Anthony Hopkins (The Remains of the Day, Amistad) gives the second-best performance of his career (The Silence of the Lambs) in a film that fails to overwhelm, like most of the other best picture nominees. Disguised by the outstanding performances of many of the other movies nominated for Oscar’s most prominent award of the night, The Father (Florian Zeller’s directorial debut) is a very well-made film that we should remember for its story, its performances, its execution, and its all too real haunting reality. I’ll concede to that if these things meet the checklist of a Best Picture-nominated movie. But there was something while watching this highly engaging film that felt like it didn’t deserve to be a movie that was one of the eight best in any year. With that said, 2020 as a whole did not generate many great films. In that regard, The Father merits its acclaim. The counter-argument is that the Academy doesn’t have to nominate up to ten films. Before 2009, only five films were able to receive a nomination. Since then, the fewest number of Best Picture nominated films for a given year has been seven (2018). 2020 would have been a year that warranted the minimum number of selections. However, the top movies, as a whole, were so poor that it would be just as challenging to distinguish five that are that much better than eight.
Category Archives: Academy Award Nominees
One Night in Miami (2020)
Adapted plays that play out on the silver screen in a fashion that makes you feel like you are watching a play are not my favorite. That’s not to say they don’t always work because sometimes they do. Fences is an excellent example of this done correctly. That movie undoubtedly was successful because of its actors (most notably Denzel Washington and Viola Davis). Like Regina King’s One Night in Miami, Fences only had a couple of stages (in the backyard, front porch, and house). But while each movie was based on a stage performance, Fences felt raw and honest, whereas One Night in Miami felt…well…staged.
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (2020)
As I write this post today, it has been just hours since the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences named its nominees for The 93rd Academy Awards, recognizing the best of what may have been its most unique year. 2020 was a pretty dreadful year all around. It was my most challenging, trying, and somber year. I’ve mentioned quite a few times in other reviews that most of the big blockbusters that were initially scheduled to be released were delayed to 2021 in hopes that the end of the COVID-19 pandemic would signal a return of moviegoers to the theaters. The jury is still out on each of these. Indeed, some theaters that closed their doors back in March of 2020 will never open their doors again. Others will see far less patronage because many movies have Video on Demand releases on the same day or shortly after their theatrical release.
Nomadland (2020)
I listened to a podcast about Chloe Zhao’s (Songs My Brothers Taught Me, The Rider) Nomadland and how this might feel like a top ten movie in a typical year but maybe closer to the back five range rather than a front-runner for best film of the year. I agreed with that sentiment and wished I had said that myself. Like so much else associated with the year 2020, with a few exceptions, this year of films will quickly be forgotten. The fact that Nomadland is the clubhouse leader to win Best Picture at the time of this March 1st post seems incredible to me. I thought 2019 was a bad year, but it still produced memorable movies such as 1917, Ad Astra, and Parasite that will be remembered for years. While there are still a few movies I have yet to see that I think I’ll enjoy (most notably Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and The Trial of the Chicago 7), I have seen the other movies that likely will earn a nomination for Best Picture. It’s the weakest list I’ve seen in a long time, coming off a year in which I had said the same thing.
Minari (2020)
Suffering from similar fates as other 2020 films such as News of the World, Land, and Nomadland is Lee Isaac Chung’s breakthrough Minari. This movie tells a familiar story in a way that is unique but ultimately ineffective. I say that tongue-in-cheek because my favorite film of the year (at the time of this post) is News of the World, which fails to escape many of the traps these other three movies fall into. And that’s not even to say that News of the World is a great film. It’s a very good film that earned quite an affinity in a reasonably drab 2020.