My 2012 Oscar Ballot

We are at our final catchup Oscar Ballot.  I've thoroughly enjoyed going back to all of the contests we've already done with this series, and officially adding this last little coda onto all of our Oscar Viewing Project retrospectives going forward.  This upcoming week we'll finish 2004's Oscar contests off, and so we'll have one last My Ballot this week along with it, and then after that we'll kick off our new season on Sunday.  All future seasons we'll have the My Oscar Ballot to cap off the festivities at the end, but these won't be weekly anymore (as I'm out of years, and also these take a lot of work to right on a weekly basis!).  But in the meantime, enjoy, and I'll keep the Oscar festivities coming-if you want to see more past ballots or our other Oscar contests from 2012, look for links at the bottom of the page.  Otherwise, here is who I would've picked in 2012:

Film

Argo

The Cabin in the Woods

The Deep Blue Sea

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Killing Them Softly

Magic Mike

The Master

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Pitch Perfect

Zero Dark Thirty

Gold: Sentiment sometimes dominates, particularly in a year like 2012 which had a lot of fun films but no movie that totally catapulted to my all-time favorites lists.  As a result, I'm going to go with the beautiful, wonderfully-rendered The Perks of Being a Wallflower as my favorite film of the year.

Silver: Behind it is Paul Thomas Anderson's peering look at a man brought into a cult...one of his most daring pictures (we all know who this is about), The Master houses great acting & cascading story.

Bronze: You can make all the jokes you want about its subject matter, but Magic Mike is a movie that shows you don't need to have a heavy topic sentence to give a slice-of-life moment to someone at a crossroads in their life & make it feel important and real.

Director

Paul Thomas Anderson (The Master)

Kathryn Bigelow (Zero Dark Thirty)

Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)

Andrew Dominik (Killing Them Softly)

Steven Soderbergh (Magic Mike)

Gold: I'm switching over to Paul Thomas Anderson here.  The movie could've indulged so many of the instincts I sometimes shy away from with him, but it doesn't.  It instead gives us a more focused, downward slope for two men, intertwined (and doomed?) to be part of each other's lives.

Silver: Soderbergh feels like a casual observer in Magic Mike, but that's the trick-there's nothing casual about what's happening onscreen as a usurper comes aboard that might rock Mike's world, and give him a change for the future?

Bronze: I'm going to just give it to Andrew Dominik, mostly because of all of the films of 2012 that I revisit, few lend themselves so well to me as Killing Them Softly, a political commentary masquerading as a crime drama.  Dominik's followup to Jesse James is everything I could've hoped for.

Actor

Philip Seymour Hoffman (The Master)

Logan Lerman (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)

Joaquin Phoenix (The Master)

Brad Pitt (Killing Them Softly)

Channing Tatum (Magic Mike)

Gold: Joaquin Phoenix gives the performance of his career as Freddie Quell, a man of strange determination, easily brought in but impossible to control who meets the man who will change his life forever.

Silver: Logan Lerman announced himself as more than just Percy Jackson with Perks of Being a Wallflower, giving a sweet, earnest performance at a crossroads of his life between loneliness & friendship.

Bronze: Magic Mike might be inspired by Channing Tatum's real life, but it's all the actor himself that pours his dreams into Mike, the kind of man we never think past the surface on...an instinct Tatum's passion & zeal make us continually question.

Actress

Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty)

Ann Dowd (Compliance)

Jennifer Lawrence (Silver Linings Playbook)

Quvenzhane Wallis (Beasts of the Southern Wild)

Rachel Weisz (The Deep Blue Sea)

Gold: Rachel Weisz plays her Hester as a woman possessed, finally willing to ask life for answers (and for more than she's been given) even if it means she'll be damned for it, or bring the ones she wants down with her.  A seismic piece-of-work from a continually underestimated actress.

Silver: Playing a real person as an empty vessel is extraordinarily difficult-it's hard to not just make the character seem empty.  Jessica Chastain achieves this symbiosis, though, making Maya a woman possessed, but with so much unknown by her we only realize as the film goes how little we understand her motivation.

Bronze: Ann Dowd graduated from "I recognize her" to "celebrated character actress" with Compliance, a film that was so uncomfortable for me to watch at times I had to literally stand in the back of the theater, and that's a testament to her work as a woman who desperately clings to authority to justify her actions.

Supporting Actor

Michael Fassbender (Prometheus)

Garrett Hedlund (On the Road)

Matthew McConaughey (Magic Mike)

Ezra Miller (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)

Andy Serkis (The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey)

Gold: Garrett Hedlund's sexual livewire in On the Road is a complete triumph, the sort of performance that can totally elevate & upend an otherwise okay film.  He's never been so good, so inhabited, as he is here as Dean Moriarty.

Silver: Matthew McConaughey, though he won an Oscar for a different film, is the same here-this is the role that he was born to play as a man possessed by his own ambition & ensuring he will stay the crown prince of his tiny little kingdom.

Bronze: Andy Serkis has been here before, but I love the modulation he does to his work in The Hobbit-there's more anger than redemption, you get to see the raw greed that was the inspiration behind Gollum before he chanced upon Frodo of the Shire.

Supporting Actress

Amy Adams (The Master)

Jennifer Ehle (Zero Dark Thirty)

Anne Hathaway (Les Miserables)

Emma Watson (The Perks of Being a Wallflower)

Rebel Wilson (Pitch Perfect)

Gold: Hathaway gets the best part in the movie, sure.  But she also plays her forgotten prostitute to the hilt, understanding not only that musicals need a little indulgence in order to work, but also that they need something real to ground the character-she finds that balancing act (and that voice!).  Hathahaters be damned.

Silver: Amy Adams needs to find a way in The Master to be both the dutiful wife and to be a threat to the titular crown, someone who knows she is not on the sidelines but must present as such-she does that beautifully.

Bronze: Emma Watson brings the confidence of a beautiful young woman to this role, and then turns it on it's head, showing how that confidence allows people to project a world upon her that she can't live up to, and buckles under those pressures.

Adapted Screenplay

Argo

The Deep Blue Sea

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Killing Them Softly

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Gold: Chbosky had the good sense to hire himself as his screenwriter.  Another writer might have faltered with Perks of Being a Wallflower, focusing too much on the overhead narration, but Chbosky knows that the open characters onscreen will give us the feel of a diary without it feeling expositional.

Silver: Films like Killing Them Softly are so good you almost take for granted at the end that you saw it all coming, but...you didn't.  The way that Dominik gives you touches of the robbery that the government is perpetrating on the people in the movie (while indicting those pulling something similar) is tough, biting political condemnation.

Bronze: I liked Argo, which I know is not always a popular sentiment, but I think it's strong, and I think one of the best ways that comes together is the script.  It's difficult to give a story you know the ending to a thriller feel, but the script, bouncy & alternating between comedy and tension, keeps the film moving (and is why this was a hit).

Original Screenplay

The Cabin in the Woods

Magic Mike

The Master

ParaNorman

Zero Dark Thirty

Gold: One of the great mysteries of the past ten years at the Oscars is how Paul Thomas Anderson somehow got a goose egg for The Master, one of his most sophisticated tales & a movie that envelopes the audience with a moody, languid shot through two men's battle for one soul.

Silver: Horror films don't get enough credit for having a good concept.  That's definitely the case for The Cabin in the Woods, which takes a cliche & turns it upside down, subverting our expectations and indicting both the Boomer & Millennial generation's baser instincts in one full swoop.

Bronze: Sometimes chokingly funny (and surprisingly tender), Magic Mike proves that, yes, you can make an intellectual, challenging movie about male stripping which is still sex positive & spry.

Animated Feature Film

Brave

ParaNorman

Wreck-It Ralph

Gold: ParaNorman is not quite the best thing that Laika has done (I still haven't gotten beyond Coraline as their piece de resistance), but it's the movie that feels like it has the most at-stake.  The best part about the movie is that it has just enough darkness mixed in with the light that you become convinced (even as an adult) that things could go south for Norman.

Silver: The surprise Oscar winner (this was before it was always just going to go to Pixar), Brave sometimes feels like an afterthought from the studio, which it shouldn't.  Beautifully animated (all of that green!), the side detours might not always work but Kelly MacDonald's Princess Merida shows how you can have the whimsy of Pixar & still wander into Disney's Princess territory.

Bronze: Wonderfully cast (and from a pretty ubiquitous slate of actors, that's surprising), Wreck-It Ralph gives us a universe that both skewers & creates from our arcade-obsessed childhoods.  Yes, it's borrowing pretty heavily from Toy Story, but that doesn't mean that it isn't treading some new territory (the sequel was unnecessary though).

Sound Mixing

The Cabin in the Woods

Killing Them Softly

Lincoln

The Master

Zero Dark Thirty

Gold: Kathryn Bigelow's films oftentimes have good sound design, but none come close to Zero Dark Thirty.  The commanding switches between quiet & loud are so perfectly executed, particularly in the raid scene, that you are literally clawing into your armrest even if you know how it's going to end.

Silver: Jonny Greenwood's score is used judiciously throughout the movie, a perfect backdrop to the hardwood floors & clicking cameras that intermingle throughout The Master's period sound work.

Bronze: I mean, obviously the shootout scene is a mixing wonder, but it's the entire score, worked so well in the film, and the way that we hear the voices of Presidents Bush & Obama in the background, misdirecting narrators to what's really happening in the movie.

Sound Editing

Brave

The Dark Knight Rises

Skyfall

Wreck-It Ralph

Zero Dark Thirty

Gold: The explosion scenes in Zero Dark Thirty are so smartly executed-the symmetry of them (both including Jennifer Ehle), with one seen coming through the sound work, the other totally upending our expectations-this is the kind of detail that makes this picture standout.

Silver: Sound editing frequently comes down to a scene or two with me-what is the moment in the movie that is so dependent on the sound being just right that we need it to go flawlessly.  In The Dark Knight Rises, that's the football field collapse...the way it just falls apart is a slow shock for both the eyes...and the ears.

Bronze: The technical proficiency of Skyfall is extraordinary.  While I liked the rough edges of Casino Royale better, it's hard to argue that from certain technical standpoints that they stepped their game up here, giving us a rich series of gadgetry and action sequences to listen to.

Original Score

Anna Karenina

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Lincoln

The Master

Prometheus

Gold: I mean, how do you argue with what Jonny Greenwood is doing with The Master?  Greenwood subverts our expectations, giving us a twinkling score with a thunderous, lurking undertone, much like the world promised by Lancaster Dodd.

Silver: The alien forces of Prometheus are a great companion for the music Marc Streitenfeld brings to the movie.  There's something a little off, something a little too programmed, about the music, adding to the film's "question everything" mentality as the picture gives us the true heroes & villains.

Bronze: Dario Marianelli plays with the ideas in Anna Karenina in a way that feels almost like you're in a circus.  The score never forgets that this is meant to have some theatricality, with all of these players lives lived on a stage, and adds to the ersatz feeling of the central romance (in Joe Wright's eyes).

Original Song

"Before My Time," (Chasing Ice)

"Freedom," (Django Unchained)

"Skyfall," (Skyfall)

"Song of the Lonely Mountain," (The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey)

"Who Did That to You?" (Django Unchained)

Gold: Adele's "Skyfall" is so good they gave it two Oscars (let's be real, that's how Sam Smith got that "first gay man" statue).  A total badass combination of Adele's dulcet melodies & the richest, "big notes" appeal of the best Bond anthems.

Silver: Scarlett Johansson's raspy voice gives a melancholic sadness to the end of Chasing Ice, the rare end credits song that genuinely adds to the actual movie because as the end credits show these disappearing wonders, you get the underlined sense of the movie's message.

Bronze: A rousing song, feeling as if it's plucked off of a 1970's soul album, "Freedom" is the best of Django's music, and the rare time that Tarantino gives us an original song that he can utilize just as well as his jukebox full of underutilized rock songs.

Art Direction

Anna Karenina

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Lincoln

Prometheus

Skyfall

Gold: You can practically smell the wood of the furniture, the aged papers on the desks...Lincoln gives us something rare in period films, a world that has clutter & feels lived-in, not just a series of historic, meticulous recreations for the screen.

Silver: Yes, The Hobbit borrows in some part from previous recreations, but I love the ways that Stuart Craig takes an iconic look and refreshes it, adding touches of a younger Bilbo (notice how the furniture is slightly less worn, the paint brighter), and better melds the real with the CGI.

Bronze: The ship design in Prometheus is brilliant, and the alien catacombs desolate without ever feeling cheap-these are instantly recognizable while never feeling like they have to be too indulgent to get the "ALIEN!" feel across.

Cinematography

The Dark Knight Rises

Killing Them Softly

The Master

Skyfall

Zero Dark Thirty

Gold: Greig Fraser was still in "Oscar doesn't see him" jail for some reason in 2012, which is criminal considering the cloud-soaked expressiveness of Killing Them Softly, a movie that finds the looks of a recovering New Orleans & paints a picture of a drowned city.

Silver: Fraser would have been equally as worthy for his work in Zero Dark Thirty, here trading in the clouds for the heat of the desert, the sand-swept world Maya floats through-gorgeous cinematography from a master who owned the movies in 2012.

Bronze: The Master is maybe the best at some of the traditional tricks employed by cinematographers to give us mood, particularly in the way it floats between closeup, medium, & wide shots to give us a sense of the contracting/expanding scope of Lancaster Dodd's realm.

Costume Design

Anna Karenina

Django Unchained

Les Miserables

Mirror Mirror

Snow White and the Huntsman

Gold: Genuinely one of the best Oscar lineups I can remember for this category (and they didn't have to go so all-in), I'm mirroring the Academy's choice of Anna Karenina, which is not just grand costume period porn, but it also winks at the one-upsmanship of the cast, everyone trying to increasingly outshine their moneyed rivals at court.

Silver: Mirror Mirror is not a good movie.  It is, however, a movie that knows how to look good.  The late Eiko Ishioka's designs are covered in crimson & salmon, and filled with such good-natured fun...it's like everyone's wearing a birthday cake (in the best way possible).

Bronze: There's something so marvelous in the way that Sharen Davis not only modernizes the wear in Django Unchained, but also finds a way to pay homage to the looks of the Blaxploitation films of the 1970's that Tarantino is clearly trying to emulate (less successfully than Davis) in his filmmaking style.

Film Editing

Argo

The Cabin in the Woods

Killing Them Softly

The Master

Zero Dark Thirty

Gold: Frequently, you could accuse a long film of not being edited enough.  That's not really the case for The Master, whose story relies not just on pacing but also misdirects to keep the audience guessing as to each character's intentions.  You get that in the cutting room, not just from the actors.

Silver: Zero Dark Thirty is also a film that occasionally will test your patience, but it does that with a purpose.  It wants you to feel the descent that Maya is feeling onscreen, as her humanity strips while she tries to find a way to complete her mission-that's the editors (plus, that raid scene justifies this nomination alone).

Bronze: I've talked a lot today about how Killing Them Softly feels like it's two stories, one action sequence & other a political documentary, merging on top of each other.  That happens in the editing room, trying to intersect two narratives to ensure that you feel the effects of both as the movie ends.

Makeup & Hairstyling

Anna Karenina

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Lincoln

Looper

Snow White and the Huntsman

Gold: The Hobbit totally builds off of the previous films, but here there's not as much to start with & perhaps the prequels even outdo the originals.  In rapid succession we're given a dozen dwarves that have to have distinctive looks & feels, and the makeup team is given the heavy-lifting in distinguishing these adventurers.

Silver: I did not enjoy the movie Looper at all, but I'm not blind, and the work done to Joseph Gordon-Levitt's face to make him realistically feel like an earlier version of Bruce Willis is some of the best transformation work I've seen in a while.

Bronze: It's hard to understand how Lincoln (which was on the shortlist) missed with the Oscars considering the period detailing on display in this movie, not just transforming the titular character, but everyone feels like they've been transported from the 1860's in terms of hair & hygiene.

Visual Effects

The Dark Knight Rises

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Life of Pi

Prometheus

Snow White and the Huntsman

Gold: Life of Pi is a hard film to love (it doesn't lay as well in the memory the further you get from it), but its visual effects are majestic to behold.  Richard Parker feels like an authentic, real-life tiger...you don't doubt the whole film that you are looking at a flesh-and-blood animal, which is an achievement.

Silver: As I've said already, The Hobbit is indebted to its three predecessor films to get to where it is (though pretty much all films at this point are indebted to LOTR in terms of their effects), but the VFX artists play with the movie's lighter tone, particularly with the cartoonish Goblin King & the bright lights of a young Rivendell.

Bronze: Prometheus is the kind of movie that is brimming with gorgeous effects, but honestly, this medal is happening because of that out-in-cloudy-daylight scene of Charlize Theron running from a circular spaceship-such a great action set-piece & visual trick.

Also in 2012: Picture, Director, Actress, Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Original Screenplay, Adapted Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Animated Short, Live Action Short, Previously in 2012

Other My Oscar Ballots: 2005, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2019

Cosmopolis (2012)

Film: Cosmopolis (2012)
Stars: Robert Pattinson, Sarah Gadon, Paul Giamatti, Samantha Morton, Juliette Binoche, Jay Baruchel
Director: David Cronenberg
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

"Weird for the sake of weird" is something that I, as a filmgoer, am far more forgiving of than your average movie attendee.  I celebrate films that try to play with form and that are willing to go to different heights for a movie.  I do occasionally find them hard to grade (I'm still not sure if The Counselor was a good movie or not), but generally I try to at least see what the point of the weird was, because if there's a point or a larger purpose, I can get onboard with the movie.  Sadly for me and for my Thursday night, Cosmopolis is simply a film that's weird for the sake of being weird, rarely actually trying to make a strong statement that resonates outside of robotic, intense dialogue even though it has polished literary roots and a fine enough cast.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film, based on the novel by the acclaimed Don DeLillo, essentially follows Eric Packer (Pattinson), an obscenely wealthy but deeply neurotic hedge fund manager who spends most of his day in his state-of-the-art limousine.  We see Eric, recently married to the beautiful but largely uninterested Elise (Gadon), struggle with both his hypochondria (he literally gets a medical exam everyday, including a prostate exam that is both deeply disturbing and wildly erotic early in the picture), and his enormous sex drive, sleeping with multiple women and making sexual release a huge part of his day.  The film takes a turn late in the picture when Eric gets his inner Patrick Bateman on by randomly killing his head of security and then coming face-to-face with a man who has been threatening his life Benno Levin (Giamatti).  The movie's progress is steep, with him losing everything but still seemingly favorable to the life of Benno, and the film ends with Benno attempting to kill Eric, but we don't ever see if he pulls the trigger, and a series of Rothko paintings over the end credits in a callback to an earlier scene where Eric tries to buy the famed Rothko Chapel in Houston.

The film succeeds on occasion, it's worth noting.  Robert Pattinson's ability as an actor is definitely there (he's not Taylor Lautner) but he's not really as strong as he could be (he's not yet Kristen Stewart).  However, the role seems tailor-made for him, as few other people could play someone so deeply disturbed, but yet through money and unattainable beauty every person, including the audience, remains drawn to him even as he becomes a murderer and someone who is less and less concerned with his own welfare.  The other actors can sometimes play into the movie, particularly Juliette Binoche as a randy art dealer, seemingly screwing Eric not for the job but because he's actually good at sex, and Samantha Morton as an employee of Eric's who can command the screen just with that wonderfully firm voice.  Both Binoche and Morton are in the film only fleetingly, but they are great cameos and something the film could have used more of as it progressed down the rabbit hole.

The problem is that these few pluses don't make up for the myriad subtractions in the cast.  For starters, the dialogue, while clearly stylized to the point of incomprehension, borders that line between "a fascinating departure" and "how cool am I?" to wobbily and especially in the final showdown with Giamatti it gets far over the top, to the point where you almost wish it were a silent picture.  Cronenberg is a fascinating director when he wants to be, but I'm not sold yet that he's a great screenwriter, and that's true here, as the dialogue isn't quite sharp enough in its "autre" mode to actually be profound.  Combine that with the worst scenes of the film being toward the end (Paul Giamatti is one of my least favorite actors, and this is hardly his The Master moment of redemption as he hams it up and is actually playing a character that plays into all of his worst acting tics).  All-in-all, a boring movie that is interestingly shot and I truly wish he'd found a way to amp up the directorial flourishes, perhaps never actually leaving the limousine as the picture all falls apart when he takes away that insulation from a restless, disruptive outside world.

Those are my thoughts on this film, one I've wanted to see for a while and Netflix gave me a mailed reason this week.  How about you-are you a fan of Cosmopolis or the films of David Cronenberg?  Is there ever going to be a film of Paul Giamatti's where I actually love him in the role?  And Robert Pattinson-is he ever going to have an undisputed critical triumph?  Share your theories down below!

The Summit (2012)

Film: The Summit (2012)
Director: Nick Ryan
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

What a weird movie.  That was the comment I texted about twenty minutes into watching The Summit, the recent documentary about the 2008 disaster on K2 which killed eleven people, making it the deadliest day in mountaineering history.  The film won an Editing prize out of Sundance and combined two of my favorite things in the trailers (mountaineering and mysteries), so I was quite certain that I would enjoy it, but man was that a mistake.  The Summit is proof that much like how you can take any story and make it fascinating with the right combination of writing, directing, and editing, you can also make any story boring and pointless when that combination is wasted.

The film's biggest mistake, in my opinion, was the weird juxtaposition between re-staging events and actual footage on top of the mountain.  It took me about fifteen minutes to realize that the film was filled with actors re-creating this scene, as initially I was flabbergasted that, short of planning the deaths himself, a documentary filmmaker could achieve such incredible footage as someone falling fifty feet down a mountain to their death or actually coming across a still living injured human being.  Once I realized that Nick Ryan wasn't a Lou Bloom-style filmmaker, the movie felt incredibly cheesy.  Increasingly these re-stagings actually look more and more fake, like when you had to watch those videos in Sunday School with the crumby production values showing Moses being found on a riverbank.  They also took me insanely outside of the actual documentary, as it was near impossible to realize if something was a staging or not, or even if all of the talking heads were actually who they said they were, since Ryan never once acknowledges what is real and what is fake, either with voiceover or with some sort of title card.

As a result the film is a weird meta-experiment in what one believes to be real, but it's not trying for that and so the entire movie fails miserably.  Honestly, I haven't had such a bizarre film-watching experience in eons.  The fact that the film won an editing award, when it is arguably the worst example of editing I've seen in a movie (I plan on referencing it as an example of bad editing, quite frankly, going forward) is even more shocking.  The movie not only cannot handle the blurring of lines, but it keeps retelling the story over and over and over again, without enough resolution in the end, since in the end we don't uncover the mystery.  We have people who are constantly backtracking their opinions, perhaps aware they are being filmed, but that doesn't make for a compelling narrative which this style of action-documentary is going for in the first place.  When we get to the final showdown, wondering if the principle focus of the film (an Irish mountaineer named Ger) was a hero, a madman, or perhaps even a murder victim (they hint around it, but I'm just saying that it seems like the documentary crew is going there even if they can't dare say it out-loud), we learn absolutely nothing except that there may have been discrepancies in the story, which we already knew.  As a result we occasionally get sweeping vistas of K2, but that's about all this movie is good for, in my opinion.

Did anyone else see this bizarre documentary?  My guess is no (it made zilch at the Box Office, though that's usually true of Art House documentaries that don't come with Oscars), but if you did I would love some discussion.  If you didn't, can you give an example of a film that had a subject you loved that you ended up hating because of the filmmaker's style?  Share it in the comments!

The Intouchables (2012)

Film: The Intouchables (2012)
Stars: Francois Cluzet, Omar Sy, Audrey Fleurot, Clotilde Mollet, Anne Le Ny
Director: Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano
Oscar History: The film was shortlisted for the Foreign Language Film award but it didn't get the nomination. (I was stunned at the time that it didn't score considering its AMPAS-friendly plot and psychotically large Box Office).
Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

Sometimes, thanks to our U.S.-centric box office coverage in the States, you don't get to read as frequently about gargantuan hits abroad, and so you'll be forgiven if you hadn't heard of this film, one of the highest-grossing movies of 2012.  This tiny French-film, arguably one of the most successful of all-time (it cost some $15 million to make but grossed over $400 million-talk about a ROI!) is also the highest-grossing foreign language film of all-time worldwide (meaning that from a purely "have you seen it?" aspect, I had to eventually get to the film).  So much box office makes you wonder if it's actually any good, though, considering you don't want people to be throwing their money at rubbish, which unfortunately this film is.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie is the story about a man named Philippe (Cluzet), a quadriplegic who needs a live-in caregiver.  He eventually hires a man named Driss (Sy) a young black man who is at first just looking to get his benefits check but eventually grows to understand Philippe, much like Philippe grows to understand Driss.  The film is essentially a buddy comedy, with both parties not particularly liking each other right away but eventually finding that they had an unusually strong bond all along, and that they aren't so different, and blah blah blah, you get the drift of the tired filmic cliches (this may seem condescending, but honestly-if you don't see the direction this film is coming from within ten minutes, congratulations on seeing your first movie, it only gets better from here).

It's set in...well, that's actually part of the problem, and we'll get that out of the way first.  The film is based on a true story, but historical inaccuracies plague the film and its characters to the point where its actual time period is a giant question mark.  Is it the 1970's, considering that's this is the only style of music Driss is listening to?  Or is it modern day, considering the clothes that are being worn by the cast and that the cell phones and cars clearly were made in the last five years?  Or is it the 1950's, considering that's the sort of shock that comes across on the faces of the cast members when they encounter people that aren't suckling opera and buying pretentious modern art cliches?

Seriously, I don't normally congratulate the United States for rejecting foreign language cinema (correction: I have never done this, in fact have done the opposite on countless occasions), but this may be a first (then again, this was the highest-grossing foreign language film domestically in 2012, so perhaps even there we should get a slap on the hands): why did people flip their lid over a film filled with trifling cliches and stereotypes?  Frequently this has been compared to Driving Miss Daisy by critics, but that film was set in the 1940's, where the sort of cultural collision of racial cultures hadn't happened on a regular basis.  This film is clearly meant to be a modern tale-how is it that Philippe would know so little about the 1970's, a decade of his youth, to not be utterly familiar with Earth, Wind, and Fire?  The film simplifies the argument so ferociously that pop music > opera and that modern art is stupid and it uses racial divides as the way to get there?  It's highly insulting and anti-intellectual in that regard, and crosses the borderline over into racist on several occasions by making Sy's Driss a collection of stereotypes.

So, despite at the time assuming that AMPAS was simply going against their traditional tastes by ignoring the big French hit, they clearly made the right decision by ignoring this "populist" pile of garbage.  The world is too complicated and too rich with human experience to waste time on such simplistic, dated trash.

Those were my (pretty harsh) thoughts on this particular film-what were yours?  I'm certain that there were a number of people that enjoyed the movie ($400 million movies usually don't hit that mark with some celebrating it, unless they star transformers)-anyone want to help me out here?  And anyone else surprised that AMPAS dodged this bullet?  Share in the comments!

A Place at the Table (2012)

Film: A Place at the Table (2012)

Stars: It's a documentary, though Oscar-winning actor Jeff Bridges is a frequent talking head.

Directors: Kristi Jacobson and Lori Silverbush

Oscar History: The year on this one is a bit of a misnomer, as this film is still in the hunt for both the Best Documentary and Best Original Song categories

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

I promise this is the last documentary for a while that I will start out with the same caveat I start every review of a documentary with-that I have trouble reviewing documentaries.  Quite frankly, I’ve been waiting for a film like A Place at the Table to pop up on my doorstep, since it is finally a documentary that proves my point in this regard: documentaries are hard to review because a poor review of the film seems to imply that you don’t agree with the positions the documentary takes.  In a way, this is true, but only in a way-what you truly don’t agree with is the way the arguments are being presented, not the actual information or debate that’s raging in the film.

A Place at the Table is the perfect example of this.  The film is largely about the great economic and nutritional disparities in our country between the have’s and have not’s (the 99%, the 47%-there’s about a thousand different metaphors people have pulled together for these classifications, but we all essentially know that we’re talking about people living roughly at or below the poverty line).  This is a vital subject worth discussing, and one could make the argument that this is more important today than it was even when the film premiered at Sundance a year ago.  The Farm Bill cannot make it through Congress because of animosity from the right toward the Food Stamp program.  Robert Reich has a documentary (that I sadly missed but it is on the Netflix list) in theaters right now called Inequality for All, which points to the widening income gap between Americans.  Obesity rates are on-track to be higher this year than last, and looking at stats from this year, more Americans have gone from overweight-to-obese than in any other BMI bracket move.  This is a staggering, gargantuan issue, and one that could fill up a hundred documentaries.

Unfortunately for Jacobson, Silverbush, and Jeff Bridges (who frequently features into the film and has clearly championed this cause for years), they try to tackle all of these issues in the course of 84 minutes, which is just not feasible.  The film focuses far too long on the personal stories, in my opinion, than offering solutions for the viewer.  Issue-based documentaries, unlike almost any other art-form have two specific jobs: to inform and to call-to-action.  A film like An Inconvenient Truth or The Cove isn’t just there to tell you about the effects of global warming or killing dolphins; it’s also there to try to get you to make a difference.  It wants you to take your small steps to support politicians that will solve the problem, to get yourself to cut back your carbon footprint or eat only dolphin-safe tuna (and to take a long-and-hard look at whether attending SeaWorld is a wise decision).

A Place at the Table doesn’t really do that.  About the only point in the film where I felt that it was shifting to solution-based government was when Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) was speaking about the hunger issue in America, and having politicians on Capitol Hill listen to this argument.  The film’s principle argument seems to be that the government should be the guiding force in solving hunger in America, and there’s a lot of weight to this-hunger is a problem that leads to mammoth issues later on in life (obesity, crime, economic stagnation, and lowered graduation rates are all far more costly to the economy than feeding people), but the film doesn’t seem to want to do anything other than complain about these issues.  The problem is quite apparent to anyone, but they don’t shift the argument toward how the solution can help both politicians and the general populace.  If the point of the film is to condemn the current “food shelf band-aid” and instead try and get the U.S. Government to take a more solution-based approach, the film doesn’t give the viewers enough tools to execute that movement.

The heart of the hunger debate has always seemed like it was too extreme to really tackle.  The film focuses primarily on hunger in the United States, but we know so well that this is a global-wide issue and one that appears daunting.  Part of the appeal of food shelves and food drives is that you feel like you're contributing to the solution.  It might not be much, but similar to using less water and checking your food labels, it's a small step.  The important thing about all issues is to not get bogged down by the enormous breadth of the issue.  If we spent all of our time focusing on the heavy weight of any issue of consequence, we would suffocate and not accomplish.  What someone like McGovern wants you to do is put pressure on your elected officials and make a person's stance on government-assisted food programs part of your decision process when choosing an elected official.  Unfortunately, that doesn't come across in the directors' very sharp world viewpoint.

As a result of this lack of structure, what we're stuck with is the presentation of an issue that we all know is enormous and worth fixing, but without any true solutions.  No one likes the idea of someone going hungry, and while I think that people are ignorant and/or cruel (depending on how you want to look at it) for attacking welfare and food stamp programs without taking a longer, more cautious look at what these programs truly provide for people who work but can't make ends meet, I don't think that the film wants us to simply leave feeling burdened by an unsolvable problem.  The directors seem to imply that, unless we have the power that a member of Congress like Jim McGovern has, we cannot make a large enough difference to make a consequence, but this is simply not true, and I'm sure the directors are aware of this fact.  Hunger is something that can be fought in this country by supporting politicians who want not just better food, but better opportunity for all Americans (better healthcare and better education are right along with access to safe, nutritious food).  We as a country need to say that while we support the concept of faith-based and community-driven food shelves, the government needs to acknowledge that income disparity has resulted in millions of Americans struggling to have the essential food, shelter, and healthcare required to sustain daily life.  That's an argument worth having-it's just not the argument that the directors are able to reach in this noble, but unsuccessful film.

OVP: Picture (2012)

OVP: Best Picture (2012)

The Nominees Were...

Margaret Menegoz, Stefan Arndt, Veit Heiduschka, and Michael Katz, Amour

Grant Heslov, Ben Affleck, and George Clooney, Argo

Dan Janvey, Josh Penn, and Michael Gottwald, Beasts of the Southern Wild

Stacey Sher, Reginald Hudlin, and Pilar Savone, Django Unchained

Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Debra Hayward, and Cameron Mackintosh, Les Miserables

Gil Netter, Ang Lee, and David Womark, Life of Pi

Steven Spielberg and Kathleen Kennedy, Lincoln
Donna Gigliotti, Bruce Cohen, and Jonathan Gordon, Silver Linings Playbook

Mark Boal, Kathryn Bigelow, and Megan Ellison, Zero Dark Thirty

My Thoughts: And so now we have come to the end of the line, the top of the heap, the cream of the crop-the nine films that received nominations for Best Picture.  Each of these films we've spent the past summer dissecting, looking through, and now it's time to figure out which one I (and you, if you post in the comments) most supported for the top prize.

I'm going to start with Silver Linings Playbook, because I feel I need to find some peace with the film. The movie is oddly good and terribly bad, and I think that I should first try and explain what I do like about the film.  The movie tries to cover a topic that is oddly underutilized in film: mental illness affecting normal, regular families.  Jennifer Lawrence, when she was doing all of the awards press junkets, frequently talked about ending the stigma of mental illness, and if this film did that just a little bit, that would have been a noble cause, if not necessarily one that deserved an Oscar nomination.  I think that the cinema does have that power to change the national conversation about a particular topic (look at movies like Brokeback Mountain for example).

But Silver Linings Playbook doesn't do that, because in real life, without some sort of medication and persistent work, mental illness is not cured by the love of a good woman.  This is not the doldrums of being dumped-Bradley Cooper's Pat has a real medical condition, and while his life going better may momentarily change his state of being, it won't permanently do so, as the ending implies.  David O. Russell, and I've said this several times, wants to have his cake and eat it too.  He wants to have a story that's about something pressing in the national dialogue, but also something that's cute and fun and a great date movie.  Both of these topics can be the source of excellent filmmaking-anyone who poo-poos this film because it's a romantic comedy doesn't get the point at all, as we are in desperate need as a cinematic audience of strong romantic comedies.  The problem is that these two don't cohesively meld in the way that Russell hopes them to, and as a result, you get a fine, enjoyable, but unsuccessful film.

Les Miserables will go next (because the two films have so many things in common, obviously).  I just checked my list of my rankings of all of the 2012 films, and I have this one oddly low compared to some of the others (including the two films trying desperately to take the top prize).  I think the biggest fault with Les Miz is that it has so many ups-and-downs.  You are given such a great start with Anne Hathaway's character and performance, easily the best part of the film-Hathaway's Fantine is a tragic, heartbreaking creation, and she sells it to the rafters.  Part of what makes a movie musical so appealing is that the sky is really the limit-you've already forgone reality by having people randomly sing in the streets, which, much to my chagrin, no one does in real life.  As a result, you can have a dramatic moment with this woman and believe that such a good person can have such a rotten life.

But the film never recovers from her leaving.  This isn't necessarily the baser story's fault: Jean Valjean, Javert, Eponine, Marius-this is a musical with a lot of interesting characters, but the performances are so all-over-the-map that when you don't have the unstoppable force of Hathaway's performance to distract you, you are pulled in many different directions.  The only work in the movie that equals Hathaway's is Eddie Redmayne's.  Sometimes I even feel that Redmayne, with that lyrical quiver in his voice (I just took a ten-minute break to listen to "Red and Black" and sing Don Ju-An multiple times) might be a better fit for the film that Hathaway.  But he can't save it when you have two lead performances that are bad for the story, and everyone else having too-limiting of characters.  The film is great for the stage, where these sorts of small character developments are more easily forgiven, but in a film they're fatal flaws that obscure the movie too deeply, even though there are definitely things to recommend seeing the movie.

Django Unchained is in a similar situation, with a lot of great pieces that don't seem to fit together.  I think the problem with Tarantino films at this point, and it's a growing problem, is that he's starting to lose the ability to shock and even surprise the audience.  No longer are we stunned when he puts together a brilliant song-score, or when he willingly kills off most of the main characters, or when the entire screen is doused in blood (it'd be a nice change if he went back to the nastiness of his first couple of films instead of the Sergio Leone-obsessed nature of his later films, at least for a picture or two).  His movies are too good to ever be called bad, but when a director can no longer thrill the audience, he needs to develop some new tricks (even Woody Allen has learned this, though he occasionally forgets it for years at a time).

What we're left with is a film that has razor-sharp dialogue, a few solid performances, but drags ferociously in the final third (why the hell does Tarantino keep casting himself, when he's seemingly the only person he can't get an improved performance out of?), and frequently finds offensive things to say without enough substance behind it.

Life of Pi has became one of the movies that, along with Silver Linings Playbook, was a punching bag throughout this OVP series of write-ups.  I have a harder time with this, because A) I like Ang Lee better than I like David O. Russell and B) there are moments in Life of Pi that are sheer bliss.  The visual effects in the film are of a caliber you rarely if ever see, coming as close to that "change the industry" sort of quality that you saw in Star Wars, Jurassic Park, and Avatar as you can get without fully pulling the trigger (I was very happy to give it the OVP for Visual Effects).  The movie is beautiful, and the whales and islands and whimsy that comes from the film are all terrific.

But the film gets a sucker punch from the ending.  I know that the book ended largely in this way, with you forced to encounter reality in such a harsh avalanche, and normally I like a sprinkle of melancholy in my movies, but here it reads as a slap to the viewer.  It's not just that the police decided to believe his tiger story, it's that we all know he was lying, and they just went along with him to make everyone happy and to neglect the ugliness in the world.  That's probably the point of the story, but it seems so artificial and lazy to have so much magic dashed.  The ending of this movie has ruined my opinion of this film-when you have months and dozens of articles to write about a sole picture, its flaws and high points come further into focus, and that has forever marred my opinion of Life of Pi.

Amour is that rare film that has done neither for me.  My opinion of Amour has stayed stunningly neutral for a movie with some things to offer and that critics lapped up with a spoon.  It might be that I don't connect with the film in the way I'm supposed to, and I don't think that's because I'm sixty years younger than the characters (I have seen what it's like for one spouse to be affected by a stroke and the other to have all of their faculties).  It's just too clinical for me, it's too matter-of-fact.  The little touches are what I loved in the film-the Haneke touches.  I'm still stunned by the final scene, with Huppert walking through the apartment: the loneliness and foreboding in that scene is stunning.  Huppert doesn't give an Oscar-worthy performance, but her character is perhaps the most interesting in the movie.  She hasn't stored love for the future.  If there would have been more of that biting attitude, I probably would have sunk into the film more.  As it is, it is to be admired, but not necessarily to be interacted with, and doesn't quite hit me.

Lincoln is the film of the bunch that I wish I liked better.  It's grown on me slightly-the way that they combine all of these great Spielbergian staples; the man has one of the best tech crews in the business.  But like Amour, I just cannot connect with the source material in the way I'm supposed to, and here I know why.  I just don't buy characters that are saints, and not just because saints don't exist in real life, it's also because saints aren't very interesting.  Day-Lewis is far too strong of an actor to not give a quality performance, but I see in his work a legend that also happened to be a person, but he doesn't disrupt a saint that also happens to be a flawed person (Lincoln was only human, of course).  I also hate whitewashing history (couldn't David Derickson have at least shown up at some point), but I more so hate when history has been retold dozens of times while other just as interesting stories lay on the back-burner.  From a director as important as Spielberg I suppose this film will remain the definitive Lincoln, but couldn't we have picked a subject that has been less covered already in cinema?

Beasts of the Southern Wild, of course, is the bravest and probably most unique film of the bunch, and that is always something to celebrate.  One of the interesting things about the nine or ten wide Best Picture races is that you get a film like Beasts (or Tree of Life or District Nine or Up!) to compete when they otherwise wouldn't be able to (I maintain that 2012 would have been that rare year like 1995 or 2001 where we would have gone 3/5 for the directors, and Les Miz and Argo would have completed our nominated set).

The film works so well because Benh Zeitlin allows us to get lost in the world of Hushpuppy, a world that is both real (we all can tell that this is Isle de Jean Charles in Louisiana) and of her imagination, and true to the wonder of cinema, Zeitlin never lets us know which is fact and which is fake.  Zeitlin's newness behind the camera is evident when he spends too much time on rebuilding the father-daughter relationship (and relying too heavily on first-time actors, a tactic which does give you a great freshness, but also gives you too many staged emotions, particularly from Dwight Henry).  The movie is a promising start to a hopefully interesting and long career, and I'm glad Oscar made the investment.

Finally, we come to Argo and Zero Dark Thirty, the two films that I've championed the hardest throughout this process.  Except, have I?  I don't feel like I've given enough credit to the excellent Argo.  Perhaps this is because Argo is the sum of its parts-it's similar to the gymnast who can't win a gold in any of the individual competitions but grabs it in the all-around.  The film just works-the humor, the acting, the suspense-Affleck may take some historical liberties, but he at least tells us a story we didn't already know (are you listening, Mr. Spielberg?), and pushes a political narrative without ever sacrificing entertainment.  That is a difficult task to undertake, and the film is littered with terrific scenes-that great finger-biting scene in the airport, for example.  It takes a lot to get a jaded and movie-educated audience to succumb to the idea that this group won't be successful.  I feel like Argo is going to be maligned a bit in Oscar history because it won the trophy for the wrong reasons, but that doesn't mean that it wasn't a super movie that deserved to be amongst the best of the year.

I recently reread my review of Zero Dark Thirty to understand why I gave the film four stars rather than five stars, because some of its best parts (Chastain's performance, the exhilarating final third of the movie) have improved my opinion of it so dramatically.  I do feel correct in stating that the side characters in the film, Jennifer Ehle and Jason Clarke in particular, don't give us enough background.  Maya is supposed to be a universally, abnormally, almost psychotically driven force-of-nature, and she doesn't need a background, but Ehle's Jessica and Clarke's Dan don't have that tunnel vision.  We should learn more about what keeps them going back for more; this would, if nothing else, give us a contrast to Maya's determination.

But that being said, Bigelow has created the darker flip side of Argo here.  They are oddly similar stories, with both focused on a single person going up against political bureaucracy to succeed in a seemingly impossible task (and both had reluctant Democratic presidents who took a major risk that paid off).  Bigelow's version is more of a Dante-like descent for her character, while Affleck's is an uplifting tale of the human spirit.  It depends on which direction your specific cinematic passions swing that makes you cast your vote for one or the other, but I maintain these are the two best nominees of the bunch.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes, having split their categories into Drama and Comedy, didn't find room for Amour or Beasts of the Southern Wild, though they did fit in Moonrise Kingdom, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, and in one of the oddest moments of the 2012 awards season, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen (Les Miz and Argo won).  The BAFTA Awards, which still maintain just five nominations, put their winner Argo over Les Miz, Life of Pi, Lincoln, and Zero Dark Thirty.  And finally, the PGA Awards skipped only Amour (which did win the Palme d'Or, so don't feel too badly for it), giving their final two nominations to Moonrise Kingdom and Skyfall (handing the trophy over to Argo).  It's a hard tell over what was in tenth place.  I know historically people will scoff that a James Bond film could get this close to the top trophy, but I think if we had had the mandatory ten-wide field, we would have seen Skyfall stunningly top Moonrise Kingdom, The Master, and Flight.
Films I Would Have Nominated: I've discussed at length my desperate need for The Master and Magic Mike, both films that continue to grow every time I view them, to be included in this field.  However, neither was my favorite film of 2012.  Nor was Argo or Zero Dark Thirty.  My favorite movie of 2012 was the little hidden sapphire that was The Perks of Being a Wallflower.  I cannot tell you how I, who favors the epic scope when picking my favorite film of the year, went with a movie about teenagers, but Stephen Chbosky's tale about such realistic youths, trying to find their way through a period of their lives when they think they know more than they do, and somehow also know more than they think, is a challenging and wonderful opus, with three superb performances from Emma Watson, Ezra Miller, and our hero of heroes, Logan Lerman.  It's a wonderland of a movie, and my 2012 favorite.

Oscar’s Choice: Oscar loves a bandwagon, and it was very easy to jump on the Argo train, considering they had a movie star's face to put on the snub.  Lincoln was likely in second (though Life of Pi could also have been there), and it's still worth mentioning the massive success of this lineup of films: six of these movies made $100 million domestically, and we didn't have to include a superhero film to do it.  Thanks for showing adult dramas and comedies can make money still, America.

My Choice: Obviously a race between Argo and Zero Dark Thirty, and I'm going to succumb to my gut and give this to Bigelow's tale of war and obsession.  In third place is Beasts, followed by Django, Lincoln, SLP, Life of Pi, Amour, and Les Miz.

And that, my friends, was 2012.  It was a long, great journey, so I'm going to leave it to you-what was the best film of 2012?  What OVP wins did you most (or least) agree with?  What AMPAS wins did you most (or least) agree with?  And with six films remaining to be viewed by moi for 2009, whose ready to encounter that race later this month?

Also in 2012: Director, Actress, Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Original Screenplay, Adapted Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Animated Short, Live Action Short, Previously in 2012

Past Best Picture Contests: 2010, 2011