Does The Father Play Fair with Dementia?

Jeremy BeckFeatures
Anthony Hopkins in The Father

Movies lie. They lie not as a callous display of dishonesty, but as a matter of literal operation; deception is a necessary function of the medium. Actors pretend to play other people. Directors manipulate their environments. Set dressers and production designers falsify the scene just so. Special effects wizards show us things that don’t really exist. Every movie is a lie, even if the best ones search for the truth. It’s an art form based on artifice.

The Father, which is currently contending for six Oscars (including Best Picture), explores this inherent contradiction to peculiar and unnerving effect. It features an unreliable narrator, but instead of mining that trope for suspense, it wields it for the purpose of immersion. That’s because The Father, which was directed by Florian Zeller from a screenplay he wrote with Christopher Hampton (based on Zeller’s play), actively grapples with dementia in a way that’s especially unsettling. It uses familiar cinematic tricks, often better associated with genres like horror or thriller, to bring you inside the diseased mind of its protagonist. It lies to you because lies are all its hero knows. Read More

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Is Promising Young Woman’s Ending a Vindication, or a Betrayal?

Jeremy BeckFeatures
Carey Mulligan in Promising Young Woman

Endings are overrated. Or at least, the importance we attach to them tends to outstrip their actual significance. Quantitatively speaking, the typical ending constitutes less than 10% of a film’s runtime, so it seems peculiar that we factor their quality so heavily into our overall appreciation of a movie. At the same time, endings matter, if only as a simple matter of recency bias; it makes sense that our brains prioritize the last few scenes that we just watched as we leave the theater (or, sigh, exit the streaming service). That’s why a lousy ending can tarnish an otherwise enjoyable picture; by way of example, Danny Boyle’s mostly terrific Sunshine could have been a modern classic if it hadn’t so badly flubbed its finale. (The converse scenario, where a forgettable film is redeemed by a strong finish, is far more rare, though I’d submit for consideration Avengers: Infinity War.)

Promising Young Woman, which was just nominated for five Oscars, features an ending that is undeniably memorable—unusually so, given that it doesn’t rely on a big reveal à la The Sixth Sense or Planet of the Apes. I still don’t know whether its culmination is spectacular or terrible; what I do know is that it doesn’t change my opinion of the movie as a whole, which is largely fantastic. A modern jolt to the classic rape-revenge genre, Emerald Fennell’s debut feature is an exhilarating cocktail that blends provocative messaging with slow-building suspense and sure-handed craft. It’s a statement picture, both in that it has something to say and in that it announces the arrival of Fennell—heretofore best known as playing Camilla Parker Bowles on The Crown—as a hugely talented filmmaker. She could have wrapped up Promising Young Woman with aliens suddenly enacting a (ninth) plan from outer space, and the movie would remain a major achievement. Read More

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Oscars 2020: Nomination Prediction Results

Jeremy BeckOscars
Paul Raci in Sound of Metal

Yesterday, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced their nominations for the 93rd Oscars. The list was met with the usual cacophony of bitterness, gratitude, and exasperation. The selections were all terrible, except for the ones that weren’t; the omissions were egregious, except for those who were justly excluded.

Same as it ever was. It remains to be seen how the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic will affect the actual telecast of this year’s Oscars (scheduled for April 25). And of course, the disease’s devastating yearlong spread carried significant consequences for the movie industry; the trickle-down effects surely included how voters perceived the various contending films (or how many they even watched). But for one day, at least, normalcy was restored in our collective outcries and appreciations.

Is this a sign of a return to the Before Times, or an isolated blip amid a continuing shift in the industry? We’ll find out. In the meantime, here’s some quickie analysis of our predictions in 13 major categories, and where the respective races currently stand. Read More

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Oscars 2020: Nomination Predictions

Jeremy BeckOscars
Viola Davis and Chadwick Boseman in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

Oh look, it’s time for another Oscars. Business as usual, right?

As I’ve written in the past, the upheaval that the film and entertainment industry has suffered at the hands of COVID-19 is perhaps one of the pandemic’s less significant calamities. But the turmoil that it sowed for the Oscars strikes me as self-inflicted. Last June, after surveying an uncertain cinematic landscape where theaters were closed and new releases were being continually postponed, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that the eligibility window for this year’s Oscars—which typically covers films that came out during the prior calendar year—would be extended to February 2021, and that it was correspondingly delaying the ceremony itself until late April. (Nominations will finally be proclaimed on Monday.) The theory, I suppose, was to broaden the pool of potential nominees, as though flipping the datebook from December to January would magically herald the sudden arrival of high-quality pictures that were heretofore unavailable.

This was, of course, nonsense; 2020 was already a terrific year for cinema, and in widening the window, the Academy implicitly derided the fertile crop of existing releases. Beyond that, the decision carried the unfortunate consequence of further prolonging the interminable period colloquially known as Awards Season: the annual ritual of critics’ groups and governing bodies bestowing honors on various films and artists, culminating with the Oscars’ ultimate crowning of the best of the best. Hell, by the time 2020’s Best Picture is announced, campaigns for 2021 Oscar candidacy will practically be underway.

So be it. It’s still the Oscars, meaning it’s still relevant in terms of the historical record; if the Academy’s actual choices for the best movies of 2020 scarcely matter, that’s no different from any other year. With that in mind, per tradition, here are MovieManifesto’s predictions for the nominations in 13 major categories of the 93rd Academy Awards: Read More

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I Care a Lot: Lies of the Guardians

Jeremy BeckReviews
Rosamund Pike in I Care a Lot

Even before you see her blond bob, you know instantly that Rosamund Pike’s newest star vehicle will find her working in the same vein of coolly ruthless savagery that she mined so brilliantly in Gone Girl. That much is clear from her opening voiceover, which finds the crisply talented actor once again ditching her British lilt for a capable American accent, and which concludes with her declaring, “I am a fucking lioness.” It’s an accurate if unnecessary introduction; one glare from her cold-blue eyes or one puff from her vape pen, and it’s plain that Pike’s Marla Grayson is a lethal predator. She plays for keeps, even when the game is other people’s lives.

This description might sounds like the template for a dark and provocative study of sociopathy, but I Care a Lot isn’t especially interested in digging into the pathologies of its protagonist. It isn’t interested in much of anything, really, beyond treating viewers to a rollicking good time with bad people. And this, it mostly does. Written and directed with slick snap by J. Blakeson, it coasts amiably on the gifts of its cast and the jolts of its pulp, untroubled by its own vacuity. Small wonder Marla is its hero. Read More

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