Category: Oscar Contenders

Millions upon millions of dollars have been poured into a series of Flash Gordon-esque movies about the unseen “Force” around us for the better part of a half-century.

Many millions more have been poured into the bank accounts of Disney execs by casual and ardent fans of the acclaimed “Star Wars” franchise that reached its summation this weekend with director JJ Abrams’ second turn at the helm of the series, “The Rise of Skywalker.”

Equally fulfilling and frustrating, the ninth entry of the Skywalker Saga gives audiences a dynamic and exciting experience to keep family members occupied this holiday season.

Set well after the events of the eighth episode “The Last Jedi,” “Skywalker” follows Resistance fighters Rey, Poe Dameron and Finn as they seek to destroy the reborn Emperor Palpatine and escape the clutches of Kylo Ren’s First Order.

As “Star Wars” films go, “Skywalker” is better than the forgettable prequel trilogy from the early 2000s, but lesser than the first two films of this new trilogy and all of the classic original set of films from the 70s and 80s.

Young fans to the series won’t know the difference in this tale, which provides a satisfying conclusion to a lengthy tale of good vs. evil, the Force against the Dark Side. It just won’t hold up against the upper echelon of films in the “Star Wars” canon and could be forgotten once the inevitable spinoffs hit theaters.

For the third straight episode, future Oscar nominee Adam Driver continues to be the best thing about this “Star Wars” trilogy with a layered, considered turn in a franchise that puts character development on the back burner for pomp and circumstance.

His conflicted villain, Kylo Ren, is a perfect blend of petulant and saddened and Driver takes a role ripe for caricature and breathes depth and life into a one-note emo baddie.

He’s matched well opposite Daisy Ridley’s most versatile turn in the role of Rey, the last hope of the Resistance seeking her identity while fighting for the lives of her friends. Ridley shows conflict within her own character and the inner turmoil she experiences resonates with audiences and feels as authentic as it can in a nine-film space odyssey.

Talented actors like Oscar Isaac, Keri Russell and John Boyega are given plenty of screen time, but take a relative back seat to the Rey-Kylo Ren saga and sacrifice for nostalgia’s sake.

Carrie Fisher, who passed away prior to filming, is in far more of “Skywalker” than expected as Abrams utilizes unused footage from prior films in this trilogy to shape the beginning of the film.

While admirable, it’s still evident that Fisher’s performance is CGI-ed on top of new footage and there’s a disconnect between characters in scenes opposite her Princess Leia that’s hard to overlook.

“Skywalker” stumbles most when it forces in plot elements for the sake of fan service or toy marketing.

One of the best things about Rian Johnson’s superior entry into the Star Wars canon, 2017’s “The Last Jedi,” was the director’s clear vision to make a film on his own terms regardless of fan expectations. “Last Jedi” is largely successful with its bold, audacious subversion of expectations.

Abrams blatantly walks back Johnson’s film — sidelining characters and tossing aside plot points — in an effort to counteract perceived disappointment to end the trilogy, but this actually has the opposite effect, sacrificing quality for mass appeal.

The film has some truly remarkable action sequences, though “Skywalker” is far more visually dynamic and inventive fighting on the ground than blowing things up in the air.

Abrams and cinematographer Dan Mindel put Ridley and Driver through the paces in a whirlwind of lightsaber flares and giving “Skywalker” must-see moments that will stick with audiences far longer than Rey’s ret-conned origin story.

A potential awards nominee, “Skywalker” probably isn’t on the level it needs to be to receive a Best Picture nomination. John Williams, however, is a strong contender for a Best Original Score nod.

There’s a little something for everyone in “The Rise of Skywalker” that should drive audiences to theaters in droves and though it’s worth the experience on a big screen, something feels incomplete that keeps Abrams’ film from matching the dazzling heights a “Star Wars” movie is capable of.

What is the impact that one person can have on another?

How is that one life can intensely, irreversibly be altered by coming into contact with someone?

It’s a common theme in modern cinema, but rarely told as simply and unapologetically in a PG-rated film as director Marielle Heller’s latest film.

“A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood” is not a biopic. It’s a wonderfully layered drama about meeting the person you need in your life at exactly the moment you need to meet them.

Inspired by the friendship between celebrated children’s TV show host Fred Rogers and journalist Tom Junod, the movie follows cynical Esquire Magazine feature writer Lloyd Vogel as an assignment to profile Mr. Rogers affects his relationships with his wife as well as his estranged father.

Two-time Oscar winner Tom Hanks is not the star of the film and the version of Fred Rogers audiences see on screen isn’t intended to be the same man chronicled in last year’s outstanding documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor.”

Casting Hanks as Rogers is a stroke of genius because, on a surface level, the iconic actor known for playing roles of virtue lends instant credibility to Rogers’ genuine warmth and spirit.

But in the subtext, as viewers question Hanks in the role because he isn’t a perfect mirror image of Rogers, the film’s protagonist – Matthew Rhys’ Vogel – maintains doubts about his authenticity in a way that subtly attaches audiences to Vogel.

No actor can truly match the singular persona of Fred Rogers, but viewed through the lens of a skeptical journalist, Hanks delivers a more than compelling facsimile that feels pulled from Vogel’s imagination and recollections of the past.

Rhys pushes the envelope just enough as Vogel to make the film’s dramatic moments compelling, but not so far as to intercede in the moments where it’s clear viewers are meant to just bask in Hanks easily charming audiences with Rogers’ message of kindness at every turn.

It’s a performance that doesn’t particularly stand out in any way, but Rhys offers enough character development to pay off the film’s overall conceit.

Veteran character actor Chris Cooper gets the most screen time he’s seen in several years and stuns audiences with a heart wrenching supporting turn as Vogel’s father Jerry.

Cooper brings a presence to the screen that challenges Rhys at every turn and forces better performances than the screenplay sets up.

Heller frames her film as if it were an extended episode of “Mr. Rogers Neighborhood,” weaving in and out of the main story with to-camera interludes by Hanks that treat the audience like Rogers’ young viewers and location changing transitions featuring miniature sets like those from the television program.

Considerable detail went into the film’s production design to get the nuance of the era correct from costumes to virtually identical sets for “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood” to the faded texture that permeates across Jody Lee Lipes’ cinematography.

“Neighborhood” deserves far wider accolades than it will likely get, although Hanks is all but assured an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor and co-frontrunner status with Brad Pitt in “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.”

The film has an outside chance at a Best Picture nomination though Heller as director and Rhys as lead actor will likely miss the cut.

A much more somber film than any true biopic of Fred Rogers probably deserves, the beauty of “Neighborhood” comes from the essence of the man and his impact on those around him rather than his life story.

No filmmaker will be able to do complete justice to Rogers’ tale better than the 2018 documentary and Heller, Hanks and company opt not to even try.

Compelling and emotional, “A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood” is a worthy drama that focuses on impact over legacy in a tale of fathers and sons that will tug at the heartstrings of audiences willing to let their hearts take over for their brains over a two hour period.

Spoiler alert: The best film of 2019 doesn’t star Leonardo DiCaprio and isn’t directed by Martin Scorsese.

Average American audiences probably haven’t heard of filmmaker Bong Joon Ho or his frequent collaborator Kang-ho Song, but their latest feature together is the best South Korean film of all time and a top five movie of the last decade by any measure.

“Parasite,” a haunting and arresting drama with elements of comedy and paranoia, took home the top prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival with a dynamic, unflinching look at families at the top and bottom of South Korea’s social strata.

The less audiences know about the film before seeing “Parasite,” the better the cinematic experience will be.

Twists and turns masterfully crafted into the story will be offset by moments of extremely poignant subtlety as Bong envelopes audiences in a world that seems infinitely close and yet constantly out of reach through perfect shot selection and camera movement that puts the viewers’ eyes on exactly what they need to see at the exact moment they need to see it.

In the simplest terms, “Parasite” is about two families, the affluent Park family living in a walled manor on a hill and the impoverished Kim family leeching off open Wi-Fi and free extermination in their semi-basement flat.

When the Kim’s son is hired to serve as an English tutor for the Park’s teenage daughter, it sets in motion a series of events that will irrevocably change both families for life.

“Parasite” relies on eight actors to deliver memorable, pitch-perfect performances in order to pull off Bong’s layered screenplay and there isn’t a false step among the entire cast.

Each member of the family – father, mother, son and daughter – is in sharp contrast from their mirror in the other family, as if they were playing the opposite side of the same coin, but not in a duplicate style as in Jordan Peele’s horror film “Us.”

The cast of “Parasite” excels in the variety of tones Bong moves through and the expressions lingering on the face of Kang-ho Song often allow viewers to peer inside the soul of the film.

“Parasite” translates perfectly for American audiences as Joon Ho maintains a universality to the film through thematic elements of economic class conflict, greed and deception. Its biggest hindrance to mainstream success is a relative unwillingness for subtitled films, though Bong has crafted a theatrical experience that far transcends any language barrier.

“Parasite” uses the camera frame as a reflection of the contrasting world views of the poor Kim family and rich Park family. This is most evident in the film’s geography, where staircases are frequently used to depict the upward mobility of the Parks and the downward descent of the Kims.

Production design in “Parasite” is stunningly effective as Bong’s team constructs a multi-layered mansion from scratch on an outdoor studio lot that seems all too perfect not to be an actual home.

The Parks’ living room is adorned by a massive wall-sized window into the enclosed front yard, framed to match the film’s 2:39:1 aspect ratio and enhance viewers’ ability to visually peer inside the mindset of the well-off family.

Cinematographer Kyung-pyo Hong gives “Parasite” an expansive visual style that provides unique geographic perspective at all times, highlighting the space the Park family enjoys in beautiful contrast to the cramped tightness of the Kim family’s world. No matter how close the camera gets to actors, Bong maintains a wide depth of field to constantly change and accentuate the audiences’ peripheral vision.

Perspective is of key importance to “Parasite” as viewers are left questioning events in the film from every angle, not knowing what’s coming next or where it’s coming from. It’s an unparalleled combination of tension and release that keeps audiences on the edge of their seats.

“Parasite” will become the first South Korean film to be nominated for an Academy Award, an almost certain lock to win the Oscar for Best International Film. There’s potential for much more acclaim for the Palme d’Or winner from this year’s Cannes Film Festival as “Parasite” deserves to contend for Best Picture, direction, cinematography, production design and supporting actor for Song Kang-ho.

A contender for the best film of the decade, “Parasite” is a thrilling, absolute masterpiece from one of the world’s greatest auteur directors. Visually stunning and arresting from start to finish, there won’t be a better cinematic experience in theaters all year.

When the term “Oscar bait” gets thrown around in film criticism, it’s usually in reference to a film like “Judy.”

Typically a movie with one central performance based on true events featuring showy, clip-worthy monologues destined for an awards season reel, “Oscar bait” is a film cliché used to describe movies that wouldn’t exist if studios couldn’t buy their way to winning accolades.

The story writes itself, a former Academy Award winner with nothing much of substance on her resume in many years makes her comeback bringing to life a classic Hollywood icon.

Critics, audiences and, most importantly, award voters are supposed to revel in this sort of pandering because it honors not just the performer bringing the part to life, but the person being honored with the biopic.

It’s a standard model used to great success by the likes of Rami Malek in last year’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” Gary Oldman in 2017’s “Darkest Hour” and Meryl Streep in 2011’s “The Iron Lady.”

This time, the performer is Oscar winner Renée Zellweger and the role is that of Hollywood starlet Judy Garland in the final years of her life.

“Judy” finds the illustrious Garland in her mid-40s, broke and trying to make a living with a concert series at London’s Talk of the Town revue so she can purchase a home for her two young children.

It’s a meandering, melodramatic biopic adapted from the award-winning play “End of the Rainbow,” that veteran stage director Rupert Goold brought to the big screen as a sweeping musical drama hinging on a knockout lead performance which just doesn’t get there.

Zellweger’s Garland feels like her Roxie Hart from 2002’s “Chicago” imitating Liza Minnelli, an over-exaggeration that neither says anything new about the subject nor comes across as anything but someone delivering lines as if every word were italicized.

The Oscar winner has no discernable on-screen chemistry with anyone she shares a scene opposite, least of all Finn Wittrock and his caricature turn as Garland’s future husband Mickey Deans.

This makes the quick, deep relationship the two form at a party hosted by Minnelli all the more baffling. Audiences can’t buy into their connection and when things inevitably begin to get rocky, Garland’s devastation feels excessive and frivolous.

The film relies heavily on nostalgia on the part of its viewers to enjoy montages set to classic Garland tunes like “The Trolley Song” and “Get Happy” that establish the illusion of a quality performance. Zellweger genuinely sings her heart out, but the entire affair is far too contrived to ever really resonate with audiences.

“Judy” goes to great lengths to inform Garland’s final years by showing a young Judy in flashbacks being tormented by the weight of stardom and a Harvey Weinstein-esque controlling producer Louis B. Mayer.

These flashbacks are done in traditional biopic style and yet lack consistency throughout the film. A large 45-minute segment in the middle third of the film could have used one of these flashbacks to break up the monotony of the latent melodrama.

Darci Shaw gives the film’s best performance as a doe-eyed young Garland, though Goold and screenwriter Tom Edge don’t give her Judy much to do besides being mildly rebellious before submitting to the rigors of the studio system.

Much of the rest of the supporting cast is talented, yet entirely forgettable as the screenplay muddles through Garland’s London run with a bittersweet awe culminating in the most ridiculously contrived final number in recent movie musical history.

Regardless of the picture as a whole, Zellweger is far too popular in much too big a role not to be a surefire nominee for Best Actress come awards season and is the clear frontrunner to win her second Academy Award. However, viewers looking for a dynamic performance about a singer coming apart at the seams should check out the vastly superior and shamefully underseen “Her Smell” with Elizabeth Moss.

Somewhere over the rainbow, there’s a good film to be made about the life of a Hollywood icon like Garland.

Unfortunately, “Judy” largely misses the mark and will be forgotten as soon as Zellweger’s seemingly certain acceptance speech concludes.

In space, no one can feel your pain.

At least, that’s the conceit of the latest space odyssey to hit the big screen, writer/director James Gray’s “Ad Astra.”

Melancholy and malaise abound in a slow-burning film ripe with wistful soliloquies delivered as a character-informing score for Gray’s expressionless short story drawn out over two hours.

Brad Pitt stars as Roy McBride, an astronaut tasked with a classified mission to travel across the solar system in search of his long-lost father, a heralded astronaut and scientist in his own regard thought dead until the doomed expedition of the elder McBride rears its ugly head on Earth.

Each moment in “Ad Astra” is deliberate and considered, allowing events to breathe naturally without rush. In this art-house film with a big studio budget, what happens plot-wise takes a backseat to emotional subtlety.

Pitt gives one of the best performances of his career as the younger McBride, delivering a stoic, magnetically pensive turn reminiscent of Ryan Gosling’s work as Neil Armstrong in last year’s “First Man.”

The performance is largely internalized with Pitt only letting audiences into Roy’s psyche through a haunting narration and the faintest whisper of emotion on his face. Roy’s primary character trait – an exceptional cool under pressure calculated as never exceeding 80 heartbeats per minute – serves as the film’s narrative pulse and lays the foundation for Pitt’s entire performance.

As audiences follow Pitt throughout the solar system, the emotional wear and tear begins to bubble under the surface in a complex, understated performance that will resonate fully with viewers who can identify with Roy’s personal struggles. Those who fail to buy in to Pitt’s subtextual work will likely find “Ad Astra” too tedious and pedantic for their liking.

In limited screen time, Oscar winner Tommy Lee Jones haunts the entire project with his looming presence as Roy’s father, Clifford. Without much development of his own, Jones’ Clifford challenges and provokes Roy in compelling, interesting ways that will leave audiences pondering the ramifications long after leaving the theaters.

Everything – and especially everyone – else doesn’t really matter in the greater context of the film except in how their appearance and/or disappearance affects Pitt’s Roy.

There is a strong supporting cast in “Ad Astra,” but on the whole, they wander in and out of the periphery of Gray’s film in such a tertiary way that even Donald Sutherland is only of use to provide character context to Roy’s journey than serve any actual purpose to the plot.

Technically proficient and understated in its beauty, “Ad Astra” has moments of action grandeur largely obscured by extensive sequences that highlight the vast emptiness of space.

Cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema subtly acknowledges the loneliness felt by Pitt’s Roy by keeping the visuals sharp yet elusively unremarkable, as if the voids Roy looks out on are as desolate and unremarkable as they seem to the average viewer.

The camerawork keeps audiences framed in on Roy in every moment either by pushing in on Pitt’s somber profile or placing viewers within his mind’s eye as events unfold around him.

While it may be off-putting to some audiences, what doesn’t happen in “Ad Astra” is often more important than what actually does, forcing viewers to feel the dread of inevitability surrounding Roy’s mission.

“Ad Astra” is exactly the kind of artistic, character-driven drama that usually succeeds come awards season, though Gray’s film may not gain the widespread support necessary to gain serious consideration come Oscar season.

Pitt’s terrific performance here may actually prove to be more useful in a run for the veteran actor in Best Supporting Actor for Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood” as voters aggregate his work for both films to justify voting for a nomination/win for a single film as a celebration of Pitt’s year.

Some audiences may find the film’s slow burn style too tedious for their liking and not in line with the aggressive marketing and trailers for “Ad Astra.”

Those willing to look beyond the simple plot structure will find Gray’s film a wonderfully nuanced character study that’s bold enough visually to enjoy on the big screen, especially in the IMAX format.