Tully. Wow. Way to toy with me, Jason Reitman (Up In the Air, Juno). I will have a spoilers section for this movie, but I will let you know when it happens. This hit me with an emotional punch. And I say that tongue-in-cheek because I did not find this movie all that emotional. Reitman has a way of writing and directing his stories so that you are wholly invested and don’t need to keep your tissues nearby. Instead, he tells his stories in a way that gets you interested from the get-go, creating characters who you wrote for and then hitting you with a gut punch when you least expect it. Ultimately, this results in his movies staying with you long after most movies you’ve seen have been forgotten. In Tully, he reunites with Charlize Theron (Mad Max: Fury Road, A Little Trip to Heaven) when the two team up for the fantastic Young Adult. I wouldn’t say that the Academy has shut out Theron (certainly not in the way that Jake Gyllenhaal has), but to have just two Academy Award nominations (Monster, North Country) is, if nothing else, a little surprising. I wonder if her performance in this film will be enough to land the coveted acting prize, especially with an April release. But she carried this movie in a couple of directions, held together by her evenness and Reitman’s adherence to the story when it felt like things were untangling.
Category Archives: Comedy
The Disaster Artist (2017)
Each year, there is at least one movie that I think I will hate and that I end up loving. Some years, it is much easier to pinpoint that movie than in other years. Not in 2017. Based on the trailers and the movie’s premise, I thought I would hate James Franco’s (Child of God, As I Lay Dying) The Disaster Artist. I will say that I knew nothing about Tommy Wiseau or the cult status of his movie The Room. However, I was pleasantly surprised and impressed by this movie’s effectiveness. This movie had quite a bit of Oscar buzz heading into awards season. It netted Franco a Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy. Unfortunately (for him), he was hit up with some sexual misconduct claims right around this time, and it very well could have cost him a nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role. This was the sixth-best performance of the year. As mentioned in previous posts, I would have gone with four nominated, minus Denzel Washington (Roman J. Israel Esq.), and replaced him with Jake Gyllenhaal (Stronger). After seeing this movie, I would have knocked Washington’s performance down to seventh and inserted Franco’s performance as the best not to be recognized with a nomination. His performance was very good. The movie would still have been good had he directed it and cast someone else as the lead, but casting himself was the right call.
Battle of the Sexes (2017)
2017 will go down as a year of very underwhelming movies. The nine films nominated for Best Picture were, by far, the poorest collection since 2009, when a decision was made that up to 10 movies could be nominated for Best Picture if they got enough votes. My Top 10 list has three of the nine movies for Best Picture (#5 The Shape of Water, #6 Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, #10 Get Out). It’s hard for me to make a case for my Top 3 (Wind River, Hostiles, Life) receiving a Best Picture Nomination. While great, these movies differ from what the Academy is looking for. But Battle of the Sexes (co-directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris) has everything the Academy looks for in a Best Picture nominee. It’s a period piece that looks very much like a period piece. It’s based on a true story and follows that story exceptionally closely. It has a definite protagonist and a definite antagonist. It has fantastic acting by its leads. It has a strong ensemble cast. It has a little bit of comedy, quite a bit of drama, and quite a bit of unexpected suspense. And its true story changed the course of history. It’s easily the most deserving movie that was not picked by The Academy (most say I, Tonya was the biggest snub), and it’s better and more deserving, in my opinion, than all of the selections.
Lady Bird (2017)
I think if you told someone that Saoirse Ronan (The Grand Budapest Hotel, The Lovely Bones), the actress who won audiences over with her innocent portrayal of a conflicted young Irish immigrant navigating her way through 1950s New York City in 2015’s fabulous Brooklyn (which earned her a Best Actress Nomination) is the same person playing the lead role two years later in Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird, they’d look at you funny before looking at pictures of her from both movies, recalling scenes from each, and then of nodding their heads and saying, “Yeah, I guess that is the same actress.” While a movie I didn’t resonate with and was definitely near the bottom of the Best Picture nominees in the lackluster 2017, I did appreciate her performance. It was just as honest and genuine as the one she gave in Brooklyn. Similarly to 2015, her work in this movie is likely the third or fourth-best of the year and landed Ronan her second Academy Award nomination.
Get Out (2017)
Jordan Peele’s debut feature film, Get Out, was a film that I originally wasn’t going to review. I liked the movie well enough, but it wasn’t one that I felt comfortable writing about. I only do so now because it will likely be nominated for Best Picture and could get as many as ten nominations. This is kind of crazy for a movie released in February. It certainly isn’t unheard of, but it is rare. Its Academy Award nominations, 99% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and $175+ million in box office revenue off a $5 million budget confirm that this is one of the most surprising and successful movies ever. It may be THE most successful horror movie of all time if you measure it by those four factors alone. It’s a movie that keeps you engaged and entertained from its very first scene (think a toned and shorter version of the first scene in Scream), powers its way through a unique plot that you’ve never seen on film before, and keeps you on the edge of your seat through its bold and unpredictable final act.