stop motion poetry.

4. World of Tomorrow – A young girl is kidnapped by her future third generation clone to retrieve a lost memory. A bleakly funny conversation follows between the two. The young girl is so young she basically speaks nonsense while the clone regales her with tales of the Earth’s doomed future, including the clone’s romances with various inanimate objects. There are a lot of funny lines in this movie. It’s animated as mostly squiggles and stick figures, which I did not enjoy, as it felt too pompous and self-aware for its own good.

5. We Can’t Live Without Cosmos is a funny, sad and sweet tale of two cosmonaut friends who dream of space. When one is killed, the other is lost, disappearing, almost literally, into his space suit. Despite its depressing premise, the movie is filled with lots of funny moments – the pair rides a gyroscope and cheerfully disembarks in front of their commander, then race to the bathroom and later they bounce on their beds until they literally hit the ceiling. The movie is virtually dialogue free and so is like an old silent comedy, which I also appreciated.

2015 Best Picture Nomination: Brooklyn

You’ll feel so homesick that you’ll want to die, and there’s nothing you can do about it apart from endure it. But you will, and it won’t kill you. And one day, the sun will come out you might not even notice straight away-it’ll be that faint. – Eilis (Saoirse Ronan), recounting her immigration, Brooklyn

Brooklyn is, to put it simply, a delightful film. I can’t remember a movie in a long time that is so sweet and good-natured without inducing groans or feeling too syrupy and corny. It’s a very hard feat to pull off and I feel that Brooklyn does it with gusto. It is definitely the smallest of this year’s Best Picture nominees – it’s quiet nature is a perfect allegory for that of its main character – and yet is memorable as a story of people looking for happiness who actually find it!

The whole movie is Saoirse Ronan, so expect lots of pictures of her

In 1951, Eilis (the impossible-to-spell Saoirse Ronan) leaves her small Irish town, her mother and sister to start a new life in Brooklyn. Eilis is hesitant to leave but encouraged by her sister due to a paucity of prospects in their impoverished Irish town. Eilis’s boat road over is a misery of sea sickness and poor conditions and her experiences in her new life aren’t much better. She’s timid and lonely, doesn’t fit in with her boisterous house mates (including Felicity from Arrow!); and her job as a shop clerk is loud and strange. Things finally begin to turn around with the assistance of a kindly pastor (Jim Broadbent). More importantly, Eilis catches the eye of Tony (Emory Cohen), a sweet natured plumber and son of Italian immigrants. The two begin dating, although Eilis is slow to return affection to Tony. As she finally begins to feel at home, tragedy compels Eilis to return to Ireland. Even though she insists the visit will be temporary, events conspire to keep her there. Will Eilis return to her new life or leave it behind?

Eilis (Saoirse Ronan) and Tony (Emory Cohen), Brooklyn

Brooklyn reminded me of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, not so much for actual content (I thought Brooklyn was superior in every way) but in the sense there really isn’t much conflict in this movie. All the characters, with one notable exception, are pleasant and well-meaning (I guess the housemates are a little mean, but not to a huge extent). Tony only has good intentions and is utterly devoted to her from the start. And yet, for all the lack of major drama, Brooklyn is still enjoyable and even calming to watch and never dull. I like that the turnaround in Eilis’s life happens slowly. She later recounts it as slowly seeing the sun come up from behind a cloud and that’s a perfect metaphor: A slow chronicling of things getting better. The movie earns its happy endings because we see how Eilis has earned it.

Even though Brie Larson will most likely win Best Actress and certainly deserves to, Ronan is a more than deserving nominee who carries the film as much as Larson carries Room (more so, in fact, since Ronan is in practically every scene of the movie). Even though Eilis is shy and quiet, she is a kind person with a sharp with and feels like she’d be a good “hang”. We root for her to succeed.

If Bridge of Spies dealt with the paranoia of 1950s America, Brooklyn is its flip side, exploring the possibilities and openness of a country full of opportunity and hope for inhabitants new and old.

Other Nominations (3 Nominations Total): Best Actress (Saoirse Ronan); Best Adapted Screenplay

Total Box Office (As of 2/15/2016): $35.3 Million (7^th among nominees)

2015 Best Picture Nominee: Bridge of Spies

James Donovan: You have been charged with three counts and nineteen overt acts. Conspiracy to transmit United States defense and atomic secrets to the Soviet Union, conspiracy to gather secrets, and failing to register as a foreign agent.

Rudolf Abel: Do many foreign agents register? – Tom Hanks and Mark Rylance discuss the nuances of spying, Bridge of Spies

 

The Oscars get a lot of flak for having drifted far, far away from the main stream of film and while we can debates the merits of critical versus commercial success all day, there is something to be said for a time when the biggest blockbuster of the year was a near certainty for the Best Picture nomination. I’m not saying Star Wars was the best picture of 2015, but considering its cultural impact, it does seem like a huge omission to leave it out of the running altogether. The Oscars attempted to address this issues a few years back when they expanded the field of nominees from five to whatever, and while that worked initially with blockbusters like Avatar and The Blind Side getting nominated (but notably not winning), last year’s pack was littered with more art house heroes than ever before.

 

I think, despite a lot of criticisms at this year’s nominees, the 8 nominated have been more mainstream than in several years. Here’s a little litmus test to run how many Best Picture nominees in a given year can you see playing on a Sunday after on TBS five years down the line? Last year there was 1 or 2 at best (American Sniper and maybe Selma). This year has at least three and possibly five, with the likes of The Martian, Mad Max and the movie most in the middle of the road for mainstream success and artistic achievement, Bridge of Spies.

Tom Hanks as defender of liberty James Donovan (right) and Mark Rylance (center) as droll spy Rudolf Abel

In 1957, Rudolf Abel (Mark Rylance) is arrested by the FBI on suspicion of being a Russian Spy. James Donovan (Tom Hanks), a mild-mannered by highly skilled insurance attorney is recruited to represent Abel in a trial to prove Democracy is still alive. (Donovan is presented as a novice in the world of spies here, which makes subsequent events more inexplicable, but in reality, he had worked with intelligence during World War II.) Donovan, to the shock of all, tries to do a good job, contesting evidence that was obtained under questionable means and generally trying to win the case. His persistence in doing his job causes professional loss and personal grief, including repeated threats to his family.

Austin Stowell as the unfortunate Gary Powers

Meanwhile, a world away, Gary Powers, a pilot for the US’s U2 spy plane missions, is shot down over Russia, captured and imprisoned. Because of Donovan’s connection to Abel, he is covertly contacted by the Russians to negotiate a trade of Powers for Abel and must secretly travel to Germany, right near the Berlin Wall, to conduct tense negotiations.

At times, Hank’s character is almost over-the-top is his All-American boy goodness. He’s always right and always fighting the man to do the right thing (most notably when he disobeys orders to negotiate TWO prisoner releases for Abel, nearly queering the deal to get Powers back.) Director Steven Spielberg of course is a master director and builds tension well in key scenes, particularly the climax, which is really just a bunch of people standing on a bridge, waiting on a phone call.

You know, Amy Ryan (in green coat) is a really good actress, so all she gets to do here is play Donovan’s fretting wife for like 10 minutes.

Bridge of Spies is well-made, but ultimately it’s just fine, and that’s all it is. Tom Hanks is likeable, like in everything he does. Spielberg makes a good movie, like he always does. There’s nothing wrong here at all but there’s also nothing blow away exceptional. It’s not as thrilling as Spotlight (which had a lot less visually to work with). It’s not as crazy as Mad Max or Revenant. Even tiny little Brooklyn left me with a sense of “Huh, what a quirky little movie. How delightful.” This movie is just fine. You’ll see it. You’ll like it. In five years, you can catch an hour running on the treadmill at the gym and it will still be fine. At the end of the day, its cultural impact will probably be a million times greater than Birdman because it will have 100X the audience. And you know what, it’s a good little thriller.

Cultural, side note: There is a glut of 1950s movies out right now, including two in the running for Best Picture – this one and Brooklyn. There’s also Trumbo, Carol, and Hail, Caesar! Do we see a reflection in this period’s strange mix of paranoia and innocence with current times? Or is it nostalgia for when the paranoia was more unfounded and information not so at the ready?

Other Nominations (6 Total Nominations): Best Supporting Actor (Mark Rylance); Best Original Screenplay; Best Score; Best Sound Mixing; Best Production Design.

Box Office (As of 2/15/2106): $72.2 Million (4^th Among Nominees)

2015 Best Picture Nominee: The Big Short

Upon first inspection, this appears to be a film about attractive people with bad haircuts

– I don’t get it. Why are they confessing?

-They’re not confessing.

– They’re bragging. – Mark Baum (Steve Carell) and his two of his colleagues discuss realtors discussing their bad deeds, The Big Short

Was The Big Short the hardest move to make this year? Sure, nobody had to crawl through the frozen Canadian tundra or a sweltering African desert, but how do a make a movie about the purposefully labyrinthine world of high finance? The Big Short is one of the two Best Picture nominees this year – along with Spotlight – that manage to deal with visually unstimulating topics in exciting relies. The Big Short relies on narrative and meta-textual trickery to explain some very complicated concepts and make it point about the distracted, naive culture that allowed the financial collapse of 2008 to fester. It’s a fascinating movie without any real heroes.

A second poster, this one more about the concept, less about the stars.

In the early 2000s, social outcast and brilliant hedge fund manager Michael Burry (Christian Bale) discovers that mortgage backed securities – considered one of the safest investments on Wall Street – are on the verge of collapse because of overpriced housing and lending to people without proper vetting of their ability to repay their mortgages. Burry starts betting against the securities – buying insurance premiums that will pay off if the funds become undervalued – the so-called “Big Short”. Most think Burry is crazy, but broker Jared Vennett (Ryan Gosling) appreciates the scheme and sells similar premiums to Mark Baum (Steve Carell), a rage-fueled banker. Baum begins personally investigating the mortgages, traveling to Florida for an enlightening scene of strippers with multiple mortgages and acres of vacant housing developments. All the while, the bonds continue to teeter as ratings agencies refuse to investigate and everyone has blind faith in the system.

Christian Bale received an Academy Award nomination as whack-a-doo Michael Burry, who first realized the impending crisis and loved drumming

The Big Short was billed as a feel-good underdog story about upstarts who beat the system – Moneyball without the ball. The reality of the films is actually quite different. These are rich guys who become substantially richer by profiting off everyone’s failure. They succeed because millions lost their jobs and homes – and the movie makes sure we know this. There is a certain heroic quality to their success in the face of no one believing in them, but we and know all too well the price of their success.

There really are a lot of angry meetings in this movie

The movie works in large part because of directory Adam McKay’s great expense to explain and examine what is happening without hanging the audience up on jargon or the very complicated inner-workings of the finance industry. Characters routinely break the fourth wall to talk to the audience about what is going on. At various points, Vennett will introduce a celebrity like Margot Robbie or Selena Gomez to explain the complex financial transactions in layman’s terms. It’s a plan that works in several ways – the audience is told about what’s going on in a way that doesn’t bring the movie to a screeching halt while further commenting on the obsession with fame and celebrity that distracts us from really important stuff like impending financial doom. I also like how the movie sets up traditional scenes and then undercuts them and chides the audience for buying into the unrealistic drama – like when another pair of investors learn about Burry scheme while sitting in a brokerage firm’s waiting room, then the characters explain they actually learned of the shorts separately in uninteresting ways and ask us to excuse the dramatic license (even more mind-blowing when you consider these characters are purportedly real, but actually composites of several real-life characters! Layers upon layers of meta-textual commentary). McKay is mostly known for making Will Ferrell’s zany improve comedies but really delivers and serious and interesting movie.

The movie’s big flaw is in trying to pin down some of the characters. Carell’s Mark Baum, in particular has a range of motivations that never really stick. Sometimes he’s enraged about his brother who committed suicide, other times he’s just flummoxed at the world. At the end of the movie, he is the last holdout in cashing in his shorts and I was never sure why.

I don’t expect The Big Short to win Best Picture this year, but I think that it is perhaps the most important of the nominees from a strictly message standpoint. This is one of the best explanations yet as to why the financial meltdown happened and an even more infuriating call to alarm that another meltdown is imminent.

Other Nominations (5 Total): Best Director (Adam McKay); Best Supporting Actor (Christian Bale); Best Adapted Screenplay; Best Editing

Box Office (As Of 2/15/2016): $65.6 Million (5th among nominees)