Some Thoughts about the Oscars.

Tomorrow night is the Oscars and tonight is the Independent Spirit Awards for Indie films. You can see my Top Ten List for 2015 here, but there were other entertaining films last year. The Spirit Awards have nominated Beasts of No Nation, Anomalisa, and Tangerine for Best Feature as well as the more mainstream, Carol, and Spotlight. I'm never sure how these Hollywood films qualify as Indies. Beasts of No Nation was made for Netflix and tells the story of a rebel army in an unnamed African country. The wonderful Idris Elba stars as the rebel commander. Tangerine has had a lot of buzz. It was "filmed" entirely on an iPhone, and tells the story of transgender prostitutes in Hollywood. It is a bit rough but it is worth seeing. Other good films with Indie nominations include Me and Earl and the Dying Girl which I liked a lot. It is about a high school kid whose mother forces him to spend time with a sick classmate. Another good one is The End of the Tour, starring Jason Segel as the author, David Foster Wallace, and Jesse Eisenberg as the Rolling Stone reporter who interviews him for several days.

Among the Hollywood films that missed getting nominations and didn't quite make my Top Ten, there were some good ones. My favorites include:

• Creed: See my mini-review here. This was probably the best film featuring African-Americans in front and behind the camera and deserved some more nominations.
• Trumbo: This movie is very good, particularly with Bryan Cranston in the title role. It's also a grim reminder that free speech has been under attack before. See my mini-review here.
• Pitch Perfect 2: What can I say, I am in love with Rebel Wilson. There I said it. This film isn't rocket science but I laughed through the whole thing. 
• Bridge of Spies: See my mini-review here. Sylvester Stallone will win Best Supporting Actor for Creed, but Mark Rylance gives the best performance of the year in Bridge of Spies as the Russian spy, Rudolph Abel. Tom Hanks is pretty good too. Duh.

Some good movies sank without a trace, but they are still out there and worth seeing:

• Pawn Sacrifice: The story of the Chess championship between Boris Spassky (Liev Schrieber) and Bobby Fischer (Tobey Maguire) in Iceland in 1972. This film is very well done.
• Ricki and the Flash: If you've always wanted to see Meryl Streep play an aging rocker, here is your chance. This is an interesting movie because it is a rare story where a woman leaves her family to pursue a career leaving the husband (Kevin Kline!) to pick up the pieces. 
• The Woman in Gold: This film came out at the beginning of 2015 and was well received. It is the true story about a woman played by Helen Mirren who tries to reclaim some painting stolen from her family by the Nazis. 
• Suffragette: This film does a nice job telling the story of the suffragette movement in England. Carey Mulligan is great. See my mini-review here.

Finally, who should win the best acting Oscars?

Best Supporting Actor:
I already mentioned that Mark Rylance (Bridge of Spies) should win Best Supporting Actor but Sylvester Stallone (Creed) will win. Stallone was great too so I don't mind him winning. The other nominees, Christian Bale (The Big Short), Mark Ruffalo (Spotlight), and Tom Hardy (The Revenant) were all good too. Hardy should get an award for playing this role along with Max in Mad Max Fury Road and two identical twin gangsters in Legend. Legend is well worth seeing. See my mini review here. Domhnall Gleeson who appeared in four good movies, Brooklyn, Star Wars, Ex Machina, and The Revenant, should get an honorable mention. And why not John Boyega (Star Wars: The Force Awakens)? Why no big nominations for Star Wars just because this is a big budget SciFi movie? He would have been a good non-white nomination.

Best Supporting Actress:
The nominees are Kate Winslet (Steve Jobs), Alicia Vikander (The Danish Girl), Rachel McAdams (Spotlight), Rooney Mara (Carol), and Jennifer Jason Leigh (The Hateful Eight). Kate Winslet seems to the slight favorite followed by Alicia Vikander. I think Winslet should win. Steve Jobs is the most underrated movie of the year. See my mini-review here. Vikander is great too although The Danish Girl isn't that great. She had an even better role in Ex-Machina. Mara should be nominated in the Best Actress category but is supporting for political reasons. She was good in Carol but the movie left me a bit cold. See my mini-review here. Rachel McAdams is doing some interesting things these days including True Detective. Spotlight is a very good film and she is good in it. See my mini-review here. The less said about The Hateful Eight the better. I love Jennifer Jason Leigh but read my mini-review here.

Best Actor:
We all know that this is the year for Leonardo DiCaprio (The Revenant). I don't agree
but other people think it was a better movie than I do. See my mini-review here. I would pick any of Michael Fassbender (Steve Jobs), Matt Damon (The Martian), and Bryan Cranston (Trumbo). These are all great movies with great lead performances. I didn't think much of Eddie Redmayne in The Danish Girl. Some other very good performances that could have been nominated include Joseph Gordon-Levitt (The Walk), Ian McKellen (Mr. Holmes), and Michael B. Jordan (Creed).

Best Actress:
This is another category that is supposed to be a lock for Brie Larson (Room). She is deserving and the film is good. See my mini-review here. Another very good movie she made that no one saw is Short Term 12. Then, there are two perennial nominees Cate Blanchett (Carol) and Jennifer Lawrence (Joy). Blanchett has 7 Oscar nominations and two wins. Lawrence although she is only 25 already has 4 nominations and one win. Joy was a mess of a movie but Lawrence was still great. See my mini-review here. Saoirse Ronan (Brooklyn) is nominated for a very sweet performance in a movie I loved. See my mini-review here. Finally, Charlotte Rampling (45 Years) has been making movies for 50 years and this is her first nomination. She might have been a sentimental favorite if not for her comments on #OscarsSoWhite. I haven't seen 45 Years.

The Top Ten Films of 2015

Well, it's only a week until The Oscars so here is my Top Ten List of last year's films. You can click on them to read my individual reviews except for Mr. Holmes. Steve Jobs is an amazing film which almost no one saw apparently because they don't like Steve Jobs. It has the best screenplay of the year by Aaron Sorkin despite his not being nominated. Michael Fassbender and Kate Winslet are both nominated for Oscars for their great performances. The Big Short is also excellent. It has an amazing energy and a great ensemble cast including Steve Carrell, Ryan Gosling, Brad Pitt and Christian Bale. Bale is nominated for an Oscar. The Big Short also has an amazing screenplay which is nominated. I really loved Brooklyn. It is a very nice coming of age film about a young Irish woman who moves to New York city. Saoirse Ronan is perfect for this role and I fell in love cinematography and art direction. The Walk is another film that almost nobody saw because of fear of heights, but it is maybe the best 3D movie ever. It's the true story of the frenchman who walked a tightrope between the Twin Towers. Mr. Holmes tells the story of Sherlock's last case, set when he very old and his fabled memory is beginning to fade. It is a beautiful little movie with Ian McKellen in the title role. It's nice to have a couple of SciFi movies, The Martian and Star Wars, in my Top Ten. The Martian starring Matt Damon as the wise-cracking astronaut marooned on Mars is very well done, and not much needs to be said about Star Wars. As Han says to Chewie, "We're home." Youth was surprisingly good, but maybe it's not surprising considering the cast of Michael Caine, Harvey Keitel and Rachel Weisz. Set in a very upscale Spa in Switzerland, Youth tells the story of a retired Maestro who feels that his life is over.  Spotlight is another very good ensemble piece with Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Mark Ruffalo and Liev Schrieber. This story, in the mold of All the President's Men, follows a group of reporters for the Boston Globe as they uncover abusive Catholic Priests. Finally, Room is the story of a young woman kidnapped and held for years in a shed by a predator who has fathered her young child. The film is split into two stories before and after the life in the Room. Brie Larson and Jacob Tremblay both give outstanding performances. The Revenant will probably win Best Picture but I gave it a big thumbs down.

1.   Steve Jobs 

2.   The Big Short 

3.   Brooklyn

4.   The Walk 

5.   Mr. Holmes

6.   The Martian

7.   Star Wars: The Force Awakens 

8.   Youth 

9.   Spotlight 

10. Room 

Deadpool

Deadpool: This movie is the first break-out hit if the year. It made about $150 million over the weekend and has an 84% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Ok, I liked it too. Deadpool is very funny. I don't get to say this very often but I laughed out loud a lot. It's also R-rated for a few bare breasts, some raunchy humor, and lots of blood and gore. Deadpool tells the story of a an ex-special forces guy (Ryan Reynolds) who meets the love of his life (Morena Baccarin) and then discovers that he has terminal cancer. And since he is living in the Marvel Universe, he is kidnapped by some very bad guys who mutate his genes to turn him into a super-slave. The good news is that it cures his cancer and gives him super powers. The bad news is that he is hard to look at and people keep trying to kill him. So he makes a nice outfit and calls himself, Deadpool (long story). As I mentioned, Deadpool is part of the Marvel Universe and in the movie, he is being recruited by the X-Men in the persons of Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead who also help him out fighting the bad guys. Deadpool notes that due to budget constraints, they could only afford two X-Men. Oh and he lives with an older blind woman played by Leslie Uggams (yes, that Leslie Uggams!). Deadpool is a lot of fun starting with some very amusing Opening Credits that had the crowd laughing right off the bat. Deadpool is full of extended bloody fights which seem to be endless since he has super-healing powers and his nemesis doesn't feel any pain. But not to worry, Deadpool is constantly turning to the audience and breaking the fourth wall to make a few jokes. The screenplay is great and the director, Tim Miller, keeps the action moving. The running time of Deadpool is nicely under two hours. Go see it.

Hail, Caesar!

Hail Caesar!: The New York Times reviewer said it best, “Hail, Caesar!” is one of those diversions that they turn out in between masterworks and duds." They are, of course, the Coen brothers, Ethan and Joel, famous for movies such as Fargo, and No Country for Old Men which won Oscars, and for movies such as, The Big Lebowski and Raising Arizona that didn't but have achieved cult status. Hail, Caesar! probably doesn't fit into either of these categories but neither is it a dud. It is a fun, entertaining film, especially if you are a fan of old Hollywood movies like those of Gene Kelly and Esther Williams. As an example of the level of humor in this movie, there is an entire scene devoted to a Western star (Alden Ehrenreich) trying to pronounce his director's name correctly. The director nicely played by Ralph Fiennes is called, Laurence Laurentz. The main character of Hail, Caesar! is Eddie Mannix played by Josh Brolin, a studio fixer, loosely based on a real person of the same name. His job is to ride herd on the studio's stars and make sure they finish their films and stay out of the gossip columns. In Hail, Caesar!, there are two competing identical-twin gossip columnists both played by Tilda Swinton. The studio's stars include a Esther Williams-like actress (Scarlett Johansson) who is about to become an unwed mother, a Gene Kelly-like actor (Channing Tatum) with communist sympathies, and the actor starring in the movie within a movie, Hail, Caesar! (George Clooney) who has a drinking problem. One of the charming things about this movie is that the Coen brothers choreographed and shot scenes for these stars that include tap dancing and synchronized swimming. Since this is a Coen brothers movie, there is also a scene where various priests and a rabbi are discussing the divinity of Jesus, and another scene with a long discussion of dialectical materialism. There are lots of entertaining cameos by Jonah Hill, Robert Picardo, David Krumholtz, Alison Pill, Fisher Stevens, and even Christopher Lambert! This isn't high art so don't expect any Oscar Nominations for Hail, Caesar! but it's worth seeing.