#OscarsSoWhat

Oscar nominations came out this week, and that means it’s time for everyone’s favorite parlor game: Reading the tea leaves of Hollywood’s swirling public relations crises in an attempt to discern which art film or bloated, sanctimonious preachfest the Academy will anoint to symbolically cleanse its sins this time. And with Harvey Weinstein, the continuing fallout of #OscarsSoWhite, and another hot-button controversy that’s left the awards show without a host, Hollywood has no shortage of sins these days.

So, with apologies to Bill Murray, I’m going to offer my handicapping services as an exclusive service to Popwell’s readers, despite the fact that I have yet to watch many of these films (if you’ve followed the Oscars over the years, you’re well aware that many Academy voters don’t watch the films before voting, either). Here’s a rundown of the eight best-picture hopefuls, in no particular order:

Roma — I tried watching this movie and could only last 10 minutes before surrendering to boredom and putting on something else. Then I felt guilty — was I being a typical xenophobic American with a short attention span? Was I being a reverse film snob, unwilling to sit still for anything that doesn’t assault my senses with an explosion or a dick joke every 5 minutes? But then I remembered that I’m a guy who actually LIKES black and white films, appreciates other cultures and has even been known to watch and enjoy an art film on occasion. So I went back and gave Roma another shot, only to find myself deposited right back into another long tracking shot of children running around a big house, followed by about 8 minutes of a woman silently washing dishes. I fell asleep and awoke to a scene depicting a naked man swinging around some kind of nun chuck, which wasn’t the only thing swinging around. Without a fast-forward button there’s no way in hell I would’ve finished this movie. I don’t want to sound too smug here, because Roma is indeed a genuine achievement in cinematography. Its depiction of Mexico City in the 1970s is stunning, and its portrait of childhood is lovingly and beautifully rendered. It’s still a chore to watch, though.

Vice —I was so excited when I heard about this project. Finally, I thought, millennials would see what a REAL evil presidency looks like. They even got Christian Bale to play Dick Cheney — an actor used to playing weird rich guys with unchecked powers. A Best Picture win would be an obvious partisan shot at Cheney and the Bushies, but one senses that liberal Hollywood has moved on to a new villain these days. As for Bale, he looked like a lock for Best Actor a month ago, but the smart money now’s on Rami Malek for Bohemian Rhapsody (more on that travesty later). Personally, I like Viggo Mortenson to snag the Oscar this year for Green Book.

Black Panther — The Academy was compelled to nominate this blockbuster… which proved once and for all that a superhero movie driven by a black cast can be just as trifling, dull, and obscenely profitable as one featuring a white cast.

The Favourite — This thing practically screams dark-horse winner. It’s got humor, costumes, and British accents: all catnip to Oscar voters. In fact, if The Favourite had been directed by some 60-year-old industry mainstay instead of a Yorgos-come lately known mainly for two offbeat Colin Ferrell vehicles, I’d have no problem boldly predicting an 11th-hour best-picture stunner in the manner of 1998’s Shakespeare in Love or 1981’s Chariots of Fire. As it is, it’ll have to settle for best-costume and best-supporting actress Oscars, and a slew of BAFTAs.

A Star is Born — An enormous success in every way — good reviews, good box office, awards nods, and plenty of cultural cachet (it’s got its own memes). But Bradley Cooper simply cannot win an Oscar for Best Picture when the Judy Garland/James Mason/George Cukor A Star is Born — the third of five Hollywood film versions of this timeless story and one of the greatest movies in Tinseltown history — was denied the top prize in favor of 1954’s On the Waterfront, a decent but somewhat overrated picture directed by a man who sold out his friends AND the First Amendment to Joe McCarthy (look it up, kids!) I think Cooper’s A Star is Born will have to settle for being this decade’s version of 1983’s Scarface – i.e., a remake that so enchants moviegoers, they completely forget (or never know in the first place) about the vastly superior original whose themes and flourishes are stripped whole-cloth into the new picture and presented as original artistic inspiration.

Bohemian Rhapsody — What a vile piece of business this film is. This was another project I was excited about before its true nature emerged. Brian May and Roger Taylor have never ceased squeezing every last penny out of Freddie Mercury’s genius, but I never begrudged them the rewards that come with the Queen name – they helped write the songs, and May is a decent guitar player. But when I started reading about how this film takes the story of Freddie Mercury in the gritty, let-it-all-hang-out 1970s and turns it into some kind of airbrushed homophobic morality tale, I searched my mind for a case of comparable betrayal and could only come up with Kobe Bryant trying to rat out Shaq to the Denver police to save his ass from a rape charge. But bandmates should be even closer than teammates. The art they give the world is the shared product of their combined blood, sweat, and tears, and it sure seems like May and Taylor are a little ashamed to have had their fluids commingling with such an unseemly libertine. If there’s justice in this world, May and Taylor will both choke on their awards-circuit shrimp cocktails and burn in hell, while Freddie sings with the angels.

BlackKKKlansman — This is being hailed as Spike Lee’s best picture in many years, which, OK, I guess. BlacKKKlansman tells the true story of a Colorado policeman who infiltrates the Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s along with his black partner. It’s a decent movie with no dull moments but few truly unforgettable ones either, expect for one sequence I’ll get to in a minute. It feels like a real stretch to nominate this movie for best picture. There’s little dramatic tension, nor are there any real character arcs. Adam Driver’s white detective has a brief moment of reckoning with his Jewishness while he’s spending time with the racists, but it’s not like he begins the movie in some sort of denial. He’s a good guy when the movie starts, and a slightly wiser one when it ends. Same for John David Washington’s Ron Stallworth, the real-life cop who masterminded this clever sting. I’m not sure why we need this picture in 2019. With the exception of the klan itself and the president of the United States, we’re all pretty much on the same page about these people, aren’t we? Lee tries tirelessly to tie this all in with current racial issues, including last year’s infamous events in Charlottesville. The real civics lesson, though, comes in the film’s best dramatic scene, as Lee toggles between a scene showing klan members hooting and laughing at a screening of 1916’s Birth of a Nation with an elderly civil rights leader’s remembrances of how the same film led to widespread murder and other terrorism from a revived KKK. It’s a great set piece, but the rest of the film mostly lacks this kind of urgency.

Green Book — “Driving Mr. Daisy” is now considered by many as the front-runner… and why not? The last time they made this picture was 1989, and it walked home with the top prize that year. Long before that, the Academy decided that 1967’s brainless treacle Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner belonged in the company of that year’s greatest achievements in film. I guess when you fuck up as badly as Birth of a Nation, you have to issue an NBA-style makeup call every 25 years or so.

AND THE WINNER IS… This year’s race is pretty tricky to handicap. The voting period is February 12-19, so there’s plenty of time for voters to change their minds more than once. The second thing to know is that the Academy’s voting membership saw a huge shift beginning in 2017 that will double the number of women and minority members by 2020. That shift was noticed immediately in 2017’s Best Picture upset for Moonlight over La La Land, and would seem to favor films that skew younger, bolder, more diverse and experimental over traditional, mainstream fare. After careful thought, I’ve concluded that this is a two-horse race between Roma and Green Book. As recently as two weeks ago, Roma looked like a lock. But one thing is giving me reservations, and it’s not the fact that this is a foreign-language film. Roma was distributed mainly on Netflix, and while this is likely the future of moviegoing, I’m not so sure the Academy is ready to dive in completely just yet. Also, my aunt Sandy LOVED Green Book, and besides being the coolest aunt in the world, I’ve always considered her a pretty solid cross-section of the American moviegoing public. So you heard it here first – Green Book wins best picture. Call it one last hurrah for the “How will it play in Peoria?” crowd, before the whole damn world goes the way of streams and memes.

Of the five best actor nominees, only Cooper plays a fictional character, and even Norman Maine has been portrayed on screen three times before. Is it really fair to compare what Bale does in Vice — or what Gary Oldman did in last year’s Darkest Hour — with the work of actors who must conjure up their characters from scratch? I don’t know the answer, I’ve never acted a day in my life, but awarding a best actor statue for playing Winston Churchill — a man whose voice has been heard and impersonated by the entire English-speaking world for a good 75 years — seems a bit like giving a best-song Grammy to a really good cover version of someone else’s tune.

As for Best Actress, this is one of those years when the Academy finds itself giving a long-overdue statue to someone who’s been nominated and passed over many times in the past. This time it’s Glenn Close, nominated for something called The Wife. Has anyone seen this movie? Is Close any good in it?  Doesn’t matter. She’s been acting in “serious” Hollywood films for decades, she’s never won before and she’s never whined about it. The Academy loves a good sport!

Comedian Bo Burnham’s film about a 13-year-old girl navigating the transition between eighth grade and her first year of high school in suburban New York is pitch-perfect, with young Elsie Kate Fisher anchoring a stellar cast. I hate coming-of-age movies, and I’m not the biggest fan of Burnham’s comedy, but I LOVED this film, so that should give you some idea of how good it is.

Not surprised that the Academy declined to nominate a horror film (even one that could stand alone as a great family drama), but the omission of Toni Collette in the Best Actress category is an unacceptable slap in the face to common sense. Her performance as a broken daughter, wife and mother trapped in a cycle of vicious family dysfunction is raw and wondrous, some of the best acting I’ve seen on a movie screen in years.

Director Damien Chazelle’s follow-up to La La Land, this Neil Armstrong biopic looked like an absolute lock for a Best Picture nomination at the very least… until it got snared in the biggest controversy of 2018. Turns out the film’s climactic moon-landing scene was a total fake. The whole thing was filmed on a sound stage!