Oscars 2017: Nomination prediction results

Jeremy BeckOscars
Vicky Krieps and Daniel Day-Lewis in Oscar nominee "Phantom Thread"

Well, the Oscar nominations are out, and I hit on 81% of my predictions (56 of 69), which is the exact same percentage I got last year. I’m nothing if not consistently mediocre. Let’s run through some quick analysis of the nominees.

BEST PICTURE
Call Me by Your Name
Dunkirk
Get Out
Lady Bird
Phantom Thread
The Post
The Shape of Water
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
The Florida Project Darkest Hour

Analysis: I was right! And also wrong! More specifically, I was right about the number of nominees (nine rather than eight), and I correctly suspected that Phantom Thread would crack the field. But I definitely did not expect Darkest Hour to show up in place of The Florida Project; clearly, the former’s refined craftsmanship and political message resonated with voters.

Current favorite: It’s tempting to pick The Shape of Water right now, given that it led the field with 13 total nominations (one short of the record). But as we’ve seen in the past with Spotlight and Moonlight, quantity doesn’t necessarily equate to success for the top prize. Get Out, Lady Bird, and Three Billboards are all still in play. This could go down to the wire (which will be fun!).

Worst omission: War for the Planet of the Apes. Yes, I know, there was no way the Academy was going to highlight a threequel about talking monkeys, but people are sleeping on just how good this movie was. Read More

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Oscars Analysis 2017: Nomination Predictions

Jeremy BeckOscars
Sam Rockwell and Frances McDormand in Oscar heavyweight "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri"

Here we go. Couple things to remember before we dive in to this year’s Oscar predictions. First: The Academy’s membership has expanded considerably over the past year, skewing younger and more diverse, so the stereotype of the typical Oscar voter—essentially, “Old white dude who loves fusty period pieces and doesn’t like to be challenged”—may no longer hold true, if it ever even did. Second, and far more importantly: Although the ceremony will take place in 2018, the show covers movies released in 2017, so whatever film wins Best Picture must be referred to as “Best Picture winner in 2017”. Do not test my patience on this. Read More

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The Post: Stop the Presses, or Else

Jeremy BeckReviews
Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep in Steven Spielberg's "The Post"

Describe The Post in terms of its plot, and you risk making it sound like a bore. Here is a based-in-fact film about a band of huffy journalists who squabble with a cadre of wussy pencil-pushers about whether to publish a newspaper article; these are not typically the raw materials of exciting drama. Yet because we currently live in a society where the government openly wages war on the press, The Post is one of the most important political movies of our time. And because it has been directed by Steven Spielberg, it is also one of our most enjoyable.

In recognizing the former, one should be careful not to ignore the latter. The unnerving topicality of The Post threatens to overshadow just how effortlessly it works as a piece of cinema, how sharply crafted and exquisitely performed it is. Employing his characteristic care and vigor, Spielberg has almost imperceptibly transformed the film’s bustling narrative—a thicket of murky backroom meetings, lavish dinner parties, and complex legal proceedings—into a rousing and supremely entertaining production. Contemporary circumstances may have rendered The Post regrettably relevant, but this movie would be a delight to watch regardless of who’s sitting in the Oval Office. Read More

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Call Me by Your Name: One Lazy Summer, a Dance of Desire

Jeremy BeckReviews
Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer in "Call Me by Your Name"

“So what do you do around here?” Oliver asks Elio early in Call Me by Your Name, Luca Guadagnino’s feverish, unusual love story. In response, the 17-year-old ticks off a number of banal activities—he reads, he swims, he parties—but his answer basically amounts to, “Not much.” Over the course of its 132-minute running time, Call Me by Your Name stirs up a broad array of emotions—desire, heartache, anger, elation, grief—but what it perhaps evokes most effectively is that ineffable state of boyhood restlessness, the feeling of being suspended in a cocoon where nothing of consequence ever happens. Elio is something of an intellectual and musical prodigy (“Is there anything you don’t know?” an amused Oliver asks), but as the movie opens, he is nevertheless waiting for his life to begin.

By the time the film ends, he’ll have undergone a transformative experience that will feel largely familiar to enthusiasts of coming-of-age cinema. Yet while Call Me by Your Name travels well-covered narrative terrain, it is not exactly typical. It is, in essence, a strange telling of a normal story. In chronicling the standard tale of a young man discovering himself, Guadagnino has retained the basic elements but altered them, glazing them with a peculiar finish that mixes awkwardness with compassion. To watch the film is to feel by turns frustrated, surprised, confused, and blissful—you know, kind of like falling in love. Read More

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Darkest Hour: Taking Power, Then Feeling Powerless

Jeremy BeckReviews
Gary Oldman is Winston Churchill in Joe Wright's "Darkest Hour"

Let us dispense immediately with the obvious and unfortunate comparison: Darkest Hour is no Dunkirk. It isn’t designed to be, of course; Joe Wright’s terse examination of Winston Churchill’s tumultuous ascension to Prime Minister is styled as an informative docudrama and a thoughtful character study, not an epic war film. Still, it’s rotten luck for Wright’s movie that it opened a mere four months after Christopher Nolan’s, given that the gap in intensity between the two films equates roughly to the length of the English Channel. It’s tempting to suggest pairing them as a double feature—after all, both chronicle the fateful events of Europe in May of 1940, albeit from opposite sides of the Channel—but in the wake of the pulverizing heroics of Dunkirk, the political brawls of Darkest Hour feel more like a palette cleanser, or maybe a sleeping pill.

Again, this (dis)similarity is not Darkest Hour’s fault. And while it’s unlikely to get anyone’s pulse racing, this modest movie sports its own elegant pleasures, chief among them affirmation of its director’s silky cinematic talents. Ever since his feature debut (the deeply underrated Pride & Prejudice), Wright has demonstrated a knack for wielding classical tools—camera placement, composition, lighting—in ways that feel invigorating rather than staid. His formidable abilities are again on display here, operating with a visual panache that does wonders to enliven his wobbly, predictable narrative. In Wright’s hands, shafts of sunlight and swirls of shadow become characters in their own right, turning every frame of the film into its own gorgeously told micro-story. There’s always something stunning to see on screen in Darkest Hour, even if you’re also invariably just watching crusty old men argue. Read More

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