The Post-Oscars Hangover: here, have some unsolicited opinions
hypnagogie and I have an now-annual tradition of attending AMC's Oscar Showcase, where they marathon all of the Best Picture nominees over two consecutive Saturdays (give or take Roma, because Netflix was totally passing AMC nasty notes in study hall or something so now they're not invited to the birthday party, Sheila). It's ridiculous amounts of fun, highly recommended if you're a movie fan, but it leaves me with a whole armload of opinions that have nowhere to go. My original plan was to do the old recap post thing in advance of the awards themselves, but the final movie finished screening less that 24 hours before the Oscars were to begin, and with the crunch on I decided to just let it go, telling myself I didn't really have many things to say.
Then the Oscars happened, and I now have things to say.
So herewith I present the 2018 Best Picture Nominees Wrap-Up post I neglected to write on Sunday, now with the smooth, fruity flavor of indignant hindsight:
Black Panther
I saw this in the theatre when it came out a year ago, and was blown clear out of my socks. I saw it again on Saturday and...well, it was still really good, but my socks stayed on. I think
hypnagogie pegged it when she said that the first time we were awed by its newness, and once that newness no longer had surprise attached it lost some of its power. The areas where it truly innovates lie in the production design, the costumes, and the score, the parts that serve to evoke this magnificent place and culture; not coincidentally, these are also the areas where it deservedly won its Oscars. I also admire its willingness to look at race and isolationism head-on in a way that typical popcorn fare usually doesn't. Beyond that, though, it's a Marvel movie that does what Marvel movies do: you've got your hero's journey, your villain, your CGI fighty-smashy, your startling plot twists that stopped being startling eight movies ago. It does these things better than most, sure, and I think Black Panther is hugely important and am delighted it has been so enormously successful. But there's a growing superhero fatigue that's been sinking in over the last decade, and the awe that I felt the first time around didn't hold up enough on the second to completely silence it.
BlacKkKlansman
I wasn't expecting BlacKkKlansman to knock me out the way that it did. I'd heard that it was problematic, that it has a gratuitous opening and a savagely unsubtle ending, that Spike Lee's directorial voice comes in so loudly it's practically screaming. All of that is true, and I wouldn't have it any other way. It's what makes Spike Spike, a man who has never had time to hold your hand while you catch up because there's a goddamn war on. When it's time to show you the racism, he shows it all, unflinching, staring it right in the face and not asking your permission before insisting you do the same. All this makes the film sound like a blunt force weapon, and it certainly can be, but the force is employed carefully, thoughtfully, and only when needed. This film is an example of nuanced and mature craftsmanship on every level: writing, direction, cinematography, design, acting (Adam Driver was robbed), music, all of it. What's more, it's entertaining-it takes this combination of one-line elevator pitch and deservedly righteous anger, and somehow makes it suspenseful, engaging, even funny (it has my vote for the greatest spit-take in modern cinema). I clearly haven't been watching enough Spike Lee lately, and I mean to fix that.
Bohemian Rhapsody
Man. I wanted to like this, really and truly. But never have I ever seen an Oscar-nominated film saddled with such a ham-handed, cliche-ridden, clanging-eyeroll-inducing, mind-numbingly bad screenplay. It's the sort of biopic that VH1 used to do in the '90s to bank on the success of Behind the Music. Speechifying about how Queen is "for the outcasts," making music that "crosses genres"? Check. A Conservative Father who doesn't understand his own son's art, who shows up just barely enough to set up a tearful reconciliation at the end? Check. Major Events consolidated to the point that, say, Freddie announces he's changed his name at the dinner where his parents meet his band and his soon-to-be wife, literally 30 seconds before receiving a phone call announcing they have a new manager? Check. A Visionless Record Executive who sneeringly proclaims, and I quote, "Mark these words: NO ONE will play Queen"? Check, check, and check. The whole film, in fact, is a checklist; it's like the filmmakers printed out the Wikipedia page and turned it into a storyboard. Milestones are presented not as milestones but as fan service: we're supposed to cheer in recognition, reveling in our knowledge of a future that the characters can't see yet. Freddie has trouble with the mic stand at his very first gig, so he rips out the boom and uses that as we all know he will for the rest of his career. At a label meeting he comes up with the album title "A Night at the Opera" on the spot after playing some opera as an example of, um, opera, I guess. Now let's all watch as *stomp*stomp*clap* is invented! We know it's going to be a classic! The confused people in the studio don't! Irony!
I get why the film is so popular. The music is wonderful, of course. Rami Malek does a fine job of bringing Freddie Mercury to life-not my pick for Best Actor, but if you're going to award something to Bohemian Rhapsody, he's easily the one you want to give it to. And it ends with the Live Aid sequence, which is exciting and well executed and as feel-good an ending as you're going to find, a perfect last word to take with you to the parking lot. But even there it left me wanting, because it didn't seem, well, real enough. The camera moves and drone shots felt like showing off. Scenes of the audience came off not like crowd of fans but crowd of paid extras, almost like a Pepsi commercial. And cutaways to Bob Geldof in the phone banks and the Visionless Record Executive alone and sad in his office became just more examples of screenplay bludgeoning. The Live Aid segment was great, but more than anything, it made me want to leave and watch the real Live Aid performance instead.
The Favourite
This is the one I was most looking forward to. If you've been avoiding The Favourite because you've already seen this kind of behind-the-throne intrigue-based costume drama: No. No, you haven't. If you've been avoiding it because Yorgos Lanthimos is a weird-ass little art-monkey provocateur...well, you're not wrong, but perhaps the weirdest thing about the film is how weird it isn't. I mean sure, it's got all of the lobster races and uncomfortable sex and grating background music you've come to expect from Yorgie-baby, but it's in service of a story that's surprisingly grounded. (This has a lot to do with the historical setting, I'm sure, which creates the sort of alien parallel world he likes to play in without having to force his actors to talk like they're reciting zip codes and avoid eye contact.) Give me the guy who ruined my week with Dogtooth, drop him in an 18th century castle, fold in dialogue you could dice tomatoes with, exquisite fondant-dipped visuals, and the absolute dream trio of Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz, and Emma Stone, and yes, more of that please, and thank you. Of all the things I saw over those two weekends, nothing has stuck with me quite like that last scene [BIT OF A SPOILER] when Colman places her hand on Stone's head, and we watch as she (and we) slowly realize just what she's created for herself, and the bitter cost. Watch this movie, full stop.
Side note:
hypnagogie showed me a tweet that said, "YOR-GOS LAN-THI-MOS, put another dime in the jukebox, babyyy," and now I'm earwormed for life.
Green Book
Raise your blast shields now, readers: NO. No, no, no, and fuck to the capital NO. Seriously, Academy, what in the name of great Hephaestus's nose clippers were you thinking? Of all the provocative, insightful, exceptional films that came out in 2018, even limited to those that got nominated, you're going to honor a backward, bland, mealy-mouthed puff piece on racism that shoves a fascinating real-life artist literally into the back seat, so you can focus on the Good White Guy Who Learns a Valuable Lesson But Also Has Something to Teach You About Blackness, Mister Actual Black Person? This is a Best Picture of 2018 that smells like a Best Picture of 1986, only it's not classic, it's downright regressive. It dances around its own race issues like its shoes are tied together; the protagonist displays one deeply grotesque passive-aggressive racist act in the first five minutes, and then the film goes out of its way to show that he's an all-right guy who just has a few misguided ideas, not like those racists they meet along the way. Whatever prejudice he's harboring is pretty much gone by day 3 of their road trip, so much so that when Dr. Shirley's sexual orientation is revealed, Tony, a blue-collar guy in 1962, greets it with a shrug, and it's never mentioned again. (To be fair, the explanation he gives for his calm response isn't unreasonable, but by then we're in the canonization part of the narrative, so he's only doing woke-person things now.) Even his more overtly racist family decides to get on board in roughly five seconds, because the happy ending demands it of them.
I know, I know, this isn't the only thing in Green Book I should be focusing on as a film lover. The direction is fine if not exceptional, the acting from Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali is as excellent as I'd expect from them, the score came from the same bottle they pour over pancakes at the craft services table. But we're well past the "everyone just needs to be nice to each other" narrative, people. I know movies like Green Book make us feel good, but we can do better. We can honor better. We have to. (For further reading, I highly recommend this Facebook post. Thanks to friend Laura for linking me to it!)
Roma
My gods, what a sumptuous wonder of a movie. I want to spend the next fourteen paragraphs describing any number of frames in minute detail (this is the sort of film you want to hang in your living room), but I think everything you need to know is in that very first shot behind the opening credits, with the paving stones, and then the water, and then the reflection in the water, and I swear to you that I gasped out loud at the simple breathtaking elegance of it. Both Alfonso Cuarón's direction and his cinematography won entirely on merit; if we're judging it in terms of pure filmmaking, then Roma should have won best picture of this year, next year, last year, and I'll call you if this string of years ever comes to an end. If there's one thing that kept it out of my #1 spot, though, and I'm just now realizing it, it's that even as intimate as the story is and as good as the acting is, I feel like I could've gotten to know everyone a little better than I did. Cuarón never leans in for the close examination, always keeping the camera at a voyeur's distance. It's part of what gives it such a unique visual identity, but it leaves us perpetually on the outside looking in, even when we're hanging out with the family in their own home. The only times we're allowed in are during the riot, which puts us in the line of fire but strangely isolated, and the utterly brutal hospital scene, where we share the most vulnerable of moments but are left helpless as we watch it unfold. This is also one of the few times Cuarón keeps the camera still, forcing us to bear witness; brilliantly done, but I wish he'd let us in a tiny bit more as the story goes on. Still, this is the sort of film that makes young people want to be directors, which is a high compliment indeed. I need to watch it again. Repeatedly, if possible.
A Star Is Born
Movie of the year. Fight me.
Seriously, this thing wields such an emotional wallop for me I don't even know where to start. I saw it when it first came out, loved it, saw it again, loved it even more, and here we are. I wrote a response on Facebook to my friend Michael, who questioned why anyone would remake this damn movie yet again, and I'm going to cut and paste it here because I don't think I'm going to say it any better than I did then: "Oh, it's a COMPLETELY ridiculous choice for a remake. The story was old-fashioned 50 years ago. Judy Garland's version should have been the last word, and Streisand's should have proved it. To choose it as your directorial debut in 2018 requires ten pounds of hubris in a five-pound sack. But I'm going to quote Roger Ebert here: it's not what a movie's about, it's how it's about it. What Cooper did was to take all the overblown melodrama and ground it, finding the characters under the caricatures. Jack and Ally are fully realized from the inside out, both through the screenplay and two phenomenal performances (yes, including and especially Lady Gaga), and their boots are firmly planted in the real world with chemistry to spare. Jackson Maine is an alcoholic, not a Hollywood drunk, which is a huge distinction, and he acts and reacts and evolves and devolves and charms and disgusts in ways we've seen people in our own lives act out. Ally is no ingenue, goes into this partnership clear-eyed and willingly, sets limits, loves without coddling. And when that downfall comes, absurd as it may have been in the past, he falls like an addict, not like the tragic script convenience we saw in James Mason or Kris Kristofferson. So many remakes are about honoring the story, or the memories we have of the story; Cooper makes it about these people, and truly remakes it into something new.
"One last thing, about That Scene: I'm a performing musician. There is a moment when you're onstage that's hard to explain to anyone who hasn't been there: it's when you stop being yourself and start being the music. There's a loss of control there, that giving of yourself to the shared moment, carried by the people watching and listening and those around you. It's terrifying and exhilarating, and you realize in the same moment not only that this song, this phrase, this breath, is so much bigger than the room you're standing in, but that you yourself are so much bigger, big enough to hold it and carry it. I'd never seen a movie completely get it right before. 'Shallow' does."
Vice
Meh. A good "meh," but meh. I loved The Big Short from a few years ago, loved the audacity, loved that it dared to teach from within an onslaught of directorial tricks and communicate outrage with a trickster's attitude. Now here's Vice, which attempts the same feat, only now the bag of tricks feels like...just...a bag tricks, and I can't enjoy the puppet show because I can't stop looking at the strings. When the tricks work, they really really work, like the final fourth wall-puncturing soliloquy and the closing credits running in the middle (pure genius, that one; you'll see what I mean). But when they don't, they really really don't, and I left feeling kind of manhandled by the whole operation. The performances were all spot-on, with an unfortunate tendency to drift toward impression rather than character. (Steve Carell is best one on screen for the second Adam McKay movie in a row, and for the second Adam McKay movie in a row he wasn't the one to get nominated.) I do admire the choice to examine Cheney's wish to protect his gay daughter from scrutiny and the sort of legislation his party was wont to pursue; it was a level of complexity that these sorts of operations often lack. All in all, I was glad to see it, and it's a good "meh," but it's still a "meh."
My rankings of the Best Picture nominees:
1) A Star Is Born
2) Roma*
3) The Favourite*
4) BlacKkKlansman
5) Black Panther
6) Vice
7) Bohemian Rhapsody**
8) Green Book**
* = Roma is a better-made film, but The Favourite is the one I'd rather rewatch.
** = Green Book is a better-made film, but Bohemian Rhapsody doesn't make me want to punch inanimate objects while cussing.