Evaluating the nominees

For the films of 2019
Post Reply
danfrank
Assistant
Posts: 908
Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 2:19 pm
Location: Fair Play, CA

Re: Evaluating the nominees

Post by danfrank »

I don’t know, Uri, but I think perhaps you’re going a bit soft. I can’t remember the last time you gave out four As in one year! I always love reading your point of view.
mlrg
Associate
Posts: 1747
Joined: Tue Dec 07, 2004 11:19 am
Location: Lisbon, Portugal

Re: Evaluating the nominees

Post by mlrg »

Uri wrote: 4. Todd Phillips – D. Take whatever I said about Bong Joon Ho and reverse it.
So Todd Phillips is Ken Loach for you :D
Big Magilla
Site Admin
Posts: 19319
Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 3:22 pm
Location: Jersey Shore

Re: Evaluating the nominees

Post by Big Magilla »

Yes, it was a better year than most with all nine nominees plus The Two Popes, Pain and Glory, The Lighthouse and The Last Back Man in San Francisco making a baker's dozen better than any year this century with more films from 2019 that I'm still in the process of discovering.
Mister Tee
Tenured Laureate
Posts: 8637
Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 2:57 pm
Location: NYC
Contact:

Re: Evaluating the nominees

Post by Mister Tee »

As usual, you grade way tougher than I. I'll stick by my contention that this has been a solid year, especially at the top, and your grades don't reflect that. And I think you (like too many) are flat wrong about The Irishman.

But I always love reading this entry, as well as other things you post. It seems like the board is withering from both ends -- people departing because they're offended, others gone because they demand the right to offend. The center cannot hold, indeed. I lament losing any of you.
Uri
Adjunct
Posts: 1230
Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 11:37 pm
Location: Israel

Evaluating the nominees

Post by Uri »

Posting my traditional evaluation this year feels kind of like taking my finale bow on the stage of this board. I wish I could say I do it solely as a bravura gesture in the name of free speech, but I’m afraid I’m suffering material fatigue, my passion is not as it used to be. I will be hanging around here, I may be posting occasionally, but at least for the time being, I won’t consider myself an active member of this group.

My rating: A- the ultimate best of the year, B- very good, would make a decent, worthy winner, C- a nomination should suffice, D- not necessarily bad, but not award material, F- a failure.

Best Picture
1. Parasite – A/not ranked. Another year, another “foreign” film about upper middle-class family and the issues they have with the help. No wonder the Academy relates. At least this one is much, much better than the one they had last year. And so much better than the other on this list. And it is one in which architecture takes a central place, so I feel obliged to be biased.
2. Marriage Story – C. Kramer vs. Kramer was good since it was taking side(s, it was mostly Ted’s, but also Joanna’s). It allowed itself to be committed, even biased, and the result was a true emotional impact. Although it’s obviously biased, being a product of the time we live in, MS tries so hard to be fair it ends up half there. It’s decent enough, but limited. Hardly earth shattering.
3. Little Women – C. As far as I’m concerned, the jury is still out. I get that the look and feel of a Hallmark card it has about it is a comment about the contrived nature of the way women are supposed to be represented in both Life and Art, but I’m not sure the nature of the comment is not contrived in itself.
4. Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood – C. Admittedly, I was entertained. Not that it’s not self-indulging and self-congratulatory, as one would expect, but it does have this lazy nice summer evening feeling about it and benefits enormously from a smashing leading performance right in the center of it.
5. The Irishman – D. When I was 50, I realized something I should have at 5 – other people are different from me. Still I think – people don’t really like The Irishman, do they? Ok, at least Academy members don’t. Otherwise they would have nominated De Niro, who is the film, yet they didn’t. This film is this big whale washed ashore, lying there gasping for air. Impressive whale, but still.
6. Ford v Ferrari – D. I didn’t relate to this one, though it moves swiftly enough, I guess. Sorry for that.
7. Joker – D. Scorsese’s take on Metropolis angst evolved on the streets. Phillips’ evolved watching Scorsese’s films. The result, I’m afraid, is more Oakland than Gotham.
8. Jojo Rabbit – D. Life is Beautiful, told from the boy’s point of view. I was not amused the first time, nor am I amused now.
9. 1917 – F. My initial reaction, while watching it was: “oh, it’s a video game”. Then, after contemplating, my take is it’s an over sentimentalized, over romanticized, reactionary, Brexit embracing FACKING VIDEO GAME.

Best Director
1. Bong Joon Ho – A/not ranked. He is trendy. His approach to film making is stylistic. He is in no way a Ken Loach. Yet he has something to say about the world and not only about Cinema. How odd.
2. Quentin Tarantino – C. He is practically a full-fledged Israeli (or at least Tel-Avivi) now, I’m afraid it’s against our newly legislated Nation-State Law to defame him.
3. Martin Scorsese – D. The only film of his I truly enjoyed in the last 25 years was The Wolf of Wall Street – it had an inner drive. With other films, I fear, his scholastic approach to Cinema won over his intuitive, primal artistic drive.
4. Todd Phillips – D. Take whatever I said about Bong Joon Ho and reverse it.
5. Sam Mendes – D. Maybe it has something to do with him being initially considered a theater director, this need to prove he mastered the art of fil making or something, but this is as vacant a display of artistry as they come.

Best Actor
1. Antonio Banderas – A/not ranked. I’m not a fan of the International-Icon-Lifetime-Achievement lone nomination the academy throws pitifully every once in a while. At least, unlike the ones they gave to von Sydow (what other nomination? It never happened), Deneuve or even Huppert, this time a major performance is being recognized. But where were they when he was equally as good in The Skin I live In or even Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!?
2. Adam Driver – B. A fine, well measured performance by a potentially great actor, not hampered by the middling film it’s in.
3. Joaquin Phoenix – C. An extravagant performance by a well proved great actor. It’s the film it’s in that humpers it. (But who cares, if that’s what it takes to get him the Oscar he should have had long ago, I’m fine with it).
4. Leonardo DiCaprio – D. And no, I wasn’t referring to him when I was using the word smashing – the scene when the little girl was admiring his acting skills was a parody, you know. He’s serviceable playing a spoiled star, but I’m still having problems accepting him as a he-man (my problem is with the man, not the he).
5. Jonathan Price – D. It seems every year I have this I’m-sure-in-a-better-film-they-would-have-been-fine/great spot. I’m happy he is finally a nominee – some would say at least 34 years too late, and his casting was spot on (ignoring he’s way too British, but it didn’t stop them with Miss Saigon, so why now), but I’m afraid it’s a somewhat wishy-washy performance in a totally wishy-washy film.

Best Actress
1. Saoirse Ronan – C. She’s not as iconic as Hepburn was, but she is better than Ryder (hopefully, no one thinks Allison is in the run). A good actress.
2. Scarlet Johansson – C. I hate when people say an actor is just playing him or herself, and I’m sure she is nothing like Nicole, but I’m afraid I was kind of thinking it, even degrading myself into contemplating the pathetic it’s-not-a-stretch notion. She is fine.
3. Renée Zellweger -C. I completed my Oscar viewing today with this one, and boy, it was quite a chore, since I had to recreate the performance I was watching while I was watching it. With every song I had an alternative track played in my head, every line, every gesture, as if I was using some kind of augmented reality device, needed to be alternated so it sounded and looked like the real thing. Garland is a tough one, and Zellweger was doing reasonably fine as a platform to evoke a (conditioned) emotional reaction, but her performance doesn’t stand on its own. She is at her best playing characters which are delusional and/or manipulative and it would have work just fine here, but they were too cautious to interfere with the legend, I guess.
4. Charlize Theron – D. A willing self-compliance sexualized and objectified female actor playing, irony free, a willing self-compliance sexualized and objectified female media person. An efficient turn by this generic, average Great Beauty and generic, average Great Actress.
5. Cynthia Erivo – D/not ranked, for political reasons. Judged by my normal standards, her performance, as well as the film it’s in, are not good – predictable, simplistic, preachy and so on. I guess it should be looked at as a kind of a spiritual or something, but as such, it’s just not rousing enough and her turn is just, well, flat.

Best Supporting Actor
1. Joe Pesci – A. The raison d’etre for enduring this film is this revelatory turn. He had a strong screen presence before, but he usually operated on a rather limited, familiar canvas, I didn’t necessarily recognize it as great acting. Here he’s masterfully exploring a totally different aspect of human realm. Chapeau.
2. Brad Pitt – B/not ranked – talk about category fraud. No one is better than him nowadays, onscreen or off, at presenting the world with some Star charisma, and he does it here with ease, grace and style. And he is the film – everything else is there to serve his character, including DiCaprio. But in a town where an onscreen black cabby would always be considered supporting while a recording star tagged a lead, an actor playing a star is a lead and the one playing the person who enables this stardom is supporting. A narcissistic state of mind in all its glory.
3. Al Pacino – C. At least, unlike De Niro’s, his is quite an energetic turn, alas – like other great actors with distinctive personalities, such as Maggie Smith or Jack Nicholson, he’s at a stage of his career he’s confined to giving an Al-Pacino’s-routine. It may be entertaining, but it’s not a real, full-fledged characterization.
4. Anthony Hopkins – D. When portraying a real-life character, an actor is not really supposed to “be” that character, but to offer us an acceptable version of it. There was nothing about him here which suggested even a remote relation to Pope Benedict. It comes off as a pr, fairy-tale version aimed at whitewashing his image.

Hank’s film was supposed to open here, but it seems it was pulled off – maybe the fact Mr. Rogers is totally a non-entity in Israel has something to do with this decision – but I’m happy he’s nominated. He’s a very good actor who’s been ignored too many times in the past two decades.

Best Supporting Actress
1. Kathy Bates – B. She has two things going for her. First – her film is better than probably eight of the nine nominated this year. Second – she is such a fine actress who brings enormous amount of pure humanity to the screen, and here this is what her performance is all about – a pure yet perfectly controlled dose of emotion.
2. Florence Pugh – C. She doesn’t fully fit into the contemporary fabric of the piece – which is the source of both the pros and the cons, when it comes to the success of her turn here. It certainly makes Amy a standout – in the family and in the film. She most certainly has a very strong presence on screen.
3. Laura Dern – C. It’s the Beatrice Straight (and Gloria Graham) factor – they know this woman, she rings true to them, they give her an Oscar. It’s a perfectly fine performance by a good actress. It’s not the second coming.
4. Margo Robbie – D. It’s a narrative device she’s been asked to play, not a character. It works as such, but not added to much more.
5. Scarlet Johansson – D. An anachronistic saint and martyr, seen through the eyes of an adoring toddler. What’s not to like?
Post Reply

Return to “92nd Academy Awards”