Vice - 8 nominations

Best Picture - Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Adam McKay and Kevin Messick

Actor in a Leading Role, Christian Bale
Actor in a Supporting Role, Sam Rockwell
Actress in a Supporting Role, Amy Adams
Directing, Adam McKay
Film Editing, Hank Corwin
Makeup and Hairstyling, Greg Cannom, Kate Biscoe and Patricia DeHaney
Writing (Original Screenplay), Written by Adam McKay

"I can handle the more mundane... jobs. Overseeing bureaucracy... military... energy... and, uh... foreign policy."  (yeah, that's basically everything)

There is so much to know about how Dick Cheney rose to the Vice Presidency.  At the time, it seemed that he was the erstwhile President behind the scenes, while George W Bush was the front man.  How did this happen?  The answer according to this film is Ann Cheney, Dick's wife, of whom it has been said that no matter who she married, he would end up in a place of serious power.  Cheney's younger years captured by heavy drinking and hard work, he slowly rose to power when Ann put her foot down and demanded more of him.  He finds a mentor in Donald Rumsfeld, and together they work for every modern Republican President in one or another capacities, including Cheney serving as the youngest chief of staff of all time for President Ford at the age of 34.

What is so cool about this film is that it's extremely weird.  It's not just regular storytelling - there is fantasy and humor and some things I don't even know how to describe.  There is a scene where the Cheneys are suddenly saying lines from MacBeth, but as themselves.  There is a scene in the middle of the movie where there is pronounced a happily ever after when the Cheneys slide off into happy obscurity, never to have engaged in politics again (well before becoming VP, just a funny, random, non-sequitur).  Not to mention the incredible number of heart attacks and how Cheney just takes them in stride as he is having them.  (A dozen doughnuts per day will do that to you.)  And these bizarre moments peppered throughout make the movie interesting and so much more than just a biopic.

The acting in the film is just superb.  Somehow Christian Bale is able to completely remake himself into Cheney, even achieving that strange side of the mouth talking from the real person.  It is well known that he gained over 40 pounds for the role, and the makeup and hairstyling do transform him into the man.  But it is the acting that brings it all the way home for Bale to truly embody the former VP.  This performance could dwarf both Adams and Rockwell, but doesn't.  They both also transform themselves into credible facsimiles of the real people, and same goes for Steve Carrell as Donald Rumsfeld, who did not receive a nomination but easily could have.

This whole film was Adam McKay's baby (which is why he is nominated in three categories).  He did years of research, he conducted interviews with the people who knew the Cheneys and who surrounded them.  As always, my very sincere admonition not to assume that everything you see in a movie is historical fact.  A quick search on Amazon reveals a number of books about the Cheney Vice Presidency (and even then, everyone has a point of view), but my sense is that the broad strokes of this film get it right.  

Cheney is possibly one of the most reviled figures in American politics (his approval rating when leaving office was 13%).  This film does nothing to assuage that impression.  I was angry during this movie, and so were the people I watched it with, Republicans and Democrats alike.  So perhaps that is the greatest value of Vice - it unites both sides of the aisle with a certain amount of shared disgust.  Isn't that a beautiful thing?

The Big Short - 5 nominations

Best Picture - Brad Pitt, Dede Gardner and Jeremy Kleiner, Producers
Actor in a Supporting Role, Christian Bale

Directing, Adam McKay

Writing (Adapted Screenplay), Charles Randolph and Adam McKay

Film Editing, Hank Corwin

The Big Short attempts a difficult feat - how to explain the collapse of the world economy and still be entertaining - and it accomplishes that goal by all accounts.  The key characters in the film are by and large real people, particularly those who saw through the housing bubble and took advantage of the deregulation of the banking industry to ultimately great wealth.  One of the most charming parts of the script is that occasionally Ryan Gosling's character will break the fourth wall, look at the audience and say, "this really happened!"  In other words, this insanity seems like something that our screenwriter would have come up with for the purposes of decorating the movie with incredible scenarios, but no! You can't make this sh*t up!  Occasionally he also looks at the camera and says, "ok, this isn't exactly how this scene transpired, but you get it, this is poetic license."

The Big Short has a very strong chance in the Adapted Screenplay category because it more than achieved its impossible task.  It's certainly one of the 5 films I consider worthy of a Best Picture nomination, and has the ever elusive comedic elements that so rarely grace Oscar nominees.  There is no question that editing this story to be coherent, understandable, and interesting was a great challenge, particularly when most of the American public is not conversant in the technicalities of mortgages, CDOs, credit swaps, and valuation.

It's hard to single out just Christian Bale for recognition in this truly ensemble film but to be fair, his quirky, awkward, heavy-metal loving character is certainly a departure from his usual work.  I'm surprised that Steve Carell wasn't nominated in the acting category, but with a packed field of outstanding performances, getting the nomination was no easy task.

All of this is always a credit to the leader of the pack, Adam McKay who not only co-wrote the brilliant screenplay (which I'm assuming means that he really learned and understood the material) but directed, as well.  His work in The Big Short clearly speaks for itself and the nomination is well deserved.

Finally, if you were intrigued by The Big Short, I high recommend seeing the Oscar winning documentary from 2010, Inside Job, which explains this material even more thoroughly.  Inside Job does include more about the political landscape and how deregulating the banking industry contributed to the collapse, and how CEO's played a role, as well.  It's also a must see.