It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything on here, so I figured the best time to do so would be for the upcoming Academy Awards. This might seem a little rushed but the Oscars are two weeks earlier than last year, so there’s less time to really dive into them this year. Just to give a recap on my 2019 movie viewing, I actually ended up seeing more total at the theater than in 2018, but fewer individual titles. In 2018, I had seen 220 unique titles in the theater for a total of exactly 400 visits, but 2019 had 401 total visits amongst 206 unique titles. These were all in the theater, so just like last year with Roma, that means I have not seen either The Irishman (10 nominations) or Marriage Story (6 nominations). Enough about me though, on to the main categories.
Best Live Action Short Film is a category that I just started to be able to see the nominees last year. These films range from what country submits them. Brotherhood is from a combination of Canada, Tunisia, Qatar, and Sweden. This film shows how tensions can flare within an Arabic family when the son returns married, unknown to his parents, and they believe that he has joined ISIS. Nefta Football Club is submitted by France and shows the true innocence of children. These kids are playing soccer when two of them notice a donkey with headphones on its ears and bags containing a “white powder” on its back. We as adults know what this is but the children use it for something much better. The Neighbors’ Window is a submission from the USA that has similarities to Hitchcock’s classic Rear Window. A family (husband, pregnant wife, children) sees a new neighbor move in across the street, but this neighbor doesn’t exactly use curtains, so this family is able to watch everything they do from their apartment in NYC. Saria is a truly heartbreaking true story of the events leading up to the fire at the female orphanage Virgen de La Asuncion Safe Home in Guatemala. This fire would claim the lives of 41 young girls, aged 14 to 17, who suffered through physical abuse daily at this orphanage to begin with. A Sister, from Belgium, is one of those films and stories that stays with you long after seeing it. Alie is being driven home by someone that she’s not exactly that familiar with, but she has to call “her sister” on the drive. Personally, I would rank these (best to worst) as: A Sister, Saria, The Neighbors’ Window, Nefta Football Club, and Brotherhood.
Best International Feature Film used to be called Best Foreign Language Film. In previous years, seeing movies in a different language at the theater was not a common occurrence for me. I used to say the same thing about documentaries as well but 2018 saw me start to venture into uncommon territory by seeing 4 different documentaries (RBG, Won’t You Be My Neighbor, Whitney, and Fahrenheit 11/9), including my first time seeing one twice. Now in 2019, as far as international features go, I was able to attend viewings of Everybody Knows, Climax (my first time seeing one twice), Pain and Glory, and Parasite (which I’ve seen four times so far, but we’ll get into that later). The nominees are Corpus Christi (Poland), Honeyland (North Macedonia), Les Misérables (France), Pain and Glory (Spain), and Parasite (South Korea). I obviously can’t say anything about the first three since I haven’t seen them (Honeyland has a unique distinction to also be nominated in the Best Documentary Feature category). Pain and Glory is wonderfully acted by Antonio Banderas (who is also nominated for Best Actor for his performance here) as Salvador Mallo in a story about a director in his decline told by legendary director Pedro Almodóvar. This film also stars Penelope Cruz as the mother to Mallo, but told in flashbacks, if there was any question as to how that could work. Parasite is easily my pick for winning this award, but I won’t get into much detail about this film until the Best Picture category.
Best Adapted Screenplay has five nominees that were all in strong consideration by the Academy for Best Picture as well, and four of them were nominated there. Two of the nominees here (The Irishman and The Two Popes) had limited theatrical runs before jumping right onto Netflix, so I have not seen them yet since I prefer seeing movies the way they were originally intended to be. The other three nominees are Jojo Rabbit, Joker, and Little Women. Since these are all also Best Picture nominees, I’ll leave my details for that category. The ironic thing is that the only two of these five that were nominated at the Golden Globe Awards are the two that I have not seen. Jojo Rabbit would be my personal pick amongst these nominees though as actor/writer/director Taika Waititi is quickly becoming a strong force in Hollywood.
Best Original Screenplay, exactly like Best Adapted Screenplay, has five nominees that were considered for Best Picture, and again, four of them were nominated for that award. Marriage Story follows the same route as The Irishman and The Two Popes with being very limited in theaters before going to Netflix, so I have no say on this script. 1917 is an incredible story of pushing yourself when you need to accomplish something within a short amount of time, something so important that it will save lives, but might actually be the least of the other four nominees in this particular category. Knives Out is a modern day “whodunit”, along the lines of Clue from 1985, which has well written twists and turns all the way to the climactic ending. Parasite is an amazing story dedicated to focusing on the differences between classes, the rich and the poor. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is a fictional story based around many facts leading up to the Sharon Tate murder by the Charles Manson gang. Quentin Tarantino is a magnificent storyteller and doesn’t disappoint at all with his attention to detail in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which is why this is my pick to win this award.
All of the acting categories have pretty much been decided for a while now, as the same four actors have been winning awards practically across the board. Best Supporting Actress has a wide array of talent that includes a previous Oscar winner (Bates), two women that have each been nominationed in the past (Dern and Robbie), a long overdue first-time nominee (Johannson), and one of the biggest up-and-coming actresses in years (Pugh). Previous Best Actress Academy Award winner Kathy Bates (Misery) plays Barbara “Bobi” Jewell in Richard Jewell. She brings to the screen a performance that puts you in the shoes of Richard Jewell’s mother, who knows her son is innocent of all charges and accusations related to the bombing at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta during the 1996 Summer Olympics. This is Laura Dern’s third nomination, having previously been nominated for Rambling Rose (Best Actress, 1991) and Wild (Best Supporting Actress, 2014), but to be honest, everyone remembers her as Ellie in Jurassic Park. Laura Dern is nominated for Marriage Story, playing Nora Fanshaw, lawyer to Nicole Barber (played by fellow nominee Scarlett Johannson). Scarlett Johansson received not only her first nomination for these Academy Awards, but her first two (she’s also nominated for Best Actress in Marriage Story). In this category, she plays Rosie Betzler, the anti-Nazi German mother to Johannes “Jojo Rabbit” Betzler. Florence Pugh isn’t exactly brand new to acting but 2019 was definitely her breakout year. She started the year with February’s sleeper hit Fighting with My Family, then grabbed your attention in July’s controversial and divisive Midsommar, then closed out the year as Amy March in Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s world-renowned novel Little Women. Margot Robbie has become one of the most recognizable actresses out there, stemming from her turn alongside Leonardo DiCaprio in The Wolf of Wall Street only six years ago. She was nominated for Best Actress just two years ago as Tonya Harding in I, Tonya. Robbie had the unique distinction of being eligible for two different roles in the same category, as she could have also been nominated for playing Sharon Tate in Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. She ended up being nominated for her portrayal of the composite character Kayla Pospisil in Jay Roach’s Bombshell. To be brutally honest, my vote from the four of the five that I’ve seen would be for Robbie, with one scene between her and John Lithgow that is acted with such quiet intensity that you actually feel uncomfortable watching it being the deciding point, but Laura Dern has been the one winning everything so far in this category. Some performances that could have been nominated here include Ana de Armas (Knives Out), Jennifer Lopez (Hustlers), Scarlett Johannson (Avengers: Endgame), Kaitlyn Dever (Booksmart), Margot Robbie (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood), and Octavia Spencer (Luce).
Best Supporting Actor is a category that pits five screen legends up against each other, all of which have won an Oscar for acting previously except for one, which will change after this year’s awards. Tom Hanks is nominated for playing the iconic Fred Rogers in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. Hanks won Best Actor (1993, 1994) in back to back years for Philadelphia and Forrest Gump. The fact that Tom Hanks is nominated for the first time in 19 years, since Cast Away, is thoroughly astonishing. It’s not like he hasn’t given us amazing performances recently (Road to Perdition, Catch Me If You Can, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, Saving Mr. Banks, Captain Phillips, Bridge of Spies, Sully and The Post all went without a nomination), it’s just that his bar is set way too high for the Academy. The next three nominees are from two movies that I have not seen because of the Netflix conundrum. Sir Anthony Hopkins, who has previously won for playing Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lecter in Silence of the Lambs, is nominated for his portrayal of Pope Benedict XVI in The Two Popes. Just like Hanks, Hopkins has been in a nomination drought of sorts, no nominations since 1997’s Amistad. Al Pacino and Joe Pesci are both up for their respective performances as Jimmy Hoffa and Russell Bufalino in The Irishman. Pacino has a win under his belt for Best Actor in 1992’s Scent of a Woman, also the last time he has been nominated too. Pesci won in this category for 1990’s Goodfellas, and again, the last time he has been nominated for an Oscar. Brad Pitt is easily the actor with the most recent acting nomination in this field, with nominations for 2008’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and 2011’s Moneyball. Pitt does have an Academy Award on his mantle at home though, for his producing credit for 2013’s Best Picture winner 12 Years a Slave. Pitt has been winning countless awards for playing Cliff Booth, stunt double to actor Rick Dalton (played by Best Actor nominee Leonardo DiCaprio) in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Pitt’s whole body of work in this film will earn him this Oscar, but the final act just might be the best acting he has ever done. Some performances that could have but didn’t lead to nominations for Best Supporting Actor were Jamie Foxx (Just Mercy), Robert Downey Jr. (Avengers: Endgame), Chris Hemsworth (Avengers: Endgame), and Daniel Craig (Knives Out).
Best Actress is a category that had been looking like a two-woman race between Johansson and Zellweger as soon as about two months ago, until one of them started winning every award out there. Cynthia Erivo earned her first acting Oscar nomination this year for playing the title role of Harriet Tubman in Harriet. This could have been her second nomination as she was on my list of snubs last year for Supporting Actress for playing Belle in Widows. Scarlett Johansson is up for playing Nicole Barber, the wife in a divorce in Marriage Story. Again, this is the first year that Johansson has been nominated for an Academy Award, even though she has previously been nominated for Golden Globes for Lost in Translation, Girl with a Pearl Earring, A Love Song for Bobby Long, and Match Point, with only Match Point being for Supporting Actress. Saoirse Ronan earned her fourth nomination this year for diving into the character of Josephine “Jo” March in Little Women. Ronan has quickly become a bona fide young acting star, with this being her fourth nomination, third in five years, and she’s only 25 years old. She was previously nominated for Best Actress in 2015 for Brooklyn and 2017 for Lady Bird, with a Supporting Actress nomination back in 2007 for Atonement when she was only 13 years old. A previous winner of this award, Charlize Theron, takes on the task of playing Megyn Kelly, a journalist/attorney who became the face of Fox News and helped bring down noted sexual harasser CEO Roger Ailes. Theron won this award for playing famed serial killer Aileen Wuornos in 2003’s Monster and was also nominated two years later for North Country. Renée Zellweger is nominated for this award for the third time for playing the legendary Judy Garland in Judy. She has been nominated for this award in the past for 2001’s Bridget Jones’s Diary and 2002’s Chicago, but she has won before for Supporting Actress in 2003’s Cold Mountain. Zellweger has been sweeping all of the awards for this performance and the Academy Awards should be nothing different here. Some Best Actress snubs include Lupita Nyong’o (Us), Florence Pugh (Midsommar), Awkwafina (The Farewell),and Cate Blanchett (Where’d You Go Bernadette?).
Best Actor is eerily similar to Best Actress in that it had started to look like a two-man race between Driver and Phoenix until actual awards started to be announced. Antonio Banderas, who turns 60 this year, finally earned his first Oscar nomination for his performance as Salvador Mallo in Pain and Glory. Notable movies that Banderas has been in include Philadelphia, Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles, Desperado, Evita, The Mask of Zorro, Spy Kids, Frida, and the Shrek sequels which led to the spinoff movie Puss in Boots. Leonardo DiCaprio is nominated for his role as Rick Dalton, an actor on the decline from his leading status, in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. This is DiCaprio’s fifth acting nomination (sixth overall since he was also nominated for Best Picture as a producer for The Wolf of Wall Street) and his first since winning for The Revenant four years ago. He has also been nominated for Best Actor for 2004’s The Aviator, 2006’s Blood Diamond, and 2013’s The Wolf of Wall Street, with another nomination for Supporting Actor 26 years ago for What’s Eating Gilbert Grape back when he was first getting into feature films. DiCaprio is another actor like Hanks where he could have been nominated many more times than he has (The Basketball Diaries, Titanic, Gangs of New York, Catch Me If You Can, The Departed, Revolutionary Road, Shutter Island, Inception, J. Edgar, Django Unchained, and The Great Gatsby were all worthy for consideration). Adam Driver is up for playing Charlie Barber in Marriage Story, husband to Johansson’s Nicole Barber. Driver has been in some noteworthy movies before, but it wasn’t until his turn as Kylo Ren in Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens, the biggest domestic movie in terms of dollars of all-time, that he really started to get noticed in feature films. This is his second year in a row as an Oscar nominee, being nominated for Supporting Actor last year for BlacKkKlansman. Joaquin Phoenix has been winning countless awards for his performance as Arthur Fleck, who eventually turns into the famed villain Joker, in Joker. This is Phoenix’s third nomination for Best Actor, and fourth overall, having been nominated previously for 2012’s The Master and 2005’s Walk the Line, in addition to his Supporting Actor nomination for 2000’s Gladiator. Should Phoenix win this award, as fully expected, this would be the second win for the role of Joker with Heath Ledger winning Supporting Actor in The Dark Knight 11 years ago, posthumously. Jonathan Pryce has finally been recognized by the Academy with his first nomination at 72 years old. He plays Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who would succeed Hopkins’ Pope Benedict XVI as Pope Francis, in The Two Popes. Pryce has an acting career that has spanned almost 50 years now, but his most notable recent credits include playing Joe Castleman in 2018’s The Wife, opposite eventual Best Actress nominee Glenn Close, and his role as High Sparrow in 12 episodes of the critically acclaimed TV show Game of Thrones. Some amazing performances for Best Actor that didn’t equate to nominations include Adam Sandler (Uncut Gems), Taron Egerton (Rocketman), Christian Bale (Ford v Ferrari), Dev Patel (Hotel Mumbai), Kelvin Harrison (for both Luce and Waves), Daniel Kaluuya (Queen & Slim), Paul Walter Hauser (Richard Jewell), and Mark Ruffalo (Dark Waters).
Best Director has that assortment of “legends” and new nominees that this category truly deserves. Martin Scorsese is up for his epic The Irishman. This is his 9th nomination for Best Director, having previously been nominated for Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ, Goodfellas, Gangs of New York, The Aviator, The Departed (his only win), Hugo, and The Wolf of Wall Street. Todd Phillips, Joker, is nominated for Best Director for the first time, but is actually up for three awards this year, since he’s also a producer and writer of the film, putting him up for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay. Joker is really the first time Phillips ventured out of his comedy roots, having directing credits for Road Trip, Old School, The Hangover trilogy, Due Date, and War Dogs on his resume. Sam Mendes won Best Director 20 years ago for American Beauty, his only previous nomination at the Oscars, but like Phillips, is also up for Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay for his war film 1917. Mendes doesn’t take on too many projects, but when he does, he makes memorable movies, having been the director for Road to Perdition, Jarhead, Revolutionary Road, Skyfall, and Spectre too. Quentin Tarantino is that iconic director that you just expect to at least be nominated for anything he directs, writes, or produces. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is only his third time being nominated for Best Director, with Pulp Fiction and Inglorious Basterds, 10 and 25 years ago respectively, as his only others. Bong Joon-ho now has the distinction of being the first Asian filmmaker to be nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay for the same film. He’s looking to be the first Asian director to take home Best Director since Ang Lee, who has won twice for Brokeback Mountain (2005) and The Life of Pi (2012). This award is looking like Tarantino’s to win, an award that has eluded him in his career, since his only two Oscars have both been for Best Original Screenplay, Pulp Fiction (1994) and Django Unchained (2012). Five snubs for Best Director include three women, where unfortunately it is too rare that a woman gets nominated here: Greta Gerwig (Little Women), Melina Matsoukas (Queen & Slim), Olivia Wilde (Booksmart), Jordan Peele (Us), and Ari Aster (Midsommar).
Best Picture is obviously the award that everyone ultimately watches for. This award is always up for grabs between “up to ten” nominees. The Academy chose to nominate nine films this year. Ford v Ferrari is based on the true story of the events leading up to the 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans race in France, a prestigious 24 hour auto racing marathon. The Irishman follows a truck driver getting involved with a mobster and his crime family. Jojo Rabbit is a comedy-drama dealing with a young German boy who aspires to have Adolf Hitler as his best friend, while his mother is hiding and protecting a Jewish teen girl in their house. Joker is a new origin story of the villain, showing the progression of Arthur Fleck to Joker, dealing mostly with mental instability. Little Women is the iconic story by Louisa May Alcott about the coming of age of the March sisters. Marriage Story ironically is more about a divorce story. 1917 deals with a two man mission during WWI, where they have important information to call off a doomed attack that is actually a trap set up by German forces. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is a fictional account of events in 1969 that in reality ultimately lead up to the Manson Family murders of Sharon Tate and friends. Parasite is that film that can’t be put into a single genre. It’s somewhat indescribable without giving away important plot details, but it’s comedic, dramatic, and thrilling all in one. My pick for Best Picture is easily Parasite, the most complete movie that I’ve seen in such a long time.
Now if I had to rank the nine nominees, I would go with (keep in mind, The Irishman and Marriage Story I have not seen):
7. Ford v Ferrari
6. Little Women
5. Joker
4. Jojo Rabbit
3. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
2. 1917
1. Parasite
On the personal side, if I had to choose my nine best of 2019, I would rank them:
9. Bombshell
8. Joker
7. Jojo Rabbit
6. Midsommar
5. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
4. Hotel Mumbai
3. Waves
2. 1917
1. Parasite
As you can see, I would still keep five of the nine nominees, including the top two, but I would have still made some substitutions among the nominees.
Zackman at the Movies 