Movies! Prizes! Lists!

Best intentions aside, I have not exactly been burning up the blogging wires this year... February has been a - interesting - month.... More on that later, I imagine. Now, though, since we seem to have arrived at the Academy Awards, this weekend, I shall endeavor to address the Oscars, so far as I am willing, which isn't very far. An excuse to hand out my own awards for various categories, really... and so - generally speaking, I'll look at the nominations, say who I think will win and who should (so far as I have opinions on those things), then offer my own slates. I'm not going through the whole list of awards - just the obvious ones. Off we go:

BEST PICTURE:

Arrival
Fences
Hacksaw Ridge
Hell or High Water
Hidden Figures
La La Land
Lion
Manchester by the Sea
Moonlight

I've seen 4 of them - Hell or High Water, La La Land, Manchester by the Sea, Moonlight; have wanted to see at least Hidden Figures and Fences, but my filmgoing habits have been abysmal. The others I can live without (not that I'll avoid them, but don't count on it). Of those four: La La Land was all right, but nothing special - wildly overhyped, since people talk about it as though it were an actual good film, a really good film. I don't understand that. Annoying characters, bland, hackneyed story, not real great music - and weird ideas. But this is not a review of it (though that is something I should have done - oh well), and really, I don't even hate it - just that I find that it's apotheosis has started to get under my skin, especially since it seems the favorite to win. Hell or High Water was a lively little heist picture, lots going for it, though the story was absurd - but for what it was and with that cast, it was quite a fine thing. Not worth considering one of the 10 best of the year. The other two, on the other hand, are certainly worthy. Of the two - I hope Moonlight wins, though I doubt it has much chance. But they are both fine films.

As for what I would have picked? 5? This might look different if I were trying to imagine an Oscar ballot - a ballot that represents what Film Is Today, maybe - 9 films? I'd leave Fences and Hidden Figures in, though I didn't see them; leave Moonlight and Manchester By the Sea; might begrudge Other People La La Land; definitely add Certain women, 20th Century Women, Silence - finish up with Loving. Right? as for my favorites? keeping to English fiction narrative films...

1. Paterson
2. Certain Women
3. Silence
4. 20th Century Women
5. Love and Friendship


ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE

Casey Affleck, Manchester by the Sea
Andrew Garfield, Hacksaw Ridge
Ryan Gosling, La La Land
Viggo Mortensen, Captain Fantastic
Denzel Washington, Fences

I have seen two of those - I would vote for Affleck, maybe in general - he is fantastic. Gosling? the character is so annoying, I couldn't vote for him for any reason. (He's like Llewyn Davis, if the Coen brothers thought Davis was right about everything - obnoxious self-destructive bully who steals his material from better people, and thinks he's doing them a favor. The Coens know he's a prick - they know he does it to himself - they understand that sympathy is not endorsement of bad people; they used to get trashed for despising all your characters, but I don't buy it - they made me sympathize with Roland Turner for god's sake! ... La La Land isn't in that universe.) Now, if Gosling got nominated for The Nice Guys - I'd like that. As for the rest? Garfield is nominated for the Mel Gibson thing instead of the Scorsese thing? oy. Maybe. The rest might well be deserving. Stil have to see Fences somewhere... As for me?

1. Adam Driver - Paterson
2. Affleck - Manchester by the Sea
3. Joel Edgerton - Loving
4. Ralph Fiennes - A Bigger Splash
5. Tom Hiddlestone - I Saw the Light

ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE

Isabelle Huppert, Elle
Ruth Negga, Loving
Natalie Portman, Jackie
Emma Stone, La La Land
Meryl Streep, Florence Foster Jenkins

I saw all but one of these. This was a miraculous year for actresses - everyone of them (that I saw) is deserving (Emma Stone's character is underwritten - boy did that film annoy me - but she's fine in it, does all that's humanly possible to save it), and they might not even make my top five. I'd vote for Huppert - I suspect Stone will win... Negga would be great too. My choices? from a very deep pool:

1. Huppert - Elle
2. Kate Beckinsale - Love & Friendship
3. Anette Bening - 20th Century Women
4. Ruth Negga - Loving
5. Sandra Huller - Toni Erdmann

ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

Mahershala Ali, Moonlight
Jeff Bridges, Hell or High Water
Lucas Hedges, Manchester by the Sea
Dev Patel, Lion
Michael Shannon, Nocturnal Animals

Saw three of these - approve completely of the nominations (Ali, Bridges, Hedges.) Another deep field, though that might be because trying to parse out who's lead and who's supporting is not as obvious as always - in Moonlight say - how do you choose among the 3 leads? Anyway: I hope Ali wins - he really is outstanding... Me?

1. Mahershala Ali - Moonlight
2. Tom Bennett - Love & Friendship
3. Alden Ehrenreich - Hail Caesar
4. Tadanobu Asano - Silence
5. Jeff Bridges - Hell or High Water

ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

Viola Davis, Fences
Naomie Harris, Moonlight
Nicole Kidman, Lion
Octavia Spencer, Hidden Figures
Michelle Williams, Manchester by the Sea

Saw only two of these - can't gainsay any of the choices, though. This is another category that seems very deep, but the depth is not really here. So - Harris or Williams would be fine choices, so might the others... I would have picked these 5:

1. Lily Gladstone - Certain Women
2. Greta Gerwig - 20th Century Women
3. Naomie Harris - Moonlight
4. Michelle Williams - Manchester by the Sea
5. Paulina Garcia - Little Men

From here on down, I'll be cherry picking categories, just to give the ones I have opinions on...

DIRECTING

Arrival
Hacksaw Ridge
La La Land
Manchester by the Sea
Moonlight

Saw three of these - no real complaints (except the usual stuff about La La Land), though only Moonlight does anything with the direction that adds to the film. Manchester is a writer's and actor's film - Lonergan does his work, to get the most from his script and his cast, but that's still where the work is. Jenkins adds a great deal with the way he films Moonlight. (Indeed, I found the script its weakest part - it's solid, but it's too on the nose sometimes - especially compared to the subtlety of the performances and direction.) Any chance he can win? I hope so - that would redeem a lot o0f things. Gonna be La La Land, though, isn't it? The poor bastard tries, but in the end, for Hollywood drama/spoofs, I didn't just prefer Hail Caesar - I preferred Cafe Society!

1. Jim Jarmusch - Paterson
2. Scorsese - Silence
3. Maren Ade - Toni Erdmann
4. Barry Jenkins - Moonlight
5. Kelly Reichhart - Certain Women

DOCUMENTARY (FEATURE)

Fire at Sea
I Am Not Your Negro
Life, Animated
O.J.: Made in America
13th

Only saw one of these, oddly - did see some decent documentaries, but the only great documentary I saw was I Am Not Your Negro. That is a stone cold masterpiece - though from what I hear, so is the OJ film. From the few I saw, my top 5 (which I ca't pretend competes with the actual pool):

1. I am Not Your Negro
2. Lo and Behold
3. Gimme Danger
4. Tickled
5. Where to Invade Next

CINEMATOGRAPHY

Arrival
La La Land
Lion
Moonlight
Silence

Saw three of them - they all look good, I can't fault La La Land there. I hope Silence wins, it has to win something - Scorsese's best in decades? though Moonlight is also very good. But me?

1. Paterson [a pattern might be emerging here]
2. Silence
3. Moonlight
4. The Handmaiden
5. Jackie

WRITING (ADAPTED SCREENPLAY)

Arrival
Fences
Hidden Figures
Lion
Moonlight

Saw just one of these. Like I said - I liked almost everything about Moonlight, but I did think the script was just adequate. So I can't say if it should win. I would nominate(with some caveats in case I'm mistaking adaptations from originals, somewhere):

1. Love & Friendship
2. Certain Women
3. Silence
4. Elle
5. The Handmaiden

WRITING (ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY)

Hell or High Water
La La Land
The Lobster
Manchester by the Sea
20th Century Women

The first category I have seen every single nominee in. Nice! 2 of those seem like obvious contenders - the others have enough going for them (except La La Land) that I have no complaints. Still...

1. 20th Century Women
2. Toni Erdmann
3. Paterson
4. Manchester By the Sea
5. The Nice Guys

FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

Land of Mine
A Man Called Ove
The Salesman
Tanna
Toni Erdmann

Managed 2 of these - having finally seen Toni Erdmann - it is the best film of the year. It should win this. Salesman might - it is a fine movie, though getting a bit old hat for Farhadi, who has always been something of stretch as a great filmmaker - solid, but not really a master... I didn't see as many foreign films as I would like, but I saw some good ones...

1. Toni Erdmann
2. Elle
3. Salesman
4. Things to Come
5. The Handmaiden

Films of 2016

2016 in movies, a bit late, though not as bad as last year, and it does let me get some some films in that are taking a while to get to the theaters. I did not have a great year going to the movies - it's a trend that's been building, and one I suspect is going to get a lot worse next year (for reasons maybe to be discussed.) The last couple years have been underwhelming film years - not bad, exactly; there are plenty of enjoyable films, but not as many transcendent ones, it seems. And the transcendent experiences sometimes seem to come from some detail in the film, some resonance, more than from the quality of the film itself. Maybe. Looking at what I saw - there are some fine films on there: plenty of pleasure, all the way down the list - and a few moments that brought back all the joys of the movies. I think I enjoyed this year's bunch of films more than I thought I did...

Whether that's so or now, I have done a terrible job of writing about films. I haven't written a thing about new films in a couple years - not a word last year. (Barely anything the 2 years before that.) Not much about old films either - unless it's for someone else (thank god for Polls!) Anyway: let me try to make up for that, with a few lines about these films - at least the top 10. And so without further ado -

Released in 2016:

1. Paterson - Beautiful and enthralling, based on the wonders of the everyday world - William Carlos Williams its obvious guiding saint - rooted in the world, and the way the world filters into one man's mind. Full of imagery - twins, writers and artists, performances, lovers - doubles and puns and internal rhymes. With nods to other films - Nagase at the end (from Mystery Train), Method Man rapping, Gilman and Hayward talking on the bus about Gaetano Breschi, the anarchist weaver who shot the king of Italy.

2. Certain Women - sharp ensemble piece, three stories almost entwined. Things happen, though nothing too dramatic, and even if something dramatic does happen, it does so quietly, almost apologetically; full of silences and looks; people working; people thinking. Beautiful film with a stellar cast.

3. Silence - best Scorsese film in 2 decades. Intense and driven, and carried by superb performances by all concerned. (Tadanabo Asano's character - weak, constantly betraying, trampling the cross and informing, and constantly coming back, begging for absolution - might be the most interesting.) A very interesting historical film as well - giving voice to the Japanese, in a fascinating tangle - a film by Americans of a novel by a Japanese about Portuguese priests...

4. 20th Century Women - Handsome clever film about a middle aged single mother trying to raise her son - another film bursting with brilliant performances: Bening and Gerwig and Crudup and Faning and Zumann the kid - Bening at the center, but first among many greats.

5. Love and Friendship - Whit Stillman adapting Austen directly, early, obscure Austen - which he describes on the DVD as an Oscar Wilde play written by Jane Austen. Kate Beckinsale is front and center - one of Stillman's monsters, the kind of character Chris Eigenman used to play - completely self-absorbed and likable anyway, you can't turn away, she's so brazen at what she does, always both completely honest and completely false. With a very cool ending, everyone getting what they want - including Lady Susan, who appears to have landed in the middle of a perfectly successful threesome...

6. Loving - Story of the Lovings, whose marriage and lawsuit ended miscegenation laws in the United States. Seen through the couple's eyes, his and hers, with their complimentary virtues, their love. It is beautiful, quiet, building tension without anything really overt happening - the fear and their ability to live around the fear, the way Edgerton squirms around the sheriff, the way they fight back. Not that it's needed, but more proof that Jeff Nichols is one of the great contemporary directors.

7. The Witch - A man is banished from his New England town in the early 17th century. He takes his family into the woods and carves out a farm there alone - but things are not well. The baby disappears - secrets and lies are revealed through the family's misfortune, and they all start going mad. Accusations fly - who is the witch? is Black Phillip the devil? A cool, brooding little film, tight and gripping - family disfunction, religious lunacy, the dangers of the frontier, madness and hormones, all add up to disaster of biblical proportions.

8. Mountains May Depart - Story in three parts: 1999 - a worker and a rising capitalist chase the same girl, until she chooses the money; 2014- the son visits his mother, whose long since divorced the capitalist; 2025 - the son, in Australia, as alienated from his father as his mother, has an affair with an older woman (Sylvia Change, so thus believable)... Melodrama of sorts, a story of misery and loss, a death as the main emotional foundation, with failed love affairs and children who don't talk to their parents the content. Everyone suffers - the rich guy ends up a pathetic loser, collecting guns in Melbourne; the worker - probably dead; the girl alone with her dog - which comes off as rather a triumph, in this context.

9. Elle - tour de force for Isabelle Huppert, who plays a rich woman, owns a video game company, and is raped to open the film - but reacts with a kind of cool numbness that we soon realize is her natural state. The story works in the backstory - her father was a mass murderer, who dragged her into his crimes, making her infamous, creating her shell. She never quite comes out - never quite becomes clear to us - stays strange throughout, as is her way.

10. Moonlight - film in three parts about a black boy/man in Miami (and Atlanta) - Chiron/Little/Black. He's a quiet sensitive boy who runs a gauntlet of trouble for it - called faggot at 9, beaten for it as a teenager, and crusting it over in street hardness as an adult. Revolves around three scenes at the ocean - learning to swim with Juan, a drug dealer who becomes his friend; smoking a joint and experimenting with sex with a friend as a teenager; then talking to the same friend, now a cook, at his house by the ocean as adults. Beautifully shot, acted with grace by the whole cast - handsome, very moving film.

11. Our Little Sister
12. Midnight Special
13. Fireworks Wednesday
14. My Golden Days
15. Little Men
16. Lo and Behold
17. Hail Caesar
18. Things to Come
19. Too Late
20. Jackie
21. The Handmaiden
22. A Bigger Splash
23. Hunt for the Wilderpeople
24. Manchester By the Sea
25. Krisha

Made in 2016 - an interesting list, because most of the best films released were in fact new last year. Usually you get a lot of the best foreign films from the year before showing up sometime in the first 2-3 months of the new year. ast year didn't have as much of that - or I didn't see them...

1. Paterson
2. Certain Women
3. Silence
4. 20th Century Women
5. Love and Friendship
6. Loving
7. Elle
8. Moonlight
9. Midnight Special
10. Little Men

And the annual look back a year - 2015. What I posted at the beginning of 2016:

1. The Look of Silence
2. The Forbidden Room
3. The Assassin
4. Tangerine
5. The Wolfpack
6. Taxi
7. Youth
8. Carol
9. The Big Short
10. Diary of a Teenaged Girl

And how it looks now - not much changed to be honest:

1. The Look of Silence
2. The Forbidden Room
3. The Assassin
4. Tangerine
5. The Wolfpack
6. Taxi
7. The Witch
8. Mountains May Depart
9. Our Little Sister
10. Carol