If I Were an Academy Member: J. Don Birnam
By J. Don Birnam
February 27, 2016
BoxOfficeProphets.com
8. The Martian
When I first saw The Martian at the Toronto Film Festival, I praised Ridley Scott’s effort into unpacking the complex novel into a very entertaining film. I was, of course, wrong then so dismiss its Best Picture chances, but I remain of the view that while it is a worthy popcorn movie, it has no business being in this race. The Martian is easy movie-going at every turn. There is not a piece that is challenging about it and the emotional and physical pitfalls are predictable and thus less exciting. Matt Damon, nominated only because it’s a weak year, plays his frat bro self. The real shame about The Martian is that the one person that did deserve a nomination - its director - missed out. Scott’s impeccable directing is what gives you all these amazing timeless movies from Alien to Gladiator. The movie works because its elements are woven together tightly and it never misses a beat. It’s hard to argue with that.
7. Mad Max
I have great respect for Mad Max, I think it’s one of the best movies of the year without a doubt. Its cinematography is incredibly beautiful, and the fact that it centers around powerful women seeking to liberate a people from oppression is not lost on me. The action sequences make The Martian look like it was made on $5. Every technical aspect of the film works perfectly, and it is buoyed by two convincing performances by the reliable Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy.
Indeed, in many ways Mad Max is a movie that comes along rarely even though their frequency is increasing of late. For years, the Oscar race was about big budget films. Then, it switched around the 2000s during the first wave of superhero movies, when the big budget films were just too commercial and ridiculed by critics to be tolerable to the Academy. But, after years of losing to arthouse films, big Hollywood is beginning to push back, and it is doing it effectively.
Mad Max, like American Sniper last year or Gravity before it, is a prime example of a big budget movie, one for the masses, that both massively entertains and can get critical respect. The Force Awakens was arguably another such movie. But it is Mad Max that felt the most original, although both movies transferred the hero status to a heroine.
6. Room
As you know if you’ve been paying attention, Room won the coveted People’s Choice award at Toronto at the start of the Oscar season. It is thus a popular, moving, crowd-pleasing movie that is almost flawless in its own way.
Room works for the most part because it’s a thriller, a family drama, and a psychological movie at the same time and works on all three levels. Brie Larson’s performance, if somewhat overstated, is beaten only by the incredible turn by her costar, young Jacob Tremblay. The degree of difficulty in filming in the crowded room should also not be forgotten, but arguably the most touching moments are those in which the young boy discovers the world and begins to interact with it.
If anything, those parts of the story were somewhat sacrificed in their depth in favor of the more facile emotional outburst moments, somewhat to the movie’s detriment. But there can be no doubt that the movie’s theme - love, and its strength - are portrayed honestly as the film moves from the room into the real world that it encounters.
A dark horse contender for Best Picture, to be sure, since no one on Earth dislikes Room, but perhaps too indie a movie to win now that the titans are back.
5. Brooklyn
I connected with Brooklyn on a personal and emotional level, and it grew on me upon subsequent viewings. The beauty of this movie lies in its subtle but genuine portrayals - of immigrants, of love, of family connections, of nostalgia, and of growing up. Helped by an incredible screenplay, the movie, indeed, matures with the character, growing from somewhat confused and choppy to confident and experienced. It is anchored by one of the best performances of the year, by the incredibly talented Saoirse Ronan.
Brooklyn reminds us, through her searching but determined gaze, through her longing and restive eyes, that life is a collection of moments and just one moment all at the same time. That while it is easy and comforting to dwell in nostalgia, in what could have beens, and, why not, in the past, life is for the living, life is for the future, life is for those who embrace it as such.
As the movie shifts back and forth between Ireland and Brooklyn, you are reminded of a time long gone by, wherein speed of travel or communications forced people away from each other but also drew them closer - real connections were necessary. The movie, thus, is somewhat ironically about that nostalgia, nostalgia for those times when humans interacted at deeper levels. But it does not lecture about the present nor does it dwell on the past, thereby accomplishing its own purpose - to remind us that while the past is not worth dwelling on, it sure is worth remembering.
4. Bridge of Spies
There are moments in Spielberg’s oeuvre that feel overly dramatized - as if the Jaws of the shark or the eyes of the Extra Terrestrial are coming out to surprise us. Tom Hanks cannot help but act as himself without a wink at moments of supposed levity. But there is an overlaying charm to these noticeable sidesteps in Bridge of Spies (which, to be sure, will prevent it from winning Best Picture). After all, the story is about American values, about their contrast and betterment vis-à-vis not just Soviet, but otherworldly lessons. The movie predictably falls into facile dichotomies between good and evil at times, but it does so with purpose, vehemence, and a subtle sense of redemption that manages to obscure the Hollywood over-simplification of the tense subject matter.
A key element of this saving theme is most definitely the subtle yet scene-stealing performance by veteran theatre actor Mark Rylance. Deserving of a Best Supporting Actor trophy - unless the winds of 1976’s Rocky blow him away -Rylance delivers the necessary and measured response to the black and white traps the movie at times falls into. He’s not the murderous evil Soviet spy you’d expect from a spaghetti Cold War Western (if such a thing is a thing). Instead, he’s the angelic and lovable creature and captive of his time, loyal to his cause, which mostly consists of his own principles.
In that sense, of course, he is but a reflection of Hanks’ main character itself - a virtuous, righteous man who stands up for those principles and then some, in the face of the challenges he faces from his own countrymen. Trite as it is on the surface, and wooden as Hanks’ deliverance can at times be, the contrast works because Spielberg and his expert team of craftsmen are behind the scenes - you buy into their struggle as if the faith of the Republic were at hand, as if John Adams himself was defending the Boston Massacre five.
In other words, you are made to believe, impossibly, and even for just a moment, in the grandeur of America - and I don’t mean because of its socio-political values. It’s the majesty of its cinema, as expressed through the lens of one of its masters, that wins you over. Because, for all the technological niceties of Mad Max, for all the audience pleasing tips in The Martian, for all the freezing, grueling shots in The Revenant, Bridge of Spies delivers an academy of moviemaking, in its subtle use of shadows, its award-nominated cinematography, its beautiful art direction, that one takes for granted - and then some - in a Spielberg picture, but is sorely missing from much of the rest.
3. The Revenant
Lest it be said that I am kowtowing to the tastes of the Academy given my choice for the top three favorites of the Best Picture contenders, these same three were also among my top 10 favorite movies of the year back in December.
I wrote my thoughts on The Revenant then and also when I first reviewed the movie, here, so I will not belabor the point. Suffice it to say that I think The Revenant is an incredible achievement in movie-making because of its uncompromising devotion to the art of movie-making. It is, clearly, not my vote for Best Picture of the year. But, in the conversation around it, it grates me to hear people point to its “weak” story as a sign of shortcomings, or to explain away the lack of a screenplay nomination at the Oscars. Creativity comes in many forms in art, narrative prowess is but one of such elements. Structural perfection, like The Revenant exhibits, is maligned too much in the snobby world of movie criticism that likes to reward confusing and innovative plots at the expense of innovative technique.
Why must it be so? The Revenant is “divisive” because some critics cannot uncouple mastery from story, despite the fact that masters from Spielberg to James Cameron to Alejandro González Iñárritu have schooled them over and over again by showing them the richness of the craft of movies. The Revenant is one of those great movies.
2. Spotlight
The one thing that has happened since I wrote my top 10 list two months ago is that I’ve moved The Big Short to the top of the three Best Picture movies I liked. This does not mean that I have any less appreciation for Spotlight. The strongest point of Spotlight is its subtlety - its refusal, in a way, like The Revenant, to kowtow to what critics and audiences would have expected from a movie about this topic: incendiary controversy, dramatic overreach, and preachy zealotry. It is matter of fact, exacting, about the story it narrates, a clear allegory for the style of reporting that it is exalting.
Spotlight is a guarded reminder of the evils that can transpire when people refuse to speak up, when people capitulate to “the way things are.” But it is also a tremendously uplifting nudge towards the good that can be accomplished by collective, determined, action. The movie refuses to fall for the cheesy denouement, the clichéd explosive, discovery moment. For that reason, it may ultimately lose the Best Picture Oscar. For that reason, of course, it may win it. It remains, despite that, one of the most important movies of the year because it exemplifies that there is an alternative to passivity in society and that, in the world of film, there is an alternative to blasé story-telling with overly used arcs.
1. The Big Short
But if I were an Oscar voter, I think I would have to vote for The Big Short (and, perhaps, I should switch my predictions before it’s too late!). The Big Short is a powerful, sarcastic, whimsical, punchy reminder of many of the things that Spotlight reminds us of, but the stakes are, in many ways, higher.
At a time when the reverberations of the Great Recession of 2008 are still felt in our society, when the Nation and the World are being called upon to decide which way we go from here, what we do with some of our broken institutions, what we do about those that have been left behind, The Big Short reminds us that, much contrary to that infamous phrase that made Gordon Gekko a household name, greed is NOT good. Unabashed greed putrefies the human soul until it becomes a senseless machine that destroys everything in its path.
Like The Wolf of Wall Street before it, The Big Short accomplishes this brilliantly, with its sarcasm, its over-satirical representations of players in the collapse (from greedy mortgage brokers to blind regulators and bought-off politicians), with its refusal to apologize or gloss over the nature of our problems. It does so with its punchy lines, and with its simply tragic ending--when for one moment Ryan Gosling’s sarcasm-dripping voice edges a notch into the serious and declares “just kidding” about the fact that those responsible were made to pay.
The flashy condos, the expensive dinners, the beautiful women, are all on display as part of the perversion of that American dream of success; they are all the apple that calls to Adam and which he is unable to resist. We were cast away from paradise, The Big Short tells us, because we lost that purity, that humanity. God help us if we don’t wake up to that.
The Big Short is the most important movie of the year, and would have my vote for that reason alone.