The race for the five Best Actor nominations might be the Academy Awards’ toughest race. It seems like Bradley Cooper (A Star Is Born) is a lock. There has been some major buzz for a couple of movies that have run in limited release only (Ethan Hawke – First Reformed) and Willem Dafoe (At Eternity’s Gate). Ryan Gosling had a huge push heading into First Man, but that movie was completely underwhelmed with critics and audiences, and his fine performance could be a casualty in this tight year. A new crop of contenders could swoop in for a spot or two (Rami Malek –Bohemian Rhapsody), John David Washington (BlacKkKlansman), Lucas Hedges (Boy Erased). And then there are a couple of oldtimers who turned in a couple of possible final career performances (Clint Eastwood – The Mule) and Robert Redford (The Old Man & the Gun). But I will state, for the record, that one of the men listed above, not named Bradley Cooper, will be knocked out for the career-defining role of Viggo Mortensen (Appaloosa, A History of Violence) in Green Book. We can talk about Mahershala Ali (Moonlight, Hidden Figures) all that we want (and we will). But Green Book is a Mortensen-driven vehicle and a movie that is an absolute must-see. I am a huge Mortensen fan. The Road is one of my all-time favorite movies, and his performance in 2007’s Eastern Promises was absolutely deserving of an Oscar nomination. But I was not a huge fan of 2016’s Captain Fantastic (a film I enjoyed to an extent but had no desire to review). I absolutely thought that the Oscar nomination should have gone to Jake Gyllenhaal (Nocturnal Animals). If, based on the preview, you are worried about Green Book basically being Driving Miss Daisy 2, rest assured that it is not. That, honestly, was my biggest trepidation. And don’t let the PG-13 rating fool you either into thinking that this will be something light-hearted and fun. It pushed the envelope with its language and tone at times. I’m not going to say that this is as dark as the Tom Cruise/ Jamie Foxx 2004 movie Collateral, but it is not designed that way either. While that movie, too, was driven by the performances of its two leads, I don’t think it had nearly as much to say as Green Book did. And I’m also not going to suggest that this movie doesn’t play out exactly as you might expect it to because it absolutely does.
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Category Archives: Mahershala Ali
Hidden Figures (2016)
I get knocked a little bit when I talk to my friends about Hidden Figures. The Ted Melfi (St. Vincent) directed movie based on the untold story of Katherine G. Johnson (Taraji P. Henson – Hustle & Flow, Four Brothers), Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer – The Help, Snowpierecer), and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe – Moonlight, Made in America) as brilliant African-American women who were hired by NASA and who served as the brains behind the launch of astronaut John Glenn into orbit, a stunning achievement that restored the nation’s confidence, turned around the Space Race and galvanized the world. When I rip on the movie a little bit, it is not because I think it is not good, but rather because it’s just a little too predictable and too PG for me. While I really do enjoy and recognize a movie based on a true story, I appreciate a darker, edgier movie that much more. When I say a movie is too Disney for me, it doesn’t have anything to do with Disney at all. It has to do with a movie being too toned down for my jaded self to be able to appreciate it. And, unfortunately, that’s my feeling on Hidden Figures. Based on the preview alone, I had no intention of seeing it unless it got nominated for best picture. When it did, I reluctantly dragged myself to the theater and even paid the extra three dollars because it was playing in my theater’s featured auditorium. With all of that said, Hidden Figures is by no means a bad movie. It just felt like a “been there, done that” type of movie for me. I feel like I’ve seen movies about overcoming adversity, fighting segregation, achieving a goal in the eleventh hour, and much more of what this movie does. In fact, I’m often drawn to this type of movie. But, as someone who sees movies a lot, I just feel like I’ve seen this exact movie a lot recently, and it just lacked the intensity and edge that I appreciate at this point in my life.
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Moonlight (2016)
Barry Jenkins’ (Medicine for Melancholy) Moonlight is an ambitious film in so many different ways. Though it particularly revolves around the uncertainty of being gay, it also touches on many of the other important issues of the day, including adolescent bullying, drug abuse, masculinity, broken relationships, and poverty. The acting in this movie is out of this world. Never does this feel like a movie to me. Rather it feels like you are just an invisible camera watching three different stages of a male discovering and dealing with his sexual identity in the hardships of a destitute part of Miami, Floria. The film is divided into three chapters. All are centered around the same Chiron. At age 6 or 7, he is referred to as Little. At age 16 or 17 (the chapter that gets the most focus), he is Chiron. And for the last chapter, he’s age 26 or 27 and goes by the name Black. He’s equally conflicted in all three different stages of his life. The simplicity of this movie is its strength. If you like artistic movies that center around a real story with characters who feel real, you will probably find this movie absolutely riveting.
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Free State of Jones (2016)
With his scraggly beard, yellow teeth, foreboding scowl, and deliberate limp, Matthew McConaughey’s (Amistad, A Time to Kill) portrayal of Newt Knight, a poor white farmer who led an extraordinary rebellion during the Civil War, is a far cry from the same man who was pigeonholing his career a decade earlier by playing the same character over and over in hit or miss romantic comedies like How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Failure to Launch, The Wedding Planner, Fool’s Gold, and The Ghosts of Girlfriends Past to name a few. McConaughey reinvented himself three or four years ago and re-established himself as a dramatic leading man with the likes of The Lincoln Lawyer, Interstellar, HBO’s True Detective, Killer Joe, Mud, and Dallas Buyer’s Club, for which he won Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role at the 2014 Academy Awards ceremony. While he’s had his misses recently (has anyone even heard of 2016’s The Sea of Trees?), he has continued to have the ability to pick and choose his movies, and, unlike his string of romantic comedies, he continues to branch himself out further and further.
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