My Unsolicited Opinions on The Oscars

My quickly written but passionate thoughts about the Oscars.

Rural Erasure, As Always

As always, the films that portrayed rural people with dignity and complexity were overlooked almost completely. Hollywood, like the literary gatekeepers in New York, won’t allow rural complexity to get too much attention or acclaim or it might be admitting that the sensational stereotypes aren’t truer. This year there were three that painted rural people beautifully—not as perfect, but as real human beings. They were:  Leave No Trace, First Reformed, and Lean on Pete, and they are all films that were absolutely cheated out of Oscar nominations.  I think it’s partly because of the rural complexity on display in the films.  Although the characters live in small rural towns, they are intelligent, engaged, and complicated.  Last year, my favorite movie of the year, The Florida Project was similarly overlooked, and I think that’s mostly because it’s maybe the most accurate and complex portrayal of poverty that I’ve ever seen.  This year, I think Lean on Pete gives a similarly complex look at class issues and it does so by displaying really interesting and complex rural people.  Don’t miss it (Currently on Prime).

Women Directors Erasure, As Always

Debra Granik (Leave No Trace) and Marielle Heller (Can You Ever Forgive Me?) should absolutely be on that Best Director list. 

An Overrated Star 

Send me your hate mail now because I’m going to say it:  A Star is Born is overrated.  I thought the first hour was electric, mostly because of Lady Gaga’s performance.  The scene where she sings “Shallow” is one of the best scenes of the year.  But once the film slides into her descent into bad pop music it becomes Bradley Cooper’s film.  And although lots of people love him in it, I found him painful to watch (and to hear--his voice sounded like gravels in a blender).  To me he’s doing nothing more than a bad impersonation of Sam Elliot with some Kris Kristofferson thrown in and by the last half hour (SPOILER) I was hoping he’d go ahead and die so I could leave.  

Best Song

With that said, “Shallow” is a great song and I hope it wins best song, although I love the Mary Poppins song, too, and I’m tickled that Gillian Welch and David Rawlings—two of my favorite singer-songwriters—are up for “When a Cowboy Trades His Wings for Spurs” from one of my favorite films of the year, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. But Lord, who knows what kind of garbs those two will wear to the ceremony.  

Speaking of Best Song, Dolly Parton has once again been screwed over by the Academy.  In the past she’s been nominated for “9 to 5” (which she lost in 1981) and “Travelin’ Thru” (which she lost in 2006 to “It’s Hard Out Here on a Pimp”, which isn’t exactly a song that is remembered for being great). She was longlisted this year for “Girl in the Movies” but didn’t make the final cut, which is outrageous.  Personally, I think “Red Shoes” and “Here I Am” were both superior cuts on the Dumplin’ soundtrack but the point is that Dolly Parton should already have at least three Oscars and this year she’s not even nominated.  It ain’t right.  

Best Actress

Devotees of Lady Gaga will likely riot if she doesn’t win Best Actress but if Glenn Close doesn’t win for The Wife then I’ll write a firmly worded tweet.  Her performance is the only one this year that rivaled Olivia Colman's in The Favourite for me.  And I think Colman can do no wrong.  Close’s role was a harder one to pull off, though, with all of that fury boiling just below the surface for such a huge chunk of the film. She does almost all of the best parts of her performance in The Wife without words, instead using her eyes to convey every bit of information to us that we need.  With all of that said, I think The Favourite is the film that will be watched in 25 years, while The Wife will not be.  

Best Actor

The fact that Ethan Hawke didn’t get nominated for best actor reaffirms my notion that awards so often get it wrong. 

Best Picture

Of the nominated films, I have been most visually haunted by Roma (that scene at the end in the ocean is the most moving thing I saw on film this year) and I think I was most outright entertained by The Favourite.  I thought Bohemian Rhapsody was a great popcorn entertainment but that’s all.  It shouldn’t be up for Best Picture (especially when movies like Lean on Pete, Leave No Trace, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, and First Reformed were knocked out of spots by it). The producers obviously set out to make a crowd pleasing hit (otherwise, why not complexify and eroticize Mercury’s gayness?) and that’s what they did.  But they didn’t create a film that is a great production.

Supportings

I wanted so badly to love If Beale Street Could Talk. I did not. I thought it was absolutely beautiful to look at:  the cinematography, the production design, the set design, the costume design.  But I never connected with it and I was even bored with it as a story (but not by its visuals).  I never really cared about the characters.  Regina King is masterful in everything she does (her performance in the TV miniseries Seven Seconds is one of the best I’ve ever seen in my life) and I think she’ll win the Oscar but I don’t think she deserves it for this role. Rachel Weisz should get it for The Favourite, but she likely won’t.  

I think Mahershala Ali is absolutely wonderful in Green Book but my favorite supporting actor this year was Richard E. Grant in Can You Ever Forgive Me?, who manages to give great complexity to a role that could have so easily been stereotypical. 

A few other notes on movies this year:

I can’t believe Won’t You Be My Neighbor wasn’t nominated for Best Documentary.  But I’ll be very happy if RBG wins.  I loved it. And They Shall Not Grow Oldis the most effective documentary I saw this year. A collection of old news reel footage of WWI battles that has been masterfully colorized by Peter Jackson’s team, it’s a shame it didn’t get recognition.

I hated the film Vice with a passion.  It’s smarmy, offensive in its myth-making, and doesn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know about Dick Cheney.  I thought Christian Bale’s performance was nothing more than mimicry although it seems transformative just because the makeup crew did such an amazing job on him (hopefully they will be the only Oscar recipients on the Vice team).  Amy Adams is the only great thing about it.  My eyes nearly rolled out of my head when they broke into that scene of faux-Shakespeare dialogue. Adam McKay being up for Best Director just shows the power of a great publicist in awards races. I actually felt dirty when I left this film.

The French film The Guardians was one of my favorites this year and should have been up for Best Foreign Picture.  You can watch it on Prime. 

I loved everything about Mary Poppins Returns.  Everything.  Well, I could have done without the scene that features Meryl Streep (the only scene in the movie that felt inserted) but otherwise it was practically perfect in every way.  Especially Emily Blunt, who is always wonderful.

Well, everyone has an opinion and these are mine.  It is likely that many people will disagree with me. That's what makes Oscar night fun, even though we all know that in the end awards don't mean as much as things like family, dogs, books, or the films themselves. Art is always better than awards.