judgmental observer

My Mom’s 2014 Oscar Picks

Posted on March 2, 2014 Updated on March 2, 2014

Most bloggers publish their Oscar picks hours, or at the latest, days, after the nominations are announced. Because that’s when most people are interested in hearing about Oscar picks — before the Oscars. But Nana and I aren’t “most bloggers.” Sure, we’ll give you our Oscar picks, but we’re going to publish them just hours before the actual ceremony. That’s because Nana and I like to throw caution to the wind. We’re free-thinkers. We’re iconoclasts. We’re rebels. But mostly? We’ve both been really, really busy the last few months and didn’t have the time to sit down and discuss our Oscar picks today, the day of the big O.

Amanda: Okay, Nana, so we don’t have a lot of time because we sort of waited until the last minute — we were both trying to see as many of the 2013 films as we could. So before we begin our conversation, in the interest of full disclosure, I think we need to tell our readers what movies we haven’t seen. I’ll start with mine: The Wolf of Wallstreet (Martin Scorsese), Nebraska (Alexander Payne), Philomena (Stephen Frears), Captain Phillips (Paul Greengrass). So there are quite a few holes in my ballot, I’m afraid. What about you?

Nana: Wow. Well, you’re going to have to see those.

I know, Nana, I know.

The movie Her (Spike Jonze) is the one Best Picture nominee that I have not seen.

That’s the only one?

Yep.

Wow. Good job, Nana. 

Thanks.

What are your picks for best actress in a leading role?

Frankly, all five of them were very, very good. I enjoyed all of their performances. But, by far — and it will be an absolute crime if she does not win — the best performance was by Cate Blanchett in Blue Jasmine (Woody Allen). Her role was so interesting: it was a woman who had experienced great wealth and then lost it suddenly, and it really affected her mentally. To watch her try to cope with life from one extreme to another was fascinating. She’s just absolutely gorgeous and she’s  such a wonderful actress. At the end you almost just had to cry with her.

Almost! Well my pick is definitely Sandra Bullock in Gravity (Alfonso Cuaron). Now I did enjoy Amy Adams in American Hustle (David O. Russell) and it was a hard role because she was playing alongside Jennifer Lawrence, who clearly had the showier role. But I think she made her character matter in that film, and she made me care about her. But still, I have to stick with Sandra here because it’s very difficult to carry a performance by yourself, when you have no humans to interact with, to play off of. Her costars were the films’ special effects. I thought she pulled off the complexity of emotion you need in a controlled role like that. She made me care about the human element in a film which is otherwise about how insignificant humanity is.

Oh I enjoyed that movie, though I did find it almost silly in areas.

What do you mean?

I mean the whole thought of a person being alone in space and what she was going through. A quarter of the way through I almost turned it off.

Wow.

I also watched it on OnDemand at home, so that may have something to do with it.

Ha, yes. What are your picks for best actor in a leading role?

Again, all five were superb (except for Christian Bale, I disliked American Hustle tremendously, I thought it was a stupid movie). As you know, I am such a fan of Leonardo, and I was pulling for him to win up until last night, when I finally watched Dallas Buyer’s Club (Jean-Marc Vallee). But now I think, without question, Matthew McConaughey* must win. He was phenomenal.

Because he lost a ton of weight?

Oh goodness, no. It was the role: this pathetic man who tried desperately to secure a life for himself and had nothing but his weekly paycheck, which always went towards gambling and women. And then the one thing he prided himself on was his sex drive, and how frequently he has sex with women, and then it turns out he has HIV.  And then, of course, his friends turn against him. Then, he tries to desperately to bring these drugs into the country, which have been banned by the FDA. Just a fascinating story.

*Note: Nana keeps calling him “Matthew McConnelly”

Well, Nana, as you know, my pick has been, and remains, Chiwetel Ejiofor in 12 Years a Slave (Steve McQueen). In some ways, it’s a similar role to the one played by McConaughey in Dallas Buyer’s Club: a man who finds himself in a horrible situation, a life or death situation, and how does he negotiate that, how does he keep himself alive? For me, I thought it was a very subtle performance — Michael Fassbender had the showy role in this movie — but this actor was expressive and restrained at the same time.

For example, there’s one scene, about halfway through the movie, where Solomon attends the funeral of an older man who has died from heat exhaustion or malnutrition — the result of his status as an enslaved worker. At first, Solomon remains silent as the other slaves sing a funeral dirge. His mouth is tight and his eyes are distant. The director uses a long take here that focuses on Solomon’s face and these subtle degrees of change — the camera stays with him through the entire song, it never cuts, never looks away. But over the course of the song his face makes these micro adjustments. He begins to sing along, half heartedly. Then he begins to sing in earnest. For me, this was the moment when Solomon decided he was going to continue to commune with his own humanity. He was going to mourn this man’s death and recognize that  death matters, even though he is in a seemingly hopeless situation. He could have gone two ways — go numb or continue to feel. He chooses to continue to feel here, which is arguably the tougher choice. To convey that with no dialogue? That’s an Oscar, Nana.

Oh, I agree, he did a great job.

What are your picks for best supporting actress in a leading role?

June Squibb, in Nebrasksa, was one of my favorites. At eighty-four years old, she’s just incredible. But she won’t win. My pick — and I don’t know if she’ll win because she’s so hot right now — and that’s Jennifer Lawrence in American Hustle. The only saving grace in that film is Jennifer Lawrence.

Oh I agree with you on that point…

I don’t really think she should have won last year (for Silver Linings Playbook). But for this role? If she doesn’t win, I think it’s because she’s so pretty. People don’t want to like her.

This is a tough one. I can’t pick between Jennifer Lawrence and Lupita Nyong’o. The reason why I’m on the fence is because I think these roles — in a lot of ways — are serving the same function. There are a lot of parallels between Rosalyn and Patsy: they’re both women who have little to no control over their own lives. Their actions and their livelihoods are controlled by men. And the outcomes of their lives are both very much tied to their bodies. Rosalyn’s only power is in her sexuality — in her sloppy up do, her ample cleavage, and her nails that smell like flowers and garbage — and she uses that to get what she wants. But for Patsy, her sexuality is a liability. It’s the reason she is repeatedly raped and why she becomes a target for the jealous wife of her rapist. I think that illustrates, ironically, the way white privilege functions in the cinema: female sexuality  is empowering for powerless white woman and destructive for the powerless black woman.

What are your picks for best supporting actor in a leading role?

Ohhh. Absolutely Jared Leto. The way he talked, the way he walked. There was such love in him. And everybody loved him, except his family. Not only was he very sick with AIDS but he was so addicted to cocaine and heroine and whatever else he was taking…And then the scene where he had to put on a men’s suit to meet with his father?

Yes, that was one of the more poignant scenes in the film. When we see him that suit — with no make up, no color — he just looks so despondent, like it’s killing him to be dressed that way. 

When you see the relationship between Rayon and his father you can see why he turned to drugs — his family didn’t accept him. And then when he knows he’s about to die and he’s looking in the mirror and he says “When I go to heaven, I want to be pretty.” Oh God.

Yeah, I think he’s my pick, too, Nana. So let’s wrap it up: what is your pick for best picture?

I am still in favor of The Wolf of Wall Street.

WHAAAAAAT?

Yes.

You’re blinded by your boyfriend [Leonard DiCaprio].

[Here Nana precedes to trash other Best Picture nominees and we argue a lot]

The Wolf of Wall Street had everything: it had incredible acting, it had — if they want the sex thing and naked bodies — it had that, it had humor, it had a fascinating story. It was just extremely well done. I’m going with The Wolf of Wall Street. 

Okay, so you know I haven’t all of the Best Picture nominees, but I am going to stick with my original pick in this category, 12 Years a Slave. My reason for that — and we’ve discussed this before — is that my criteria for Best Picture is that the whole be greater than the sum of its parts. So a Best Picture winner has to have great performances, beautiful cinematography, a strong script, etc. But then, the picture itself has to be more than that. For me, this movie has been long overdue. I know there have been movies about slavery made in the past, but no other film, in my experience, has delved into the subtle and ongoing damage that the institution of slavery has created in this country like this film has. We see how slavery impacts the relationships between African American men and women — how they are both suffering but in such very different ways (for example, getting rape versus watching helplessly as someone gets raped, those are two very different kinds of horrors). We also see how it impacted the relationships between the male and female slaveowners — how the white mistress was powerless, except when it came to the slaves, the one arena in which she could flex her muscles and exert power. We see that in the scene where Mistress Epps (Sarah Paulson) throws a crystal vase at Patsy’s head. I found those scenes to be so much more devastating than the more overtly violent moments. I think America desperately needed this movie to be made.

Okay, so my final question for you is this: are there any movies or performances that weren’t nominated that you feel should have been nominated?

Hmmm, you know the one film I was surprised didn’t get anything is The Butler (Lee Daniels). I was surprised it didn’t get more. Did Oprah get anything for this?

Nope.

Oh wow. Well the lead, Forest Whitaker, was superb. The role he played — from when he was a little boy and his father was shot in the fields and his mother was raped — and he goes on to get a job in the White House. I really thought that film was wonderful, Not sure why it was snubbed. Also, All is Lost  (J.C. Chandor). Poor Robert Redford.

For me this year’s big snub was Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine). Spring Breakers failed to find it’s audience because on the surface it looked like a fun teenpic about “good girls gone bad” on Spring Break — this misconception about the film was encourage by the foregrounding of its Disney princess stars — Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens — and the images of neon-bikini clad revelers that accompanied advertisements for the film. The folks who were drawn in by the ad campaign got a very different picture: a borderline-experimental meditation on capitalism, whiteness, femininity, and the affectless violence and sexuality of contemporary visual culture. So, in other words, not a light film in the least. In fact, I just taught this film in my course, Women and Identity in American Cinema, and one thing my students mentioned is that they didn’t believe that the film’s young stars — particularly Selena Gomez — were even aware of the kind of film they were starring in. Instead, the women acted as they always do — as the beneficiaries of white privilege, immune to critique, physical harm (except for a single gunshot wound), or laws. One of my students explained it this way on our class blog: 

While the girls do little, they are rewarded nonetheless, whether their efforts were good or bad. This allows the “white privilege” of the girls to be seen more like armor because they act as though nothing can touch them, they are invincible– immortal. They’ve been taught and proven right many times (robbing a restaurant, etc.) that there are no consequences for them…That is the role whiteness plays in this film, the illusion of immortality and security.

Beyond it’s cunning commentary on race, Spring Breakers offers up one of the best performances of the year with James Franco’s turn as Alien, a cornrow-and-diamond-grill-wearing drug dealer/wannabe-rapper. My students all agreed that Franco definitely knew what kind of movie he was acting in (one student noted “I mean, he has a PhD”). Yeah, that’s the kind of movie this is — the kind of movie that may require one of its actors to have a PhD in order to fully understand the meaning of his own character.

As Jeffrey Sconce notes, Alien is a tragic figure in this movie. While the pretty white girls he brings under his wing are just “playing” at being gangstas and “bad bitches,” this world is his life. When he delivers his “Look at my shit!” speech he means it. He loves his shit and he believes his shit makes him important. But it was the acquisition of so much shit (specifically, the deadly duo of Candy and Britt) that leads to his ultimate demise.

Other snubs? I loved Greta Gerwig in Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach), and really, I feel that film deserved more recognition overall. Also, Don Jon (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), which was a visceral counterpoint to the more philosophically-inclined Her on the subject of online intimacy. 

Well, Nana, thanks for talking with me again. Your fans thank you.