NO GUTS, NO GLORY: FINAL OSCAR PREDICTIONS

For all the excitement and buzz leading up to nomination day, it seems like the remainder of this year's Oscar season has passed without many surprises or, for that matter, a whole lot of fanfare. Those two things may be connected, at least for me, since the predictable nature of this year's awards season has left little to nothing to talk about, and has left me, for the second year in a row, a little bit bored by the proceedings. Maybe it's the absence of so many of my favorite films from the race this year, or maybe it's the fact that my favorite performances were snubbed in almost every acting category. Either way, the season will reach its climactic moment this Sunday evening, with the 84th annual Academy Awards, and despite how dull the season has been, I will most certainly be tuning in. For that reason, have decided to lay out all of my predictions for the night right here. The interesting thing is that, looking through the nominees, there's a lot of categories that are tricky to predict this year, it's just that none of them are the ones most people pay a lot of attention to.

And the nominees are...

Best Picture:

The Artist
The Descendants
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
The Help
Hugo
Midnight in Paris
Moneyball
The Tree of Life
War Horse

I've thought a few times that this year's best picture slate is one of the most boring I've ever seen in the category, but in this case, boring doesn't necessarily equal bad, since I enjoyed each and every one of these films for what they brought to the table. That said, when the Academy increased the size of the Best Picture category two years ago, it was in hopes that it would broaden the variety of the nominees: the Academy hoped it would allow for everything from small art house films, to Oscar baiting features, to comedies, to animated films, all the way to well made, widely loved blockbuster films. The last two years, I think that idea generally worked: we saw summer favorites sneak in that never would have had a chance otherwise (Inception, District 9), we saw Pixar finally earn the nominations they should have gotten for the first Toy Story film (Toy Story 3, Up), we saw a huge box office drama (The Blind Side), and some smaller art house gems (Winter's Bone, An Education) that would have been swept aside in years of five. The quality of all of these films can be debated, as can how deserving or undeserving of the accolade they were, but the Academy had gotten its wish, and the variety was there. This year, its right back to the way things used to be: I've heard the "I haven't seen any of these movies!" argument from a lot of different people, and to me, despite the fact that I don't really think any of these films are obscure in the least, is a failure of the expanded category. I'd rather they just nominated five and eliminated the pretense that any of the extra nominees could ever win.

And again, that's not to say that I don't like these films, since Hugo, The Artist and Moneyball would all be among my list of the year's best, and everything else here was more than worthwhile. I even loved War Horse, which many people thought was just paint-by-numbers Spielberg! It's just that, for the most part, the films that I liked the most, the ones that made me think, the ones that stayed with me for the longest after I saw them, are not here. That's fine, since I certainly can't expect every year to be like 2009 (where my top three were all legitimate contenders), and since I never really expected a few of them (Like Crazy, We Bought a Zoo, The Lincoln Lawyer, Source Code, Crazy Stupid Love) to get anywhere near a Best Picture nomination, and the others (Drive, The Ides of March, Warrior, Beginners, Margin Call) got at least some level of awards attention, I suppose I'll get over the disappointment. Ultimately though, it really doesn't make any difference, since not even Hugo, with its 11 nominations and vast critical acclaim, is any match for the silent film time capsule that is The Artist.

Will win: The Artist (alt: Hugo)
Should win: Hugo
Should have been here: The Ides of March

Best Director:

Michel Hazanvicius, The Artist
Alexander Payne, The Descendants
Martin Scorsese, Hugo
Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris
Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life

The argument in movie-buff circles is that Malick should win, since his film is an enormously ambitious technical achievement and his entire cast give terrific performances. My personal choice (of these nominees, at least) would be Scorsese, for making his best and most beautiful film in decades, but neither auteur will be able to weather the massive adoration that the Academy has for The Artist, and much like last year, a less experienced director will take the prize for a film that just charmed the Academy. As for the other two nominees (Woody Allen, an old favorite at this point, and Thomas Payne, whose film began the season as one of the frontrunners but lost steam along the way), they're just happy to be here.

Will win: Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist (alt: Scorsese)
Should win: Scorsese
Should be here: Nicolas Winding Refn, Drive

Best Actor:

Demián Bichir, A Better Life

George Clooney, The Descendants
Jean Dujardin, The Artist
Gary Oldman, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Brad Pitt, Moneyball

One of the most solid categories of the night is still missing many of the best performances I saw last year (or in the case of Michael Fassbender, that I still haven't seen), but Actor is usually so crowded that any oversights can and should be forgiven. Clooney and Pitt give a pair of their best and most nuanced performances to date; Pitt, especially, is perfect for his role, and Clooney does a terrific job with some tricky emotional confusion inherent in his character, but both will likely be going home empty handed yet again, as it's Dujardin's strongly physical and decidedly unforgettable work as a washed up silent film star that will likely prevail. That said, Clooney has been a major player all season, making this category the one of the big eight that's most ripe for an upset, but if I've learned one thing, it's not to doubt the SAG, who handed their award to Dujardin earlier this month. Oldman (finally earning his first Oscar nomination for his wonderfully understated work in Tinker) and Bichir (I haven't seen his film yet) are the also-rans.


Will win: Jean Dujardin, The Artist (alt: George Clooney)
Should win: Brad Pitt, Moneyball
Should be here: Ryan Gosling, The Ides of March OR Kevin Spacey, Margin Call

Best Actress:

Glenn Close, Albert Nobbs
Viola Davis, The Help
Rooney Mara, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady
Michelle Williams, My Week With Marilyn

Once again, the Best Actress category this year boiled down to a battle between Meryl Streep (who delivers a typically great performance in a lukewarm film) and the actress who ultimately ends up beating her to the Oscar. This year the latter role will be filled by Viola Davis, who gives what is definitely one of my favorite performances of the year in The Help (at the head of a killer ensemble cast, no less). Many have argued on Mara's behalf, due to the alarmingly transformative nature of her work, but the nomination is her award, and Davis is a perfectly worthy winner. As for snubs, I continue to get sad when I look at this category and don't see Felicity Jones, who I still maintain gave the best performance of the year in Like Crazy.


Will win: Viola Davis, The Help (alt: Meryl Streep)
Should win: Viola Davis
Should have been here: Felicity Jones, Like Crazy

Best Supporting Actor:

Kenneth Branagh, My Week With Marilyn
Jonah Hill, Moneyball
Nick Nolte, Warrior
Christopher Plummer, Beginners
Maxwell von Sydow, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

One of the biggest surprises of the season took place in this category on Oscar nomination morning, when Maxwell von Sydow scored a nomination for his memorable work in Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. The other four nominees had pretty much remained constants all season, with the fifth slot thought by many to belong to Albert Brooks for his terrific, against-type performance as a mob boss in Drive. If I had to trade one of these gentlemen out for Brooks, it would certainly be Hill, who gives an okay performance, but one that in no way compares to the other four. As for the winner, this award belongs to the long overdue Christopher Plummer, who will take home this lone key trophy for the underrated Beginners. He's certainly the most deserving here, but Nolte is one of my favorite nominations of the night: a nuanced and moving performance in a film that never got enough credit.


Will win: Christopher Plummer, Beginners (alt: Maxwell von Sydow)

Should win: Christopher Plummer
Should have been here: Albert Brooks, Drive OR Brad Pitt, The Tree of Life

Best Supporting Actress:

Berenice Bejo, The Artist
Jessica Chastain, The Help
Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids
Janet McTeer, Albert Nobbs
Octavia Spencer, The Help

The Help will gets its Oscar recognition in the areas that it deserves it the most, via domination in the female acting categories. Spencer has this as locked up as any award all night, and since it's the first Oscar handed out, we should all be able to have 100% on our predictions, if only for a few minutes. Chastain got a nomination for a year of unbelievable work, but it's arguably for the wrong film (her performance in The Tree of Life would have been my first choice), and Bejo is splendid in The Artist, but this is one category where the Academy will not be swayed by their love for her film.

Will win: Octavia Spencer, The Help (alt: Berenice Bejo)
Should win: Octavia Spencer
Should have been here: Shailene Woodley, The Descendants

Best Adapted Screenplay:

The Descendants
Hugo
The Ides of March
Moneyball
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Another great category, with The Ides of March rightfully sneaking in (even if this is the only nomination it managed, and with the other films encompassing some of the best last year had to offer. You can count Ides out right away, sadly, since this is its only nomination. Same goes for Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, which is a feat for how much source material it had to condense alone, but ultimately, I think the book was too big for the movie the screenplay formed, and I expect that Academy members will be as split on it as I am. Hugo is the darkest of horses, a solid screenplay (and a very good adaptation) for a film that's far more notable in other areas. That means the battle will play out between The Descendants and Moneyball, and since both are well liked films with precursor writing awards under their belts, it's a tough call between them. My guess? Taking Clooney's likely loss into account, the Academy will turn to award the film here, the only other area it really can. That said, this race reminds me eerily of another Adapted Screenplay category: 2009, where another Clooney vehicle (Up in the Air) was considered locked, right up until the moment it that wasn't and Precious took the prize (a horrible decision, but notable nonetheless).


Will win: The Descendants (alt: Moneyball)
Should win: Moneyball
Should win: Drive

Best Original Screenplay:

The Artist
Bridesmaids
Margin Call
Midnight in Paris
A Separation

While the other screenplay category is one of my favorites of the night, this is undoubtedly the most interesting, pitting a foreign language film, a raunchy comedy, a silent film, and a intelligent and dialogue driven zeitgeist picture (all first time nominees) against the legendary Woody Allen (who has won this category twice and been nominated for it a record 15 times). General wisdom points to Allen for another win, and despite the fact that much of the film's acclaim has baffled me, a screenplay award would make a certain amount of sense, since it's time-traveling storyline and witty set pieces with famous literary figures mark it as the most "original" work in the category. The Margin Call nomination is particularly inspired, though clearly, the film has no chance for a win. The other contender is The Artist, which will have an uphill battle, seeing as most associate the word "screenplay" with "script" and "dialogue," but the Best Picture winner has also won a screenplay award for the past seven years, so that makes this another category to watch.


Will win: Midnight in Paris (alt: The Artist)
Should win: Margin Call
Should have been here: Beginners

The rest:

*Best Art Direction: Hugo (alt: The Artist)

Best Cinematography: The Tree of Life (alt: Hugo)

Best Costume Design: The Artist (alt: Jane Eyre)

*Best Film Editing: The Artist (alt: Hugo)

*Best Makeup: The Iron Lady (alt: Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows, Part II)

*Best Original Score: The Artist (alt: War Horse)

*Best Original Song: "Man or Muppet" from The Muppets (alt: the only other nominee...)

Best Sound Editing: Hugo (alt: War Horse )

Best Sound Mixing: Hugo (alt: War Horse)

*Best Visual Effects: The Rise of the Planet of the Apes (alt: Hugo)

*Best Foreign Language Film: A Separation (alt: In Darkness)

*Best Animated Feature: Rango (alt: Puss in Boots)

Best Documentary Feature:  Hell & Back Again (alt: Undefeated)

Best Documentary Short: Saving Face (alt. The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom)

Best Short Film (Animated): The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore (alt: La Luna)

Best Short Film (Live-Action): The Shore (alt: Tuba Atlantic)

*Categories I'm relatively sure of.

A few notes: Even if Hugo wins nothing else, it will get Art Direction, for being the most beautiful film in the race (the first shot of the Parisian vistas probably could have won it that award alone). Similarly, Best Cinematography often goes to the film that is the "prettiest" rather than the one with the best or most innovative photography, which this year is undoubtedly The Tree of Life. That film is divisive though, and Hugo isn't even the only other player, as The Artist could easily grab a win for its striking black and white photography. And then there's War Horse, which is a fantastically shot film with enormous scope and more than a couple of unforgettable images. I ultimately went for the one that struck me the most, and I think the "creation of the universe scene" from The Tree of Life will have a lot of passionate supporters that should carry it to a win here, but I've been wrong in less wide open categories before.

Costume design is similarly wide open, with four of the five nominees (The Artist, Hugo, Jane Eyre, and Anonymous) all having a fair shot. With all the doubt I have in that category, I just went with the Best Picture frontrunner, but if not The Artist, Jane Eyre's period setting bears similarity to a lot of previous winners, so that felt like a solid alternate. The Best Picture winner generally sails towards a win in Editing as well, so bet on The Artist there, and there are clearly no other players in Best Original Score, since rarely is a film as reliant on that aspect as The Artist is. Parts of The Iron Lady seemed like they were only made so that the makeup team could get an Oscar, and they will, even as Meryl Streep loses the award for the film's most definitive aspect. Best Original Song has become a complete joke, with only two nominees, but the category has belonged to The Muppets all season, with the only question ever being which song they'd nominate.

The sound categories very rarely split, but Hugo and War Horse both have a shot. I'll go with general wisdom, which says Hugo, but general wisdom also said Avatar two years ago, and that film ultimately lost to the war film (The Hurt Locker), so War Horse is an obvious threat. Visual effects, Animated Feature, and Foreign Language film feel like some of the safest bets of the night, while Best Documentary Feature is probably the biggest wild card. Even the hardcore Oscar pundits have no idea what will win that category, and arguments have been stated for each of the five films nominated. One of the Oscar blogs I read advised me to "just pick this one out of a hat," so that's what I did: fingers crossed. As for the short films, I personally have no clue. Sometimes it feels like those categories are there for the the sole purpose of wrecking my predictions, so I just went with what seemed to be the general consensus: again, fingers crossed.

So that's it: all that's left to do is to sit back, relax, and watch Billy Crystal redeem the Oscars from last year's James Franco-shaped trainwreck.

 Happy Oscars!

The Artist

 The Artist

Warner Bros. (France), 2011

Directed by Michel Hazanavicius

Starring: Jean Dujardin, Bérénice Bejo, Jon Goodman

Four stars

Immediately after walking out of The Artist, Michel Hazanavicius' gloriously executed love letter to the silent era of cinema, the first thing I said was: "well, that's the Best Picture winner." It's not necessarily because it's the best film of the year (though a strong argument could be made for just that), but because of the emotions it evoked inside of me, feelings that felt remarkably similar to those I experienced with films like The King's Speech and Slumdog Millionaire. That's because The Artist is, among many other things, an absolute crowd-pleaser. As the credits rolled at the end of the film, the audience (an almost sold-out crowd) erupted with applause, a smile on every face in the theater, and those things, combined with the fact that there is no legitimate competitor, make it an almost surefire winner. And why not? The Artist is a gorgeously, lovingly made film: heartwarming, saddening, jarring and funny in all the right places, and wonderfully acted, meticulously directed and strong in every technical field. It is such an enjoyable and enrapturing experience, in fact, that audiences will forget it's a silent film at all.

I personally have spent little time with silent cinema, but after seeing The Artist, I had to ask myself why that was. In this day and age, I think it has become difficult for many of us to wrap our heads around a film whose narrative revolves more around its score and the facial expressions and body language of its actors than it does around scripted lines (though, of course, lines do pop up on the screen, when necessary), but this is the same day and age where many films emphasize style and special effects over story anyway. Perhaps that's why something like The Artist feels so new and refreshing, even though it is, in reality, a return to a very old way of doing things. But even still, I don't think The Artist will win Best Picture solely because of the "silent gimmick," but because it is such an entertaining and well made film, with a story truly worth telling. If there is a gimmick here, it's that Hazanavicius creates the film as a complete love letter to cinema history (just like Scorsese did with Hugo, or, to a lesser extent, like Nicolas Winding Refn did with Drive, both of which had silent elements about them).

 

The performances, across the board, are strong as well, from Jean Dujardin as George Valentin a silent movie star displaced by the "talkie film" revolution, to Jon Goodman as his colorful producer, to Bérénice Bejo as Peppy Miller, the young actress who becomes the face of "talkie" cinema, and in doing so, essentially replaces Valentin. Dujardin and Bejo share a palpable chemistry built almost entirely on body language and expression, and watching their relationship form and change throughout the film is a marvel. Both actors deserve Academy Award nominations for their work here, and each has a chance to win, which I wouldn't mind at all, as both are fantastic. And then there's the scene stealing dog (how great is that?), who is so remarkable well trained that he colors every scene he's in, both joyful and dire, with a comic charm that would be impossible to recreate outside of the silent genre. The film is a technical tour-de-force as well, from it's striking black and white cinematography (there are more than a few instantly memorable shots throughout this film), pitch perfect film editing, and surprisingly, some truly brilliant sound work. The Artist is obviously notable for its silent aspects, but it's also worth noting that the film makes some of the best use of sound I've seen all year. A dream sequence early on, where Valentin is consumed by an explosion of noise, symbolizing the changing of the guard, is one of the most breathtaking cinematic experiences of the year, and could easily go down as one of my favorite scenes of the decade. While the thought of a silent film receiving a sound editing mention at the Oscars seems a bit absurd, it's worth noting that I have rarely been more struck by the instance of noise in a film. 

 

When The Artist wins the Best Picture Oscar (and I would be willing to place money on it winning), I certainly hope it is not written off as "the silent film," because even though it will be the first film of that qualification to win the Oscar since Wings (the first Best Picture, back in 1927), it really is so much more than that. It's a feast of filmmaking and performance prowess that is nearly unequaled this year, a refreshing change of pace and, at its heart, a wonderful story with well drawn characters. While I'm not sure if I would want to call it the best film of the year myself (there is still so much I need to see!), The Artist is easily one of the most notable films, this year or any other in recent memory, and I won't mind watching it dominate on Oscar night, whether it has a sweep, of sorts (Picture, Director, Actor, Supporting Actress, Film Editing, Original Screenplay, Cinematography, Art Direction, Costume Design, Original Score and Make Up all seem to be possible/likely nominations, and it could win roughly half of those), or just walks away with a few prizes at the top. And if the world ends in December (damn you, Mayans!), I think it would be nicely fitting for the last Best Picture winner to be a return to the form of the first. Lolz.

The Descendants

 The Descendants

Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2011

Directed by Alexander Payne

Starring: George Clooney, Shailene Woodley, Beau Bridges

Three stars

When I first saw the trailer for The Descendants, it immediately jumped to the top of my most anticipated films for 2011. It looked like a great mix of comedy and drama, with the always likable George Clooney at the center, and also the return of acclaimed director Alexander Payne, who made Sideways back in 2004, one of the mid-00s Best Picture nominees that I never got around to seeing.  In many ways, The Descendants brought back memories of two years ago and Jason Reitman's Up in the Air, another dramedy which also featured Clooney as a workaholic man re-examining his life after a big wake up call. That film, which, along with my recent topics of We Bought a Zoo and The Lord of the Rings, sits happily on the list of movies I first saw on Christmas Eve, and it ended up being my third favorite film in what I thought was a terrific year. I also think Clooney gave one of his very best lead performances in that film (second only, probably, to his terrificly explosive turn in 2007's Michael Clayton, which wins on the strength of its final scene alone). Unfortunately, The Descendants doesn't quite live up to either of those films, but there's still a lot to enjoy here, and I can certainly see why it's getting so much awards attention, even if I don't particularly agree with much of it.

The Descendants centers around a Hawaiian man named Matt King (Clooney), whose wife, Elizabeth, ends up in a terminal coma after a severe boating accident. It's only after he is given the news that his wife is never going to wake up that his daughter reveals she was cheating on him, leaving him with a complex web of emotions to fight through, as well as delivering a harsh wake up call as to what his life has become in paradise. King is torn between love for the woman he's been married to for 20-some years and rage that she could betray him in such a way, and Clooney executes both (and everything in between) with the nuance and skill of the true professional he is. Clooney, naturally, has some rage-filled moments, which he has always been great at playing, but there are some strikingly tender ones as well, and those are the moments that resonated me the most in this film. There has been talk amongst Oscar experts that this may be Clooney's year in the Best Actor category (he already won Supporting Actor, for Syriana in 2005), and I really wouldn't mind seeing him take it home: he's a bonafide movie star, a likable guy and easily the best thing about this film. While I would rather have seen him win for Up in the Air (he lost to Jeff Bridges) or Michael Clayton (he lost to Daniel Day Lewis), his work here is certainly among the best performances of the year.

Also notable is Shailene Woodley, who plays one of King's daughters, and serves as the perfect foil for Clooney. The younger daughter is nothing but a nuisance for most of the film, but Woodley brings life and depth to Alex, the one who caught her mother cheating and the one who reveals the information to her father. Woodley, whose only real credit up to this point is as the lead character on ABC Family's The Secret Life of the American Teenager (which, I can only assume, is one of those semi-trashy teen soap operas), gives a terrific performance here, and is probably a lock for an Oscar nomination at this point, proving that sometimes, talent can blossom in some pretty unlikely places. Unfortunately, Alex comes with Sid, her pseudo-boyfriend figure, who hangs around for the entire film for seemingly no purpose other than to inject some extremely misguided and misplaced comic relief into the proceedings. His presence is almost justified, though, in a scene where he and Clooney share a late-night conversation in a hotel room. The scene is brilliant, funny and tender, and represents my main problem with this screenplay: it's inconsistent. Sometimes the film is everything this scene is, other times it drags, leaving a film that feels both compelling and overlong, moving at times, and strangely hollow at others. It's a feeling that I can't explain entirely, but I was never completely emotionally invested in these characters, so what's supposed to be the big emotional "pay-off" at the end didn't really strike me like it should have.  

 

One of the Oscar bloggers I follow has always said that a Best Picture winner should be universal, that you could sit anyone down in front of that film and they would get it. The past three years have seen three extremely emotionally resonant films take the top prize (The King's Speech, The Hurt Locker, Slumdog Millionaire), and while many (myself included) would rather have seen David Fincher's masterful The Social Network triumph last year, or James Cameron's landmark Avatar take the prize the year before (I was pulling for Inglourious Basterds that year, but I do believe that The Hurt Locker was the best film), and some will still tell you that Christopher Nolan's work on The Dark Knight should have merited a nomination and a win three years back, but the films that ultimately won had involving, emotional climaxes that were borderline impossible not to feel. In that way, I don't think The Descendants can win, because unlike those three winners, I just didn't get it. And the potential was there too: I really expected to leave the theater feeling both viscerally moved and emotionally satisfied, the way I felt with the past three Best Picture winners, but I think the screenplay misses. Ultimately, The Descendants is a good film, not a great one. Clooney is terrific, as usual, but he made a better film himself this past year with The Ides of March, and I would much rather see that film be awarded, even as it becomes increasingly unlikely that it will be. Yet, despite its flaws, The Descendants still works, and it's the onscreen dynamic between Clooney and Woodley that does it. As the two search for the man Elizabeth was "seeing," they form a tangible bond that really gives the film it's heartbeat. Irritating peripheral characters and screenplay inconsistencies aside, that relationship is the thing about this film I will remember the most, and if Oscar does choose to award this film, I hope it's for those two performances, without which it couldn't possibly work. And if Gosling can't win this year, Clooney is more than a worthy stand-in.

J. Edgar

  J. Edgar

Imagine Entertainment, 2011

Directed by Clint Eastwood

Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Armie Hammer, Judi Dench

Two and a half stars 

Ever since Clint Eastwood delivered his last (and by many accounts, greatest) Western with the near-perfect 1993 Best Picture/Director winner Unforgiven, his films have explored a vast variety of subjects and characters, both historical and fictional, featured many of the most respected actors in the business (and earned a good number of them Oscar nominations), and have made him one of the most prolific directors currently working. I must confess that my experience with the Eastwood oeuvre is rather lacking, but of what I've seen, his films range from favorites (Unforgiven) to other Best Picture/Director winners (Million Dollar Baby) to films that would just miss my favorites list, but that I still respect in every way (Mystic River), to flawed but compelling character pieces (last year's Hereafter), to enjoyable star vehicles for the man himself (his farewell to acting in 2008's Gran Torino), all the way to Invictus, a film that I thought to be directionless and unnecessary, and one that really only justified it's existence because it gave Morgan Freeman a chance to play Nelson Mandela, a performance that comes nowhere close to his best. J. Edgar, much like the majority of Eastwood's recent output, is a compelling, well-made and exquisitely acted piece of cinema, and just like most of his recent films, it suffers from flaws that make it hard to enjoy completely.

The first thing that must be said about this film is that Leonardo DiCaprio owns the title role and gives one of his best performances to date here. It's a showy piece of acting, as DiCaprio's portrayal spans many years and tackles a complex character full of contradictions, and it wouldn't surprise me if the Academy chooses to recognize him come nomination time, even if they ignore the film apart from his performance. There's not a moment of this film where DiCaprio isn't fully committed to the character, and that's what gives the film it's pulse and elevates it above what it would be with a lesser actor in the role. I've generally liked DiCaprio in his more likable roles, like in last years Inception, or his role opposite Tom Hanks in Spielberg's Catch Me If You Can, an all time favorite of mine, but here, he brings complexity to a character that could easily have become a villainous performance. That the audience never quite knows whether they like or hate Edgar is one of the film's greatest triumphs, though some of the credit must be given to Eastwood, who's built his career on exploring the antihero.

If DiCaprio is the film's greatest strength, then it's the script, penned by Academy Award Winner Dustin Lance Black (who won for Milk), that is it's greatest weakness. The film opens with a fantastic hook: the bombing of the house of Hoover's predecessor at the FBI (though it's not called that yet, to give an idea for the vast amount of time this screenplay spans), a piece of communist activity that, as the movie tells us, pushes Hoover towards everything he will fight for throughout his life. The film draws the audience in right from the get go, and then relies on DiCaprio to carry it for the remainder of it's running time, something that works for a little while, but falls apart as the film reaches it's second and third acts. Black saddles the movie with the rather uninspired format of Hoover telling his life story to someone else, which results in seemingly random jumps through time that make the screenplay feel jarring, sloppy, and, worst of all, unfocused. We do get a sense of who this man is, but the characters around him and the relationships he has with them feel so thoroughly one-dimensional that it's hard to understand what Black was going for. Is this a history? Is it a character study? Is it a political film? It has shades of all of those, but it never becomes one of them fully. And DiCaprio's stellar supporting cast, featuring the great Judi Dench as his mother, Naomi Watts as his secretary and The Social Network's Armie Hammer as a longtime colleague, could have been the basis for a dynamite ensemble cast, but the film is so singularly focused on J. Edgar that his supporters end up feeling like they're simply there to fulfill a very specific function.

I don't really understand how this could have happened with the script, since Black's work on Milk was almost the opposite. He got to the emotional core of that story; he found out what made the characters tick, and it was his exceptional work that drove the film and allowed Sean Penn to do what he needed to do to earn his second Oscar (the first, naturally, earned for an Eastwood film). But Penn wasn't the only one who shone brightly in that film, and it wasn't because it had a stronger slate of actors than this one, but because Black fully understood the supporting characters as well. He understood the relationship between Penn and James Franco's characters, he understood Dan White (played in a career best performance by James Brolin), and he understood that his pleasant outward facade hid a troubled, unpredictable man underneath, and that was why the moment when he pulled the trigger and we saw Harvey Milk fall was still so shocking, even though we already knew it was coming. The final minutes of that film are some of the most emotionally moving I've ever seen, and that's mostly thanks to the way Black built the story, how he established the characters and their relationships, and how he tied it up at the end: it was, in my opinion, the way a biopic should be made. He tries to frame the story here similarly, but he's missing the key aspects: the emotional connection, the supporting character depth and the relationships therein. It makes sense, I guess: Milk was a passion project for Black, who was inspired by Harvey Milk when he was struggling with his own sexuality. He tries to find homosexual themes in this film as well, and it almost works: the relationship between Edgar and Clyde Tolson (Hammer) was rumored to be a gay relationship, and Black goes beyond mere hints here, which isn't necessarily a problem as the relationship between DiCaprio and Hammer is the only one that I really bought into (unlike the mother-son connection between Dench and DiCaprio), but then we find ourselves again with the problem that the film is just trying to do too many things, and not doing any of them in great enough detail.

Despite all of this, I did enjoy J. Edgar. There's a better film here than the one that finds it's way out, but it's beautifully shot, with some impressive (and some questionable) aging make-up, and every actor here does their best with the material given to them. DiCaprio obviously shines the brightest, and that's how it should be, but Hammer shouldn't be overlooked, since he's clearly announced himself as an actor to watch with strong supporting roles these past two years. Ultimately, it's another good, if significantly flawed film from Eastwood, and even though I wouldn't call it among the year's best, I would still recommend it on the strength of DiCaprio's performance alone. He's never been one of my favorite actors, though I love some of his films (Catch Me if You Can, The Departed, Inception) and admire his work in others that I didn't quite love (The Aviator, Shutter Island). I'm almost certain that he'll find his way to an Oscar one day, and if this is the film to do it, I wouldn't be sorry at all. Something tells me he's not due quite yet, but stranger things have happened, and on that possibility alone, the film is a must-see for those who care about such things.

Margin Call

 Margin Call

Before the Door Pictures, 2011

Directed by J.C. Chandor

Starring: Kevin Spacey, Zachary Quinto, Paul Bettany 

Three and a half stars

Margin Call, a thriller that revolves around a group of key employees at an Investment Firm on the eve of a financial disaster, opens with Paul Dale (Stanley Tucci), a well respected, long-time risk management worker for the company, getting fired in the midst of a mass company layoff. Tucci, who's become one of my favorite actors in recent years, thanks almost exclusively to his wide range of fantastic supporting roles (from a scene-stealing sarcastic father in Easy A, to a supportive husband in Julie & Julia, all the way to his horrific transformation into a rapist and murderer in Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones), and this portrayal can be added to that list easily. He exits the film for a large portion of the action, but when he reappears for some closure later on, in a tour-de-force scene with Paul Bettany (who plays a senior trader with a reckless side), it's one of the best moments of a great film. 

Tucci is only the tip of the iceberg for this terrific ensemble cast. Much of the action centers on Zachary Quinto (Star Trek) and Penn Badgley (Easy A, Gossip Girl), two lower-down employees who find themselves entangled in a complicated web of corporate decisions, moral ambiguity and financial breakdown after Peter (Quinto), discovers that the company has accumulated a massive number of worthless mortgage-backed securities on their books, which, if allowed to remain, will decimate the company; as Peter puts it, "the loss will exceed the current value of the company." So begins the night from hell for Peter and his buddy Seth (Penn Badgley), a less brilliant-minded but equally well-meaning employee. Quinto and Badgley are both highly likable young actors, and both have exhibited a fair bit of talent (Quinto was a pitch-perfect Spock in J.J. Abrams' excellent Star Trek reboot, while Badgley's been tapped to play enigmatic singer Jeff Buckley in the upcoming picture Greetings From Tim Buckley). Both exude inexperience and naivety throughout the film as they find themselves embroiled in increasingly questionable moral territory. Neither actor goes far beyond what they've done in previous films, but both are welcome additions to this stellar cast.

As the night goes on, all the higher-ups are brought in: Peter and Seth's boss Will (Bettany), his boss, Sam (a brilliant Kevin Spacey), and the company's CEO (Jeremy Irons, in a typically villainous portrayal), and they find themselves in a dilemma. There will be huge consequences of their actions no matter which way they turn, and their ultimate decision, as cold and calculated as it is, feels frighteningly logical. By the time the film reaches it's climax, a scene that plays out with little but audio to build tension, director J.C. Chandor (in an impressively evenhanded debut) has painted a horrific portrait of corporate darkness (personified mostly by Irons) that's only so disturbing because it hits so close to home. In the penultimate scenes, we find ourselves looking out over New York City and Wall Street from high above; it all looks so peaceful and idyllic, but we share the characters' surreal feeling of foresight: knowing that all hell is about to break loose and knowing, in a way, that they caused it all. Their solution won't solve a thing, and everyone knows it, but no one can walk away.

Perhaps the most interesting artistic decision that Chandor makes is with his ending: he doesn't focus on the consequences of the firm's actions, nor does he show us the world outside of the company headquarters, the everyday people whose lives will be impacted by the economic disaster the firm has handed them, but he doesn't need too. Although a year is never given, it's obvious that the financial disaster depicted here represents what happened in the fall of 2008, and why would Chandor need to show the impact of Wall Street's collapse when it can still be seen and felt in every city in America? Chandor's film is very zeitgeist-appealing, and it could easily rely on those points to carry it to it's finale, which is way it's left-turn at the film's conclusion is so refreshing. The final scene depicts Spacey digging a grave for his dog (who he had to put to sleep the night before, just before he was called in to deal with the firm's crisis) in his ex-wife's front yard. She comes out to see who's making all the noise the two end up sharing a deeply personal conversation. It's one of the film's best scenes, not because it builds tension, not because it's thrilling or pulse-pounding or shocking in anyway, but because it feels so completely human, even after this character just played a role in something that could be considered borderline inhumane. Spacey, who's played the sympathetic character all along, comes out broken and regretful, unhappy with the decisions he's made, both personally and professionally, and in the final scene, we feel for him, despite what he's done. It's good writing, but it wouldn't work if the actor weren't so committed to playing the character with complete realism, and Spacey gives one of his best performances ever right here. Whether it's considered a lead role or a supporting one, I fully believe Spacey should receive Oscar attention for this, even though he doesn't really need it (he does have two of them already).

Margin Call is a terrific thriller, and it builds tension to a pulse-pounding point without a punch ever being thrown, a shot ever being fired, or a bomb ever going off (though, sometimes it feels like any of those things could happen). It's driven by good direction (Chandor is one to follow in the coming years), a solid script and an even better cast, featuring both hardened Hollywood vets and promising newcomers, that sits alongside the likes of The Ides of March and The Help at the top of the list for best ensemble casts this year. It's one of my favorite films of the year so far: a dark, complex and thrilling look at what could have happened just before the recession began, a memorable zeitgeist-appealing picture, and a stirring and surprisingly personal character piece. It's destined to go on being overlooked, both commercially and during the upcoming awards season, but I personally think it deserves top marks and significant recognition. Here's hoping at least Spacey grabs a nomination.