Gabs Writes

Tag: academy awards

  • Don’t Look Up: Flawed, entertaining, too long

    Don’t Look Up: Flawed, entertaining, too long

    Kind of like The Power of the Dog was my third experience with Jane Campion, Don’t Look Up was my third foray into Adam McKay.

    Or, rather, my third foray into Oscar-nominated Adam McKay films. I’ve also seen some of his work from before he was critically acclaimed including both Anchorman and Stepbrothers. (In a nutshell: Not a fan of the former but though the latter was pretty funny.)

    When stacking the three Oscar nominated movies against each other, I thought Don’t Look Up was better than Vice but didn’t live up to the standard set by The Big Short. I learned recently that The Big Short is based on a book by Michael Lewis, and I think having some source material to rein him in probably did McKay some favors. Because his follow-ups to that first nominated movie have been…kind of annoying?

    There are parts of Don’t Look Up I really enjoyed. There are parts that even made me laugh out loud. But this move is two and a half hours long and that is at least an hour too long. In general, I think satire is hard to maintain for a long story because it can get old fast. And if you’re doing really nice pointed commentary, you probably don’t need two and a half hours to do it. (Prove me wrong if you have a good counter example!)

    This particular movie does not need to be two and a half hours long.

    My spouse and I sat down to watch this and initially we had a pretty enjoyable time. The beginning is kind of a romp. There are some good jokes. Then, the story hit a point where we thought it was probably about over. I checked my phone to make sure.

    Comet streaking across night sky over cliff face and water.
    I, for one, welcome our new overlord, the planet destroyer.

    There was over an hour left in the movie.

    We promptly turned the TV off and went to bed.

    When we finished the movie the next night, my main complaint was that it was too long. Most of my favorite bits making digs were taking aim capitalism. I completely believe that if a planet destroying comet were streaking toward earth, some tech company would claim they could get minerals off it that would make people a lot of money. That completely tracked.

    Afterward, I did some light reading on the movie and learned that the comet is a metaphor for climate change. I couldn’t tell if the fact that I hadn’t realized that made me dumb. Maybe. But one of the critics I listened to made me feel a little better on this front when he argued that the metaphor isn’t a particularly good one.

    A comet hurtling toward the earth that will hit in six months and kill us all is a different kind of threat than slight changes in global temperature that are happening on a much longer timeframe. Plus the effects of climate change are much messier and more opaque. We’re seeing those effects now, but they’ve been happening for years and a lot of us are just starting to connect the dots. Plus, for a long time, people didn’t think they were going to have to deal with the fallout on climate change so there seemed to be no immediate incentive to prevent it. (Joke’s on us there.)

    I think if I had known the intent was to comment on climate change going in, I might have had different opinions watching the movie. And, honestly, I think they would have initially been more critical.

    After sitting with it for awhile, my opinions are not super favorable. Not because I actively dislike the movie but because I saw it a couple months ago and haven’t really thought about it since. (This is partially because some of the other nominees for Best Picture have taken up much more of my brain space.)

    But I will give the movie credit for writing an original story and trying to say something. I do love it when original screenplays get made into films. (Exhibit A in this case being Knives Out.)

    It’s just that maybe this one shouldn’t have been nominated for an Oscar.

  • The Power of the Dog: Throwing off vibes

    The Power of the Dog: Throwing off vibes

    I had heard about The Power of the Dog several times in passing before I saw it. Mostly what I heard was that it’s good, it’s on Netflix, and I should watch it before finding out too much about it.

    So I decided one afternoon just to put it on. And, man! Was it weird!

    This movie was my third brush with Jane Campion. I first experienced one of her films in 2015 when my husband and I decided to watch all the Best Picture nominees from 1994. We watched The Piano and spent most of the runtime in a state of confusion. We talked about it pretty extensively after it was over. And then I thought about it pretty much nonstop for days on end.

    I think it’s pretty telling that after watching the ’94 Best Picture nominees, The Piano is the one that lodged itself the most firmly in my mind. This is the year of The Fugitive, Schindler’s List, and The Remains of the Day. These are good movies! And memorable ones too. But somehow a weird little film about a woman and her piano and New Zealand is what stuck with me. (Apologies to the last nominee from 1994, In the Name of the Father. For some reason, we never got around to watching it.)

    A few months ago, I was looking for a movie to watch after having taken the day off work. A newsletter I like had recommended Bright Star, which had been on my Netflix queue for approximately five thousand years. So I popped it on.

    Then I proceeded to think about nothing but Bright Star for about three days. This, of course, included in-depth Googling about John Keats and Fanny Brawne. (I learned that so many people in Keats’ family other than him also tied of tuberculosis. And that several people in Fanny’s family did as well. I now want to read a giant nonfiction tomb about the history of tuberculosis.)

    Aside from the biographical reading, though, I also just kept thinking about the movie itself. It was gorgeous as hell and I highly recommend it.

    Knowing that The Power of the Dog was made by the same woman who made both The Piano and Bright Star completely tracks for me. Bright Star isn’t quite as weird as the other two, but all three have an extremely strong voice. And they are all shot in a really specific way. And they all kind of…linger after they are done.

    Rider on a horse set small against a vast landscape including large hills.
    The movie is basically this. But at the same time deeply unsettling.

    I found a lot to like about The Power of the Dog even though it was weirding me out at every juncture. The performances were very good (and what a delight to see Kirsten Dunst!). The strange menacing energy that Benedict Cumberbatch put off in this movie really worked for me. When I followed up watching this movie by listening to the episode of Pop Culture Happy Hour covering it, I loved that one of the panelists said a sense of imminent dread pervades the entire film. Yes! It definitely does.

    I also did some Googling after watching because I can’t stop myself. I quickly discovered that this movie is actually an adaptation of a book with the same name. That book, by the way, is written by a man named Thomas Savage. This is incredibly fitting and I love that fact.

    The fact that the move was an adaptation initially surprised me. But thinking it through, I do think it makes sense. Using all the information you can find in a book allowed Campion to sort of infuse the movie with this sense of being lived in. You can tell all the characters have a lot going on even if you don’t know what the hell that is. This might be laid out more explicitly in a narrative form that allows for things like that. But my guess is that the richness of the book allowed the film to do a lot while also having very little stated out loud.

    For that reason, I do consider this movie to be more of a vibe than anything else. You’ll get that sense of dread, the weird malice coming off of Benedict Cumberbatch’s character, and then a whole lot of other uncomfortable moments that give The Power of the Dog a distinctive feel.

    Also, I will say that I thought the pay off at the end of the movie was effective.

    Will you like The Power of the Dog? Couple things to consider:

    • Have you liked other Jane Campion films? If so, I think it’s likely you’ll be onboard for this one.
    • Do you like a movie that has more vibes than plot? If you require a more straightforward plot structure, this one might not be for you.
    • Do you like Westerns? Then you might like this movie depending on what you like about Westerns. A John Wayne movie, this is not. If you like a subversion of Westerns or something exploring the prototypical Western story, I’d say give it a try.
    • Are you a Kirsten Dunst fan or Benedict Cumberbatch fan? Probably worth a watch, then. I’m actually not the world’s biggest Cumberbatch fan, but I don’t actively dislike him, and I thought he was good here. (Although I cannot state it strongly enough how deeply unsettling he is.)

    I will also say that there has been some discussion and criticism of how sexuality is portrayed in this movie. I personally thought the film explored some of these ideas more in the exploration of what rigid masculinity and gender roles do to people who don’t fit within those boundaries and less as falling prey to the queer villain archetype. That being said, you might think differently! So just throwing it out there.

    If you have the time and any of the above sounds intriguing to you, I’d say go for it. If nothing else, you’ll get two hours of vibes and some impressive shots of the gorgeous countryside.

    (Go read more about my opinions on the Academy Awards if you want.)

  • Finding some value in the Academy Awards

    Finding some value in the Academy Awards

    It’s not really news that the Oscars are a hot mess this year. They’ve been a hot mess since, well, forever, as far as I can tell. There’s simply a baseline of pure nonsense associated with Hollywood’s most prestigious awards ceremony. Even now, when things are changing due to all the extremely valid criticism of the ceremony and the nominations process, things still tend to go sideways in unexpected ways.

    This year there are some changes that I think are for the better. The pool of voters has expanded as has the number of Best Picture nominees. I liked when the change happened that allowed the Best Picture nominees to go up to ten. But in order to hit certain thresholds, it seemed like a lot of years it was more like seven or eight nominees. That while the expanded pool is supposed to help more unusual movies get nominated, that wasn’t always happening either. (Listen, will I be bitter about having to watch War Horse for the rest of my life? Yes.)

    Three yellow jellyfish swimming upside down in deep blue water.
    Why does this picture show up when I search for Academy Awards? I don’t know, but it’s neat, so I’m sharing. (Photo by Georg Eiermann on Unsplash)

    I think it’s good to make it mandated that ten movies get the Best Picture nominee. While that does mean you probably have a weird or unworthy option creep in, it also allows for the less traditional choices. Would Drive My Car have been nominated without this rule change? I think it probably wouldn’t.

    Of course, the system isn’t perfect. We had the perfection of Moonlight winning Best Picture, but you know, Green Book, also happened.

    Awards shows in general seem to be in a state of peril. Ratings are falling. They all seem to be struggling to stay relevant. People are suggesting that they might not even exist in ten years. And if that happens, does it matter? Does a lack of Oscars in the world really cause some kind of void in the world?

    Ultimately, probably not really. (Especially because films will still win awards even if the actual ceremonies stop happening.) But there is something that I still sort of love about the Oscars. And I think it stems from mostly this: It helps me get a good general big picture of what’s going on in the industry and it allows me to see some pretty interesting and culturally relevant movies.

    Nobody is arguing that the Best Picture nominations are literally the best movies made in that year. Especially given that a certain brand of movie has a habit of getting nominated all the time and it’s extremely frustrating. But especially since the expansion of how many movies can get nominated for Best Picture, I’ve started seeing some really cool stuff.

    I’m not a super involved moviegoer. Before the pandemic, I’d hit up the theater a couple times a year for a movie I was really interested in seeing, like Knives Out but I don’t really go to the movies just because. This means, starting in 2011, when I started attending the Best Picture showcase, I was basically seeing a whole bunch of brand new to me movies all in a row.

    Movie theater audience watching a film.
    Imagine this for 24 hours. Except it smells funky and everyone is wrapped in a blanket and hopped up on 5 Hour Energy.

    For the uninitiated, the Best Picture Showcase is put on by AMC Theaters and is an event where typically you watch all Best Picture nominees either in the course of two weekends or over the course of a very long day. (This has changed a little due to the pandemic, but it might come back!) Because I’m a bit of a glutton for punishment and love an endurance challenge, I would go to the one-day event. This meant showing up at the theater at around 9 in the morning and then stumbling out around 7 the next morning.

    Some years the batch of movies is better than others but I always walked away from that event having seen at least one gem. Usually, as awards season rolls through, I have the best intentions of watching a lot of acclaimed movies, but I never quite get there. It’s hard to find the time and there’s so much to sort through. I’ve seen multiple rave reviews of Drive My Car, for example. Does this mean I’m guaranteed to watch it? No. Even if my favorite movie channel on YouTube names it their favorite film of the year, I’m still dumb enough to go watch Interview with the Vampire instead. (Which I don’t regret. It ruled.)

    But the Best Picture nominees offers me a finite list and the Best Picture Showcase offers me a concrete way to go watch some of those movies catching buzz.

    Over the years, this method has introduced me to movies like The Kids are All Right, Winter’s Bone, The Tree of Life, Amour, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Philomena, Brooklyn, Room, Hell or High Water, Moonlight, Parasite. Would I have seen some of these movies regardless of whether they were nominated for Best Picture? Maybe! But that’s honestly a big maybe.

    Yes, I had to see War Horse and I reluctantly sat through The Wolf of Wall Street (no shade to anyone who likes that film, but really one of my most hated watches ever). But I really have seen some pretty gorgeous, funny, moving films I never would have otherwise. And I’m grateful for that.

    Without the Best Picture Showcase in 2021 and being absolutely burnt out due to, you know, everything, I’m trying to recapture a little of that Oscars joy. I’m aiming for the modest goal of watching all 10 nominees before the ceremony happens at the end of March. I’m also hoping to do little write ups about those movies. I will let wiser people than me continue to call the Academy out for all their bad choices.

    Meanwhile? I’m going to drum up some opinions about Don’t Look Up (too long) and The Power of the Dog (classic Campion weirdness).

    Share your Oscars opinions, if you have ’em!