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2015 in review – You had us worried there for a bit

2015 best of

There was a moment when it looked like 2015 would be a pretty miserable year for cinema. A good few moments, to be honest. Battling through my final semester of college, my film viewing was restricted, and it wasn’t until May that I saw the first of the films to make my Top 20 of the year (Mad Max: Fury Road, if you’re asking).

Highly rated horrors It Follows and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night proved to be effective diversions that thoroughly failed to live up to the hyperbolic heights of the Film Twitter opinion machine. Furious 7 was a delightful (and dumb, but delightful) way to spend my birthday and a night away from my thesis, but that franchise continues to move away from the success of Fast Five. After Mad Max summer descended into a farce of blockbusters: the paint-by-nostalgia monstrosity that was Jurassic World, the lopsidedly bloated Avengers: Age of Ultron, the Roland Emmerich-lite San Andreas.

It was well into autumn before things picked up for me. Some early triumphs from the year made their ways to Netflix, and by then I was working on a project at the Museum of Modern Art, where keeping up to date with the better film releases became little more than a matter of staying late after work. In so many ways 2015 ended a lot better than it began.

It was Star Wars that sealed the deal. Not my favourite film of the year (in fact you’ll see it absent from the list below – but it was a close cut), The Force Awakens proved to have that little bit of magic that has been missing for all too long, a film the world can absorb the hype of that then manages to live up to expectations and be a genuinely terrific film. I saw a late screening opening night, and regardless of reservations, I left the cinema more charged than I can remember being in years.

There were, as always, dabbles in film history to charge me also. Painfully overdue, I finally viewed Kieślowski’s Three Colours trilogy, which lived up to the expectations of that teenager who caught three minutes of White on the TV so many years ago. At the cinema, I caught some real masterpieces for the first time: The Naked Spur, A Star Is Born (1954), The Masque of the Red Death, Fires on the Plain, the five-hour cut of Until the End of the World, Touki Bouki, Lonesome, and a 3D screening of the delirious Kiss Me Kate. Nothing compared to Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles, which stole my heart and exhausted my mind at MoMA in November, and instantly catapulted itself into the list of very greatest films I have ever seen.

Knowing 2015 would be a busy year, my annual movie challenge was intentionally a light one. Spying an obvious blind spot in my film knowledge – Bollywood – I took to forcing myself to watch one (long) feature a month. I only scraped the surface of course, but I’ve developed an understanding of and passion for this major branch of Indian cinema, its flamboyance, its love of twists and hatred of subtext. I watched essential classics including Zanjeer, Mother India, and Mughal-e-Azam, as well as recent hits like Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge and 3 Idiots, and even contemporary madness like Dhoom, Dhoom 2, and Enthiran. I’ll be watching more in future, and I can’t recommend enough that film fans who have yet to dip their toes in Bollywood streams take care of that, and see what a sixth of people on earth considers mainstream cinema.

So on to the films of the year. As always I missed a few things. Beasts of No Nation, despite being right there on Netflix, never got seen. Clouds of Sils Maria, Bridge of Spides, Magic Mike XXL, and Creed similarly got missed. Some lauded films were appreciated, but fell short for me, like Straight Outta Compton, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, The Hateful Eight, and The Revenant. Films that narrowly didn’t make my Top 20 include Mistress America, Tangerine, Taxi, James White, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Song of the Sea, and The Big Short. The terrific farce 7 Days of Hell was considered, but rejected for the same reason A Very Murray Christmas, the worst thing I saw all year, doesn’t feature in my worst-of list – they’re both productions designed for home viewing and barely of a length to qualify as features.

 

Now, who enjoys a good list?

 

20. Queen of Earth

Alex Ross Perry’s psychological drama about the breakdown of friendship between two millenial yuppies is peppered with nightmarish oddities that keep the viewer on their toes. It’s violently negative in its lack of faith in people supporting one another in need, but not unjustifiably so. Shot in bright airy spaces, but the focus is on intense close-ups that further alienate the characters from each other. Elisabeth Moss gave one of the year’s most committed performances.

 

19. Youth

Still struggling to recreate his earlier successes in The Consequences of Love and (the near-perfect) Il Divo, Paolo Sorrentino has made his best film in seven years. It focuses on two elderly artist friends hiding from the world in a Swiss spa. Michael Caine is the retired classical composer who peaked too soon, Harvey Keitel is the Scorsese-like filmmaker who keeps pumping out films that cannot compare to the works of his youth. Finely acted and sublimely scored, and featuring a deluge of Sorrentino’s delicious, unexplained eccentricities, it is hampered only by its dialogue, which feels all too scabrously translated from Italian.

 

18. Ex Machina

As sci-fi continues to recapture the public imagination (2015 was quite a good year for it overall), this unexpected gem, a sexy Asimovian tale of A.I. versus real en-souled intelligence, became a surprise favourite for many. Written and directed by Alex Garland, known best for writing Danny Boyle’s sci-fi ventures, this was a slickly produced psychological thriller that brought together demi-perspex android Alicia Vikander and 2015 MVP Domhnall Gleeson’s computer expert for the ultimate Voight-Kampff test. Oscar Isaac’s untrustworthy tech billionaire, all creatine and superego, stole the show, along with the lush visuals. A mishandled finale was the only sour note.

 

17. Phoenix

Christian Petzold, the emerging master of German historical melodrama, weaves a strangely original yarn in Phoenix, in which a Holocaust survivor attempts to uncover if her husband served her up to the Nazis. Unrecognisable after reconsructive surgery, she is hired by her husband to impersonate his supposedly dead wife to claim an inheritance. The greater mystery is therefore known to us, creating a scintilating game of cat and mouse. Impressive period detail, Nina Hoss’s restrained performance and a jawdropping conclusion make it one to remember.

 

16. Sicario

What should feel overly familiar, another tale of cynical cops and murderous cartels, is given new life and energy in Denis Villeneuve’s Sicario. The descent of Emily Blunt’s FBI agent from go-getting SWAT member, to toughened special forces volunteer, to exhausted, disillusioned survivor, stands as a superb metaphor for the bewildering War on Drugs. Smart dialogue and incredible cinematography by Roger Deakins (the night vision sequence was one of the year’s finest) saw it through clunkier moments; it leaves a lasting impression.

 

15. Goodnight Mommy

The old dark house of classic horror is here replaced with a soulless, polished modernist monolith, a bright white country house full of dark terrors. A pair of twins – spritely, Aryan-looking – begin to suspect that their mother is no longer who she claims to be. A nasty game of powerplay ensues, with the story cleverly shifting the viewer’s allegience. Keenly cut and often blackly comic, it’s a skin-crawling horror that reinvents torture porn as Oedipal nightmare.

 

14. The Assassin

Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s stunning wuxia fable was one of 2015’s most beautiful and most frustrating films. With an intentionally obtuse storyline and an editing style that cuts away from the main action on a whim, it is not a film that satisfies a hunger for solid storytelling. What it does have however are exquisitely lush production values and, in its star Shu Qi, a remarkable feminine intensity. Many of the year’s most arresting images were imbedded in this work, in particular a dramatic cliffside confrontation slowly enwrapped in mist.

 

13. Inside Out

Pixar rarely let us down, but lately their hits have numbered their misses. But their hits remain some of the smartest, most charming and most universally appealing films to come out of Hollywood today. Pete Docter, responsible for Monsters, Inc. and Up, here takes us inside the mind of a young preteen, demonstrating her emotional turmoil through anthropomorphised emotions that dwell in a sci-fi wonderland; part playground, part bureaucratic stampede. The characters both inside and out carry the film’s hefty emotional punch, and the designs are handsome and witty. Only its repetitive, stop-and-start adventure narrative prevents it from being listed with the very top of the Pixar pantheon.

 

12. Brooklyn

Old-fashioned in the best possible way, director John Crowley’s take on Colm Tóibín’s novel, adapted by Nick Hornby, puts its money where its heart is. Saoirse Ronan beams as Eilis, a shy parochial Irish girl who moves to New York to better herself, and soon emerges from her shell, only to be torn between her new home and the one she left behind. Plus there’s an ideal romantic match on both sides of the Atlantic. Excellent period detail and finely paced, simple human drama create something traditional yet timely. Earnest, genuine, and unironic storytelling.

 

11. Spotlight 

Telling the story of how The Boston Globe broke the news of massive cover-ups of paedophilia within the Catholic Church, Spotlight repeatedly evokes the champion of the investigative news genre, All the President’s Men. While never quite reaching its forebear’s heights, it recaptures much of its energy, making the gathering of information or the biting of a new lead as thrilling as a gun battle or foot chase. It is functionally, unshowily shot, with some choice montage work, but it’s the slowly building story and the great performances, most notably Mark Ruffalo, that made this one of the year’s most surprisingly powerful dramas.

 

10. Anomalisa

Resurrecting a 10-year-old stage play, the unique surrealist Charlie Kaufman chose to visualise this tale of depression and isolation in stop-motion animation form. The antihero of the film, Michael, is so cut-off, introspective and self-obsessive, that he perceives every stranger as sharing the same, expressionless face, each bearing actor Tom Noonan’s barely shifting tones. A chance encounter with Lisa, wearing her own 3D-printed face and wielding Jennifer Jason Leigh’s sweet voice, evolves into a simple love affair with complex repercussions. At times hilarious, tragic, or nightmarish, it sculpts two incredible character studies as rich as the miniature universe built to house them. The shower scene alone guarantees this one immortality.

9. The Duke of Burgundy

Peter Strickland has emerged as a late British Lynch, an artist who understands the film camera as a literal dream machine, producing deep truth from the illogical. In this, his third dramatic feature, he explores female sexuality through a series of twisting sexual games of cat-and-mouse, as a lesbian couple indulge in sado-masochistic role-play in opulent fashion. The lavish English country estate décor, sensuous lingerie and extensive all-female cast create a gratifying otherworldliness, while the rich cinematography, sharp cutting and unexpected insect imagery add to Strickland’s ethereal scenario an extra sexy pinch.

 

8. The Look of Silence

The companion piece to 2012’s untouchable The Act of Killing, The Look of Silence sees Joshua Oppenheimer turn away from the perpetrators of Indonesia’s anti-communist genocide to look at its victims, and the survivors. In a metaphor too perfect for fiction, clear sight is given to us through an optician (or supposed optician), a man whose brother was savagely slain by government-backed gangsters. He visits these older gangsters, now local big wigs, and while performing eye exams, has them probe their despicable pasts for reasonings and methods. Mixing gut-wrenching old video testament with brightly shot contemporary footage, Oppenheimer hints that an emotional cleansing is possible, but all too late for our protagonist and his withering parents.

 

7. Mad Max: Fury Road 

Just when reboots and remakes and all-too-late sequels were becoming old-hat, George Miller undid more than a decade’s worth of talking animal abuse to bring back Max Rockatansky from his shallow, sandy, post-apocalyptic grave. An adrenaline-pumping extended chase sequence of a movie, Fury Road has all the thump and energy of the finest post-’90s action cinema with the dedicated, unpatronising world-building of ’80s fantasy. Tom Hardy grunts as Max, while Charlize Theron stands a one-armed feminist archangel as Imperator Furiosa, a second-tier thug in a cultish tribe who decides enough is enough in the face of crippling misogyny and rape. With exquisite stunts and mind-boggling costume and vehicle design, Fury Road is that rare art film in blockbuster’s clothing. Indulgences in the thrill of the chase undermine the broader themes at times, but this is still exceptional filmmaking from start to finish.

 

6. The Tribe

Part gangster movie, part coming-of-age tale, part pitch-black parody of high school dramas, The Tribe is a monstrous and brilliant work. Set at a Ukrainian school for the deaf, the dialogue is entirely in sign language, without accompanying translation of any kind. The audience is thus forced to engage doubly with the material, to absorb what story it can while the thunderous, angered performances confront them head on. Extended shots without cuts for interruption draw you further in, only to be assaulted by a McDonagh-ian propensity for sudden, horrifying violence. Other sequences our ears pick up the important sounds that could mean life-or-death for the characters on screen. It is a hopeless look at an isolated, noiseless world, that milks the potential of cinema to both reveal and conceal for everything it’s got.

 

5. The Martian

Another story of survival in space – so what makes this one different? Well for starters, Matt Damon gives his finest performance in a decade in one of his greatest roles, as astronaut Mark Watney, a cocksure scientist whose wit and ego are enough to just about sustain him after he is abandoned on Mars in a dust storm. His quest to stay alive with limited resources is created with real (or at least believable) science and exceptional wit, through Drew Goddard’s bouncy screenplay and Damon’s sardonic delivery. The momentum jumps along at a solid pace, while sequences on Mars, Earth, and in space sustain the drama without an ounce of fat. Ridley Scott, working as a director for hire, commits to a great project, tying together excellent location shooting (in Jordan) and expertly deployed special effects. A testament to human perseverance, a uniquely smart blockbuster, and just a really good time at the movies.

 

4. Son of Saul

Shot on 35mm with needle-point-shallow focus, Hungarian filmmaker László Nemes’s debut feature redefines ‘harrowing’, by bringing you into the whirling hell of a Nazi death camp and refusing to let you out. The sensational Géza Röhrig is Saul, a Jewish prisoner fit enough to be part of the team who assist in the mass murder of their own people, and thus an enforced collaborator. His impossible last chance for redemption is to save the corpse of a young man (his son, perhaps?) from the furnace, but escalating events in the camp block his way at every hurdle. An exhausting, frustrating and beautiful work, that dares to reveal the darkest, unwhispered barbarities of the Holocaust.

 

3. 45 Years

The year’s simplest, meatiest tragedy, Andrew Haigh’s 45 Years feels like the untold not-so-happy ending to many of the greatest love stories. An older couple is about to celebrate their 45th wedding anniversary when he receives a letter regarding a lost love from his past. The nostalgia and sadness bred in him stirs regret and paranoia in his wife, threatening not just the occasion, but the legacy of their relationship. Capturing beautiful moments of human interaction and shot from a permanently respectful distance, 45 Years is a remarkable story that triumphs through its two stars, the resurrected ’60s heartthrob Tom Courtenay, and the irrepressible Charlotte Rampling, at her very finest.

 

2. Carol

Todd Haynes’s sumptuous, delicious film of forbidden love in 1950s New York hits with an emotional wallop, as wide-eyed salesgirl Therese (Rooney Mara) meets older divorcee-to-be Carol (Cate Blanchett), and embarks upon a seemingly doomed lesbian romance. Made up of perfectly framed glances and erotically charged conversations, Carol highlights the cruelty of the attitudes of the time without preaching or descending into melodrama. The period detail and lighting astonish, while the score by Carter Burwell captures and holds the energy of the drama. But it’s the performances by the film’s two female leads that make this one for the ages. Heartfelt and empathetic, they carry their flawed characters with immense pride right through to the heart-stopping finale.

 

1. Hard to Be a God

One of the defining qualities of a great movie is that it either shows you something that has never been seen before, or tells a story that is unlike any you have ever seen. It has been too long since a film did both. Aleksei German’s final film (it was completed in post after his death), shot over six years, originates in a novel by Russian authors Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, who wrote the work on which Tarkovsky’s Stalker was based. It is about a group of human scientists observing a world almost identical to Earth, but still in, and seemingly stuck in, the Middle Ages. In an explosive performance, Leonid Yarmolnik plays Don Rumata, a human observer succumbed to extraordinary hubris, encouraging the peasants of this backwards planet to treat him as a god. The themes of madness and decline are handled with the gravitas they deserve, but the film retains a casual cheekiness throughout, defiantly grotesque and dirty. The lengthy takes with roving handheld cameras get you right up in the thick of it; you can almost smell the sweat and mud. German has done the near impossible, rigidly blocking his scenes despite the wild camera movements, so that his frame is perpetually full, busy, and yet with no action obscured. It is monumental filmmaking, beautiful and hideous and deep.

hardtobeagod

Good god, man!

 

—————————————————————–

So as for the worst films of 2015, well, for a year that never seemed like it was going to be a good year for cinema until the last minute, it never looked much like a bad year either. I never saw Mortdecai or Rock the Kasbah or Pan or Terminator: Typo. End-of-the-world examples of cynical capitalist cinema in the guise of Jurassic World or Minions were so blandly efficient as to escape this list. Here’s what utterly disappointed or downright infuriated this past year.

 

5. The Good Dinosaur

One step forward and one step back is Pixar’s game right now. This mindlessly banal tripe is only a patch above Cars 2 in that studio’s canon. It’s utterly unbelievable, uncrafted world, with barely a dozen dinosaur inhabitants implying rampant inbreeding, its rehashed boy-and-his-dog plot that goes nowhere new, its lazy voicework and godawful twangy score, all add up to bad family entertainment. The backgrounds are, admittedly, extraordinarily illustrated, but that’s no use when the characters in front of them look like Aardman characters crafted from nasal drippings. The magic mushrooms scene was the most socially and ethically misjudged moment in an American movie all year, and I’m including Entourage in that.

 

4. Taken 3

Climbing its way up from the very bottom a few years back, the Taken franchise now no longer feels like an advertising campaign for ISIS, at least. But this remains truly exhausted action garbage, with growling and exhausted Liam Neeson killing all the Russians in America after his ex-wife is murdered in a desperate attempt to raise the stakes. The action sequences barely thrill (as they barely thrilled when seen in the trailers), and Forest Whitaker only serves to depress with his role-slumming. The dramatic ending is gloriously, unintentionally laughable.

 

3. The Editor 

Genre spoofs are not easy, and this attempt to lampoon giallo and B-movie horror manages to bungle everything from the get-go. The look, the rhythms, the acting styles are all wrong, as if no one involved actually bothered to watch a giallo beforehand, or thought a movie all about analogue film editing might wanna look like it’s being shown on old film. The murder mystery isn’t intriguing, the horror isn’t frightening and the gags just aren’t funny – desperate as it is to find comedy in old-timey Italian misogyny, it comes off as disinterested in appearing at all respectful to women. At least it tried, but it failed utterly.

 

2. Fantastic Four

The superhero reboot no one asked for became the film no one wanted, including, it would seem, the actors or filmmakers involved. Every step is so blatantly miscalculated, from the casting (Jamie Bell as tough guy Ben, Michael B. Jordan as lovable fop Johnny, Toby Kebbell as someone with an accent) to the overly realistic look, to the epic score played over characters crossing the street or typing things into computers. Supposedly plagued by production issues, its bipolar switch in the second act reveals that no one could quite agree what kind of movie they were making. For once with a messy major Marvel-based project, the box office reflected this.

1. The Loft

Erik Van Looy’s remake of his own modestly successful Belgian thriller Loft, this is an uncompromising study in bad filmmaking. An unengaging murder mystery, that doubles as a deeply unsexy erotic thriller, The Loft starts off on the most wrong foot by having its five male stars buy an apartment together in which to cheat on their wives. By the time a dead body turns up, we already want all these men locked away for it regardless of their role in the murder. Painful miscasting and excruciating dialogue build up to a pathetic series of convoluted twists. Men’s rights activist cinema, with all the talent you imagine goes with that.

 

 

And with that, onward into 2016…

 

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Oscarhood – Predictions for the 87th Academy Awards

I like to imagine an alternate universe where giant gold men award each other Neil Patrick Harrises for their contributions to the cinematic arts

With your host, Dougie Stinson.

If I’m to understand this correctly, California is the only American state right now not crippled by unnaturally cold February weather. And it’s a good thing too, or this weekend’s Oscars would feature 90 very unpleasant minutes on the white carpet, and those of us on the East Coast wouldn’t have good excuses to hide inside from the snow on a Sunday night.

So yes, it’s Academy Awards time again, that one magical time of the year where everyone cares as much about movies as I do. The theme for this year’s show is “Neil Patrick Harris finally gets to host the Oscars”, so there’s a lot of pressure on the Starship Troopers star to make sure MC stands for ‘most charming’.

Twelve months on from 12 Years a Slave’s deserved win, and 12 years are again a major contender – this time the 12 years of Mason Evans’s life in Boyhood. Richard Linklater’s film is surprisingly lo-fi for a Best Picture contender, but the scope of its production makes it that one-of-a-kind film the Academy occasionally like to acknowledge. But it’s not quite a given yet, with the likes of Birdman, The Grand Budapest Hotel and the struggling British scientist twins Hawking and Turing all viable contenders. There’s been a notable best picture/director split the last two years, also, and although Interstellar has been denied the role of this year’s Gravity, there’s still a good chance of the top film of the night won’t walk away with all the gold.

The big event no one is talking about is The Sound of Music 50th anniversary something-or-other we’re all going to be subjected to because AMPAS have officially run out of ideas for how to throw a party. The only way it’s going to be truly entertaining is if they just play this clip on a loop for five minutes.

 

Anyways, where was I?

 

Best Picture

Free Mason: Ellar Coltrane in Boyhood

Free Mason: Ellar Coltrane in Boyhood

Only eight nominees this time around? What does that say about the movies in 2014? And what was the point of the whole Dark Knight-inspired revival of up to 10 nominees if Interstellar was gonna get shut out? And where the hell is Nightcrawler on this list? Boyhood has all the prestige in its pocket, but it also comes with plenty of fatigue given its summer release and the endless parade of praise since its Sundance debut more than a year ago. It’s a deserving winner though, and it’s hard to pick out a true opponent. Birdman is just that bit too out there to take the prize, and Grand Budapest Hotel suffers from both fatigue and over-whimsy. The Imitation Game and The Theory of Everything would almost be shoe-ins in their own years (although the latter is a far more affecting film than the rather flaccid Turing tale), but I suspect they cancel one another out. Whiplash is terrific, but its real-world appeal is utterly overshadowed by Boyhood’s. American Sniper has courted so much ire and controversy it’s hard to see it taking the top prize, but then I remain astonished it was nominated in the first place – it has to be the weakest BP nominee since Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Selma follows a Black History winner last year, and despite some superbly staged scenes just cannot live up to 12 Years; it’s a worthy nominee, but not a deserving a winner.

Should win: Boyhood or Whiplash

Will win: Boyhood

 

Best Director

Period Piece: Ellar Coltrane and director Richard Linklater check out some very dated hardware

Period Piece: Ellar Coltrane and director Richard Linklater check out some very dated hardware

Bennett Miller (Foxcatcher) and Morten Tyldum (The Imitation Game) are the placeholders here, while a win for Wes Anderson would be more a career achievement prize than a win for GBH. Really it’s between Alejandro González Iñárritu and Linklater. Iñárritu has energy behind him after Alfonso Cuarón’s win last year, ut really it’s hard to imagine Linklater not taking this home for committing twelve years to such an ambitious and personal project.

Should win: Richard Linklater or Bennett Miller

Will win: Richard Linklater

 

Best Actor

A Short History of Hawking: Eddie Redmayne in The Theory of Everything

A Short History of Hawking: Eddie Redmayne in The Theory of Everything

This one will go down to the very last vote. Michael Keaton has made an astonishing career comeback with Birdman, and it’s hard to know if he has another performance of this quality in him. But the astonishing physicality of Eddie Redmayne’s take on Stephen Hawking, which pushed through impression into a remarkably affecting conjuring of the scientist, is the sort of prestige performance the Academy adores. Steve Carell, Benedict Cumberbatch and Bradley Cooper can all sit this one out.

Should win: Michael Keaton or Eddie Redmayne

Will win: Eddie Redmayne

 

Best Actress

Forget-Me-Not: The internet assures me this is a picture of Julianne Moore in Still Alice

Forget-Me-Not: The internet assures me this is a picture of Julianne Moore in Still Alice

Julianne Moore seems anointed for Still Alice, although the film escaped me this awards season. Of the three performances I did catch, of Marion Cotillard, Rosamund Pike and Felicity Jones, all were stellar, although Jones did not completely carry her movie as the other two did.

Should win: Marion Cotillard or Rosamund Pike (but probably Julianne Moore?)

Will win: Julianne Moore

 

Best Supporting Actor

Srsly, no jk: Simmons offers a little encouragement to Miles Teller

Srsly, no jk: Simmons offers a little encouragement to Miles Teller

Robert Duvall gets his pat on the back for still being with us and wonderful. Ethan Hawke wins the award for most eternally youthful, so doesn’t need an Oscar. Ed Norton gave one of the finest (and most entertaining) performances of his career in Birdman, while Mark Ruffalo was solid throughout Foxcatcher. But yeah, why am I still writing here? J.K. Simmons dominated Whiplash. This is all his.

Should win: J.K. Simmons

Will win: J.K. Simmons

 

Best Supporting Actress

The single parent trap: Patricia Arquette with Lorelei Linklater and Ellar Coltraine

The single parent trap: Patricia Arquette with Lorelei Linklater and Ellar Coltraine

Emma Stone would be a deserving winner for Birdman, but something tells me (and I think everyone else) that she has a lot more performances of this quality in her. Patricia Arquette, on the other hand, deserves this on the power of her final scene in Boyhood alone, in which she summons millennia of forgotten, neglected womanhood and channels it into a wail lightly tinged with ironic wit.

Should win: Patricia Arquette

Will win: Patricia Arquette

 

Best Original Screenplay

This is a tight one too. It would seem unfair for Linklater to take this, given the script was worked so much on the fly. Anderson has lost momentum too, and assumedly his script says “[funny cameo]” one too many times for it to be taken too seriously. Dan Gilroy’s screenplay for Nightcrawler is one of the most brilliantly dark works to come out of Hollywood in years, but it’s so scathing of the entertainment business it’s hard to imagine it getting a bite. The Birdman gang, whose praise for real artists is found on every page, will take this.

Should win: Dan Gilroy

Will win: Alejandro González Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris, Jr. and Armando Bo

 

Best Adapted Screenplay

Whiplash would be a very deserving winner here, as would Paul Thomas Anderson, whose Inherent Vice, however incoherent at times, is loaded with punchy scenes and dialogue. This could be where American Sniper takes it, but somehow I suspect Graham Moore’s (lacklustre) screenplay for The Imitation Game will win for simplifying so much complicated science in the manner of a tour guide at Bletchley Park.

Should win: Damien Chazelle

Will win: Graham Moore

 

Best Animated Feature

Bewilderbeasting: A satirical cartoon representing DreamWorks pressuring the Academy to vote for their shitty sequel

Bewilderbeasting: A satirical cartoon depicting DreamWorks pressuring the Academy to vote for their shitty sequel

Why even bother? The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, assumedly Isao Takahata’s swansong, was probably the finest film of 2014. It’s hard to believe any of the Academy’s members even watched it. Song of the Sea was equally as enchanting if not quite as deep or visually mesmerising. But that’s all irrelevant. DreamWorks have shovelled out enough money to claim it for the bog-standard How to Train Your Dragon 2 (a film whose predecessor was superior to Oscar-winner Toy Story 3, back in the day). Likely to be the biggest farce of the night.

Should win: The Tale of the Princess Kaguya

Will win: How to Train Your Dragon 2

 

Best Animated Short

I waaaaaaaan' it! Winston, the hero of Disney's Feast

I waaaaaaaan’ it! Winston, the hero of Disney’s Feast

I’ve only seen Feast so I’m guessing Feast because I want a puppy and now I’m hungry.

Should win: Feast

Will win: Feast

 

Best Foreign Language Film

Ida-ntity crisis:  Agata Trzebuchowska and Agata Kulesza take a break on their journey

Ida-ntity crisis: Agata Trzebuchowska and Agata Kulesza take a break on their journey

Embarrassingly I have only seen Ida of this batch, but it is magnificent. I have yet to read a review of Leviathan that wasn’t overflowing with praise, but really this can only go to Ida, if only for proving that the Holocaust can still be mined for the most exceptional drama.

Should win: Ida

Will win: Ida

 

Best Documentary Feature

Metadata is betta'data: Edward Snowden breaks down some complex coding for Glenn Greenwald

Metadata is betta’data: Edward Snowden breaks down some complex coding for Glenn Greenwald 

Two warzone films (Last Days in Vietnam and Virunga). Two photographer films (Finding Vivian Maier and The Salt of the Earth). And then there’s the astonishing and frighteningly potent Citizenfour. Maier is the only real competition, but as incredible as its subject is the film itself is very blandly thrown together. Citizenfour on the other hand grips like a thriller and chills like a horror. We have to trust the Academy on this one.

Should win: Citizenfour

Will win: Citizenfour

 

Best Documentary Short

I promise one of these years I’ll see one of these, OK?

 

Best Live Action Short

Ugh now you’re just trying to make me feel bad.

 

Best Original Score

What is the sound of science? The big competitors here are Interstellar (Hans Zimmer), The Imitation Game (Alexandre Desplat), and The Theory of Everything (Jóhann Jóhannsson). Criminally locked-out of the major categories, Mr. Turner appears here for Gary Yershon’s score, but like Desplat’s Grand Budapest Hotel score both were less memorable in the face of such exquisite visuals.

Should win: Hans Zimmer or Jóhann Jóhannsson

Will win: Jóhann Jóhannsson

 

Best Original Song

Hey did you notice how I managed not to piss and moan about The Lego Movie getting cut out of Best Animated Feature? Well now I’m gonna! Because that was bullshit. But just because it was cut out does not mean it should be patronised with a bonus Oscar elsewhere. ‘Everything Is Awesome’ is amazing fun, but musically and thematically John Legend and Common’s ‘Glory’, from the also largely overlooked Selma, is probably the more deserving winner.

Should win: ‘Glory’

Will win: ‘Everything Is Awesome’

 

Best Sound Editing

Hey look the third Hobbit movie got a nomination for something! But no seriously fuck that movie. Birdman gets this.

Should win: Birdman

Will win: Birmdan

 

Best Sound Mixing

Oh right! The other sound one! This will be tight between Birdman and Whiplash, but I suspect the former has it as it goes for a minor technical sweep.

Should win: Birdman or Whiplash

Will win: Birdman

 

Best Production Design

Box art: Tony Revolori and Saoirse Ronan in The Grand Budapest Hotel

Box art: Tony Revolori and Saoirse Ronan in The Grand Budapest Hotel

I’m sure I’ve made it very clear I am no fan of Wes Anderson’s latest, but even I think it would be criminal to let The Grand Budapest Hotel be beaten here, unless it was by the sensational Mr. Turner. But no, give it to Adam Stockhausen and Anna Pinnock, seriously.

Should win: The Grand Budapest Hotel or Mr. Turner

Will win: The Grand Budapest Hotel

 

Best Cinematography

Flight the power: Michael Keaton takes to the skies in Birdman

Flight the power: Michael Keaton takes to the skies in Birdman

Emmanuel Lubezki’s work on Birdman was that film’s greatest draw, but with a win for Gravity last year and up against the likes of Grand Budapest, Ida, and Mr. Turner it’s hard to just hand it to straight to him. But the Academy will.

Should win: Emmanuel Lubezki, Łukasz Żal and Ryszard Lenczewski (Ida), or Dick Pope (Mr. Turner)

Will win: Emmanuel Lubezki (Birdman)

 

Best Makeup and Hairstyling

Skin-jobs: Dave Bautista and Zoe Saldana show off some impressive full-body makeup

Skin-jobs: Dave Bautista and Zoe Saldana show off some impressive full-body makeup

Steve Carell’s nose takes on Dave Bautista’s full-body tattoos. You just never know which way the Academy will go. I suspect the tremendous goodwill towards Guardians of the Galaxy will see it through.

Should win: Guardians of the Galaxy

Will win: Guardians of the Galaxy

 

Best Costume Design

Purple pros: Ralph Fiennes comforts Tilda Swinton in the lift of the Grand Budapest Hotel

Purple pros: Ralph Fiennes comforts Tilda Swinton in the lift of the Grand Budapest Hotel

This is the sort of place outsiders like Mr. Turner or Into the Woods could sneak one through. Even Maleficent got a nod here. If we take it the fairytales cancel one another out, that throws the period dramas up against one another. Inherent Vice could take it for cool, but I’d put my money on another win for the look of Grand Budapest Hotel

Should win: Inherent Vice

Will win: The Grand Budapest Hotel

 

Best Film Editing

There’s only two choices here: Whiplash for rhythm, or Boyhood for scope. If Boyhood doesn’t take this early, the rest of the night could go very differently to what’s expected, and you may then dismiss the entirety of this article.

Should win: Whiplash

Will win: Boyhood

 

Best Visual Effects

Spirit in the sky: Star-Lord's ship the Milano flies over the planet Xandar

Spirit in the sky: Star-Lord’s ship the Milano flies over the planet Xandar

This is like making me choose between my children. I cannot remember the last time I would be delighted for any of the nominees to win. Captain America: The Winter Solider – fantastic. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes – fantastic. Guardians of the Galaxy – fantastic. Interstellar – fantastic. X-Men: Days of Future Past – fantastic. Not only are they great effects films, but they’re also probably the five best blockbusters of last year, with films like Transformers 4 and The Hobbit 3 getting deservedly cut. I dunno, I just want to congratulate the winner and move on.

Should win: Guardians of the Galaxy or Interstellar

Will win: Guardians of the Galaxy

 

And that’s all there is. I wish I could predict which winners will be booed or orchestra’d off the stage, but that’s a very different kind of Oscar prediction. We’ll know around this time tomorrow night anyways… See you back here then!

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