Oscar Predictions 2009

I now realize that last year’s Academy Awards spoiled me. I loved four of the Best Picture nominees (No Country for Old Men, There Will be Blood, Michael Clayton, and Juno) and disliked one (Atonement). This year, I like two of the Best Picture nominees (Frost/Nixon, Milk) am ambivalent about two (Slumdog Millionaire, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) and strongly dislike one (The Reader). In other words, this year is more typical of the Oscars. The best films of the year are rarely recognized by the Academy. I’m watching the Oscars this year in a similar manner as I watched the Super Bowl, as a disinterested spectator who doesn’t really care who wins. Nevertheless, below are my predictions of who will win as well as, more importantly, who should win:

Best Original Screenplay
Nominees: Frozen River, Happy-Go-Lucky, In Bruges, Milk, Wall-E
Will Win: Milk
Should Win: In Bruges
In Bruges was the best-written film of the year (until it fell apart slightly at the end). I could listen to the dialogue all day.

Best Adapted Screenplay
Nominees: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Doubt, Frost/Nixon, The Reader, Slumdog Millionaire
Will Win: Slumdog Millionaire
Should Win: Doubt
Doubt is an engaging and successful stage play that was transformed into a cinematic meditation on the relationship between faith and doubt.

Best Supporting Actress:
Nominees: Amy Adams (Doubt), Penelope Cruz (Vicky Christina Barcelona), Viola Davis (Doubt), Taraji P. Henson (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), Marissa Tomei (The Wrestler).
Will Win: Marissa Tomei
Should Win: Penelope Cruz
My gut tells me Marissa Tomei will win, but Penelope Cruz should win. Woody Allen’s Vicky Christina Barcelona is one of his best films in years and it owes its success largely to Cruz’s forceful performance.

Best Leading Actress:
Nominees: Anne Hathaway (Rachel Getting Married), Angelina Jolie (Changeling), Melissa Leo (Frozen River), Meryl Streep (Doubt), Kate Winslet (The Reader)
Will Win: Kate Winslet
Should Win: Anne Hathaway
We have learned over the past couple of year that Anne Hathaway can indeed act. Who knew?

Best Supporting Actor:
Nominees: Josh Brolin (Milk), Robert Downey Jr. (Tropic Thunder), Philip Seymour Hoffman (Doubt), Heath Ledger (The Dark Knight), Michael Shannon (Revolutionary Road)
Will Win: Heath Ledger
Should Win: Heath Ledger
What can I say that hasn’t already been said?

Best Leading Actor:
Nominees: Richard Jenkins (The Visitor), Frank Lengella (Frost/Nixon), Sean Penn (Milk), Brad Pitt (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), Mickey Rourke (The Wrestler)
Will Win: Sean Penn
Should Win: Mickey Rourke
I felt every moment of Rourke’s subtle and self-reflexive performance.

Best Director:
Nominees: David Fincher, Ron Howard, Gus Van Sant, Stephen Daldry, Danny Boyle
Will Win: Danny Boyle
Should Win: Ron Howard
The Best Director nominees and Best Picture nominees line up precisely this year. I believe that the director of the Best Picture should also win Best Director. Frost/Nixon was my favorite picture of the five, so Ron Howard should win Best Director.

Best Picture:
Nominees: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, Milk, The Reader, Slumdog Millionaire
Will Win: Slumdog Millionaire
Should Win: Frost/Nixon
Frost/Nixon entertained me the most of these five films. I was not overwhelmed by any of them, but as long as The Reader doesn’t win I will be content.

Better Late Than Never: The Top 10 Films of 2008

I know … I know. We are almost in the third month of 2009 already. Why did I wait until now to post my top 10 favorite movies of 2008?

Here’s my excuse for my procrastination. Unless you are a full-time film critic living in L.A. or New York, your chances of seeing all the end-of-the-year awards season movies before January 1 are slim to none. I live in Chicagoland, an area with a more sophisticated film culture than many cities. Nevertheless, it is extremely difficult to see all the 2008 movies before the end of 2008.

I did not feel comfortable posting my top ten list until I saw all the 2008 films I could. Still, I feel that the list is incomplete. There are several big (and small) releases of the year which I have not yet checked out. At some point, though, one has to waive the white flag of surrender and admit that one does not live by movie-watching alone (especially when one has a full-time job and other responsibilities that keep one from the movie theatre).

So, I have listed the ten films of 2008 that I enjoyed the most. These are not necessarily the best films. Heck, they’re not even the most profound films. They’re simply the films that I am most anxious to see again and that I haven’t been able to get off my mind.

2008 has not been a great year for movies. Nevertheless, it’s been okay, maybe even better than average. When I look at my top 10 list from 2007, I notice how much more enthused I was about the best films of that year. Movies like No Country for Old Men, There Will be Blood, and Once have joined my list of favorite films of all time. I can’t imagine retaining the same enthusiasm for 2008’s top choices, although I admired them very much in their own way.

So, without further ado, here they are …

10. Frost/Nixon
The only Oscar nominee to make my Top 10 list. Ron Howard has a way of making well-known stories come alive. Yes, the facts of the Frost/Nixon interviews are altered a bit for entertainment factor. Yes, the film is rather predictable and conventionally made. Nevertheless, the film is wildly entertaining and both Frank Langella and Michael Sheen made me smile in their respective roles as Richard Nixon and British talk show host David Frost, perhaps the most unlikely person on earth to give the president his most important televised interview.

9. Flight of the Red Balloon
This French film is not really about a red balloon, but rather a complicated French family as seen through the ideas of a talented French student. Hou Hsiao-Hsien is one of the most subtle of modern filmmakers. This film is so subtle, in fact, that many will be bored by the ultra-slow pacing and the apparent lack of plot. It’s all about the family’s private moments, though, that the audience gets to witness first hand. The movie seems to say that we live in an age in which effective parenting is no longer a priority and children must be looked after by inanimate objects.

8. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days
Despite what some may say, this movie is not about abortion or oppression in Communist Romania. It’s about two college friends who find themselves in a desperate and dangerous situation. We watch their scenario play out in real-time and feel nothing but intense sympathy and pity for everyone involved. This may be the most perfect film I saw in 2008.

7. The Dark Knight
It turns out that the highest-grossing film of the year is also one of the most critically-acclaimed films of the year, and one of my favorite films of the year. What a rare occurrence! It’s kind of a shame that The Dark Knight was not recognized by the Academy with a Best Picture nomination. It deserves it. Christopher Nolan’s film elevates the superhero genre to the level of Shakespearean tragedy. The film explores many of the themes that plague our contemporary culture without being overly didactic. Heath Ledger, as we all know, gives a performance for the ages. It’s a shame he can’t be here to accept his inevitable Best Supporting Actor award in person.

6. The Wrestler
Both Mickey Rourke and director Darren Aranofsky made incredible comebacks this year in the same film. Rourke overcame his indulgent lifestyle and antisocial behavior to give the performance of his life as a one-trick-pony aging professional wrestler with nowhere to turn for sustenance and human contact. Aranofsky made the most accessible film of his career without abandoning his creative principles. The gritty style and sublime performances engaged me every step of the way.

5. Happy-Go-Lucky
What would it be like to see the world through rose-colored glasses? This is the question Mike Leigh explores in his delightful latest film. Sally Hawkins deserves an Academy Award for Best Leading Actress (yet wasn’t even nominated) for her performance as Poppy, a thirtyish London schoolteacher who refuses to let the trials and tribulations of the world dampen her relentless optimism. Even a Nazish driving teacher won’t undo the web of happiness she has woven for herself.

4. Let the Right One In
I am very rarely genuinely scared in the movie theatre anymore. Having seen so many films, the effects of some so-called “horror” films are lost on me. However, I felt every single frame of this Swedish masterpiece. Forget Twilight, this is the real teenage vampire film of the year. A bullied 12-year-old boy develops a friendship with a vampire in suburban Stockholm. Let the Right One In is really a parable for what it means to grow up in a culture that has very little room for individuality and nonconformity.

3. Rachel Getting Married
Jonathan Demme’s new film says so much without coming out and saying much at all. Roger Ebert sums it up when he says that Rachel Getting Married is “like the theme music for an evolving new age.” The plot concerns Kim (Anne Hathaway), a young woman returning home from drug rehab the day before her sister Rachel (Rosemarie DeWitt) is getting married. The beautiful multiculturalism of the families involved makes for a fascinating and diverse wedding ceremony. The joy of the occasion, however, is undercut by Kim’s turbulent behavior and some old wounds between family members that will not heal. Demme’s movie provides one of the most unique experiences you will ever have in the theatre.

2. Synecdoche, New York
Not for the faint of heart. Phillip Seymour Hoffman plays a middle-aged theatre director who wants to do something meaningful with his life. Having received a large fellowship, he decides to create a massive theatre piece closely simulating his own life. Charlie Kauffman, screenwriter of such wildly-creative movies as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Adaptation, directs the most controversial movie of the year. Some love it, some hate it, and some are just deeply confused by it. I can’t say that I understood every last frame of the movie. But, I can say it was probably the single greatest theatrical experience I had this year. We live in a culture that is generally uncomfortable with ambiguity and complexity. Kauffman’s film is refreshingly comfortable with living in the gray areas of human existence. Synecdoche also has the distinction of being the only film this year that made me cry.

1. Paranoid Park
Gus Van Sant’s arty film about a Portland teenage skateboarder who accidently kills a security guard is the movie that came closest to reaching the sublimity of last year’s favorite No Country for Old Men. There is something incredibly real about the way that Van Sant depicts the teenage community in Oregon. Paranoid Park could serve as a manual on how to take a simple story and turn it into a fascinating and creative work of art. Long close-ups of Alex, the film’s troubled 16-year-old protagonist are juxtaposed with languid shots of teenagers gliding adroitly through the air on skateboards. While Van Sant’s other 2008 movie, the more recognized Academy-Award nominated Milk, tells the audience what they should be feeling in every frame, the more sublte Paranoid Park is comfortable with allowing the audience to respond to the haunting images before them on their own terms.

Biggest Disappointments of the Year:
Following are the five films of 2008 that most disappointed me. These are not the worst films of the year. Rather, they are the films that let me down the most, based upon my expectations going in.

5. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
David Fincher’s Academy-Award nominated movie is not bad by any stretch of the imagination. However, it is not the profound artistic statement that many make it out to be (and that the film itself tries to convince us it is). Fincher’s Zodiac was one of the true masterpieces of last year and I am more than confident that the great director will make an artistic comeback with his next movie.

4. Gran Torino
Clint Eastwood is still a force to be reckoned with at his advanced age. His performance in Gran Torino has all the force of a high-speed freight train. Unfortunately, nobody else in the movie can act and the script sounds like it was written by a politically incorrect creative writing student.

3. Burn After Reading
Last year’s No Country for Old Men haunted me for months. The Coens’ latest effort, Burn After Reading was disappointing. I could not relate to or sympathize with any of the characters. Therefore, I had no way of caring about what happened to them. I admire the Coens for constantly expanding their artistic horizons. It’s perfectly okay for them to overstep their boundaries on occasion. Now I hope they get back to making good movies.

2. The Reader
Other than the bold lead performances, especially by Kate Winslet, I quite despised this critically-acclaimed film. The first and second halves of the film have apparently nothing to do with one another. The movie pretends to be deeply profound in exploring Germany’s post-Hitler angst. However, I didn’t feel one moment of pain, joy, sympathy, or anything else in this vapid piece of shameless Oscar bait.

1. The Happening
What’s happening in this movie? I’ve seen it and still have no idea. M. Night Shyamalan has truly gone off his rocker here. Mark Wahlberg reached truly new lows in this “thriller” as well. He should spend more time talking to animals and less time talking to Zooey Deschanel.

Omissions by Default
Even though I waited as long as I could to post my end-of-the-year list, there are still a plethora of 2008 films I haven’t caught up with yet. Here are a few films that didn’t appear on my list, simply because I haven’t seen them:

Changeling, Che, The Class, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Frozen River, My Winnipeg, Revolutionary Road, Trouble the Water, Waltz with Bashir, Wendy and Lucy