Every 2021 Film I Saw: Quick Takes

1.            Blue Bayou-Filmed, directed, and starring South Korean Justin Chon, the story of a Korean immigrant born and raised in Louisiana facing deportation is difficult with glimmering vestiges of human triumph. I was floored by the sentiment.

2.            House of Gucci-Very Shakespearean in all its delicious tragedy and back-stabbing. These people were larger than life and the story takes on that grandeur.  

3.            West Side Story-The degree of difficulty to adapt a classic and make it your own is high, so many great decisions went to make a fuller and richer story and put character developments in historic context 

4.            Last Night in Soho-I admire that a director who has always had comedy in each of his pictures was able to do something entirely without it. It was a great mystery, time capsule and comic of age story and I was overwhelmed with the kinetic frenzy. My one minor complaint is I didn’t love the horror elements.

5.            Licorice Pizza-There was an extremely icky age difference but I enjoyed so much of the nostalgic drench and vignette-like nature of the story.

6.            Nightmare Alley-This visually beautiful tragic tale of a drifter is very rewarding on second viewing

7.            Concrete Cowboy-Idris Elba played the hard black dad like Denzel Washington in Fences but convincingly added the layer of empathy and caring for his child and that vulnerability in their relationship really got to me. I didn’t understand what this horse stable was doing in the middle of Philadelphia but I also got that it was important to them

8.            Last Duel-Slightly slower than ideal in terms of authenticity but the trade-off is authenticity.

9.            Power of the Dog-An incredibly strong attention to detail, great performances, and, in my opinion, a thematic thrust worthy of a Best Picture win.

10.          Free Guy-Yes, it's fun, but a lot of world building and the kind of detailed storyline that could transfer over to a robust sci-fi film

11.          Jungle Cruise-More just fun, but I found the central relationships moving enough, and I'm a sucker for Amazon stories

12.          Courier-It had a first half that was markedly different than the second (kind of like the Dev Patel film Lion) that was tonally a bit jarring, but it was a spy film that moved at the speed of life.

13.          Mayday-Very eerie and quiet film that sneaks up on you about a violated teenager who's taken away to a fantasy land where she can be in the protection of woman but she's also lulling men to their deaths

14.          Don’t Look Up-Yes, it was depressing, but it was sharp

15.          Queen Bees-Another entry into the "Old People Team Up to Make a Movie" genre with Jane Curtin, Ellen Burstyn, Loretta DeVine, Ann Margaret, Christopher Lloyd, and James Caan. Very sweet and tuned into the twilight years

16.          Moxie-A high school melodrama directed by Amy Poehler (maybe a companion piece to Mean Girls?) that's sharp and funny at times. Navigates the current climate well without casting feminism or men as villains.

17.          Woman in the Window-A Hitchcockonian mystery that oozed suspense and mystery

18.          Val-The only documentary I watched this year about Val Kilmer. A very self-conscious look at fame and coming to terms with his physical demise

19.          Ride the Eagle-An impressive small-scale production about a guy (Jake Johnson) coping with the death of a mother (Susan Sarandon) he barely knew

20.          Eyes of Tammy Faye-A nicely focused biopic which picked the right parts of Tammy's life to focus on and had a good villain in Vincent D'Onofrio's Jerry Fallwell. There was a tremendous amount to appreciate in Tammy Faye's arc as evidenced by Jessica's Oscar BUT I would've liked a litle more development to Andrew Garfield's character

21.          Coda-It was sweet and it did show us a world we hadn't seen before, but I felt the music part itself was full of plot holes and the piano teacher to the rescue at the audition is an old trope. Still I'm happy it won in an odd way: The Oscars are extremely predictable with the glut of precursors so a bizarre upset is welcome.

22.          Passing-Well-shot and acted and I’d even buy the score on CD. The conversations were really interesting as well but at times they felt a little theatrical as if they were playing for a small art-house audience.

23.        Ice Road-I love the guts of whoever pitched this film: “Speed but twice as slow and they’ll be going on ice.” Amber Midthunder could be a star down the road.

24.       Space Jam 2-I love the Looney Tunes though they feel a little off in the looniness department and, even in the first Space Jam, Bugs, Duffy and Lola had bigger roles which set them up to fuel more of the comedy (Michael Jordan/LeBron James is the straight man). Still, the film was fun, the plot felt updated in clever ways (taking a page from the e-sports world and lampooning entertainment’s overemphasis on IPs), and I enjoyed the greater focus on the son-father relationship that the original Space Jam should have also been about.

25.          Beckett-It's a contextless action film like the Bourne series where we're just shown a guy doing lots of amazing fighting but we don't know the why of anything. Tonally, the film held but barely.

26.          Worth-The film was executed well, but it was kind of dull. At the same time, it's not that easy to make a film about an accountant making risk assessment calculations.

27.          Cruella-Beautiful to look at and Emma Stone's iteration of the character was a fun underdog to root for. Paul Walter Hauser and Joel Frye also make excellent sidekicks. Still it went on way too long and there’s a such thing as too many twists.

27.          Pig-It's nice to see Nicholas Cage celebrated for his acting, but the film is a bit self-serious. It’s just food seasoning, guys: No need to start a fight club over it or build an organized crime empire around it.

28.       Legend  of Shang-Tsi and the Ten Rings-I could predict almost every plot development five minutes in advance, and what I couldn’t predict, I didn’t care about.  I was also bothered that the film expected me to know who Trevor whatever-his-name-is, F--- Off Marvel, I don’t care about crossovers. And shouldn’t side kicks have some use? (I’m looking at you Seth Rogen as Green Hornet, who punched out maybe 2 people in comparison to Kato single-handedly fighting dozens of goons at once).  But, that sky scraper fight scene was next level.

29.         Flag Day-This was a film…..that I watched…..sorry, I barely remember watching this..

31.          Being the Ricardos-Aaron Sorkin had been on a really good streak—Molly’s Game, Trial of the Chicago 7—but this is like “Studio 60” backwards in terms of egotistical awfulness. Yes, the actors handle the smug material well, but the material is all about praising the ego of the creator at the expense of others (the producers, writers and co-stars are secondary to Lucy’s brilliance) and had little to do with Lucy who was funny.

32.          French Dispatch-The only Wes Anderson film I wouldn’t recommend. There is such a thing as too bloated of an ensemble and too much attention to detail.

33.          Electric Life of Louis P Wain-Too cutesy-wutesy and by the numbers.

34.          Lost Daughter-Slow and dreary. It might have all the right moves to offer but it didn’t hook me.

35.        Mitchells vs Machines-Don’t know if I remember this too much either. That’s not a good sign.

36.          Tomorrow War-Sooo much uncanny valley and ugly creatures on the screen and this is probably one of the few times when there’s no debate that a time travel film makes no sense. Normally that genre can hand-wave a lot of plot holes.

37.          Barb and Star Go to Mar El Vista-I know it had its fans, but I found this overly low-brow and couldn’t find a single scene that screams “Brilliant!.” Maybe Barb and Star being fired from their jobs comes close but that’s in the beginning of the movie and front loads with lots of expectations.  You realize that these two made Bridesmaids? It’s mostly standard mix-em-ups and a comedy of doors.

 This felt like when Mike Meyers or M. Night Shyamalan refuse to listen to studio notes about a bad idea.

38.          Thunder Force-Because it stars Melissa McCarthy, one might assume it’s a send-up to superhero tropes but the film plays the superhero story pretty straight despite the film still having the outlines of a comedy. It’s a pretty awkward clash. At least Jason Bateman seemed to know he was in a comic film.

39.          Breaking News in Yuma County-A dark comedy that feels as if someone read cliff notes on the Coen Brothers films (people fabricate dumb schemes, people get blackmailed, people are violently hurt, etc) and tried to make a film solely off that. It probably doesn’t help that the scheme is not just dumb but uninteresting. Allyson Janney pretends to know details about your husband’s death because she likes being on the news and the fame it brings her, but do people really like being a talking head on the news?

40.          Kate-Like Beckett, it’s a contextless action film (we’re not meant to know much about the hero) but, it’s also a contextless shoot-em-up and it’s too high in the ratio of violence to context for me to not see it as gratuitous.  

41.          Stowaway-Boring attempt at sci-fi and it’s lifeboat ethics weren’t anything I agreed with. 

2017 Golden Globes Reaction and Hopes for the Upcoming Awards Season

Source: http://www.korsgaardscommentary.com

The first in-depth piece I read on the Golden Globes was by Richard Roeper who did an expose in his book about how the Hollywood Foreign Press Association was a near-fraudulent organization of some 80-something journalists who don’t represent anywhere near the cream of the crop in terms of film critics or reporters.

But looking over the lists of nominees, I hardly care: Despite having to go first, these guys generally manage to fall in the same region of adventurous mainstream artistry that the academy favors which is a lot harder to do when you’re up earlier in the season. But more than that, they’ve allowed people like Colin Farrell (In Bruges), Gene Hackman (Royal Tenenbaums), Dennis Quaid (Far From Heaven), Gael Garcia Bernal (Mozart in the Jungle), Rachel Bloom (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend) to thrive that didn’t get recognition at the Academy or Oscars. Mozart in the Jungle is a solid show that will always get overlooked by best of lists considering the plethora of Golden Age TV, but it can always call itself a Golden Globe winner.

This year, Jason Bateman in Ozark, Katherine Langford in 13 Reasons Why, and Freddie Highmore in the Good Doctor (let’s call this collateral for his Bates Motel snubs) are surprisingly astute picks. Eric McCormack (the blandest cast member of an entirely unnecessary reboot) and SMILF are both pretty puzzling but when you have such a small sample size of 80 that’s part of the fun.


Other notes:

-Three of my four favorite films this year are all in the comedy category: Big Sick, Beatriz at Dinner, and Baby Driver so I had plenty of horses in this race and was somewhat disappointed. Selma Hayek gave a tender performance that went for big laughs in a wonderful movie that encapsulated the best of Mike White-style awkwardness. Similarly, the omission of Holly Hunter, Kumail Nanjiani, Zoe Kazan, and the screenplay of Emily Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani are all extremely disappointing. Watching Ansel Elgort get nominated for Baby Driver was a small consolation prize. Overlooked in all the hype of the movie is Baby Driver isn’t just a great technical achievement but Edgar Wright’s most emotionally poignant story with Elgort at the center. However, I think Lily James might also have been deserving.

-For my money, the nicest surprise would have been Tom Cruise in American Made. The actor has been relegated to strictly low-risk action since Oprah-gate and this is the first role in years where Cruise is committed to creating an interesting character while letting loose. Tropic Thunder was a nice cameo, but Barry Seal was a fully realized anti-hero and he was a lot of fun.

-With the horror film Get Out (a film I’m not crazy about), the indie stylings of Sean Baker (The Florida Project), and the fantastical Shape of Water, this is an awards year in which genre ghettoization will be broken open and I predict that will be the story of the 2017 season.

-Though I’m a big fan of Jordan Peele, I worry that Get Out will displace a better film because it’s getting an exaggerated spike from a film criticism community that leans towards the social justice liberal end of the spectrum. At the same time, I’m not attuned or experienced in the horror genre to fully get the nuances of the film. I would recommend that awards bodies go for Mudbound instead (which got snubbed by the Globes). 

-While I think the idea of being unable to separate the man from his art in the case of Kevin Spacey is absurd, I can certainly respect Ridley Scott’s decision to remake the film and it’s a testament to his genius and efficiency that he reshot All the Money in the World in a week and it was wonderful to see him rewarded.

-For the life of me, I can’t understand the fuss with Mary J. Blige. It’s such an understated performance, I can barely remember her at all. Mad props to Blige for taking on a challenging project for her transition to acting, but if these awards bodies want to award the film’s fantastic acting, Jason Clarke or Jason Mitchell deserve the nod in the supporting actor category. 

-Ughh, Judi Dench and Meryl Streep. Of course, these are two very good actresses but the former is always getting slots for Oscar-bait (she's already been nominated twice for playing Monarchs including Victoria herself, Chocolat was lightweight and Iris was a dry biopic that had no appeal outside of the acting challenge of playing an aging author culminating in Alzheimer's) and Streep has just been nominated too many times to feel any joy for her 21st film nomination.

-Lastly, seeing your favorite films get love on awards ceremonies is nice but it also makes one wonder about the “what ifs.” Todd Haynes and Richard Linklater are both directors who rarely go wrong and one has to wonder what they possibly could have done differently with Wonderstruck or Last Flag Flying to get the critics’ attention. Are they deserving films? Both films were on my must list but by the time I got around to stopping by the theater to see them, I discovered that they both were quietly dropped within a week or two.

The Man in the High Castle: Season 1

“Man in High Castle” examines the ins and outs of a hypothetical 1960’s world in which the Axis Powers won the war and U.S. is partitioned between Japan and Nazi Germany with the Rockies acting as a lawless neutral zone of sorts. It’s filled with the kinds of hypotheticals and conjecture that history buffs will eat up with a lot of intrigue for the rest of us.

At the center of it all is a couple in San Francisco trying to keep their noses down in this Orwellian world. Frank Fink works in what looks (from our American middle-class 20^th century perspective audience) like a dreary job at a factory for souvenir relics which contrasts well with girlfriend Juliana Crain who doesn’t yet have a job but seems like a woman who’s destined for great things. Perhaps it’s the male gaze of the camera but Crain has the poise and glamor that looks like she owns the screen. This is fitting because the re-appearance of Juliana’s sister moments before being gunned down puts her on a Hithcockian journey (complete with her own MaGuffin in the form of a film from the titular Man in The High Castle) in the mold of Cary Grant (“North by Northwest), Robert Cummings (“Sabetour”) or Robert Donat (“39 Steps”).

It’s a welcome inversion to see a female heroine in the ordinary-man-called-to-be-a-hero mold but it’s hard to ignore that she seems to have a knack for making the wrong decisions. On no less than three occasions, she makes an impulsive decision and leaves trusted comrades out to dry for an enigmatic character, Joe Blake, who functions as the film’s third protagonist but takes too long to develop into something interesting enough to warrant his screen time. Blake is allied with the resistance but also secretly reports to the Third Reich and the actor plays him as too much of a blank slate to really care. There's supposedly supposed to be sexual tension but there are too many reasons that a Bluniana Union would never be remotely feasible and the lack of chemistry between the two leaves us little reason to believe otherwise.

For his part, Frank Fink is a trusty peon of the Japanese Pacific States until three of his family members get murdered. In some ways, his actions in the heat of the moment mirror the impulsive Juliana but his erring on the side of caution posits him as a character defined by a passivity that's repressed inside him until he occasionally explodes. Frank's loyalty to his friends and gradual turning to the side of the good guys makes him a pretty noble figure. His passivity is also a form of thoughtfulness, which is kind of ironic (and even darkly humorous in its over-the-topness) that he has no qualms whatsoever about repeatedly blackmailing and doing whatever the hell he wants to an antiques dealer named Mr Childan who identifies as a "man of culture." Aside from Childan's effeminate manner (it's possible he's supposed to read as closeted gay) that contrasts with Frank's gruff masculinity, there's also the issue of Childan displaying an exaggerated form of Frank's subservience that must get under his skin and add to a hypocrisy of sorts.

Like Childan, the series revolves around a number of characters connected to the three protagonists at various levels of power. It’s pretty rare to find a serialized story so deep that nearly every character on screen has back story that gets interesting the more they’re on. For example, Obengrubberfuhrer (if I lived in this world, I’d be shot pretty quickly for giggling at these German titles) John Smith (Joe Blake’s contact) is an American family man with a strong allegiance to the Third Reich that’s pretty much played straight: He’s a man of his circumstances. It’s interesting, on the surface that he has a general sense of through-the-looking-glass decency in a Nazi uniform, but it’s also interesting that he generally embodies the type of 50s family patriarch who’s commanding, unilateral, and a little emotionally distant from his kids even as he’s doing things in his best interest. His bad guy status highlights both worlds.

Similarly, a lot of the Japanese characters are even more fascinating for someone who has seen very few on-screen portrayals of Japanese power structures (does “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service” count?) whether in an official or underworld capacity. It’s hard to find anyone to admire more than Nokosube Tagomi.

Because it’s such a complex world it takes at least five or six episodes to unwind and its only towards the very end of the season that it starts to get addictive. The plus is that there’s a wide world to delve into but the downside is that it’s a slow burn. When a particularly menacing character, Inspector Kiddo (it seems like many of the Japanese characters were cast on ability to menacing scowl and this guy takes the cake), started making an impression on me late in the season, it took me a minute to remember that this man was a guy I should have hated and feared all along since he was responsible for locking up Frank and killing his family.

I’m not sure the degree of Ridley Scott’s involvement but there is a lot of dystopic beauty here that’s similar to “Blade Runner.” This is a world filled with a lot of beautiful shades of gray. It's a world of bleak situations, secrets and traces of honor and hope. It's worth sticking around for.

Every 2015 Film I've seen Ranked 1-30, Part I

Here is the ranking of the first 30 films I have seen in 2015 (Bottom Half can be found here):

1. Spotlight, dir. Thomas McCarthy, starring Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Liev Schreiber, Rachel McAdams, Brian D’Arcy James, John Slattery, Stanley Tucci- The critical consensus is that this film is the shit and I won’t disagree. It’s kinetic, does a great job of deepening its characters with little or no exposition, has a solid amount of world-building and has all that profound social significance you expect from an Oscar front-runner without being preachy. Did I mention it’s about journalism and I’m a journalist? I love that its best picture win is raising at least some degree of awareness that high-quality journalism adds up to something.

2. The Martian, dir. Ridley Scott, starring Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Jeff Daniels, Sean Bean, Kate Mara, Kristen Wiig-A fun science-fiction film that doesn’t skimp on the science or the action. Matt Damon got his third Oscar nomination for this film but it’s more the way the character is written that deserves the credit. Damon’s character exists in a haunting isolation that he faces with a thin veneer of optimistic plunk and the fact that his struggle can hold your attention so well is a testament to the writing. The action is smartly divided between Mars’ sole resident, his ship mates in space, and mission control on Earth and the latter two settings are populated with all sorts of gems including Kristen Wiig, Donald Glover, Jeff Daniels, Sean Bean, Jessica Chastain, and Chiwetel Ejiofor. 

3. Joy, dir. David O Russell, starring Jennifer Lawrence, Robert DeNiro, Bradley Cooper, Isabella Rossellini, Edgar Ramirez, Virginia Madsen-I don’t know if my head would agree that this is the third best film of the year, but it just worked for me emotionally. Made in the same history-as-a-loose-guideline-for-my-actors-whims spirit as “American Hustle,” Joy caters to the strengths of its players (particularly, Bradley Cooper’s manic confidence) but is more grounded in a narrative of the struggle to make it in a dog-eat-dog world. As with Spotlight and journalism, the film does a good job of world-building with inventions and QVC. I also like that the film is unapologetic of showing how bad Joy’s family is and doesn’t treat it as something that needs to be resolved in a bow at the end. Edgar Ramirez has a breakout performance here.

4. Star Wars VII, dir. George Lucas, starring Daisey Ridley, John Boyega, Adam Driver, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Oscar Isaac, Donmhall Gleeson-For this viewer, Star Wars’s biggest achievement was convincing me that it had a reason to exist. Return of the Jedi wrapped things up in such an uber-happy ending that I couldn’t see a possible reason for continuing the story except more money. J.J. Abrams’s version was transformative on that front. Not only did it achieve the task of investing me in a story I considered closed but it was about as good as a film could be. 

5. Big Short, dir. Adam McKay, starring Steve Carell, Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling, Jeremy Strong, Melissa Leo, Marissa Tomei, Brad Pitt-The comic genius behind the immortal line “I love lamp” has an Oscar. What a year it’s been for Adam McKay: He used to be known primarily as a skilled comic writer who found his way to some studio money, and now he’s being courted by Democatic presidential candidates for an endorsement. Big Short contains a pretty sharp ensemble with at least two highly memorable characters and contains the kind of comic bounce that protégé Tina Fey (yep, Adam McKay technically recruited Fey to SNL) and others use on TV: Supercuts, cutaways, and flashbacks keep the story moving.

6. Inside Out, voices Amy Poehler, Phyllis Smith, Bill Hader, Lewis Black, Mindy Kaling, Diane Lane-One of Pixar’s best and most original film in years. Few films really explore an outside topic so well (Inception and dreams comes to mind) that they serve such a pedagogical purpose which is important for a kids’ movie. The comedy and adventure are pretty masterfully done here. It’s an example of Pixar in its groove.

7. Mustang, dir. Deniz Erguven-I actually reviewed this one and you can read it here. In short, I described it as a hellish version of Little House on the Prairie. Following five orphaned sisters under a house arrest imposed by their conservative uncle in small-town Turkey, the film’s technicality recalls Terrence Malick for the ethereal exploration of the present or Jonothan Demme’s more small-scale stuff with a focus on found moments of joy. At the same time, it’s a pretty scary look at restrictive societies.

8. Everest, starring Jason Clarke, Josh Brolin, John Hawkes, Emily Watson, Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Kelly, Kiera Knightley, Robin Wright-Not a popular film but, hey, you can’t win them all. I had the added benefits of watching this film in 3D AND of not really knowing that it was a disaster film. Perhaps, that’s why the heartbreak of the climbers not making it down resonated so much with me. Some complained that the film was too ambitious with its large ensemble, but there was a lot in Jason Clarke, Josh Brolin, Jon Hawkes and Emily Watson’s characters to keep their fates engaging. Like Inside Out and child psychology or Love and Mercy and the Beach Boys, this is a film that had me rushing to the library (or the internet or whatever) to learn all I could and become an Everest-phile.

9. Man from Uncle, dir. Guy Ritchie, starring Henry Cavill, Armie Hammer, Alicia Vikander,  Hugh Grant, Elizabeth Debicki, Sylvester Groth -Whether it was awards juggernaut Mad Max: Fury Road,  Jurassic Park tearing up the box office, or Star Wars VII realizing the dreams of fanboys and fangirls, there was an aura of credibility to tentpole films this year. My pick for best action film is this slick spy homage from action auteur Guy Richie. Like his last masterwork, Sherlock Holmes, he creates a distinct time and place: The luxury and extravagance of mid-century Italy (scenery porn galore! Even the shots of meals alone will make your mouth water) with an undercurrent of Cold War paranoia. The film’s buddy chemistry between the two leads and the girl is playful (with the appropriate level of homoerotic satire) and Alicia Vikander is an odd mix of Aurdrey Hepburnesque cuteness and playfully lethal in a way that works.

10. Love and Mercy, starring John Cusack, Paul Dano, Elizabeth Banks, Paul Giamatti, Bill Camp, Erin Drake, written by Oren Moverman, Michael Lerner-Like Everest, this is a film that turned me onto something new. I’m embarrassed to say that I previously only knew of the Beach Boys as the group of famous musicians who would randomly pop in on the Tanner residence when Full House needed a ratings boost. The film’s split narrative device can be wobbly at times and there are more than a few awkward  moments (the Brian and Melinda courtship comes off as strange to say the least) but the film brings it on the emotional front. The four principals in the cast each carry very heavy material: Paul Giamatti channels some pretty epic villainy, Elizabeth Banks makes a very awkward courting process on paper work and unleashes a killer instinct in later scenes, John Cusack impresses with quiet moments, and Paul Dano steals the show by selling the genius and the emotional breakdown of a young Brian Wilson

11. Trumbo, dir. Jay Roach, starring Bryan Cranston, Elle Fanning, Louis CK, Diane Lane, Michael Stuhlbarg, John Goodman-As a sucker for Hollywood history, it’s hard to resist watching actors of today doing their best impressions of Hollywood royalty. It’s a solid story dragged down by Bryan Cranston’s slightly cartoonish take and half-hearted attempts to infuse the material with a comic tone (though Stephen Root and John Goodman pull off the funny quite well). It’s an important film that successfully avoids being overly preachy.

12. Our Brand is Crisis dir. David Gordon Greene, starring Sandra Bullock, Anthony Mackie, Joaquim de Almeida, Billy Bob Thornton, Zoe Kazan, Ann Dowd, Scoot McNairy- An underlooked political drama about the rivalry between two ace political strategists (Sandra Bullock channeling a slightly darker version of her frazzled but endearing rom-com persona and Billy Bob Thornton channeling James Carville) working different sides of a Bolivian election. With a supporting cast that includes Scoot McNairy (he with the name that’s extremely easy to misspell), Zoe Kazan and Ann Dowd, the film boasts an enjoyable camaraderie and this is easily one of Sandra Bullock’s best performances. Like Trumbo, it successfully threads the needle of thought-provoking without being overly preachy, even if the resolution is slightly less profound than it thinks it is. Bonus points if you’ve recently been to Bolivia (i.e. me!)

13. Mad Max: Fury Road dir. George Miller, starring Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult, Hugh Keays-Bryne, Rosie Huntington-Whitely-In light of the fact that putting such a popular film somewhere in the middle of the queue will draw complaints, it seems preferable here to pre-emptively answer the question “why isn’t this in your top five?’ and it would be even better if I had a good answer to that question. The things that are praised- the exploration of society’s male-female dichotomy and the can’t-be-faked special effects – are things I agree with on all counts but I don’t necessarily think the special effects or the gender explorations of other films are particularly lacking. I also think that Imortan Joe and his goons could have used just a tad more subtlety. Still, this certainly was something unique and different and the narrative worked whole-heartedly.

14. Sicario, dir. Denis Villeneuve, starring Emily Blunt, Josh Brolin, Benicio Del Toro, Dan Kaluuya-I’ve wanted to see a good Mexican border/drug cartel film for a while, but aside from a great performance by Emily Blunt, this isn’t that film. It felt slightly more like a slightly tired entry of the gangster genre than something profound and new.  I prefer the series “The Bridge” which is truly all that and a bag of chips and while I can’t personally recommend Stephen Soderberg’s “Traffic” (I’ve inexplicably never seen it),  it sounds like a great film. “Sicario” is still a pretty good film and I can’t say enough good things about Emily Blunt, but I just don’t think it’s THE film.

15. Hot Tub Time Machine 2, starring Rob Corddry, Craig Robinson, Clark Duke, Adam Scott, Gillian Jacobs, Kumail Nanjiani-I can’t imagine there are more than half a dozen people on the entire planet who bothered writing up a comprehensive ranking of their greatest films from 2015 and ranked Hot Tub Time Machine 2 ahead of Bridge of Spies. I realize this got negative reviews for crude and dumb characters, but there is a lot dumber and cruder stuff out there (Adam Sandler, Johnny Knoxville, Tyler Perry, Eddie Murphy, “Entourage the Movie”, the “Dumb and Dumber” Series, etc, etc., etc.). Yes, these characters are idiots but there’s a comic rhythm to their shared idiocy that hit the sweet spot for me and the naiveté of Adam Scott’s character made him a great straight man and contrast to the trio. I read this film as a trippier version of Back to the Future with a higher level of Murphy’s Law-infused stupidity.

Are the Oscar Best Picture Picks Duds? Defending the Academy

As long as there are movie fans and those movie fans have access to the internet, you will always hear complaining that the Oscars get it wrong. I'm not sure if it's a non-conformist streak in my character or a love for playing devil's advocate, but I often like to take the opposite point of view that by golly, those Oscars often get it right like no one else!

One thing people need to acknowledge by the very nature of its large membership, a voting  body like AMPAS will naturally veer more towards some kind of consensus with few extremes. If you put the 1,000 most vocal critics of the Oscars in a room and asked them to vote for their Best Pictures of the year, I would bet money that their most idiosyncratic choices would cancel each other out and you would be left with the commonalities like The Martian, The Revenant, and Spotlight. 

When we look at the main criticisms leveled at the Academy, the same contradictory criticisms often pop up: They either don't reflect the views of the public, or they don't acknowledge the more experimental fare below-the-radar. Otherwise, everyone points to a few bad choices over the years and just uses that as proof that the Academy is terrible.

Personally, I think the Best Picture nominees in the past few years do a good job of balancing populist picks, artier films, ambitious experimental stuff, and straight genre stuff that's done well. I wouldn't want them to go too indie because I feel like films should resonate with the public and even if the best film by critics' views was something that screened for two weeks in Toronto and Tribeca, it's not something the public will enjoy being a part of on Oscar night.

So here's my expanded case:

For the Populists:

• Avatar is the highest grossing film ever and it got nominated, and ET, Exorcist, Sound of Music, Godfather, and Titanic were all box office record breakers of some sort.
• Nominees Rain Man, Forrest Gump, ET, Saving Private Ryan, Avatar, Toy Story 3 and American Sniper were all the top grossing film of their year
• Nominees Martian, American Sniper, Gravity, Zero Dark Thirty, Argo, The Help, True Grit, Social Network, Toy Story 3, True Grit, Inception, District 9, Up, Blind Side, Avatar, and Ingloruious Basterds all won their opening weekends in the 10-picture era
• Among others that haven't made any of those lists list Mad Max: Fury Road, Spielberg's films (War Horse, Lincoln and Bridge of Spies), Wolf of Wall Street, The Artist, and The Fighter have all been crowd-pleasers

For the art house crowd:

• Films like Beasts of the Southern Wild, Amor, District 9, Brooklyn, Winter's Bone and Room were all films that had very, very little chance at finding a widespread audience before Awards Season boosted them.
• Nearly every popular visionary film director out there: Michelle Haneke, Wes Anderson, Thomas McCarthy, Richard Linklater, Steve McQueen, Kathryn Bigelow, Lisa Cholodenko, Christopher Nolan, David Fincher, Darren Aronofsky, the Coen brothers (4 times) and Neil Blokamp have all gotten a turn at the bat with Best Picture nominations. A few years ago, you could have said, some of the more interesting film directors like Wes Anderson or Alfonso Cuaron or Richard Linklater have never been nominated. But no longer.
• Last year, you two films that had never been done before stylistically in Boyhood and Birdman and this year Revenant and Room were both stylistically very original.

For the socially-conscious crowd:

• Six films in the expanded BP era-Selma, Precious, Help, 12 Years a Slave, Beasts of the Southern Wild, and Blind Side- have had black narratives and black casts and the majority of those have had a black director. Each of those black directors got a major boost that allowed them greater creative freedom on their next projects.  While one can conceded that  Blind Side might be geared toward glorification of the white protagonist in the story at expense of the black protagonist, that is not the case with the other five films. I would also argue that Blind Side does teach us  something about the black experience. After all, Michael Oher (the film's subject) is a real person.
• Another nominee, Life of Pi, tells a story set in another 3rd world region: South Asia.
• Three of this year's eight films feature a woman protagonist
• Spotlight is about a struggle against the ultimate patriarchal society. Big Short is about the uneven distribution of wealth and economically disadvantaged.
• Last year, we had a film about a physically disabled person, a film about a gay person, a film with a black theme, and a film about a broken family
• The year before, we had a feminist film (Philomena), a film about transgender righs (DBC), a film with a black narrative, an action film with a female protagonist (Gravity), a film taking place in the 3rd world with an illuminating look of the struggles of people in the Global South (Captain Phillips), and another film about the effects of the rich on the financially disadvantaged (Wolf of Wall Street)
• Of the last six Oscar-winning directors, one has been a woman, four have come from a non-English speaking country, one has been East Asian, two have been Mexican

Top 25 People of the Year

People Magazine made a list of the 25 most intriguing people of 2015. If it didn’t have People’s sensibilities (where people’s ability to sell the front page of a tabloid magazine factored into it), it would have the potential to be an interesting artifact of our times. As far as I can gather, Sandra Bullock, Jennifer Garner, and David Beckham made the list because they’re celebrity favorites of the soccer mom audience although they didn’t really do much this year other than look after their kids. I imagine there are at least 110 million people in the US doing just that. 

Still, the magazine got away with a few familiar names (Barack Obama and Taylor Swift) and made the case that these two really were emblematic of 2015 and not 2009-2014. The magazine also made some good choices with people I overlooked like Chris Pratt (who did become a blockbuster star in 2015 if you consider Guardians of the Galaxy a fluke), Tracy Morgan (you have to admit, he had quite the comeback), and the three Americans who prevented a terror attack in Paris. 

In the end, this is all subjunctive.

When I asked some people on a message board to chime in their own opinions, one commenter chimed in with a Boston media sensation called Baby Doe I’ve never heard of but must have been a big deal for someone in the Boston area.  

Another person countered with what might be considered an anti-People list with a lot of intellectual entries. Here are a few examples of some of them:

Juhari Idusuyi - This 23-year-old African-American woman read Citizen: An American Lyric throughout a televised Donald Trump rally. On camera. She was seated so that she was visible just over Trump's left shoulder for the entire event. Simple nonviolent protest at Trump's lack of ideas about governance.

Rotana Tarabzouni - A 26-year-old Saudi Arabian woman, terribly scandalous in her homeland for singing about taboo subjects, like driving and crises of faith, and performing unveiled and immodestly (meaning she dresses mildly sexy by 1980s American standards). She's getting buzz around LA - she might be one to watch out for on the national airwaves in a year or two.

Robert Epstein - A psychologist whose research suggests and explains how Google could rig the 2016 elections. By modifying which results come first for a given result, a search engine can determine which candidate one votes for, all other things being equal.

Another person posted a list which the board moderator called the best list he’d seen:

Serena Williams, Megan Phelps-Roper, Ava DuVernay, Ijeoma Oluo, Rowan Blanchard, Amandla Stenberg, Ahmed Mohammed, Edward Snowden, Johnetta Elzie, DeRay McKesson,
Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi, Patrisse Cullors, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Roxane Gay, Bree Newsome,
Saladin Ahmed, Michael Ian Black, Natasha Vargas-Cooper, Sean O'Neal, Don Lemon, Aziz Ansari, Rabia Chaudry, David Simon, Oscar Isaac

I asked him about Sean O’Neal (a senior editor at the AV Club) and he replied that he was just surprised that O’Neal just had a kid (reproducing really does get you points it seems). He also conceded that Michael Ian Black’s comedy was starting to strike a chord with him so subjectivity creeps in pretty much everywhere.

My list would go something like:
1. Eddie Redmayne-The first person under 35 to win a Best Actor Oscar since 2002 and THEN followed it up with an equally daring role that will likely net him another nod if not a lot of admiration for his gutsiness.
2. Amy Schumer-The buzziest comedian out there AND runs the buzziest sketch show on today. She certainly has something original to say, a hilarious way to say it, and 12 Angry Men Inside Amy Schumer was one of the landmark TV shows of the year. In previous years, Key and Peele would have definitely had this spot
3. Pope Francis-Here's an idea: Let's not be assholes to gays, divorcees and people with a history of abortion for the first time in our 2000 year history. Yeah, buddy, you got a spot!
4. Ted Sarandos-Netflix CEO is a complete game changer. So many genres of TV shows you didn't even know you wanted (a realism-infused living single show for seniors in Grace and Frankie, a new Daredevil, a parody cartoon with deep psychological leanings in BoJack Horseman, a racially diverse Seinfeld in Masters of None, A global soap opera with superheroes in Sense8 marking the Wachowski Brothers first success in over a decade, etc) are being done here and they might just get the first Oscar nominations for something outside of the theater distribution model ever
5. American Pharoah-With the way horse racing has turned into an Arms Race since the 1970's when the last horse won a triple crown (horses winning the Belmont stakes are generally resting through the other legs), American Pharoah's win was deemed pretty impossible after so many people who won the first two legs sputtered
6. Shia LaBeouf-He continues to have success (yes, I'll call it that) and spark discourse about the nature of fame with his experimental art projects and continues to rebound from failure in an exciting way
7. Serena Williams-Winning late in her career with grace maturity and garnering attention for her brand and social causes along the way.
8. Elon Musk-Well on his way to winning the space race, Space X became the first private company to send a spacecraft to the international space station in 2015. Other projects under his tutelage include building a self-funded solar city, developing artificial intelligence and searching for extraterrestrial life. Very few science fiction films are covering territory that Musk isn’t doing in real life.

9. Taraji P Henson-Empire was certainly among the 2 or 3 most buzziest things on TV and this character actress really found her groove and was a big part of that show. Her personality and quotability are definitely becoming iconic. It also helps that Empire debuted in 2015
10. University of Missouri Football Team-By refusing to play until the U of Missouri president resigned, it was probably the most effective thing anyone's done in the race wars going on this year. Their story touches on a lot of things: the privilege athletes are afforded, the disaster that is higher education, the unique geography of Missouri as a place which shouldn't be (you'd expect it to be the deep south) but is probably the most unresolved state in the country in terms of racial tension, and the aforementioned racial tensions these days
11. Lin Manuel Miranda-Combined history and rap and making it a smash success on Broadway. As Obama said during a post-performance speech, very few things can make Dick Cheney and Obama agree on anything. Hamilton being a great musical is one of those things.
12. Paul Ryan-I would be equally comfortable giving this spot to John Boehner who announced the death of partisanship in the House of Representatives by stepping back. Ryan is going to step in and clean up the mess.
13. Rachel Dolezal-Certainly a fascinating story about racial identity and politics these days
14. Jason Day-A golfer and sports person of the year candidate.
15. Francois Hollande-His leadership either caused further complications in the war on terror or presented a step forward in it
16. Ridley Scott-Interstellar and Gravity both had their strengths but his film was the kind of optimistic and imaginative sci-fi adventure that the movies were made for and that we don't see enough of these days. Apollo 13 inspired my sister to study astronomy in college and this could be it for a new generation. Additionally, Scott has been at the forefront of film making since 1979 and this is his introduction to a new generation
17. Kim Davis-Some will call her an idiot, but I kind of admire her at least on the level of doing effective civil disobedience. At the same time, I'm listing people regardless of whether I like them or not and I think she's the 2016 version of Joe the Plumber in the way her story is already being coopted by everyone in the Republican party as a litmus test for their voters' values
18. The election outsiders-Donald Trump, Carly Fiorina, Ben Carson-There's too much focus on the election so rather than use up a bullet point on each one of these guys, let's just group them all in one. These three are surging in the polls at various levels despite probably being unelectable if the voters eventually care about experience.
19. Trevor Noah- This was a big year of talk show hosts, but James Corden, John Oliver and Seth Meyers really belonged on last year's list. I also love Stephen Colbert but I don't think 2015 is the year in which he's found his niche. Meyers has found his niche this year, but I'm not sure if he's making that much of a splash at 12:35 AM and he can no longer take ownership of the SNL era he presided over since he left last year. Trevor Noah is one change-up that has been working by my subjective opinion and his stand-up is pretty spectacular (also by my subjective opinion).
20. Joe Biden-His political capital is at an all-time high this year as evidenced by Stephen Colbert and everyone else practically begging him to run for president. His heartbreak with another family death resonated throughout the nation
21. Stephen Curry-Most of the time (in my experience), the upstart team in the regular season (Sacramento Kings in the early 2000s, Dallas Mavericks in the mid-2000s, the Chicago Bulls and Indiana Pacers in the early 2010s) loses to the experienced team, but Curry's Warriors surprised everyone by not being busts. Curry dominated over reigning king LeBron James, showed a media friendly personality (partially due to his daughter), and matched his regular season record with clutch during the post-season.
22. JJ Abrams-If sequels and reboots are the currency of Hollywood in 2010, than this guy is the established master having turned both Star Wars and Star Trek into must-see events.
23. Justice John Roberts-Continues to frustrate anyone expecting him to be political by voting his conscience and he deserves recognition in a big year in which the Supreme Court upheld Obama care, ruled on freedom of speech laws (the confederate license plate case, the Gilbert, Arizona case), pollution regulation, gerrymandering and same sex marriage. In  a generation or two, the only notable supreme court cases that will appear in a history textbook will be Obama care and same sex marriage: One of which was upheld this year and one which was ruled upon.
24. Amy Poehler-Leslie Knope started out as one of the most awkward characters on a TV show that seemed doomed to wither out. Seven seasons later, Poehler has turned her into one of the most iconic and rootable characters on TV and that’s not all. She’s also written a biography, produced Billy Eichner’s comedy shows as well as Broad City, and is attacking the big screen again with Sisters. The only thing she didn’t do in 2015 was agree to host the Oscars and that’s our loss.

25.Justin Trodeau-I know Canadian politics aren’t worth worrying about to most Americans, but to the degree that they are, Trodeau’s election marks a major shake-up in a system that many feel had gone stagnant. Failing that, he’s dreamy-looking enough to sell a cover.