Tag: Midnight in Paris

Oscars 2012: Will Win (Part 1)

See my remaining picks in the major categories here.

Movies are an art, not a science. And yet The Academy, save for a few eye rolling hiccups each year, operates like clockwork. Predicting the winners at the Oscars is as simple as playing the horses at the track, so here’s your betting form for the big race on Sunday night.

Best Adapted Screenplay

The Descendants: 40%

“The Descendants” is bound to win something, and because it’s a screenplay that greatly differs from the source material and comes from a director and screenwriter who hasn’t put out a movie in six years, it’s looking more and more certain.

Moneyball: 30%

“Moneyball” is a serious contender in this category for the way in which it adapts a fact based, nonfiction book into a story with likeable and pathos filled characters. It also comes from last year’s winner, Aaron Sorkin and other Oscar fave Steven Zallian.

Hugo: 20%

“Hugo” isn’t exactly a writer’s movie, but Brian Selznick’s children’s book is surprisingly rich and colorful, and somehow John Logan tops it.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: 5%

The Ides of March: 5% Continue reading “Oscars 2012: Will Win (Part 1)”

Oscars 2012: Should Win

“The Tree of Life” leads my picks for who should win at the 2012 Oscars.

When critics write columns detailing who should win at the Oscars, they can be very self-serving.

Mostly, the articles act as a way for bloggers to draw a line in the sand and pick a side, rallying readers who will stand behind them. And in the process we weave an increasingly complex narrative for what a win at the Oscars will mean for our favorite.

It wasn’t enough to have a favorite; we had to be on Team Sandra or Team Meryl. It wasn’t enough to call “The Hurt Locker” the best movie of the year; it had to be a benchmark for 21st Century war films and a victory for female directors.

But none of that matters because the Oscars will act the way they always do and disappoint someone in the way they always have and always will.

My better column on the Oscars focused on the films and actors that were completely forgotten and lost in the shuffle of the Oscar madness. Those Anti-Oscars served as a reminder that there were other good movies this year.

The Oscars themselves are a reminder too, and even if I default to some of the clichés I’ve already mentioned, I plant my flag to recognize quality where it’s due. Most of the nominees are quite good (although some aren’t) and to pick just one is harder than you know.

Best Picture – The Tree of Life

It took seeing “The Tree of Life” only once to recognize it was an important film but twice to see it as a masterpiece. And rarely is a film, least of all an American film this significant, cemented in cinematic history, hotly debated and with this magnificent of a theme, this close to being recognized as such. “The Tree of Life” is not just a work of art that innovates on what cinema can be and make you feel, but it challenged those norms to a wide audience that both embraced and rejected it. Such controversy is always a sign of greatness. Continue reading “Oscars 2012: Should Win”

The Anti-Oscars

In “The Anti-Oscars,” I make a list of the Best Movies and Performances of the Year that don’t stand a chance at getting nominated.

This article will not help you win your Oscar pool.

On this Oscar Nomination ballot, you will not find any Streeps, Clooneys, Plummers or Spielbergs.

No, this is the Anti-Oscars! This is the opposite of what will happen when nominations are announced on Tuesday, January 24.

I’ve made picks in five of the six major categories, but while these certainly don’t reflect what will happen, they aren’t even necessarily what I think should happen. The Academy gets some things right some of the time.

Rather this list is my personal ballot dedicated to the not-even-out-of-the-gate contenders that were marvelous in 2011 but for whatever reason will not receive the attention they deserve at the biggest award ceremony of the year.

I’ll also use this space to discuss why they are not in the race and what that means for the actual contenders. So if any of these names are in your predictions, rethink your decisions now, and watch me eat my words when I predict the real ballot next week.

 

Best Picture

  • Drive
  • Beginners
  • Super 8
  • Incendies
  • The Skin I Live In
  • Certified Copy
  • Weekend
  • Melancholia

If there’s one thing the Best Picture hopeful lineup is missing, it’s a good dose of darkness. Is “Moneyball” really the darkest movie this year’s Oscars have to offer? My list, which conveniently resembles all eight films in my Top 10 list not solid contenders for nomination (the other two being “Midnight in Paris” and “Hugo”), shows a much more even split of heavy and lighter entertainment. Continue reading “The Anti-Oscars”

The Best Movies of 2011

“Drive” tops the list of my best movies of 2011.

I had to be convinced in just the last few weeks 2011 was a decent year for movies.

Catching up on some high profile winter titles made list making extra difficult this year.

Perhaps because of style over substance in some cases, no one movie jumped out as the year defining movie that no other could touch.

And although critics uniformly rallied behind “The Tree of Life” as the consensus favorite of the year, this year found critics getting behind just about anything as their number one choice, and they could often find at least someone to back them up.

It’s even made for an interesting Oscar race with no clear frontrunners.

But 2011 was a year for looking back. Veteran directors trumped newbies with nostalgia projects (“Hugo,” “Midnight in Paris,” “War Horse”) and grandiose epics (“Melancholia,” “The Tree of Life”). A few indies and up-and-comers stepped forward, but they made timeless statements (“Weekend,” “Beginners,” “Super 8,” “The Descendants”) rather than 21st Century relics, with a few exceptions (“Margin Call,” “Moneyball,” “50/50”).

Last year I assigned titles to each movie for what they stood for in the year, and there was one clear winner. This year no such labels exist, and just about any could be my favorite.

I’ve done my best to mention films that need mentioning and forgotten the rest. (Most titles are linked to subsequent reviews on my website.)

1. Drive

The Driver is in a plain silver sedan parked underneath a bridge as a helicopter passes overhead. He sits silently and does not make a bold getaway, and yet this is one of the more exciting scenes in the most invigorating and intense motion picture of the year. Continue reading “The Best Movies of 2011”

Making a small stand for quality

If “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” can make over a billion dollars worldwide, does anyone even care anymore?

The truth is, yes, some do.

This summer, a small group of American moviegoers spoke with their wallets and demanded something more from our Hollywood studio system.

These people made a stand for quality in their films, and behind the haze of more sequels, remakes and reboots than any year in history (we’ll have 27 by year’s end), we’ve found a glimmer of hope in our studio system.

Hollywood knows it’s limping. Their answer to get people to see movies on the big screen has been 3-D, and 40 films have been released in this medium in 2011 alone. But the technology has yet to prove itself in any film this side of “Avatar,” a large number of the movies in 3-D were shoddily converted from 2-D in post production, and no one looks forward to paying an extra three dollars at the box office.

But when “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides” makes only 37 percent of its $239 million gross from 3-D sales, Hollywood takes that as a sign; We won’t put up with three dimensions if the junk they’re delivering is no better than it is in two. Continue reading “Making a small stand for quality”

Midnight in Paris

If Woody Allen were 40 years younger, I can sense him itching to get in front of the camera again for his latest film “Midnight in Paris.”

This time around, he seems to address his critics’ pleas over the last 20 years for him to simply return to the golden age of film making he had in the ‘70s and ‘80s and responds by quelling his own neuroses of nostalgia by optimistically looking towards the future.

He does so in a film dripping with love for his own nostalgic influences and styles. “Midnight in Paris” is classic Allen from the first title card. The opening shots recall “Manhattan” in every detail but the black and white. It stars Owen Wilson as a spot-on Woody Allen surrogate and Michael Sheen (sporting a convincing American accent) in the Alan Alda or Max von Sydow pompous intellectual role common throughout all of his classics. Continue reading “Midnight in Paris”