Tag: American Hustle

2014 Oscar Winner Predictions

“12 Years a Slave” will win Best Picture, along with three other Oscars.

The Oscars are here, although maybe not soon enough. A report recently said that two thirds of Americans have not seen any of the Best Picture winners yet. That to me doesn’t add up for a movie like “Gravity” that made as much money as it did, but the point is that this awards season, while interesting, has just gone on too long. A New York Times article wondered if the average individual is generally apathetic to the whole institution of the Oscars.

I hope that isn’t true, but it’s starting to feel that way when the debate over “12 Years a Slave” versus “American Hustle” has long since past, when we’ve heard the story about Jonah Hill getting paid as little as SAG would allow to work for Martin Scorsese over and over again, and when even “Let it Go” parodies are getting old.

Anyway, here are my final predictions. You may find there’s more consensus and predictability than you’d think.

12 Years a Slave

Best Picture

Months ago I wrote an article bluntly titled “Gravity Will NOT Win Best Picture… Probably.” It was smart of me to add on that last word, because the good news is that “Gravity,” my favorite film of the year, is still here. It is still as much of a favorite to win now as it was back when it premiered at Toronto, despite all the things I said about it technically having come true.

But in the case of “Gravity,” the nitpickers have beaten the dollars, and a more “worthy” title, one that isn’t seen as just “a ride” or a movie with a “bad script” will have to take its place. That film will be “12 Years a Slave,” as many predicted long ago that it was invincible. It has now survived with wins at the BAFTAs and Golden Globes as the one to beat, and yet its tie in the Producers Guild Awards with “Gravity” confirms just how close this race is.

“American Hustle” may not be the last minute favorite after all, and it’s a shame for David O. Russell, who would now be 0-3 in a row on his current hot streak. The third time is not the charm, it seems, but I’m betting he’ll strike again, whereas Alfonso Cuaron and Steve McQueen may never make another Oscar friendly movie. The reason I feel it can’t win, and why some are predicting it might not win anything, is, what exactly is the narrative behind this movie winning? It’s a throwback, but not quite. It’s a crowd pleaser, but not entirely. It’s madcap fun, brilliant and original, but some would argue even that’s not all true.

“Gravity” and “12 Years a Slave” each have their supporters who would say otherwise about all of the above, and a win for them will mean something special.

Oscar Nominations 2014 Analysis: Full of Surprises and None

All the Oscar surprises that really weren’t surprises after all

The Oscar nominees rarely satisfy, only surprise and enrage, although never in the way people expect, which I guess is its own surprise.

It was expected that Amy Adams could “surprise” by breaking into the field of Best Actress nominees, but did anyone suspect that it would be at Emma Thompson’s expense? There were predictions that Christian Bale or Leonardo DiCaprio could get into an even tighter race, but both of them? Sally Hawkins was less expected behind perhaps Octavia Spencer and others, but was Oprah really the weak link?

These are the kinds of revelations that both delight and frustrate Oscar pundits. In a way, they were right that the Academy after all did not love “Inside Llewyn Davis” or “Saving Mr. Banks,” but then those prediction tallies never seem to match up.

The fact that there are surprises each year really shouldn’t be a surprise at all. If the Oscar nominations were as easy to predict as picking all the top ranked favorites, then what would be the fun of waking up at 7:38 in the morning to watch them? For instance, why was there doubt that David O. Russell couldn’t lead yet another cast to a sweep of the acting categories like he did with “Silver Linings Playbook” and nearly did with “The Fighter”? That’s one of those “surprises” that people should’ve seen coming a mile away, but no one did.

I guess it’s less of a surprise that Oscar pundits will now all turn around and rationalize the nominations in the way I’ve just done, as though it made sense or was expected all along, but no one “knew” that Thompson would be out, or no one “knew” that “Philomena” was a sure thing thanks to Harvey Weinstein after all. (I did however bet Hanks would get nothing) Continue reading “Oscar Nominations 2014 Analysis: Full of Surprises and None”

2014 Oscars Final Predictions

Who all will be nominated for the 2014 Oscars on January 16.

The day has come. Everyone’s had their say, and the Oscar nominations are only days away. In one corner we have strong consensus on some absolute great movies, movies that could sit on any year’s Best Picture list and be stronger contenders than they are here. And in the other corner you have controversy, bitching, stewing and whining that maybe just about all of these are overrated to some degree. I mean, we knew “Spring Breakers” wasn’t about to be nominated, but does the Academy really think there are 10 better movies this year than “Before Midnight”?

It’s easy to get exhausted by all the bickering, but then that’s criticism, and that’s the Oscar race. It isn’t every year that we get three, maybe four plausible winners in such a vast field.

I tend to enjoy Oscar nomination morning even more so than Oscar night itself. There are more chances for surprise, for curveballs, snubs and the opportunity to pick the winner. Maybe not everyone is aware that Cate Blanchett’s Oscar win this year will be a foregone conclusion (watch me eat those words), but there’s a lot less certainty when it’s so close to being over.

This year my predictions have gone back and forth, but not as much as you might think. Movies like “Rush,” “August: Osage County” and “Fruitvale Station” have been pushed to the margins as the months have passed, and “Her” and “American Hustle” have emerged as more than gems. But this crop of films that we started with back in October has stayed mostly constant because all of them have been as good, if not better than expected. No amount of prognosticating, statistics and snubs can take all that away.

Best Picture

  1. 12 Years a Slave
  2. Gravity
  3. American Hustle
  4. Her
  5. Captain Phillips
  6. Saving Mr. Banks
  7. The Wolf of Wall Street
  8. Nebraska
  9. Inside Llewyn Davis

This remains a race between “12 Years a Slave,” “Gravity,” “American Hustle” and to a lesser degree “Her,” and it’s most exciting to know that not one is the runaway favorite. “12 Years” may be in the lead, but “American Hustle” pulled the hat trick of being recognized by all three guilds, the DGA, PGA and WGA.

“Captain Phillips” and “Saving Mr. Banks” seem like safe fifth and sixth bets, both studio films but one with an edgy action pulse and the other a family friendly affair full of Old Hollywood nostalgia.

A bigger question mark however hangs over “The Wolf of Wall Street,” the most controversial of all the contenders, and “Inside Llewyn Davis,” which has been hit or miss. Opposite “American Hustle,” it pulled the hat trick of being snubbed by all three guilds, and yet it swept the National Society of Film Critics’ Awards.

The reason I feel both are getting in is the little movie no one is talking about, “Nebraska.” This movie has quietly remained in the hunt despite only mild notices for its actors. Alexander Payne missed with the DGA, and no critics have really come to bat for it. But is there a fear that it can’t scrape together a measly 300 1st place votes? Both “Inside Llewyn Davis” and “Wolf” have that kind of love, despite the hate, and this will be a nine horse race for the third year running. Continue reading “2014 Oscars Final Predictions”

The Best Movies of 2013

Championing a year in cinema and the stories only it can tell

The major theme across the intros to most of this year’s Best Film lists has been that the movies matter. Critics have championed the movies that could only be movies, ones that feel cinematic not because they’re big but because they can be small, because they can avoid “complex narrative” as championed by TV and use imagery and style above all to convey a different sort of complexity.

Here’s Richard Brody on the cinematic squabble:

“The ever-increasing prominence of television is, in turn, sparking a renewed reflection on the part of filmmakers about what cinema is, and what it can be. The conflict between the dependent image and the essential image, between the transparent and the conspicuous, is real and serious…The best movies this year are films of combative cinema, audacious inventions in vision. The specificity and originality of their moment-to-moment creation of images offers new ways for viewers to confront the notion of what “narrative” might be.”

And A.O. Scott:

“It is easy to conclude that movies have surrendered that long-held vanguard position. The creative flowering of television has exposed the complacency and conservatism that rules big-money filmmaking at the studio level… But within this landscape of bloat and desolation, there is quite a lot worth caring about. More important, there are filmmakers determined to refine and reinvigorate the medium, to recapture its newness and uniqueness and to figure out, in a post-film, platform-agnostic, digital-everything era, what the art of cinema might be.”

They seem to say in blunter terms, “Yeah, TV’s good, but fuck that.”

This is cinema. You can hurl around “golden age of TV” all you want, but I can’t imagine any of these stories, some of them with minimal plot, some with no discernable plot at all, being transplanted to TV.

That doesn’t mean they aren’t deeply moving works of art, experiences with beginnings, middles and ends that carry emotions, characters and visceral sensations through their durations.

These are the things you can’t find anywhere else. I don’t know if the movies are blooming or dying (the consensus seems to be both), but they continue to be groundbreaking and frankly amazing.

I’m aware there’s five seasons of “Breaking Bad” on Netflix, but these 25 movies, 15 ranked, eight unranked and two Honorable Mentions, are the stuff that will blow your mind if you gave it the time of day.

Click through to browse the gallery and read each blurb. Reviews to each film are linked in the caption of each photo. Continue reading “The Best Movies of 2013”

American Hustle

“American Hustle” is David O. Russell’s brilliant charade of a movie led by an amazing cast.

 

Christian Bale gained 43 pounds for his role in “American Hustle.” When he first appears on screen, he spends minutes “perfecting” an elaborate comb over of glued on hair and parted strands that will fool no one.

The beauty is that Bale and O. Russell have fooled everyone. We immediately are torn between the “real” Bale, the real character he’s portraying or the carefully tailored version he’s putting on for his associates, and if this portrayal is good enough, we’ll believe whatever these master performers put in front of us.

“American Hustle” is a brilliant charade of a movie. It’s a talky, intricate and intrigue filled caper in which everyone’s a con artist and there’s little sense of what’s real and what isn’t. We’ve been conditioned to believe in the movies there’s a certain element of truth within each story, no matter how fictional, fantastical or how deceitful and crafty the characters.

O. Russell’s film takes the real life story of ABSCAM, a ‘70s FBI sting operation that convicted several congressmen and a senator, and turns that concept of reality on its head. He opens the film with “Some of this actually happened,” a clever twist on the ambiguous “Based on a True Story,” and inhabits his and Eric Singer’s screenplay with a wacky, high octane and deliciously fun investigation that can’t be fully followed, trusted or believed in the slightest. Continue reading “American Hustle”

2014 Oscar Predictions Round 3

“Her” and “American Hustle” give “Gravity” and “12 Years a Slave” a run for their money.

Checking Twitter in the past few weeks has been exhausting. It seems as though every hour there’s a new Top 10 list or set of nominations from a guild or critics group being handed out.

It’s not enough to merely list the best movies of the year but to give the best cast, score, soundtrack, performances, breakout performances, breakout directors, best movie posters, most underrated, most under the radar, best documentaries, best animated films, best foreign films and so on.

Would you know that each needs to be analyzed and has an impact on this thing we call the Oscar race? Critics awards in New York and L.A. (as dictated by people who live in New York and L.A.) hold a lot of influence, while others get laughed out of the room because they’re horrible barometers for the actual Oscar winner, as evidenced by statistics and numbers that often don’t hold up to a science anyway (ask Nate Silver).

What’s worse is when many of these Oscar pundits are shocked (SHOCKED) that a given critics’ group went the way it did. It’s as though every critics group is not just voting for the things they liked but are scrutinizing the “message” that a given selection will send. “Ooh, well we can’t choose ‘Gravity’ because that’ll make us look populist, but if we choose ‘American Hustle’ it’ll look like we were goaded by the most recent press screening, so we better choose ‘Her’ so that we keep our hip, indie cred.” How dare they not go for “12 Years a Slave” like everyone was sure they must?

The point is, all of these intangible drops in the pond do color the race as a whole. If we can pick up on those trends perhaps we can better predict. Suddenly it seems as though we have at least a four-horse race between “Gravity,” “American Hustle,” “12 Years a Slave” and “Her,” as all have picked up some major victories in the past few weeks. At the same time, certain contenders like Octavia Spencer, Tom Hanks or Paul Greengrass seem conspicuously absent from major nominations while people like Joaquin Phoenix, Will Forte and those behind “Before Midnight” look a lot less hopeless.

This remains anyone’s race, but somehow this wide open field feels a lot more treacherous.

* Designates a movie I’ve seen

Bulleted entries are Dark Horse candidates ranked in likelihood of getting in

Her

Best Picture

  1. Gravity*
  2. American Hustle
  3. 12 Years a Slave*
  4. Her*
  5. Captain Phillips*
  6. Saving Mr. Banks*
  7. Inside Llewyn Davis*
  8. Nebraska*
  9. The Wolf of Wall Street
  • Lee Daniels’ The Butler*
  • Dallas Buyers Club*
  • Fruitvale Station*
  • Before Midnight*
  • Rush*
  • All is Lost*
  • Blue Jasmine*
  • August: Osage County*
  • The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

If you want to make this easy, look at the American Film Institute’s unranked Top 10 list for the year, and that might be your Best Picture slate right there. Each of the movies selected has had well-rounded praise. “Gravity” is getting the populist vote, “American Hustle” scored with the New York film critics, “Her” with the Los Angeles critics and the National Board of Review, while “12 Years a Slave” has scored with everyone else.

As for the rest, the remaining films are using their winter season releases to drum up steam where those like “The Butler”, “Before Midnight” and “All is Lost” have to fight their way back into a crowded room. And those movies are getting no help from places like the Golden Globes. “The Butler” picked up a goose egg of nominations. But they did manage to shove “Rush” back into the hunt.

But Steve Pond has the reason above all why the cutoff may be at “The Wolf of Wall Street”: math. The Academy has yet to nominate 10 films under the new flexible rules, and in past years when the ballots were rerun, the magic number resulted in everywhere from five to nine movies, but never 10. Things could change, but as he explains, even the sheer numerical breakdown is against such an outcome. Continue reading “2014 Oscar Predictions Round 3”

Fall Movie Preview 2013

Here’s hoping Fall 2013 is a lot better than the summer.

This summer movie season was so ho-hum that the films that were so hyped mere months ago will fade into oblivion as soon as September gets going. Yes, gems like “Frances Ha” and “The Spectacular Now” may be revived by critics come Top Ten list time, but as a stacked fall continues to impress, movies like “Blue Jasmine,” “Before Midnight” and “Fruitvale Station” seem less certain to make appearances come Oscar night.

As I’ve done in seasons past, I’ve made clever groupings for the huge batch of films coming our way, and since my excitement ranges from pretty solid to thrilled for most of them, they’re now grouped by “type” instead.

Keep in mind that some of these movies will have tentative release dates, some have not yet picked up a date or distribution in America, some will only get extremely limited Oscar qualifying runs at the end of the year, and some might not end up coming out this year at all.

Destined for Awesomeness

Gravity – October 4

Not all films can be described as jaw-droppingly good looking by a trailer alone, but the fascinating POV, 3-D effects in Alfonso Cuaron’s “Gravity” certainly can. Will the narrative be sustaining enough with just Sandra Bullock floating through space? Early reviews say hell yes.

Captain Phillips – October 11

“Green Zone” was too much Bourne in Iraq, so it’s refreshing to see Paul Greengrass take on another real-event inspired story with a new actor. Tom Hanks could earn an Oscar nod for his hybrid action star turn.

12 Years a Slave – October 18

Last year Leo played the Southern slave owner, and this year Michael Fassbender gets that juicy role. Just about anything would be more Oscar friendly than “Shame,” but Steve McQueen should bring some much needed darkness to this story.

The Wolf of Wall Street – November 15

Leonardo Dicaprio Wolf on Wall Street gif

The trailer that produced the most mesmerizing gif of the year looks no less enticing. Scored to Kanye’s “Black Skinheads,” Scorsese’s Leo-led drama with Matthew McConaughey and Jonah Hill looks to be a mad romp set to cap a year full of “have-more” movies.

Inside Llewyn Davis – December 6

Though considered a more modest Coen Brothers film, Oscar Isaac and “Inside Llewyn Davis” took Cannes by storm with its ‘60s folk rock charm. I hope to see it as the closing night film in the Chicago International Film Festival.

American Hustle – December 13

Oscar pundits are saying third time’s a charm for David O. Russell, who is reuniting his casts from “The Fighter” and “Silver Linings Playbook” (and throwing in Louis C.K. for good measure) for a con artist drama. If you thought the hair styles looked silly in “Argo,” wait till you see this.

Her – December 20

Spike Jonze’s return to feature length films since 2009’s “Where the Wild Things Are” features Joaquin Phoenix in a rare sympathetic and vulnerable role in which he’s falling in love with his Siri-esque computer voiced by Scarlett Johansson. It looks lovely.

The Wind Rises – N/A

New Miyazaki movie? Yes please! This story about a Japanese fighter plane designer during World War II reminds of the early Studio Ghibli film “Grave of the Fireflies” and looks to be Miyazaki’s most adult movie yet. Continue reading “Fall Movie Preview 2013”