Category: Nominees – 2010s

Little Women – 2019

Really?  Do we need another telling of the same dull story?  This is the seventh film adaptation of the classic novel by Louisa May Alcott.  The first two were silent films, and the 2018 version was a modern-day retelling.  But take those out, and you still have four versions of the same story.  So what was it about this newest version that makes it stand out from the rest, and why was it nominated for the Best Picture award?

First of all, just because I find the story slow and boring, it doesn’t mean that everyone finds it so.  There is a reason why it is a book that has endured the test of time, a reason why so many people still revere the book as inspirational and groundbreaking, even today.  It is a story that celebrates female independence and empowerment, among other things, and director Greta Gerwig really beefed up those aspects of the tale.  The plot is told through the perspective of Jo March, who is the most independent character in the story, and who is the most direct representation of the author of the original book.  Seeing as how it was written in 1868, a time when women were seen as the inferior gender, then I can see how it was certainly groundbreaking for its time.

The story, in a nutshell, is this: Four sisters, Jo, played by Saoirse Ronan, Meg, played by Emma Watson, Amy, played by Florence Pugh, and Beth, played by Eliza Scanlen, under the guidance of their mother Marmee, played by Laura Dern, grow from girlhood to womanhood.  They each have their own individual personalities and talents.  For example, Jo is an author, Amy is a painter, Beth is a pianist, and Meg has a love of acting.  Jo is bold and brash, Amy is pragmatic and slightly spoiled, Beth is shy, and Meg is pretty.  As the sisters reach adulthood, they each face struggles, but eventually find husbands, all except Beth who dies of scarlet fever.

There is a love triangle sub-plot that involves Laurie Laurence, played by Timothee Chalamet.  Amy loves him but he loves Jo.  Joe just loves her sisters and writing, and doesn’t want to get married.  But eventually she falls for Friedrich Bhaer, a fellow scholar, played by Louis Garrel.  Meg has dreams of marrying into money but ends up marrying the penniless John Brooke, played by James Norton.  Amy eventually wins Laurie over, and the two marry.  In the end Jo writes the Book Little Women, and everyone lives happily ever after.  The end.

But I think that Greta Gerwig really told the story in a new and interesting way, so that it wasn’t just the same old story that’s been told so many times before.  Most versions are like the book and are very linear.  They are children, then they are adults, in that order.  But here, the movie begins as the girls are already adults, and much of the story is told in flashback.  Yes, it is a subtle difference, but it makes the character of Jo out to be much more introspective about her own past, and how it has shaped the woman she has become.

I thought it was significant that, though Gerwig’s script remained very true to the original novel, a very small yet significant departure from the source material snuck its way into the film.  In the book, when Professor Bhaer comes to stay with the March family, he proposes to Jo, and she accepts.  In the film, he doesn’t propose, and Jo ends her book without her own character marrying.  But then Mr. Dashwood, the publisher, tells her that the book will not sell if the main character remains unmarried, so she re-writes the ending so that she chases after Professor Bhare, finds him at the train station, and then he proposes to her, which she accepts.  It made the point that the character would have been perfectly happy remaining single and eventually becoming a spinster, all in the name of retaining her independence.  But it also says that she wants her book to sell, so she chooses to let her character marry, and chooses to marry, herself.  It’s a little meta.

And then there was the character of Aunt March, played by Meryl Streep.  She is usually portrayed as just a mean old spinster with money, but Streep is such a good actress, that she made her seem like she was being strict and manipulative out of love, rather than spite.  The men in the film were mostly window dressing.  Chalamet did a good job and the critics have praised his performance along with Ronan and Pugh, but I thought he was just alright.  The other two significant male rolls were The March family’s father, played by Bob Odenkirk, and Laurie’s father, Mr. Laurence, played by Chris Cooper, and both did just fine.  I particularly liked Cooper who brought a very likeable quality to the character.

So, was the period film relevant to today’s times?  Yes, I believe it was.  Female empowerment and independence is a very important issue that doesn’t get enough attention, even today.  Was the plot slow and boring?  Yes.  Was the drama deep or moving?  Not for me, but I think I’m in the minority on that one.  Did the movie deserve its Best Picture nomination?  Sure, why not, but I’m glad it didn’t win, especially when it was up against great movies like Parasite, JoJo Rabbit, 1917, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.  Who knows, maybe in another few decades, it will be time for an eighth film adaptation.

Marriage Story – 2019

This was a good enough drama, but I don’t know.  It doesn’t seem to deserve all the attention it got.  I didn’t see how this movie about a marriage that is ending was any more outstanding than other films that deal with the same subject.  Was the story somehow deeper than its peers?  Was the acting better? I don’t really think so.  I’m not saying that any of those things were bad.  Far from it.  They were pretty good.  But was it enough to earn it a Best Picture nomination?  I’m not sure.

The movie starred Scarlet Johansson and Adam Driver as Nicole and Charlie Barber, a couple who have been married for several years.  They have a son who becomes the main point of contention during the separation.  At first, they want to go through the divorce without the use of lawyers, but that idea soon goes by the wayside.  Nicole hires Nora Fanshaw, played by Laura Dern, who won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.  Charlie is forced to get a lawyer too.  First, he tries an inexpensive divorce attorney named Bert Spitz, played by Alan Alda.  But when Bert urges him to give up custody rights for his son, he hires the expensive Jay Marotta, played by Ray Liotta.

When the lawyers really got involved and started demanding more and more things in court, it all seemed to get out of hand.  It was here that the movie’s most intense drama played out.  There was one scene in particular when Nicole and Charlie got into a real shouting match, hurling the most hurtful things they could come up with at each other.  I think it was really this scene that got the movie its Best Picture nomination.  Adam Driver really shined in this scene and stood out as a very good actor.

I also really liked how the movie began.  It started off with a voice-over from Charlie as he describes all the things about his wife that he loves.  All the while, we watch footage of her in her normal life.  Then it switches to Nicole doing a similar voice-over as we watch similar footage of Charlie in his daily life.  But the opening sequence ends as we learn that It isn’t simple narration.  It is the couple reading written statements in a marriage councilor’s office.  But what it did, right away, was introduce us to the characters, while telling us why they loved each other in the first place.  It allowed the story to start at the divorce without having to take half an hour to show us the couple meeting, falling in love, marrying, sharing their lives together, and so on.  Very clever.

An important character who was central to the main plot was the child, Henry Barber, played by Azhy Robertson.  The boy did a good enough job with a difficult part to play, but he was a little one-note, and for that I blame the script, not the actor.  But I think that was alright.  Children are rarely very dynamic.  I thought he did a particularly good job with the scene at the end when he was trying to read a letter.  Making it sound like he was believably struggling with reading must have been a bit of a challenge, and Robertson did just fine.

I also have to make mention of a few other actors who did a good job.  A favorite of mine, Julie Haggerty played the role of Nicole’s mother, Sandra, and her sister, Cassie, was played by Merritt Wever.  Everyone did a good job, and I have no complaints in the film’s acting.

If I had any complaints about the film as a whole, it would be the pacing.  It was just too slow, and if you look at the movie from beginning to end, not much happened.  There were too many moments where a character would go into an extended speech.  It was like the movie was trying a little too hard to be deep.  But I get it.  It was a drama, and not an action film.  But even a well-written drama can have a little more intensity or a more engaging pace.  This movie, while good, was just too slow for my tastes.  The problem is that I’m not sure what I would do to make the movie better.

When it comes down to it, Marriage Story is just not my favorite kind of movie to watch, but what do I know?  Critics really loved it.  In fact, it has a score of ninety-five percent of Rotton Tomatoes, and a weighted average score of ninety-three out of a hundred on Metacritic, indicating “Universal Acclaim”.  Obviously, people love this film, and if a slow and mildly intense drama is your cup of tea, you’ll like it, too.  It has some really good performances, an easy to follow story, and paints a fairly realistic picture of a divorce.

And one last thought on the film, which has to do with Adam Driver’s performance.  For me, he was the real stand-out of the film.  The only things I have seen him in are the Star Wars franchise, playing the part of Kylo Ren, and BlackKklansman, playing a police officer.  He was good in both of those rolls, but here we saw a much more emotional side to his acting and he really stepped up to the plate.  He always seemed to be really invested in the performance.  He earned a well-deserved nomination for the Best Actor Oscar, though he did not win.  Still, I expect we are going to be seeing a lot more of him in the future.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood – 2019

It really seems that every movie Quinten Tarantino makes is a good one.  They all have engaging plots, and some wonderfully interesting characters.  There is always a certain amount of really shocking and intense violence. And there are always the perfect music selections to underscore the action.  Tarantino definitely has his own style and it is always exciting to watch.

The main plot and its two leading characters were fictional, but most of the supporting cast were based on real people. Leonardo DiCaprio played Rick Dalton, a western film and TV star whose career seemed to be stalling, and his faithful stunt double, Cliff Booth, played by Brad Pitt.  It had been a while since Cliff had done any stunts, but he had become Rick’s driver, gopher, and best friend.  The main plot follows them as they face the prospect of being out of work as the Golden Age of Hollywood comes to a close.

But there were a lot of characters based on real people, like the lead actress in a different storyline, Margot Robbie, playing the part of Sharon Tate, Roman Polanski’s young wife. We were also treated to amazing cameo portrayals of historical figures like Jay Sebring, Michelle Phillips, Cass Elliot, Steve McQueen, Squeaky Fromme, Charles Manson, James Stacy, Connie Stevens, and Bruce Lee, among others.  It lent an extra amount of realism to the somewhat fictional story.

But there was one thing that I couldn’t seem to get over.  That second story line that followed Sharon Tate seemed to be largely unnecessary.  I mean, nothing much really happened, and there seemed to be no dramatic or emotional payoff at the end of the film.  It wasn’t until I did my research on the characters in the film that I understood why the storyline was in the movie.  You have to know about how Tate was murdered in her home, along with four other people, by members of the Manson “Family”.

And that led me to understand why the movie was titled Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.  It was ultimately a fairy tale, because in the movie, the murderers invaded Rick Dalton’s home instead of Polanski’s.  In true Tarantino style, Rick and Cliff super-violently kill all three of Manson’s would-be murderers.  Just before the credits roll, Cliff is taken away in an ambulance, and Tate invites Rick into her home as a friend.  And that was it.  That was the emotional payoff of her story.  She lived.  Learning what actually happened made the movie so much more impactful, especially the ending.  But if you don’t know those historical events before watching it, you might be as confused as I was about Margot Robbie’s part in the movie.

Now, I have to mention DiCaprio’s portrayal of Rick Dalton.  I have come to respect DiCaprio as an incredible actor who really throws himself into the rolls he plays.  Every time, he turns in a really fantastic performance, and when you sit down to watch one of his movies, you know you are in good hands.  He is consistently dynamic and yet believable, intense and yet relatable.  The moments in this movie where he breaks down as he sees his career dying were ironically comical, and strangely powerful.  As an actor, he has a way of easily drawing in an audience and holding their attention, and this film was no exception.  He’s one of those actors who will actually draw me into a theater, no matter what kind of movie he’s doing.

And I particularly liked his climactic finale here, when he takes out one of Manson’s murderers with a flame-thrower.  She crashes through his glass patio door and falls into his swimming pool.  His surprised reaction is priceless. She is standing in the pool, her face beat to a bloody mess, firing a gun wildly into the air.  Rick runs and gets his flame thrower, a working movie prop, and sets her on fire.  She burns, screaming bloody murder, until she dies and sinks into the water, dousing the flames.  So violent, and yet so cool!  How do you do it Tarantino?  How do you consistently make such awful violence so awesome and satisfying?

Brad Pitt has also proven himself to be a very good actor, but his roll in this film was less emotional and more bad-ass.  Even though his character was on an acid-trip during the home invasion scene, he still managed to dispatch his attackers in a way that was really frightening to watch.  Pitt totally sold it and did a great job.  And of course, Tarantino’s writing is so good because he didn’t ignore Cliff’s injuries or his acid-trip when the action was over and the police arrived to question him.

There was also the period piece angle of the movie that was wonderful. It all took place in the late sixties and was perfectly executed.  The costumes and the music were spot-on.  The cars, the characters, and the general vibe were flawless.  I wasn’t even alive in the sixties, and it still all felt right.  Yes, Tarantino really knows what he is doing!  Actually, I often wonder why he hasn’t won a Best Picture Oscar, or at the very least, one for Best Director, though he has been nominated several times.  In fact, the only Oscar he’s actually taken home was for the screenplay of Pulp Fiction in 1994.

The Irishman – 2019

I have to say, I was kind of unimpressed with this movie.  Am I saying it was a bad movie? Not at all.  It was very good if you enjoy movies about the mafia.  All I mean is that director Martin Scorsese has made this movie before, more than once.  I found it no better or worse than his 1990 film, Goodfellas, which was also nominated for Best Picture.  In fact, if you replace Ray Liota with Al Pacino, then you have the exact same three leading actors.  It has the same kind of plot, the same kind of aesthetic, the same narrative structure, and took place in roughly the same time period.

So what was it that set The Irishman apart from Goodfellas? Well, nothing more than the fact that Goodfellas was largely fictional, while The Irishman was based on real people and events.  That’s about it.  After the movie, I watched a little segment where Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, and Martin Scorsese sat around a table and talked about their experiences in making the film, and even they said the same thing. Of course, this difference presented its own challenges and subtle differences in the way the actors approached their rolls, but really, I’d seen it all before.

This movie was about three and a half hours long, and I think it could have been cut down by at least an hour and a quarter before the quality of the film would have suffered.  I can appreciate that Scorsese took the time to really develop his characters, something that many modern films fail to do, but I think he went overboard.  And there were several climactic points in the film, after which the movie could have ended, but it just kept going.  And while the scenes that came after were interesting, a lot of it felt kind-of unnecessary. 

The main character, the one through whose perspective the film was told, was Frank Sheeran, a man who was, among other things, a well-liked hit man for the Bufalino crime family, headed by Russell Bufalino, played by Joe Pesci. The movie focuses on his friendship with the President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Jimmy Hoffa, played by Pacino. There was a huge cast of supporting characters with a few recognizable names like Ray Ramano playing Sheeran’s lawyer, Bill Bufalino, and Anna Paquin, playing the grown up version of one of Frank’s four daughters, Peggy, the daughter who knew what her father was, and what he had done, and had refused to ever speak with him again.  There was Stephen Graham, playing another crime boss, “Tony Pro” Provenzano, who hated Jimmy Hoffa.  Also, there was Bobby Canavalle playing Skinny Razor, another hitman for the Bufalino family. And the last name that I easily recognized was Harvey Keitel, an actor who I have always enjoyed watching on the screen, playing Angelo Bruno, a high ranking Mafia boss.

 Being in an epic that spanned around fifty years of history, the actors had to portray their characters at different ages.  Scorsese considered the idea of using digital aging and de-aging techniques, and originally decided against it, saying that he didn’t want his cast to have to act with each other with tennis balls on their faces.  But in the end, the technique was used and was mostly successful, though there were a few shots where the images were obviously altered.  But as good as the de-aging shots were, I thought it was the old age makeup shots that were phenomenal.  They really did a fantastic job of making the already old actors look even older.  They did an especially great job with Joe Pesci.

 And that brings me to the three main actors themselves.  They are all skilled actors who have good on-screen chemistry with each other. De Niro played a roll that we have seen him play several times before, but I have to admit, he plays that character really well, very believably.  The same could be said for Pacino.  They were both pretty perfectly cast, and they executed their parts excellently.

 But it was Joe Pesci who I’d like to focus on for a moment.  It has been a while since I have seen him in any big movie.  He was very busy during the 90s, starring in movies like Goodfellas, JFK, My Cousin Vinney, and Casino.  But after Lethal Weapon 4 in 1998, he mostly retired from acting.  He was only in three other films during the 2000s and 2010s, until he took the roll of Russell Bufalino in 2019.  Apparently, Scorsese had to ask him over fifty times to play the part, but he kept refusing because he didn’t want to play yet another gangster. But Scorsese and De Niro eventually convinced him that this one would be different.  And I have to admit it was.  Yes, he was a gangster, but more reserved and much less violent.  It was a very different side to his dangerous gangster persona, so very well-done Mr. Pesci.  It was good to see you on the screen again.

 One of the other things I liked about the film is that it was a historical drama.  I did a little research and found that it was based on the book I Heard You Paint Houses by Charles Brandt, who reportedly heard the real Sheeran confess to Hoffa’s murder before he died of cancer in 2003.  But there is actually no evidence to support his claim.  Is it possible that the film is historically accurate?  Sure.  Is there proof that it is? No, not really.  But then, Scorsese never claimed that it was.

JoJo Rabbit – 2019

This was one of those movies that I instinctively knew I was going to enjoy before I even watched it, and as has usually been the case, I was right.  The trailer made it appear both fun and visually appealing.  And when I finally watched the movie, I found that I was thoroughly entertained for the entire duration of the film.

The plot is simple and can be summed up pretty quickly.  There is a little ten-year-old boy named Jojo, wonderfully played by Roman Griffin Davis, living in Nazi-Germany, who is a fanatic.  His mother, played by Scarlet Johansson is a Jewish sympathizer who is hiding a young Jewish girl named Elsa, played by Thomasin McKenzie, behind a wall in their home.  Jojo discovers her and threatens to turn her in, but she threatens him and frightens him into silence.  In order to learn more about his enemy, Jojo talks to her, but ends up befriending her, and realizes that she is a good person, not at all like the Nazis would have him believe.

So most of the movie relied on child actors, which is usually a dangerous thing.  And incidentally, there was one other child who really deserves to be mentioned, Archie Yates, who played Jojo’s best friend Yorkie.  All the kids really did a fantastic job.  And the film’s director, Taika Waititi, wisely did not break my cardinal rule of filmmaking, which states that cute for the sake of cute is never cute.  Never. McKenzie really did a great job with her difficult roll.

But I’d like to focus, for a moment, on Roman Griffin Davis.  This was Roman’s first film roll ever, and he really stood out as a phenomenal little actor.  The roll required a wide range of emotional highs and lows and Roman made it all look easy.  He was equally as memorable and impactful in moments of happiness as in moments of terror and sadness.  His tears when he finds that his mother has been publicly hanged, and that he, a ten-year-old boy, is now on his own, were real and un-forced.  It was a powerful moment in the movie and Roman pulled it off perfectly.

Now, back to Taika Waititi.  Not only did he do a fantastic job directing the movie, but he also played a very important roll in the film, one that provided plenty of comedic moments.  He played the part of Jojo’s imaginary friend, Adolf Hitler.  Of course, it was an over-the-top portrayal that made the monster look like a buffoon, though he was still somehow able to retain his terrible fanaticism and ridiculous hatred of the Jews.  Yes, he was funny, but the monster was always there.

And, of course, my character comments wouldn’t be complete without mentioning three well-known actors, each of whom did a great job.  I’m talking about Sam Rockwell, Rebel Wilson, and Alfie Allen, playing the parts of Captain Kelnzendorf, Fraulein Rahm, and Finkel, respectively, all instructors in the Hitler Youth Camp that Jojo goes to.  The more I see of Sam Rockwell, the more I like him.  I liked Alfie Allen on Game of Thrones, but I have never been a fig Rebel Wilson fan.  I’ve just never found her style of comedy very funny.  But I will say that she didn’t seem to be doing her usual shtick here, so I liked her as well.

Captain Klenzendorf was a very interesting character, played by a skilled actor. He played the part of a sarcastic, cynical drunkard who was pro-Nazi all the way, except there were subtle hints dropped every now and then showing that he was a homosexual.  And there were even a few interesting moments that suggested that he and Finkel might be attracted to each other.  In the end, feeling sympathy for Jojo, he saves the boy’s life by calling him a Jew and spitting on him in front of the Allied soldiers, after which he is shot and killed.  And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Scarlett Johansson, and her fine work.  She played the caring mother perfectly, along with the frustrations of being a single parent having to hide her sympathetic activities from her fanatical son.  Very well played Scarlett!

There seemed to be so many layers to the movie, its plot, its characters, and its themes.  The director really knew what he was doing, making the dramatic moments powerful and memorable.  And yet it was a comedy that was really funny, all the way through to the end.  It was just a brilliantly crafted film!  I really have no complaints, except for one.  And this isn’t really even a complaint, but an inconsistency that I noticed.  The little boy, Yorkie, was an eleven-year-old German boy, and yet he had a distinctly British accent.  He was like a miniature Nick Frost, another actor who I have always liked.

But there were some interesting choices made in the film that almost turned it into a fantasy.  Yes, there were the hilarious conversations between Jojo and the imaginary Hitler, but also, the music that was used in the movie was too modern. Taking place in the 1940s, they used Beatles music, but sung in German.  And when Elsa is finally able to leave the house in freedom, she and Jojo dance, using very modern dance moves.  They were interesting choices, but they gave the movie a more light-hearted feel, easily fostering the air of a comedy, rather than that of a drama about one of the darkest times in human history.

Ford v Ferrari – 2019

This movie was good.  There is no doubting that.  But I have to admit a certain disinterest in the subject matter.  I try not to let that color my appraisal of the film’s merits, of which there were many.  But auto racing has never been an interest of mine.  That being said, the film was able to stir my emotions in the way that I think it was trying to, so in that respect, it succeeded.  I’ll explain.

One of the things that has always prevented me from enjoying professional racing has been the possibility of an accident.  I simply have no interest in watching such a horrific event.  It helped to know that every accident that occurred in this movie was planned and filmed in a controlled environment.  The special effects team did a great job with the realism of the crashes and explosions.  But I suppose that, for many fans, that thrill and that danger is part of the attraction to the sport.

And as for that, they did a fantastic job of putting the viewers on the road with them, hurtling by at those incredible speeds.  It really brought the dangers of professional racing to the screen in an incredible way.  Granted, this has been done in cinema many times before, but here, they did it better.  I instinctively felt afraid for the safety of the drivers who were racing at speeds up to, and over, two hundred miles per hour.

But the movie was much more than that.  First, we had two very good actors playing the leads.  We had Matt Damon playing the part of Carroll Shelby, one of the best racecar designers and manufacturers in the world.  Opposite him was Christian Bale, playing one of the best race car drivers in the world, Ken Miles.  He was a man with an attitude, who was portrayed as having a near magical talent when racing.  The two had a good on-screen chemistry and shared the screen well.

The more I see of Matt Damon, the more I am convinced of his skill as an actor. He continues to impress me in every roll he plays.  He has a kind of likeable ease about him that always makes him a pleasure to watch. Unfortunately, I have never been a huge fan of Christian Bale.  I think he is a very good actor, but he has a habit of playing rolls that I don’t like to watch.  He plays people with attitude and sometimes downright jerks. There is no doubting his skill in front of the camera, but he seems to play these parts a little too well.

Also in the film were Jon Bernthal as Lee Iacocca, the man who thought to get Ford into the big race against Ferrari, Tracy Letts as Henry Ford II, owner of Ford, Caitriona Balfe as Miles’ wife, Mollie, Noah Jupe as Peter, Miles’ son, and finally, the movie’s main villain, Josh Lucas, playing Leo Beebe, the Senior Executive Vice President of Ford Motors who put his dislike of Miles above the idea of winning the movie’s big race, the 1966 24 hours of Le Mans, a race which, at the time, was always dominated by the Italian automobile, the Ferrari.

And there was the movie’s main driving plot device. Henry Ford II was insulted by Enzo Ferrari, and thus became obsessed with defeating him in the big race.   But I thought the secondary conflict was the much more interesting one.  Ford executive Leo Beebe didn’t like Miles, and tried to get rid of him at every turn.  He didn’t understand, or didn’t care, that Miles was the best man for the job.

In the end, Leo tricked Miles into losing the race.  I mean, we all knew that the Ford underdogs were going to win.  But we all wanted to see Miles come in first.  Instead, Leo asked that Miles cross the finish line at the same time as the other two Ford drivers in the race for the sake of a fantastic photograph.  Even though Miles was far ahead of the others, he slowed down so they could get that photo of the three Fords crossing the line together.  But since one of the other two drivers had been farther back in the starting line-up than Miles, the other man won.

So, as I usually do when a film is based on real events, I did a little reading to see if the movie was historically accurate.  Did Leo Beebe really trick Miles into losing the race that he should have won? Or was this just made up to make the film more dramatic?  Well, apparently, it is true that the three cars crossed the finish line together, at Beebe’s suggestion.  However, his motives in making that call may have been fabricated.  When asked about it in later years he said that his decision at Le Mans was partly because he was worried over safety and financial concerns. He didn’t want drivers to “knock one another off” in their race to victory.

I was pleased to learn that most of the driving in the film was done in real cars as opposed to CGI cars.  The special effects were limited to digitally altering pre-filmed backgrounds to make them historically appropriate, creating stadiums full of cheering fans, and adding rain effects at the 24-hour race.  For safety reasons, they also sped up some of the racing sequences to make it look more like two hundred mph instead of fifty.  It was all done well, but I’m just not a big racing fan.

Joker – 2019

On the one hand, Joker was a well-made and interesting movie, but on the other hand, I was actually pretty disappointed.  I feel like the movie’s entire premise was almost a deception.  It was supposed to be a movie about the possible origins of Batman’s nemesis, the Joker, but really it wasn’t.  It was as if the character of the Joker was used as an excuse to tell the story of a mentally unstable psychopathic serial killer.  The movie was ninety percent that, and ten percent Supervillain.  The sprinkling of Batman elements mostly came near the end of the film, and felt like  afterthoughts. I’ll explain.

Traditionally, the Joker is a secondary character in the Batman mythos, and I see nothing wrong with making an entire movie telling his story.  But Batman is a fantasy.  I mean, I understand that adding reality to the story makes the fantasy more grounded and real, but this movie took out the fantasy element so completely that I had trouble associating it with the long-known and established character of the Joker.  Thus, it could so easily have been a movie about any mentally unstable murderer.  The fact that this one happened to be Batman’s arch-nemesis was either incidental or coincidental.

Interesting Note: I’m not the only one who felt this way.  According to Wikipedia, “Phoenix believes that Fleck is the actual Joker; however, director Todd Phillips said that he intentionally left it ambiguous as to whether Arthur becomes the actual Joker as seen in traditional Batman stories or inspires a separate character.”  However, the few Batman elements that were put in were undeniable.  We even saw the death of Bruce Wayne’s parents… again.

One thing I noticed about the character was the way it was written.  They actually tried to make him a sympathetic character.  They presented his mental illness in such a way as to say that he was a victim of it.  It wasn’t his fault that he was a violent murderer.  He had the desire to be a good person, and was on multiple medications to correct his mental imbalance, but because of state-wide budget cuts, his access to his medications was ended. He never wanted to have a gun, but after he is beat up by street thugs, his friend gives him one so he can protect himself. And he only uses it when he is getting beat up a second time.  And he only murders his mother after he learned that she had lied to him all his life about being adopted, and that she had allowed an ex-lover to physically abuse him when he was a child.  All these things, and others, point to the idea that he was only bad because the world made him that way, not because he was just a bad egg.

But that being said, the movie had some fantastic acting, especially from its lead, Joaquin Phoenix.  The character of Arthur Fleck, the man who becomes the Joker by the end of the movie, is shown from the very beginning to be a profoundly mentally disturbed man.  He has a mental disorder that causes him to laugh uncontrollably at inappropriate times.  But his psychological problems go far deeper than that.  Throughout the movie, we learn that he has never been happy a single day in his life, and Phoenix really made me believe that about the character.

Phoenix was simply incredible.  He took home the Oscar for Best Actor for the role and I think he really deserved it.  Through his performance, I could see both the internal and the external struggles of a man with severe mental illness.  You could see how he hated who he was and how he behaved, and you could see how he was powerless to change any of it.  He had frequent hallucinations, making up events and stories in his mind that had nothing to do with the real world.

Other wonderful performances in the film were Robert DeNiro as Murray Franklin, a Johnny Carson-like talk-show host, Frances Conroy as Arthur’s mother Penny, Zazie Beetz as Sophie, the neighbor who he delusionally  fantasizes about being his girlfriend, and Brett Cullen as Thomas Wayne, little Bruce’s father who is running to be Mayor of Gotham.  Each of them turned in pretty good performances, though they were all quite easily overshadowed by Phoenix.  But that’s not surprising, seeing as how he was the focus of the entire film.

The movie actually got a lot of attention and praise from critics, but I find it interesting that it has only a sixty-eight percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and a fifty-nine out of a hundred rating on Metacritic.  What this tells me is that it is actually a fairly average move that was elevated to a higher status because of Joaquin Phoenix’s incredible performance of a mentally unbalance character who may or may not have been the iconic villain.  And when it comes down to it, I have to agree with those numbers.

So I have to ask myself: did I like the movie?  It was alright  Would I watch it again? Probably not.  Did it deserve its Best Picture nomination?  No, but I think it most definitely deserve its Best Actor nomination and win.  It was good as a movie about a man with mental illnesses, like the 1976 movie Taxi Driver, but not as a movie about the Joker.

Vice – 2018

This was a strange movie, and I’m having a difficult time trying to categorize it.  It was a political drama that was presented in a strange mix of different styles, all cut together to create a unique tapestry.  It followed the professional career of the politician Dick Cheney, the most powerful Vice President in U.S. history, wonderfully played by Christian Bale.  The director, Adam McKay, used a number of risky cinematic tricks to make the otherwise confusing, and I’m sorry to say, for someone like me, dull subject matter more interesting and understandable.

For example, at one point, in order to illustrate the point that at times, Cheney was like a political predator who was going in for the kill, the quick image of a lioness in Africa taking down a gazelle came up on the screen.  At another time, during a conversation in which Dick and Lynne seem to be plotting a power grab, they start speaking in Shakespearean language and quoting lines from Macbeth.  It was all metaphor and likening.  There were also scenes in which the actors would break the fourth wall and speak directly to the viewers.  And near the beginning of the movie, whenever a new character would be introduced, the image on the screen would freeze while dramatic or action music would be underscored, all to emphasize the introduction, as if to say, “Get a good look at this guy.  He is a political bad-ass, and he is going to be important.”  It had the feel of a Quinten Tarantino film.

But then the style would shift again and I would be watching something that looked like actual news footage.  Many times it actually was real.  And then the style would change yet again, and I would be watching a documentary.  Then it continued to change, this time to a parody or farce.  I recall one interesting scene in which the characters were sitting around a table at a fancy restaurant, where the waiter was describing dishes such as morally ambiguous political moves or policies.  The politicians said with delight, “Sounds delicious!”

The movie was a hodge-podge of these, and many other, tricks of the film media that I would normally roll my eyes at as cheap cinematic stunts.  There was even a strange fake-out scene forty-nine minutes into the film, in which Dick Chaney’s political career seemed to have reached a favorable conclusion.  They started the triumphant credit music and actually started rolling the cast credits and character epilogues, explaining what happened to them in the end.  But everything stopped and we are treated to a new stage of Cheney’s career.  But the use of those kinds of tricks was the style, and it was consistent throughout the entire film.  And again, I have to concede that they helped to keep an otherwise boring film interesting.

The movie seemed to imply that all the featured politicians were either power-hungry, vicious sharks with no morals to speak of, as in the case of Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld, brilliantly played by Steve Carell, utter morons, like George W. Bush Jr., played by Sam Rockwell, or cowed political tools like Colin Powell, played by Tyler Perry.  There was also Don McManus playing Cheney’s legal council and chief of staff, David Addington.  And I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Amy Adams as Cheney’s wife Lynne.  She was portrayed, at times, as even more self-serving and, dare I say, heartless than Dick, as she spurs her husband on to higher and higher levels of political power.  But then in the next scene, she plays the sweet and loving wife who is concerned for her husband’s health.  Her character was a little difficult to interpret.  And I have to mention that Bale once again transformed himself and turned in a phenomenal performance.  He was barely recognizable under all the makeup and extra weight. 

Despite this movie’s flights of fancy in the way the story was told, they claimed, more than once, that to the best of their ability, they made everything completely factual.  As far as I can tell, it was all pretty true.  But it was also clear that the filmmakers had their own agenda.  Were they characters truly as avaricious as the movie suggests, or was there something more to it?  It is actually hard to tell if the movie was pro liberal or conservative.  In telling the story of how Cheney vastly overstepped the normal powers of the position of Vice President during George W’s Presidency, having only taken the position because he saw Bush Jr. as an idiot, how he directly influenced the President to enter the Iraq war, how he was indirectly responsible for the formation of the terrorist organization, ISIS, did the film portray Cheney as a hero or a villain?  It is hard to tell.

But a piece of that question was answered in Cheney’s final scene.  He breaks the fourth wall and explains all his actions in a monologue that bears repeating.  “I can feel your incriminations and your judgment, and I am fine with that. You want to be loved? Go be a movie star. The world is as you find it. You’ve gotta deal with that reality that there are monsters in this world. We saw 3,000 innocent people burned to death by those monsters, yet you object when I refuse to kiss those monsters on the cheek and say ‘pretty please.’ You answer me this, what terrorist attack would you have let go forward so you wouldn’t seem like a mean and nasty fella? I will not apologize for keeping your family safe. And I will not apologize for doing what needed to be done so that your loved ones could sleep peacefully at night. It has been my honor to be your servant. You chose me. And I did what you asked.”

A Star is Born – 2018

This movie was alright.  I won’t say it was really any better than that.  There are several problems I have with it, and yes, there were a few things I liked, but I wanted it to be so much better than it actually was.  I’m not saying it was a bad movie, but it was simply average.  But apparently audiences didn’t agree.  It made plenty of money at the box office, and both critics and audiences loved it.  It was nominated for eight Oscars by the Academy, though it won only one.

First of all, I have to address the obvious.  This is the fourth cinematic telling of an old story.  The first one was in 1937 and starred Janet Gaynor and Fredric March.  The second was in 1954, and starred Judy Garland and James Mason.  The 1976 version starred Barbara Streisand and Kris Kristofferson.  And here we are again, this time with Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga.  Some people say that Hollywood is having trouble finding original stories, and I believe there is some truth in that.  Did we really need a fourth iteration?

The bare bones of the plot is easy to follow.  Jackson Maine, played by Cooper, is a rock star with severe drug and alcohol addiction.  While looking for the closest bar, he chances upon a drag bar that lets a real woman sing in the show.  Ally, played by Gaga, enthralls him and he takes her out for drinks.  Jackson learns that Ally writes her own songs.  He hears her mumble through one before taking her home.  The next night, Jackson convinces Ally to join him on the stage in front of thousands of screaming fans, and her career as a superstar takes off.

The two go on the road together and fall in love.  While Ally’s star rises, Jackson’s falls.  We follow their ups and downs, their marriage, and their personal struggles. Jackson’s substance abuse reaches epic levels and he nearly ruins Ally’s career in the process.  Convinced that she would rather sacrifice her career than leave him behind, Jackson commits suicide to ensure that she continues on her path to stardom.  Ally has her diva moment and sings a powerful love song to her dead husband.  The end.

Of course, the movie is much more complex than that.  There are plenty of dramatic subplots that fostered plenty of anger, pain, and tears.  The critics praised Lady Gaga’s performance and she was nominated for Best Actress, though she didn’t win.  Personally, I thought her acting was mostly good, though there were a few moments in which her performance felt a little awkward.  I actually thought Cooper turned in a better performance.  But on top of that, even Cooper was overshadowed a little by the actor playing Bobby Maine, Jackson’s older half-brother, Sam Elliott, who was fantastic in his supporting role.  Actually, all three actors were nominated in their respective categories, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Supporting Actor.

Of course, the film also has the distinction of being Cooper’s directorial debut, and I suppose he did a competent job.  But the one Oscar the movie took home was for Best Original Song.  I have to admit that the song Shallow is a good song.  In fact, if you didn’t watch the awards show, go to Youtube and watch Cooper and Gaga perform it live at the Awards ceremony.  It was really a great performance.

But don’t be fooled by its place in the film.  It was the song that Jackson, while in a partially drunken haze, learned by listening to Ally stumble through a single verse.  The very next night he gets her to come on to the stage, unrehearsed, and sing it with him as a duet.  It is beautiful and perfect, the band played it like a studio recording, the crowd goes wild, and it jumpstarts Ally’s career.  Wrong!  Wrong!  That’s not how it works!  I am a musician, and I can confidently say that there is no way on God’s green Earth that the song could have come off as anything but a complete train-wreck if it was performed under those conditions.  Music that good takes a ton of hard work and preparation.  Ok… suspension of disbelief.

There were a couple of other supporting roles that deserve to be recognized.  For instance, Andrew Dice Clay did a great job playing Ally’s father Lorenzo, and Dave Chapelle as George “Noodles” Stone, Jackson’s best friend.  Also, Rafi Gavron did a good job playing Rez Gavron, Ally’s manager.  He was just sleezy enough to be memorable.  And lest I forget, Anthony Ramos as Ally’s friend, Ramon, and a personal favorite of mine, Greg Grunberg, as Phil, Jacksons personal driver.  Everyone did a good job, though again, Sam Elliott really stood out to me as a cut above the rest.

But apparently it was almost a very different movie.  The original actress hired to play the part of Ally was Beyoncé, though she had to drop out do to the timing of her pregnancy.  Just imagine what the movie could have been with a different singer/songwriter playing opposite Cooper.  Beyoncé actually has more experience as an actress in a leading role, though Gaga is certainly not without experience in front of the cameras, so why not?

Roma – 2018 

Roma was half good and half boring, and for the life of me, I can’t figure out why the critics went gaga over it.  Several friends who I talked to before watching the film told me they turned it off about half an hour into the movie because it was just so boring.  After seeing it for myself, I can’t say they were entirely wrong.  The movie starts off with a really slow pace and the first fifteen minutes or so are spent watching a woman cleaning a house. 

I think a factor in the slow pace of the film is the director, Alfonso Cuarón’s, choice to not have any underscoring at all in the movie.  I think I understand why he made that decision, but the result was a dull opening to his film.  I think he did it to add an extra layer of realism to the story.  There wasn’t even any music during the opening or closing credits.

Two things the film did have going for it was its realism and its intimacy.  The story is that of a young girl named Cleodegaria Gutierrez, or just Cleo, played by Yalitza Aparicio, working as a live-in house maid in Mexico City for a middle-class family.  Now, whenever I hear of Mexico City, I immediately have visions of a wildly overpopulated mega-city, and the film certainly showed that.  In nearly every scene, there were people everywhere.  Inside the house are the two parents, Antonio and his wife, Sofia, played by Fernando Grediaga and Marina de Tavira, their four children, Pepe, Sofi, Tono , and Paco, the mother-in-law, Teresa, played by Veronica Garcia, the cook, Adela, played by Nancy Garcia, the family dog, Borras, and Cleo.  Every time they left the house, there were people crowding the streets, along with the noise that always accompanies large crowds and traffic.

The plot follows two different stories, both told from Cleo’s perspective.  The two narratives are closely related, though not necessarily intertwined.  The first is the tale of Cleo and her unplanned pregnancy.  The second is that of the family for whom she works, as Antonia and Sofia go through a painful separation and divorce.  Add to that a dangerous riot in the city, in which Fermin, played by Jorge Antonia Guerrero, who was the father of Cleo’s baby, takes part in a murder.  He has already told the poor girl that he isn’t the father of the child, even though he is the only man with whom she has ever had sex, and that he would beat her severely if she tried to claim that he was.

The movie’s real intimacy comes into play because over the course of the film, you really get to know Cleo’s personality and how she relates to the world, and I think this is where the critics see the movie shine.  She seems to have led a very sheltered life, but she is happy in her place.  She feels like, though she serves the family, she is part of the family.  She belongs.  But when that family fractures, when that perfect bubble bursts, she doesn’t know how to feel.  Or at the very least, she is so used to not expressing her own emotions that she doesn’t really know how.  The climax of her story is when she breaks down and confesses her true feelings to Sofia and the children.

At one point during the riot, Fermin points a gun at her, and for a moment, you don’t know if he is going to shoot her or not.  But as soon as he rushes off, leaving her unharmed, Cleo’s water breaks and she goes into labor.  The crowded streets prevent her from getting to the hospital quickly.  Unfortunately, tragedy surrounds the birth, and the baby is born dead.  Afterword, the family does their best to raise her spirits.  They take her on a vacation to the beach in Tuxpan.  After she risks her life to save two of the children from drowning, she breaks down and tearfully confesses that she didn’t want the baby.  When they all return to the house, Antonio has taken away all his belongings.  But Cleo is happy because she has told her secret, and her sheltered life as a domestic servant can return to normal.

It was a strangely abrupt ending.  But it also seemed appropriate to finish Cleo’s little story.  While the first half of the film was dull and slow, there was plenty of good drama in the second half to make up for it.  And through it all, the same high level of realism is maintained.  But I guess the question I have to answer is, was the extreme realism and intimacy of the narrative enough to make the film deserve its ten Oscar nominations?  It was nominated for, and won, the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film.  But the Academy voters also nominated it for Best Picture as well.  So did it merit all the attention it received?  If you ask me, the answer is no.  I thought it was alright, but I don’t understand all the awards, all the praise, all the fuss.  The drama, at its best, just wasn’t that intense.

But what do I know?  To paraphrase from Wikipedia, “Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian, said ‘Roma is thrilling, engrossing, moving – and just entirely amazing. Cuarón has reached back into his own childhood to create an intensely personal story.’ Also, Manohla Dargis of the New York Times called the film ‘an expansive, emotional portrait of life buffeted by violent forces, and a masterpiece,’ and praised Cuarón’s use of ‘intimacy and monumentality to express the depths of ordinary life.’”  I guess, if you say so.