Three days ago the New York Film Critics Circle creamed over Carol, and now the Boston Online Film Critics Association has tumbled for Mad Max: Fury Road to the tune of five awards — Best Picture, Best Director (George Miller), Best Cinematography (John Seale), Best Editing (Margaret Sixel) and Best Original Score (Junkie XL). And Creed took two awards — Michael B. Jordan for Best Actor and Sylvester Stallone for Best Supporting Actor. Will this be a regional critics group trend for the next two or three weeks — to honor films that haven’t been heavily favored by the Gurus of Gold or Gold Derbyites, to deny Spotlight any Best Picture awards, to ignore The Revenant, to favor genre films about physical conflict, to celebrate Kristen Stewart‘s performance in a negligible Olivier Assayas film that peaked during the 2014 film-festival season? Other BOFCA honors: Best Actress — Brooklyn‘s Saiorse Ronan, Best supporting Actress — Kristen Stewart, Clouds of Sils Maria, Best Documentary — Amy, Best Animated Film — Inside Out.
A Carol cabal almost totally dominated the New York Film Critics Circle today, resulting in wins for Best Picture, Best Director (Todd Haynes), Best Screenplay (Phyllis Nagy) and Best Cinematography (Ed Lachman). We all love Carol & sincere congratultations to these four, but boy, that Carol cabal!…they really strong-armed this normally eclectic, spread-the-wealth-around group into submission. I was expecting a Spotlight win but whatever. Obviously this ups Carol‘s stock among the Academy and guild members — a very welcome gift for the Weinstein Co.
Spotlight‘s Michael Keaton won for Best Actor — a welcome but somewhat confusing surprise given that Spotlight is totally an ensemble piece — there are no leads in that film & the NYFCC definitely knows that. Brooklyn‘s Saoirse Ronan won for Best Actress (brilliant, agreed). Kristen Stewart (Clouds of Sils Maria) won for Best Supporting Actress — a rich performance but the film (which doesn’t work at all) belongs to 2014 — I’m telling you straight out that the NYFCC is wrong to regard Stewart’s performance as better than Jane Fonda‘s in Youth or Elizabeth Banks‘ in Love & Mercy. Bridge of Spies‘ Mark Rylance won for Best Supporting Actor — fine.
Inside Out won for Best Animated Film (the NYFCC should have gone against the grain and given it to Anomalisa). Frederic Wiseman‘s In Jackson Heights won for Best Non-Fiction Film (really?). Timbuktu won for Best Foreign Film (a bit of a head-scratcher but fine). Laszlo Nemes‘ Son of Saul won for Best First Film.
With the exceptions of the Keaton, Rylance and Wiseman awards the NYFCC rule seems to have been that if a film/performance was seen or released after 9.1.15, it didn’t qualify. Carol was Cannes (May 2015), Brooklyn was last January (Sundance 2015), Clouds of Sils Maria was May 2014 (Cannes), Inside Out was last May (Cannes), Timbuktu was May 2014 (Cannes), Son of Saul was last May (Cannes).
Keaton is superb in Spotlight and all power to him and the proud and gifted Spotlight team (HE worships this film body and soul), but giving him a Best Actor trophy is category fraud, plain and simple. And that’s not a slam against Keaton at all. He simply doesn’t give a “lead” performance by any standard or criteria I’m familiar with.
Two days ago Variety‘s Ramin Setoodeh posted about 11 under-the-radar performances “that haven’t been buzzed about enough, but deserve Oscar consideration. To my surprise I agree with six of his assessments. I’ll start with these and conclude with my four disagreements. No comment on Helen Mirren‘s Woman in Gold performance as I haven’t seen the film.
AGREEMENT:
(1) Robert De Niro, The Intern. As a retired windower who becomes a chauffeur and trusted confidante for online-fashion tycoon Anne Hathaway, DeNiro “injects this comedy with so much soul he’s almost as impressive as Diane Keaton in Something’s Gotta Give,” Setoodeh writes. HE comment: Definitely a winning supporting performance. It’s odd to think of Jake LaMotta or Neil McCauley playing a correct and well-mannered Mr. Belvedere, but that’s what this performance essentially is. But two things may happen. One, DeNiro’s performance as Jennifer Lawrence‘s dad in Joy may outshine his Intern-ist. And two, a Norbit-like effect from Dirty Grandpa, a throwaway horndog comedy in which DeNiro costars with Zac Efron, may spoil the soup.
(2) Kristen Stewart, Clouds of Sils Maria. HE comment: Yes, 2014 was a banner year for Stewart with three striking performances in Clouds, Camp X-Ray and Still Alice. She definitely upped her game. But nobody paid the slightest attention to Olivier Assayas’s film, which I found glum and meandering when I saw it in Cannes 17 months ago. Stewart’s Best Actress Cesar award for her performance as Juliette Binoche‘s personal assistant will have to do.
(3) Robert Redford, Truth. HE comment: Redford is one of those actors who can’t change his appearance or accent, but he captures Dan Rather with that particular, very familiar cadence that the former CBS Evening News anchor used on the air for so many decades. Plus he conveys a affecting sense of dignity. Truth has been killed by the liberal media and is currently buried in a 20-foot-deep pit so Redford hasn’t a prayer, but this is one of his best post-1990 performances.
Thanks to Forbes.com’s Natalie Robehmed and her 8.20 story about the highest-paid actresses over the last 12 months, I’m finally paying attention to Bingbing Fan, a hot Chinese actress who pulled down $21 million (pre-tax) from roles in X-Men: Days of Future Past and The White-Haired Witch of Lunar Kingdom plus commercial endorsement revenue from Chopard and L’Oreal. Fine. Hello, Bingbing!
And now that I’ve made Ms. Fan’s acquaintance, I’d…well, I think I’d like to go back to not contemplating her if that’s okay. It’s not just my aversion to Asian cinema (sorry) and particularly historical Asian cinema (especially if it involves swords) but…I’m not going to go there. Let’s drop it.
The big news about the Forbes survey is not that all these women are doing so well but that guys are getting paid a lot more.
How many of the top earners made their dough by acting in really good films and how many brought in the dough with shitty mass-market projects and/or commercial endorsements? Just about all of them.
Why did Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart agree to costar in an obviously low-rent, less-than-inspired exploitation film that borrows from the old Long Kiss Goodnight and Bourne Identity formula (i.e., trained government agent with apparent amnesia, living in relative obscurity, suddenly having to evade attempts by agency to kill him)? Did they need the money or something? A film like this lowers the value of their respective brands and that’s all. With admired performances in Camp X-Ray, Clouds of Sils Maria and Still Alice, Stewart has finally established herself as a formidable thesp…and now she’s plotzing. Eisenberg has already made a few brazenly commercial flicks (Now You See Me, the forthcoming Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice) and is committed to Now You See Me: The Second Act. Plus he’s been expanding upon his sensitive-OCD-guy chops with The End of the Tour and Louder Than Bombs. I understand acting in semi-cool commercial flicks like Adventureland and Zombieland but not something like this, which is obviously shit.
“With the exception of Kristen Stewart‘s alert, quietly arresting performance as a personal assistant to Juliette Binoche‘s famous, middle-aged actress undergoing a psychological downshift, Olivier Assayas‘s Clouds of Sils Maria is a talky, rather flat experience. It isn’t Persona or Three Women or All About Eve, although it seems to be occasionally flirt with the material that these three films dug into. MCN’s David Poland has written that it sometimes feels like ‘a female version of My Dinner With Andre‘ — generous! But on that note I’ll give Poland credit for thinking about this rather airless and meandering chit-chat film more than I did. It just didn’t light my torch. I agree with Poland on one point — it would have been a more interesting film if Assayas has focused more on Stewart and costar Chloe Moretz, who’s playing a version of herself.” — from a 5.23.14 mini-review, filed from the Cannes Film Festival.
“I had dreams as a child of what I wanted to do, but I didn’t have to suffer the scrutiny that you did. What I did suffer when I was young was because I was sort of a hick coming into New York City. I was made fun of by a lot of the Factory people. Even Andy Warhol thought I was a hick. I met these people and I had to be strong. I had to either be crushed by these people or chop my hair up like Keith Richards and say ‘Fuck you.’ But that scrutiny is hurtful, and the rumor mill, the constant bullshit, speculations about your personal life must be very difficult. But in the end, all of that is peripheral. What will remain 20, 30 years from now…all those people and their snarky comments and their projections will be forgotten. But if your work continues to grow and you do great work, that’s what will be remembered. It’s all about work in the end.” — Patti Smith to Kristen Stewart in an undated but presumably recent Interview q & a.
No film critic wants to be seen as insensitive or unsympathetic to characters suffering from a disease, especially well-off victims with a restrained and dignified air. And so Still Alice (Sony Pictures Classics, opening today in N.Y. and L.A.), a drama about a brilliant college professor (Julianne Moore) suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, is getting a 71% pass on Metacritic and an 86% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. But a few bold fellows have stepped up and called Alice a Lifetime movie — a mediocrity — ennobled by Moore’s touching performance.
We all know this won’t get in the way of Moore’s Best Actress Oscar. She’s due and all that. Plus she doesn’t have a heavy competitor to really worry about. But the reality can’t be waved away. Still Alice is a drag, man. It’s tedious and painful to sit through, and I don’t mean “painful” in an empathizing sense. I mean “oh, shit, I’m stuck here in this seat and I can’t get out until this movie comes to an end.”
But the right guys are standing up and calling a spade a spade, and right now you could almost use the metaphor of a small snowball starting to roll down a steep, snow-covered slope.
A few days ago Hollywood Reporter columnist Scott Feinberg moderated an AFI Fest discussion with A Most Violent Year director-writer J.C. Chandor, Whiplash director-writer Damien Chazelle, Two Days and One Night star Marion Cotillard, Nightcrawler star Jake Gyllenhaal, The Skeleton Twins star Bill Hader, Fort Bliss star Michelle Monaghan, Still Alice, Camp X-Ray and Clouds of Sils Maria star Kristen Stewart and Snowpiercer, Grand Budapest Hotel and Only Lovers Left Alive star Tilda Swinton. Who among the six actors is totally deserving of award-season applause but whose performance hasn’t caught on, at least in comparison to the others? Hader. Ten months ago I went nuts for Skeleton Twins in Sundance but the buzz just wouldn’t ignite, or not the way it should have.
Tech note: The THR video is watchable on my Mac laptops but not on my iPhone 6 Plus, nor on Jett’s iPhone 6. And yet Feinberg tells me it’s viewable on his phone. What about iPads and Kindles? It’s that damn Brightcove video/media platform, which many large publishers use but which isn’t as easily viewable as videos on YouTube or Vimeo. What’s the point of posting videos that aren’t supported on all the major devices?
Like Kristen Stewart, John Cusack got his groove on this year with two stand-up performances — as Dr. Stafford Weiss, an unctuous TV psychologist and father of the Bieber-esque Benjie, in David Cronenberg‘s Maps to the Stars, and as the 40ish Brian Wilson in Bill Pohlad‘s Love & Mercy, which is apparently being shunted off to a 2015 release. But in the long run it’s possible Cusack will be even better remembered for a quote about aging that he gave a Guardian interviewer five days ago. “I got another 15, 20 years before they say I’m old,” Cusack said. “[But] for women it’s brutal. I have actress friends who are being put out to pasture at 29. [Zombie studio execs] just want to open up another can of hot 22. It’s becoming almost like kiddie porn. It’s fucking weird.” What Cusack is saying is that guys with LexG-like attitudes about women are more influential than we might think, at least within the big-studio culture.
When I first started thinking and writing about Kristen Stewart around ’04 or thereabouts, I thought she had something exceptional brewing inside. I thought she might eventually become the new Montgomery Clift or some facsimile thereof. I’m not so sure that’s in the cards but at least one can say that after a few starts and stops Stewart finally stepped up the plate three times in 2014. Camp X-Ray, in which she lent palpable weariness and inner conflict to Amy Cole, the green Guantanamo recruit, was the first indication when it played Sundance. Then came her subtly-drawn performance as Valentine, the personal assistant to Juliette Binoche in Clouds of Sils Maria, which everyone saw in Cannes. I haven’t seen Still Alice, in which Stewart plays Julianne Moore‘s daughter, but I read somewhere that she nails this one also. This is all to say that Stewart deserves a Best Supporting Actress nomination as much as Birdman‘s Emma Stone, Boyhood‘s Patricia Arquette and Foxcatcher‘s Vanessa Redgrave.
Julianne Moore, Kristen Stewart in the little-seen Still Alice.
Clouds of Sils Maria
Camp X-Ray.
I’m updating HE’s Oscar Balloon this morning with the following. As always, disputes, corrections and beyond-the-ballpark suggestions are welcome. “HE approved” obviously means favored status, rooting factor, etc.
Best Picture Likelies (in this order, right now): 1. Birdman (HE approved); 2. Boyhood; 3. The Theory of Everything; 4. The Imitation Game; 5. Foxcatcher; 6. The Grand Budapest Hotel. Unseen Best Picture Spitballs: 1. Interstellar; 2. A Most Violent Year; 3. Gone Girl; 4. American Sniper; 5. The Gambler; 6. Into The Woods; 7. Selma; 8. Inherent Vice; 9. Unbroken; 10. Big Eyes; 11. Mr. Turner; 12. Fury.
Most Visually Ravishing, “Painterly” Best Picture Contender: Mr. Turner, although I’d like to see it with subtitles sometime down the road.
Best Director: Alejandro González Inarritu, Birdman (HE approved); 2. Richard Linklater, Boyhood; 3. James Marsh, The Theory of Everything; 4. Morten Tyldum, The Imitation Game; 5. Bennett Miller, Foxcatcher; 6. Wes Anderson, The Grand Budapest Hotel.
Best Director Maybes: Christopher Nolan, Interstellar; JC Chandor, A Most Violent Year; Angelina Jolie, Unbroken; David Ayer, Fury; Clint Eastwood, American Sniper; David Fincher, Gone Girl.
Best Actor: 1. Michael Keaton, Birdman (HE approved); 2. Eddie Redmayne, The Theory of Everything; 3. Benedict Cumberbatch, The Imitation Game; 4. Steve Carell, Foxcatcher; 5. Tom Hardy, The Drop/Locke. 6. Timothy Spall, Mr. Turner (despite my inability to hear half of Spall’s dialogue due to his all-but-indecipherable British working-class accent); 7. Jake Gyllenhaal, Nightcrawler; 8. Joaquin Phoenix, Inherent Vice; 9. Ben Affleck, Gone Girl; 10. Bill Hader, The Skeleton Twins.
Tragic Absence of Sublime, World-Class Lead Performance due to (no offense to Roadside) an overly cautious release strategy: Paul Dano as Brian Wilson in Love & Mercy.
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