Marty Supreme - 9 nominations

 

Best Casting: Jennifer Venditti

Best Achievement in Cinematography: Darius Khondji

Best Motion Picture of the Year: Eli Bush, Ronald Bronstein, Josh Safdie, Anthony Katagas, Timothée Chalamet

Best Achievement in Directing: Josh Safdie

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role: Timothée Chalamet

Best Original Screenplay: Josh Safdie (writer), Ronald Bronstein (writer)

Best Achievement in Production Design: Jack Fisk (production designer), Adam Willis (set decorator)

Best Achievement in Costume Design: Miyako Bellizzi

Best Achievement in Film Editing: Ronald Bronstein, Josh Safdie

Marty Mauser is a shoe salesman with a dream - to become the world champion table tennis player. He is a hustler, he has a married girlfriend who is pregnant with his baby, and what’s more, each one of his disastrous decisions puts him in danger, or at least right at the edge of it. But he is singularly focused on achieving greatness, much like the actor who plays him and openly says that he aspires to be one of the all-time greats in his own field. The film is frenetic, much like Josh Safdie’s other works (especially Uncut Gems), and this is another year in a row when the Producer/Director is also the Writer/Editor and is nominated for all four categories (including Best Picture). Last year, Sean Baker took home all four prizes.

Does this put Marty Supreme on the path for the big win, Best Picture? In the mix, maybe. For the win? I don’t think so. Having said that, it’s hard to argue that the frenetic style of movie making - when done well - must be a top contender for Editing. And Timothee (who longtime readers of the blog will know I have nicknamed “Greasy” because even after an on-screen shower, he still somehow looks a bit greasy to me) was outstanding. For an actor who brings his A game powerfully in every role, this was his best performance of his career. The nominations in some of the technical categories (costume, production design) are expected for period pieces but are unlikely winners against films like Hamnet and this year’s darling, Sinners.

I highly recommend the film with the caveat that it can be dizzying. If you’re not up for that kind of experience, then give it a skip.

Dune Part Two - 5 nominations

 

• 
  • Best Sound

  • Gareth John 
  • Richard King 
  • Ron Bartlett 
  • Doug Hemphill
• 
  • Best Achievement in Visual Effects

  • Paul Lambert 
  • Stephen James 
  • Rhys Salcombe 
  • Gerd Nefzer
• 
  • Best Motion Picture of the Year

  • Mary Parent 
  • Cale Boyter 
  • Tanya Lapointe 
  • Denis Villeneuve
• 
  • Best Achievement in Cinematography

  • Greig Fraser
• 
  • Best Achievement in Production Design

  • Shane Vieau (set decorator) 
  • Patrice Vermette (production designer)

Before I describe a bit about Dune Part 2 (and frankly, the story is complicated enough rendering it nearly indescribable in a short blog post), I want to remind you that Dune Part 1 was nominated for 10 Oscars and won 6 of those. At the time, I thought surely that when Part 2 came out, it would be the leading candidate for Best Picture and that Denis Villeneuve (who took the unfilmable story and made it very filmable) would be a shoo-in for Best Director.  He's not even nominated, and beyond the Best Picture nomination, all the accolades are in the technical categories for production craft.

So what happened? I can't pretend to know. But if you look at the other films nominated for Best Picture, there is a way to describe the stories, there is something that sticks with you. Wicked's got hummable songs and a power cast. Emilia Perez has songs and a power cast. Nickel Boys has history and a whole different way of telling a story. A Complete Unknown has Timothee Chala... ok, that's one for Dune 2, as well.

In addition to all of that, Dune has also released a tv show which has the same characters and family intrigue, and it's just possible that people are simply Dune-d out. When you add that the movie inconveniently is very hard to describe, it's hard to get the buzz. (You know, that movie with the sand monsters and something about spice, maybe? is hardly the catchy narrative that some of the other nominees can claim.)

To be sure, the second film is as good as the first and certainly as impressive as a work of science fiction and I enjoyed it once my memory kicked in from the first installment. (I highly recommend doing some sort of review of the first film before you begin the second, there is no "last time on Dune 1"...) But if I were cutting the nominees down to just 5, Dune 2 would not make my list. And frankly, if I had to kick one out to make room for Sing Sing (review coming soon), this would be the one I would choose. And no, there is no chance of my being able to describe the plot succinctly, so for the first time in 12 years of blog posts, I'm skipping even trying.

A Complete Unknown - 8 Nominations

 

• 
  • Best Sound

  • Tod A. Maitland 
  • Donald Sylvester 
  • Ted Caplan 
  • Paul Massey 
  • David Giammarco
• 
  • Best Motion Picture of the Year

  • Fred Berger 
  • James Mangold 
  • Alex Heineman
• 
  • Best Achievement in Directing

  • James Mangold
• 
  • Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role

  • Timothée Chalamet
• 
  • Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role

  • Monica Barbaro
• 
  • Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role

  • Edward Norton
• 
  • Best Adapted Screenplay

  • Jay Cocks 
  • James Mangold
• 
  • Best Achievement in Costume Design

  • Arianne Phillips

In a very musical year at the Oscars, A Complete Unknown was truly one of my favorites of the year. The performances from Timothee Chalamet, Ed Norton, and Monica Barbaro blew me away - and for the film, I understand all three had to learn guitar and Ed Norton banjo for an unbelievably convincing turn as Pete Seeger. It is a biopic that begins when Bob Dylan arrives in New York, figures out where Woody Guthrie is hospitalized, and visits him with this guitar and his impressive lyrics. He and Pete figure out pretty quickly that this kid has the makings of a star. We watch Dylan's rise to fame and his ultimate ambivalence about what stardom does to his life. He doesn't appreciate being in the spotlight, and he REALLY doesn't want to be locked in a box of what "folk music" means. He doesn't want to be anyone's performing monkey, so he won't play the game, nor will he play Blowin' in the Wind, no matter how much the audience wants to hear it.

All of this tumult though is overridden by the pure joy of Dylan's songs and try as I might to be quiet in the theater, I couldn't help singing along. The music is timeless, and even when you're watching what sometimes looks like a petulant child (do you think that I like doing every thing required of me in MY job? That's called being a grown up, Bob), the performances and the story are so compelling that they can't be resisted by the hardest of movie goers. I hope that audiences of all ages are going, but if you're over 50 and you haven't seen it, I just don't know what you are doing with your life.

Call Me By Your Name - 4 nominations

Best Picture - Peter Spears, Luca Guadagnino, Emilie Georges and Marco Morabito
Actor in a Leading Role, Timothée Chalamet
Music (Original Song), "Mystery Of Love" from Call Me by Your Name, Music and Lyric by Sufjan Stevens
Writing (Adapted Screenplay), Screenplay by James Ivory

Elio (Timothee Chalamet) is a 17 year old student who lives with his professor father and translator mother in Italy, living the normal life of a teenager (as normal as it can be when one is trilingual and an incredible musician). The family of intellectuals welcomes Oliver, a doctoral student and uber hottie (Armie Hammer), to live with them for the summer so that he can study with Elio's father (Michael Stuhlbarg).  Over the course of the summer, Elio experiences a sexual awakening having both his first experience with a girlfriend and heterosexual sex and his first experience with love, as he and Oliver find delight in each other.  

There are some confusing moments - Oliver claims to have been trying to woo Elio throughout the summer, but has an affair with a woman from the town.  He never says anything about why a 17 year old would find it hard to decipher that Oliver might be interested in a gay romance while he is pursuing a woman, and we the audience must decipher that both Oliver and Elio are having sex with women while apparently secretly pining for each other.  The sexual orientation of both characters is never entirely clear, but the romance is so pure that labels are clearly irrelevant and totally unimportant.

I'm not a big lover of slow, methodical films like this one, and if you peruse my past reviews of films, you'll find similar criticisms as I'm expressing here.  Call Me By Your Name is gorgeous to look at at, and it's true that Timothee Chalamet gives a remarkable performance for someone so young - the final shot of the film is probably what won him the nomination.  

But what I couldn't get over in the age of #metoo, where an entire movie is reshot because Kevin Spacey was sexually inappropriate with a 14 year old at age 30 (I'll talk more about this in my future review of All the Money in the World), people are strangely silent about a film in which a 17 year old boy is finding himself with a 24 year old man (and let's face it, Armie Hammer is actually a 29 year old man who looks like a 29 year old man which doesn't help).  I couldn't get past the "ew" factor of a teenager and a grown man who has finished college.  Certainly one could argue that Elio would be 18 in a year and that he was already old for his age and that I'm being too conventional.  But had this same film been shot with another high school student, I think this creep factor wouldn't have been an issue.

To me, the most powerful part of the film comes at the end in a monologue by Michael Stuhlbarg who plays Elio's father.  (Spoiler alert)  To see a father express unconditional love, to provide support when his child's heart is breaking, and to reassure him that everything he is experiencing is normal AND important was truly pivotal and must honored.  Though this one monologue isn't really enough to garner an Oscar nomination this year, it certainly is enough to give Stuhlbarg the great adoration that he deserves for his performance.

Again, I'm not always engaged by long, slow films, so I'm not sure that the creep factor was my only issue with the film.  There are plenty of people who love this style and I've heard many who have said they thought this the finest film of the year.  Bottom line, it wasn't for me and if you are like me, you can skip it.

To watch the movie trailer: