Critical Dan

The 2013 Oscar Nominations were announced yesterday. Below, you’ll find my opinions. Performances I’ve seen will be in bold. Judgments made on non-bold performances are entirely uninformed.

Best Picture

While there are a few light surprises on the Best Picture list, including Beasts of the Southern Wild, Django Unchained, and Amour, I think the general population already expected the rest of the list, with  Lincoln, Les Misérables, Zero Dark Thirty, Silver Linings Playbook, Life of Pi, and Argo. I am excited about the possibility of a picture like Beasts winning, although I know it’ll likely go to Zero Dark Thirty. Movies like Beasts are too niche to win Best Picture, but the nomination is well-deserved so people will seek out this movie more. I’m looking forward to Django Unchanined, although I’m prepared to get skeptical of Tarantino sooner or later. Les Misérables won’t take the award because Anne Hathaway and Hugh Jackman cannot save the film and it’s shoddy camerawork. Life of Pi is probably too philosophically cheesy, but I haven’t seen it or read the book. Argo won’t fare well, which is a disappointment but not a surprise. Silver Linings Playbook was likely nominated for the performances than the movie as a whole, so shouldn’t fare well either.

(There are additional thoughts on the specific movies I’ve seen moved to the end of the post, if you’re interested in more specifics)

Best Actor

Best Actor is intended for Daniel Day-Lewis, and while I think Hugh Jackman could poll well, along with Joaquin Phoenix, they’re not going to beat out Lincoln. While I haven’t seen Bradley Cooper or Denzel Washington in their nominated performances, I don’t expect the stars of All About Steve and Safehouse, respectively, to bring home the award.

Best Actress

According to every list everywhere, Jessica Chastain will win Best Actress and so I’m not going to argue until I see it. I haven’t hopped on the Jessica Chastain train yet because I haven’t caught any movie she’s been in, but I’ll change that soon. I am over the moon to see Quvenzhané Wallis on this list, the six-year-old lead from Beasts of the Southern Wild. I think part of her nomination is the Academy showing they’re willing to nominate a child for this award–thinking of Hailee Steinfeld of True Grit receiving a 2010 Supporting Actress nomination when she was clearly in a leading role–and I cannot wait to see Wallis’s future performances. I like Jennifer Lawrence, but only know her as Mystique and Katniss so no judgment yet. Naomi Watts will probably get confused for any other blonde actress–it took me over an hour to figure out she wasn’t Nicole Kidman in King Kong–and forgotten about. No idea on Emmanuelle Riva or the french movie Amour at all yet.

Best Support Actor

Likely going to goto Philip Seymour Hoffman for The Master, and really I’d expect Tommy Lee Jones and Christoph Waltz are the best competition for that spot. I think Tommy Lee Jones would be a great choice because his character has the most interesting storyline in Lincoln, but I don’t think the film explored his character deeply enough to justify the award. No thoughts on Alan Arkin or Robert De Niro.

Best Supporting Actress

Anne Hathaway will get the award for Best Supporting Actress, and it will be well deserved. Her performance saved the movie and everyone should see Les Misérables simply for her. Amy Adams is great, but her performance was too early and probably forgotten over Phoenix’s and Hoffman’s, not that I’ve seen The Master. Still need to see The Sessions, because I’m sure Helen Hunt is delightful and it has to be pretty good. Still no thoughts on Silver Linings Playbook, sorry Jacki Weaver. And Sally Field, your performance belonged in a Lifetime movie.

Best Animated Film

This category I have the least grasp on, even though I’ve seen two of the nominees, Brave and Wreck-It Ralph. To take a shot in the dark, I consider Frankenweenie the best prospect. The majority certainly likes an animated Tim Burton picture. If he wins, maybe he’ll consider going back to his early film roots, and wouldn’t that be a welcome change. ParaNorman and The Pirates! Band of Misfits look more like the category filler types of nominees, but I’ll admit that’s an entirely uninformed judgment. I think of Brave as the Lincoln of animated features, and if it wins I’ll be reassured these awards are irrelevant. It had so much potential but left the audience feeling constantly cheated. Avoiding romance was the obvious modus operandi of the filmmakers, and they focused more on that than creating a quality story.

Best Original Screenplay

The last interesting award in popular opinion, it always goes to the great movie that’s a bit too quirky to take the Best Picture. With a list including Amour, Django Unchained, Flight, and Zero Dark Thirty, none of these are as oddball enough for the award as Moonrise Kingdom, which is my expected winner.

Additional Best Movie Thoughts

Beasts of the Southern Wild was a beautiful piece of work that told the story of a young child’s confrontation with natural disaster, life, independence, and mortality. The performances, along with highly skilled editing, direction, and cinematography, are stunning and I hope everyone takes the time to watch it. My family and I sat down a bit apprehensive because we thought it would be a Hurricane Katrina-esque story taking advantage of devastation, but we were entirely wrong.The story of this powerful child swept us away and found ourselves genuinely moved multiple times. Please check it out.

To anyone who has actually seen Les Misérables, it’s apparent this movie would receive a nomination, but it will not win the Oscar. Hugh Jackman was expectedly wonderful, and Anne Hathaway was so exquisite I would’ve paid good money for a movie just about her character. But besides these two, the rest of the film is left wanting. I think the camera work thrust the actors faces onto screen way too often and missed a lot of wide shot opportunities. Russell Crowe was a fish out of water and the casting directors should have chosen any good actor who has played that character on Broadway and could handle the music instead of him. Amanda Seyfried, while not a terrible singer, had music too high for her voice, which forced a shrill sound more often than not. Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen did great jobs playing themselves, but there was nothing innovative about that. It ended up lasting forever, and I think the filmmakers should have decided to abandon the style of movie musical treatment that Rent received, and instead made the full musical à la the film The Sound of Music, and it should have included an intermission. Finally, was Samantha Barks, playing Eponine, wearing seven corsets? Seriously, she had the waist of a toddler.

Lincoln, besides Daniel Day Lewis and Tommy Lee Jones, was terrible. If this movie receives the award for Best Picture I will know for sure that the Oscars are no longer a relevant award show. Daniel Day Lewis embodied Lincoln so well and I think it will snag him the Best Actor award, especially because of the clunky script handed to him. It seemed every time Lincoln opened his mouth he shared an obvious trope or over-wrought personal parable meant to teach a lesson in every line of dialogue. The opening scene started on an emotionally moving note, but the movie pushed away from that feeling quickly. It became a parade of every white American actor available plastered with nonsensical amounts of facial hair. There was insubstantial character development thanks to the vast number of actors involved and it left little explanation for most decisions made by the congressmen swayed to vote for the amendment or not during the final scenes of the movie. Oh, I was suspicious all Sally Field’s scenes were clips from various Lifetime movies. In all honesty, I think it should’ve been renamed Amendment 13 and focused on Tommy Lee Jones and his wife.

Adam’s Apples begins when a Neo-Nazi who, after being sentenced to community service at a church, arrives to meet the eccentric and overly optimistic vicar running the place. Ivan, the vicar, is happy to welcome Adam into their odd family, which includes a former child tennis star turned drunk, a Saudi Arabian immigrant, Ivan’s handicapped son, and a pregnant woman. Hilarity ensues.

Dark, dark hilarity, to be honest. I don’t want to delve too far into the specific moments of comedy in this film because I’d feel guilty depriving folks of actually enjoying the unexpected turns of it all. With certain films I expect a type of gruesome dark comedy–like Burn After Reading–but the opening attitude of this film gave no warning signs of the abrupt darkling comic moments ahead, and you find yourself outright chortling during a graphic shooting or at a picture of Hitler.

In the movie the religious component cannot be avoided, as it’s apparent from the opening scene that Adam’s character is crying out for redemption. (Thanks to a minister father who adores movies, I’ve grown up with a lot of film analysis from an intelligent religious perspective) As we settle in for a funny romp about a neo-nazi out of his depth with a kooky vicar, we are surprised with raw comic writing confronting major issues like abortion, death, and suicide. This brilliant trick played on the audience comes to light as the story unravels the vicar’s disheartening past and it’s revealed Ivan may be living a modern life of Job, one unexpectedly unfortunate step at a time.

A most refreshing aspect of the movie was definitely the happy ending, or at least form of such. I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to say the movie followed general comedy conventions and provided satisfying conclusions for the majority of the characters. The writers had obviously written themselves toward that point, however round-aboutly it took, but there are just so many dark comedies unwilling to relent with the darkness or cynicism and it’s much more fun to watch a deeply troubling story resolve happily for those involved, just as it did for Job.

Available on Netflix in the foreign film area, I must warn it’s from Denmark, so in Danish with English subtitles. When you get started be prepared for a quick pace because the jokes come quickly and unexpectedly. I hope you’re willing to give it a try and if you do I’d love to hear your comments about it!