My 2021 “Oscar” Picks

Best Actor in a Supporting Role

Sadly, the Oscars largely ignores non-English-language films outside of the best International Film category. As far as I’m concerned, that’s part of why the Oscars risk irrelevance. The awards already don’t cater to “average-Joe” movie goers, by ignoring blockbuster releases. By failing to pay attention to small-indie, and non-English films, the Academy also gives the middle-finger to people are actually invested in the cinematic art. 

I would argue the year’s most compelling “supporting” performance came from French actor Vincent Lindoln. Julia Ducournau’s film Titane starts out as a surreal, Tarantino-esque gore-fest, based around leading actress Agathe Rousselle. Lindoln, plays the important role of turning the film’s tone on its head. He portrays a tough, middle-aged fire-fighter, whose sensitive side comes out when he’s made to believe his kidnapped son has been returned to him after ten years. 

It would also be fun to have Don Cheadle given an Oscar nomination for his role in Space Jam 2. Cheadle’s character is an evil, personifed algorithm that tries to trap Lebron James in the internet. Space Jam 2 has a tragically mediocre script, but that doesn’t make Cheadle’s portrayal of a corny, yet sinister villain any less engaging. Talent can thrive in all kinds of contexts, and it’s a shame that The Academy doesn’t have the nuance to recognize that.

Best Actress in a Supporting Role

Yet another of my gripes with the Oscars is the narrow meanings of the categories “leading” and “supporting” role. The awards twist these words to (usually) mean “actor with the most lines/screen time” and “actor with slightly less screen time than the leading actor.” Thus, Brad Pitt won an Oscar as a “supporting actor” in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, despite being just as much the film’s protagonist as Leonardo DiCaprio.  

Diana Rigg, does not enter Last Night in Soho with the bravado of a Brad Pitt. No. She enters the film as a character-actor, playing a well-defined, but seemingly insignificant landlady. Her character gradually takes on more importance in Edgar Wright’s film, but Rigg, who would die before the film was released, ensures that her character’s development is perfectly executed. 

Best Actress in a Leading Role

Musician Alana Haim made her Hollywood-acting debut in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza, and got to play a 25-year old character who struggles, to a fault, with immaturity (the most extreme manifestation of this being that she regularly hangs out with a 15-year old actor who is determined to make her his girlfriend). 

While cinema has no shortage of immature figures, Haim’s character is unique. She’s not the kind of obnoxious, buffoon you see in Adam Sandler movies; her immaturity is not a source for cheap laughs. Instead, she struggles with an insecurity. She is unable to find a fulfilling job, or relate well to her family. Haim’s performance strikes a good balance between outer-strength and inner weakness, making it one that’s not easy to forget.

Best Actor in a Leading Role

Nicholas Cage is known for his melodramatic acting: a skill he couples well with scripts that give him the chance to say absurd things. This formula makes for entertaining performances, but doesn’t always pass the eye-test for “good acting.” Pig, the story of a reclusive chef whose beloved truffle pig is kidnapped, gave Cage the perfect role. A recluse singularly obsessed with a truffle pig sounds like a cartoon character: and indeed the character is eccentric. But Pig’s script creates a context where this eccentricity is sincere and heartbreaking, making it a defining performance in Cage’s already iconic career.

Best Adapted Screenplay

While I’ll admit I haven’t seen the previous Candyman films, I can at least say that I was highly entertained by Nia DaCosta’s 2021 contribution to the series. Candyman is an aesthetically pleasing horror film that both does and doesn’t play to our current cultural-political moment. The film is the story of a diabolical “Candyman” who is rumored to have risen with a vengeance from the pain of his impoverished and over-policed black neighborhood. 

What makes the film interesting is that rather than simply relying on the easy political messaging of drawing attention to inequality, it becomes a psychological study of its black main characters. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II stars as Anthony, an artist whose struggle for relevancy, leads him to explore just who the Candyman is, and whether he and the Candyman are meaningfully on the same team. The film presents a nuanced exploration of identity as something that is both chosen by and imposed upon its subjects, and that nuance translates to exactly the kind of suspense a horror film needs.

Best Original Screenplay

Often I go to a film and am awed by the general experience of it, but struggle to retell what I saw after the fact. That’s not the case with Edgar Wright’s Last Night in Soho. While like many auteur-films Wright’s work is partially defined by its aesthetics (Soho celebrates the visuals and (non-Beatles) music of 1960s London), it’s real effectiveness comes from its coherence and unpredictability as a piece of storytelling.

Best Director

Julie Ducournau’s Titane, is the opposite of Last Night in Soho: it’s less a piece of storytelling and more an enticing, shocking spectacle. But the fact that it manages to sew its disparate settings and moods together is a testament to Ducournau’s skill as a director. The film is visually striking, and mixes pulpy horror, with family drama and science fiction. It may be a disturbing pile of nonsense, but Ducournau’s auteurship makes it one of the best films of the year: and perhaps of all time.

Best Picture

Maybe one day the genre of screwball-society-satires will tire on me. Maybe, but not yet. My favorite film of 2018 was Sorry to Bother You, My favorite film of 2019 was Diamantino, and my favorite film of 2021 is Don’t Look Up. 

Am I biased because Don’t Look Up was co-conceived by the leftist journalist David Sirota? Absolutely. But that’s in part because Sirota brings a perspective, that liberal Hollywood sorely lacks.

And given how many critics seem to have their own unfortunate biases about the film (lazily describing it is a “Netflix comedy” with an all-star cast, rather than the latest work by a politically-conscious writer-director), I hardly feel a need to apologize for my own.

Don’t Look Up uses its plots twists to show that what we think of as wrong with American politics is only the tip of the iceberg. At the beginning of the film, a trio of scientists (Leonard DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence and Rob Morgan) are left hopeless because a Trumpian president (Meryl Streep) refuses to listen to their warnings that an apocalyptic comet is coming. This President, however, turns out to be less Donald Trump and more Kyrsten Sinema. In a shocking turn of events, she decides to listen to the scientists and stop the comet: alas, that is not the end of her story.

Don’t Look Up features lots of interesting little performances. Streep (who apparently did some great improv work on set) is great, as is Jonah Hill as her minion of a son. DiCaprio’s character has all the quirk of a TV nerd (particularly the Big Bang Theory’s Leonard Hofstader), while still coming across as being sincerely portrayed. Mark Rylance steals the show by playing a fusion of Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, while speaking like Jordan Peterson. Timothee Chalamet makes the most of his limited screen time, playing an assertive street kid, with an unconventional affection for Evangelical Christianity. And Melanie Lynskey, playing a relatively mild mannered character, nonetheless brings humanity to a script, that’s just as much about coping with misery, as it is about trying to defeats its causes.

A weird combination of clever jokes and unsettling tragedy, Don’t Look Up makes for a unique and poignant viewing experience. It may not be the kind of thing to win over conservative (and by conservative I mean blasé-liberal) academy voters, but it should serve as a model of political satire and comedic world-building for years to come.

Les Misérables (2019)

Directed by: Ladj Ly Written by: Ly, Giordano Gederlini and Alexis Manenti

 Oscar season has seen the spotlight shone on two “revenge of the underclass” films: Joker and Parasite. Since one is a comic book-inspired flick, however, and the other is a whimsical, dark-comedy, both explore their subject matter with some artistic distance. When it comes to Les Misérables, however, the only distance is the film’s occasional aerial cinematography.

Les Misérables, which quotes, but is not otherwise based on the novel/musical of the same name, is told from the perspective of Stéphane Ruiz (Damien Bonnard), a cop who has relocated to Paris to be in proximity to his ex-wife and son. Stéphane is assigned to the Special Crime’s Unit, along with bad-apple-type-cop Chris (Alexis Manenti) and Gwanda (Djibril Zonga). The film’s first scenes make the piece appear to be a pure amalgamation of visuals and ambition, as a number of conflicts within an ensemble cast are depicted in a racialized slum. Eventually, however, a plot structure comes to fruition. An odd, almost whimsical, crime is reported, and Stéphane’s unit is assigned to the case.

I wrote that Les Misérables is particularly realist in its storytelling. In many ways that’s true. The film does not have a particularly Hollywood ending, and is very blunt with its messaging (embodied at the end of the film with a Victor Hugo quotation). What makes the film somewhat literary, however, is how it picks up real-life dynamics that might strike removed viewers as cartoonish. Sometimes it is little things, such as how the slum’s mayor (Steve Tientcheu)  tries to present himself as a man of the people by wearing a PSG jersey with “Mayor” written on the back. 

At other times, however, it’s bigger things. That the “Special Crimes Unit,” is populated by the well-meaning but undertrained Ruiz, known abuser and buffoon Chris, and one other unremarkable cop, at brief moments, makes the film seem like a cop-comedy rather than a conscientious, and tragic piece. Socially-savvy viewers will know, however, that Chris is written to embody well documented problems with policing, and that the unit’s overall incompetence represents the critique that police forces aren’t build to “serve and protect,” but simply to hold back threats to the existing power structure. The realness of the film’s bad-policing, however, is rendered most plain through the character of Gwanda, who grew up in the slum and thus has mixed feelings about his work, but has nonetheless decided to surrender to the established norms of policing.

The “comic” dynamic of the police trio is mirrored by the fact that their primary targets throughout the film are children, particularly a trouble-making, yet mild-mannered and gentle child named Issa (Issa Perica). The absurdity of watching incompetent grown men chase and confront children, again takes on a powerful effect when one realizes it is not in fact absurd, and that police racism can take its toll even on individuals who are obviously children and obviously pose no threat.

Despite its visual ambitions, Les Misérables ends up seeming like a simple film. But it only feels that way because its subject matter is too complex for the film to fully untangle. One might think basic human decency could save the Issa’s of the world, but thus far it has failed. In a film where the only “hero” is a “good cop,” the answer to the problems of racism and impoverishment remains miles away

Roma (2018)

Written and Directed by: Alfonso Cuarón 

If you’re not Mexican  and you didn’t do your research you’ll probably not know what “Roma” refers to. After leaving a showing of Alfonso Cuarón’s latest release, I still wasn’t sure. I now know that it refers to the Mexico City neighborhood (Colonia Roma) where the film is primarily set.

It’s an appropriate title for the film. It should be acknowledged the film is particularly focused on one person, Cleo the nanny (Yalitza Aparicio), and is not a story of its titular neighborhood. Nonetheless, the film’s defining trait is its realism, thus making its location as noteworthy a detail as any.

Roma opens with an extended montage of water sloshing over a driveway. We find out the water is coming from Cleo’s mop. Though not as agonizingly long as, for instance, the pie scene in A Ghost Story, this scene leaves us well acquainted with the facts that Roma a) is going to be a film about a domestic worker b) this worker lives a somewhat tedious existence and c) the driveway is going to become a character of sorts in the film. From there Roma takes its time, showing scenes of Cleo’s various tasks. For a while it gives off the impression that it’s going to be a film where little happens.

Roma does not end up as a film where little happens. We eventually see Cleo’s life while she is not working, a slight change to the film’s pace. We are also gradually introduced to Cleo’s employer Sofía (Marina de Tavira) as a secondary character. Sofía’s power sometimes leads to her serving as the film’s antagonist, but since Cleo is the film’s centre, and the film is, again, uncompromising in its realism, this antagonism is spaced out and never overdone.

By the film’s end a number of major dramas have taken place. None of these serve as a a traditional climax, however. In several cases, these dramas serve just as much an aesthetic purpose as they do a dramatic one: adding would-be color to Cuarón’s black and white shots.

Roma is plainly a film that explores class dynamics, and some would say it does so inadequately, with Richard Brody arguing it contributes to the “quiet, dignified worker” trope. The extent to which one agrees with Brody’s critique depends, of course, on how much one believes in blaming individual film’s for systemic problems, and how well one believes Cuarón did in translating the personality of his own nanny childhood Libo, who Cleo is closely based on. One of the interesting tensions in the film in this regard is that while Cuarón is clearly committed to being critical of his parents, he nonetheless developed his intimate relationship with Libo through her role as a domestic worker; a factor which may have limited his ability to imagine her as too unhappy with her lot in life.

That all said, even if Brody may have a point in saying the film leaves a lot said about Cleo’s individual class consciousness, I think on a bigger level the film is still politically important. I suspect many Americans have a homogenized view of “Mexicans” and citizens of the global south in general. Roma challenges this perception by highlighting the similarities between Mexican and American society. It presents a stark contrast between a white upper class and racialized working class (an important distinction to recall in an era when Latin America is seeing leaders like Jair Bolsonaro and Sebastián Piñera come to power) .

And again with Roma, it all comes back to realism, even if it’s not a complete realism: no realism is. Cleo is one person in a vast society: on some days she feels the weight of the personal more than the political and vice versa. Roma is a story of one person, but it treats that one person like an essential puzzle piece: she alone doesn’t solve the jigsaw, but she sets you up to understand where numerous other pieces are laid.

 

One final thought:

 

Roma of course also bears the baggage of being the most culturally significant Netflix movie to date. Some say it lost the best picture Oscar as a punishment for its not spending a traditional amount of time in theatres prior to its release. I can’t help but wonder, however, whether the Netflix thing was a two-way street. Fellow slow indie films like this year’s Leave No Trace and The Rider were never considered serious Oscar contenders. 2014’s Ida, as a black-and-white film, and fellow best-foreign-film winner, is a particularly close analogue to Roma, but despite its success, it didn’t receive a best picture nomination either. Cuarón’s near-success in the best-picture race can, in my opinion, be chalked down to his releasing an art-house film via a populist platform: the Netflix baggage helped him far more than it hurt him. I can only assume that once other films take on this approach, one of them will eventually win best picture. 

Cuarón was luckily uncompromising in pushing for his well-shot, attention-necessitating work, to be given a (limited) theatrical release, despite Netflix’s established business model. I was lucky enough to get to see Roma on the big screen, albeit by booking a ticket a month-in-advance at the one Montréal cinema (Cinéma Moderne) that was showing it. If Netflix releases are indeed the way of the future, I can only hope that future auteurs normalize Cuarón’s approach and push Netflix to embrace the big screen.

 

Vice (2018)

Written and Directed by: Adam McKay

 

                 Call me cynical, but my guess is that Vice is one of this year’s nominees for best picture because it’s about a popular news/historical topic and came out at the right time of year. That’s what I think, and I don’t think that’s a radical statement. That said, that is the most cynical thing you’ll read in this review. Vice may me unsubtle Oscar Bait, but given the overall thrill it was to watch I suspect it will hold up as one of the better works from that tradition.

Vice makes semi-regular usage of a critical narrator and title cards. In its opening moment we barely see its subject, Vice President Dick Cheney (Christian Bale) speak at all. This creates the impression that one is watching a Michael Moore documentary. While this impression quickly fades, it is indicative of Vice’s broader ambitions. Sure, for the most part it’s a mainstream biopic, but Adam McKay was clearly inspired in creating this work and was willing to employ a nice dose of fourth-wall breaking tongue and cheek.

When the Michael Moore moment ends, the story really begins. We are introduced to a young Cheney who is presented as academically incompetent and rough around the edges (A bit of a surprise given that one might assume it was these very traits in George W. Bush that Cheney sought to make up for). We are also introduced to his future wife Lynne (Amy Adams). In an early monologue, Lynne is about as expository as can be, explaining that she is an intellectually savvy woman who nonetheless needs Dick to get his act together, as 1960s patriarchal culture prevented women from getting too far in life. In defence of this scene, it does make a point about Lynne’s (and the general women’s) experience in the 1960s that might fly over many viewers heads. Nonetheless, it’s indicative of the film’s biggest weakness: its choppy, episodic presentation of history that is rendered wooden through its lack of subtlety.

Early in the movie I noticed its writing problem and began to think of ways in which Vice could have been made better. Dick’s hard-living-manchild beginnings reminded me of Daniel Plainview from There Will be Blood and Esteban Trueba from Isabel Allende’s novel The House of Spirits. Both are characters that embody a self-serving, reactionary masculinity that is presented as rising from an Americana-coming-of-age pathway. Perhaps a more emotionally resonant story about Cheney could have been developed if the filmmaker had committed to this kind of narrative.

Alternatively, the peculiarity of Dick and Lynne as a couple could also have provided the foundation for a well-written, character-oriented story. In fairness, Vice does not miss the mark on this plot by too much, which is why I was able to observe its potential in the first place. But in essence, Dick and Lynne appear to have an egalitarian relationship and a shared commitment to political action. The resemblance between them and the Clintons is striking. This resemblance left me wondering why they (especially Lynne) came to adopt a colder, less nuanced and less cosmopolitan ideology than their fellow political power couple.

Perhaps Vice would have been stronger if it focused on one of the above paths, instead of plowing through Cheney’s life with a dearth of exposition. That said, I regularly find myself disappointed with biopics for attempting to stretch the stories of people into feature-length films where source material is lacking. The great (or rather terrifying) thing about Cheney is that there’s no lack of material. As I watched the film my attitude evolved from: 1) this isn’t that great to 2) ok, this should be a classic teaching-tool in high school history classes to 3) that was a pretty striking film. So, for example, one might be frustrated by the rushed depiction of Cheney’s falling for Donald Rumsfeld (Steve Carrel), but, by the time the latter man leaves the film, the relationship more than leaves it mark.

Vice ultimately accomplishes a lot of things. It notes the peculiarity of Cheney as someone who avoided the limelight but craved the opportunity to quietly assert his will (one can debate whether the roots of this tendency are adequately portrayed or not). It also portrays how his political schemes were products of both legally dubious behaviour, and sinister attempts to act within the law (taking advantage of constitutional law’s theoretical flexibility). Where possible the film opts for comedy. George W. Bush (Sam Rockwell) isn’t in the film as much as one might want, but his portrayal as a hapless puppet of Cheney and his father is certainly amusing. That said, the film does not miss the chance to criticize those to Cheney’s left. It depicts the brutal impact of US militarism on Iraqis and briefly draws attention to the way liberals Hilary Rodham Clinton and Tony Blair advanced Cheney’s war propaganda.

Vice serves as an important reminder that the cruelty of American politics runs deeper than Trump’s particular brand of callousness. And as a film it may not be perfect, but its engaging up to and including its M Night Shyamalan-esque ending. So why not give this film a chance and recall just how terrifying the supposedly powerless vice president can be.

If Beale Street Could Talk (2018)

Written and directed by: Barry Jenkins

Based on a Novel by James Baldwin

Barry Jenkins can probably be said to have picked up the reputation of being an “issues” director. His breakout film, Moonlight dealt with homophobia in a poor, black community. This follow-up film deals with the consequences of police racism. But as the title of Moonlight suggests, Jenkins does not want his social commentary to be the sole defining feature of his legacy: he is also committed to beauty.  Aesthetically, If Beale Street Could Talk takes off where Moonlight left off employing a sparse but resonant classical soundtrack to accompany shots that, at times, slow the story down to capture graceful and provocative movement.

 

Another common element of If Beale Street Could Talk and Moonlight is that both address racism without really bringing the (white) antagonists into the picture. If Beale Street Could Talk tells the story of an arrest, by showing the interactions it produces in and around the film’s black community. If Beale Street Could Talk admittedly ventures outside of the black community more often than Moonlight, but then again, it also more directly about racism than Jenkins’ previous work.

 

Therefore, while I wouldn’t call If Beale Street Could Talk a subtle film (all the political points it wants to make are directly stated), it nonetheless is a film that strives to present issues as they actually happen, and not polish them up for the Hollywood gaze. Rather than telling a flowing, linear narrative, Jenkins tells of protagonist Kiki (Nikki Layne) and her fiancé Fonny, through a series of non-chronologically ordered memories. One, a conversation about incarceration between Fonny and his friend Daniel (Brian Tyree Henry), feels particularly extended. The film’s story does not allow for Daniel and Fonny to spend much time together, but when it does, Jenkins’ seeks to emphasize the power of the moment.

 

If Beale Street Could Talk thus achieves one of the aesthetics I personally most like in film: it feels like a diorama with a memorable collection of moving pieces. A number of these pieces are brought into the story relatively briefly. The brevity of their appearances is not due to the roles being cameos, nor can it be described as an oversight on Jenkins’ part. Instead it is a representation of how striking figures can come into ones life and, due to unjust complications (ie arrests), unceremoniously disappear from sight.

 

Occasionally Jenkins’ moving-pieces approach comes at the expense of the quality of his screenplay. There’s one vignette that seems to exist to show the hope in Black-Jewish solidarity. The scene has funny moments, and it was a pleasant surprise to see the actor who’s cameo it was. Nonetheless, the scene’s political point felt a bit forced, due to its being brought in so quickly and tangentially to the main plot.

 

I have not read James Baldwin’s novel, so I cannot say with certainty what truly were Jenkins’ choices. That said, what seems to be an interesting quality of the film is that it presents itself as a grandiose narrative: an epic Hollywood mystery that seeks to unravel an overwhelming injustice in the court system. Given this set up,  the very end of the film comes as a surprise. It’s a surprise that feels awkward at first, but since the film’s very point is that the justice system so often reaches unsatisfying conclusions, this awkwardness feels perfectly justified.

 

Speaking now, its hard to say exactly what the legacy of If Beale Street Could Talk will be. I suppose it can be said its about a slightly less novel topic than Moonlight, and it also lacks a single scene that is quite the equal of Moonlight’s best (ie the one where Juan explains the fa-word to Chiron). That said, as a piece of art and a piece of storytelling, If Beale Street Could Talk is overall Moonlight’s equal, and a good sign that Barry Jenkins is an auteur here to stay.

Brokeback Mountain (2005)

Written by: Larry McMurty and Diana Ossana Directed by: Ang Lee

There are various reasons I take films off the the shelf at the video store or library. Sometimes I systematically try to watch certain works. Other times I go for the oddball covers. In the case of finally seeing Brokeback Mountain, I suppose I was chasing a memory. 2006 was the first year in which I was broadly aware of what films were nominated for the Oscars, even though I was too young to have seen any of them. While my interest was admittedly peaked because a movie about one of my favourite singers (Johnny Cash/Walk the Line) was part of the conversation, I nonetheless retained memories of the names of actors and movies that were not necessarily atop the tabloid world: actors including Brokeback Stars Heath Ledger, Jake Gylenhaal, Michelle Williams and Anne Hathaway,

So what did I think of Brokeback Mountain? I enjoyed it, though perhaps I felt it did not live up to the mystical stature it held as the first “great” (modern) movie to have slipped into my consciousness. In drama classes, a common piece of advice is “show not tell.” Clearly, I think this is good advice, as I regularly find myself using “subtlety” as a near synonym for quality when discussing film. When storytellers, “show and not tell,” they make more powerful statements about the issues they are dealing with, than if they name the issue head on: they allow the issue to emerge in a raw, more natural form.

Brokeback Mountain, literally speaking, is a subtle film. Its protagonist, Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) doesn’t say much, and his silence certainly plays a role in shaping the film’s trajectory. Upon deeper examination, however, Brokeback Mountain is not a subtle work. It’s quite plainly “the gay cowboy” story, even if the word “gay” is never used in the script. Brokeback Mountain straddles the line between “mainstream” and “alternative”: it is realist and lacks (with one brief, but significant exception) action, yet at the same time is dramatic and unambiguous in its messaging.

An obvious way to think about Brokeback Mountain is as a piece of gay (or queer) cinema, a lens which for me evokes, the memory of recent releases Call Me By Your Name and Moonlight. Moonlight is a story that takes place in this modern era, one in which “gay rights” enjoy broad support (even as homophobia can clearly still take a violent toll on society). Call Me By Your Name is slightly pre-modern as far as the gay-rights conversations goes, however, since it is set in a small world populated by liberal intellectuals the significance of this time difference is somewhat negated. Brokeback Mountain thus, in a way, feels different than those two works. It opens in rural America in the 60s: a world which we can assume is predominantly homophobic. What is interesting about the film,, again, that “gayness” is rarely explicitly mentioned. As such, the degree to which it influences the plot’s dramatic tension is left at least somewhat ambiguous. Yes, we can assume that a gay couple probably couldn’t be out and proud in the world of Brokeback Mountain, but does this homophobia go so far as to prevent its characters from being out in the small world of their family and social groups? This second question is left unanswered. We never get to know whether the film’s protagonists are entirely victims of homophobia, or whether it is their internal fears and self-hate that prevent them from finding happiness.

I suppose it can be said that this ambiguity is the feature that gives Brokeback Mountain its reputation. It’s this feature that allows the film to run on, even where dramatic events are few and far between. Ennis may not have enemies, but he does have his own personality to conquer: a personality that silences him no matter who the listener is.

The film is also a joy aesthetically. It’s score is simple, but interesting. It consists of acoustic guitar riffs: plucked strings breaking out with the Brokeback mountain sunrise over the fresh morning dew. To anyone who ever over-generalizes and says they hate country music, I dare them to see this movie, and take in country as it emerges from its natural habitat.

Unfortunately it is not 2006 and I cannot appreciate how Brokeback Mountain would have come across when it first came out. Perhaps at the times its politics were more revolutionary, making its theme feel richer or at least more original than it does today. This vague gripe aside, I thoroughly appreciated the modern classic. Just remember to put on the subtitles: That Heath Ledger sure can mumble.

The Films that Hooked Me: The Grand Budapest Hotel and Inside Llewyn Davis

As I eagerly await my chance to see Wes Anderson’s new release, Isle of Dogs, I look back on how seeing the trailer for his previous release sparked my interest in film and, eventually, gave rise to this blog. 

It wasn’t long ago that I would tell you I didn’t watch movies. I didn’t watch TV either. This was not a conscious choice. Rather, I was raised in the kind of household where sitting in front of the TV for unregulated hours was forbidden. By the time I was in middle school I noticed a clear differentiation between myself and my peers. I watched the odd TV show or family movie that my family went to together because it was a good fit for all of us and/or because it was culturally significant (eg Pixar and Harry Potter films). By contrast, my peers were beginning to binge watch live action TV dramas like Lost, Heroes and various crime shows.

 

My alienation from film viewing was further developed, however, by the movies I did see. The movies that were supposed to excite me didn’t. I got no thrill out of watching action sequences, or the sappy endings to mainstream comedies.

 

I was twenty years old when my mind began to change. I don’t remember what film I was watching (Dallas Buyers Club would be my guess), but I remember seeing a trailer at Varsity Cinema that struck a unique emotion in me. That trailer was for Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel. I remember thinking “I’m going to make a point of seeing that movie.” Yet that film was not an adaptation of a young adult series I’d enjoyed. It wasn’t a straightforward comedy with an easily explicable humorous hook either. It wasn’t even about a historical event or subject matter that was important to me. Rather, what struck me about it was precisely that I could not articulate what excited me about it. Sure it seemed amusing: the clips of Ralph Fiennes yelling “lobby boy!” gave off that impression, but I didn’t remember individual jokes. I remembered a melange of things: actors, colors, moods and that word “lobby boy.” In other words, it struck me as impressive as a, well, “film.”

 

Seeing The Grand Budapest Hotel for the first time was a mixed experience for me. I certainly found parts of it funny, but I also had questions. Why, for example, was the film’s opening narration about a writer, who appears in a flashback telling of how (in a flashback) he met the film’s protagonist (“lobby boy”) Zero Mostel, who (via a long flashback) tells the story that is essentially the whole movie? In short, what was the point of the writer, who in no way factors into the story’s action? I probably wouldn’t be bothered by this aspect of the film today, but at the time this narrative unconventionality was something I hadn’t yet acquired a taste for.

 

Around the same time as The Grand Budapest Hotel came out, another film hit theatres. This one, Inside Llewyn Davis, attracted me for less mysterious reasons. It was a film about a folk-singer (I like to think of myself as a folk-singer). It was also written/directed by the Coen brothers, who I knew because they’d directed an adaptation of The Odyssey (O Brother Where Art Thou?).

 

In short, I was drawn to see The Grand Budapest Hotel, because of its many qualities as a work of art and Inside Llewyn Davis because it was a work by a known writer/director(s). Of course, had my life story been only slightly different, I could reverse those descriptions and they would equally be true. My discovery of Wes Anderson was as important as my re-acquaintance with the Coens. More important than my relationship with either of these directors, however ,was the new way they taught me to appreciate film.

 

In watching Inside Llewyn Davis, I found a bit of the old me. I liked the movie because of what it was about: because there were characters based off of Jim& Jean and Tom Paxton. Yet there were also frustrating elements to the film in that regard: Llewyn’s interest in pre-Dylan folk and the film’s anti-climactic ending. There were also things that the burgeoning new film fan in me enjoyed. The film incorporated a not yet famous Adam Driver as character that was very memorable, despite being insignificant to the plot. The film also used John Goodman in a similar regard. Goodman’s character has an eerie feel to him that briefly makes him seem like the film’s villain. In fact, however, he’s simply a quirky, self-promoting man with dehabilitating health problems.

 

Much like Driver’s character, Goodman’s character doesn’t “matter.” Then again, no character in Inside Llewyn Davis really does: the film’s frustrating ending is the revelation that Llewyn’s story is cyclical (a trait also seen in the Coen’s An Irrational Man). As such, Inside Llewyn Davis is not just a narrative, but a diorama: a depiction of Greenwich village and the universe around it from the perspective of one of the numerous folk singers who did not get to be Bob Dylan. Therefore, it doesn’t matter that John Goodman’s curmudgeony, jazz musician does not serve the function of a traditional villain. He fills an important place in the diorama, sitting in his sunglasses behind his chauffeur, and waiting to capture the viewer’s eye and imagination.

 

Speaking of dioramas, what film better embodies that metaphor than The Grand Budapest Hotel? While it is a story that takes its protagonists to numerous places, its true soul comes out in every utterance of that phrase “lobby boy!” It is the adventure of a purple uniform as much as it the adventure of its unassuming protagonist. The uniform dashes through an exquisite pink hotel, which itself exists with in the mind of a man buried in a beautiful, key covered monument. Furthermore, while The Grand Budapest Hotel is not a thoroughly non-traditional story (unlike Inside Llewyn Davis it features a traditional villain), it too is peppered with characters who briskly come in and out (including Owen Wilson’s “Monsieur Chuck”), making them more funky-dolls in a diorama than characters in a story.

 

By the time I started film-blogging over three years had passed since I watched these films. They changed me, yes, but it wasn’t a change I became aware of at once. In the year following my seeing those titles I continued to see the occasional flick at the suggestion of a film-student friend of mine. It took me 10 months before I truly began consuming film on my own. I lived near Toronto’s Bay St Video at the time, and when I had to watch Children of Men for an assignment, I decided to sign up for membership and rent the DVD.

 

Then, I began to rent more. I rapidly went through all of Wes Anderson’s filmography. I rented Linklater’s Boyhood, the Coen’s A Serious Man as well as a lot of Jean–Luc Godard. Having never received a formal film education, I’m sure I missed out on some of the key innovations in Godard’s work. I did however come to appreciate its blatant characteristics: long shots of natural and industrialized environments, philosophical monologues often peppered with references to Marxism and history, and a lack of a traditional storyline: In other words, the oddness of Wes Anderson and the Coens’ approaches to narrative pales in comparison.

 

The challenge of learning to appreciate works like Godard’s Goodbye to Language, left me with a strong desire to parody. For me the mindsets of wanting to parody something, and having genuine sense of affection for it are not too far removed from each other. Therefore, when I made a makeshift, imitation Godard film called “La Mort et la Famille” in the summer of 2015 (just under a year and a half since the two titular films of this piece came into my life, and just under two years before I started blogging), it wasn’t just a joke: it was a moment of self discovery. There was (and still is) a lot for me to see, but suddenly I could say it: “I liked movies.”

 

There is a reason I realized I liked movies then and couldn’t before. For me, my ability to enjoy films is often rooted in my sense of connection with their director and/or writer. I cannot simply be an audience member being entertained (which is why generic, big budget fight scenes don’t do it for me); rather I wanted to admire and philosophize about the idea of crafting the movie before me. In parodying Godard I awakened a way of thinking that had been stirring in my head since I first saw The Grand Budapest Hotel trailer. I was now finally seeing films not as standalone pieces of entertainment, but as intertextual expressions of writer-directors’ imaginations.

 

It took another year and a half for me to first articulate this relationship, however. Moonlight and La, La Land were competing neck-and-neck for best picture, and in my social media world the competition was tense. This tension was of course political, with the #OscarsSoWhite movement motivating some of the support for Moonlight. To be clear, I agree with this cause and have no interest in arguing with its proponents, however, I did feel that this politicized environment lead to some misguided statements about La, La Land. For those judging the film through a political lens, La, La Land was a predictable repetition of the Hollywood-celebrating-itself trope. If that’s how one saw Damien Chazelle’s movie, I can indeed understand why one would feel it was inferior to Moonlight: a ground-breaking indie film about the intersections of race, sexuality and poverty.

 

For me, however, La, La Land was far more than its theme. It was, well, a dazzling

Chazelle directing La, La Land

diorama: a magical realist extravaganza that guides its protagonists around a world so wondrous and vast that they end up with happy endings while still being miserably lost. That it was about Hollywood and dreams coming true was not what made it entertaining: Chazelle’s world-building skills were.

I used to be the guy who didn’t like movies. Then I became more like “everyone else” and learned to like movies. The 2017 Oscars reminded me that maybe I was still in fact not like everyone else. I never learned to watch movies in the way that others do: I’d rather developed a distinct hobby that was like that of the regular movie goer in that it also involved looking at a film on a screen.

 

I suppose I could have named this blog post after La, La Land or Godard’s La Chinoise. Other works including Taika Waititi’s What We Do in the Shadows, Sean Baker’s Tangerine, and Jim Jarmusch’s Paterson were also part of that process. That said, I’m going to take the Coen brothers’ approach of going full circle. I started blogging in May 2017, roughly within one month of my re-seeing and re-appreciating The Grand Budapest Hotel and Inside Llewyn Davis. I still have a lot to work on: seeing more classics, improving my cinematic vocabulary, and finding more non-white male directors to count amongst my influences. That said, in this regard, I’m not the same person I was 4 years ago, so “…p…p…please Mr. Kennedy, don’t shoot me into outer space,” I hear they don’t have video stores up there.

Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)

Written and Directed by: Guillermo del Toro

I was inspired to finally watch Pan’s Labyrinth for two related reasons. Firstly, I was recently introduced to del Toro’s fascination with monsters, insects and fairy tales by a travelling exhibit of his at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Secondly, The Shape of Water recently won the Oscar for best picture and del Toro was named best director. I had mixed feelings about this result. I think del Toro deserved the directorial award due to the beautiful world he created. As a script, I felt The Shape of Water fell a bit short: it made it a tad too obvious who was good and who was evil, depriving it of a necessary dose of complexity.

Of course, one way to think of The Shape of Water’s simplicity is to understand it as a fable or a fairy tale, albeit one for a PG-13 audience. del Toro has a clear fascintion with merging the worlds of adults and children. In The Shape of Water, I feel this made the script come up a little short. In the case of Pan’s Labyrinth, however, this quality makes the film the modern classic that it is.

Pan’s Labyrinth opens much like an early Disney movie (the approach parodied in Shrek), in the pages of a book. The reader is Ofelia (Ivana Baquero), roughly ten years old, who is travelling with her mother to live at the home of her stepfather, Captain Vidal (Sergi Lopez). The year is 1944 and Vidal is a pro-Franco Spanish officer. Ofelia is insistent that she does not accept him as her father, however, it is unclear if she has any understanding of his politics, and to what degree her loathing of him is simply motivated by her love for her true father. The film’s initial tension is quickly introduced, as Ofelia’s pregnant mother Carmen (Ariadna Gil) tells her she is too old for fairy tales. Ofelia is, unsurprisingly, not persuaded to give up her stories, and goes on a series of all-too-real fairy tale journeys all the while under the strict eyes of Vidal and her mother (who reluctantly enforces Vidal’s rules).

Ofelia’s refusal to outgrow fairy tales provides a direct connection between the text and its fairy-tale-loving writer. del Toro’s portrayal of Ofelia’s adventure proves that  she is indeed not too old for fairy tales. His approach to doing this, however, is to depict a fairy tale that is not all that kid-friendly. Its major players include a giant toad, a child-eating monster with eyes on its hands, and most importantly, a faun (who, despite the English translation of the film’s title, is not actually the famed Pan). The faun (Doug Jones as the body and Pablo Adán as the voice) is a good character, but he has demonic eyes and is crushingly strict; he’s not exactly the kind of cuddly mentor you’d envision in a kid-friendly fairy tale.

Ofelia’s adventure in fairy tales runs parallel to that of Vidal’s maid, Mercedes (Maribel Verdú) who it turns out is a supporter of anti-Franco rebels. While Ofelia throws herself into the dangerous world of the child-eater, Mercedes makes herself vulnerable to Vidal’s cold, militaristic whims. Vidal’s way of being is characterized by his belief in patriarchal hierarchy, and willingness to brutalize all that get in his way. The co-existence of Ofelia and Mercedes’ horror stories make a number of a narrative points. On the one hand, their implicit connection adds a level of depth to Ofelia’s fairy tales, again sending the message that fairy tales cannot be dismissed as childish. On the other hand, since the parallel between Ofelia and Mercedes’ stories is limited (Ofelia’s magical foes are not blatantly allegorical to real life menaces) del Toro also sends the message that fairy tales can be compelling even if they do not have some meaningful connection to the real world. Finally, the combination of historical and fantastic drama in Pan’s Labyrinth speaks to the agency of children and the liberating effect of imagination. As much as we may like to think they are protected, children can get caught up in real world tragedies. While Ofelia is largely unable to participate or defend herself in the real world conflict, she is able to engage with it in her own way and with much more agency through her heroics in the world of fairy tales.

To get back to my original idea, there are undoubtedly parallels between Pan’s Labyrinth and The Shape of Water. Both star silenced protagonists Ofelia (who is too young to be political) and Eliza (who is mute). Both feature sidekicks who are also marginalized, though more able to speak to their conditions than the protagonists: Mercedes (a servant woman), and Zelda (an African-American woman and janitor). Both film’s also have blatantly bad antagonists, whose badness is characterized by their social conservatism. Finally, both films feature double agent doctors. While The Shape of Water’s (portrayed by Michael Stuhlbarg) doctor is a more developed character than the original, in all the other cases Pan’s Labyrinth’s characters come out just a little bit richer.

In the context their respective stories, Ofelia’s form of marginalization, thinking-like, dreaming-like and literally being a child makes her more vulnerable, and thus capable of more interesting interactions with her film’s terrors, than Eliza.

Mercedes, unlike Zelda, is not simply a sidekick but a secondary protagonist.

Most importantly, there is a subtle difference between Vidal and Strickland’s portrayal. Strickland is an outright caricature of right-wing badness: everything he says is cold and reactionary. Vidal, however, has just enough moments of vulnerability that rather than coming across as a caricature, he is in fact a portrayal of a certain terrifying, but real way of being. He is not devoid of love, as shown by his tenderness towards his son. Rather, he has simply become accustomed to a world in which all love shown by and towards him, is strictly filtered through the framework of traditionalist patriarchy.

That said, The Shape of Water and Pan’s Labyrinth are not the same film, and that difference is best demonstrated through their depictions of monsters (played by Doug Jones). In The Shape of Water, the monster is for all intents and purposes a misunderstood other: one to sympathize with. In Pan’s Labyrinth, we are still supposed to sympathize with some monsters (and certainly relative to the conventionally handsome true monster that is fascism), however, it is a more trying sympathy. We are challenged with the idea that for Ofelia the world of the faun is an escape from her horrible home life, despite the fact that the faun’s world is hardly a pleasant thing to escape to. In another scene (that I cannot describe without spoiling the movie), the faun behaves in a way reminiscent of God in an early biblical story. He gives Ofelia a horrible instruction presenting her with a painful moral conundrum and exposing the absurdity of having to live without safe moral authorities to turn to.

The god-like nature of the faun’s behaviour again contributes to the film’s overall affect of giving Ofelia choices not between a good and a bad situation, but between magical-fear and real-world horrors. Watching a child navigate this scenario is a shocking thing. Ivana Baquero’s performance is remarkable in that we never forget the injustice of what Ofelia has to face as a child, yet we simultaneously accept her as fully qualified hero. Guillermo del Toro may ultimately be remembered for his monsters, however, his writing and directing of fairy-tale loving Ofelia may in fact be his greatest accomplishment.

Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)

Written and Directed by: Martin McDonagh

CW: This film deals with bluntly with sexual and domestic violence, and also addresses police brutality and racism (a focus of this review).

            When you see a title as verbose as that of TBOEM (sorry, that’s what I’m to call it), you know you’re in for an unusual viewing experience. TBOEM is the story of Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand), the mother of a rape-and-murder victim enraged at the failure of police to find her daughter’s assailant. She expresses her rage by renting three abandoned billboards on which she denounces the town’s beloved police chief William Willoughby (Woody Harrelson). The billboards are mundane in their color-scheme and brutally graphic in their words. They are significant in that they come to mean something greater to Mildred than the direct political purpose they serve. That said, the quirk of the film lies not so much in the billboards, as in the conflict they stir.

Harrelson is well cast as Willoughby, a character whose personality lies somewhere on the spectrum of Albus Dumbledore (powerful man with a surprisingly gentle soul) to Long John Silver (megalomaniac who manages to have a gentle soul on the side). Whether Harrelson is more Dumbledore or Silver depends of course on what one assumes about the film’s subtext (ie what the Ebbing police were up to when the camera wasn’t running). Political assumptions aside (we’ll get back to that later), Willoughby’s gentleness certainly stands out. While other citizens of Ebbing, which seems be a town where everyone knows everyone, are quick to denounce the billboards, Willoughby humors them and speaks empathetically of Hayes. He is simultaneously affectionate towards his loose cannon colleague, Jason Dixon (Sam Rockwell).

Willoughby’s gentleness enables one of the film’s notable characteristics: genre-bending. Willoughby speaks wryly and light-heartedly, despite delivering some quite heavy lines. The result of his characterization is that it frees the audience from having to simply experience TBOEM as a literal, realist story. Instead, audiences can appreciate the film as an exploration of how different kinds of police-in-small-town-storylines (fictional and real) in contemporary American can play out. Hayes’ son (Lucas Hedges) and friendly barfly James (Peter Dinklage) also make important contributions to the film’s wonderfully awkward gesticulations between its sombre and slapstick moods.

TBOEM is reminiscent of Coen brothers and Tarantino films. It features the occasional outburst of violence that is swept under the rug with relative ease. This violence, much like in Tarantino’s political works, Jango Unchained and Unglorious Bastards, can be read as a metaphor for the intensity of its character’s feelings, the violent oppression they face and the urgency and validness of their causes. More so than in Tarantino films, however, the violence in TBOEM boils up at a moment’s notice, giving audiences the particularly uncomfortable experience of not knowing whether to take it literally or even that seriously. Some of TBOEM’s violence fits into the story at such a sharp angle that it comes across as a very dark form of physical comedy.

TBOEM also attempts to factor racism into its storyline. This is where the film gets sloppy. Martin McDonagh made a film in which a police department is criticized for not working hard enough to make an arrest. It seems that he worried his message would be misconstrued as a claim that the problem with America’s police is that they don’t police enough. Therefore, it seems, he threw in a number of references to racist (and homophobic) behaviour from Ebbing police officers, particularly Dixon, so that his film would not be interpreted as oblivious to these ills. McDonagh includes three black characters in his script, all of who appear just enough to be remembered, but not enough to be memorable. For example, one black character, Denise (Amanda Warren), is arrested for marijuana possession, as a way of illustrating police racism. Denise, however, is never shown objecting to or suffering through her incarceration. Rather, her suffering is objectified as a self-righteous talking point for her friend Mildred Hayes.

Others have criticized TBOEM’s approach to race on the grounds that Dixon is ultimately portrayed in a sympathetic light despite passing references in the film to his “torturing black people” (and no suggestion that his racial politics improve). The film’s quirky style leaves it unclear what exactly these accusations mean: are they to be taken literally, or as grain-of-truth-accusations from his critics. On the one hand, the accusations are repeated and never rebutted. On the other hand, they are referenced so casually, that it is hard to fully accept that they are true. I can therefore, on the one hand, understand the criticism the film has garnered. In real life, anti-black violence from police is readily brushed over, so it makes sense that some viewers could interpret the film as a reinforcement of this unjust order. On the other hand, this critique ignores that TBOEM is not exactly a realist film; let alone one with clear messages. Dixon should not be understood as a person, but as a post-modern character who simultaneously inhabits (perhaps exaggerated versions of) different interpretations of white American masculinity. The emergence of Dixon-as-hero (and not exactly an angelic hero) therefore does not erase the problem of Dixon-as-racial-oppressor. I suppose therefore, I would defend McDonagh from some critiques while readily acknowledging that these critiques are a justified consequence for the film’s failure to meaningfully develop its own black characters

TBOEM brings together a great cast of characters into a story with well written dialogue and excellent melange of tones. Whether it will ultimately be remembered as perhaps this year’s best effort in narrative constructions or for its political shortcomings (and, as always, I hope both viewpoints can be understood and held in appropriate balance by as many viewers as possible) is a question that remains to be answered, though I’m sure its one this year’s academy awards will not fail to bring to a boil.

Coco (2017)

Directed by: Lee Unkrich Written by: Adrian Molina and Matthew Aldrich

Coco marks at least two major innovations in the history of Pixar filmmaking. One is that it is Pixar’s first “ethnically” themed film (well there’s Ratatouille and Brave, but  it’s Pixar’s first ethnically themed film where insensitive cultural representation was a risk). The other is that it is the first Pixar film to revolve around a child: 12-year-old Miguel (Anthony Gonzalez).

Coco’s Mexicanness is essential, as it takes place during The Day of the Dead: a holiday with traditions that are explicitly explained in the film. That said, Coco’s focus on a demographic of humans, should not be viewed as an abandonment of the Pixar tradition of making films about groupings-of-things. I once came across an internet meme that described Pixar’s approach as follows: “what if toys had feelings?, what if bugs had feelings?, what if monsters had feelings?….what if feelings had feelings?” Coco follows this pattern by asking “what if the dead had feelings?” Coco thus could have been a Tim Burtonesque movie: a tale of gory skeletons looking for meaning in a dreary world. By taking its cues from Mexican culture, however, Coco came up with a concept of the “dead” that is far more profound than the slapstick gore-fest it could have otherwise been. Coco’s dead are not defined by being corpses; in fact, their skeleton forms are quite cartoonish and retain humanoid eyeballs and hair. Rather they are defined by their relationship to the living: a drive not to be forgotten by those on the other side.

Coco’s being centred around a child, on the other hand, was a more questionable tactic. The compelling nature of many Pixar’s protagonists comes from the fact that they are flawed despite being superficially mature. Toy Story’s Woody is beacon of good citizenry who must relearn compassion when he discovers he is in fact highly jealous of challengers to his top-dog status. Finding Nemo’s Marlin must overcome his overwhelming fear of all things-potentially-dangerous. Up’s Carl deals with loss, by committing full heartedly to a goal he set earlier in life, forcing him to relearn how to find happiness when life sends him in new directions. While Coco’s Miguel can perhaps be a bit hot-headed at times, for the most part, he is a perfectly reasonable child, surrounded by often unreasonable adults. While admittedly, a child might be a good fit for a story that teaches about a cultural holiday (an adult would be less likely to need training in their own cultural traditions), Miguel in my opinion, is ultimately not as memorable as some of Pixar’s other protagonists. I would add, as a thought experiment, Coco might have benefited from centering instead around the skeleton Héctor (Gael Garcia Bernal). While Hector seems like a natural sidekick-type, his story is not unlike A Bug’s Life’s Flik (with some darker undertones). (I suppose this gives rise to the parallel thought experiment of what A Bug’s Life would be like if Dot, and not Flik, was its hero).

Plot-wise Coco is bolstered by the novelty of its world of the dead, and that world’s intricately imagined scenery. Its narrative itself is perhaps a bit too plain-stated early on and feels a bit derived from Monster’s Inc., Inside Out, and Up at later moments. That said, one recycled trope, a reference to A Bug’s Life’s Heimlich, is fresh and funny in the Coco context.

I often explain my love for A Bug’s Life as follows: though its premise is that it’s a story about bugs, it might be a good film even without Pixar’s “What if X had feelings formula.” A Bug’s Life is the story of a naïve but spunky inventor who accidentally hires an army of clowns to liberate his people from a colonizing bully: that sounds like it could be a good story even if it starred ordinary humans. Coco, on the other hand, is not necessarily more than its Pixar formula, as without its particular brand of vibrant skeletons (and a persistent street dog) its story would not necessarily stand out. Then again, that is a mere thought experiment, and as it actually is (with its skeletons) Coco is a fun, emotional film that like its Pixar predecessors will linger as a crowd pleaser for audiences of all ages.