Cinematic Considerations

Tag: Hacksaw Ridge

  • Oscar Nominations Reaction: La La Land and then everything else

    Oscar Nominations Reaction: La La Land and then everything else

    ​So did “La La Land” get nominated for anything? 

    I’m sure I didn’t hear their name called more than 14 times early this morning, tying a record for most nominations in Academy Awards history.

    It’s a City of Stars and we’re all just living in it.

    If you haven’t already seen “La La Land,” you’re going to want to go and watch Damien Chazelle’s cinematic masterpiece at least once over the next month before it takes the Oscars by storm.

    When you’re done with that, go find “Whiplash,” Chazelle’s equally brilliant 2014 film that earned a couple of nominations and a much deserved Best Supporting Actor win for J.K. Simmons. You’ll see that “La La Land” is no fluke.

    Before we get into more of the specifics, a few words on the nominations “ceremony” itself that shows just how out of touch the Academy is with the general movie going public.

    Nominations were released online at the crack of dawn (or before the crack of dawn depending on what time zone you’re in) via a pre-taped video reel featuring past nominees and winners talking about how great and life-changing it is to be nominated. Fantastic.

    Yet a good chunk of the country – the so-called “forgotten” ones we keep hearing about in Washington these days – will be too busy sleeping or getting ready for work that they’ll just glance at a list of nominees hours from now and lament about how they’ve barely seen any of these films.

    The Academy undercuts the value of their own Oscar nominations by releasing them haphazardly on a Tuesday morning. How perfect would it be for millions of Americans to see an hour-long special highlighting the nominees in prime time, with trailers and clips of the films to entice people into the theaters to see these films. 

    The divide between what Academy voters award nominations to and what moviegoers spend their hard-earned dollars on in theaters is widening and it’s not the audiences’ fault. Studios often make their best films difficult to find in rural America, cramming less quality movies down the throats of a populace much smarter than Hollywood gives them credit for.

    This isn’t to say that voters need to give “Deadpool” a Best Picture nomination, say, or a Best Actress nomination to Felicity Jones for “Rogue One.” But something’s got to change.

    The Academy needs to bridge the gap. And fast.

    Best Picture – “Arrival,” “Fences,” “Hacksaw Ridge,” “Hell or High Water,” “Hidden Figures,” “La La Land,” “Lion,” “Manchester By The Sea” and “Moonlight”

    The nine nominees in the Oscars’ top category are a terrific blend of everything right that’s going on in filmmaking right now in Hollywood. 

    Everything from big-budget blockbusters like “La La Land” and “Hacksaw Ridge” to small, intimate indie pieces like “Moonlight” and “Hell or High Water” are nominated. Amazon becomes the first internet company to earn a Best Picture nomination with “Manchester By The Sea,” which is surprising given how prevalent Netflix is in the online film world.

    All of these films are worthy of their nominations, but I can’t help but feel for films like Tom Ford’s haunting “Nocturnal Animals” and Martin Scorsese’s compelling “Silence” which feel incredibly under-seen and underappreciated given the complete nomination list. I had both films making the Best Picture race in my “best case scenario” predictions, besting “Hacksaw Ridge” and “Hidden Figures.”

    Acting Categories

    It’s probably best to start with the least surprising category – Best Supporting Actress – which went pretty smoothly with nominations for Viola Davis in “Fences,” Naomie Harris in “Moonlight,” Nicole Kidman in “Lion,” Octavia Spencer in “Hidden Figures” and Michelle Williams in “Manchester By The Sea.” All but Spencer seemed like an absolute lock for a nomination in this category.

    Spencer’s performance is very good in the critically acclaimed, surprise box office smash hit “Hidden Figures,” but I would have personally gone with Rachel Weisz’s wonderful turn in Derek Cianfrance’s criminally under-seen “The Light Between Oceans.”

    Best Supporting Actor had three certain choices confirmed with Mahershala Ali in “Moonlight,” Jeff Bridges in “Hell or High Water” and Dev Patel in “Lion.” Michael Shannon’s nomination in the category for his terrific work in “Nocturnal Animals” over Golden Globe winning costar Aaron Taylor-Johnson shouldn’t really come as much of a surprise to those who’ve seen the film. Both are fantastic.

    Lucas Hedges’ great work opposite Casey Affleck in “Manchester By The Sea” is well earned, though the Academy could have gone in any number of directions here, including Hugh Grant in “Florence Foster Jenkins,” Issey Ogata in “Silence” or my personal favorite fifth option, Mykelti Williamson in “Fences.”

    The Academy seemed to take the most chances with their nominations in the Best Actress category, though Natalie Portman in “Jackie,” Emma Stone in “La La Land” and 20-time nominee Meryl Streep in “Florence Foster Jenkins” aren’t surprises by any means.

    The biggest omission in any category has to be Amy Adams getting left out here despite her flawless performance in “Arrival,” a Best Picture nominee that simply does not work without Adams killing it in the lead role. Golden Globe winner Isabelle Huppert of “Elle” shouldn’t be as much of a surprise as it still feels like given her upset win last month, though Ruth Negga’s work in the barely-seen “Loving” will have average moviegoers who have never heard of the film scratching their heads.

    Best Actor, as expected, will feature the two-horse race between front runners Casey Affleck in “Manchester By The Sea” and Denzel Washington in “Fences.” They are joined by nominees Andrew Garfield in “Hacksaw Ridge,” Ryan Gosling in “La La Land” and Viggo Mortensen in “Captain Fantastic.”

    All are deserving, though it feels as if Garfield is nominated for the wrong film as his performance in Scorsese’s “Silence” is perhaps the best of his young career. Mortensen does a fine job in a great film, though “Captain Fantastic” feels like any number of terrific indie comedies that seem to come out every year. To me, Paul Dano and Daniel Radcliffe are both better in the tonally similar “Swiss Army Man,” but there are far too many fart jokes in that film for the Academy to take notice.

    Other various thoughts

    “La La Land” getting 14 nominations makes sense if you watch the film, though it will be incredibly unlikely the film carries the day as easily come Oscar night as it did sweeping all seven categories at this year’s Golden Globes. Backlash from the Globes could actually hurt its chances overall, though it probably has the best shot at Best Picture given the Academy’s preferential balloting system in the category.

    It feels pretty foolish for the Academy to pass on Pharrell’s incredibly catching tune “Runnin’” from “Hidden Figures” in the Best Original Song category given two “La La Land” nominations for “Audition (The Fools Who Dream)” and “City of Stars.” Voters might split their votes between the two songs and open the door for “Hamilton” creator Lin-Manuel Miranda to slip in and win the category with the great “How Far I’ll Go” from the hit Disney animated film “Moana.”

    “O.J. Made In America” should be the consensus favorite for Best Documentary, though the Academy certainly needs to clarify what is eligible here (and in the supporting acting categories). Like most who’ve seen Ezra Edelman’s terrific doc, I caught “O.J. Made In America” spread across several parts on ESPN rather than in one seven-hour sitting at a theater. To me, it’s a television miniseries rather than a single documentary. It will win, and probably deserves to, but it still seems fishy.

    Other nominations that I would have liked to have seen:

    – Alicia Vikander and Michael Fassbender for “The Light Between Oceans”

    – David Mackenzie’s direction for “Hell or High Water”

    – Love somewhere, anywhere for “Sing Street”

    – John Goodman for “10 Cloverfield Lane”

    – “Weiner” for Best Documentary

  • Hacksaw Ridge: What it means to serve

    Hacksaw Ridge: What it means to serve

    Unwavering heroism amidst the ravages of war is explored in Mel Gibson’s latest directorial effort “Hacksaw Ridge,” sure to be one of the year’s ten best feature films.

    Gibson expertly combines gruesome World War II era violence akin to Steven Spielberg’s classic “Saving Private Ryan” with dramatic underpinnings of faith, family and love for your fellow man that one might expect in a traditional faith-based movie.

    “Hacksaw Ridge” tells the true story of Desmond Doss, a Seventh Day Adventist who volunteers to serve in the Pacific during World War II despite being a conscientious objector who refuses to carry a weapon into battle. Doss overcame court-martial to serve his country at the Hacksaw Ridge offensive during the Battle of Okinawa, rescuing 75 men as a combat medic largely behind enemy lines.


    Andrew Garfield shines as Doss, a man imbued with unshakeable conviction for both his country and his nonviolent beliefs. “Hacksaw Ridge” is unquestionably the best work of Garfield’s career and, along with a stellar turn in last year’s “99 Homes,” marks a turning point past two films in the “Spiderman” franchise. While it could be easily said that “Hacksaw Ridge” is an incredible war film, Garfield’s expert portrayal of a man who refuses to fight but demands to serve elevates the performances of every actor around him and the movie as a whole.

    Hugo Weaving, who has largely slept-walked his way through films since his breakout as Agent Smith in “The Matrix” trilogy, comes alive opposite Garfield as Doss’s alcoholic, belligerent father racked with emotional guilt after being the only of his friends to survive two tours of duty during World War I. Many war films attempt to gloss over the home life of the soldiers they feature, but Gibson embraces the task head-on in limited, but well-acted scenes between Weaving and Garfield. Both actors perform flawlessly in developing the character of the man Doss was by hammering home how he came to be that man.

    Less successful in this respect is the film’s romantic interludes as Doss courts a local nurse named Dorothy (Teresa Palmer) who later becomes his wife. At first glance, it’s unclear whether the romance angle of “Hacksaw Ridge” falters due to script issues or Palmer’s bland, ineffective performance, but the on-screen couple have very little chemistry.

    Doss’s military superiors as played by “Avatar” star Sam Worthington and funnyman Vince Vaughn are unusual casting choices, but neither actor gets in the way of the overall film.

    “Hacksaw Ridge” is perhaps the most graphically violent World War II era war film since “Saving Private Ryan,” but Gibson relies on the authenticity of the conflict to drive home just how harrowing Doss’s story of heroism and survival genuinely was. With the lead character serving as a medic, it shouldn’t come as much surprise that the level of gore within “Hacksaw Ridge” is amplified by the length of time bodies with severed limbs are shown on screen. 

    Embracing violence has been a trademark of his films dating back to 1995’s “Braveheart,” but Gibson does a terrific job of approaching the ravages of war from a fresh perspective and is buoyed by Garfield’s strong individual effort. “Hacksaw Ridge” will likely stay in the Oscar conversation, but ultimately fall short due to the graphic violence and controversial nature of the film’s director. It would not be a surprise, however, to see Garfield’s work in the film honored as part of a nomination for his role in Martin Scorcese’s “Silence.”

    Doss’s tale of patriotic heroism is too important for mature audiences not to make an effort to see “Hacksaw Ridge” at least once and Gibson’s film will probably never look better than it does on the big screen. Even though it arrives in a highly charged political climate, the film opts to avoid definitely becoming a pro-war or anti-war piece and benefits greatly from its relative evenhandedness.

    While not a perfect film, “Hacksaw Ridge” will ultimately be remembered as one of Hollywood’s best World War II efforts and a must see for those capable of handling its brutality.