Best of 2022

In honor of the Oscars today and also me pretty much tapping out on going any further in unseen 2022 movies, here’s my personal nominations for the best of 2022.

I’ll just do the big categories that I care about because
a) you don’t want to read me parsing through Best Sound, if you do care, just ask
b) I want to, who are you, my supervisor?

Best Actor in a Supporting Performance

Jeffrey Wright – The Batman
Paul Dano – The Fablemans
Nicolas Hoult – The Menu
Steven Yeun – Nope

Winner: Ke Huy Quan – Everything Everywhere All At Once

Best Actress in a Supporting Performance

Stephanie Hsu – Everything Everywhere All At Once
Michelle Williams – The Fablemans
Keke Palmer – Nope
Sigourney Weaver – Avatar: The Way of Water

Winner: Kristen Stewart – Crimes of the Future

Best Performance by a Voice Actor

Kaho Nakamura – Belle
Tim Robinson – Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers
Jenny Slate – Marcel the Shell With Shoes On
Rosalie Chiang – Turning Red

Winner: H. Jon Benjamin – The Bob’s Burgers Movie

Best Original Screenplay

The Fablemans
Nope
Decision to Leave
Aftersun

Winner: Tar

Best Adapted Screenplay

Pearl
The Batman
After Yang
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

Winner: Marcel the Shell With Shoes On

Best Animated Feature

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On
Mad God
Inu-Oh

Winner: Belle

Best Non-English Language Feature (Non-Animated)

Saloum
Shin Ultraman
Petite Maman
Decision to Leave

Winner: RRR

Best Director

James Cameron
Todd Field
Matt Reeves
The Daniels

Winner: S.S. Rajamouli

Best Actress in a Leading Performance

Mia Goth – Pearl
Anna Cobb – We’re All Going to the World’s Fair
Rebecca Hall – Resurrection
Michelle Yeoh – Everything Everywhere All At Once

Winner: Cate Blanchett – Tar

Best Actor in a Leading Performance

Robert Pattinson – The Batman
Austin Butler – Elvis
Paul Mescal – Aftersun
Tom Cruise – Top Gun: Maverick

Winner(s): Ram Charan and NT Rama Rao Jr. – RRR

Pages: 1 2

For Review: ‘The French Dispatch’, ‘Spencer’, ‘The Harder They Fall’, ‘The Electrical Life of Louis Wain’

The French Dispatch

Late-period Wes Anderson has, for me, become the most artistically fruitful period of his entire career. The melancholy that always italicized his conceptions of his worlds and his characters has blossomed into a constant meditation into being something of a man out of time. Now that he’s something of the last remaining indie auteur of his generation still making at the same level he always was, his work feels constantly grappling with the idea of what it means to tell his stories and what they will leave behind.

In The French Dispatch, we are treated to three main vignettes and a short aside, each framed as stories told in an issue of a New Yorker-esque magazine, completing its final release following the death of its founder Arthur Howitzer, Jr. (Billy Murray).

Anthology films have a tendency to be inconsistent, often shades of their filmmakers full-length features or ideas that could not have a full completion. Here, Anderson avoids that pitfall. Each of these feels as though they are a complete thematic work, telling part of the larger whole. His form, designed to pick images and points of emphasis relentlessly, feels wedded to function, telling the story as precisely chosen as a writer would select their words and as editor would ruthlessly trim away.

Whether the story of a violent artist (Benicio Del Toro) and his muse (Lea Seydoux), a revolutionary teen (Timothee Chalamet) and the overly involved journalist (Frances McDormand) chronicling their uprising, or a man of considerable eloquence (Jeffery Wright) recounting a fascinating encounter with a chef (Stephen Park), The French Dispatch stays laser-focused on the humanity at the core of these stories.

It’s about the connections we make and the stories we tell about those connections. What’s important, what do we leave in and leave out? Are we even totally sure what the most important part of our narratives are or is that something that only others can really give to us? The stories of writers are here because these are people, by their nature, who observe human experience, but who also rely on others to tell them what matters. At its core, The French Dispatch is the story of the editor, what remains when we get away from what ultimately doesn’t matter.

Anderson’s filmmaking is often sad because he knows things end. This magazine ends, our time somewhere ends, people die. But it is what we do before those endings that matter. Take Jeffery Wright’s food writer and James Baldwin-expy Roebuck Wright, giving the highlight performance of the film. Roebuck is a master of recollection, recalling every word that he’s ever written. But it is Anderson emphasizing for him that at every step, it’s the people around him that he remembered. The connection of a father and son and the skill and presence of a chef. The gruff kindness of an editor giving him a second chance. Jeffery Wright gives an extraordinary tenderness to the character, showing the warmth this man really does have for his subjects.

Ultimately, The French Dispatch is a continuation of the humanist Wes Anderson work. A story about people and what they tell and experience in the world around them.

5/5

Also, I got through that whole thing without the word “twee,” “precocious,” or wanking poetically about Wes Anderson’s going more and more into his style, so the rest of you can too.

Spencer

Kristen Stewart must be exhausted from carrying this movie on her back.

Look, it is to be expected. Spencer, Larrain’s latest hypnotic biopic of a powerful political woman, is basically a direct submission to the Academy to win Best Actress in a Leading Performance. It is a film that exists for a virtuoso leading performance, the cinematic equivalent of a backing band for Steve Vai. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it is what it is.

And let us be clear, Kristen Stewart 100% fully earns that submission and, most likely, that win. This is an absolutely towering work of acting. Less playing the historical Diana and more a character based on Diana (think Joyce Carol Oates’ Blonde) that draws on Stewart’s own experience in front of the paparazzi, Stewart is absolutely astounding, a woman constantly on the edge without ever leaping quite over, one who’s decided to let the stiff upper lip not get the better of her.

Stewart plays her Diana as a woman who was clearly once happy. She knows how to wear the motions of somebody going through the motions who knows the contours of what happy people do. It’s depression, it’s anxiety, it’s the paranoia that comes from not being able to trust anybody with your life. Stewart’s constant microexpressions, a million thoughts racing as she tries to simply keep it together, that is this movie.

And the direction gives her every opportunity. The phrase “the camera loves you” here means that the camera follows her like a puppy dog. Larrain knows she’s the star. The camera swirls and swoops and brings us to the brink of darkness right along with Diana.

Every bit of this film serves that central purpose. Claire Mathon’s gorgeous photography gives a foggy darkness even in the light and Jonny Greenwood keeps you from relaxing with every screeching string.

The only person who doesn’t seem to quite get the memo here is Steven Knight, writer of Serenity (2019), who turns in a clunky script that nearly threatens to sink the film. Absolutely no metaphor is turned away at the door here. The ending is a choice that I’m still chewing on. There’s a lot put here and the film vacillates wildly between functioning and not functioning. It is every moment that mostly rests on Stewart and Larrain and Greenwood and Mathon that works, but when we get back to the plotting, it strains. There’s also not enough bold choices. A few reasonably weird things don’t get past the sense that you’re simply checking boxes to give Stewart “ACTING” to do. This film feels desperately in want of a few bolder story choices.

But hey, Kristen Stewart is definitely getting Best Actress this year, so in that way, total success.

3.5/5

Capsules

The Harder They Fall:
A debut that you’re gonna be able to say “boy, I saw it all there right from the start.” Jeymes Samuel’s dizzying Western is long on style and short on substance. But with that much style and a phenomenal cast that looks to be having a barrel of fun every time they’re on screen, one can forgive it. Jonathan Majors particularly earns his bonafides here, the kind of performance that should have everyone ready to cast him in their action movie. If only this wasn’t made for Netflix, it wouldn’t look so flat. The ceiling ends up getting lowered on this movie with the sheer lack of mood the lighting and style is allowed to have. A dizzying camera shooting flat landscapes, that’s Netflix, what are you gonna do?

3.5/5

The Electrical Life of Louis Wain:

Cumberbatch gives his all-time best performance this year in The Power of the Dog, so naturally he must accompany it with a performance that certainly ranks among the performances that he has given. The most you can say about any of this is that nobody and nothing is outright awful, but rather that it all feels perfectly competent. The least would be that the film takes an awfully long time to get to anything anyone may care about (read: the thing about the cats) and spends far too little time once it’s there. Otherwise, it’s Cumberbatch playing someone who would probably be on the spectrum if diagnosed with a cast around him in petticoats where at the end you can go “huh, I guess.” A Wikipedia entry through and through.

2/5

Dune isn’t funny. Good!

Among its many other virtues, Denis Villeneuve’s Dune is blessed with a dearth of jokes.

Let me explain.

It’s not that the film, at least to my belief, contains absolutely zero levity. Jason Momoa’s “coolest uncle” take on Duncan Idaho provides the film with its few out and out quips and Brolin is the butt of a few jabs at his military stiffness. I also believe that levity need not merely be comedy. There’s fun to be had in a sense of adventure and action, which Dune has especially in the latter half.

But at no point is Dune, like many of its big-budget neighbors, an action comedy. Which, to be frank, we have far too many of now.

As genre storytelling and “geek” film especially becomes the largely dominant mode of Hollywood filmmaking, it has been plagued by the sense that people making this stuff don’t really believe in it. There’s an ironic distancing from superheroes, a wink to the audience that all this space stuff is kind of silly, a reminder that you can’t get too serious with it, right?

It’s blamed on the MCU and Joss Whedon in particular, and while I certainly wouldn’t lay it squarely at the feet of the trillion-pound elephant in the room, I think it starts there. Not Whedon, who certainly is a contributor, his proud geekdom always tinged with shame (when he likely should have been shamed for other things), but with Robert Downey Jr. in Iron Man.

It is important to remember that Iron Man comes out the same year as The Dark Knight, and succeeds in part because it is a counterpoint to that Nolan/DC mode. Where Nolan is distancing from the genre trappings, making Heat with bat-suits, the MCU embraced those trappings in Iron Man. An origin story, a man in red and gold armor, a bad guy that was a dark mirror.

But to keep the audience, they worry, from rejecting the goofier aspects of the story, the movie leans heavily into RDJ. A committed emotional performance when necessary, but an above-it-all aloofness that would only become more exacerbated with sequels. He doesn’t take any of this seriously, so why should you?

Over time, that has permeated into all of this sci-fi/superhero/genre filmmaking on a huge scale. Quips make sure the audience never feel too much tension. Undercut huge emotional moments with a joke. You can be comic-accurate, but not too much so, otherwise you’ll look like Jack Kirby and who would want that?

Think this scene from Infinity War.

You have a simple, fairly emotional scene between two characters that has spent time being built over the course of the serialized narrative. But just to make sure the audience doesn’t feel the emotion too much, the comic relief comes in with a bit at the end. No sincerity, these are space people. It tells the audience that this stuff can’t be real, so don’t worry.

I also think about the opening of The Force Awakens with Poe, where he makes a joke that does nothing to establish his character, but does serve to let off the release valve of what should be an otherwise tense scene. Again, telling the audience not to take any of this too seriously. No awe, no tension, simply spectacle.

What Dune does that has been sorely missing from major budget film (except for the Snyder DC films, which, yes, are immensely YMMV) is go “No, we are going to take this seriously.”

At no point does Dune seek to cut the tension, to distance itself from the spectacle it puts on display. This is a serious, committed work of pop art. Villeneuve is a serious man (look at…the rest of his filmography) and he has a proper respect not only for the story and for the genre, but for his audience.

Dune is couched in the fundamental belief that an audience is intelligent and doesn’t need to have the heavier edges of the story sanded away or pushed out to keep the audience away from it. It and Villeneuve believe that spectacle is engaging. That commitment is engaging. That you can tell a story and believe in it and that is what will get across to audiences. Space is cool, worms are big, and Paul is barreling towards a destiny that he is completely in and out of control of. You don’t need to undercut that.

The seriousness of Dune is what makes it fun. By never distancing, Dune becomes transportive. We’re never told all this is ridiculous or out there, never nudged in the ribs and told “some real nerdy shit, right”? It’s a true cinematic experience, stepping into another world and experiencing someone else’s dream for a while.

9/20/20: Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, KING OF THE HILL, Mario 64, and MORE!

KING OF THE HILL
SEASON 12, EPISODE 22 and SEASON 13, EPISODE 1-3

King of the Hill is one of the greatest adult animated sitcoms of all time, even rounding into the final season. Giving Lucky some development is a good thing, even if Mike Judge can’t allow Hank to be wrong anymore. The HD animation really picks up here, “Square-Footed Monster has some gorgeous shots. No new wells here, Bill is sad, Luanne is tragic, Strickland is a prophetic pre-Trump grifter, Hank leads a rebellion against the petit bourgeois. The show is what it is, not at its best, but better than most.

MARIO 64 from MARIO 3D ALL-STARS COLLECTION

Went in expecting Citizen Kane, a historical trendsetter that’s still a blast to watch. Got Forrest Gump, a technical achievement with rapturous reception that’s been ravaged by time and advance. The first draft of history is frustrating to edit and the 56^th time you’ve died because the camera lied to you about the depth and won’t adjust like you need to is frustrating. I don’t think they should have remade it, video game history is so thin as is. But some things are probably better as memories than as your little fella sliding off another mushroom.

HADES

Usually not a roguelike guy, but Hades finally manages to make that work for me. Building it into the story progression is beautiful, piecing fractures of memories, and creating the actual feeling of getting better run by run is even better. Character design is amazing, perfect intersection of American anime influence with western comic style. Combat rules, you never feel like you have too much to choose from and the enemies are a blast to kill. I can’t say enough good things about this game, it’s already in the category of games I can’t stop thinking about when I’m not playing.

JOJO’S BIZARRE ADVENTURE: DIAMOND IS UNBREAKABLE, EPISODES 3-5

This season clicks for me right here, which is honestly faster than Stardust Crusaders. Doing a 3-parter right off the top is a bold move, but this season in general feels like it knows that it’s following up something insanely popular and doesn’t have to spend a lot of time selling you on a new concept. I heard Twin Peaks comparisons and I see what they mean now. This seems like a  season of small town tragedies and the sadness and fear that underly idyllic surfaces. Already love Josuke, giving him an adventure away from Jotaro establishes his character quicker.

NARUTO SEASON 2, EPISODE 97

Is this the first proper story filler episode of Naruto? Resources say yes. Feels a little thin even for filler, but whatever, I know how the game works. I’ll take any time I can get with Jiraiya and Tsunade, my two favorite characters on the show (yes, I had a BLAST with Shippuden). A little thin of a plot, even for filler, but whatever, it happens. The animation was actually fairly nice on this one, so kudos to them for that, I loved the Naruto and Tsunade parade.

THE BOYS SEASON 1, EPISODE 4 and EPISODE 5 (incomplete)

I’ve been bouncing off this show a little bit, as impressed as I am with it technically, and this episode finally helped me figure out why. I don’t actually give a shit about The Boys. I’m in this show for the Supes drama, the dudes trying to hunt them down, Hughie, all this stuff feels peripheral to the actually engaging central satire of American society centered around The Seven. Every show these days has one more plotline than it needs. Give me more Starlight slowly losing her faith in America. Antony Starr continues to kill it, his Homelander is the most genuinely terrifying portrayal of recognizable evil on television.

WANDAVISION TRAILER

Kind of a bold shot for the first official Marvel Studios TV show. We’ll see if this is something for them to change up the formula, or if it’s genre clothes on Marvel formula. Either way, glad to expand these two, love them in theory, little done with them in practice. Glad to see Kathryn Hahn! Hope it’s as weird as the trailer suggests.

The Best things i’ve gotten into over the last 6 months

Since we are *checks calendar* 6 months into this pandemic, there’s a lot of stuff I’ve already been watching and doing that isn’t gonna make this list. So I’m gonna pop all of that in below. This is by no means EVERYTHING that I’ve done, but this is just the stuff I’ve kept thinking about since March or so.

Also, just up front, didn’t get THAT into Animal Crossing. Haven’t played in months. Life sim games just not my thing.

ONE PIECE

The capsule review format feels weirdly underselling for a media property that has lasted for 20 years across hundreds of chapters, episodes, movies, and various other things. But holy shit, how can you not be blown away by a continuous 20-year narrative that somehow has never managed to lose any real steam? I read the manga for this and every storyline is captivating, engaging, thrilling, emotional, hilarious, and just about as good as serialized storytelling gets. A near flawless cast of hundreds, phenomenal antagonistic forces at every step, just the best of narrative fiction.

FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE

Figuring out that the only way to win is not to play may have been the best idea behind the FF7 Remake. If you’re going to remake one of the “greatest games of all time,” there is literally no update you could have made that would not have pissed people off in some form of fashion. So making the game about that struggle, about changing one of the great works of the genre, becomes immensely freeing, a game now able to craft its own narrative while directly addressing the weight of its own expectations. All that plus the greatest musical cues I’ve heard in a game in years.

DAVID LYNCH’S WHOLE FILMOGRAPHY

I was definitely always a David Lynch guy, Twin Peaks is tattooed directly on my heart (and possibly on my shoulder when this pandemic is over). But I’d never actually taken the time to dip into everything he’s ever made and I was absolutely missing out. A filmography of deep humanity, someone who understands people on the margins and in the middle of it all, their wants and needs and desires. He maintains a deep well of sadness that these films pull from, for all their surrealism, David Lynch is a filmmaker who simply wants to show the pain we all go through by pulling from the darkest parts of the nightmare.

WATCHING WHOLE FILMOGRAPHIES AND FRANCHISES IN ORDER

This one is inspired by Blank Check with Griffin and David, one of my shining lights of podcasting that has become even more important to me in quarantine as something to look forward to each week. If you’re having trouble finding something to watch and you’re sick of TV, just pick a filmmaker! Go through their filmography, in order. It’s fun to see the development over time, get the context of their career. Same with franchises, get to know this art in the way it was made!

HAVING A CAT

Cat tax.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Brandon Harrison Wagner (@wagsterelli)

UNLEASH THE ARCHERS

Canadian power metal group Unleash the Archers put out one of the most ripping and maximalist power metal albums I’ve heard in years in ABYSS. The album’s secret strength is just in good old-fashioned songwriting. Every track has a hell of a hook and melodies galore, letting the atmosphere and the riffs underlying it lay the foundation that keeps you coming back. The title track is probably one of the best songs from this year, just give it a listen and tell me I’m wrong (unless this music isn’t your bag).

WRITING CAMPAIGNS FOR TABLETOP RPGS

The funny thing is that I love Dungeons and Dragons and all its ilk, but I’ve never been much of a player. For me, the TTRPG is a place to exercise game design and writing, a muscle I get to flex very rarely. Being locked indoors with my own brain gave me the space to think through this stuff again, and I’ve had a blast designing campaigns in DnD 5e, Mork Borg, Carbon 2185 and more. There’s a joy in laying the perfect trap or coming up with the perfect worldbuilding detail. Can’t wait to see if any of this stuff works. Hit me up if you want to try the Cyberpunk campaign I’ve built!

JOJO’S BIZARRE ADVENTURE: STARDUST CRUSADERS

Cheating a little bit because I started this a long time ago, but finally got up the motivation to finish it recently. What a fuckin’ show man. Bold and fearless about following it wherever its muse takes it. Loading every gut punch at the end to make you realize how much you really have grown to care about these people. I can’t say I started out loving Jotaro but by the end I was rooting for him fiercely. Turns anime action conventions on their head while indulging gleefully in excess, Jotaro vs. Dio is an all-timer action sequence.

REWATCHING THE LEGEND OF KORRA

Let’s load my molten take right up top:

I like Legend of Korra more than The Last Airbender.

I came into Avatar late and have no real nostalgic affection for The Last Airbender, recognizing as I do that it is one of the great animated adventure shows.  

But Korra just hits the sweet spot for me in a way that Last Airbender barely misses. The world Korra builds, the way it expands and delves into the lore and mythos, the characterizations, the darker implications, it’s all just deeply up my alley. Korra’s growth arc is beautifully done. I also think Zaheer is the best villain the show ever came up with and one of the best TV villains period.

BILL AND TED FACE THE MUSIC

Long tail sequels rarely succeed quite in the way that Bill and Ted Face the Music do, I in fact can only think of enough for one hand count. The film crafts a new direction going forward without feeling like it abandons the people who made it work. Reeves and Winter slide back in effortlessly but Weaving and Lundy-Paine both play their daughters with enormous skill and you feel eager to see them eventually take a new adventure. It threads the needle perfectly between the history jokes of the first and the sci-fi of the second, becoming its own voice. Shout out to Anthony Carrigan, turning in a scene stealer.

PROMARE

Boy I wish I had seen this one when movie theaters still existed. What a jaw-dropping visual achievement, the anime equivalent of Into the Spider-Verse, a merger of 2D and 3D animation that enhances the splendor of both. A great story with great characters to be sure, but every 5 minutes contains some awe-inspiring setpiece or movement or something that you’ve genuinely never seen done like that before. I ended this practically vibrating with joy, what a picture!

REGULAR SHOW and CLOSE ENOUGH

I guess you probably could have shortened this and called this the “Cartoons of JG Quintel.”

Quintel, reversed from a lot of his contemporaries, feels like he is the master of making the mundane feel immense. Many of his animated compatriots are all about taking fantastic situations and injecting them with relatable emotion, where he feels like someone who gets across the internal feelings of relatable situations by blowing them up to surreal proportions. The chaos, the in-over-your-head feeling of daily life, that is Quintel’s bread and butter, something that both of these shows just know how to hammer home.

Name and Purpose change

Hello,

I’m getting back to blogging because I’ve lost all other sense of purpose don’t want to bother my wife with endless talking about opinions I think there’s no better time to start a side hustle than now!

But considering the overwhelming sense of anxiety and dread so permeating our society, I figure I need an actual goal to keep up with doing this regularly so I don’t slide into run after run on HADES and episode after episode of anime to distract from the ennui (pay $200 a month in student loans to know how to use that word properly).

So I’ve decided to use the latter to keep up with the former. This blog, at least for now, is going to be daily capsule reviews of any and all media that I’ve watched, read, or played and any news stories that interested in the previous day. It will literally be ANYTHING I want to talk about, so get ready for a wild smattering of content. No individual review will be over 200 words, no matter how much or how little I watched. I’ll group chapters of things and episodes of shows into the groups of the day (i.e. Season 13, Episodes 2-5).

This is not intended to be a serious thing, I will probably not get into like…the real shit. There are people far more qualified to tell you to go vote and why, but go vote. It’ll mostly be irrelevant bullshit that scratches my brain itches. That’s what I’m here for.

Oscar Nominations 2020

The Oscars will always let you down, let’s be clear there. The best they can do is fuck up and recognize something worth recognizing, it’s not by design, but by sheer cosmic force of will. They’re good for getting attention to those nominated, which is why this year in particular stings like a motherfucker. We’ve had 4 years of talking about fixing the problems with the Oscars and we’ve ended up right back where we started.

Visual Effects:

“Avengers Endgame”
“The Irishman”
“1917”
“The Lion King”
“Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker”

An inauspicious start. It often flies under the radar, but few categories are a “Most” category like Visual Effects. There’s a lot going on here, but very little success. I love THE IRISHMAN and even I’ve gotta say that the de-aging is absolutely the worst part of it and the film doesn’t work worth a damn until they stop pretending. THE LION KING is an abomination, the Disney blockbusters are fine. 1917 was very hard, I’m sure.

 

NOMINATE CATS YOU COWARDS

Costume Design:

”The Irishman,” Sandy Powell, Christopher Peterson
“Jojo Rabbit,” Mayes C. Rubeo
“Joker,” Mark Bridges
“Little Women,” Jacqueline Durran
“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” Arianne Phillips

No DOLEMITE IS MY NAME means no thank you. Same for ROCKETMAN honestly. It’s a bunch of the least creative sort of period wear, even if it’s none of it is bad, this is just the very narrow band the Academy wants to recognize.

Makeup and Hair:

“Bombshell”
“Joker”
“Judy”
“Maleficent: Mistress of Evil”
“1917”

Honestly, genuine kudos to nominating MALEFICENT, at least someone tried for something there. A lot of very obvious makeup here again, no way JOKER wasn’t gonna be here.

Original Song:

“I Can’t Let You Throw Yourself Away,” “Toy Story 4”
“I’m Gonna Love Me Again,” “Rocketman”
“I’m Standing With You,” “Breakthrough”
“Into the Unknown,” “Frozen 2”
“Stand Up,” “Harriet”

God what an artistically bankrupt category this ends up being every year. 4 end-credit songs (including one from the movie that may not actually exist [spoiler it does]) and the most popular song from a Disney picture. At least “Into the Unknown” played an actual role in the damn movie. 

I would be absolutely in favor of a rule where the song has to play somewhere in the ACTUAL runtime of the picture and be evaluated based on its usage instead of this being the Oscar Raffle Ticket category.

Original Score:

“Joker,” Hildur Guðnadóttir
“Little Women,” Alexandre Desplat
“Marriage Story,” Randy Newman
“1917,” Thomas Newman
“Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,” John Williams

I got nothing but good things to say about Desplat’s score for LITTLE WOMEN and Newman’s score for MARRIAGE STORY was strong. I’m sure 1917 has a good score and let’s just throw Oscars at Williams while he’s here.

If the score for JOKER wins, I will kill myself on live television. Just someone screaming at you for two hours. 

Production Design:

“The Irishman,” Bob Shaw and Regina Graves
“Jojo Rabbit,” Ra Vincent and Nora Sopkova
“1917,” Dennis Gassner and Lee Sandales
“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” Barbara Ling and Nancy Haigh
“Parasite,” Lee Ha-Jun and Cho Won Woo, Han Ga Ram, and Cho Hee

No real complaints here. PARASITE deserves the win, but hey, recognize the work here. 

Sound Mixing:

“Ad Astra”
“Ford v Ferrari”
“Joker”
“1917”
“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”

Oof, one pity Oscar for AD ASTRA. “Looked expensive, guess you tried?”

UNCUT GEMS should have been here. Otherwise fine I guess?

Sound Editing:

“Ford v Ferrari,” Don Sylvester
“Joker,” Alan Robert Murray
“1917,” Oliver Tarney, Rachel Tate
“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” Wylie Stateman
“Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,” Matthew Wood, David Acord

Sure, I’ll trust the branch here, whatever. 

Film Editing:

“Ford v Ferrari,” Michael McCusker, Andrew Buckland
“The Irishman,” Thelma Schoonmaker
“Jojo Rabbit,” Tom Eagles
“Joker,” Jeff Groth
“Parasite,” Jinmo Yang

Christ, I mean, I guess so. Seeing JOKER pop up as often as it has gives me hives, but don’t think I don’t notice you JOJO RABBIT. Let’s just give this shit to Schoonmaker for like…everything. LITTLE WOMEN should also 100% be here, the fuck.

Best International Feature Film:

“Corpus Christi,” Jan Komasa
“Honeyland,” Tamara Kotevska, Ljubo Stefanov
“Les Miserables,” Ladj Ly
“Pain and Glory,” Pedro Almodovar
“Parasite,” Bong Joon Ho

Sadly, work has gotten in the way of seeing movies, but I’m renting PAIN AND GLORY soon so hopefully I can have more of an opinion on this by the actual ceremony. But PARASITE, fuck yes. 

Tangent, can you believe it is just now that a film from South Korea is getting an Oscar nomination?! South Korea has one of the richest and most sheerly thrilling and entertaining cinemas, one I think most American audiences would latch onto pretty well, and yet here we are. 

Best Live Action Short Film:

“Brotherhood,” Meryam Joobeur
“Nefta Football Club,” Yves Piat
“The Neighbors’ Window,” Marshall Curry
“Saria,” Bryan Buckley
“A Sister,” Delphine Girard

Best Documentary Short Subject:

“In the Absence,” Yi Seung-Jun and Gary Byung-Seok Kam
“Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone,” Carol Dysinger
“Life Overtakes Me,” Kristine Samuelson and John Haptas
“St. Louis Superman,” Smriti Mundhra and Sami Khan
“Walk Run Cha-Cha,” Laura Nix

Animated Short:

“Dcera,” Daria Kashcheeva
“Hair Love,” Matthew A. Cherry
“Kitbull,” Rosana Sullivan
“Memorable,” Bruno Collet
“Sister,” Siqi Song

Best Documentary Feature:

“American Factory,” Julia Rieichert, Steven Bognar
“The Cave,” Feras Fayyad
“The Edge of Democracy,” Petra Costa
“For Sama,” Waad Al-Kateab, Edward Watts
“Honeyland,” Tamara Kotevska, Ljubo Stefanov

Okay, I’m gonna be real. I have a 60+ hour a week job and I’ve had to make some sacrifices to even keep up like I currently am. I haven’t see anything in these categories, there are other people who have better opinions, let’s keep rolling. 

Cinematography:

“The Irishman,” Rodrigo Prieto
“Joker,” Lawrence Sher
“The Lighthouse,” Jarin Blaschke
“1917,” Roger Deakins
“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” Robert Richardson

PARASITE not being here is a crime. The Academy sure does love black and white, I can’t believe anyone went for THE LIGHTHOUSE, as fascinating as it is. It’ll go to 1917, a second win for Deakins, who deserves so many wins, but I can’t help but feel it’s a “wow that looks hard” Oscar.

Original Screenplay:

“Knives Out,” Rian Johnson
“Marriage Story,” Noah Baumbach
“1917,” Sam Mendes and Krysty Wilson-Cairns
“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” Quentin Tarantino
“Parasite,” Bong Joon-ho, Jin Won Han

Good for KNIVES OUT, the most out and out entertaining film I saw this year, for netting a nomination here. I’m kind of surprised 1917 has an actual screenplay to nominate. Otherwise a strong enough grouping here, PARASITE should win, it won’t.

Adapted Screenplay:

“The Irishman,” Steven Zaillian
“Jojo Rabbit,” Taika Waititi
“Joker,” Todd Phillips, Scott Silver
“Little Women,” Greta Gerwig
“The Two Popes,” Anthony McCarten

LITTLE WOMEN should win (THE IRISHMAN is all acting and directing), JOKER will win because life is cruel and we have been punished for our sins. THE FAREWELL should be here but it’s not because I’m tired. 

Animated Feature:

“How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World” Dean DeBlois
“I Lost My Body” Jeremy Clapin
“Klaus” Sergio Pablos
“Missing Link” Chris Butler
“Toy Story 4”  Josh Cooley

Kinda cool that so much of this year is traditional animation. One stop-motion and two hand-drawn. Very cool. Big surprise that FROZEN 2 doesn’t make this list, I wonder if Disney thought TOY STORY had the better chance of winning or if it’s legitimate backlash. 

But let me go off on a tangent. It is baffling to me that in one of the hottest moments I’ve seen for anime in my lifetime, we’ve had two films from Japan nominated in this decade. GKIDS usually can try and swing something, but they couldn’t get WEATHERING WITH YOU in the running after YOUR NAME is one of the biggest films in Japan ever and received near-universal critical acclaim? Or PROMARE which seems to have been a legitimate sensation in America. You can’t tell me the Academy has looked at FERDINAND and found these films wanting in comparison. This is a strong lineup, but it feels narrow and lazy. 

Director:

Martin Scorsese, “The Irishman”
Todd Phillips, “Joker”
Sam Mendes, “1917”
Quentin Tarantino, “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”
Bong Joon Ho, “Parasite”

What is the earnest point of nominating Scorsese and Todd Phillips in this category? Nominate Scorsese and you’ve nominated everything Phillips is doing in JOKER. Except without the thin layer of slime you get all over you from putting Phillips in. 

Let’s reiterate again that it is a genuine crime that this lineup is all male. Gerwig is the obvious go-to, LITTLE WOMEN was a treasure and a masterwork made out of a story already told a hundred times. And Lulu Wang absolutely should have been here, THE FAREWELL is immensely rich filmmaking. I didn’t love HUSTLERS as much as many but my god Lorene Scafaria pulled way more out of that movie than anyone should have been able to. And my pick for the most underrated and most deserving is Marielle Heller, who’s done consistently phenomenal work and who transformed A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD from its the most obvious syrupy incarnation into something melancholy and brilliant and complex and gorgeous. Heller deserves every accolade that for some ungodly reason we’ve been heaping on DUNKIRK BUT GIMMICKIER and THE CLOWN WHO FIGHTS BATMAN.

Bong and Scorsese deserve to be here unequivocally and I’m pretty sure I’d put Tarantino on here, but man what a absolute whiff.

Supporting Actress:

Kathy Bates, “Richard Jewell”
Laura Dern, “Marriage Story”
Scarlett Johansson, “Jojo Rabbit”
Florence Pugh, “Little Women”
Margot Robbie, “Bombshell”

Dern is getting this one as a lifetime achievement award. Out of this group, Pugh is the one who honestly deserves it in a walk. Can’t believe Robbie is on here for BOMBSHELL, what a shit film. At least for OUATIH, she does something interesting and has enough to chew on.

Jennifer Lopez not being here is maybe the biggest snub of the whole thing. I get it, STX sucks at campaigning, we shouldn’t have expected too much. But she took a role that could have been just absolutely nothing and gave it depth and shading and expertly put in place something memorable. Can you really not even pretend that you want to see anything new? 

Supporting Actor:

Tom Hanks, “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”
Anthony Hopkins, “The Two Popes”
Al Pacino, “The Irishman”
Joe Pesci, “The Irishman”
Brad Pitt, “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”

Credit to Hanks for getting a nomination after nineteen years. Mr. Rogers could have been such a dull role, but he (and Heller) really go for filling out the character, giving a sense of how odd he must have been to be around, the person under the persona. 

Love to Pacino and Pesci. Pitt wasn’t quite my bag, but I get what he’s doing. Sure, Hopkins, I mean, they went through the trouble to get TWO whole Popes. Gotta give them the awards.

And you know what, let’s stop here for a second. Why the fuck is PARASITE completely missing from both Supporting categories? I get that it’s an ensemble movie, probably gonna miss the Leads. The movie is all on performance, the shifting dynamics and the charisma and the lies and the con. You’re telling me Song Kang-ho did worse than Hopkins? Park So-dam was less dialed in than Johansson? Or are you just telling me the Academy refuses to recognize a foreign language performance because well that would require work or require us to recognize the humanity and the depth of non-Americans? If you can recognize the craft, you can recognize the art.

Lead Actress:

Cynthia Erivo “Harriet”
Scarlett Johansson “Marriage Story”
Saoirse Ronan “Little Women”
Charlize Theron “Bombshell”
Renee Zellweger “Judy”

More accuracy roles. Zellweger and Erivo sure did put in the research, I’m sure. At least they managed to get one PoC in here, good for you Hollywood, you did it, hooray. Johansson did a legitimately phenomenal job here, feels weird she’s nominated in two categories, but whatever. Ronan was phenomenal, she feels like the next Amy Adams.

Was it so vital to nominate Theron’s prosthetic makeup to shut out the legitimately phenomenal work Nyong’o did in US? Like, I get it was a funny SNL sketch and all, but Nyong’o turned in a career defining performance and nothing. Hollywood seems legitimately uninterested in black performers unless they’re in a very narrow band and uninterested in actresses in general unless they’re doing something obvious, so you know, kudos for a double whammy there.

Lead Actor:

Antonio Banderas “Pain and Glory”
Leonardo DiCaprio “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”
Adam Driver “Marriage Story”
Joaquin Phoenix “Joker”
Jonathan Pryce “The Two Popes”

This category could be a full essay unto itself, mostly centering on my incredibly mixed feelings on my favorite actor Joaquin Phoenix winning his Oscar for THE CLOWN WHO FIGHTS BATMAN and Sandler getting shut out after giving one of the top performances of the decade. So to keep it short:

Best Picture:

“Ford v Ferrari”
“The Irishman”
“Jojo Rabbit”
“Joker”
“Little Women”
“Marriage Story”
“1917”
“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”
“Parasite”

JOKER and THE IRISHMAN have all the precursors. JOKER is gonna win we’re all gonna die the movie sucked it says nothing I can’t believe one of the best years for film this decade is gonna come down to this

 

 

 

What do you get when you cross a mentally ill loner with a society that abandons him and treats him like trash?

There isn’t much to say here because everything has already been said. Joker exists solely as whatever you want to observe it to be, a trick of the eye that holds pretensions of being a film by one of the great filmmakers. That is precisely because the thing knows what it is imitating, a changeling that misses a few key details.

Let us quickly dispense with something. This is a film that is pro-incel, the poor downtrodden virgin getting his revenge. It is a film that is also leftist, the working class masses led by the emblem of their dismay, taking revenge against the rich and powerful. This is a film about how social services and compassion for the marginalized could easily improve society. This is an edgy film that isn’t afraid to go there. It is about everything because it is about nothing.

The storytellers here don’t have the courage of their convictions. This is a film by cowards, bringing up everything that they know will push buttons but running with their tail between their legs the second they would actually have to try and make a point.

I wish they had attempted to make a point of some kind. The moral panic surrounding this film’s existence at least posited an interesting cultural artifact. The Collapse of America embodied in the clown who fights Batman? Think S. Craig Zahler’s cryptofascism but with a budget. At least there, we’ve bones to pick, meat to rend.

Joker gives us everything so that no one is TRULY offended. Product on this scale doesn’t get to be offensive. The appearance of edge is the same thrill as a roller coaster or a haunted house, something to tempt us so that we get the thrill of feeling transgression. You can pick whatever flavor you want, be reinforced or be enraged, it’s on offer. Think Netflix, purveyor of both Nanette and one hundred specials by men in tight button-downs called “Triggered.”

Sound and fury signifying nothing is a cliche phrase but it is what Joker ultimately amounts to. There is a certainly a level of technical sheen that impresses. Thank the Gods for a real on-location shoot, rather than having to pretend the Chinese place 10 minutes down the road from me is in Portland. There is certainly a grimy realness created here, a physical world that actually creates an atmosphere to hold on to.

Director Todd Phillips‘ talent is in how he’s saying it, not what he’s saying. The last act is a thrill, tense and controlled. Its poor choices (the lazy punching down at a dwarf that undercuts the closest thing to a point this movie has and the use of a song by a convicted pedophile) and bum notes (truly one of the worst lines of dialogue I’ve heard since David Goyer) are ably danced around by the visceral thrill that perhaps this movie has finally figured out how to entertain right before it ends.

Of course, that could all be on the shoulders of Joaquin Phoenix. The vast majority of this film rests on his shoulders, both by choice and by the sheer electricity of his screen presence. This is a phenomenal performance, no caveats there. The camera uses lingering shots of his face as a crutch, but only because Phoenix has so much to give. He is horrifying and sorrowful in equal measures. His body twists and turns in ways that seem to come from outside him. He sells everything that is asked of him. You can’t imagine a world where anyone else played this.

But that is truly all there is. That performance gives the movie its weight. God knows no one else is given the time to add. This is a central performance looking for a movie to aid it. Phoenix has the power to make this feel important. Which after all is the trick of the whole thing.

To feel important, yet to have no real power.

“We are Americans”: At the end of it all, there is only US

*SPOILERS FOR US. IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE MOVIE, SEE IT AND RETURN*

 

As an adolescent, I used to hate discovering that I was alone. Not for anything so rational, but for fear that the Rapture had come and I was, in the parlance of the times, “left behind.” The series with that title was the hottest thing in the Evangelical world, any child raised in a Protestant church had either read those books, read the YA version, seen Kirk Cameron “act” it out, or had at least heard their pastor try to describe it to them. There was an intense preoccupation with the End of Days, and I rest assured that I was to soon see them come.

There’s a uniquely American preoccupation with the End of Days. Sure, all cultures have their version of eschatology and their sidelined street preachers. But Americans seem to so often believe that history began with them, that it seems simply impossible that history wouldn’t also end with us there.

And yet somehow it now seems more and more believable. Wars and rumors of such, climate change beginning to gently ravage the coast as if phoning ahead that it’s on our street. We’re living in the first generation that has some shared psychic knowledge that perhaps this time it really is all over.

That’s what perhaps so unnerved me about Jordan Peele’s Us. In getting at the buried darkness underneath the American surface, he hits on perhaps the most vital American truth of all. At its core, Us preoccupies itself with the great American narcissism that things must finally end with us and the great American fear that we will eventually be right.

Early in the film, we catch a look at a disheveled prophet/homeless man holding a sign with “Jeremiah 11:11” scrawled on it. The verse, from the KJV, reads as follows:

Therefore thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will bring evil upon them, which they shall not be able to escape; and though they shall cry unto me, I will not hearken unto them.

Those of you who didn’t pay ungodly sums of money to learn this should know simply that this comes of a warning from God to the Jewish people. It was a warning to those who turned their backs on Yahweh and had chosen to worship false idols. One of many promises of punishment that God would ultimately follow up through.

While it’s lovely double doubling of numbers makes it the perfect verse for a doppelganger film, it more importantly puts the film squarely in the mindset of punishment.

In eschatological visions, the punishment of those who sin is often as, if not more important, as the reward of the faithful. The Christian version promises those who are left behind (caveat: if you subscribe to the Rapture) will face 7 years of torment, all manner of plagues and natural disasters and man turning against man.

The Tethered, the film’s name for the doppelgangers, are buried beneath the surface of the country, a mistake by the government that rose up to take revenge on Americans. Their mistakes and their flaws rise up to retake the country.

Us seems to posit the Tethered as the extremeness of American sins. Arrogance and hate and violence, nothing specific. Peele wants us to be unable to distance ourselves from what they’re doing, recognizing our nature rather than our actions.

In essence, Peele wants us to be very clear that yes, things are to end soon. Whatever we’ve done, it will be our fault. The evil within us, the damage to the climate, the hate we’ve spread, that’s finally coming home to roost.

Us gets into the underlying subtext of current American society. The end is here and we’ve reached the apotheosis of what we are. We can’t shove it under the rug anymore and it’s time for it to tear us apart. There’s no misanthropy in this, rather a clear assessment of the idea that the end is here. Maybe not for everyone, but certainly for us.

We are Americans and we’ve come to punish America.