Popcorn Kernels: Best Picture Contenders, Vol. 1

In which I once again attempt to sit through all the nominees for Best Picture, knowing full well that the presence of Darkest Hour shall surely prevent me from accomplishing this goal. Here are two of those efforts.

The Post

Year: 2017
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, Bob Odenkirk
Run Time: 1 hour 56 minutes
MPAA Rating: PG-13

When the Washington Post gets ahold of the Pentagon Papers, which expose a decade of government secrets, they must decide whether or not to publish them, which could potentially shut down the paper and send them to jail.

Look, I admitted that Spotlight was good, even though it's preposterous that it won Best Picture. And I dislike the state of the country as much as any reasonable American. But as timely as The Post is, it will never feel like anything other than Spotlight 2 (and in fact, it was co-written by one of the co-writers of Spotlight, if it wasn't already watered down enough for you). And as much as director Steven Spielberg has proven time and again he's a genius, we all have our bad days. The Post is such a huge waste of everyone's time and effort that it's not even funny.

Not that it was meant to be funny. The film finds Spielberg in intensely sober-minded Oscarbait mode, with only one scene (the best scene in the movie, involving a little girl selling lemonade) providing a moment of levity in this grandiose, self-important, completely arid awards season trifle.

The Post has a cruelly inflated sense of its own relevance, tying the problems of the past to current affairs in the most blunt, obvious way possible. Look, I'm all for arguments in favor of the free press, but they don't have to be couched in a series of artless, implacable zooms while characters monologue about how important the themes of the movie are. It hardly pretends to be dialogue, it's just one long essay mummifying an admittedly important historical event.

It's honestly rather clumsy, constantly framing Meryl Streep in drifts of men to pointedly remind you that she's not in a woman's space, all while the dialogue revolves around her being a woman in a man's space. It's very pointedly a message movie, and while shots like that can work - I'm thinking of Clarice Starling in the elevator at Quantico in Silence of the Lambs - it's forced down your throat so hard you start gagging before the fifteen minute mark.

It's just kind of a generally lousy movie, bookended by its worst scenes (a shoehorned-in Saving Private Ryan moment in Vietnam and a hilariously terrible Marvel-esque coda involving the world's worst Richard Nixon impersonator frantically waving his arms like a caffeinated mime and not even attempting to time his movements to the actual Nixon recording posing as dialogue) and endlessly unspooling trite, uninspired dialogue in between ("That picture makes me sad," exclaims Sarah Paulson, hopelessly drowning in a nothing role).

There's just no feeling involved here, it's all lecturing. And considering that The Post contains two of the world's most charismatic movie stars, it's astonishing how this could have even been accomplished. Meryl Streep is fine, as always, but she's snoozing through a role she could play with both hands and feet tied behind her back. And Tom Hanks is acting SO. HARD. But no matter how much he rakishly props his leg up on desks or undoes his sleeves, he's straining through an inexplicable old timey radio host accent that just drips with insincerity.

The Post was never going to be a great movie. It could only have ever been a acceptably Important prestige picture. But the way it fails its actors and the audience so substantially is frankly shocking. The music (John Williams, again visibly bored) seems to actively rebel against the tone of the film, the script is begging for attention yet barely there, and the coterie of strong performers (including, randomly, a handful of comic actors like Zach Woods and David Cross) is given nothing to do but be conduits for a firehose stream of flop sweat. One to miss.

Rating: 4/10

Dunkirk

Year: 2017

Director: Christopher Nolan

Cast: Fionn Whitehead, Tom Hardy, Mark Rylance

Run Time: 1 hour 46 minutes

MPAA Rating: PG-13

We follow a fighter pilot, a civilian ship, and some ground troops through the effort to rescue the British military from the beach at Dunkirk during World War II.

Dunkirk is about as boldly experimental as a big budget blockbuster can get. But the thing is, experimentation leads to failure about half the time. Not that Dunkirk is a failure; what it gets right outweighs what it gets wrong, but its open risk-taking comes with some very odd choices that don't quite work.

For one thing, take the peculiar dilation of time that occurs over the course of the film. One story elapses over a week, one over a day, and one over an hour. The film cuts between these stories simultaneously, and they overlap at certain key moments. But the way they are presented doesn't really allow for any more insight or intrigue than if they had just been shown chronologically. And the landing of a fighter plane is dragged out over the course of what feels like half an hour of excruciatingly long screen time, milked for all it's worth in the film's biggest patch of jingoistic militarism.

Luckily, that doesn't seem to be the prevailing sentiment over the rest of the film. Dunkirk is a film that is above all else about the terror and constant, oppressive violence of war (despite the conspicuously pulled punches of its PG-13 rating), doled out by an omnipresent enemy that is literally never shown, except in the form of bomber planes that whistle by periodically. It eschews character arcs and even dialogue at times (especially in the sequences on the beach, it plays out more like a silent film, which fortunately prevents Harry Styles from screwing anything up) in favor of this all-important, nerve-rattling atmosphere.

And there is absolutely no denying that this is an utterly gorgeous motion picture. Between what are probably some of the best airplane action sequences ever filmed, Nolan provides us bleakly stunning, expansive vistas that blast your corneas with the sheer wideness of devastation and desolation on this beach. The single distracting thing about the visuals is that - at least on the home video release, I can't speak to the theatrical - it has been decided that the aspect ratios switch between the footage shot on 70mm and 65mm. The black bars constantly blotting out the huge screen-filling vistas are hugely distracting and an entirely odd choice.

Much more thoroughly satisfying is the soundscape, which is as harsh and alarming as you would expect any good war picture to be, slashed through with Hans Zimmer's droning, atonal, staccato score that ratchets up the tension to an unbearable degree.

It's a good thing that Dunkirk is so visually and aurally stunning and goes all in on those elements, because most of the dialogue sequences are the worst parts of the movie. Whether its generals dumping piles of exposition on the top of your head or Mark Rylance spouting nothing but affectless patriotic quotes for the better part of an hour, these scenes are generally worth much less of your time than the tense beach sequences - especially a scene where bullets begin to blast through the hull of a ship where stowaway soldiers are waiting for high tide.

I'm not usually a fan of war movies, and I wouldn't say I'd ever want to watch this again, but I'm glad I saw it in the first place. If you've already seen Lady Bird, Get Out, and The Shape of Water, this should certainly be next on your Oscars checklist.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1306

OK, Brennan

Year: 2017

Director: Luca Guadagnino

Cast: Armie Hammer, Timothée Chalamet, Michael Stuhlbarg 

Run Time: 2 hours 12 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

As a gay film reviewer, I felt personally and professionally obligated to watch Call Me By Your Name, the new film from Italian director Luca Guadagnino, which has been nominated for a pile of Golden Globes and will surely be one of the most buzzed-about Oscars titles in the coming months. (Plus, as a horror fan, I needed to do some reconnaissance on the man who is currently helming the Suspiria remake.) I'm happy another gay film is getting such a big awards push. The years were long between Brokeback Mountain and Moonlight, and it's time for LGBT stories to hit the big time. But until our stories become mainstream in a legitimately major way, we're still stuck in the Oscarbait realm, a genre that I don't really like all that much.

Pictured: Me attempting to interact with fancy-people movies.

Based on the novel by André Aciman, Call Me By Your Name tells the story of six long weeks in the dead of summer in 1983. At a palazzo in Northern Italy, 17-year-old Elio (Timothée Chalamet) finds his lazy days are beginning to heat up with the arrival of graduate student Oliver (Armie Hammer), who has come to intern with his anthropology professor father (Michael Stuhlbarg). Other than some initial resistance and the inevitable end to their time together, there is very little drama to be had here. Their love blossoms as they lay in the grass and lounge by the pool. And sometimes Oliver actually does some work, though you start to wonder if Michael Stuhlbarg doesn't just cart in students so his son can get it in.

At any rate, his Father of the Year award is in the mail.

It's difficult for one to review a film so purely dedicated to the depiction of aesthetic and sensual pleasures. Especially when one didn't really like it quite as much as the rest of the world. But let me say this: If the sole reason you're watching Call Me By Your Name is to get some gorgeous, sun-dappled shots of the Italian countryside (and you have every right to approach it this way), you will love this movie. But after a certain point it begins to feel like a screensaver and not an actual narrative.

It does capture that feeling of time ticking slowly in a summer daze, the seconds seeming almost too lazy to drift by the way they normally do. However, accurately representing the feeling of boredom isn't something I'm really looking for in a motion picture, and as much as the lush camerawork takes in the awe and splendor of the beauty of nature, it doesn't quite manage to let you feel the sheer heat of the summer. Characters are splashing around in pools and rivers, so it clearly ain't winter, but the film is too pretty to let them sweat. It all feels sealed off from any real-world experience, which isn't really helped by the fact that Elio is living out his teen angst in a gorgeous palace in one of the most breathtaking natural landscapes in the world, with parents who love and understand him and a strapping broad shoulder to cry on.

I just don't feel inclined to feel sorry for him, I can't put my finger on why...

To be fair, it's not like the purpose of every movie is to be relatable. And to be fairer, there is some excellent work here in two people in the first throes of falling in love can create a bubble around themselves, finding a space for their passion to grow in a beautiful vacuum apart from all the other factors in their life and environment. And while it's certainly not exciting, it's never truly boring. There's always some new vista or terrible dance sequence to keep you occupied.

But now that I've just barely nicked a toehold onto the concept of music, I must speak my piece about the score to this film. It's just plain aggressive. Its constant piano trills feel like it was played by someone with hammers instead of fingers, and the two or three times it dips into an original Sufjan Stevens acoustic noodle, the lurching leaves a pit in your stomach. And by George, are those Sufjan Stevens songs two of the most treacly, infuriatingly juvenile tracks ever provided for an Oscar contender, and I'm including that song from Trolls that got nominated last year. It feels like something I would have written when I was 14, and there's a reason I wasn't being asked to score major motion pictures in junior high.

OK, maybe I'm just complaining extra hard because the rest of the critical sphere is revering this film as a new modern classic and I just don't get it. But allow me one more: There's a scene with a peach here that - as I understand it - is a direct lift and even a sanitization of a scene from the book. But with it, the movie takes a swerve into territory that feels like a cross between John Waters and David Cronenberg, and it fits like a square peg into no hole at all.

Let me tell you, if I had witnessed the events of this film in real life, I would certainly not feel the urge to be kissing either of these people.

OK, because I'm going to give Call Me By Your Name a 7/10, I should probably start saying some nice things about it. Like I said, it's certainly a visual feast. And I would definitely like to commend one Mr. Hammer, who manages to turn a brash American idiot into a delicate, loving dreamboat in a way that actually feels organic and all contained within the multitudes of one single personality. Chalamet and Stuhlbarg have been getting all the attention lately, and they are good, but this is an ensemble piece through and through. Everyone commits to the feelings and tone of the film, and even if those things aren't ones I particularly respond to, that's something worth celebrating.

TL;DR: Call Me By Your Name is a lush, pretty romance that ends up feeling just a teensy bit empty when all is said and done.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1057

Whatever Container It's In

Year: 2017

Director: Guillermo del Toro

Cast: Sally Hawkins, Octavia Spencer, Michael Shannon 

Run Time: 2 hours 3 minutes

MPAA Rating: R

Guillermo del Toro is one of the few visionary directors we have on hand today, but he’s also one of the most inconsistent. I tend to abide by the rule of thumb that his Spanish-language work is stronger than his English films (Pan’s Labyrinth and The Devil’s Backbone are masterpieces, whereas Crimson Peak or Pacific Rim are pretty but a bit empty-headed), but I was greatly intrigued by The Shape of Water, his quasi-remake of The Creature from the Black Lagoon. I must say that rule of thumb still applies, but it’s certainly an interesting beast that I’m excited to discuss.

And if there’s one thing del Toro knows a lot about, it’s interesting beasts.

So, the plot. Elisa Esposito (Sally Hawkins) is a mute cleaning woman who works at an aerospace institute in a fairy tale vision of 1960’s Baltimore. When the scientists at work bring in their newest asset – an amphibious sea creature from South America (Doug Jones, who is not the Alabama senator, though I’m sure he wishes he had that on his CV instead of The Bye Bye Man) that they’re hoping will help them make major steps in the space race once they figure out how its breathing apparatus works – she begins to teach it sign language and they become fast friends… and maybe more.

When the Evil Scientist Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon) decides to vivisect the creature, Elisa must face the loss of this new relationship with a creature that makes her feel less alien and alone in this world of people who look down on her, either for her lack of speech or the fact that she’s a woman. She is supported by her coworker Zelda (Octavia Spencer) and her aging painter neighbor Giles (Richard Jenkins), but she might just have to take action.

And I mean “action” in every sense of the word.

I don’t know what it is about this Oscar season. Normally I’m not a huge fan of big awards contenders in general so it shouldn't be surprising that I'm not feeling into it, but this slate of flicks seems tailor-made for my tastes. A non-AIDS/death related gay romance? A romance starring the Gill Man? A film bringing to life the story of The Room?! Don’t mind if I do! And yet I’m liking these films even less than normal. OK, I don’t think I’ll ever dislike anything as much as The Revenant or Birdman, but this year I’m kind of longing for a Her, or a Brooklyn, or even a The Descendants. Just something that doesn’t promise high genre heights yet still manages to evoke something quiet and engrossing. Meanwhile I’m stuck with empty promises of things I’ll love that end up delivering something messy and flawed, ultimately redeemable but impossible to fall head over heels in love with.

I at least enjoyed The Shape of Water more thoroughly than Call Me By Your Name, because del Toro is a consummate entertainer even when he’s operating in a lower gear. But this film fails so hard at delivering most of what it promises that when it hits one of its many truly great scenes, it just doesn’t have the punch you wish it did.

I think my biggest issue is that The Shape of Water is just a little bit – I hate to say it – twee. The easiest comparison that comes to mind is Amélie, another film that spins a grand fairy tale fantasy out of regular life. Del Toro has proven himself adept at that kind of thing before, but Pan’s Labyrinth is no Jean-Pierre Jeunet romp. The particular register he’s working in feels utterly alien, and the central romance suffers because of it.

Fairy tales have the ability to smooth the edges off the snags and quibbles of real life love (Prince Charming hardly ever knows the Princess for more than a week before they’re hitched), but del Toro’s instincts toward blending the epic fantasy with gritty, violent reality hobble his ability to do that.  And despite the stellar performances of both Hawkins (who whips up a dazzling internal life for a character who doesn’t speak a word) and Jones (whose posture is so utterly alien that you don’t for a second remember he’s a man in a suit), the script underserves them. Their romance is too rushed-through to evoke the huge swell of emotion the movie clearly wants you to feel toward the midpoint, and the characters are too whimsical to really take the stakes seriously, even when they are raised through the roof.

The amount of time it takes you to look at this caption is about the time the script devotes to their chemistry before tossing them into another movie entirely for about forty minutes.

But let's not pretend that there is not some terrific material at work in The Shape of Water, it just tends to be in the stuff circulating around the central relationship. The lead actors might be great, but their supporting players are even better. Well, I mean Octavia Spencer is doing her Octavia Spencer thing, and that's just dandy, but Richard Jenkins and Michael Shannon are pure magic.

Michael Shannon has made a habit of getting accolades for movies I don't really care to see, but he has more than won me over to his side here. The metaphor about his character (a white man with a hilariously perfect 50's suburban family) being the true monster here isn't particularly subtle, but boy does he sell it by being f**king scary. Every second he's onscreen pulses with nerve-shattering tension, and he has the audience wrapped around his little finger within two frames.

And then there's poor Richard Jenkins, who digs deep to unearth some raw loneliness in character as a gay man who has allowed himself to grow old hiding in the shadows and regrets letting his life and potential love pass him by. His character is probably the funniest, warmest presence in the film, but every three scenes or so he gets it into his head to rip out your heart with his bare hands and play the strings like a maestro of human misery.

The Shape of Water has a lot to say about alienation and loneliness, and those themes live and breathe in the performances even when they aren't present on the page. This is probably the best ensemble of the year, and the fact that they get to act out a story this weird on sets this sumptuous in their grotty glory, with cinematography this sleek and stunning is a small miracle. It doesn't come together quite enough for me to give it a wholehearted recommendation, but god damn can it draw some real beauty from its murky depths.

TL;DR: The Shape of Water is a gorgeous, well-acted film with clumsy script execution.

Rating: 7/10

Word Count: 1165