Sure, we who write about such things are obsessed about Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and The Shape of Water dueling over who will win Best Picture. Then again, we are also thinking that perhaps Steven Spielberg’s timely and electric The Post could sneak in and win Best Picture.
What about Wind River? What happened to all that buzz surrounding Baby Driver? Why aren’t these movies even in the conversation? Sure, superhero movies don’t usually get nominated, but when Logan landed in theaters back in March, critics called it not only superhero movie good, but “Oscar nomination good.”
This latest edition of The Movie Mensch’s look at all things Academy Awards, Oscar Watch, digs deep and begs the Motion Picture Academy to not forget these gems when the ballots are counted, and nominations are revealed on January 23.
Wind River
Jeremy Renner should be getting a slew of buzz for Best Actor and the film itself should be an easy lock for Best Picture, but it is nowhere in the conversation despite being on many people’s best of 2017 lists (including ours). The man who we will see as Hawkeye in Avengers: Infinity War this summer dazzled and gave the performance of his career in a thriller that found him portraying a soft-spoken Fish and Wildlife agent tapped to help a neophyte FBI agent (Elizabeth Olsen) in solving a gruesome murder on a desolate and snow covered Native American reservation.
Wind River’s haunting themes of lost parenthood and the desperation of America’s indigenous people are all handled with a grace and power that few films exhibited in 2017. Taylor Sheridan made his directorial debut and brought to life his screenplay in a manner that screams veteran filmmaker, not newbie. Wind River is chilling. Wind River is riveting. Above all else, Wind River should be a nominee for Best Picture and Renner should be ready to celebrate his third Oscar nomination. Instead, critical acclaim and steady audience adoration over the years will have to be the consolation.
Hostiles
What a stunning piece of filmmaking. Hostiles stars Christian Bale as a union soldier who has made a name for himself as an “Indian killer” of the highest order whose business is booming as Manifest Destiny is rearing its ugly head in the later 1800s. Going against everything he’s been trained to do and believe in, his superiors have tasked him with taking Yellow Hawk, a dying Native American chief (Wes Studi), from New Mexico to Montana so he can spend his final moments in land that has been in his family for centuries.
Sure, it’s another film that shows the plight of the Native American peoples in this country. That’s just one spoke in the wheel of awesomeness that is Hostiles. Early in their journey, they come across an out-of-her-mind homesteader (Rosamund Pike) who is wandering aimlessly after witnessing her children and husband killed by natives who are no friends to Chief Yellow Hawk. This traveling posse is a unique group, bound together by the savagery of the times, the landscape and above all else, the violent thread that connects us all – humanity.
Bale delivers one of his greatest performances to date and does so much by saying so little. Pike delivers one of the most gut-wrenching moments in the cinema year that was and the picture itself is a striking journey through one of America’s more dark periods. The Civil War is over, but the battle for the country’s soul is far from complete. Hostiles shows that in the end, we all at one time deserve to be called by that moniker. Director Scott Cooper (Out of the Furnace, Crazy Heart, Black Mass) also penned the script and has given everyone involved a film that should be racking up the Oscar nods, but alas, it seems to be completely absent from any kind of Academy radar.
Only the Brave
Arizona’s Granite Mountain Hotshots personified the word “hero” and as Joseph Kosinski illustrates on multiple occasions in his latest film, they run towards the danger while the rest of us are fleeing from it.
Josh Brolin turns in the performance of his career as the leader of this group of firefighters that waltz into wildfires armed only with pickaxes and other forestry tools. No water, no hoses… nothing to quench the flames. Yet, what they do is invaluable in saving lives, property and ceasing a wildfire from becoming a hellish inferno.
Fighting fires has never been portrayed so realistically. The cast (including Miles Teller, Jeff Bridges, Taylor Kitsch and James Badge Dale deliver on a level that is the most astounding of tributes to the men who lost their lives doing what they loved… saving others. Only the Brave will smolder inside you for some time, it is one of those rare movies that will be impossible to emotionally shake, no matter how much time passes since witnessing its glory.
Only the Brave is probably the biggest longshot of this list of longshots. But, there is something uniquely haunting about this true story that should be honored by cinema’s most esteemed organization.
Stronger
Jake Gyllenhaal is on the outside looking in for a nomination for Best Actor for his work portraying the real-life hero of the Boston Marathon bombing. The film could also be considered for Best Picture, but alas, it is not.
Jeff Bauman was that boyfriend that always missed everything requested of him by his girlfriend, Erin (Tatiana Maslany). The one time he decided to literally show up for his girl and prove his heart is in this relationship was at the 2013 Boston Marathon. Erin was running, and Jeff was there, at the finish line… ready to root for her to the conclusion. Instead of uttering cheers, he would be surrounded by screams of terror as two bombs were detonated, killing several and wounding hundreds. He lost both his legs.
Surviving such a horrid moment alone would be an incredible story, but what Bauman did lead police and federal investigators to find the two men who committed the act of terror. He recalled the face of one of the killers and that description would allow the city of Boston to experience justice to help heal their wounds.
David Gordon Green directs Stronger with an even hand, showing us that even though one is a hero and should be thrilled at surviving the rarely-survivable, that there is a ton of emotional landmines that litter life for someone in Bauman’s position. In the hands of Gyllenhaal, Green and the entire cast and crew, Bean Town gets the proper tribute it deserves. We just wish that the Academy felt the same way as the odds of the film being nominated for Best Picture and its lead scoring an acting nod are quite slim.
Good Time
Robert Pattinson shakes off his Edward in Twilight persona and rips it to shreds in a role that should have him being discussed for Best Actor. The film itself is also one of the best of the year, yet hardly anyone has it on their Academy Awards short list.
Sure, a Best Picture nod for this film is not in the cards, and it probably is accurate in that there are 10 other films (the max allowed to get a Best Picture nod) that are “better” than this one. But, the biggest crime is that Pattinson is not being discussed for the Best Actor race. He deserves it, wholeheartedly. But, we take solace in the fact that for those of us who write about film, we have not stopped talking about what he did in Good Time and as such, his clearly has taken his career to new heights with this role. We cannot wait to see what he does next.
Battle of the Sexes
When Bobby Riggs challenged Billie Jean King to a tennis match to prove that men were better than women, he didn’t realize it… but what he did was light the fire to a powder keg that would move women closer to winning the so-called Battle of the Sexes.
Steve Carell is Riggs and Emma Stone is King and each dazzle in their roles in a film that is simultaneously entertaining and enlightening. It is an important film that allows the younger viewers to learn that the rights that women have today, were not always a given. Frankly, we still have a long way to go… but the point is that without what King did to Riggs in the early 70s on a tennis court, one could argue that the rights of women would be further out of reach.
Why is this film not being talked about for Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor and Best Actress? When it played at TIFF, the reaction was pretty universal. Somehow, between then and when ballots got mailed to Academy members, something sad happened. The Battle became forgotten.
Logan
When The Dark Knight failed to secure a Best Picture nomination, the following year the Academy expanded the number of films that could receive the industry’s highest honor from five to ten. It is for films like Logan, that the Oscar voters felt an expanded field would allow them to honor films that might not normally be “Best Picture” type flicks. Yet, something strange has happened in 2017. Logan landed in March and was immediately met with critics wondering if the flick could score a nomination for Best Picture. Then, Wonder Woman arrived a few months later and similar discussions began. Thus, Logan was pushed aside as the story of Diana Prince seems to be the film that is likely to get the Best Picture votes for a superhero film.
That being said, can we at least honor Patrick Stewart with a nomination for Best Supporting Actor? I mean, come on!
Baby Driver
Edgar Wright’s triumphant work Baby Driver had us cheering in the aisles and our effort to triumph this film as one of the year’s best began. It has been practically universally lauded and as such, one would think that a Best Picture nomination would be being talked about. It is not and that is one of the biggest omissions of this year’s Oscar race.
Let’s hope it can score a Best Editing or Best Score nod because when it comes to Best Picture, there is no buzz… it’s more like a black hole of silence.
Don’t miss our Top 17 of 2017!