Oscars Recap

I don’t hate Green Book.

I want to lead with that, because over the next few days, weeks, and maybe decades, you’re going to be hearing a lot about how bad Green Book is, and how the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences made a dreadful error when they awarded it the Oscar for Best Picture. I’m by no means a fan of the film, but I also don’t think that it’s completely irredeemable. (When I ranked every movie that I watched in 2018, it came in at #113 out of 135, but you could bump it as high as #70 and I wouldn’t put up a huge fight.) It’s very well-acted, it’s paced appropriately, its production values are impressive, and—if you can set aside its regressive politics and simplistic themes—it’s largely enjoyable. I’ve seen worse.

But “I’ve seen worse” is not exactly the type of ringing endorsement that should greet the Best Picture winner at the Oscars. And Green Book, as superficially pleasing as it can be, is not a very good movie. (Regrettably, I never formally reviewed it, though I did register my thoughts on Twitter.) Its screenplay is clunky and predictable, while its message—essentially a childish plea of “Can’t we all just get along?”—is hopelessly crude. Instead of grappling with the complexity and causticity of American race relations, it peddles a fairy tale of white decency and mutual growth. It is sappy, trite, and self-congratulatory. It does not resemble anything close to the best movie of the year. Read More

For a self-referential ceremony that exists mostly to celebrate itself, this year’s Oscars were different. Well, not entirely; in its bold strokes, last night’s telecast kept to the same basic rhythms—the clips, the songs, the montages—that the Academy Awards have been refining for the past nine decades. But many of the speeches and presentations that highlighted this year’s show were decidedly of the moment. At a time when Hollywood is facing a long-awaited reckoning, many of Tinsel Town’s brightest stars used show business’ glitziest stage to speak frankly on the issues that continue to engulf the industry. In that sense, at least, this was not your grandfather’s Oscars.

Beyond that, it was a perfectly decent show, which is to say that it was too long, too dull, and too stiff. In his second straight turn as host, Jimmy Kimmell delivered a decidedly adequate performance, with a few hits—in addition to a dry and well-paced opening monologue, his jet ski bit was an inspired touch, with many winners referring to it in their speeches—a few duds, and one ghastly misfire (the insufferable and interminable Wrinkle in Time bit). He seemed to minimize his own presence this year, which served the tone of this year’s Oscars well; with so much attention on diversity—of sex, of race, of orientation, of national origin—there is only so much that a straight white male host has to say. And at least the predictable callbacks to last year’s envelope fiasco were kept to a dull roar.

For my part, I did rather well in terms of my predictions, hitting on 18 of 21 categories, a marked improvement after my atrocious score last year. And while I often preferred one of the losing nominees (as is usually the case), it was difficult to begrudge most of the winners.

On to a quick recap of the awards, in order of presentation: Read More

In a shocking twist, La La Land was not the big winner at this year’s Oscars. But Moonlight, which actually (though not initially) won Best Picture, wasn’t the big winner either. Nor was Emma Stone, nor Casey Affleck, nor Best Animated Feature winner Zootopia, nor The Salesman director Asghar Farhadi (though his in absentia speech was pretty cool).

No, the big winner at the 89th Annual Academy Awards was Jordan Horowitz.

You probably don’t know Horowitz by name, but you almost assuredly now know him by sight. He’s one of the producers of La La Land, the one who—after realizing the historic, incomprehensible gaffe that concluded last night’s ceremony, when Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty erroneously announced La La Land as the recipient of Best Picture—handled the debacle with extraordinary grace. He could have ranted, cried, complained, or stormed off; if he had, it’s unlikely anyone would have blamed him. Instead, he kept his composure and, in a display of enviable courtesy, announced, “I’m gonna be really proud to hand this to my friends from Moonlight.”

That is the memory I will choose to take away from this year’s Oscars. Yes, it was crazy, inexplicable, and deeply unfortunate—even if you weren’t a fan of La La Land (and plenty of you weren’t), it was downright cruel to tease it with the gift of Best Picture only to suddenly wrench the trophy out of its grasp. But Horowitz made the best of a very bad situation. The official theme of last night’s ceremony was “inspiration”—that’s a tacky title, but as the telecast wrapped up its absurd conclusion, it was impossible to watch Horowitz and not be inspired by his humility and class.

Before running through the actual awards, a quick review of the overall telecast: It was fine. Jimmy Kimmell is hardly my favorite comedian, and many of his bits—the mean tweets, the candy dropping from the ceiling, the overlong segment with real tourists parading through the Dolby Theatre—fell flat. But his dry opening monologue cleverly downplayed the evening’s grandeur, and his inevitable political commentary was reasonably amusing, going for the funny bone rather than the jugular. (His extended feud with Matt Damon was excellent, culminating with his hilarious faux-appreciation of We Bought a Zoo.) The overall tone of Kimmell’s performance was one of understatement; he seemed to recognize that, yes, the Oscars are silly and stupid and self-aggrandizing and there are more important things going on in the world right now, but what the hell, we’re here, so let’s all enjoy ourselves. He even handled the envelope snafu with poise and wit, first name-checking Steve Harvey and then attempting to place the blame on himself. It wasn’t perfect, but it could have been a lot worse.

On to a brief recap of the show, with the awards listed in order of their presentation. Read More

When I recap the Oscars every year, I always remind readers that I’m a movie critic, not a fashion/gala/whatever-the-hell-the-Oscars-are critic. So I can’t pretend that I’m qualified to analyze the 88th Academy Awards, or Chris Rock’s performance in hosting it. I’ll just say that hosting the Oscars is an awkward job in general, but this year it was an especially tricky task, given that controversy swirling around the white-washing of the nominations. Rock had to chastise the Academy for its biases while simultaneously ensuring that he didn’t lose the audience’s goodwill.

It’s a tightrope that he walked reasonably well, even if it resulted in a performance that featured more barbs than laughs. Rock made it clear that he wasn’t especially happy to be there, which gave his opening monologue—so typically a rote exercise in congratulatory back-slapping—some unpredictable juice. (His most caustic zinger: his promise that the annual “In Memoriam” montage would exclusively comprise black people murdered by police on their way to the movies.) Yet as the show went on, Rock’s act wore somewhat thin, and his obligatory attempts to rub elbows with the celebrities—as in the limp extended bit involving Girl Scout cookies—fell flat. (I also wonder if Rock will receive flak from other minority groups for focusing his ire exclusively toward the lack of representation for black actors, which would be quite the irony.) But again, hosting the Oscars is hard, and if Rock lacked the charm and improvisational gifts required of a great host, he was at least appropriately transgressive.

On to the movies. This year, the Manifesto went just 16-for-21 (76%), a step down from last year’s 17-for-21 performance. That brands me a poor prognosticator, which is just fine with me; I’ll happily trade some predictive cachet in exchange for some legitimate surprises.

On to a quick recap of the show, with the awards listed in order of their presentation: Read More

So how were this year’s Oscars? It depends on which part of me you’re asking. As a movie fan, they were intriguingly democratic—each of the eight Best Picture nominees walked away with at least one statuette—even if I was disappointed in the Academy’s choice for its top prize. As a show business fan, they were pretty awful, with a limp performance from host Neil Patrick Harris and a draggy first two-and-a-half hours that were only marginally redeemed by some strong speeches on the back end.

But as a prognosticator, they were pretty good. I went 17-for-21 this year (81%), a dip from last year’s career-best 19-for-21 performance, but still reasonably impressive given the relative unpredictability of this year’s slate. (Translation: I couldn’t just check off Gravity for one-third of this year’s races.) My success, as always, was the combination of painstaking research and dumb luck. I’ll take it.

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