And Scene! Wrapping up 2021 Oscar Gluttony

Thank you for reading and commenting and being with me on my journey once again. I managed to watch every nominee this year. I finished my final film at 2 pm on Oscar Sunday, watching the documentary, Writing With Fire on my laptop via Vudu! Whew! Now I'm sitting down to eat cheese, apples and cinnamon honey while the red carpet gets kicked off.

I am still super pissed that the Academy decided to sideline several awards in order to 'save time' and appease the masses. They took out Film Editors, so I'm going to be fuming for awhile. But I am no less angry that the Short Subject films will not be included. To be clear, they will show us the winners, but they will pre-record them. Dumb.

I'm not giving my picks this year, I just want to call out my favorite moments in the films I have watched.

My awards go to:

Andrew Garfield belting out a song

Ariana Dubose dancing with so much flare

Kenneth Branaugh's intense and claustrophobic compositions

A daughter signing her song for her father in Coda

The majesty and detail of Dune being brought to the screen

Ariana Grande singing Just Look Up

A couple not cheating in The Worst Person in the World

Olivia Colman and Jessie Bickley showing me real motherhood on screen in The Lost Daughter

The total mania of The Mitchells vs. The Machines

The joy of Free Guy

Enjoy the broadcast if you choose to watch! Good luck to all of you with Oscar ballots!

Writing With Fire

Movie: Writing With Fire

Nominated for: Best Documentary Feature

How I watched: Vudu

When I fell asleep: No, watched in a panic right before the Awards

When it had me: Women Journalists

When it lost me: It didn't

What I have to say:

A documentary that made me both hopeful and sad. It is amazing to see low caste women in India get educated and dedicate themselves to journalism and a belief that they can make a difference in this world.

They are struggling against a political climate that is becoming more religion based and with attacks on journalists, including these women, with personal threats and claims of fake news. It is sad for me to realize that the push toward right wing politics, authoritarian government and fewer rights for women is a global problem. It makes me wonder what hope we have of resisting the rising tide. I guess watching these women work with amazing integrity and bravery can give me the courage I need to keep up the faith.

Spider-Man: No Way Home

Movie: Spider-man: No Way Home

Nominated for: Best Visual Effects

How I watched: AMC

When I fell asleep: No, silly

When it had me: Gen Z

When it lost me: I can't recall

What I have to say:

This was the LAST film we saw before omicron hit. I knew we were taking a risk and I was freaking out. I was wary of this film. The others have been good, we were due for a bad Marvel film, even after The Eternals came out. I felt like this would flop. I was wrong.

I felt like I didn't want to see Tobey McGuire and Andrew Garfield come back. I was wrong, again. I did! I did want to see them. I want to thank Marvel for bringing the Gen Z vibe into the Marvel universe. Watching the older Spider-Men grapple with their feelings of self worth, guilt, shame and PTSD is exactly what I needed and loved about this movie. It was done lightly enough but it also brought such human, behind the scenes look at the darker aspects of what being a superhero might be like.

I was surprised that we had to have a Spider-Man origin story built into this movie. It feels like I've seen so many times and with this incarnation of Spider-Man already having left the planet and blipped and all, it just felt unnecessary but, whatever.

Overall, Marvel is still doing their thing and doing it well.

Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom

Movie: Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom

Nominated for: Best International Feature

How I watched: On Demand

When I fell asleep: I did not

When it had me: Opening shot

When it lost me: It didn't

What I have to say:

This movie starts with a grandmother chiding her twenty-something grandson for his laziness and ranting in a sort of "kids these days" vein. The movie supports her hypothesis by having his boss tell him he is the laziest of all teachers and in answer to that she is sending him to the world's most remote school for the final year of his contract. The school is in Lunana in the mountains of Bhutan at 15,000 feet elevation.

I imagined the movie would then devolve into hearty rural people laughing at an idiot city boy until he learns first hand that country folk are better. That might be what the American version would do. This movie shows more restraint than that. There is a learning curve for the kid from a softer, civilized life but he steps up quickly when he sees the need of the village children. 

I felt the movie made a fair case of demonstrating what we have lost as a species as we have wandered farther away from our tribal roots, without falling into the trap of over-romanticizing life in a mountain village with a population of 53. There is so much that they don't have and I didn't get the feeling I was supposed to end the movie feeling that we should all live in remote villages, necessarily. But through the sparsity of their life, we can see more clearly what they do have: connection to each other and the land, deep gratitude, free time and a relationship to their own creativity and talent for the sake of it, rather than as a commodity.

It is fun to see the young man fall into the rhythm of the village so much so that he doesn't want to leave when his term has ended. Whether he chooses a life in the highlands or not, he has been touched by these lessons and they will change his life forever. They are lessons that I think we could all benefit from, even if we do still like our flush toilets. 

The film was shot on location in Lunana with the actual villagers who had never even seen a movie before. They used solar charged batteries to run the camera. It is important that the location is beautiful and breath taking but it is even more crucial that the people in the film are  so honest and real. You feel you are invited in to something sacred and special that was previously only known to a small community. Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom is something really special and I hope a lot of people get to see it.

Also? This is the most intriguing title of any film this year and the title did not let me down.

Four Good Days

Movie: Four Good Days

Nominated for: Best Original Son

How I watched: Apple TV

When I fell asleep: No

When it had me: Eh

When it lost me: Eh

What I have to say:

Every year, Diane Warren personally sees to it that I end up watching a film that is nominated solely for one of her songs. You never know where her music will pop up; often times it is not in the big nomination getters, but in outlying films.

This movie is about Glenn Close trying to get her adult daughter, Mila Kunis, off of drugs. I find these stories very moving because it is so gut wrenching to see families that simply lose a person to addiction. Once lost, they are so hard to recover!

The acting was solid, the plot drove forward and I felt a great deal of buy in and suspense as to whether their plan would work or not. All of this being said, I'm not sure why I don't feel like this was a GREAT movie. It felt more like a really amazing made for TV movie or a super grown up after school special. I guess its just a solid, workmanlike film that didn't quite transcend. If you like these actors, it's totally worth a watch.

Cyrano

Movie: Cyrano

Nominated for: Best Costume Design

How I watched: Laemmle

When I fell asleep: During one cold, wintry song

When it had me: Peter Dinklage

When it lost me: Frequently

What I have to say:

First off, can I just say that the parking garage I used was real sketchy and ended up charging me $15 for the two hours I was there and I will never think of this movie without that resentment creeping into my heart.

Secondly, this is a musical?? Oh! Ok. I've seen trailers for it and they successfully hid that from me. Is that something you generally want to hide from your audience? Or maybe is it good for people to know what they are getting into? Just curious.

Peter Dinklage is a great actor and not as great of a singer. I thought of Russell Crowe in Les Mis. No one let it affect that movie's success, but this one isn't doing as well. The core story between Roxanne and Cyrano is believable and sweet, charming and heartbreaking. The rest is hard to follow and clunky with those songs that don't function so much as songs as musical exposition and revelation. 

The song that landed best was "I want More" from Roxanne, pinpointing the emotional depth that women crave and has historically been so difficult for men to provide. Emotional depth has not been a celebrated hallmark of masculinity so it makes sense that it can more easily be found in a man who already finds himself an outlier to any traditional notion of "being a man."

As I said above, I did doze during a protracted song about war, in winter. (I recall falling asleep during a similar situation in Les Mis, as well.) This part of the movie was bereft of the connection and lift of Cyrano and Roxanne and so, for me, folded like a house of cards. 

Peter Dinklage is a fantastic actor and to see this story told with someone's real stature as the bar to love and self acceptance, rather then a comical prosthetic nose, is much more vulnerable and tragic. Society has told Cyrano so loudly and so often that he isn't even a real man that his own doubts are what keep him from feeling free enough to express his love. This lifts it out of comedy and sheds light on how the cruelty of the world stunts people's growth as humans. All of this is great for the story but unfortunately still got lost deep inside a clumsy musical.

Coming 2 America

Movie: Coming 2 America

Nominated for: Best Make Up and Hairstyling

How I watched: Prime Video

When I fell asleep: About halfway through

When it had me: Salt N Pepa

When it lost me: It never had me

What I have to say:

I was not a fan of the first movie. I didn't like a lot of things that I was supposed to like in the 1980s, so it makes sense. I did not want to watch this movie.

What I saw felt like half-hearted attempts to update jokes from a long time ago. Also, a lot of musical numbers, which surprised me. Early in the film they reference how last time the King changes the rules to update the kingdom so I knew they were going to have to update the rules so that the one truly competent, invested, intelligent and well trained character could be in charge and I just couldn't stomach a bunch of shenanigans before we got there, so I fell asleep. My husband says I made the right choice.

Also? Leslie Jones character straight up rapes the Eddie Murphy character and they never address it. They treat it as a kind of a blessing? Ugh. That's all I can take.