Friday, April 18, 2014

Top Movies By Decade: Part 9 - "Why so serious?"

Author’s Note: I apparently did this in July of 2009 but didn’t list my top ten favorites.  It simply had my favorite film and then a few honorable mentions that would have been in the top five.
I started a series of lists that rank my top ten favorite movies by decade.  It began in the 1920s and will be working toward the new millennium.
To compile this list, I took my ranked films from IMDb, which I grade after every movie viewing, and sorted them from highest to lowest.  Then, looking at each movie in each decade I came up with my favorite ten.
I have included some honorable mentions to show what the top ten were up against. We will continue with the 1990s.

2000s
Honorable Mentions: Almost Famous (2000), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), Amelie (2001), The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), X2 (2003), The Bourne Supremacy (2004), Shaun of the Dead (2004), King Kong (2005), Little Miss Sunshine (2006), Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), Man on Wire (2008), Slumdog Millionaire (2008), Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)

10. Star Trek (2009)
Similar to another reboot of a well-established film franchise higher on this list, Star Trek reintroduced audiences to the original crew of the starship Enterprise.  Director J.J. Abrams revitalized the series with an action-packed time-travel story that allowed for the filmmakers to explore an alternate timeline without being constrained by the continuity of the previous five decades of Trekkie canon.  Critics praised the feature for being well balanced among humor, action, drama, and spectacle.  Star Trek had the largest American opening ever in the series’ history and went on to be the highest-grossing of all the Trek feature films.  The movie received four Academy Award nominations, winning in Best Makeup, and other nominations included a Grammy, three Empire, five Teen Choice Award, four People’s Choice Award, and five Broadcast Film Critics Association nominations.

9. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)
The third film of the Harry Potter series, it is the first of the franchise that took a darker, more mature, tone and was truly stylized for both children and adults.  It is also the only film of the series that could be a stand-alone picture, which is one of the reasons that makes it so appealing to me.  Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is the story of a man named Sirius Black who has escaped prison and looks to murder Harry.  Despite enormous, and even record-breaking in some areas, box office receipts and earning nearly $800 million worldwide, it is the lowest grossing of all the Harry Potter films.  The movie garnered two Oscar nominations for Best Original Score and Visual Effects and found its way on to a few “Best Of” lists, including Empire magazine, IGN, and Moviefone.

8. WALL-E (2008)
Pixar is heavily represented on this decade’s list, but this is right in the middle of the Golden Age of Pixar filmmaking.  WALL-E is a futuristic story that follows a robot designed to clean a waste-covered Earth that falls in love with another robot and travels into space, altering the lives of mankind.  Although a children’s computer-animated movie, the story deals with deeper societal issues, including consumerism, complacency in the technological age, environmental and waste management, and nostalgia.  WALL-E received near universal acclaim and was a box office success.  Accolades included nominations and wins at the Academy Awards, Golden Globes, Hugo Awards, Saturn Awards, and numerous Critics’ Award ceremonies.  It also was named the best film of the decade by TIME.

7. City of God (2002)
Most likely the only Brazilian film I have ever seen, Cidade de Deus, or City of God, follows the rise of organized crime in Rio de Janeiro from the late 1960s to the early 1980s.  Among the movies bountiful praise from critics, it received abundant rankings on top ten lists for the year and decade.  The film received four Academy Award nominations and was named the Best Foreign Language Film at the Chicago Film Critics Association Awards, New York Film Critics Circle Awards, Las Vegas Film Critics Society Awards, Satellite Awards, Southeastern Film Critics Association Awards, and Toronto Film Critics Association Awards, along with several other nominations in the same category at other award ceremonies.  The movie also spawned a television series and a film based on the TV series.

6. Gladiator (2000)
Not just an epic guy movie that supplanted Spartacus as greatest gladiatorial film, but Gladiator was also an Academy Award winning best picture.  Ridley Scott directs Russell Crowe as former general, turned gladiator, who seeks revenge on the emperor who has murdered his family while surviving fights to the death in Rome’s Colosseum.  Due in part to its box office success, favorable reviews from critics, and showering of awards, Gladiator renewed interest in the historical epic genre.  While it wasn’t a universal success with critics, despite the Best Picture Oscar, audience-goers loved it, making it one of the highest grossing films of the year.  The film was nominated in 36 individual award ceremonies and of the 119 nominations it received, it garnered 48 wins.  Along with the Academy Award, BAFTA, Golden Globe, and other award nominations, Gladiator was included on the American Film Institute’s 100 Heroes and Villains list, the Total Film list of 50 best heroes and villains, and Empire’s 100 Greatest Movie Characters.

5. Up (2009)
One of the things that makes Pixar’s Up so incredible is the first four minutes of the film is a gripping dramatic montage of cinema that summons the deepest compassion in nearly every viewer as it traces the love story of two characters.  Yet, Pixar didn’t stop there and the next 92 minutes follows that up with some of the most heartfelt storytelling Hollywood has ever produced.  The movie centers on an elderly man and young Wilderness Explorer who are thrown together on a trip into South America after the former ties thousands of balloons to his home.  Up was the first animated film to ever open the Cannes Film Festival and only the second animated movie to receive a Best Picture nomination.  It went on to become a huge financial success and was lauded by critics.  The movie was named Best Animated Feature and won for Best Original Score at the Academy Awards and Golden Globes.  It also received nine Annie Award nominations along with several other accolades.

4. Finding Nemo (2003)
Yet another title from the prodigious filmmakers and designers at Pixar, Finding Nemo is not only an astonishing work of storytelling, but the achievements in creating natural-looking water through computer animation is beyond belief.  Like the title implies, Finding Nemo follows an over-protective clown fish named Marlin, who is searching for his abducted son and meets a friend with short-term memory problems along the way that helps teach him that not everything in life can be safe.  Another critical and financial smash for Pixar, Finding Nemo was the second highest grossing film of the year, won the Academy Award and Saturn Award for Best Animated Feature, and is the best-selling DVD of all time.  It received countless other awards and nominations, among which included Best Animated Film at several critics’ award ceremonies.  AFI included the movie among its 10 Top 10 Best Animated Films.

3. Casino Royale (2006)
No “Best Of” list by decade would be complete for me without at least one James Bond movie in consideration, except for the 70s (that’s on you Roger Moore).  Casino Royale, the first written and last filmed of Ian Fleming’s novels, is a reboot of the series, becoming grittier and showing a more vulnerable hero.  Bond must win at a high-stakes poker game in order to bankrupt criminal-financier Le Chiffre.  Current 007 Daniel Craig took over the role with this film, presenting an interpretation more in the mold of Sean Connery and Timothy Dalton than Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan.  Critics were receptive to the new direction of the series but some felt the more brutal tone was turning James Bond into Jason Bourne.  Financially it was the biggest Bond film ever up to that point.  Casino Royale made it on several critics’ top 10 lists and received eight BAFTA nominations, five Saturn Award nominations, and several other awards for its screenplay, film editing, visual effects, and production design.

2. The Dark Knight (2008)
Another film series that rebooted the character to create a darker, more realistic tone, Christopher Nolan’s Batman series is considered to be supreme among the superhero genre.  The Dark Knight is based on the comics The Killing Joke and The Long Halloween and focuses on Batman and Harvey Dent’s pursuit of a new menace in Gotham, the Joker.  Heather Ledger was posthumously awarded the Best Supporting Actor Oscar, Golden Globe, and BAFTA for his role as the Joker and the film was nominated for another seven Academy Awards and eight BAFTAs.  Several other award ceremonies recognized the film and financially the picture made more than a billion dollars worldwide.  With the tone being much more serious than previous comic book movies, real-world themes and analysis were presented with the release of The Dark Knight, including vigilantism, escalation and the extreme measures men will take to fight for justice.

1. The Incredibles (2004)
The fourth and final entry of a Pixar film on this list, The Incredibles presents themes concerning a family of supers attempting to cope with living a normal existence, such as what the Fantastic Four has attempted to achieve, but on a much more human level.  Like Finding Nemo before it having to generate an accurate representative of animated water, The Incredibles required animators to create new technology that would result in realistic-looking human characters that would detail human anatomy, clothing, and skin.  Praised as one of the best of the year, the film was the first all-animated feature to win the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation.  The movie also received the Academy Award and Annie Award for Best Animated Feature.  Winning another Oscar for Best Sound Editing, The Incredibles was the first Pixar feature to win multiple Academy Awards.  It was announced last month that a sequel is currently in the works.

Analysis
Including four computer-animated features on this list portrays me as a simpleton that cannot handle more complex movies than what is presented to a child, but that is simply not the case as Pixar’s filmography includes titles with complicated themes and mature content.  Plus, computer-generated effects were heavily used throughout the 2000s, especially in the animated feature genre.  This specific decade also saw an increased interest in foreign language films and documentaries.  Another attribute of the period was how 9/11 affected filmmaking and the use of social networking to promote movies.

Thursday, April 17, 2014

Thoughts On Oscar's Nominations

The other night while at an Arlington Landmark of Eatery (Candlelight Inn), my friends and I got into a conversation about this past year in film.  One friend claimed the Academy Awards were becoming like the Grammys, in that the nominations are a joke and it is all name recognition at this point.  Anyone who pays the slightest attention to movie and music awards knows that is about the most insulting thing you can say about an awards presentation.
The example he used was Bradley Cooper from American Hustle.  His complaint was Cooper’s performance was not so great that he deserved a nomination, and on top of that opinion he also included that the movie, along with Captain Phillips, shouldn’t have even been included in the list of nominees for Best Picture.  My counter to his complaint was name another movie to replace either American Hustle or Captain Phillips within the list of nine.
I should have prefaced this post with the caveat that I have not yet seen all nine nominated films.  I lack viewing American Hustle, Her, and Philomena.  However, my argument for American Hustle wasn’t predicated on needing to see it.
You see, part of my friend’s complaint with the Academy Awards is that there is too much politicking for specific movies to be nominated in certain categories.  I completely agree with that aspect of his argument.  As my friend stated, “If Harvey Weinstein’s name is on the movie, it’s getting nominated.”  That is a bit hyperbolic, but you get the point.  The campaign period and release schedule do weigh heavily on whether a movie is considered for nomination during awards season.  However, where my stance on whether the Academy Awards has become as preposterous as the Grammys diverges greatly is in his complete dismissal that movies like American Hustle and Captain Phillips aren’t at least in the conversation of the year’s best.
Although I am defending a movie I haven’t seen as one of the best from 2013, I really am justifying the idea of finding nine movies in 2013 to at least consider being the best.  After watching 12 Years a Slave and Gravity, it is unquestionable that one of those two films was the best from last year.  It is completely your prerogative as to whether you would award Gravity for its technical brilliance or 12 Years a Slave for its compelling story and captivating performances, but to have a completely objective view and give the Oscar to any other movie from last year would be a hard sell.
Last year there were 158 movies released in America.  Among that group, there is a lot of crap.  In fact, there is more filth and cash-grabbing from Hollywood’s releases last year than artful, well-made pictures.  To go through the entire list of movies eligible for consideration of the best picture and ignore movies like American Hustle and Captain Phillips is a disservice.  Sure, there are some smaller, more intimate indie-made movies that get overshadowed due to the late-season campaigning, and there are even some movies that not only get a nod for Best Picture but actually end up erroneously being crowned winner, *cough* Shakespeare in Love *cough*.
Back to my friend’s negative outlook on Bradley Cooper’s performance in American Hustle, since I have not yet seen the movie I am not able to confirm or deny the validity of his opinion.  Yet, I think that the acting categories are open to much more interpretation than the technical categories when awards are given out.
If you were to get my opinion about some of the Best Actor/Actress nominees, which you’re not, I would say Lupita Nyong’o’s performance in 12 Years a Slave wasn’t Best Supporting Actress worthy.  She had one scene that showed any real range other than silent submissiveness or the painful wailing brought about by the crack of a whip, but what made that single scene stand out for her is that it was quite a departure from all the other moments she was a part of.   In reality, 95 percent of her acting was inaudible taunting toward her master’s wife and the cries of agony from the beatings she endured as punishment, so of course that final 5 percent would appear to be splendid.  Should a Best Supporting Actress award really go to someone for one good scene when Sally Hawkins, Jennifer Lawrence, Julia Roberts, and June Squibb carry their great performances throughout the entire film.
My thought train has become derailed a bit and crashed through the wall of a depot like the Kool-Aid Man, but what I am trying to get at is five minutes of what appears to be remarkable acting can get you a nomination, but an entire film of great visual effects, music, costumes, or cinematography are needed for a nomination in the specialized categories, including Best Director and Best Picture.
Is the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences a perfect system that gets it right every time?  No.  Does it bring to the public’s attention several motion pictures that are superbly made and deserve recognition for the hard work put into them?  Absolutely.
And for the final record, if I had an Academy vote it would have gone to 12 Years a Slave.  The movie is superbly done and to me outweighs the technical virtuosity that Alfonso Cuaron provided with Gravity.