92nd Academy Awards

What Will Win: 1917. What Should Win: 1917.

What Will Win: 1917. What Should Win: 1917.

And the Nominees Are…

Contains no spoilers.

Every year, I make it a point to watch every Best Picture nominee. I’m happily married to a person who shares my enthusiasm — or at least indulges my own.

This was the first year I can recall when I don’t have a strong favorite and a strong least-favorite. I generally assume most BP noms are 8s (or 80% on the Rotten Tomatoes / Metacritic scale). I go in with that assumption and then the film either gains or loses points based on my viewing. That said, my own personal biases are becoming more pronounced with age. And over time, I can grow to like a movie much more (though it rarely goes in the other direction).

The standard deviation with the 2019 flicks is surprisingly small. I thought they were all pretty solid.

JOKER: 95%. So, if this is the highest rated, why not make it my pick? I gotta tell ya, it’s tough. The Joker is my favorite comic book character and I’ve long been obsessed with the Joker/Batman relationship. All I can say is that it’s incredible but it’s not a Best Picture. I wrote a deep-dive analysis of it.

1917: 90%. This should win. It probably will, since the Academy loves war films. And so few have been told about the War to End All Wars. I have to see Birdman Or again but my impression of it was a semi-interesting story told in an innovative way. It was incredible to see a film of that length and magnitude depicted in a handful of tracking shots. The difference with 1917 is that the (true) tale is so much more important and epic. The first 25 minutes of Saving Private Ryan are the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen in the history of cinema. You feel like you’re storming Omaha Beach yourself. But my critique of that movie (though I still think it’s 80%) is that it can’t follow itself. When I asked my comic friend, Ron Josol, if he picked up chicks after his shows, he hit me with one of the great lines I’ve heard: “I can’t follow myself.” Gosh, so cocky and so accurate. He’s so funny onstage that any after-party rendezvous is a comedown. So, while the rest of SPR is good, to me, it never lives up to its opening. (Still probably should’ve beaten Shakespeare In Love in 1998, though.) 1917 makes you feel like you are in WWI yourself. And as it’s been said, War is Hell. A beautiful story beautifully told.

Parasite: 89%. This was incredible. Never quite seen anything like it. A bit reminiscent of Get Out (the runner-up Movie of the Decade for the 2010s, second only to The Social Network), but not in a derivative way. I am loath to write too much here because this is one where you should go in totally fresh. The writing and the acting are superb. And the way it unfolds is unlike anything I’ve seen… though that’s a sentence you have already seen. My point is this flick is original as hell. In my experience, being scary and being funny are adjacent. Some of the best ghost stories I’ve heard have been told by the funniest people I know. So, to create a comedy horror (but nothing like Scream) will stand as one of cinema’s great achievements.

Marriage Story: 86%. I discussed this with a group of people in Austin, Texas. A divorced man found this film too real. And a married woman agreed but added that one didn’t have to be divorced to be hurt by this one. It was so true-to-life that a couple’s viewing of it together could itself create problems. I concur. I am fascinated by movies that seem as if the director just turned on a camcorder and placed it in the window of a real family. Per Tolstoy, now referred to as the Anna Karenina Principle: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” In this way, the way Marriage Story was told reminded me of one of my favorite movies, Little Miss Sunshine (not to be confused with Little Women). Adam Driver and ScarJo were on fire. It is so difficult to portray a fight accurately since we’ve all been in fights. Without giving anything away, the epic battle scene they do have captures exactly how one feels when arguing with a significant other. Even if all of those words weren’t said, the emotion itself was enough to drain you.

The Irishman: 82%. For somebody who has a problem with length, I’m a bit sympathetic to Martin Scorsese. That said, dude needs an editor. His films just seem to be getting longer and longer. I don’t know how historically accurate this one is but it was almost like a dark Forrest Gump in terms of all the places Jimmy Hoffa turned up. If Casino (70%) was a Xerox of Goodfellas (95%), then I wouldn’t go as far as saying that The Irishman was a Xerox of Casino, but it absolutely feels like a clone of much of his earlier work. That said, I love Marty and have watched most of his movies multiple times.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: 80%. I’ve always had a complex relationship with Quentin Tarantino’s movies. I strongly disliked Pulp Fiction in the theatre. Then again, I made the mistake of seeing it with my parents and 14-year-old brothers. An 18-year-old Rajiv should’ve gone with his boys. Over the years, it’s become a film I’ve seen many, many times. I stand by my initial evaluation that the violence is gratuitous and “the scene” is over-the-top. But the storytelling and the witty banter are compelling beyond belief. One of my issues with QT is his depiction of women. Not in a political way. I just find them so, so annoying. I have to fast-forward through the scenes in PF with Bruce Willis’ sugar pop girlfriend and the “Buuutch” taxi driver, and it’s all I can do to grit my teeth through the honey bunny burglar in the diner. So, though I know people say Margot Robbie didn’t get enough screen time, I loved her in this. In fact, a movie could be a straight shot of Robbie for the length of The Irishman and it wouldn’t be enough of her. Margot Robbie. Yum. Revisionist history has become Tarantino’s thing and he’s darned good at it. I loved the twist ending. I actually didn’t realize what the subject matter of this film was until it began unfolding. I read Helter Skelter years ago because I’m such an enormous fan of The Beatles. And I’ll never forget the opening page. Only these words: “This Story Will Scare the Hell Out of You.” And it did. So, it was nice to paste over those memories with this movie. And I wasn’t even alive in August 1969. Though it does make me wonder how Bryan Adams was able to release “Summer of ’69” as such a happy tune.

Jojo Rabbit: 78%. I wanted to love this movie. I liked it a lot, but Harsha liked it more than I. I laughed a bunch but it felt a bit uneven. The funny part was that Harsha found Sam Rockwell’s character hilarious, whereas Rebel Wilson had me in stitches. That said, I have a very dark sense of humor: most comics use Hitler as a punchline, but there were times I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to laugh. For me, after a while, the conceit wore thin. I thought the girl and the boy (and his friend) were stupendous. And ScarJo killed it, per yoozhe.

Ford v Ferrari: 70%. Interesting but very linear. Good action, fun to watch. The ending felt thrown-in so it left me with kind of a deflated feeling. I’ve seen just about every Matt Damon flick and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bad one. (I even loved The Informant!) Christian Bale continues to prove why he’s one of the greatest actors ever and probably the best actor to rise to prominence this millennium. Yes, he debuted in the ’80s but didn’t become a leading man till American Psycho in 2000 (even though that’s one of the most overrated movies I’ve ever seen… I found it more sick than dark).

Little Women: 70%. The phrase “Rorschach Test” has been thrown around a lot this year, but I’ll apply it here. I’m a man, and despite the fact that I’m more than a little in-touch with my feminine side, I think this one just didn’t resonate with me. I felt the first 90 minutes were a bit of a slog. The acting was solid (Saoirse Ronan, especially), but I’ve seen this type of period piece myriad times. The last 45 minutes were very good, though. As a writer, I appreciated the display of the process. And I enjoyed Director Greta Gerwig’s postmodern approach to storytelling. That said, my brother, Rakesh Satyal, is a huge fan of Little Women (the novel), and he tweeted this: “There is a fascinating paradox at the heart of Little Women: In the very knowing scene in which Jo lays her novel before her and rearranges it, the assumption can be drawn that this is how LMA approached her book, with the final order being what she saw as its best narration. Then Gerwig takes that order and rearranges it, simultaneously asserting her willingness to innovate but undercutting the creative decisions of the person about whom she is ostensibly making a film.” That is not a Little problem. So, while I’m willing to concede that a straight man may not be in the best position to evaluate this work, a lifelong gay fan is. And that sums up part of why it could have been stronger.

What do you think?

#Oscars

Rajiv Satyal is a comedian. He resides in Burbank, adjacent to but oh-so-far from Hollywood.