Obligatory Oscars Dream Roundup 2011

So the 83rd Academy Awards – the only awards show that still kind of matters! – is tomorrow night.  Sadly, I will be unable to watch unless I stumble across a television.  But that won’t stop me from making a list of the nominees I’d like to see win.  I don’t care about who actually has the best chance of going home with the Oscar.  These are simply who I’d vote for if I were a member of the Academy.

BEST PICTURE
Seen ‘em all
In terms of sheer enjoyment, my favorites were True Grit, Black Swan and Toy Story 3.  But The Social Network strikes the ideal balance for a Best Picture winner: it speaks to the times it was released, but I could also see people studying it in film school 30 years from now.  Besides, I’m not going to hand it an award in another category anyway.

BEST ACTOR
Not seen: Biutiful
Truly, 2010 was the year of THE FRANCO.  He was great in 127 Hours, great in Howl, great (I assume) in General Hospital and great at playing “James Franco” in “real life” (or is it???). I can’t hate on any of the nominees in this category, though. Biutiful looks kind of terrible, but I could buy that Javier Bardem brought the goods.  I’m sort of getting Mickey-Rourke-in-The–Wrestler vibes for Colin Firth, by which I mean he’s a talented actor who’s unlikely to get another fighting chance at a Best Actor win, at least until he ages into an elder statesman.  And it would be kind of cool if Jesse Eisenberg won – but still not as cool as FRANCO.

BEST ACTRESS
Not seen: Blue Valentine, Rabbit Hole
Consensus pick! I never had any particular affection for Natalie Portman, but she somehow manages to go balls-to-the-wall cuh-RAZY while still being vulnerable enough to invoke sympathy.  Kudos to Darren Aronofsky for following The Wrestler with another brilliant stroke of meta casting.  PS: Did Rabbit Hole ever actually come out?

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR:
Seen ‘em all
This is a toughie.  I guess Jeremy Renner’s just getting automatic nominations now post-The Hurt Locker.  I like him fine, but his work in The Town wasn’t his best.  John Hawkes was an interesting baddie in Winter’s Bone, but his performance wasn’t as memorable as Jennifer Lawrence’s.  I’d be happy with any of the other three, but I have to give special props to Christian Bale for actually being less over-the-top than the real Dicky Eklund.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Seen ‘em all
In contrast, this category is pretty humdrum.  Melissa Leo and Jacki Weaver are basically playing variations on the same Supporting-Actress-Oscar-Bait-role-for-women-of-a-certain-age (Leo the comic version, Weaver the creepy version).  Helena Bonham Carter’s barely a blip in The King’s Speech.  Amy Adams got nominated because her character swears and wears low-cut blouses, which is completely not what her persona is in real life! So we’re left with Hailee Steinfeld, who shouldn’t even be winning the Best Supporting Actress Oscar.  She should be busy winning the Best Actress Oscar instead.

BEST DIRECTOR
Seen ‘em all
David O. Russell and Tom Hooper made pretty conventional directorial decisions, which is especially shocking because Russell fashions himself an auteur (though I only really liked Three Kings; admittedly I still haven’t seen his first two).  The Coens are my favorite working directors, so I’m kind of always rooting for them, but I’ll save up my wishing dust for another day.  I’ll instead give Darren Aronofsky a slight nudge over David Fincher, mainly because I already picked The Social Network over Black Swan for Best Picture.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Not seen: Another Year
Inception, of course.  Haters gonna whine that it was all exposition.  But if the exposition is entertaining, then what’s the problem?

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Seen ‘em all
Here I’ll give it to the Coens, for somehow improving on a film that was already great.

BEST ANIMATED SHORT FILM
Seen ‘em all
If you saw Toy Story 3 in theaters, then you remember Day and Night.  Even after watching all of the nominees, it stood out as the most visually inventive and had a satisfying story arc.  Second place goes to Madagascar, a Journey Diary for its beautiful and clever use of mixed media.  Special bonus points to Bill Plympton’s short-listed (but not nominated) The Cow Who Wanted to Be a Hamburger, which was unfortunately shut out in favor of the one-note Let’s Pollute and the overlong The Gruffalo.

BEST LIVE ACTION SHORT FILM
Seen ‘em all
God of Love, God of Love, God of Love. God of Love? God of Love! Not only was the short itself totally charming and funny, but it was the only one that made me excited to see a feature by the director.  Sadly, I doubt it’ll win, precisely because it is charming and funny.  It’s also the only nominee that’s not about Bad Things Involving Children.

BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT FILM
Seen ‘em all
This was the strongest of the short film categories, but the two that stood out the most were Killing in the Name, in which a Jordanian Muslim whose wedding was bombed confronts the extremist group responsible, and Poster Girl, about a female Army sergeant who was trouble adjusting to life after Iraq.  I just slightly connected with Poster Girl more, but both are worthy contenders.  This category is also one of the few where I suspect my favorites will be the Academy’s as well.

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
Not seen: GasLand, Inside Job, Waste Land
This may be the most frustrating category because of all the films that aren’t nominated.  Then again, maybe the three I haven’t seen are works of genius: Inside Job and Waste Land aren’t out on DVD yet, and GasLand has been a “Very Long Wait” since I pushed it to the top of my Netflix queue.  I’m split on the two I have seen.  Restrepo contains some astonishing, invaluable footage that in itself probably deserves the Oscar, but it could have used a real filmmaker to give it shape. Exit Through the Gift Shop, on the other hand, is highly entertaining.  It sure would be fun for it to win, especially since Banksy is bound to have some delightful prank cooked up – but it also feels kind of unfair to have it compete in the documentary category.  And really, Amir Bar-Lev’s 2007 doc My Kid Could Paint That is a more incisive examination of the modern art scene. (Bar-Lev also directed The Tillman Story, the film that should have won this category.)

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FEATURE
Not seen: Biutiful, In a Better World, Incendies, Outside the Law
OK, so the only nominee I’ve actually seen is Dogtooth.  And if the Academy gives the award to Dogtooth, then it would mean everything I thought I knew about the Oscars is wrong, and also I’m trapped in the wrong Fringe universe with Faux-livia.  The Academy will either give it to Biutiful (name recognition) or one of the three unknown picks (whichever is the most heartwarming).  But a morbidly dark comedy with a disturbing premise and several cringe-inducing scenes? Even if it is brilliant? Whatever’s Greek for “not a chance.”

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
Not seen: How to Train Your Dragon, The Illusionist
Again, I’ve only seen Toy Story 3, but I have a hard time believing the other two could possibly be better.  It’s a wise rule to never bet against Pixar, and Toy Story 3 is in my (probably unpopular) opinion the studio’s best movie since Toy Story 2.

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Mailbox Film Festival #2: Animal Kingdom (Michôd, 2010)

Animal Kingdom has been described by more than one critic as “the Australian Goodfellas,” a comparison even director David Michôd dismisses.  Really, the film Animal Kingdom resembles most closely is Ben Affleck’s The Town, both of which came out in the US last fall.  Unlike Goodfellas‘s Henry Hill, an outsider who ingratiates himself with the Mafia, the protagonists of Animal Kingdom and The Town are born into crime and ambivalent about getting out.  Instead of the glamour and grudging respect afforded members of the Family, their mom-and-pop armed robbery and drugs rackets are coated in grime and desperation.

After his mother takes a fatal overdose of heroin, teenager J (James Frecheville) moves in with his grandmother Smurf (Jacki Weaver) and uncles Pope (Ben Mendelsohn), Craig (Sullivan Stapleton) and Darren (Luke Ford).  J more or less gets swept along on their capers, never showing any enthusiasm for crime but not protesting either.  Detective Nathan Leckie (Guy Pearce) seizes on J’s youth and newbie status and tries to persuade him to testify against the Codys, thus setting up the film’s central conflict: should J betray the only family he has, or should he latch onto what may be his only chance out?

For most of its running time, Animal Kingdom paints its themes in broad strokes common to the genre.  There’s the bad guy who vows to go straight, only to get gunned down moments later by a corrupt cop.  There’s the good guy who we know is good because he’s happily married and has a daughter with Down syndrome.  Then there’s the truly evil guy, who coldly murders a teenage girl on the off chance she’d rat him out to the police.  Add to the mix a transparently metaphorical monologue, in which the detective equates J’s place in the Cody family to life in the Australian bush, that indirectly gives the film its title. “Some creatures are weak,” Leckie tells J. “They survive because they’re being protected by the strong. … But they’re not strong anymore.”

Where Michôd tries to distinguish himself is through style, to mixed results.  He films in slow motion so often it loses its impact, and the music he chooses sits flatly on top of the scene rather than integrating into or commenting on the action.  There’s even an unnecessary sequence that seems to exist for the sole purpose of quasi-sincerely reviving Air Supply’s “All Out of Love.”  His casting of the protagonist as a blank slate also makes the film feel less urgent than it should.  J is supposed to be the audience’s surrogate, but his detachment verges on catatonia.  It’s difficult to sympathize with a character who doesn’t bat an eyelid when his mother dies sitting next to him.

But in the third act of the movie, a switch flips.  J shows signs of being human.  When he realizes that Pope killed his girlfriend, J breaks down in her parents’ bathroom and decides to testify.  Of course, since Pope is off to kill him next, this change isn’t entirely internal.  But it mirrors a shift in Michôd’s filmmaking, where he stops trying to craft a style and just creates one.  There’s also a welcome bit of pitch-black humor in these final scenes, from a low-speed car crash to an intimidation meeting in an art museum (chosen because it’s “somewhere no one we know would go”).  Even this reel’s obligatory slow motion sequence, when Pope and Darren are arrested, works.  Perhaps the most affecting image in the film shows Smurf, in the thick of it but not legally culpable, vacantly dunking her tea bag in and out of her mug as her sons are carted away.  I won’t spoil what happens next.  Suffice it to say that it’s in the last 20 minutes or so that Animal Kingdom finds its voice and finally becomes worthy of its buzz.

(SPECIAL OSCAR® UPDATE: In light of Jacki Weaver’s Best Supporting Actress nomination, I thought I’d add a few extra words about her performance in the film.  She’s perfectly fine in it, but it’s the kind of role that attracts awards.  In fact, Weaver just lost the Golden Globe to Melissa Leo for playing a slightly less sinister version of the character in The Fighter.  Weaver does, however, get a wonderfully creepy scene opposite Guy Pearce toward the movie’s end.  I’d wager she got the nod for her Cheshire Cat grin during the line “But I do, Nathan.”)

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