Brave

Brave

Disney/Pixar Animation Studios, 2012

Directed by Mark Andrews and Brenda Chapman

Starring: Kelly MacDonald, Emma Thompson, Billy Connolly (Voices)

Three and a half stars 

It's no secret that Pixar is the most consistently solid studio in Hollywood: ever since they burst onto the scene with 1995's Toy Story, the storytellers and animators at Pixar Animation Studios have challenged the boundaries of animation, served as a constant pillar for heartfelt and innovative storytelling, and created some of the most beloved films and franchises of our time. At their best, almost no one can touch them: the Toy Story trilogy is the most critically acclaimed film franchise of all time; Finding Nemo redefined what voice acting could be for an animated movie (thanks largely to Ellen DeGeneres who, despite Academy rules, should have won an Oscar for her work there); Monster's Inc. set a benchmark for boundless imagination that has rarely been duplicated; and Up and Wall-E, though I find both less consistently wonderful than the aforementioned titles, each began by flirting with silent film elements and delivered sizable emotional punches in the process. Hell, even when Pixar has fallen short of their customary originality and transcendentalism, the results (namely the Cars films and A Bug's Life) have stood up to (and often surpassed) the ones that Dreamworks or Disney (on their own) were making at the same time.

 It's also no secret that Pixar is a well-oiled machine, delivering one full-length feature every summer, no more, no less. When that one film captures the minds of audiences and critics alike, the result has often been the most well-reviewed film of the year, and recently, has even netted the studio a pair of Best Picture nominations. But when the result is a disappointment, like with last year's misguided Cars sequel, the wait between projects seems to stretch on for much longer than usual. Last summer, when Cars 2 became the first Pixar feature to earn a "rotten" rating from review aggregate Rotten Tomatoes (and the first to receive zero Oscar nominations), moviegoers and critics everywhere began speculating about what that first crack in the facade meant for the world's most consistent studio. Was the Pixar golden age at an end? Certainly no streak can last forever, but the moment Pixar's fell, the sense that they were untouchable, like they could do no wrong, was shattered, and critics began to realize that kicking them around was actually a viable option. This brings me, at last, to Brave, Pixar's latest full-length feature, the first to feature a heroine in the lead role, and unlucky number 13 in their oeuvre.

When the reviews for Brave started rolling in, even I was ready to speculate that Pixar was on the downswing. That's not because Brave has received the level of mixed to poor reviews that Cars 2 did, but because I have, over the course of my life, become so accustomed to seeing everything the studio touches turn to solid gold that seeing their projects get anything less than unanimously perfect reviews is still a bit of a shock. I took those reviews and I bought into the negative hype. But they say that the best way to enter a movie is with lowered expectations, and so I found myself as I sat down in the theater Sunday afternoon for my first viewing of Brave. Too often, by the time the credits roll on the year's most critically acclaimed films, I find myself wondering what I missed, where the great film I read about was, and why all the flaws that I noticed had been looked over; too often, my enjoyment of a film is sabotaged by the hype and by my own expectations. But after experiencing just over an hour and a half of what is, rather doubtlessly, the most gorgeous animated film ever put to celluloid, I had the opposite reaction: there hasn't been enough hype for Brave.

Perhaps it's because Brave doesn't quite reach the level of originality that has been pivotal to Pixar's past work, the level of how-the-hell-did-they-think-of-that brilliance that runs back and forth through films like Monsters or Toy Story. And indeed, while Brave does carry a ton of Pixar's trademark comedy and heart, its ideas are a bit more straightforward than those that have served as backbone for the studio's true masterworks. Perhaps the "good-but-not-great" critical response to Brave has been a result of people who just can't wrap their heads around the fact that, yes, we have kinda sorta seen this story play out before. But then again, each Pixar movie has, at its barest essentials, covered universal themes, and that's no different here. Just like Toy Story, this is a film about growing up, about the things we love that we take for granted right up until the moment that we almost lose them; like Nemo, it depicts a relationship between a parent and a child that is tested and reborn through struggle and adventure; and just like Toy Story 3 and Up and Wall-E and every other movie this studio has made, it has a handful of moments that hit tremendously hard.

On the whole, Brave is more of a throwback to classic Disney Princess movies than it is to the rest of Pixar's innovative track record, but that's not a bad thing. The movies it collects inspiration from, ranging from Snow White to Sleeping Beauty to Mulan, are all terrific, classics even, and Brave stands among them easily. Blending its baffling animation with a gorgeous score of Gaelic music and a terrific cast of characters (including a notably strong heroine in Merida, since its about time Pixar had a female lead), I can't recall enjoying many Pixar films more than Brave on first viewing (the Toy Story films and Finding Nemo excepted), nor have I been so thoroughly pleased, moved, or enraptured by any film I've seen so far this year. To me, it feels like a collision of the timelessness of the hand-drawn Disney classics and the fierce creativity and heart that has defined all of Pixar's films, movies that have carried me along from childhood, into adolescence, and finally onto adulthood: movies that are near and dear to my heart. Needless to say, that it fits among that legacy at all is praise enough for Brave; that it surpasses some of it is one of the highest commendations that can be given in modern film.

There has always been this sort of unspoken belief in the film industry that animated movies can't be "serious art," that these films are made for kids and they can't possibly measure up to the works that are showered with big awards recognition at the end of each year. But that's not true, and right from the beginning, Pixar Animation Studios have spent every one of their films proving that. Sure, these movies can be enjoyed by kids: the audience I saw this movie with was at least 60% children, and they all loved it. But I've always felt that Pixar is not aiming at the kids: they're aiming for the parents, they're aiming for the film buffs, and they're aiming for my generation, the generation that fell in love with the first Toy Story in the first days of its original release, the generation that has been there with them every step of the way, growing up alongside Pixar, their films, and their characters, and finding new pieces of wisdom every time we sit down to watch a new feature or revisit an old one. Because in every Pixar movie, there are themes or moments that can only be fully appreciated with age, with time, and with experience. It's a gift that we have an animation studio so thoroughly committed to making great films that are resonant across all age groups, and it's a testament to their high level of work that I have never seen two people rank their output in the same order. Some may say that the Cars 2 debacle and the less-than-perfect reviews for Brave are a sign that the studio is weakening, but on the contrary, I'd rank Brave as one of their most enjoyable films to date...if not one of their best, and that deserves celebrating.

*Note: As is customary with Pixar features, a short film plays before Brave. The wide-eyed wonder of this year's version, a beautifully rendered short called La Luna, is not to be missed, so make sure you show up in time to catch it - even if you have to sit through a bevy of terrible previews first.

Hide Away

Hide Away

Joules Films, 2012

Directed by Chris Eyre

Starring: Josh Lucas, James Cromwell, Ayelet Zurer

One and a half stars (out of four) 

I really wanted to love Hide Away, and that's not just because it was filmed in my hometown and is graced, on so many frames, by the gorgeous expanses of Grand Traverse Bay. No, I wanted to love Hide Away because I loved the concept and because Josh Lucas is one of the most likable and underrated actors working today. At very least, Lucas's talent isn't in doubt, as he does a terrible amount of heavy lifting in a film that, ultimately, renders his efforts as both a thankless task and a moot point. When we land on the shores of the Grand Traverse Peninsula at the outset of the film, we are introduced to Lucas (as a character who is never explicitly given a name). He's come to the docks to buy a boat, and, rather inexplicably, he's wearing a suit. We don't need the screenplay to tell us that he's running away from something, but it throws us a few bones anyway. "Are you divorced?" asks the guy who sells him a frighteningly decrepit sailboat. "No, I'm not," Lucas replies. Apparently these docks are a haven for divorced men, running away from their pasts and trying to regain some vestige of youth and happiness. Neither of those options seem very likely for Lucas's character, who seems thoroughly grounded in his own personal darkness from the first frame to the last, but he's still here for the same reason: to disappear.

As the film progresses, the "Young Mariner" (so Lucas is named in the credits, if you get that far) sets about repairing the boat, often to comically disastrous results. He is observed by a pair of other damaged souls (a solid James Cromwell and an ambiguously accented Ayelet Zurer) who will offer him personal and technical assistance over the course of the story, and he even gets a few interested glances from the cute girl who works at the local grocery store (maybe they should have just made a movie of Springsteen's "Queen of the Supermarket" instead...) Amidst all of this, Lucas sinks into mourning and succumbs to an alcohol-fueled depression, rebuilding the broken-down boat as he tries to rebuild his own heart, soul, and life. It's a nice idea, as crushing loss has led to many great works of art in the past. Anyone who has ever lost a loved one will relate to our young mariner: when we lose the things that are most important to us, it feels impossibly wrong to move on without them, and Lucas plays that kind of unendurable pain very well. But the screenplay betrays his efforts, and clunky editing only makes matters worse. A long, drawn out montage during the film's mid-section shows Lucas's descent into alcoholism, but it feels more like an anti-drinking commercial than it does a movie. Even the nice moments in there, like one where he reads out loud to imaginary children, or where he loses his temper with another phantom in his head, have their emotional force truncated by tonally awkward fade-to-black cuts. The segment ends up feeling both painful and eternal, and the only solace comes from the fact that the film improves somewhat after it's over.

There isn't a whole lot of dialogue in Hide Away, and Lucas gets to spend a good deal of the (mercifully brief) runtime onscreen by himself. But even with so many intimate moments, we don't really get a deep sense of who he is. The same holds true for the supporting characters, who each have a few shining moments, but seem thrown in to fulfill decidedly more calculated plot points. Listed as the "Ancient Mariner" in the credits, we're (probably) meant to believe that Cromwell and Lucas are essentially the same person, with the latter being on a 20-year delay, but that slice of symbolism only gets a few moments of clarity. Zurer's character ("Waitress," how exciting) is even more of a caricature, with the film's most cringe-worthy moment coming when she solicits a sexual encounter with Lucas's character late in the film, eliciting a brief flashback that shows us just what happened to his family (and a too-subtle hint as to why he feels guilty enough to run away from it).



To Lucas's credit, he pulls this all off very well, giving us a handful of emotionally resonant moments in a film that otherwise never feels the slightest bit organic. The "plot twist" with his family doesn't work though, and it mutes the impact of his struggle with himself. The screenplay oscillates randomly between not giving it's audience enough credit and expecting them to make huge leaps in logic without the slightest bit of exposition or clarification, and the result is a frustrating, muddled mess of a movie that never finds its feet and has no damn clue what it wants to be. It would have been better to leave Lucas as an enigmatic figure, suffering from a nameless pain, to leave the funeral suit he arrives in at the film's outset as the only physical link to his mourning and his past life; it would have been better to build on the strong onscreen relationship he shares with Cromwell in their few scenes together and to pretty much eliminate Zurer from the film altogether; it would have been better if this film had a discernible story arc. Sadly, the film and it's director Chris Eyre (with whom I am entirely unfamiliar) don't take the ideal or sensible paths here, opting instead for something more minimalistic and abstract. But you can't have meaningful minimalism without a fully formed idea to build it on, and despite some nice flashes of concept, the framework here is distinctly half-baked.

Hide Away sounds good on paper: man loses family, runs away and starts re-building a boat in a symbolic nod to his own disrepair, helping a number of other people find their way in the meantime, and thus finding the redemption he came here looking for. Sadly, Eyre's film is able to find the emotional nuance in very little of that. More dialogue, more characterization, less heavy-handed editing, and more time would have helped the material breathe a little (though I can't say I wanted another 20 or 30 minutes when the credits finally rolled), but as is, Hide Away is a sloppy pile of ideas that never coalesce into anything more powerful than the sum of their parts (and actually distinctly less). Minor characters (and alcoholism) disappear without a trace, relationships spring up from nowhere, without any vestige of believability, and then the film just ends. There's no climactic moment, no real resolution, and certainly no memorable message to take away when the credits roll. Instead, it feels like Eyre just got tired of making this movie, and while I can hardly blame him, he does a major disservice to his characters (and to Josh Lucas, in general) by never giving them the time to grow. Worse, he does a poor, shallow job of depicting a theme and struggle that should have been intrinsically devastating and viscerally moving; I just wish someone had told him.

The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games

Lionsgate Films, 2012

Directed by Gary Ross

Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Stanley Tucci, Woody Harrelson, Donald Sutherland

Three and a half stars

Approaching the opening weekend of The Hunger Games, the first film adaptation for a trilogy of novels by TV screenwriter turned author Suzanne Collins, a lot of comparisons were being thrown around. Most prominent among those comparisons were allusions to Twilight and Harry Potter, a pair of ridiculously popular fantasy fiction novels that translated their success to the big screen. In a lot of ways, The Hunger Games fits into that same niche, especially after scoring a $155 million domestic gross in its opening weekend, the third biggest weekend ever, and the supreme ruler amongst non-sequels, but it also has something both of those franchises lacked: a film version which is truly great.

To be fair, The Hunger Games is an inherently cinematic tale, and Collins penned the screenplay herself (along with director Gary Ross: more on him later). The story, which revolves around a post-apocalyptic, totalitarian government that punishes its citizens for past misdeeds by forcing randomly selected teenagers (tributes) to participate in an annual fight-to-the-death competition, was ripe for a film adaptation based only on the book flap. Furthermore, the casting here is pitch perfect across the board. Where Daniel Radcliffe had to grow into the role of Harry Potter as he went (and where Kristen Stewart just stares blankly into space), Academy Award nominee Jennifer Lawrence arrives here (as the resilient heroine Katniss Everdeen) fully formed, giving a performance that is fiercely physical, viscerally emotional, and, on every single level, fantastic. Right from the first scenes, Lawrence imbues Katniss with emotional colors that didn't quite come out on the page: take the breathtaking sequence featured in nearly every trailer, where her sister's name comes out of the drawing for the Hunger Games and she screams out her decision to volunteer in her place; or a scene several minutes later, where she is forced to say goodbye to everyone she has ever known: these scenes showcase a young woman who radiates strength and love, even as she fights the anger, sadness, and especially fear, that threaten to overcome her. But Lawrence is only the tip of the iceberg for what proves to be a remarkably well cast film, featuring Academy award nominees such as Stanley Tucci (playing in his comfort zone, as the slightly goofy but wonderfully kindhearted Caesar Flickerman, who interviews the tributes before the start of the games) or Woody Harrelson (as the alcoholic Haymitch, a former winner of the Hunger Games who has been left jaded and bitter after watching hundreds of kids die in the contest every year). Harrelson's Haymitch, who serves as mentor for Katniss and her fellow tribute Peeta Mellark (a solid and occasionally funny Josh Hutcherson), will have his shining moments in later films, but he's the perfect fit for the role. The same can be said of Donald Sutherland, who plays the President and dictator of this world, and who hangs over the film's proceedings like a specter of death. Elsewhere, Lenny Kravitz delivers a small but undeniably effective turn as Cinna, Katniss's stylist for the pre-game ceremonies, and a true friend.

Despite the Games being the movie's namesake, much of the action of the film actually revolves around the build-up to the main event, giving director Gary Ross (with writing and directing credits such as Pleasantville, The Truman Show, and Big) a good chance to acquaint us with these characters before all hell breaks loose. Seeing Peeta's protective nature, or Katniss and her tendency towards rebellious behavior, outside of the arena actually makes those qualities more pronounced than they would be if Ross and Collins had rushed towards the Games rather than giving such a large chunk of screen time over to the exposition. It also gives Lawrence and Hutcherson a chance to give their pivotal onscreen relationship some life and conflict, which will serve their characters very well later on in the series.

The film plays as a very faithful adaptation until the moment where the tributes enter the arena, at which point Ross and Collins make some interesting choices that will likely cause grumbling among fans, but ultimately create a stronger, more organic cinematic experience. The first and most noticeable side of this is that Ross gives us more than a handful of scenes from the viewpoint of characters who exited the story almost entirely at this point in the book. Collins wrote the whole Hunger Games trilogy from the perspective of Katniss, and as a result, the action was focused very largely on her internal monologue and not at all upon what was going on outside of the arena. Ross and Collins throw in a curve ball by giving us an entire storyline focused around the happenings in the capitol: the thoughts and actions of Games mastermind Seneca Crane and his fellow gamemakers (think of them as the show's "producers"), the play-by-play coverage by Caesar Flickerman, Haymitch's struggles to obtain "sponsors" for Katniss and Peeta (which will allow him to send them supplies that will save their lives), or the brooding presence of Sutherland's President Snow, who recognizes right away that Katniss could represent a problem for his carefully laid empire, especially as unrest begins to bubble over in direct response to her actions in the arena. The second palpable aspect of Ross's style is felt in the way the film's violence plays out. Naturally, since the story revolves around a bunch of teenagers brutally murdering each other, the film could easily have earned itself an R-rating (something that will grow more problematic as the series progresses). Ross, however, shoots the violence with a dreamlike, surreal quality that makes it even more effective than gallons of fake blood ever could. Take the first moments in the arena, where Ross drops the sound and films with a jerky camera as roughly half of the tributes are taken out of action: it's not a stylistic choice that will universally praised, but in my eyes, it's the right decision.

The most criticized portion of this film will very likely be the romantic moments between Lawrence's Katniss and Hutcherson's Peeta, and while I thought some of their chemistry was a bit awkward, the more I think about it, the more I believe that this was intentional. Lawrence and Hutcherson have appeared, with terrific chemistry, in a plethora of interviews in support of this film, and I find it impossible to believe that the two of them, with the talent they obviously manifest throughout the rest of the film, would let something they have naturally fall away unless they were doing so intentionally. And it makes sense that the two of them wouldn't have that automatic spark: in the arena, love is a calculation made to get sponsors and to stay alive, and their wonky chemistry makes sense because the film never lets the audience know for sure if either of them means it. Their true feelings for each other are always kept in a blurry zone, and I would argue that the choice not to present their relationship as a sweeping Hollywood romance is one of the film's greatest masterstrokes.

The Hunger Games will always be compared to Harry Potter and Twilight because of its "young adult fiction" label and the age of its heroes, but as a film, it actually falls a lot closer to another titanic fantasy series. Indeed, echoes of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy ring through many of The Hunger Games' key moments, from Katniss's choice to volunteer for a perilous task, to the emotional death of a small but pivotal character, all the way to the brilliant cut-to-black ending, which leaves the movie feeling more like the first third of a much larger film than a standalone entry in a series (something I never felt with Harry Potter, even in the two films that came from the same book). It's a powerful triumph as a film and as an adaptation, which manages to stand on it's own a lot better than I thought it would. At the end of this past decade, when I ranked The Lord of the Rings trilogy on the top of my favorite films list, I wrote that "the cuts that are made are the right ones, the few changes made work well, and every character is written with accuracy and realism not found in many films like this," and I believe that all of those things stand for this film as well. But ultimately, even with terrific qualities across the board, everything comes back to Lawrence, who owns the film and makes it what it is. Katniss was a strong heroine anyway, but Lawrence brings nuance and color to the character that wasn't on the page, and in doing so, delivers one of the best performances I've seen in a long time. I certainly hope that Oscar will take note, but either way, I cannot wait to see what she, Ross, and the rest of the team decide to do with the other two novels, because I personally believe we have something special on our hands.

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!

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

Warner Bros. / Paramount Pictures, 2011

Directed by Stephen Daldry

Starring: Thomas Horn, Sandra Bullock, Tom Hanks, Maxwell von Sydow

Three stars

On Oscar Nomination morning, a lot of people were shocked when Stephen Daldry's Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close was read off as the 9th Best Picture nominee. The film, which is based on the 2005 novel of the same name (by Jonathan Safran Foer), had already suffered a massive critical beat down, scoring in the 40% range on both Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic, and common consensus was that the film was melodramatic and emotionally manipulative, using the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks as a means to draw a few tears from the audience and make a couple bucks. Nevertheless, I predicted the film as a long shot alternate, wondering if the it had released just at the right time and left enough of an impression on voters to score a nomination. Evidently, it had, and it did land that nomination (along with one for supporting actor Maxwell von Sydow), making it the only one of the nine films I had not seen before nomination day.

While Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close was certainly far from my favorite film of the year, and while it does have its share of flaws, the fact that much of the criticism for the film surrounded its use of the 9/11 events as the backdrop of the story made me scratch my head a bit. Over the past decade, I've seen many people use the words "too soon" in regards to artistic manifestations of that terrible day: it happened in 2006, when filmmakers Oliver Stone and Paul Greengrass made a pair of films focusing on different aspects of the terror. It probably happened in 2002, when Bruce Springsteen released his comeback album The Rising, where many of the songs discussed the overwhelming sense of loss and grief that gripped the nation following the attacks. It most certainly happened (and probably rightfully so) in 2010, when what looked to be a pretty straightforward Robert Pattison romance flick (Remember Me) concluded with the mother of all deus-ex-machina devices, with the main character dying in the World Trade Center in the penultimate scene. In all of these cases, still grieving citizens made the argument that these filmmakers and artists were trying to make money off of their grief, trying to tap into that day tragedy for monetary benefit. But we can't simply ignore that day, and just as WWII has provided the backdrop for countless films for ages, the events of September 11th will be revisited, time and time again, from different angles.

I personally don't have a problem with the 9/11 subject matter if it is handled well: Greengrass made one of the most effective and moving films of the last decade with United 93, which did its very best to tell the story as it happened, in complete realism, without a single Hollywood moment. However, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close hardly even fits into the same category anyway, since only a fraction of the film takes place on September 11th, and most of it revolves around what follows. So even though Extremely Loud is destined to be thought of as "the 9/11 film" throughout this year's Oscar season and probably forever, it's far more about dealing with the devastation of losing a person you love, about learning how to live without that person, even as their memory is with you everywhere you go, than it is about a day in our nation's history. In that regard, I think the film does a terrific job, and even though I didn't personally love every moment of the film, it does pack one hell of an emotional punch. I can certainly understand why Oscar voters responded to it the way they did, even if the higher-brow critical faction didn't find much to enjoy.

Many of the criticisms have also been levied towards Thomas Horn, who portrays Oskar, a child with asperger's who is the central protagonist of the story. I read somewhere that the whole movie was essentially "Horn running around screaming," and while that is obviously an exaggerated remark, the character's mannerisms and personality did start to wear on me towards the films middle section. That said, Oskar is a character who is not entirely likable by design: all evidence suggests that this boy has no real friendships in his school environment. His best friend and his only real link to the world around him was his father (a dependably solid Tom Hanks), who would design tasks to get him to talk to strangers and break out of his shell, and when he perishes in the World Trade Center, Oskar can't really comprehend that loss. The main thrust of the plot involves one final task Oskar believes his father left to him, and he ventures out into the wide expanses of New York City, trying to solve the puzzle. In his searching, Oskar encounters hundreds of people, many suffering from the same kind of grief that he's working through, and eventually it becomes obvious that his task isn't about the destination, but the journey it takes to get there.

The supporting cast is aces all around: Viola Davis, a likely Best Actress winner for her terrific work last year in The Help, has a small but important role as one of the many lives that Oskar wanders into (and changes) throughout his quest. Maxwell von Sydow doesn't say a word throughout the whole film, but his silent, quirky facade makes him the perfect companion for Oskar, even as he hides a life full of pain and regret. And Sandra Bullock gives her best performance to date as Oskar's mother, who, as we learn in the film's final act, isn't quite what she seems. Near the end of the film, Horn and Bullock share a scene that is just dynamite, discussing grief, love and loss, and remembering the man that was taken away from them far too soon. "I miss his voice telling me he loves me," Bullock's character says quietly. It's the perfect encapsulation of loss, condensed down to a single line, and at that moment, there might not have been a dry eye in the house. If I had to pin down why this film got the Best Picture nomination that alluded many much more critically acclaimed films, from Dragon Tattoo to Tinker, Tailor to The Ides of March, I'd point to that single scene: I doubt there's a more powerful one in any of the nominees this year.

When I first saw the trailer for this film, I actually teared up a little bit. Maybe it was the juxtaposition of so many powerful images and ideas from the film's center, or maybe it was all about the use of U2's "Where the Streets Have No Name" (one of my top five favorite songs of all time), but either way, it was a trailer that resonated with me immediately, and a film I gravitated towards for that reason. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close has taken a lot of flak (and will continue to be on the receiving end of it for awhile, thanks to that Oscar nomination), but once I got past all of that nonsense and right to the core of the film, there was something really worthwhile there. It's not my favorite film of the year: I'd probably rank towards the lower end of the Best Picture nominees, but I don't think there has been a more misunderstood or unfairly maligned film in the past year. Because ultimately, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close really is a good movie. Maybe not a great one and maybe not one I can see myself revisiting a lot down the road, but I'm glad it was made, I'm glad I saw it, and I am truly glad the Academy chose to give it a reprieve from the nonsensical critical slaughter it has received.

And damn, I still love that trailer...

The Tragedy of the Underrated Film: Cameron Crowe's "Elizabethtown," six years down the road

Elizabethtown

Directed by Cameron Crowe

Fall 2005

I could, quite easily I think, call Cameron Crowe my favorite director of all time. Sure, Tarantino's blown my mind wide open countless times, the Coen Brothers have never made a film I didn't like, David Fincher just gets better and better, and Peter Jackson probably gets himself into the conversation based on my love for The Lord of the Rings alone. Then there are greats like Spielberg and Scorsese, who have made so many great movies (and so many different kinds of great movies), that I still haven't explored either entirely, but if I had to pick one director's collection of films as my "desert island film list," Crowe would have to be the winner. His films are so personal, so infectiously moving and memorable, and so full of replay value that I can't imagine getting tired of them. Like great songs or great albums, Crowe's films don't always necessarily become my favorites on the initial viewing, but they really stick with me. Perhaps it's due to Crowe's fantastic use of music in his films, but every single one of them has one or two moments of pure magic, and those moments infect my mind and stay there until I am dying to see the film again. We Bought a Zoo wasn't my favorite film of last year, but it was one I found viscerally moving and very memorable. There were a few moments in that film where Crowe's music choices and Matt Damon's performance juxtaposed so perfectly that they transcended the film's simple narrative and became a part of me, and for that reason alone, I'm dying to see the film again.

I can't figure out for the life of me why I wrote off Elizabethtown for so long. The 2005 film, for the longest time, has been one that I sort of lumped in with Vanilla Sky as a part of Crowe's "dry period," but looking back, I recall quite enjoying it on my first viewing (which was, I suppose, 6 years ago). After reading through an excellent countdown of the greatest music moments in Crowe's films (read it here) and seeing the abundance of Elizabethtown tunes on there, I decided to give the film another chance, and I fell in love.

I think there is something deeply wrong in the way we gauge the quality of films in this day and age. So much relies on what wins awards or what scores a high percentage on Rotten Tomatoes, but really, what do those things mean? As much as I follow the Oscars, as much as I love seeing all the films and deciding for myself what I think should or should not win, at the end of the day, it's just an Award, just a statistic (though one that will, admittedly, immortalize that particular film amongst a highly regarded tradition), but unless my own personal favorite films are being validated by those prizes, does it really make a difference to me what wins? And what about those Rotten Tomatoes scores, which have probably caused people to write off countless numbers of films that I love due to mixed critical reaction: there are things inside these films that simply cannot be condensed down into a number, and in trying to do so, I think we have lost something from modern cinema.

Crowe's films and Elizabethtown in particular got me thinking about this, as they've never been big awards players, and Elizabethtown holds a disgusting 28% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, which is pretty much enough for me to write the site off for the remaining stretch of my existence. There is no arguing that the film is flawed: Orlando Bloom is a deeply likable actor, and he tries terribly hard in this role, but the performance never quite works the way it should. There are strange snatches of awkwardness and even a few scenes (towards the beginning), where something really does feel very, very off. But he does his best. Much like Woody Allen's films, which all seem to present a different version of the director, the Cameron Crowe hero has always had bits and pieces that felt friendly and familiar. Matt Damon, Tom Cruise, John Cusack and Patrick Fugit have all done splendidly in different takes on a similar role, each in wildly different settings, but all playing through some similar thematic issues, and although Bloom doesn't quite hit that mark, I still kind of liked his performance for what it was. More on that later.

Elizabethtown follows the story of a shoe designer named Drew Baylor (Bloom), who has just been fired after designing a product that cost his company a billion dollars. Well, not quite a billion dollars, but as Alec Baldwin states in his brief appearance as Drew's boss, the number is close enough that they might as well round up. And so Drew's story begins, fired, dumped (by Jessica Biel, with so little to do in this movie that you wonder why they even bothered) and at the end of his rope. It's not so far from the set-up of Jerry Maguire, except for instead of resolving to start his own company and come back from his crushing failure, Drew goes home, tosses his belongings in the trash, and prepares to kill himself. It's then that the phone rings and changes everything: Drew's father has died, and Drew has to go to Elizabethtown, his father's old hometown and where he was visiting when he died, to make funeral arrangements. And then he meets Claire (Kirsten Dunst, as a bubbly flight-attendant), and the film really gains its feet.

Doubtlessly, this film is flawed: actors or characters make brief appearances and then disappear without a trace, others seem strangely underdeveloped, and some scenes feel disjointed and out of place. And yet despite all of this, as the film finished out tonight, after years spent writing it off, I immediately thought I may have found a new favorite. Why? How can a film with so many obvious flaws and such a weak opening end up being so sublime, so weirdly, quirkily, unexpectedly brilliant? The answer is that, despite strange casting and scripting flaws (and a serious snafu in the film editing department), this is still a Cameron Crowe film, and it still has his trademark magic: the magic of the all-night phone conversation Drew and Claire share together, with Ryan Adams' "Come Pick Me Up" serving as soundtrack; the bizarre comedy of Drew's drunk encounter with a groom at the hotel he's staying at as he tries to steal a few beers; the wistful warmth of Drew and Claire driving to meet each other at dawn, just to sit and watch the sunset together, staying on the phone until they're face to face; the weirdly emotional power of the scene where Susan Sarandon (as Drew's mother) tap dances to "Moon River," her late husband's favorite song, at his memorial. It's the kind of magic you feel as Drew's cousin reunites his band to play "Freebird" at the memorial, lighting the place on fire, but continuing on through the entire guitar solo, even as the sprinklers drench the place and the audience runs for the exits. It's the sheer perfection of the film's closing sequence, where Drew takes a long road trip home, perfectly laid out and soundtracked by Claire (in the most flawless tribute to the mixtape that film has ever seen), and it's the satisfaction of watching them search for each other in a busy crowd, the connection of their eyes, the sprint towards each other, the collision, the embrace and the long, drawn out kiss. It's old fashioned romance, but Crowe has always had a way of making that seem fresh, and he does it perfectly here.

But perhaps the thing that hits the hardest in this film is the music that Crowe selects to soundtrack it: the crushing tragedy of losing a parent that sets in on Drew as Helen Stellar's "This Time Around" plays and he finds himself looking back; the melancholic strains of Tom Petty's "It'll All Work Out" that so expertly foreshadow the fated collision of these two people and the love they will find together; the welcome arrival of any of the three Ryan Adams songs, at key points in the score, framing the film almost as much as Elton John's opus "My Father's Gun" does; or the way the music washes over the road trip scene and brings the film to a truly fantastic conclusion, from the splendid American vistas that pass by as EastMountainSouth's gorgeously harmonized cover of Stephen Foster's "Hard Times" plays, to the bittersweet melody of Wheat's "Don't I Hold You," which will put a smile on the face of any audience member who has ever fallen in love with a song on a thoughtful late night drive. The list of examples could fill paragraphs, but suffice to say that, of all of Crowe's films, Elizabethtown is perhaps the most fully realized in terms of its soundtrack, and that's saying something. Maybe that's why I love this film so much: the script is certainly flawed, the casting imperfect, but when it comes to perfect collisions of music and film, it's hard to think of another example that blends my two favorite mediums of entertainment and art together so well.

Aside from Vanilla Sky (which I hardly even count as a Cameron Crowe film), Elizabethtown is probably Crowe's weakest screenplay. It's weak in that there are plot and character inconsistencies and that, at times, it feels like there is something missing. But in its concept? In its central story and character ideas? In those areas, the script about as far from weak as you can get. I read a blog post once (read it here) that explained it more perfectly than I can:

"If Jerry Maguire and Almost Famous are both a solid 9 out of 10, then Elizabethtown is a solid 4 out of 10 yet also a solid 12 out of 10. It's everything and nothing, it's great and terrible, terrible and great."

That is to say, there are failures in this film, but when Crowe succeeds, like on that perfect road trip sequence, or the euphoric up-all-night phone call scene, it's hard for me to think of moments in his other films that I love more. I honestly think he could have made his best movie here, had a few things gone differently; he misses that mark, but it's still worth an awful lot that I can't get the movie out of my head. Maybe it's the music geek in me: maybe it's Drew visiting the scene of Martin Luther King's assassination as U2's "Pride (In the Name of Love)" plays like an anthem in the background; maybe it's him stopping by Sun Studios and grabbing a drink in a bar nearby, where the bartender tells him stories of all kinds of music legends (Elvis included) who have walked through his door; maybe it's the chilling mention of Jeff Buckley's final resting place as Drew drives over the Mississippi; or maybe it's just the idea of a guy who suffers a crushing tragedy and a demoralizing defeat at the same time, and then finds himself in the aftermath: in a crazy extended family, in music, and in love. I love that plot and I love the way the film reminds me of moments out of my own life. I think Drew is a really great character, one that I can see myself in a lot, and the fact that Bloom doesn't quite hit the bullseye doesn't take away from how genuine and good-natured his performance is. And his chemistry with Dunst just works: one viewing of that phone call scene makes that statement undeniable.

Elizabethtown, unlike Almost Famous, is not a perfect movie, but it bears its scars proudly, and it rises above them to become a truly great film, even if I didn't realize that fact for six years. There's a tragedy in films sitting underrated for more than half a decade like this one has: the tragedy of missing out on years of these songs and scenes to remember fondly; the tragedy of thinking my favorite director lost his golden touch. But there's also something truly splendid about the underrated film: it's getting to rediscover it years after the first viewing and cherishing it all the more for that reason; it's having the film come back into my life at the perfect time and truly resonating with me like I know it never could have when I was younger; and its the thrill of reclaiming a film that critics and popular consensus kept from me for far too long. In that way, I suppose it's more of a triumph than a tragedy.

Oscar Nominations 2012: Predictions

After months of movie watching, analyzing and conjecturing, the 2011-2012 Awards Season will move into its final phase early tomorrow morning, when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences announces the nominations for the 84th Annual Academy Awards. It was a really great year in film, even if Oscar ignores some of my favorite films, and I'm looking forward to waking up to watch the nominations tomorrow. Let's see how closely I can guess the big six categories.

Note: I've included my picks for nominations along with an alternate or two and, if something struck me, a performance or film that I would have nominated in the given category.

Best Picture

The Artist

The Descendants

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The Help

Hugo

Midnight in Paris

Moneyball

War Horse

Alternates: The Tree of Life, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Should be here: The Ides of March

Since The Artist pretty much has Oscar night sown up already, and since most of the acting categories are either relatively locked or firmly in the "two horse race" phase, the most exciting aspect of the season could be watching what happens with the Best Picture nominees tomorrow. After two years of ten nominees (after decades with five), the Academy has switched their nomination policy for this category again, allowing for anywhere between five and ten nominees, depending on the percentage of votes received. While I'm certain the number of nominations won't make it to ten, there's a fair amount of wiggle room here beyond the five or six consensus picks. Support has been surprisingly strong for Midnight in Paris, a film I found good, in unspectacular, and it now sits as a lock for a nomination in this category. Also in that category are the season's three biggest players (The Artist, The Descendants and Hugo), as well as the big summer hit The Help (with its stellar ensemble cast), and pleasantly strong support for the Aaron Sorkin scripted Moneyball will put it in this category as well. The biggest question mark is War Horse, as the Spielberg epic has fallen from early frontrunner status (you know, before anyone saw the film), and has missed several key precursor nominations from the Directors' and Producers' Guilds. Still, I think Spielberg's popularity, as well as the film's undeniably strong production value, will land it here.

The other big question mark is whether or not the Academy will go for the dark, atmospheric subject matter of David Fincher's Dragon Tattoo. I never thought the film would be an Oscar contender, but recent nominations from the PGA and the DGA are hard to ignore, and it's likely to duplicate that success here. As for outside chances, Tinker, Tailor could easily have a large enough faction of support to land a nomination, though I question whether the film's labyrinthine plot fits in a category that generally tends to play closer to the mainstream side of things. Ditto for Terrence Malick's massively ambitious and polarizing epic (The Tree of Life), which likely came out too early to generate the necessary buzz for a nomination. Extremely Loud is the real wild card: the film has received divisive reviews, but it's an emotionally resonant work that hit at just the right time, and it could have stuck in the minds of enough voters to sneak in with a surprise nomination.

Meanwhile, I'm still a bit disappointed that a handful of my favorite films of the year (Ides, Like Crazy, We Bought a Zoo, Drive, The Lincoln Lawyer) are all going to miss here, and their absence will lead to the first year in awhile where my favorite film of the year is not among the nominees for Best Picture.

Best Director

Michel Hazanvicius, The Artist

Alexander Payne, The Descendants

David Fincher, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Martin Scorsese, Hugo

Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris

Alternate: Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life

The "real" Best Picture nominees almost always end up landing in the director category as well, and it's hard to doubt the DGA nomination line-up, which I've replicated in my predictions above. Some pundits predict the Academy to recognize Malick for his massively ambitious undertaking in The Tree of Life, but I don't see a director slipping into this category without a Best Picture nomination. Fincher is the only remote question mark here, but if Dragon Tattoo gets in for Best Picture, it seems like a sure bet that he'll score here as well, especially since some Academy members may still be feeling some residual good will towards his direction for last year's The Social Network (which I still maintain should have won the category). Again, I must express puzzlement that Allen's work is likely to slip into this field, but it's a small gripe for what really is an impressive collection of films.

Best Actor

George Clooney, The Descendants

Jean Dujardin, The Artist

Michael Fassbender, Shame

Brad Pitt, Moneyball

Leonardo Dicaprio, J. Edgar

Alternates: Gary Oldman, Tinker, Tailor or Michael Shannon, Take Shelter

Should be here: Ryan Gosling, Drive or The Ides of March, Matt Damon, We Bought a Zoo

Here's a category poised for some surprises come tomorrow morning. Three of these gentlemen (Dujardin, Pitt and Clooney) are genuine locks, as they've shown up pretty much everywhere else (including the key SAG nomination). The other two slots are anything but locked, with two critically acclaimed portrayals from a pair of young actors in films that have remained in limited release and aren't likely to show up anywhere else in the nominations. Those performances, from Shannon and Fassbender, represent what many have ranked as the key performances of the year, in any category. Shannon has scored a surprise nod before (in 2008, when he was the lone representation for the very actor friendly Revolutionary Road), and is supposedly utterly fantastic, but have enough voters seen his performance for him to sneak into a field crowded with movie stars? And will Shame's difficult subject matter and NC-17 rating keep Fassbender, who's had one hell of a year, from being recognized? I expect one of those performances will make it, but not both, and I feel Fassbender has more buzz. Elsewhere, Leonardo Dicaprio, the lone survivor of a critical decimation of Clint Eastwood's J. Edgar, received a SAG nomination making him hard to count out, but the overall lukewarm response to the film could leave him out yet again. And Gary Oldman's subdued performance in Tinker, Tailor has been showing up on a lot of predictions lists, but I don't hear the buzz.

As for Gosling, he's set to be snubbed for the second year in a row, and Damon's ridiculously likable leading performance in We Bought a Zoo will be another in his long road to the Oscar that he will, I'm confident, someday win.

Best Actress

Glenn Close, Albert Nobbs

Viola Davis, The Help

Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady

Tilda Swinton, We Need to Talk About Kevin

Michelle Williams, My Week With Marilyn

Alternate: Rooney Mara, The Girl with the Dragon TattooShould be here: Felicity Jones, Like Crazy

Not much to say here, as the only one of those five that I've seen is Davis, who is fantastic and deserves the nomination (and ultimately, I think, the win). Still, Mara could easily slip into the field for her portrayal of what has become something of an iconic character in recent years. And Oscar will make its biggest mistake of the year in ignoring Felicity Jones' heartbreakingly real portrayal in Like Crazy, a performance that I still maintain is the best of the year in any category.

Best Supporting Actor

Kenneth Branagh, My Week With Marilyn

Albert Brooks, Drive

Jonah Hill, Moneyball

Nick Nolte, Warrior

Christopher Plummer, Beginners

Alternate: Brad Pitt, The Tree of Life

As much as I loved Moneyball, I haven't for a moment understood why Jonah Hill has gained such traction in this Awards season. His performance is perfectly fine and is obviously a step up from his previous work, but for him to be a more sure bet in this category than Nolte and Brooks, who were both fantastic, is a bit wrong. Trade Hill for Pitt and this is the best category of the night, though it's all completely irrelevant since this Oscar is firmly in the hands of the great, long overdue Christopher Plummer.

Best Supporting Actress

Berenice Bejo, The Artist

Jessica Chastain, The Help

Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids

Janet McTeer, Albert Nobbs

Octavia Spencer, The Help

Alternate: Shailene Woodley, The Descendants

Should be here: Jessica Chastain, The Tree of Life

Shailene Woodley is on the bubble here, which I find a bit ironic, since this is probably the one category where I feel very passionately that The Descendants should score a nomination. The two performances from The Help are pretty much locked, solidifying this category's recent trend of two supporting actresses from the same film showing up. Berenice Bejo is equally locked for a delightful supporting turn, and she is likely Spencer's only notable competition for the Oscar. McTeer and McCarthy both scored SAG nominations and Woodley didn't, so I may be sabotaging myself here, but I personally cannot see the Academy going for Bridesmaids, especially over a performance in a film that's probably in second in the Best Picture race. That said, a similar thing happened in the case of Andrew Garfield last year (snubbed for my favorite performance in The Social Network), whose lack of a SAG nomination indicated a lack of strong support, and I have a sneaking suspicion that the same thing will happen to Woodley.