Wednesday, February 28, 2018

Oscar Predictions: Best Director

The Oscars are coming up yet again. The guilds, Globes, BAFTAs, and critics have all made their picks. Now it's my turn to figure out what it all means with my multi-part Oscar predictions.
I'm going to go through each of the Oscar categories, tell you what has been nominated and won elsewhere, and order the nominees from who I think is most to least likely to win on Oscar night. That doesn't mean I'll be right, but it does mean I'll be informed. Wish me luck.


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Glossary:
BAFTA Awards - British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards
Golden Globe Award - Presented by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association
DGA Award - Director's Guild of America

"In the case of the surprise Moonlight Best Picture win though, [a Best Director] win would be a requirement. " - Me (2/23/2017)
Just a little reminder that I'm wrong more often than my degree of certainly would suggest. Then again, right before that, I said of the Best Director Oscar "there's no reason to think from the precursors that Jenkins will pull ahead of Chazelle", so maybe I am smart.

The BAFTA and Golden Globe awards are nice. Both have nominated 19 of the last 20 Oscar winners. The BAFTA and Oscar winner have matched 9 times. The Golden Globe and Oscar winner have matched 11 times.

But, the DGA award is the big one. The DGA has nominated the Oscar winner 20 of the last 20 times and matched winners 17 times. One of the 3 misses was due to the baffling Oscar snub of Ben Affleck for Argo. Another was when the Globes, BAFTAs, and DGA picked three different winners in 2002. The third case is the only one that worries me. In 2000 all three precursors went to Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), then the Oscar went to Steven Soderbergh (Traffic). Even more confusing for that year: neither movie won the Oscar for Best Picture. That kind of split wouldn't be crazy this year. I'd say three director's have air tight cases for deserving and Oscar win and the other two wouldn't earn jeers from me if either won.

Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water)
DGA - Director - Winner
BAFTA - Director - Winner
Golden Globes - Director - Winner
As I pointed out already, the trifecta is no guarantee. 5 of the last 6 times it's happened, the movie also won the Oscar*. I'd be stupid to pick against del Toro. This leads me to wondering what the hell was in the water in Mexico between 1961-1964? A del Toro win would mean that 4 of the last 5 winners were Mexican directors (Alfonso Cuarón - 2013, Alejandro G. Iñárritu - 2014, 2015, del Toro - 2017). I'm starting to wonder if Damien Chazelle is really from Rhode Island.

*Technically 5/7 but I'm not counting the Argo year since Affleck didn't get nominated for the Oscar.

Christopher Nolan (Dunkirk)
DGA - Director - Nominee
BAFTA - Director - Nominee
Golden Globes - Director - Nominee
I would be shocked if The Shape of Water wins Best Picture without del Toro winning this. If The Shape of Water doesn't win, this is a real possibility. There are a lot of people who think a nomination was overdue for Nolan. He gets even more of the credit for Dunkirk than del Toro has received for The Shape of Water. He's del Toro's only obvious competition.

Jordan Peele (Get Out)
DGA - Director - Nominee
Del Toro is enough of a favorite that the rest of this space is reserved for me acting as amateur sociologist. Even in the case of a Get Out surprise win for Best Picture, I don't predict a Jordan Peele win for Best Director. Get Out is fully credited to Peele. When people talk about his direction, it's more from a place of surprise. Despite everything, Get Out is still seen as either a horror movie or a comedy. Either has a hard time getting taken seriously. Mainly though,Peele is seen as a writer-first and foremost. A Get Out win would be like Spotlight in 2015 getting Best Picture and Screenplay but not Director.

Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird)
DGA - Director - Nominee
Hopefully Gerwig will have many nominations in the future.

Paul Thomas Anderson (Phantom Thread)
This is only his second nomination for Best Director. That surprised me. What would surprise me more is if he won this time.

Movie Reaction: Annihilation

Formula: (Contact + Under the Skin) / Arrival

2015's Ex Machina had me from frame one. Despite the moral quandaries of it, the movie was very easy to grasp. It's one of my favorite story structures: put a few characters in a room, watch how they bounce off one another, and see who leaves it (Free Fire is another great example of this). The cast was made up of that guy I loved from About Time, that guy I loved from Inside Llewyn Davis, and that impossibly beautiful Swede from Anna Karenina. The ending was dark and haunting and I loved the movie.

Alex Garland's follow-up, Annihilation, is a little harder for me to grasp. It works on a much larger canvas. Rather than setting a few characters in a room, it sends them off into a mysterious forest. The cast is a little larger and a little less designed for me to immediately fall in love with. The ending is dark but less certain, and I'm not sure how I feel about the movie as a whole.

The film begins with Lena (Natalie Portman), still trying to get over the loss of her husband (Oscar Isaac), who has been missing for 12 months on a special ops mission. Then, without warning, her husband returns one night, a stoic shell of who he used to be. This leads to both of them being abducted by a stealth government agency and brought to a facility down in, I think, Louisiana. This facility is on the edge of a mysterious location called "The Shimmer". The Shimmer is this expanding bubble created by an alien force. Lena's husband went in there 12 months ago on an exploratory mission and is so far the only person to ever come out of it. So, Lena joins a group of female scientists to explore the Shimmer to get answers about what happened to her husband. As you can imagine, the group slowly gets picked off by the creatures in there as they move closer to the lighthouse where all this began. Oh, and the life inside the Shimmer is all mutated, combining multiple species.

I'm sure I left out a few key details there. There's a lot going on with the story. This is a much more ambitious film than Ex Machina. I'll be honest, I'm still trying to make sense of enough of this movie, that I'm not sure how useful this Reaction is going to be. Annihilation is an example of creating a Sci Fi world with a lot of mysteries and only answering the questions that need to be answered. There are a lot of loose ends in the film. Intentional loose ends, but loose ends nonetheless. I have trouble with movies that do this, mainly because I'm never sure whether it's bold filmmaking or a narrative cop-out. Anyone can create a lot of questions. It's harder to have answers. I actually do think Garland has more answers than I picked up on. As I mentioned, the movie confused me a bit.

I couldn't stop thinking about other movies when I was watching Annihilation. There's a lot of Contact in this. Bits of Arrival too with some of the mind games being played. There are countless movies about exploring abandoned alien planets or vessels that it reminded me of (most of the Alien series, in fact). I even got hints of Under the Skin in how the movie played with silences and foreign noises. Ex Machina wasn't wholly new either. It was a fresh slant on familiar structures though. Annihilation feels more like an amalgamation of other stories without adding anything new from the combination.

Natalie Portman is very good at the center of the movie. She's worked in enough kinds of movies, they I can buy her as a former army badass who became a biology professor. She's played both parts before and knows how to carry herself for each. Part of what worked so well in Ex Machina was that the limited cast (3 characters, give or take a robot) allowed Garland the time to build a few really great, complex characters. Annihilation has to spread that out with a larger cast. Oscar Isaac spends most of the movie shell-shocked, which is a bit of a waste. The other scientists are played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson, and Tuva Novotny. They are all playing types more than fully formed characters. They do well, but mostly exist to be picked off and symbolize all the effects of the Shimmer on people. One represents that random external danger. Another is the internal danger and the mind games. One submits to the power of the Shimmer. Another fights like hell to get it before it can get her. I'm not sure there's a better way to handle this. I just wish there was. Oh, and poor Benedict Wong's entire performance is inside a biohazzard suit.

Annihilation has a lot of talent on display. The world inside the Shimmer has some beautiful touches. The visual effects look good. The sound is often unsettling. The performances by the actors are better than the characters. Garland's direction is confident. It all felt more like a tryout for a franchise movie than a bold new vision*. Perhaps Ex Machina set my expectations too high. Annihilation is good, not great.

*Btw, if Garland wanted to director a Star Wars movie, I'd be cool with that.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend

Tuesday, February 27, 2018

Oscar Predictions: Best Lead Actress

The Oscars are coming up yet again. The guilds, Globes, BAFTAs, and critics have all made their picks. Now it's my turn to figure out what it all means with my multi-part Oscar predictions.
I'm going to go through each of the Oscar categories, tell you what has been nominated and won elsewhere, and order the nominees from who I think is most to least likely to win on Oscar night. That doesn't mean I'll be right, but it does mean I'll be informed. Wish me luck.


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Glossary:
BAFTA - British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards
Golden Globe - Presented by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association  Award
SAG - Screen Actors Guild Award

Even I'm bored by these acting categories. I suppose Lead Actress has the most suspense of the four. It's still pretty minimal. Let's run through the numbers real quick anyway. Both the Golden Globes and SAG have nominated all of the last 20 Oscar winners. BAFTA is way behind at 14. What's intimidating is that the Globes have matched the Oscar winner 18 times (technically out of 19, not 20). The SAG award 16. The BAFTA 12. When all three go to the same actress, she's won the Oscar all 8 times.

Golden Globes - Lead Actress Drama - Winner
SAG - Lead Actress - Winner
BAFTA - Lead Actress - Winner
I've already covered why Frances McDormand will win this in the intro. The only thing that could hurt her is that she doesn't give a fuck if she wins. Sometimes voters like to know you want it.

Sally Hawkins (The Shape of Water)
Golden Globes - Lead Actress Drama - Nominee
SAG - Lead Actress - Nominee
BAFTA - Lead Actress - Nominee
Oscar voters fell for a silent performance in 2011's The Artist, so there is precedence, and Hawkins' performance is less of a gimmick*. However, I think voters are way more interested in a performance by a woman who's angry as hell and taking it out on the men in power getting in her way. You know, but the Oscars aren't political.

*Can you tell I'm not a big fan of The Artist?

Saoirse Ronan (Lady Bird)
Golden Globes - Lead Actress Comedy - Winner
SAG - Lead Actress - Nominee
BAFTA - Lead Actress - Nominee
Ronan already has three Oscar nominations and she's younger than Emma Stone, Brie Larson, and Jennifer Lawrence. At this point, if she doesn't have an Oscar of her own by the time she's 30, I'll be genuinely surprised.

Margot Robbie (I, Tonya)
Golden Globes - Lead Actress Comedy - Nominee
SAG - Lead Actress - Nominee
BAFTA - Lead Actress - Nominee
I suppose the recent Winter Olympics don't hurt her odds.

Meryl Streep (The Post)
Golden Globes - Lead Actress Drama - Nominee
I'm excited to see how unreachable she can make her record Oscar nomination tally. No one's in a hurry to give her that fourth win yet.

Oscar Predictions: Best Lead Actor

The Oscars are coming up yet again. The guilds, Globes, BAFTAs, and critics have all made their picks. Now it's my turn to figure out what it all means with my multi-part Oscar predictions.
I'm going to go through each of the Oscar categories, tell you what has been nominated and won elsewhere, and order the nominees from who I think is most to least likely to win on Oscar night. That doesn't mean I'll be right, but it does mean I'll be informed. Wish me luck.


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Previously:
Foreign Film
Visual Effects
Production Design
Supporting Actor
Supporting Actress
Original Score and Song
Original and Adapted Screenplay

Glossary:
BAFTA - British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards
Golden Globe - Presented by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association  Award
SAG - Screen Actors Guild Award

The Golden Globes have nominated the eventual Oscar winner 19 of the last 20 years. The one blemish is Roberto Benigni winning for Life is Beautiful in 1998*. They've also awarded the man who went on to win the Oscar 14 times (13 of the last 14 too). This is a little inflated, since they have two lead actor awards, but still.

*Side thought: A lot of the Golden Globes big misses are foreign performances/films. The Globes are chosen by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. What's up with that?

The BAFTA Award lags a little behind. They've nominated the Oscar winner 17 times and matched winners 12 times in the last two decades. You can normally see it coming when it's going to happen. In 2013, they had no love for Dallas Buyers Club, but no one doubted that Matthew McConaughey was a lock to win the Oscar. However, we don't have to worry about it this year.

The SAG Award is ultra-reliable. They nominated the last 20 Oscar winners and matched winners 15 of those times. Before last year's unexpected split, they called the last 12 Oscar winners. I suspect this year will begin a new streak.

Gary Oldman (Darkest Hour)
BAFTA - Lead Actor - Winner
Golden Globes - Lead Actor Drama - Winner
SAG - Lead Actor - Winner
The trifecta isn't a lock. It's resulted in an Oscar win 8 of the last 9 times it's happened. Look a little closer though and the exception makes a little more sense. In 2000, Russell Crowe won a surprise Lead Actor Oscar for Gladiator. In 2001, he won the BAFTA, SAG, and Globe for A Beautiful Mind. Coming fresh off a win the year before, voters didn't feel as compelled to follow suit, so the award went to Denzel Washington instead.

This year is a much different story. I always bring up the "It's his time" Oscar. That's when nothing else matters than the public saying this actor should win. It's why no one doubted Leo's ability to win for TheRevenant. It's how Meryl Streep turned a middle of the road (for her) performance in The Iron Lady into her third win. The people have spoken. Gary Oldman is due an Oscar. It helps that this really is a powerhouse performance.

Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out)
BAFTA - Lead Actor - Nominee
Golden Globes - Lead Actor Comedy - Nominee
SAG - Lead Actor - Nominee
This is me hedging. There's a very real chance that Get Out could win Best Picture. The demographics of the Academy have changed a lot over the last couple years (age, race, gender, size). I'd still call Kaluuya a massive underdog, but if the change in the voting body causes some unexpected results, this would be a good place to look. Kaluuya also gets the tiniest of bumps for being in The Black Panther at the same time that voting is going on. It's probably only a .1% boost. Any bit helps.

Timothee Chalamet (Call Me By Your Name)
BAFTA - Lead Actor - Nominee
Golden Globes - Lead Actor Drama - Nominee
SAG - Lead Actor - Nominee
Chalamet is the prototypical "obvious nominee". Everyone picks him, saying things like "he's got a great career ahead of him" and "this is the first of many". There's no urgency to making sure he wins now. Call Me By Your Name has been one of the quieter Best Picture nominees in this last phase.

Daniel Day-Lewis (Phantom Thread)
BAFTA - Lead Actor - Nominee
Golden Globes - Lead Actor Drama - Nominee
This is not a Best Actor winning performance. Day-Lewis willingly steps aside and lets the women in the movie make it their own. He's good and still nominated on reputation if nothing else. In a decade, no one will be saying he was robbed like some do about Gangs of New York.

Denzel Washington (Roman J. Israel Esq.)
Golden Globes - Lead Actor Drama - Nominee
SAG - Lead Actor - Nominee
Everyone, welcome Denzel to the "Nominated on Reputation" club. Please take your seat between Meryl and Daniel. That used to be Jack Nicholson's chair but he doesn't need it any more.

Monday, February 26, 2018

Movie Reaction: Game Night

Formula: The Game ^ Rat Race

A group of friends has a weekly game night. One of them decides to up the stakes. He hires a company to fake a kidnapping and leave clues for the others to solve. Coincidentally, at the exact time that the fake kidnapping is supposed to happen, that person is really kidnapped and the others don't realize that this is no longer a game. Wacky hijinks ensue.

As far as high concepts go, Game Night is asks a lot from the audience to accept. As with a lot of comedies, the goal is for the jokes to outpace the story. Keep the audience laughing so much that they can't think about if any of the story makes sense. In that respect, Game Night does just enough to work, but not without stumbles.

The movie has a strong cast, and that's a great way to start. It centers around three couples, Rachel McAdams & Jason Bateman, Lamorne Morris & Kylie Bunbury, and Billy Magnussen & Sharon Horgan. There's also Jesse Plemons playing a creepy neighbor and Kyle Chandler as Bateman's over-achieving brother. All the people you would expect to be funny are. Bateman can play this kind of straight man role in his sleep and still be funny (Note: his isn't sleepwalking through this role). Morris uses a lot of his moves from New Girl, except with the crazy dialed down a bit. Horgan is one of the greats at getting a laugh out of an eye roll or general belittlement. However, the people who impressed me the most were those I don't normally associate with comedies. McAdams is the romance-end of most of the romantic comedies she's been in. It hasn't been since Mean Girls that she's been asked to actually generate the laughs like this. She has good comedic timing and gets laughs from a few lines that don't otherwise deserve them. I'm so used to Kyle Chandler as a stoic presence in Friday Night Lights and Bloodline that it is bizarre seeing him so loose and frantic. Jesse Plemons most effectively uses what he's already known for as an actor to great effect. He's always kind of awkward and has an unscrutible face. He could be listening intently or completely spaced out and you'd never know which. He dials all that up and milks every second he can out of it. With a weaker cast, I don't see how this movie could've worked. 

The directors of Game Night also wrote both of the Horrible Bosses movies, which is a good bar to set. Like those movies, I like the idea of different jokes and plot points more than the actual execution. I think it sounds funny to have someone holding a gun that they think is fake. I don't think I've ever laughed at a scene of someone waving the gun around in exaggerated fashion and sticking the gun in his or her mouth playfully. It's a joke that always sounds funnier described than seeing it acted out*. The movie is filled with things like that. The funniest parts for me were small jokes on the side, like a recurring gag about glass tables not breaking. There aren't enough of these to make up for a lack of big set pieces though. Ideally, this antics in the movie will rise with the plot. As the story expands, so do the jokes. Instead, it settles for being a half-assed action movie by the end. And I should be clear. They didn't try and fail to make it an action movie by the end. They made a half-assed action movie by design, which is fine and potentially quite funny. There just weren't enough laughs to sustain it.

*That said, this film features a scene like that with Rachel McAdams doing this while dancing along to Third Eye Blind which is more delightful than I can possibly explain. 

One of the most common lazy commentaries I'll hear someone make about a movie is saying "I bet that was every good joke" after seeing a trailer. That's up there with "the book was so much better" among the most useless bits of criticism one can come up with. What the person is really saying is, "I bet none of the jokes in the movie need any context". You see, trailers use the funny parts of a movie that don't have to be explained: the jokes that could essentially be plugged into any movie and still be funny. They don't have time to set things up in 30, 60, or 120 seconds. Great comedies don't have to worry about the best jokes being spoiled in a trailer, because even more of the jokes are based on knowing the characters or are built on prior events in the movie that can't be covers so quickly. Mediocre comedies are more filled with those simple jokes that can be easily spoiled by an overzealous trailer. Well, that happens with Game Night. I laughed the hardest at the trailer. By the time I saw the movie, I knew most of what turned out to be my favorite jokes. With context the jokes didn't get any funnier and there weren't enough new jokes to make up for the ones lost to the trailer. I suppose I could be angry at the trailer for this, but I'd rather look to a thin script in need of another punch-up draft or two.

It's a shame. Game Night fell just below the threshold for me to really love it. Had the jokes landed even 10% harder, I could've thoroughly enjoyed it. Laughs have a compounding effect. It's easier to make someone keep laughing than to start laughing. Comedy benefits a great deal from momentum. For me, Game Night never had enough momentum with the jokes. I found myself not laughing just enough to really think about the convoluted story and the whole movie collapsed under the weight of that scrutiny. I have a feeling that if the jokes hit you even a little harder than they hit me, you'll have a great time.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend

Sunday, February 25, 2018

Oscar Predictions: Best Original and Adapted Screenplay


The Oscars are coming up yet again. The guilds, Globes, BAFTAs, and critics have all made their picks. Now it's my turn to figure out what it all means with my multi-part Oscar predictions.
I'm going to go through each of the Oscar categories, tell you what has been nominated and won elsewhere, and order the nominees from who I think is most to least likely to win on Oscar night. That doesn't mean I'll be right, but it does mean I'll be informed. Wish me luck.

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Glossary:
BAFTA - British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards
Golden Globe - Presented by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association  Award
WGA - Writers Guild of America Awards

The WGA is very userful for figuring out the Oscar winner...except for when it isn't. To be eligible for a WGA award, one must belong to the Writers Guild of America. Immediately, you'll notice that foreign films or scripts from foreigners are immediately excluded. A lot of animated films too for some reason. Pixar never gets WGA nominations or even consideration. There's always a handful of potential Oscar players not present for the WGA Award. It's not too bad this year. Only one Oscar film is ineligible. Too bad it's the frontrunner for the Original Screenplay Oscar. It's also difficult to find lists of which films were actually eligible for the WGA Award in past years. So far, my research has only gone back to 2010. In that time, the WGA winners for Adapted Screenplay and Original Screenplay predict the Oscar winner every time that the movie is eligible for the Oscar. In other words: In 2014. The Imitation Game was eligible for the WGA, won the WGA Award for Adapted Screenplay, then won the Oscar. In 2014, Birdman wasn't eligible for the WGA Award and wasn't nominated, The Grand Budapest Hotel won the WGA Award for Original Screenplay, but Birdman went on to win the Oscar.

The Golden Globes combine the screenplay award into one award, so it's tricky judging its usefulness. 15 of the last 20 years, the one Golden Globe field has included both the Original and Adapted Screenplay Oscar winner. The Golden Globe winner has also won either the Original or Adapted Screenplay Oscar 15 times. All that means the Golden Globes are moderately useful.

The BAFTA Awards are a little easier to decipher. They've nominated the eventual winner of the Original and Adapted Screenplay Oscars 18 of the last 20 years each. Of the combined 4 misses they've had, only one was in the 2000s (Her in 2013). The BAFTA winner for Original Screenplay has matched the Oscar winner 11 the last 20 times. Adapted Screenplay only 7 of 20 times. Although, it should be noted that the Moonlight screenplay last year was handled oddly, so the Adapted Screenplay numbers a slight bit higher.

Original Screenplay
BAFTA - Original Screenplay - Winner
Golden Globes - Screenplay - Winner
WGA - Ineligible
The WGA ineligibility adds a little question to this. There isn't any precedent I found of a movie winning two of the screenplay awards, being ineligible for the third, then losing the Oscar. Three Billboards is pretty safe.

BAFTA - Original Screenplay - Nominee
WGA - Original Screenplay - Winner
When Three Billboards wasn't in the field, the award went to Get Out. I wouldn't read too much into the lack of a Golden Globe nomination. They didn't care much for Get Out. I have it this high because there's a lot of talk of Get Out possibly pulling off a Best Picture win. If it does, it almost has to have another win somewhere else. This is by far the most likely place.

BAFTA - Original Screenplay - Nominee
Golden Globes - Screenplay - Nominee
WGA - Original Screenplay- Nominee
I have a hard time believing that if The Shape of Water wins Best Picture, it would be part of some Titanic-esque night. If one movie is positioned to sweep though, it would be The Shape of Water.

BAFTA - Original Screenplay - Nominee
Golden Globes - Screenplay - Nominee
WGA - Original Screenplay - Nominee
There's a good chance that Lady Bird could come away with no wins on Oscar night, which would be a shame.

WGA - Original Screenplay - Nominee
I'm pretty sure they're just thrilled to be nominated.

Adapted Screenplay
BAFTA - Adapted Screenplay - Winner
WGA - Adapted Screenplay - Winner
The lack of a Golden Globe nomination is odd, given that this film matches the Hollywood Foreign Press Association's demographic pretty well. It's a weak field though. I feel confident about this one.

Golden Globes - Screenplay - Nominee
BAFTA - Adapted Screenplay - Nominee
WGA - Adapted Screenplay - Nominee
Academy voters do love Aaron Sorkin. There is no heat on this movie though. If Jessica Chastain couldn't get a Lead Actress nomination, that indicates a massive lack of support.

WGA - Adapted Screenplay - Nominee
Perhaps the sheer novelty of a Marvel movie being nominated could sneak it through to a win. That would be a big ask.

WGA - Adapted Screenplay - Nominee
The narration is mixed into things nicely. The BAFTAs ignored more about this movie than just the screenplay, so I won't read too much into that. I'd call the screenplay more competent than exceptional though.

WGA - Adapted Screenplay - Nominee
This sure feels toxic after the James Franco allegations came out.