The Oscars are looming,
in case you hadn’t heard. I spent last evening with a last-minute Oscar
lightning round screening of Willem Dafoe’s Best Actor-nominated performance as
Vincent Van Gogh in At Eternity’s Gate,
and in my best Gene Shalit voice I will tell you to go-go-Gogh grab it at a
Redbox near you. Dafoe’s work towers over the other four nominees, and even
gives Ethan Hawke’s tortured pastor in First
Reformed, my choice for male performance of the year, a run for its money.
But truth be told, I’ve been
spending the waning minutes before the Dolby Theater at Hollywood and Highland
takes its place as the center of the universe tomorrow night (or tonight, if
you’re reading this on Sunday), immersed in decidedly anti-Oscar bait, and if
you don’t have any desire to submit yourself to watching Oscars this year you
could do much worse than spending time with any or all of these three
Oscar-allergic alternatives. Speaking of alternatives, in the last few days my
daughters and I have traveled to a parallel universe (where, perhaps, movies
like this win awards?) courtesy of Happy Death Day 2U, the inventive
and energetic sequel to 2017’s unexpectedly nifty Happy Death Day, both of which rest squarely on the shoulders of
the percolating comic talent of their lead, Jessica Rothe, who again navigates
the treacherous landscape of an endlessly repeating day which ends, every time,
with her own death. The sequel is, as one friend put it, more Real Genius (1985) than real horror, and it doesn’t quite measure
up to the delicious blend of existential horror-comedy the first one managed. But
fans of the first movie will likely be plenty diverted, as were we, by all the
different spins Rothe can put onto waking up in the same place
not-dead-after-all again and again and again…
Then we caught up with Overlord (“FROM PRODUCER J.J. ABRAMS!” shout the
ads), which parachuted into theaters this past November as if on a stealth
mission to make it into multiplexes and then avoid as many paying customers as
possible before sneaking out a week later the same way it snuck in and marching
straight to the closest streaming provider. The setup couldn’t be more
videogame boilerplate: a group of soldiers on a mission to take out a
communications tower behind German enemy lines during the last days of World
War II find that there’s much more sinister things going on in (and beneath)
that tower than just radio transmissions revealing Allied troop positions. And
the trailers reinforce the perception of the movie as yet another tired entry
in the zombie saturation fest that has been plaguing pop culture since long
before The Walking Dead became a
phenomenon.
But Overlord’s scope is
thankfully far more compact, and as a result more potent, than that of a full-on
invasion of suddenly reanimated corpses roaming across the bombed-out French
countryside. The movie is absurdly well directed by one Julius Avery and definitely
benefits from low expectations and having flown relatively low and successfully
under the radar. It’s also anchored by strong performances by Jovan Adepo and
Wyatt Russell as the straight-up private and the cynical corporal leading the
charge against they don’t exactly know what—Adepo hails from Denzel
Washington’s adaptation of August Wilson’s Fences,
and Russell, who you’ve seen in Richard Linklater’s Everybody Wants Some!, is every inch, every clenched tooth, his
father Kurt’s son, complete with genetically inherited magnetism— and young
actress Mathilde Ollivier as a girl seasoned by the horrors of war whose fellow
villagers are mysteriously disappearing into the German-occupied “church” on
the outskirts of town and coming back, if they come back at all, not quite the
same as they once were. Even if you can guess where it’s going, and you
probably will, Overlord has the power
to surprise you with both its over-the-top gore and its restraint. Its sense of being rooted in a tradition of
well-made horror handily elevates this picture above and beyond the usual fare
aimed at the rowdy hooligans roaming the multiplex on a Saturday night, in
relentless search of thrills far cheaper than the ones available here.
And speaking of the
multiplex, my family and I were snowbound the weekend it opened and couldn't
get to a show house, but I'm happy to report that earlier this week my daughter
Emma and I got to see The Prodigy with a packed, very
appreciative and very attentive audience, and if the sound of screams,
tension-release laughter and absolute quiet in all the right spots (no
guarantee from a multiplex horror movie audience) is any indicator, then
director Nicholas McCarthy's new movie is a well-deserving success. Don't let
the release date fool you-- this is not an early
2019 dump of a junk picture the studio is trying to earn back its money on. The Prodigy is a visually sophisticated
and eloquent horror thriller whose chill perfectly matches the winter air. It’s
a supernatural bad-seed melodrama with roots in lots of other pictures and
influences (The Exorcist, The Omen,
and directors like Mario Bava among them), but the movie’s ace-in-the-hole is
how grounded it is not only in the horror, but also the parental nightmare at
the root of the horror. Orange is the New
Black’s Taylor Schilling is a young mother who can’t get a handle on the
strange development of her young son, who showed incredible intellectual
agility from the earliest moments but who now, at age eight (as embodied by
Jackson Robert Scott, Pennywise’s first victim in the 2017 version of Stephen
King’s It), is exhibiting some rather
strange… tendencies.
To say more would be unfair, because of the three movies I’ve
talked about in this post The Prodigy is
the one that really delivers. Now,
after three features, the film’s director, Nicholas McCarthy, is becoming a
master of the slow burn-- he knows the value of using the wide-screen frame to
creep up to the terror. McCarthy is a true believer, a director who knows the
genre inside-out and takes it seriously, but he doesn’t come across as either an
overeager fanboy or a po-faced practitioner of the art of rubbing the
audience’s faces in gruesomeness in order to ensure his credibility. (See
French extreme horror.) McCarthy’s confidence here is remarkable. He manages to
steal a jump-scare bit directly from Bava and spin it brilliantly in such a way
that outdoes the maestro and puts the audience on the floor behind their seats.
(At least I was.) And The Prodigy delivers
one sequence that will surely endure among horror aficionados and, with any
luck, mainstream audiences, a masterful buildup to a release that never comes--
Schilling makes her way down a dark staircase and hovers near the entrance to
an even darker room, its black entrance opening toward her like the maw of an
abyss. Yet the cheap scream that a lesser director would pull out of his hat to
cap a setup like this, like a desperate magician's ragged rabbit, never
materializes. McCarthy leaves the scream that wants to leap out stuck squarely
in your throat, and the residual lingering on that dark room before the cutaway
cements a lingering dread that never dissipates for the remainder of the movie.
No plot spoilers from me. Just know that The
Prodigy will get under your skin. See it in a theater, if you can.
*****************************************
Okay, so back to the Oscars. With precious few hours left, I’ve
decided to once again participate in the ritual public humiliation of Oscar
predictions. You should be forewarned though: As they used to say on the
pinball machines of my youth, these predictions are for your amusement only. In
fact, some may get more amusement out of them than others, and that’s okay—I am
nothing if not one to be laughed at. So with that as my lead, it’s probably
redundant to suggest that the following predictions are probably not your best
bet for winning the office Oscar pool—the last time I won it myself, with my
awesome powers of precognition, was 15 years ago. And if some of you do choose
to use these guesses as a template in the expectation of big cash prizes, let
me be the first to say, “I told you so.” Here we go.
BEST PICTURE
In this year of all years, smack in the middle of a “national
emergency,” even though it’s not close to being my own pick I won’t be upset to
see Cuaron’s movie hold center stage.
Winner: Roma
Should win: BlacKkKlansman
Spoiler: Black Panther
BEST ACTRESS
It’s career achievement time.
Winner: Glenn Close, The
Wife
Should win: Olivia Colman,
The Favourite (sadly, she doesn’t seem to be one any longer)
Spoiler: Lady Gaga, A Star
is Born
BEST ACTOR
Bradley Cooper should learn the lesson that if he’s going to win
a Best Actor Oscar, he’d be better off to impersonate an actual person, like
Dick Cheney, or Freddie Mercury, or Vincent Van Gogh, or even a mook like Tony
“Lip” Vallelonga, rather than a fictional guy like Norman Maine (or a real guy
like Sam Elliot). Oh, well…
Winner: Rami Malek, Bohemian
Rhapsody
Should win: Willem Dafoe,
At Eternity’s Gate
Spoiler: Christian Bale, Vice
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
This year Oscar will coronate King.
Winner: Regina King, If
Beale Street Could Talk
Should win: Regina King, If
Beale Street Could Talk
Spoiler: Emma Stone, The
Favourite
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Can Mahershala Ali overcome the prevalent refrain of “he already
got his”? Yeah, I think so.
Winner: Mahershala Ali, Green
Book
Should win: Adam Driver, BlacKkKlansman
Spoiler: Richard E. Grant, Can
You Ever Forgive Me?
BEST DIRECTOR
He/she who bets against Mexico in this category is either a
Greek or Polish national, or more probably someone who hasn’t been paying
attention too closely over the last few months.
Winner: Alfonso Cuaron, Roma
Should win: Spike Lee, BlacKkKlansman
Spoiler: Spike Lee, BlacKkKlansman
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Despite the Writer’s Guild of America win for Nicole Holofcener
and Jeff Whitty for Can You Ever Forgive
Me?, I think the Oscar race is a close call between Spike Lee et al. and
Barry Jenkins. The winner will be the guy “they” really want to give an Oscar to.
Winner: Spike Lee, Kevin Willmott, Charlie Wachtel and David
Rabinowitz, BlacKkKlansman
Should win: (I threw a dart and it landed on) Barry Jenkins, If Beale Street Could Talk
Spoiler: Barry Jenkins, If
Beale Street Could Talk
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
The sweep will continue unabated here.
Winner: Alfonso Cuaron, Roma
Should win: Paul Schrader, First
Reformed
Spoiler: Deborah Davis, Tony McNamara, The Favourite
BEST DIRECTOR
Adam McKay! Kidding!
Winner: Alfonso Cuaron, Roma
Should win: Spike Lee, BlacKkKlansman
Spoiler: Ain’t gonna be no spoiler in this category.
BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
Winner: Spider-Man: Into
the Spider-verse
Should win: Spider-Man:
Into the Spider-verse
Spoiler: Ain’t gonna be no spoiler in this category
BEST ANIMATED SHORT
Winner: Bao
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Winner: Alfonso Cuaron, Roma
Should win: Robbie Ryan, The
Favourite, with a shout-out to Bruno Delbonnel (The Ballad of Buster Scruggs) and Benoit Delhomme (At Eternity’s Gate), who have no
business being on the sidelines here.
Spoiler: Lukasz Zal, Cold
War
BEST COSTUME DESIGN
Winner: Ruth Carter, Black
Panther
Should win: Ruth Carter, Black
Panther
Spoiler: Mary Zophres, The
Ballad of Buster Scruggs
BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
Winner: Free Solo
Should win: Of Fathers and
Sons
Spoiler: RBG
BEST DOCUMENTARY SHORT
Winner: Black Sheep
BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE
FILM
I’m betting on the maverick sensibilities of the Academy
membership to—What the hell am I saying?
Winner: Roma
Should win: Shoplifters
Spoiler: Cold War
BEST FILM EDITING
Winner: Hank Corwin, Vice
Should win: Barry Alexander Brown, BlacKkKlansman
Spoiler: Barry Alexander Brown, BlacKkKlansman
BEST LIVE-ACTION SHORT
Winner: Marguerite
BEST MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING
Winner: Vice
Should win: Vice
Spoiler: Ain’t gonna be no spoiler in
this category.
BEST ORIGINAL SCORE
Winner: Terence Blanchard, BlacKkKlansman
Should win: Nicholas Britell, If Beale Street Could Talk
Spoiler: Ludwig Goranson Black Panther
BEST ORIGINAL SONG
It’s the only win this overhyped
machine can’t possibly lose.
Winner: “Shallow,” A Star is Born
Should win: “When a Cowboy Trades His
Spurs for Wings,” The Ballad of Buster
Scruggs
Spoiler: Ain’t gonna be no spoiler in
this category
BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN
Wakanda forever?
Winner: Black Panther
Should win: Black Panther
Spoiler: Roma
BEST SOUND EDITING
Winner: Bohemian Rhapsody
Should win: A Quiet Place
Spoiler: A Quiet Place
BEST SOUND MIXING
Winner: Bohemian Rhapsody
Should win: Bohemian Rhapsody
Spoiler: Black Panther
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
Zzzzzzzzzzz….Whoops! I’m sorry. Carry
on.
Winner: Avengers: Infinity War
Should win: Uh…. Avengers: Infinity War
Spoiler: Ready Player One
************************************
Enjoy the Oscars. And promise not to
read these predictions on Monday and make fun of me.
***********************************
No comments:
Post a Comment