It was a year when most people had not seen any of the nominees and totally didn’t care about the Oscars. I had seen all the “Best Picture” nominees (and most of the others in other categories) and didn’t really love any of them. (Well, OK, I did love Mank, but I suppose that’s only because I’m a film nerd. My girlfriend just hated it, and her family gave up on it after ten minutes.) I suppose Nomadland was a fair choice – as good a choice as any of the others. Frankly, I liked News of the World better than the nominated films, and I liked Loren’s The Life Ahead better than any of the nominated “international” films. That probably says more about me than about the films. I did like the animated winner, Soul, but I haven’t seen the other animated films, since I have no intention of watching something called Farmageddon: A Shaun the Sheep Movie.
There was only one major award that I didn’t expect. The late Chad Boseman was expected to win the award for the best actor in a leading role, and was a prohibitive betting favorite. The actual winner was Tony Hopkins. As much as I love Boseman’s versatile body of work, I have to agree with this decision. Hopkins, that old goat, nailed that role shut and shipped it to Mt. Olympus. I also support the Oscar for the screenplay of that film, which was impressive in its ability to convey the main character’s confusion through his own POV (which was also confusing to the audience, but I guess that was the point).
Glenn Close tied Peter O’Toole’s record for the most nominations without a win, at eight.
Thanks for the helpful opinions. I’ve only seen Minari. Intended to watch Promising & Father, haven’t yet, will do. I was dead set against Nomads on account of who liked it & who didn’t. (Critical darling.) Now I guess it might be more of a neutral to me. Still not a priority. Awards used to be one of my preferred criteria to weed out movies & books. As a younger, well, fool. This year’s exceptional, but more than that, age & events have led me to see agendas everywhere. It’s made me maybe a little bit wiser & a lotta bit picky. Anyway, msg rcvd & thanks.
PS. TV shows, 1 good thing & 1 bad:
1. Critical takes are suitably low on the public’s totem pole.
2. Compared to movies, season-enders are more clouded than movie endings because of the next-season bait. I like an ongoing saga to have a completed story arc within each “volume”. Apart from that, shows with long arcs can be better than movies. I suppose 4 to 6 episode mini series might be my favorite vehicle in today’s landscape. I especially like the trend toward binge-drop releasing. So I can pace by my own choice.
Nomadland is dark. Critics love that. The academy loves that. I do not. I personally like my bleak, unvarnished reality seasoned with some hope and laughter. (Jeez, I’ve always stated that I hate magic realism. I think I may have changed. I might like it now. Must be an old-age thing.)
I don’t like the fact that there is so little entertainment in the modern Oscar winners. (Talk about “old man talk”! That’s a sentiment I have heard old people articulate since the 60s. I may as well say, “Get off my lawn.”) It seems that our choice today is between throwaway comic book spectacles with lots of punching and no brains, and too-serious, meandering, arty stuff with plenty of brains, but little plot and no heart. Oh, yeah, there have been times in my life when I loved Stan Lee, and times when I loved James Joyce. (Those are my stand-ins for today’s film choices). But I have grown away from both of those stages. I have to confess that I now like iconoclastic comedies, movies with a lot of heart, and big, old-fashioned yarns like The Man Who Would Be King. Heck, I guess I’m reverting to childhood. I still want my dad to tell me some of his best jokes and my mom to read me a good story!
Megadittos to most of that. During lockdown, I realized I never got round to Synecdoche NY despite Ebert’s rave revu. I’d meant to. So I did. No, I didn’t have any trouble figuring it out. It’s pure pretentious crap. Plain & simple. What I loved about Ebert was I knew where he was coming from. My cup o’ tea wasn’t his, but I always got predictive insights from his breakdown. This one was a huge miss. Maybe my young self would’ve been OK with it. But 2008 wasn’t that long ago.
Stick with the old classics. I recommend:
1.The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
2.Double Indemnity
3.White Heat
4.Modern Times
5.Gaslight (both versions)
6. The Parallax View (newest film on here)
I scene a whaleo lotteo oldene (BW) flix as a kid. Afternoon matinees on TV & late at night if the folks weren’t checking. I like keeping up with popular shows to an extent. It fosters a feeling of understanding even if still not quite belonging. One counter trend, tho. Us boomers being such a demo bump, more & more it’s packs of seniors I’m amongst for the showings I prefer to go to in theaters. I’m more in touch with bygones than the future. That’s not good.
A point you might’ve missed, Adam, is that Scoopy reviews movies & gave Synecdocheny (darn that spell-checker) what for him is high praise. I hoped I would bait him to defend it. I had wanted to clarify that when I called it pretentious, I really meant self-indulgent. Maybe mental masturbation would be even more accurate.
I did like other Charlie Kaufman stories, Adaptation, Being John Malkovich & Spotless Mind. In all cases, they provoke thought like a dream generates them. As in intuition in the driver seat with cognition suppressed. The experience is not one of receiving the author’s mental state. Rather, it’s basically a rorschach test of the viewer’s. I got into positive feedback with those 3 above. Or constructive interference. But destructive interference with Confessions, Synecdoche & Anomalisa. IOW, to all appearances, random outcomes.
As for my entertainment, I need a mix of old & new. I can’t get it mining only old material. Not without losing a sense of the now. Yes, I’ll miss it. I’m already at arm’s length to the direction of what used to be called popular music. Fortunately, I’m eclectic & there are many artists only a short way off the beaten path. If not, I’d be on permanent hiatus scuba diving in tropical waters of Vivaldi & friends.
I wouldn’t defend Synecdoche. As I wrote in my original review, the potential audience is about six people. Given that the world contains some 8 billion, the odds against any one individual liking it are overwhelming. I’ve recommended Kaufman’s Eternal Sunshine to many people with mainstream tastes, and most have loved it, but I don’t know a single person that I would comfortably offer a recommendation to watch Synecdoche. It’s too far out there. I think that the problem lies in Kaufman also having directed. There was simply nobody on the set to say “Hold on there, Buckaroo, you’re ridin’ that horse into the mist and neither of you can tell where you’re goin'”
Kaufman recently wrote and directed a new film, a thriller (??) called I’m Thinking of Ending Things. Despite some solid reviews, I’ve made no effort to watch it. The IndieWire reviewer loved it, but his key disclaimer was,”For all of its self-insistent detours and high-minded indulgences …” So it seems certain that you would hate it, given your inherent distaste for high-minded indulgences. And to be honest, despite my tolerance for such pretentious claptrap in the service of originality, I’d probably hate it as well.
I’m Thinking of Ending Things is provisionally on my list to watch. I mean, 50-50 odds I’ll like a movie isn’t terrible. 🙂
You may be right & I’ll hate it. There’s just no other way I’ve found that works, to put it to the test, than to waste my time on it. I can’t honestly say I didn’t waste much of my life watching films. Despite 90% of SF being crap (because 90% of everything is crap), I’m glad I read that crap because I found some of that 10%. IOW, no regrets.
MikeP – based on 2., Fargo might be your show if you haven’t tried yet. My wife saw Nomad, said beautifully photographed landscapes but otherwise deeply meh.
Nature Mom: Good call. A retrodiction that proves your theory. I love the character actors that Fargo brings to the fore: Stuhlbarg, Plemons etc. Oh, & Jessie Buckley, seen her now in Woman in White, Chernobyl (Mrs. Ignatenko), Judy (Zellweger vehicle), Fargo, Romeo & Juliet (PBS Great Performances). Only watched the latter for a few minutes but a striking performance from her. 5 shows, 5 distinct characters. No idea yet if I was ever within shooting distance of her range. I might not have guessed if I didn’t know she’s Irish. Anyway, thanks.
First time in my adult life that I hadn’t seen any of the Best Picture nominees, and honestly not terribly excited about any of them. I’m somewhat interested in Promising Young Woman. Like your girlfriend’s family, I didn’t make it past the 15 min mark of Mank – turns out I’m not the film nerd I thought I was.
I haven’t seen any of these. I’m going to assume that Promising Young Woman is the real winner because it’s the only non-drama in the lot. A black comedy (maybe) being allowed to sit with the adults?!?! It’s gotta be good!
I have wanted to watch Sound of Metal after hearing about it last year. I’m just happy that they made a movie about a Heavy Metal musician and that it even won some awards.
In response to both of you: Promising Young Woman does at least have some entertainment value, a straightforward narrative, and a (bizarre) sense of style.
From the little snippet I saw, I got an American Psycho vibe.
That’s not unfair, but the difference is in sincerity. Whereas American Psycho never swerved from its cold, aloof, satiric tone, Promising Young Woman has underlying heart, and moments of honest human interaction. The lead character is not a murderous psychotic, but a wounded woman on a mission.
You really have to be patient with it. I can’t tell you that I loved it, but I can say that it grew on me as I watched. I started out annoyed with it and was considering abandoning it altogether, but it did gradually draw me in.
It’s certainly a fair point in that the modern Academy voters will honor a fourth-rate drama over a top-tier comedy. Among 1998 movies, to illustrate, The Thin Red Line was nominated for Best Picture, The Big Lebowski was not. You could probably come up with dozens of other examples.
On the other hand, I wouldn’t call Promising Young Woman a black comedy. I’d define it as a highly stylized female revenge pic. Imagine if Almodovar remade I Spit On Your Grave in his own pastel-infused way.
I would gleefully watch Almodovar remake just about anything.
I was just going off the Wikipedia entry for PYW. I was just curious to see if any film didn’t conform to the usual high-minded Drama and it seems to be the odd one out.
I saw a three old Siskel and Ebert shows (Sneak Previews) on Youtube. One on the best films of 1979 and a special episode on Woody Allen vs. Mel Brooks, and a regular film review program that included Albert Brook’s Modern Romance (I was looking for their review of Albert Brook’s Defending Your Life) and Heaven’s Gate.
In the best films of 1979 they both had the awful self indulgent The Deer Hunter at #3 (they both disliked Heaven’s Gate though) and they both had on their list a film they thought would be much more noticed one day named Saint Jack.
In the other episode, they mentioned that Annie Hall was the first comedy to win best picture in 38 years. I assume they did not include comedy musicals. I don’t know if a comedy has won best picture since Annie Hall either (excluding comedy musicals like Chicago, to the degree that’s a comedy.)
I suspect Annie Hall won best picture in 1977 to prevent the bigger horror of a science fiction fantasy winning best picture – Star Wars.