If you're paying attention, I'm sure you've heard all of these. There have naturally been some snubs this year with the Oscar nominations. Actually some people I thought had very good chances of WINNING turned out to not be nominated. So I was a bit disappointed.
A big complaint this year has been no Harry Potter for Best Picture. This didn't piss me off or anything, as I thought it was a good but not great movie, but I was surprised that it wasn't nominated. It seemed a near certainty, if for no other reason than because it was a conclusion to a series that gets more and more critical acclaim every film that comes out. For instance, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King won Best Picture and while I'm not saying that wasn't deserved, I still argue that Fellowship is the best of that series, but I think the popularity of that series built to a point in which Return of the King virtually had to win Best Picture...and basically every other Academy Award that year.
So now I got that out of the way. As far as the other Best Picture nominees go, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close has no business being up there. It's a classic case of just being an emotional film on an emotional subject, designed to do nothing more than pull at your heartstrings. I'm not saying it's a bad film, but if you look at what critics have had to say about it, it certainly isn't a good film. It reminds me a little bit of The Blind Side back in '09, which seemed to just be up for Best Picture for sentimental reasons.
As I have mentioned numerous times before, this was a year in which the best movies never really saw wide releases. That having been said, I'm not surprised The Help didn't get a nomination. It probably isn't deserving of it, but it's one of the few movies that people actually saw. Again, that's why I'm surprised Harry Potter and Drive didn't get nominated, Drive in particular.
This year of course contained the annual Meryl Streep Oscar nomination, this time playing former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. From what I've heard, this was an outstanding performance.
Moneyball. Moneyball was a good film but not a great film by any means. As far as baseball movies go, it is nothing compared to Bull Durham or Field of Dreams. It was well acted and all, and overall quite well-made but I don't know why it got so much Oscar buzz. I'm not surprised it was up for so many Academy Awards because people have been talking about it for a long time, but when I finally saw it I was a bit disappointed. While telling a story of baseball from a financial sidepoint was a unique view, it wasn't really a story worth telling. And being a baseball fan, I couldn't help but think that this was a baseball movie for people who didn't really like baseball (Why do you think they cast Brad Pitt, every woman's favorite man ever?). For instance, a good deal of the film focuses on a 20-game win-streak when I as a baseball fan know well that regular season win-streaks mean very little. Pitt was good but it was an easy role to play and I would have much preferred to see a nomination go to Fassbender in Shame or Gosling in Drive or DiCaprio in J Edgar. Now THAT was a hard role to play. This year was the most crowded year for Best Actor since 2004, I think. I never even heard of A Better Life or Demian Bichir, but judging by his competition (and more importantly, the competition that didn't get nominated) I'm sure he's quite deserving. And on one final note, I despise Jonah Hill but I hope Moneyball marks a change in his career to playing more mature roles. Then I wouldn't hate him.
We all know Albert Brooks was ripped off for not being nominated in the Supporting Actor category for Drive, the most snubbed film of the year with all due respect to Harry Potter. I loved Kenneth Branagh as Olivier in My Week with Marilyn and Hill was quite good as aforementioned, but let's face it: we've been waiting life fifty years for Christopher Plummer to win an Academy Award, so I kind of hope he wins the Best Supporting Actor this year.
This year was also incredibly crowded in the Best Actress category. People have been talking about Viola Davis and Streep for a while, and Rooney Mara certainly got a good deal of attention in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. And I think Kirsten Dunst was snubbed for her performance in Melancholia, a very underplayed film that was brilliantly made, and she was just astounding in it. However, Glenn Close came out of nowhere and got a nomination. I didn't even know she was in a movie this year. All that having been said, I would be rather surprised if Michelle Williams doesn't win it for My Week with Marilyn. Why? Well the Academy loves those kind of roles: playing conflicted historical people. And after seeing the film, by no means would it be undeserving. It was incredible seeing her in what I consider to be the best performance of the year. Being a Marilyn Monroe fan, I was a bit skeptical (mostly because in real life she doesn't look a thing like her) but she had every expression down completely, and her voice was perfect, even when she sang. If you haven't seen that movie, see it for the performance alone (though I thought it was a pretty darn good movie anyways).
Many have argued that Andy Serkis deserves an Academy Award nomination for his performance as the chimpanzee Caesar in Rise of the Planet of the Apes. If he was eligible, I'd say sure, but I don't think he could have possibly been nominated, since he's done completely CGI. He was great, don't get me wrong, but I found this film to be a little overrated. And on top of that, it was my second favorite Andy Serkis bites off someone's thumb performance, and maybe even my second favorite Andy Serkis as an ape performance, though probably not the latter.
The Adventures of Tintin was horribly ripped off by not getting an Oscar nod for Best Animated Feature. You can't possibly tell me Kung Fu Panda 2 was better than this refreshing film. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I'm saying it was the best action movie of the year, though admittedly I did not see Mission Impossible.
For my final complaint, let's head to the Best Original Screenplay category. This is the opportunity for the little films to shine, usually an creatively original serious comedy will get a nomination or a win here, like Lost in Translation or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. This isn't a category for gross-out comedies like Bridesmaids. Now Bridesmaids has more to it than just a gross-out comedy; in that regard it was like Superbad: a funny and vulgar movie that had some heart to it. But was the screenplay really that great? No. And yes, folks, though it's a woman's movie, I did actually see it, so I kind of know what I'm talking about. I've been pointed to 50/50 as being an outstanding script and I've been told it was ripped off. There ya go, folks.
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