The race for the five Best Actor nominations might be the Academy Awards’ toughest race. Bradley Cooper (A Star Is Born) is a lock. There has been some significant buzz for movies that have run in limited release only (Ethan Hawke – First Reformed) and Willem Dafoe (At Eternity’s Gate). Ryan Gosling had a considerable push heading into First Man, but the movie was a miss with critics and audiences. His outstanding 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.
Category Archives: Genre
Overlord (2018)
Any great movie year needs a variety of different types of movies:
- You have to have massive heavyweights during Oscar season.
- You need to exclude a handful of movies from contention simply because there isn’t enough room. These would be movies that, during a normal, might not just be considered for a nomination but might win some. These are movies that, when you look at your Top 10 list at the end of the year and don’t see that film’s title, make you scratch your head until you see the list of titles there instead, and then you say to yourself, “Okay, that makes sense.”
- A great movie year needs to have at least one memorable comedy and one memorable horror.
Widows (2018)
After watching Widows, I can very confidently say that if you team up director Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave, Shame) and writer Gillian Flynn (Gone Girl, HBO’s Sharp Objects), I’m going to have my butt in a theater opening weekend. I’ve heard about Widows for months and saw the trailer the day before I saw the movie. And I still haven’t seen the whole trailer. I only needed to watch the first half of it to know that it was a movie I wanted to see immediately. McQueen, who was narrowly beaten out for Best Director (Alfonso Cuarón – Gravity), hardly seemed upset when, half an hour later, his 12 Years a Slave won topped Gravity (and others) for Best Picture of 2013. He’s been off the grid for the last five years (save for a few shorts), but he is back with a movie that might be better than any of his previous three masterpieces (12 Years a Slave, Shame, Hunger Strike). The only thing missing is an appearance by Michael Fassbender, but you won’t even notice.
Boy Erased (2018)
After two movies, the jury is still out on Joel Edgerton as a director. After catching fire with 2015’s surprise hit The Gift, Edgerton tried his hand with material based on a true story, adapting and writing the screenplay for Garrard Conley’s novel Boy Erased. To be perfectly transparent, I had extremely high expectations for this film. This was a novel I read a couple of years ago, well before I knew that a movie based on the story was in the process. I enjoyed the book, and when I saw that the cast was to include Edgerton, Lucas Hedges, Nicole Kidman, and Russell Crowe and that it was already being mentioned in Oscar discussions before it was released, I was more than excited. However, I knew that the topic of this film was controversial. When I read the book, I was not dissatisfied with the ending but felt rushed quite a bit. Boy Erased was one of my ten most anticipated films of the year. And like a few others in my ten most anticipated films of the year (namely First Man), it ultimately failed to impress. A film that should have been ripe with emotion left me completely unaffected.
Mid90s (2018)
Before reading this review on Jonah Hill’s (True Story, War Dogs) directorial debut effort Mid90s, I ask that you watch this quick 90-second video that someone compiled about him and put on YouTube. It is heartbreaking and hopefully will change your impression of this living legend of an actor. Perceived for many years as being Hollywood’s next fat man, perhaps in the same mold as the gone-too-early Jim Belushi, John Candy, Chris Farley, Hill broke into Hollywood with roles in iconic comedies like Superbad, Funny People, Get Him to the Greek, Cyrus, This Is the End, 21 Jump Street, 22 Jump Street, Hail, Caesar, Knocked Up; movies that in one way or another accentuated his overweight character. And if you, like me, laughed at the jokes aimed at his weight in any of these movies and are feeling guilty after watching this clip, first of all, relax; you were supposed to. Secondly, reevaluate. It doesn’t take a genius to see that Hill has battled his weight throughout his career (he has numerous roles interspersed in his career in which he is thin).