OPPENHIEMER (2023)

                            

 

                            OPPENHEIMER (DIR: CHRISTOPHER NOLAN) (SCR: ADAPTED  BY NOLAN                                 FROM THE BOOK "AMERICAN PROMETHEUS" BY KAI BIRD AND                                             MARTIN SHERWIN) 

The Best Picture win for OPPENHEIMER  was almost completely predictable: it had already won multiple Golden Globe and National Review awards, and it was nominated for 13 Oscars, more than any other film from 2023.  (It won 7 in all).  It also is the kind of film that the Academy likes to give awards to: it's not just a period piece biopic, it's also about American history and deals with big, meaty issues like the morality of building nuclear weapons.  Add to that the fact that acclaimed director Christopher Nolan had never won an Oscar before, and you have all the makings of an obvious victory.  Personally, I didn't mind that at all; I consider Oppenheimer to be a great film, filled with excellent performances and terrific looking period recreations.  From Hoyte van Hoytema terrific cinematography (in both color and black and white) to Jennifer Lame's editing, (both of them won Oscars) this is one well made and great looking movie.

Like Steven Spielberg before him, for years now Christopher Nolan has been a director that has gotten both big box office receipts and critical respect for many of his movies. (I've been a fan since  is excellent 2000 thriller MOMENTO).  So much so that when he really wants to make a movie, he can get it done on the strength of his name appeal alone.  Nolan had been interested in making a movie about rocket scientist Robert Oppenheimer for years and Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin's acclaimed and well researched  2005 biography about Oppenheimer, "American Prometheus" had been kicked around as a movie for years before Nolan himself read the book in 2015.  He began production on it almost immediately after finishing his 2020 film "TENET.  Interestingly, he worked with the Universal film studio instead of his usual home, Warner Brothers, because he was mad that that studio had released TENET in both theaters and on streaming during the pandemic.  (Nolan has always been a big proponent of movies being seen on big screens in theaters).  

Due to his clout, Nolan was able to make an epic three hour  film that spanned decades of time and required numerous period designs.  He was also able to get big stars like Robert Downey Jr and Emily Blunt to take supporting roles, while he cast his frequent collaborator Cillian Murphy in the title role.  The final budget was around one hundred million dollars, and the film would, despite its length and heavy subject matter, make a hefty profit.  Its national box office was over three hundred million dollars, with foreign grosses bringing it close to a billion dollars worldwide.

The film jumps around in time, from Oppenheimer's youth as a brilliant physics student to his leading a government team of scientists to  make a nuclear bomb before the Germans did during World War II, with another timeline covering his life in the postwar years, when anti Communist fervor saw his government security clearance threatened.

Cillian Murphy and Charles Oppenheimer 

Nolan has said part of what drew him to the film was the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine, which brought serious talk of a possible use of nuclear weapons into the world's conversation for the first time in decades. And this to me is a big part of why I think this is a great film: yes, it's about events that took place a long time ago, but the ramifications of those events are still frighteningly relevant.  And the movie effectively pulls us in different directions emotionally: of course it's totally understandable that Oppenheimer and his scientific team want to beat the Nazis in developing a nuclear weapon.  But when the bomb is used on  Japan, there is both a sense of elation at the war's end and a fear of what a future with nuclear weapons will hold for the human race.  Whether Oppenheimer himself is a hero or villain is left hanging because there's no easy answer.  In perhaps my favorite scene in the film, Oppenheimer meets with President Harry Truman (Gary Oldman), who can't for a second understand the scientist's mixed feelings about the atomic bombing of Japan.  While Truman seems almost buffoonish here, his assertions are not unreasonable.  Again, there's no easy answer about Oppenheimer's discoveries.   

As Oppenheimer, Murphy is just great.  Somehow, he just seems to radiate intellect and drive as he calmly but determinedly works towards his goal.  He also seems stunned and helpless in the postwar part of the film, as the same government that he did so much for turns on him.  And Robert Downey Jr as as Rear Admiral Lewis Strauss, who's feelings about Oppenheimer are complicated,  is also very good.  One of Nolan's blind spots in his films is his lack of interesting female characters, and that problem does arise here.  Oh sure, Emily Blunt as Oppenheimer's wife and Florence Pugh as  his mistress both do what they can, but their roles don't go much beyond what you would expect from those characters.  But that doesn't really hurt the film because this was historically a story about a group of men making big decisions.

Along with jumping around chronologically, Nolan's script also deftly explains the research the characters are engaging in without confusing the audience.   And, of course, the film's inevitable build up to the first atomic bomb test is  thrilling, even though we all know the result.  To me, Nolan has made something really special:  a thought provoking, well made and acted historical epic that's also very entertaining.  

SO DID THE ACADEMY GET IT RIGHT?

It's pretty obvious that I love this movie, and while I wouldn't have minded an upset win for Cord Jefferson's wonderful racial satire AMERICAN FICTION, this was really the right choice in my opinion. (And Jefferson did win a well deserved Oscar for his script).

THE 2023 NOMINATIONS: FIRST IMPRESSIONS

 The Oscar nominations for 2023 were announced this morning, and to the surprise of nobody paying attention, Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer dominated with a whopping 13 nominations in all.  Again, that's hardly a shock, given that Nolan's film is a high profile, important historical biopic about big ideas that was a big box office hit.  Add to that the fact that the highly respected Nolan has never won a Best Director award or had any of his other  films win Best Picture despite multiple nominations in both categories, and it looks like Oppenheimer will win big.  Among the other Best Picture Nominees, I was very happy to see that Cord Jefferson's excellent satire American Fiction is in there, and that Jeffrey Wright is also nominated for Best Actor for his great work on that film.  And, as always, I was happy to see Best Picture nominations for lower budgeted, non star driven films like Celine Song's Past Lives and Justine Triet's Anatomy of a Fall; to me, bringing the attention of the public to less well known films like these is what the Oscars do best.

As for surprises, perhaps the biggest one is that Greta Gerwig's Barbie movie, while nominated for Best Picture and 7 other categories, didn't get a nomination for director Gerwig or star Margot Robbie.  But before you cry sexism for Gerwig being snubbed, it should be pointed out that for the first time ever, 3 of the 10 movies nominated for Best Picture were directed by women (Anatomy of a Fall by Triet, Past Lives by Song and Barbie by Gerwig). Also, Gerwig has been nominated for Best Director in the past, for 2018's Ladybird (which I thought was better than Barbie).  That said I do think that Gerwig should have been nominated for Best Director for Barbie given that the film was such a big production that became a massive hit (the biggest box office for a movie directed by a woman ever), and I would  choose her over director Jonathan Glazer's nomination for the overrated (in my opinion) Zone of Interest.  But there's no doubt that Gerwig's entrance into the A list of directors will mean that she will be nominated in that category again sometime in the future.

Overall, there's nothing in the list of nominees that I think is unworthy or bothersome; I've seen 9 of the 10 Best Picture nominees, and I enjoyed all of them. (I plan to see Maestro, the one I haven't seen yet, sometime soon, and I'm pretty sure that I will like it).  I certainly won't complain if Oppenheimer wins Best Picture although I also wouldn't  mind if American Fiction were to were to make an upset win there.  (Picking between those two pictures is tough for me, because I loved both of them and they're so different).  Meanwhile, Barbie will almost definitely win numerous well deserved technical awards for things like production design and costumes, and Gerwig might win for Best Adapted Screenplay to make up for not getting nominated for Best Director.  So even though she won't get her Best Director award yet, she could still go home happy.

AN INTERESTING MOMENT AT THE AMERICAN BOX OFFICE

 

Recently, during the weekend of December 8th-10th, the number one film at the American box office was writer/director/animator Hayao Miyazaki's latest (and perhaps last) film The Boy and the Heron.  While this was in itself no surprise, with Miyazaki's films having been quite popular in the US for decades, what is interesting is that the number three spot on the box office list that week was Takashi Yamazaki's Godzilla Minus One, which had debuted at number one two weeks earlier.

This means that for the first time ever, Japan had two out of the three top box office movies for the weekend.  While this may just be a coincidence of releasing, with the two films sandwiched by the usual big budget Hollywood releases, I like to think that it also may show that international films may finally be getting their moment in the US.  (Although I suppose I should point out that both films have been shown with both subtitled and dubbed versions, with the dubbing of course making them feel less foreign).

For decades, foreign films were delegated mostly to arthouse theaters in this country, with studios assuming that American audiences just don't like subtitles and aren't interested in stories from other cultures.  Sadly, there seemed to be some truth in this, with foreign films at the Oscars almost always ghettoized by only winning a "Best Foreign Film" award and only big cities showing them on the big screen.  This happened despite the fact that many of the most influential films ever made are foreign films, such as Akira Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai (remade twice as the Magnificent Seven) and Frederico Fellini's 8 1/2, which has also been remade several times, while also being turned into a Broadway musical.  

But the fact that Japan did not just see animated films as just children's films lead to Japanese adult oriented animated movies and TV shows (like 1988's Akira) building cult followings in the US, aided by the rise of videotape rental stores.  Another big change was the surprising win for Best Picture by the Korean film Parasite in 2019, followed by the enormous success of the Korean TV series Squid Game in 2021 would seem to confirm this trend.  It would seem that the continuing rate of diversification in the country has lead to an opening for films from different cultures.

But then perhaps I'm being overly optimistic, and that the box office success of The Boy and the Heron and Godzilla Minus One is not so surprising considering that both Miyazaki and Godzilla are both far from obscure in the US. (Considering the recent series of Godzilla films made in Hollywood, that character  has pretty much become as much an  American commodity these days as a Japanese one.)   But as someone who grew up in San Francisco and has sought out and often loved foreign language films almost all my life, I hope that in the future Americans will get over their aversion to sub titles.  At the very least, I hope sometime soon that there is a cable channel available in the US that only shows foreign language films. (When you consider how many versions of ESPN there are, you'd think there'd be a chance!).  

EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE (2022)

EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE AT ONCE (DIR AND SCR: DANIEL KWAN AND DANIEL SCHEINERT)

 Co writers and directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (known as the Daniels) first started wanting to make a movie about the possibilities of a multiverse in 2010.  In the next few years movies like 2018's SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE came out, beating them to the punch premise wise.   Fortunately, they kept at it, directing their first film together (2016's SWISS ARMY MAN) before finally getting the chance to make EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE in late 2020.  And I'm sure glad they did, because they wound up making a multiverse movie that blows away every other attempt at the concept; it's a near perfect blend of martial arts, family drama, comedy and trippy surrealism.  I can't think of any other film quite like it, and I love almost every minute of it.  Obviously I wasn't alone, because the film won a whopping 7 Oscars, with star Michelle Yeoh becoming the first Asian woman to win a Best Actress award.  

Considering the film's length and  how many special effects shot were there, the fact that the film was shot in only around a month and had a budget of  27 million dollars is impressive.  Its release last March saw it winning almost universal acclaim, and it was also a box office hit, making well over a hundred million dollars worldwide.

 Yeoh stars as Evelyn, a middle aged Chinese mother who runs a laundromat with her good natured husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan).  At the film's start, she's in trouble: the laundromat is being audited by the intimidating IRS agent Deirdre (Jamie Lee Curtis), her teenage daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu) is often at odds with her, and she's worried about telling her overbearing father Gong (James Hong) about Joy's lesbianism.  On the way to the IRS office, Waymond suddenly starts acting differently, and he explains to her that he is now actually a different version of Waymond from an alternate universe.  And he needs her help in stopping the multiverse hopping  Tobu Tapaki (who looks like Joy) from causing permanent destruction to the multiverse.

My plot description of this film doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of what's going on here, and how multiple viewings of this film are really necessary to catch everything. (I must admit, I was bit overwhelmed by first viewing of the film, and my reaction was muted, but with each subsequent viewing I've grown more and more fond of it).  The important thing is that, even when the audience is off balance, the Daniels never are; the movie slyly and swiftly moves from action to drama to comedy without ever losing a beat.  I love all the different looks for the different universes (one looks like a classic martial arts film, another is like the dreamy, gorgeous style of  director Wong Kar Wai), and how, despite all the craziness, the story always sticks with Evelyn and her problems, from the mundane (getting her taxes in order) to the action oriented (fighting off a roomful of baddies with a policeman's shield) to the surreal (living in a universe where all humans have hotdogs for fingers, or another  in which she's merely a rock).  Also, the action scenes are wonderfully choreographed and feature some amusing weaponry (Waymond wields a mean fanny pack!). 

At its core, I personally think this is a film about a woman realizing that she's losing her daughter to depression and possible suicide, and that she has to start caring about her more and criticizing her less. (Joy needs more joy). Along with that is her dawning realization that her toughness towards her daughter stems from her own father's harshness towards her (her family were never happy with her marrying Waymond).  So she must push herself to, as her husband puts it, "just be kind" to her daughter while convincing her father to do the same.  The movie wonderfully expresses this in both a special effect moment (Evelyn, Waymond and Gong all pull together to stop Joy as Tobu Tapak,i from jumping into the void) and a straightforward dramatic moment (Evelyn finally admits to Gong that Joy is a lesbian).  Although the movie thankfully never spells this out, it's entirely possible that almost all of it is just playing out in Evelyn's head as she daydreams at the IRS office.  Really, all the multiverses could just be thoughts that Evelyn is having about the choices she's made in her life and how things could have played out differently (making this the only martial arts movie I've ever seen that could be influenced by Ingmar Bergman's 1957 film WILD STRAWBERRIES!).  

Originally, Jackie Chan was intended to play the part of Waymond, but I'm glad that he bowed out; having a well known star like Chan would have made this more of a star vehicle for him, when this story really is Evelyn's.  Along with Yeoh winning, Quan and Curtis also won Oscars for their supporting roles, which is no surprise since their is a real joy to all of these performances, as each actor gets to play wildly different versions of their characters.  I love the way that Waymond's change from mild mannered husband to alternate universe warrior is shown by his taking off his glasses, like Clark Kent turning into Superman, or how Curtis at one point gets to play a crazed psycho smashing down a door, not unlike the killers she's run from in her many horror roles.   But even with all the quick character changes, the performances are also grounded; before the multiverse madness kicks in the family chemistry and dynamics between Evelyn, Waymond and Joy feel real and relatable, giving the audience something to hang on to when all the multiverse hopping starts.  Really, if I have any objection to this film winning three awards for acting, it's that I would have given the Best Supporting Actress award to Hsu instead of Curtis.  Oh sure, Curtis is great in the movie, but I think Hsu is even better, showing a wider range of emotions in her character.  But that's no big deal.

SO DID THE ACADEMY GET IT RIGHT?

This is one time that I completely agree with the Academy's choice, really, I can't think of any other movie this year that even comes close.  It's probably the best film in years.

IS "80 FOR BRADY" PROPAGANDA?

 The recent release of the comedy film "80 for Brady" marks an interesting breaking of precedent: while there have been many movies about football going back decades, this film marks the first time that one was made that is aimed squarely at the female viewing audience.  As anyone who has seen the preview for the film knows, it stars four venerable female actors (Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Sally Field and Rita Moreno) and is more about the characters whacky antics as they try to get into the Super Bowl LI than football itself.  Much has been made about how the film is loosely based on a real life group of elderly female football fans, and one of the film's producers is Tom Brady himself, who I'm sure is just fine with a movie being made about fans cheering for his greatness as quarterback.  

The film appears to already be a moderate hit, opening at number two at the box office, but I think the NFL had a little more on their mind than box office returns when they went ahead with this film.  Even someone who isn't a fan of football like me can't help but notice that the sport seems to be reaching out to female fans more and more in the past few years.  In 2015, for the first time ever, a woman was hired as an assistant NFL coach, with more on the way.   Women are also being hired as football TV announcers and referees.  Even the fact that the planes that soar over the stadium this year will all be piloted by women for the first time ever has been widely reported on.  Part of this is just due to more women breaking ground in general in the world, which is obviously a good thing.

But I think there's something else going on here: football in America is in an odd position.  While the game is obviously very popular, its future maybe in doubt.  While scandals like steroid use and players getting away with terrible behavior rocked the league in the past without really hurting the game, the discovery in 2004 that  multiple concussions from on the field play could lead  to severe mental problems, (known as Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy) for the players, hurt the game like no other scandal before it.  The  fallout from that discovery, lead to a congressional investigation in 2009 in which the NFL was openly accused of knowing the potential damage of CTE on its players and covering it up.  Eventually the league paid out a settlement of almost a  billion dollars to retired players suffering from CTE.  And while some attempts have been made to tamp down the brutal nature of the game, pile ons and tackles are such a big part of it that it seems really impossible to make it safe for players.

Recent polls show that the league has something to worry about: a 2018 Gallup poll found that while football remained the country's favorite sport, its numbers were slipping (from 43% saying it was their favorite in 2006 and 2007  to 37% in 2017).  Furthermore,   according to the website FiveThirtyEight,  between 2016 and 2017 there was a decline of 12% in children playing in youth football leagues, and an NBC poll showed an increase in parents trying to discourage their sons from playing football between 2014 and 2018.  And the important number in that poll is that women are more likely to discourage their sons than men are.  

Putting it simply, the NFL's future resides on convincing the mothers of America that football is a safe game for their sons to play.  So the league has been doing damage control by reaching out to female fans (and trying to create more), with  moves like  hiring female referees and coaches, and  green lighting a movie for women about the joys of football fandom like "80 For Brady".  Whether this strategy will work in the long term remains to be seen,  (the NFL certainly has deep pockets to spend on improving its image).  Personally, I'm with author Malcolm Gladwell when he asserts that football is a "moral abomination", but every Super Bowl Sunday, with all the media buildup it gets,  people like me feel like we're, well, whispering in a wind tunnel.

WHAT DID I JUST SEE?!

 

The British Film Institute poll a group of 1,639 cineastes every decade to build a list of the 100 best films of all time.  Ten years ago, it was a big deal when Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo knocked perennial favorite Citizen Kane off the top spot on the list.  But that's nothing compared to what happened to the top spot on this year's poll.    Oh boy, is there a big change: shooting up from #35 last decade, the number one film now is the Belgium film Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles.  This marks the first time that the number one film was one that was  directed by a woman.

As a person who curates a blog like this and who passionately loves to watch films from all eras, I felt a little humbled to realize that I had never even heard of writer director Chantal Akerman's film.  And then I found it available on HBO Max.  I set aside three and a half hours of time and watched it alone with intense interest.  And my reaction?  Well, let me first say that I like to think that I'm open to experimental films, and movies that play with conventional filmmaking styles.  I generally like directors like Jean Luc Goddard and Luis Bunuel. In other words, I expected something unusual and tried to open myself to the experience.

But this movie to me was almost completely unwatchable.  First, let's talk about the style, or really, its almost complete lack of any.  All of the shots in this film are at medium length without camera movement.  The takes are mostly very long with simple editing.  There's no soundtrack, and not much dialogue to speak of, and the sets are just normal, uninteresting looking locations.  Even the color of the film looks drab and lifeless, and there are some technical flaws, like a when a boom mike momentarily dips into a shot.  All of this might be alright if the story and acting were redeemable, but they aren't.  In fact, there hardly is a story.

Oh sure, one does slowly emerge, in dribs and drabs. Delphine Seyrig plays the titular character, a middle aged widow who lives with her son in a small apartment.  She sometimes turns tricks to get by.  Honestly, that description probably sounds a lot more interesting than what's on screen.  Most of this film consists of Jeanne working around her house in real time.  So we have an entire scene of a woman doing the dishes in a single take with her back to the camera.  Realize, there is no other sound on the soundtrack, no dialogue, no music, just the sound of her doing the dishes.  This goes on for five minutes.  In another scene we see her shine a pair of shoes in much the same way.  Again, this goes on for some very long minutes.  And what could be even more boring than that?  Later in the film she does both things again in the exact same way!  We also see her prepare two different meals, also in real time.

Things get even crazier in a later scene in the film in which Jeanne just sits completely still and silent in a chair.  Save for some traffic noises in the background, there is nothing in this scene to let us know that we're actually watching a film instead of staring at a photo.  Director Ackerman really seems to be daring the audience to keep watching, giving them nothing to hang on to.  It's the cinematic equivalent of wallpaper.  It beats Andy Warhol's Empire for movement, but only slightly.  The next scene seems to push Ackerman's dare to the audience even further when Jeanne picks up a neighbor's baby, which cries incessantly for a long period of time, again challenging the audience to remain seated and keep watching.

So what was Ackerman up to here?  Was she trying to make a point about the mundane nature of the average woman's life at that time?  By showcasing the small housekeeping tasks that Jeanne must engage in, is it glorifying her work, or shoving its difficulties in our faces so that we appreciate women like her more?  This has been called a feminist film, and I suppose it is (it even had an all female crew), but points about the hardships of "women's work" can be made without boring the audience. (I suppose the film's defenders would say that the boredom is the point, allowing the audience to experience the same challenges that Jeanne does).  And even if the point of the film is the difficult and repetitive nature of Jeanne's life, how does that explain the scene I mentioned before in which she sits motionless in a chair for a long period of time.  That she's finally resting, and the audience is supposed to rest with her?  I suppose, but that point could be made in far less time.

I should mention that there is some dialogue, and that the relationship between Jeanne and her son Sylvain (Jan Decorte) has some interesting moments, although even that is hurt by the fact that Sylvain talks and acts like a teenage boy but is played by the then 25 year old Decorte.  I haven't even mentioned much about Jeanne's life as a prostitute, but that's because, through out most of the film, it's incidental.  Most of the time we see her greet her client (with just a few words) walk him to her bedroom, and then cut to her later showing him out.  We never know how she feels about her clients, or how she wound up as a a prostitute in the first place.  (Does her son know?).  The film's ending (spoiler) finally shows her engaging in lifeless sex with one of her clients.  Afterwards she silently picks up a pair of scissors and stabs him in the throat.  The shock of the violence is jolting in a film that has been so lifeless up to this moment.  But there's no build up to her action, we see no real anger or rage in what she does.  Why does she stab this client?  Because she's so sick of her life that she wants to take it out on someone?  Or did he do something particularly horrible that we didn't see? Afterwards she sits in a chair, her hand covered in blood, unmoving for what seems like an eternity.  Her face is a blank mask, although she eventually drops her head, but even that gesture seems mild given what she's done.  Is she remorseful?  Excited?  Happy that she has forced a change into her life in the most dramatic way possible? We never really know.

Now that I have spent several paragraphs breaking down this film, I suppose that means that it is worthy of discussion, and I would encourage people to see it for themselves (although I imagine very few people will actually finish it!).  But I must strongly say that I think that the emperor has no clothes and that the BFI's choice of this as the best film ever seems like an absurd joke on the viewing public.  Oh sure, I understand that there is a big difference between critical tastes and popular ones, but I can't see how anyone could find this static film superior to Citizen Kane or Vertigo.  Or nearly every other film on the list for that matter.

CODA (2021)

 

CODA (DIR: SIAN HEDER) (SCR: HEDER, BASED ON LA FAMILLE BELIER, WRITTEN BY VICTORIA BEDOS, STANILAS CARRE DE MALBERG AND ERIC LARTIGAU)

While the most recent Oscar broadcast will go down in history as "that time when Will Smith slapped Chris Rock", there were a number of other interesting things that happened.  Ariana Debose became the first openly gay woman of color to win an award (Best Supporting Actress for WESTSIDE STORY), Troy Kotsur became the first deaf man to win an award (Best Supporting Actor for CODA), and, perhaps most interestingly for the future not only of the Oscars but for movies in general, CODA became the first Best Picture winner ever to  play on a streaming site (Apple+) before opening in only a few theaters.  Will streaming services soon be the only way to view certain Oscar winning films?  Obviously the theater owners of America aren't too thrilled about that prospect, but with moviegoers heading back into theaters more and more as the pandemic seems to wind down,  it has been  mostly the big blockbusters that have drawn a crowd.  It's clear that a low budget film like CODA is going to  be seen on small screens by most people, as foreign and independent films go the streaming route.  Personally, I think that that is a shame, given that I prefer those kinds of movies and enjoy seeing them on the big screen. Really, the pandemic just seemed to accelerate a growing trend of audiences only going to see big spectacle movies in the theaters and staying home for everything else.

In any event, CODA was a bit a of surprise winner, given that it was nominated for only 3 awards (Best Picture, Supporting Actor and Adapted Screenplay), while Jane Campion's Western THE POWER OF THE DOG was up for a whopping 12.  Add to that the fact that CODA is the rare Best Picture winner to not even get a Best Director nomination, and its victory seemed unlikely. But then Campion's more complicated film is a tougher sell than CODA, which tells a simple, moving story with likable characters.  So maybe a sweet film like CODA winning in a world coming out of a pandemic and looking for something uplifting isn't all that surprising after all.  In any event, CODA is such a good natured film, so openly trying to coax tears from its audience, that I found it hard to resist, even if I also think it was far from perfect. 

It tales the story of teenager Ruby (Emilia Jones) who lives with her father Frank (Kotsur), mother Jackie (Marlee Matlin) and older brother Leo (Daniel Durant).  Ruby is the only member of her family that isn't deaf.  They make a living fishing, with each family member helping out.  When Ruby joins the choir at school, her teacher, Bernardo (Eugenio Derbez) thinks she has potential and personally trains her while encouraging her to try out for a scholarship to a musical academy.  But her parents want her to stay with them and continue to help out with their struggling business.

Emilia Jones

CODA began as a French film (LA FAMILLE BELIER) released in 2014.  While the film was a hit in France, it sparked some controversy because deaf characters were sometimes portrayed by actors who weren't actually deaf.  When Sian Heder was brought it to adapt and direct an American version of the film, she made sure not to make the same mistake.  It didn't hurt that the first person she cast for the film was Marlee Matlin, the deaf actress who herself had won an Oscar back in 1986, and who is probably the  most famous deaf actor in Hollywood.  And for the crucial lead role of Ruby, Heder cast English born actress Jones, who spent months learning both sign language and how to fish.  The film was shot  on location in Gloucester, Massachusetts.  After it was debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah, it was purchased by Apple for a festival record 25 million dollars.

In a way it's not surprising to me that Heder was not nominated for Best Director, given that, apart from some lovely shots of fishing boats, the direction here is far from striking.  Really, one get the impression that she knew that this film was fated to be seen mostly on smaller screens, so visuals are not a high priority here.  Still, the film does have a nice sense of place, with what seems to be a realistic depiction of the highs and lows of living life as a fishing boat worker.  Heder's script (for which she won a Best Adapted Screenplay award) tells the story well, but is often predictable; yes, there's a scene in which Ruby's brother is called a "freak" for being deaf, yes, the family eventually supports her singing dreams, and yes, it even ends with a group family hug.  All quite formulaic.    It also never explains just how the family overcomes their financial difficulties. 

So, to the extent that the film works, it works on the strength of its performances: Jones is very good here, capably carrying the film and playing a teen girl who's likable without being perfect (she does yell "I hate you!" at her parents at one point).  Plus she has a nice chemistry with Ferdia Walsh-Peelo as her boyfriend Miles.  And most of the rest of the cast is also very good, with Kotsur's earthy but soulful  performance as Ruby's dad being a standout (he pretty much won his Best Supporting Actor award for his enthusiastic signing about birth control in one scene.)  The one performance I didn't care for is Derbez as Ruby's music instructor; perhaps because the inspiring teacher character is such a cliche, Derbez's performance and the script seem to play up his more eccentric behavior, making him too over the top for my taste. 

SO DID THE ACADEMY GET IT RIGHT?

I think that it's clear that I admire this film but don't actually love it.  I think Stephen Spielberg's lovely new version of WEST SIDE STORY is a better film.  I also preferred NIGHTMARE ALLEY, LICORICE PIZZA and the underrated TICK, TICK, BOOM...Still, CODA isn't a bad choice.  

THE 2021 OSCAR NOMINATIONS: FIRST IMPRESSIONS

 Given that the state of movies playing in theaters seems to be precarious these days (although the latest Spiderman movie is packing them in), the announcement of the Oscar nominations this morning was a less lighthearted affair than it usually is.  Still, even during a pandemic, the Oscar nominations are always big news to film fans like me.  Right away, it was interesting to see the Academy have ten nominations for Best Picture (last year there were only 8).  Perhaps the Academy is trying to drum up interest in theater going by spreading the love?  Hard to say.

In any event, there were some surprises: to me the biggest was the complete shut out of Wes Anderson's terrific THE FRENCH DISPATCH (poor Anderson has been nominated 7 times without winning!).  I was also disappointed that Lynn Manuel Miranda's first rate musical TICK,TICK...BOOM was not given a Best Picture nomination (although Andrew Garfield's performance in the film is up for Best Actor ).  Speaking of Best Picture, I was really surprised to see Adam McKay's DON'T LOOK UP up for that award, considering that the film's critical reception was mostly lukewarm (it got three other nominations too).  Still, it was very popular on Netflix, and it's certainly a timely satire (and the all star cast doesn't hurt either).

With twelve nominations, the most of any film, Jane Campion's western THE POWER OF THE DOG seems to be the front runner for Best Picture.  While I personally didn't love the film, its Oscar success makes for a nice comeback for Campion, who, after her 1993 film THE PIANO was a surprise hit that won 3 Oscars, hasn't had much of an impact in this country since.  Another favorite contender for the top award is Kenneth Branagh's bittersweet, autobiographical film BELFAST, which tells the kind of simple, uplifting story about tolerance that the Academy often embraces.  And then there's Steven Spielberg's new version of WEST SIDE STORY, which may have an outside chance because the Academy often favors musicals.  It also wouldn't hurt to help the well reviewed film out, considering that it's box office has been underwhelming.  Perhaps the Academy will want to help give a boost to the popular Spielberg.  And it would be the first time that a remake of a film that won Best Picture also wins Best Picture, which would be an interesting turn of events.  (And I for one thought that it was a great movie).

This year will see the return of a large crowd for the show at the Dolby Theater in Hollywood, a nice change after last year's subdued, scaled down  show.  Whether or not this return to normalcy will result in better ratings for the show (which have been slumping for years) remains to be seen.  Either way, I'll be watching, partly just to get the sense that the world is finally returning to normal. 

A QUIET PLACE PART II, AND THE PROBLEM WITH ALIEN INVASIONS

Deus ex machina:

Latin,  English: "god out of the machine".  A plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem in a story is suddenly and abruptly resolved by an unexpected and unlikely occurrence.

 (There are spoilers for A Quiet Place II and other movies in this post).

It's hard to know exactly when stories about alien invaders attacking earth began; clearly there are ancient carvings and painting showing humans being attacked from above by some sort of creatures, but whether they count as aliens or just mythical beings muddies the waters a bit.  The first real proper alien invasion story is generally considered to be HG Wells's classic eighteen ninety eight novel, THE WAR OF THE WORLDS.  All of the usual elements are there: ghastly martians in spaceships, laser beams, terrified humans and so on.  The impact of the novel over the years has been huge, with two movie versions (one in nineteen fifty three, the other in two thousand and five) and innumerable rip offs, homages and parodies (not to mention one very famous radio broadcast from a young Orson Welles).

While Well's novel may have been written before the twentieth century, it really wasn't until the nineteen fifties that Hollywood starting turning out alien invasion movies.  Oh sure, Flash Gordon serials that featured the titular hero battling the alien Ming the Merciless started out in nineteen thirty six, but it really took a cold war to get America to start fearing an invasion.  Yes, just as Godzilla was symbolizing the dangers of nuclear radiation in Japan, alien invaders were standing in for the Russians in the US.  Starting with the nineteen fifty one classic Howard Hawks film THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD, each year saw Hollywood churning out films that played on our fears of Russian invasion, with titles like EARTH VS. THE FLYING SAUCERS and INVASION OF THE SAUCER-MEN.  Others, like INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS and I MARRIED A CREATURE FROM OUTER SPACE showed a fear of not only Russian infiltration, but also the turning of good Americans into godless commies. And even with the cold war cooling, Hollywood kept making alien invasion movies, from Steven Spielberg's version of THE WAR OF THE WORLDS to the just released A QUIET PLACE PART II.

The titular creatures from 1957's INVASION OF THE SAUCER-MEN

While I have enjoyed a number of these movies over the years, there is a central flaw in almost all of them that bugs me: the part where the aliens lose.  Most of the movies follow the same formula: a nice, peaceful day is shattered when aliens arrive and start blasting (or in some cases, munching) people.  The human casualties are terrible, but, just when things look their blackest, one of the humans (usually a scientist) discovers the alien's Achilles heel.  Their weakness exposed, the aliens are defeated and the surviving humans all cheer.  I get that most of these movies play out this way because ending the movie with the aliens winning would be a big bummer, but that doesn't make it any less ridiculous*.  Time and time again in these movies we are supposed to believe that an alien race that is far more advanced than ours could lose to the humans by not foreseeing an obvious flaw in their plan.  Wells himself fell prey to this absurd notion by ending his novel with the almost triumphant aliens all dying from exposure to human germs.  And since then aliens have been brought down by things like flashing headlights (INVASION OF THE SAUCER-MEN), a computer virus (INDEPENDENCE DAY) and, in one example of a movie embracing its absurdity, a Slim Whitman song (MARS ATTACKS!).  

Now I understand that I'm not getting into the spirit of these movies, and again, I have enjoyed some of them, but it's still a stumbling block for me; I can only suspend my disbelief so far.  Which brings us to John Krasinski's twenty eighteen film THE QUIET PLACE (which he also wrote and starred in).  Which brought together elements from Ridley Scott's ALIEN (gooey monsters), Corman McCarthy's novel THE ROAD (post apocalyptic scrounging) and the English alien invasion movie,  ATTACK THE BLOCK (toothy flesh eating aliens float down to earth),  Krasinski's film added the clever premise of aliens that hunt entirely by sound, making even the simplest dropped item or misplaced foot a source of fear.  THE QUIET PLACE worked effectively for its first two thirds, with Krasinski and Emily Blunt  making a likable couple  that try vainly to keep their family safe in a very dangerous world.  But once again, I think the movie fails when Krasinski's teenage daughter, Regan (Millicent Simmonds) discovers that the normally indestructible  aliens are made vulnerable by high frequency sounds.  It seems more than a bit absurd that all the great scientists and researchers in the world were unable to find out what one kid armed with a walkman and a hearing aid does!  This gets even more ludicrous the  more you think about it: creatures with super good hearing might be weakened by loud sounds?  You don't say.  At one point we see newspaper headlines that write about the creatures, which means that the invasion didn't happen all at once; so there was enough time for people to report on the aliens, but not enough to discover what would seem to be their most obvious weak spot.

Still, despite my cynicism, I did enjoy THE QUIET PLACE overall, and I actually think that the recently released sequel is even better.  To me the film works well because there is no time wasted on exposition or  character introduction, meaning that it can get right down to the suspenseful scenes of people trying to avoid the aliens.  And I think Krasinski has improved as a director, as in one sequence he effectively cross cuts between different characters in dangerous situations (due credit must also be given to editor Michael P. Shawver) to build to a very exciting climax.  And as for the alien's weakness, well, even if it still bothers me, it doesn't kill my enjoyment of the film.  This time I could suspend my disbelief.

*Of course, not all alien invasion movies end this way, as fans of Philip Kaufman's very good nineteen seventy eight remake of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS can attest to.