THE OTHER NOMINEES OF 1989: I’m sure somebody has already made a “Crape Diem” joke so I’m not gonna bother.

if I complained about Driving Miss Daisy being too petite a movie to really count as a Best Picture winner, and I did, I could probably make the same complaint about the other films nominated the same year. Each one is a particularly personal affair, generally dealing with one person’s or at the most one small group of people’s issues. Sure, there’s a lot of thematic back chatter in each of these: The treatment of Vietnam veterans, the importance of a liberal education, the 1922 Black Sox scandal for some goddamn ridiculous reason, and of course the treatment of the disabled. But in each of these we are given relatively low, personal stakes and a focus on personal development.

I, in general, tend to like these sorts of movies, or at least like that there are still films that can be intimate and cozy. But there’s a line here between ‘cozy’ and ‘blisteringly boring’, a line which Driving Miss Daisy walks right off of. (I could have said ‘drives right off of’ to match the title, but no, fuck that, that movie is THAT slow that it’s going to have to walk in my metaphor). How do these other films fare with that line? Are they close readings of characters, or are they so small as to become invisible? Long time readers will instinctively recognize that it’s probably a bit of both. God bless you, long time readers.

REAL TALK: I bet being born on July 4th sucks, even if you’re not a Vietnam vet.

BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY: Directed by Oliver Stone, 90% on Rotten Tomatoes 

It’s frankly amazing how prolific and popular a subject the Vietnam war was for such a long time. Born on the Fourth of July isn’t even the last of them, even though it came out fourteen freaking years after the end of the conflict and a good decade after Apocalypse Now said everything that needed to be said on the subject. This does, however, represent the finals gasps of Vietnam as a producer of Academy Awards for filmmakers (Forrest Gump has a Vietnam scene, but it doesn’t count. It NEVER counts). After this, the horrors of the war, the terror faced by both Americans and Vietnamese during it, and the shoddy treatment suffered by veterans after they returned home all became themes non grata. I cannot particularly say what causes this drop off. Perhaps exciting new wars in the Middle East took audience’s minds away from that old dust Vietnam conflict. Perhaps we had simply said all that needed to be said. Perhaps Born of the Fourth of July was so good, so definitive, that it rendered any further musing on the subject completely and totally moot.

Probably not that last one though. This is not a bad film, particularly. Tom Cruise overacts a bit, and it is certainly too long. But it is entertaining enough. The problems come in when that’s about all I can say about the film. It’s alright, not great, not outstanding in its genre (again: Apocalypse Now pretty much took care of everything when it came to movies about Vietnam). Its greatest use is didactic, an attempt to show the audience what it was like for wounded veterans returning from war: angry crowds, filthy hospitals with little helps, and heaps and heaps of regret. This it does well, though many bits seem somewhat overwrought to be realistic. Importantly, it does not matter here how actually realistic these portrayals are. What matters is that they SEEM unrealistic to the viewer, too bad to be true.

Much of the rest reminds me very much of the American Sniper of 1989: a man can’t quite equate his civilian life with his military one, especially considering the horrific things he has done. Born of the Fourth of July is certainly correct in its assumption that it is important. But it doesn’t quite match up at being an interesting story, too.

Moments before throwing their teacher into Mount Doom, forever destroying his life-affirming method of teaching from this world.

DEAD POET’S SOCIETY: Directed by Peter Weir, 85% on Rotten Tomatoes

Is is possible to like a movie but sort of hate the feeling it evokes? That’s how I feel about Dead Poet’s Society, a film that features both Robin Williams at his best and an impassioned plea that people better respect the study of art and literature, two things that are totally straight A+ one hundred up my alley. Yet at the same time, it reduces that study into a string of toothless platitudes, a collection of very nice sounding phrases that are best left to motivational posters next to pictures of the grand canyon, inspiring only those dumb enough to be inspired by a poster.

As somebody who spent…woof….far too much time studying literature myself, it’s way harder and more rewarding than just carpe diem-ing and standing on your desk. In reality, this is the study of complex ideas, of themes and message, the tracking of the tropes of a genre, the analysis of the works of a decade, the translation of words on a page into something that can actually be of some use to somebody out there. What does “seize the day” mean anyway? What an impractical and, frankly, silly way to live your life. Sometimes you gotta do boring stuff! I can’t spend every god damned day crying at sunsets.

I’m being too harsh on it. Robin Williams is very much superb here, and honestly the movie itself displays a relatively low level, high school introduction sort of approach to studying literature. But it does annoy me when reading poetry or studying a great work of fiction is equated with this ephemeral quirk, this vague self-esteem crap.

The movie’s still fun! It’s a very pretty film, considering how much of that is just being set in fall at a nice university, and at the very least it gets a lot across while being about nothing more than a couple of boys learning to love learning. So yes, that IS an undeniably good message. But still. Something’s there that bugs me. Dunno what it is.

The big hoop in the back represents baseball. You know, the sport known for its hoops.

Field of Dreams: Directed by Phil Aiden Robinson, 87% on Rotten Tomatoes

Would you believe that I’ve never seen Field of Dreams? I like my life a lot better this way, thank you very much. This way, I get to be absolutely bewildered at how this is even a movie. I read the Wikipedia synopsis. Apparently a guy is told by a ghost voice to build a baseball field in the middle of his farm in the middle of nowhere, and this makes ghosts show up? And one of the ghosts is his dad? This is a film that people like.

And apparently throughout the film the farmer’s brother keeps saying “dude, you have to grow corn on your field, not build a baseball stadium there, because you’re a fucking farmer that is your job”, but he keeps not growing corn and he insists that…I dunno. His magic baseball field will make him money somehow. And I guess in the end it does? Because of magic? Maybe God?

Seriously this movie is about baseball ghosts.

This poster is simultaneously kinda great and super kinda gross.

MY LEFT FOOT: Directed by Jim Sheridan, 97% on Rotten Tomatoes

The film that brought Daniel Day-Lewis into the spotlight both as an amazing acting talent and as “that asshole who refused to get out of his wheelchair the entire damn time we were filming’, My Left Foot is an excellent example of the power of a single performance. Imagine for a moment this same film, the same story of Christy Brown, the same guy with the same cerebral palsy who overcame it the same inspiring way, but without Day-Lewis in the lead role. Imagine this was somebody not as fascinating to watch, somebody who didn’t put their whole self into the role as much. There really isn’t in this film to carry it, besides the acting and the inherent inspirational nature of its subject. It would probably still be fine, but not nearly as memorable. I’ve talked about how much I love DDL elsewhere on this blog, so I won’t go too much into it here. But, you know, he’s quite good.

Something else I really like about this film: Christy Brown is never particularly portrayed as a great person. An inspiring person, definitely. A strong willed person, sure. But he’s kinda a jerk, starting fights and very much abusing some of the women in his life. He’s angry at his condition and he hates that he has to live a non normal life. This isn’t portrayed as motivation for him to better himself, this is real anger, hatred at the world, hatred at the people in his life. Compare this to, let’s just say, The Theory of Everything, which similarly portrays a man who manages to do brilliant things despite a debilitating condition. But one portrays its hero as a deeply flawed human, and the other portrays him as some sort of saint, churning out inspiration like some kinda….inspiration factory. I dunno. This treatment of its subject as real, as flawed, as the bad guy at parts, sets this far and away from other biopics. Considering how easily (and fairly) maligned the inspirational biopic genre is, it’s a miracle that something like this came forth to say to us all “this person was kinda a dick, but his story is still remarkable”. In film making, that’s really damn brave.

2012 Nominees (Part Two)

QUICK WARNING: These are not meant to be traditional reviews of the nominees, and thus may contain spoilers.

In 2009 the Academy changed the rules (or, if you believe the statute of limitations stretches back to 1943, changed them back) increasing the number of Best Picture nominees from five to ten. Or nine, or however many they feel like it is really unclear. The major advantage to this approach is that it doubles the speculation, things to bet on, and DVD covers that can claim “Academy Award Nominee” on the cover. The huge ridiculous downside is that we get a lot of silly, silly movies that don’t really deserve to be elevated to that level. It dilutes the award itself. I’ve already talked about probably the silliest nominee from last year, Les Miserables, which everybody agreed was kinda bad and silly and people made fun of it. Sure, Anne Hathaway sang one song pretty well, but Sascha Baron Cohen ALSO sang a song and…woof…let’s not go into it.

Other than that, last year’s nominees feature an interesting mix of actually pretty decent movies and just okay movies that had a single notable feature amongst a whole slew of bad.

I know nobody’s asking, but if I had to choose five movies from this nominee list to form an…ugh…”old school” list, it would be these:

Lincoln

Zero Dark Thirty

Amour

Life of Pi

Django Unchained

And even that’s a list I’m not completely happy with. Point is, there’s a lot of real mediocre films being honored each year and that’s dumb. Fortunately, I got through most of those in the first half of the list. This half consists mostly of stronger movies, though their problems shine through like bright shining crap diamonds (Unfortunately not the sequel to Blood Diamond).

LIFE OF PI-Directed by Ang lee 88% on Rotten Tomatoes

This poster makes me wish for a Face/Off sequel where Travolta is replaced by a Tiger. That’d be awesome.

Life of Pi has been called a masterpiece by several critics, and that is certainly true, provided you only look at like a third of the film in total. You see, Life of Pi is a very pretty movie. For the past few years, there seems to be a special slot in the nominees for a the technical achievement movies, the same slot Avatar filed a few years back. In general I dislike this approach, though I must admit that I just don’t like those sorts of movies as much as others, and that perhaps honoring achievements from all aspects of the filmmaking spectrum is the best way to go about it.

So in that sense, Life of Pi is a smashing success. There were several moments that truly were visually remarkable, in the sense that I had never seen anything like it before. And isn’t that all that cinema is about? Expanding our universe bit by bit, giving us some bald, bright example of the new, something we couldn’t have expected?

Sure. Fine. I guess? But that doesn’t stop Life of Pi’s problems. Fortunately for Ang Lee, I find that a lot of these issues stem from the source material, which seems content in replacing satisfying storytelling with vagueness and mysticism and saying the word “God” as if you’re actually figuring anything out by it. The film version doesn’t fix any of the problems with the story (and there is a good argument to be had over whether adaptations should try), but we reach the point where there’s a moving island shaped like a giant person, and then Pi himself tries to argue that God exists because we’d rather talk about fun stories instead of sad stories? It smacks of falsehood, and seems to me that being very very pretty isn’t enough.

LINCOLN-Directed by Stephen Spielberg, 89%

Very few people know that the penny is supposed to be in black and white.

This is more what I’m talking about. Spielberg is notoriously underrepresented Oscar wise, considering he gave us God damned Jurassic Park, and it is a crime that he didn’t snag a best picture here. Out of the movies nominated in 2012, this was by far my favorite.

Sure, most of that is Daniel Day-Lewis. I mean, it’s impossible to deny his talent. Probably my second favorite portrayal of Honest Abe of all time. This is a movie with a whole slew of strong acting performances from talented folks like Sally Field, James Spader and Tommy Lee Jones, but while they did everything they did exceptionally well, you could tell they were actors playing parts in a movie. But whenever they spoke to Lincoln himself it felt like they were talking to the literal, historical Abraham Lincoln, who kindly agreed to step through Spielberg’s time portal to talk about all the cool things he did. It’s hardly a performance at all, it seems real, in that vague sense lesser actors try to evoke and rarely if ever achieve. It’s incredible. It’s legendary. I wouldn’t be surprised if, ten years down the line, it is considered one of the finest things and actor ever did.

But what’s really, truly cool about this movie? It’s not about the war, it isn’t really about anything most films would call ‘dramatic’. Instead, Tony Kushner‘s excellent script takes your high school history book and actually makes it so damn enthralling that nothing else seems to matter. The passage of the 13th amendment, though undeniably important, was never as cool as it is here. This is a film, essentially, about convincing stubborn people to vote a certain way, and it draws almost impossible intrigue and just…just so much fun from it.

What isn’t fun about watching Tommy Lee Jones say “You are a democrat. What’s the matter with you? Are you wicked?”

What isn’t fun about watching James Spader kick dirt at a guy who just tried to shoot them?

What isn’t fun about Daniel Day-Lewis telling a story involving George Washington and pooping?

How is it that this film is such a joy to watch, considering it should be as dry as dust? It is basically a miracle and worthwhile for that alone.

SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK-Directed by David O. Russel, 92%

This poster really makes me wish for a Face/Off sequel that is also a romantic comedy.

In which love cures all, which completely rewrites everything we know about mental illness.

Silver Linings Playbook is a pretty decent romantic comedy with some pretty fantastic performances, but at the end of the day it is a romantic comedy. Yes, Jennifer Lawrence is a joy to watch, and between this and Winter’s Bone has definitely established herself as an excellent actor. Bradley Cooper, too, who used to establish himself as the douche in ensemble comedies, actually seems like a full (if a bit over the top) human being.

But this is a romantic comedy. And as such it decides fairly early on that reality is out of the window. It is very very odd that Tiffany would be unable to reschedule their dance lessons when Pat decides to go to an Eagle’s game, considering neither of them have any responsibilities of anything whatsoever to do at any point. It seems odder for Pat’s therapist to cause an emotional outburst by playing his trigger song in the waiting room (for seemingly no reason).

And by the end it…Let us be serious here for a moment, everybody. Let’s lay out exactly how the climax of this movie comes about:

1. The lead couple, Tiffany and Pat are training for a professional level dance competition for…some reason. We should probably ask why,, considering this is a terrible idea and clearly they’re not going to be as good at dancing as everybody else there, but I can accept it on face value as the premise, sure.

What I have a much bigger problem with is the film’s assumption that its characters are justified doing completely illogical things because they’re ‘crazy’, which happens a bunch of times.

2. Pat’s father gets into trouble by making one too many bets on Eagles games. Sure. The movie slightly posits either that ‘crazy’ is hereditary or that everybody is ‘crazy’, sure.

3. Pat’s father decides to double or nothing on a new bet, which is that Pat and Tiffany will get at least a five average at the competition.

What.

What.

What.

What.

What.

What.

Does this strike anybody else as the stupidest thing you’ve ever heard of? This is nominated for the Best Picture out of every picture of the year and it is cribbing its climax off of old The Facts of Life episodes? This is silly. This is ridiculous. This is absurd. Nope nope nope. I don’t care how charming the two leads are this is ridiculous. NEXT.

ZERO DARK THIRTY Directed by Kathryn Bigelow, 93%

It has taken every ounce of my power to refrain from calling this movie “Zero Dork Thirty” every time I think about it.

While not as complete and full as Bigelow’s excellent The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty is still a fine example in the same very specific genre. These are ostensibly military thrillers with real moral and personal questions at its core. The controversy surrounding it is numerous, and perhaps suggestive of just how close to home it hit for Americans. Personally I have trouble believing that the film glamorizes or endorses torture. Bigelow herself suggests that a creator cannot be barred from portraying something just because of its controversial nature, and I tend to agree with that. Mark Bowden probably put it best when he said”[P]ure storytelling is not always about making an argument, no matter how worthy. It can be simply about telling the truth”.

Ultimately, however, I think such questions are irrelevant. Zero Dark Thirty isn’t ABOUT torture, or really about Osama at all.

Rather, it is ALL about Jessica Chastain’s Maya.

This is a story about a person who has transformed herself into a sharp and specific weapon. Most of the film’s pretty substantial running time is spent less about chasing down terrorists and more about how spartan and unadorned Maya’s life has become. She is hardly at all seen not working. She has no family, no true friends, no activities besides taking in information. Any attempts to have a normal life is met abruptly and literally with chaos and explosions. She has taken everything she is and knows and honed it into an ideal Bin Laden hunting machine. If she seems cold and emotionless, that is only because she has no room for it. It’s fascinating to watch, really. So many actors focus on how much emotion they can pack into a scene. By doing the opposite Chastain delivers a really remarkable performance.

At the end, with the terrorists dead, all her desires fulfilled, and all her skills and knowledge now useless, we see one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen in film in recent memory: She’s asked where she wants to go, does not answer, and begins to weep in the back of a military transport. What else is there to do for her now? The incredible emptiness we see is a remarkable example of what a movie can do when it knows the exact sum of its characters.

NEXT TIME: I’ll take a look at which film I thought should’ve taken the top spot instead of that jerk Argo. Same bat time, same bat channel, folks.