Best Picture 2012

So after finally starting to get caught up with the current awards, I've noticed that there seems to be a lack of diversity for the films among the different acting/picture groups. Watching Supporting Actress and Actor almost finishes up all the different films I need to see. It's like the Academy is not looking at anything else besides the 9 or so films that get nominated for Best Picture. Of course, there are more films nominated instead of the 5 we had for so long, but it just seems all those smaller performances aren't getting seen. I dunno but 2013 gets even worse from what I can tell. I'd have to look at 2014 again but that trend needs to stop. I want more diversity in the number of films that get nominated. Anyway, on to this year's group.

2012 Best Picture

Argo

Argo is a crowdpleaser. Depending on who you ask, that can be a good or bad thing. Usually when it comes to Oscar it's a bad thing, especially if the crowdpleaser is a winner. I'm surprised they haven't actually made or tried to make the actual Argo movie because I'm sure there would be lots of interest, no matter how bad it might be! One of the main reasons I personally think Argo won here, is because it's one of the biggest representations of Hollywood helping out the world. So it winning is basically Hollywood or Oscar patting itself on the back. Let's be for real, Oscar loves rewarding itself, especially lately! So no doubt a movie about Hollywood saving some Americans from Iran in the 80s would get enough votes for Best Picture. Throw in the whole Ben Affleck not being nominated for Best Director controversy and there are plenty of reasons why people wanted Argo to win. Argo is decent at raising the tension for some of it's crucial scenes. The thing is we all know that things came out alright and those little bits of tension aren't enough to sustain the film for me. It's an easily likable crowdpleaser, like I said, but it's a little too safe. There's a couple brief scenes with the Canadian residence housemaid (who is Iranian) or whatever where she lies to the Iranian authorities about there being any other people in the home and you're not sure if she's gonna tell or not. More of those moments that involve the sacrifice of the Iranians to help this escape go down would have been great. Instead we do get a bit of rah rah Americans are great showcase. And while Argo is a satisfying film to watch and isn't a bad choice for a nominee, it just lacks that certain something that makes it a winner. There's a couple other films in this group that are frankly way better than this one. Even just a couple years later, I still don't think it holds up all that well as a winner. To me, it's just an uninspiring pat on the back for Oscar.

Amour

I was dreading having to watch this one again. A 2 plus hour French movie about old people dying - exciting! I know that's simplifying it way too much but honestly that's what sticks out when thinking about having to watch it again. This was the last film I watched prior to the Oscar ceremony that year. I finished it during the second commercial break so that I could say that I'd seen all the nominees prior to the awards being given out. So part of me was wondering if I gave this Palme d'Or winner a legit chance. It was widely praised and will most likely be one of those films on best of all time lists that have a ton of foreign films (which I do like!) you've never seen or heard of, so I should at least give it a real chance. I guess I didn't appreciate it before, but I really quite like the static shots that watch the lives of the characters play out from across the room for a few minutes or so without cutting or moving the camera. It makes the film feel really intimate and like you're a part of these peoples' lives. Plus, it's just nice to watch something that doesn't have a million jump cuts and angles trying to make up for a lack of plot. Amour is very real and awkward at times and I think that's part of the great love many people have for it - it shows life as it is, warts and all. But at times it does feel insincere. The couple seem selfish in their own ways, Georges for not wanting to have his daughter around to see her mother and Anne for giving up on life. It does feel a little on the extremes at times but overall it works. The acting is natural and the leads are definitely compelling. While this style could be cold and clinical it's nice that it manages to include the humane touch, as well. Is it something I want to watch again? No, especially not after a long day at work and this is what is awaiting me. It's a film to see and say you saw and appreciate it.

Beasts of the Southern Wild

This film can be a little tough to follow. I had to read the wikipedia entry to make sense of it and that was while watching it for the second time. This film exploded onto the scene after winning Sundance and just stayed in the collective conscious of the voters for the rest of year - something most Sundance films don't do. Normally they lose steam and fade by the time summer rolls around all the big Hollywood movies start coming out and then we start getting the Oscar films after that. Kudos to Beasts, I guess, but I still don't find what everyone thought was so compelling about it. I know Wallis was well liked but I thought the acting showed just how amateur it actually was. The metaphors and deeper meaning stuff was something that was uninteresting to me. I didn't care about any of that and critics seemed to latch onto it in treating it as something more important than it really was. Overall, I simply found the film to be boring. The first time I was interested because of all the hype and I wanted to see exactly what everyone saw in it to keep it alive through awards season and get it nominated. The second time was even worse because I knew what I was getting myself into. I guess some films just really speak to some people and some films don't. This one certainly doesn't speak to me on any level. The positive is that southern Louisiana does look pretty great and I kinda dig the direction style. It gives an otherwise boring film some energy and does it's best to keep me into it. The nomination is its own reward and this film got plenty of rewards I'm not sure it should have.

Django Unchained

There's an awful lot to like about this Tarantino film, which ticks off all the usual great things about Tarantino films. It has fantastic musical choices. From the theme song which is from another movie but fits well here to all the other music used, it's one of the the typical highlights of Tarantino films. There's always one song that is instantly recognizable as being from his films. His dedication to the old techniques with using film instead of digital and his use of certain aspect ratios really do pay off in the end product. They may not be as noticeable to everyone but they sure do make for a very, very pretty film. Tarantino also is able to capture so many great looking locations, scenes, and compositions that watching his films is a visual treat. Even if you don't like the violence or blood or whatever, you can't say his films don't look good. And as usual, Tarantino gets great performances out of everyone, including all the random cameos in this. You can tell people want to come be a part of his films so they bring their A game and have fun while doing so which translates to the scenes. The writing and dialogue are of course top notch and very fun. He makes some scene crackle with his words and watching them unfold is just a lot of pure cinematic entertainment. He is absolutely an auteur. Where he stumbles, and ultimately where this film fails, is that Django is just way too damn long. It's about 30 minutes too long and unfortunately it seems that auteurs seem to make more and more bloated films as they get more respect and age in years and there is no one to reign them in or to at least say no to them. This film is almost 3 hours long and there's no reason it should be. The ending is so convoluted and tacked on that if you end it much earlier, you might be talking about Tarantino's first Best Picture win. Sadly, we get a film that enjoys the excess which includes a lot of needless shit at the end. There is no doubt if this was better edited and trimmed down, this would possibly be considered his best which would be high praise. Unfortunately we are only left with what could have been for what is a really good film.

Les Miserables

Now this is a pretty good musical, although it does have it's faults. It must be pretty hard to make a movie version of Les Mis because it's so beloved and well known by most people. You have to live up to everyone's expectation of what Les Mis is and ought to be. As much as I didn't like his Best Picture win for The King's Speech, Tom Hooper delivers a pretty good movie here. Hugh Jackman was a great choice as was Samantha Barks. The rest of the cast was alright and did their parts nobly but those two stood out head and shoulders above everyone else. Much was made about how the actors sang live on film instead of recording it later and it getting dubbed in, which is frankly an amazing an admirable thing. That could have been absolutely disastrous. Instead it really works for the movie and we get those raw songs and performances like Jackman's in the beginning of the movie. Much is to be said about capturing the realness of the emotions especially in a musical because it gives it such a genuine quality. There was a lot said also about how Hooper used a lot of extreme close up when the actors were singing. To me, that concept was hit and miss. There are times when it really works and adds to the intensity of the performances and makes the songs hit that much harder. Yet there are other times where it just gets annoying and awkward. I'm just impressed that such an epic musical was done in such a reverential but also original way. That's pretty key to a successful movie and musical. Add something new to Les Mis because we sure have seen a whole bunch of iterations of it through the years. It keeps it fresh and really made for an entertaining watch right to the end, well, mostly to the end. I think that it starts to putter out after the big battle scenes and gets stretched a little thin there. But as a whole, Les Mis is really well done and I can't find much to hate on. I've grown to love musicals more and more as I've grown up thanks to ex-girlfriends and this one ranks right up there for me just based on effort and execution alone.

Life of Pi

Every time I watch Life of Pi, I get so happy and hopeful. It's a very uplifting film and is how a feel good movie should be done. It never talks down to it's viewer and has a nice earnestness to it. The story it tells is quite something. It's fantastical but doesn't ever feel too unbelievable. I think that's due a bit to the acting and the storyteller and Ang Lee's dedication to the whole concept. It's also a very spiritual film. It absolutely talks about a higher power and believing in something. It's message is easy to digest but also not over the top which makes it not annoying. Basically when I watch it I feel better as a person, like I can do anything and help out others. There are other mediums that do the same thing for me like the book Siddhartha, I read it and want to change the world. I think that's why I like the film so much is that it makes me feel so good inside. It also has some absolutely incredible special effects. The tiger is mostly CGI and you cannot tell the difference between a real tiger and the CGI one, it's that good. All the animals and probably most of the ocean scenes are effects but it doesn't detract from the story instead adding to it and making it so much better. The film itself is also buoyed by the one man show of Suraj Sharma. He is amazing and does what many actors can't do - and that's carry a film by themselves. It's sad that he's an Indian kid because he should have been among the leading actor nominees. He was the perfect choice for Pi and really helped elevate the film. Also, I wanted to give a shout out to Irrfan Khan who is the grown up Pi who tells the tale because he is a really talented actor. I just really like him. Anyway, Life of Pi is a great, well done feel good movie that expertly uses CGI to tell a really interesting story.

Lincoln

Lincoln started out making me almost puke in my mouth. It starts off with two black soldiers who are joined by two white soldiers who start reciting the Gettysburg Address to Lincoln himself and I thought for sure we would get some sanctimonious Spielberg bullshit but thankfully that didn't happen. What we get is legitimately one of Spielberg's best works and he's made some great films. It tells of Lincoln's attempt to get the 13th Amendment passed. It's easy for your film to look good when your actor gives one of the best performances I've ever seen. When that man is Lincoln everything else is just relative. This film has so many good cameos and supporting turns. Yeah, Tommy Lee Jones is good but the triplet line of John Hawkes, Tim Blake Nelson, and especially James Spader are fantastic. Spader should be a national treasure but that's a different discussion. Lincoln offers up an intimate look at the President and excels at showing those moments when he's most human: telling a joke, interacting with a citizen, talking to his wife, or getting angry at his Cabinet. Spielberg's success is staying unobtrusive in those moments and not making everything so neatly wrapped up or manipulatively saccharine. He just lets things unfold and allows DDL to carry the scene and film. I also like that Lincoln didn't cover his whole life or whole presidency because that's just too much. Focusing on this one thing with everything else as a backdrop was incredibly smart. It allows for so much more focus and intensity without compromising huge swaths of time. It's a great looking film, with great acting, covering a great man. What more could you ask for? 

Silver Linings Playbook

Just like some of the other films this year, I'm kinda burnt out when it comes to writing about the film itself. Having 3 or 4 acting nominees and writing about all of them can really drain you! I feel like I've got nothing left to say by the time I get to Best Picture. I'm thinking I might keep some of these short for that reason or I'll never finish this year. I never understood the hype this film got and definitely didn't understand all the Oscar love it got with all the nominations. To me, it's just an alright film. I wasn't a big fan of Lawrence or the supporting players, but I did like Cooper. I thought it bringing mental illness into the public eye was a good thing. Though, many criticized it as being too flippant with the subject. I disagree because mental illness films can get bogged down in showing just how crazy people can be and this focused on Cooper trying to overcome his illness in a measured way and dealing with it in an adult way. There were some silly moments that didn't seem to vibe with the rest of the story and the big dance at the end was very anti-climactic and rushed to me. I like to see more mature dramedies like this because that's a very under served genre but I don't think SLP holds up very well under scrutiny. That's why I think it's just alright and not the amazing film people seemed to think it was. Not a film I'll come back to very much or at all.

Zero Dark Thirty

I love watching this film. I mean absolutely love it. Once I start, I can't stop and that's a sign of a great film to me. This is my clear cut winner for this group and with The Master would offer up an awesome 1-2 punch, in either order (my two favorites). It really is hard to believe even just a couple years later that this amazing work of art was beaten by Argo. This film does everything Argo wants and tries to do a million times better. The tension is palpable. The characters, especially Chastain's Maya, are phenomenal. The story is more interesting, though the conceit of Argo is pretty fantastic. The visuals and action and tone and importance are all far beyond anything Argo can muster. Argo won because it's about Hollywood and because everyone wanted Affleck to win after his Directing snub. Part of it too might be that Kathryn Bigelow already had a war movie win Best Picture very recently and the Academy didn't want to go back to that well. ZDT, however, is a way better film overall than The Hurt Locker which unfortunately devolved into a bullshit fantasy of what the writer thought being a soldier was like. This film is a complete film unlike her winner and that was all due to a stroke of luck. Bin Laden was killed during the making of the film or at least right before filming began. So I think that's why the film almost works as two different movies. The first is the hunt for information and the grueling, slow pace at which our top intel people try to find UBL. It's this really jarring and sobering look behind the curtain at just how much work and pain and work and frustration and work and effort goes in to finding UBL and what actually goes on in the intel world. It's not all Jason Bourne type stuff with super satellites and immediate info and pictures and all that. I worked as an intel analyst just like Maya when I was in Afghanistan (obviously nowhere near the same level though) and it's a very unsexy job. Lot's of miscommunication and dead ends and too much information to sift through and no one listening to your ideas and superiors wanting results even though that means a ton of work to be done by a few people. That's part of the reason I love this film so much, is that to me it's an accurate representation of what intel gathering and analyzing is actually like. It's a lot of hard work done by some very dedicated people. That film right there is already compelling enough, even if it ended with Maya not finding UBL and still looking. That dedication and frustration is something easily relatable to, almost universal. The second part is the assault on UBL's compound and makes for some of the best war film action scenes ever. Even if the beginning doesn't much interest you, that last hour is some of the most engrossing cinema I've ever seen. It grabs you by the throat and doesn't let go for an hour and it's completely exhilarating. It introduces a couple even more intriguing characters in the SEAL guys and doesn't skip a beat going from the first part to the second. The two could come off as being very disparate but they work in tandem and tell a story that deserves to be told in that way. The hunt and then the kill. Bigelow makes a very primal film at it's core but also a film that embraces a strong female lead without hitting us over the head that she's a female. There's so many good things I could keep saying about this film but I just want it to be known I love it. This is definitely one of the best American films ever.

 

The Master would have been my winner if I wrote this right around the time of the ceremony. That film was intoxicating to me and still is. It's going to be remembered as one of those great films when we look back in a few years and it makes all these lists and we wonder why the fuck Argo won and this wasn't even nominated. Makes no sense to me, especially with Beasts on this list. But since one of my favorites wasn't even included what should win from this group? That's an easy answer: Zero Dark Thirty. Which after watching it again makes me want to rank above even The Master! I think that's a case of whichever one I've seen last gets the nod. Can't really go wrong with either one, though. From there, Lincoln is an easy second on the strength of DDL's performance alone. Throw in the fact that it's one of Spielberg's best films along with Munich since Saving Private Ryan, well that's a no brainer. Life of Pi is so inspiring and such a wonderful story and a visual treat that it makes for a close third. Then we get into the more flawed films like Les Mis which has some bad singing and goes on a bit too long followed by Django which loses lots of points for it's awful last 30 minutes. Finally we get to the Oscar winner in Argo, which is just meh followed by more meh in SLP followed by a film that's obviously great for critics and best of lists but one I don't want to watch again in Amour followed by the film that doesn't belong Beasts. The top half is a very strong group and if The Master was included this would have been a nice 10 nominees. Alas, it wasn't and this year gets weighed down by the bottom few.

Oscar Winner: Argo
My Winner:  Zero Dark Thirty
Lincoln
Life of Pi
Les Miserables
Django Unchained
Argo
Silver Linings Playbook
Amour
Beasts of the Southern Wild