Dunkirk ***
Get Out ****
The Shape of Water ***1/2
Not seen:
Call Me by Your Name
Darkest Hour
Lady Bird
Phantom Thread
The Post
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Brief reviews:
Dunkirk *** Saw it months ago when it was released - liked it very much but it has not stuck with me like a great movie would. Not all that memorable.
Get Out **** Started out good, kept getting better. This may not make sense, but I actually enjoyed it more after it was done, as opposed to while it was unfolding. My front runner for Best Picture, can’t imagine that any of the so-far unseen films will top Get Out.
The Shape of Water ***1/2 Loved it, but I did have a semi-beef about how the final act devolved into a seen-it-all-before chase sequence. As original as it was it’s a shame there were occasional but glaring cliches dropped into the mix.
mmm
Call Me by Your Name ****
Get Out ****
Lady Bird ***
The Post **15/16
The Shape of Water ****
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri **7/8
I think any of my three 4-Star movies would make a satisfying Best Picture win, but I’m really rooting for Get Out. It’s a subtly genius-level piece of filmmaking. Jordan Peele paid so much attention to every aspect of the film.
Of the ones I’ve seen, Three Billboards is my least favorite — a bit shallow and contrived compared to the others. Still a solid movie, but I don’t think it operated at as deep a level as a the competition.
PS: my girlfriend just pointed out to me that Lady Bird is basically a John Hughes movie. I guess I ageee.
Darkest Hour ***
Dunkirk *** 1/2
Get Out *** 1/2
Lady Bird *** 1/2
Phantom Thread ****
The Shape of Water ***1/2
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri ****
Not Seen (I’ll get to these):
The Post
Call Me by Your Name
A few friends of mine haven’t really liked Call me by your name, but I’ll watch it and make my own judgement. I’m not that into The Post for some reason, but I reckon I’ll see it at some point.
I really feel like I should have loved Call Me, but it just didn’t really grab me. It’s beautiful filmmaking and the actors are wonderful, so I can definitely appreciate it, but it was such a slow burn before much of anything happened.
While all the other categories are simply a ballot check-off, Best Picture runs off a preferential ballot, where you rank your choices 1-9 and the film with the fewest #1s get those ballots redistributed to the remaining films based on the #2 choice, and then the next lowest #1s get redistributed, etc. until a single film has a majority (not just a plurality). So given this, this is how I’d rank the Picture nominees:
Dunkirk ***
Get Out ****
The Post **
The Shape of Water ***1/2 Not seen:
Call Me by Your Name
Darkest Hour
Lady Bird
Phantom Thread
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri
Just returned from seeing The Post. Very mediocre. I always like Hanks, and Streep was Streep, but the movie was pretty by-the-books film making, nothing out of the ordinary. Tried, and failed, to be the All the President’s Men of its time. Happy to see Bob Odenkirk get a nice film role, though.
mmm
It was a necessary change in the voting once they expanded the Best Picture slate beyond the traditional 5 in 2009. They didn’t want a film to win Best Picture with only potentially as little as 12% of the ballots. Since the preferential ballot is what they use to assemble the nominees for Best Picture (a similar ranking and redistribution system), it’s also been implemented for the award itself.
This means that a film has to have not only a passionate set of followers, but also a broader appeal so that while #1 rankings will never alone be enough for a win, the accumulation of #2 & 3 ranks as well will do the job.
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, MO- A
Get Out-A
The Shape of Water-B
I may watch Darkest Hour and Call Me By Your Name, but Dunkirk and The Post I’m not going to watch. Phantom Thread and Lady Bird I’m on the fence, they’re not priority watches for me.
I have movie pass which allows one to watch many movies in the theater for a small monthly price. The ones that no longer in the theater I may watch at home.
Have only seen The Post so far, will be starting an Oscar marathon watch this weekend.
The Post reminds me of a documentary and I don’t think people younger than about 60 would appreciate it, I think they’d be bored out of their minds. I’d give it 2-3/4 stars.
I think the nominees show yet again that “middlebrow” cinema is almost dead.
The Oscars used to go to mainstream movies playing at neighborhood theaters. That doesn’t happen so much any more. Most of the nominees are now arthouse flicks.
The days when Hollywood took best selling novels and made them into middlebrow movies for ordinary grownups are largely gone. You have indie movies at the arthouses for foreign and gay movies, and superhero or car chase movies at the multiplex for kids. Hardly anybody is making movies for middle class, middle American adults any more (they stay home and watch*** NCIS***).
The Oscars increasing go to the same movies that win Spirit awards, movies that most Americans have never heard of, let alone seen.
For a change, this year I’ve actually seen some of the nominations before the ceremony.
Seen:
Darkest Hour - it’s OK, but there’s a scene that is so totally shit that it rather ruins the rest of it. Gary Oldman Gary Oldman’s his way to a likely Oscar, but eh, John Lithgow made a better job of Churchill in The Crown.
Dunkirk - horrible, claustrophobic, white-knuckle-tense in the cinema, less so on a second viewing via alternate means. On a smaller screen - with the sonic and visual virtuosity turned down- some flaws become evident: Dunkirk was a gigantic operation, and Nolan reduced it down way too far. The sound design and Zimmer’s score though - holy shit. Overall a tremendous piece of work.
The Post - strictly by the numbers Spielberg. OK I suppose, the performances are good as you’d expect, but there’s hee-haw tension or interest for me in who ended up keeping control of the Washington Post.
The Shape of Water - Smitten, I was smote. Hard to articulate -and I can’t fully explain how much I loved Pans Labyrinth either - but GDT sometimes just gets it so damned right. Loved it.
Not seen yet
Call Me by Your Name
Get Out
Lady Bird
Phantom Thread
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri