As most of my friends know I loved the Academy awards. It is time for me to eat crow. Many of my friends here in DC saw through the bureaucratic bs of the awards long before I did. This year, with the Kevin Hart "scandal" ending with no host for the first time since 1989, the initial thought by them to give some "lesser" awards during commercial breaks, and then the subsequent rescinding of that thought, have turned me against the Oscars.
That being said, I still watched all the best picture nominees and enjoyed most, but even toying with the idea of some awards being "lesser" than others is ridiculous. Every single person on a film set is important and the fact that the Academy was going to ignore them just to make a few extra bucks is pathetic.
Anyway, here's my breakdown, in alphabetical order (spoilers ahead):
A Star is Born
First up, this is the fourth time this story has been told. The ending was a pathetic and cheap cop out. Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper were near perfection in acting ability, but why, after being against the establishment, would her character suddenly sell out and not stand with her man. Sure this sounds misogynistic and asinine, but when you see the movie, you'd understand. There was no reason for him to kill himself except to move the story along.
Aside from that, this was a tough film for me to watch (timing and life), but I still enjoyed it. The music was great and for Cooper's directing debut, he was great.
Not going to win the big one tonight, but will win best song, hands down.
Blackkklansman
Loved this movie. It was dark, but fun with the trope of a black man using his white voice (shout-out to the better and more creative movie 'Sorry to Bother You') and a white man posing as him. Great to see Spike Lee back in action again.
Even if it was overly heavy handed it was horrifying because there are plenty of people in this country, empowered by an asshole, who think the same way as the white characters of this movie. And that was the point. The acting was great and the story was perfect, but was a little to close to what we're living through currently. Maybe that's the point.
It was so darkly poignant and showed the pure evil of idiocy, lack of intelligence, and just pure karma. Great, great movie.
Could actually steal the best picture this year.
Black Panther
Being a fan of Marvel movies I expected more. Representation matters, absolutely, but putting this movie in the best picture category is a blatant display of the Academy being more concerned with getting viewers and more money from commercials than nominating the best movies of the year. This is here because of their "popular film" debacle as well.
It's still a great movie, but is just another superhero movie. Sorry 'bout it. It didn't bring anything new to the table other than black superheroes. Which is great, but doesn't mean it's worthy of being nominated for best picture.
A heavy dark horse here, I don't see it having any chance.
Bohemian Rhapsody
Similar to Black Panther, this is here because of its popularity. Accuracy to Freddie Mercury's life be damned. It showed me how little people knew about him and how few really cared about telling the true story of one of the most incredible musicians of all time. It's Queen's greatest hits set to a bland story. Not to mention the wildly offensive use of that music. 'Another One Bites the Dust' accompanying a montage of Mercury inn the depths of gay clubs. Admittedly this was not my original opinion, but I read a lengthy article about it and this was pointed out to me and blew me away. I was too enraptured in enjoying the Queen soundtrack I failed to notice how blatant it was about approaching Mercury's sexuality.
I did enjoy Rami Malek's performance, but calling it a performance is a bit of a stretch. He was mimicking a performer, not actually giving any spin of his own to Freddie Mercury. Half the movie is him lip-syncing Queen music. It's fine, but I honestly would have rather seen someone try and sing like him. His voice is nearly unreplicable, but I would have liked to see an actor (and the "director" Bryan Singer) take a big swing at it rather than do what they did with it.
Look at something like "Ray" with Jamie Foxx. He sang all the music and imitated Ray Charles perfectly, but still gave some of himself to the story. That performance made that movie the great biopic it is and now the popularity and success of Bohemian Rhapsody is leading to a far too huge influx in musician biopics coming out. Because why create an original story/performance when you can just copy someone else's life and all their stage performances?
Stale, but could be something the Academy awards just like the Golden Globes did.
The Favourite
Whew! What a movie. What a trip. This one came out of left field for me. I figured I'd enjoy it, despite hating period pieces, but I really really liked this.
Technically, I quite enjoyed the cinematographic choices made. Using a fish-eye lens at times really made me feel the discomfort between the two women.
However, what really made the movie was the performances. I'm incredibly impressed with all the actresses in the movie. Genius acting at its finest. Best actress should be already be in Olivia Colman's hand.
Green Book
This was a rare time that a feel good movie is nominated for best picture. Even though it's a stale "white savior" story, and yet another biopic (at its core), the Academy will most likely take this route again.
I did, however, have a lot of fun with the movie. Mahershala Ali was perfect and his performance was outstanding. Viggo Mortensen played off of him to near perfection as well. It was funny, entertaining, and just an all-around fun movie. It's rare the Academy gives awards to the feel good flick, but this could be the year. Especially as it's the safe choice for them.
Roma
The Academy is unabashed in their love for Alfonso Cuarón. And sure, he's a great filmmaker, director, cinematographer, but just because he made a movie doesn't mean he should be nominated. I'm still convinced his win for 'Gravity' (aka Garbage) was because of his work from 'Y Tu Mama Tambien' and 'Children of Men,' which are far superior films even to 'Roma.'
The only performance that could give Olivia Colman a run for her money is Yalitza Aparicio. She was outstanding as was the whole cast. Even though it was slow and often quite boring, these performances were the only reason I made it through the whole movie.
The Academy will probably give a lot of awards to 'Roma' and perhaps its' love of anything that's black and white will get it best picture too.
Great cinematography and writing for sure, but I fear that the bureaucracy of the Academy will give 'Roma' a bit too much undeserved love.
Vice
This felt like such a cheap version of 'The Big Short.' Maybe I hated watching a lot of it because it just highlighted the terrible world we're living in today, but I didn't get it. It hurt to watch.
However, again the performances saved this movie. Christian Bale was Dick Cheney. Sam Rockwell gave an unsurprisingly accurate representation of George W. Bush.
I really don't have much else to say here because I thought it was pretty bland overall. Just another biopic, a way for the Academy to feel safe and try to get more viewers for the ads they're going to air.
At the end of the day, the Academy has stopped taking any risks. Five of these movies were biopics. I wish they'd go back to just five best picture nominees, but they never will because they need the room to put popular films in to try and garner viewers. I haven't even watched the Oscars in years (cord-cutter, so no cable) and certainly won't be trying to watch them this year.
Making the Oscars more accessible isn't about what's nominated, it's about honoring the craft of the film industry and respecting those in the industry. It's about the work of the crew, not about popularity. Bring back the Academy Awards that gave 'Silence of the Lambs' best picture, that gave the dark horse 'The Hurt Locker' best picture. If the awards were kept more exclusive as opposed to trying to appeal to the casual movie viewer maybe they could regain whatever credibility they once had.
So really this was just to say, enjoy the movies you enjoy. Watch what you want to watch. Don't let the Oscars dictate what you should or shouldn't watch. The best movies survive with or without winning awards. And most of my favorite movies weren't ever even close to winning an Oscar or even being nominated.
