This is the first of two (possibly three?) posts today about awards season, as it all comes to the grand finale tonight with the 90th Academy Awards. They can be viewed on a dedicated Sky Movies channel in the UK and on ABC in the US.
But before I get on to post my Oscar predictions, there's one more awards body to get out of the way first.
Yesterday- Saturday 3rd March- saw the handing out of the 33rd Film Independent Spirit Awards, in a ceremony hosted by Nick Kroll (Loving, Sing, Vacation) and John Mulaney (Mayne Street, Saturday Night Live) for the second year running.
As you no doubt know by now, the Independent Spirit Awards honour films made (partly or wholly) outside the major film studio system. Some of the winners are below.
Best Feature: Get Out
Best Female Lead: Frances McDormand (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri)
Best Male Lead: Timothee Chalamet (Call Me By Your Name)
Best Supporting Female: Allison Janney (I, Tonya)
Best Supporting Male: Sam Rockwell (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri)
Best Director: Jordan Peele (Get Out)
Best Screenplay: Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird)
Best First Screenplay: Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani (The Big Sick)
Best Cinematography: Call Me By Your Name
Best First Feature: Ingrid Goes West
Best International Film: A Fantastic Woman
Best Documentary: Faces Places
John Cassavetes Award: Life And Nothing More
The John Cassavetes Award is given to the creative team of a film budgeted at less than $500,000. The full list of winners can be found here.
A fairly even spread of awards, with no one film totally dominating. Get Out, Call Me By Your Name, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, and I, Tonya all came away with two awards each.
With wins here, McDormand, Janney, and Rockwell surely cement their positions for winning the Oscars (but more on that later). I'm really pleased with both of Call Me By Your Name's wins- Timothee Chalamet's central performance is just superb and Sayombhu Mukdeeprom's cinematography is utterly gorgeous.
Get Out is a very worthy winner of Best Picture and of Best Director, but it may struggle to replicate that success at the Oscars, due to it being up against more mainstream fare. However, in a hotly contested Original Screenplay category, it could be taking at least one statuette home.
So, with that done, this just leaves the main event: the Oscars tonight. As promised, my predictions for the big winners will be coming later today.
Just a quick update today as The Writers' Guild Awards were handed out yesterday (Sunday 11th February).
The film winners were:
Original Screenplay: Get Out
Adapted Screenplay: Call Me By Your Name
Documentary Screenplay: Jane
The WGA nominees for Original and Adapted Screenplays are virtually identical to those for the Oscars: the only difference is that the WGA nominated I, Tonya in the Original Screenplay category as Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri was ineligible for consideration under WGA rules.
I'm overjoyed that Call Me By Your Name won; the screenplay is one of the most touching, poignant, and heartfelt pieces of writing I've experienced in ages. Get Out's eclectic blend of genres and styles is a superb piece of writing and, again, really glad to see it awarded.
Interestingly, none of the nominees for the WGA Documentary Screenplay Award have been nominated for the Best Documentary Feature Oscar.
Next Sunday (18th February) sees the 71st British Academy Film Awards (BAFTAs) handed out. I'll put up a full list of winners after the ceremony.
Meeting your girlfriend's family for the first time is nerve-wracking enough, but for Chris Washington, it literally becomes a matter of life and death. Welcomed warmly (maybe a bit too warmly) by Rose's liberal parents, the truth behind Chris' visit soon becomes apparent- and he's forced into a desperate battle for survival...
Released in 2017, I missed Get Out during its cinema release, but it's now available on DVD/BluRay, so I've been able to catch up with it, and I'm glad that I have. I'm not a massive horror fan, as I've said before, but I thoroughly enjoyed the film (as did Matt, who spoke highly of it in our Review Of The Year). It's not a horror in the traditional sense; it's much more of a thriller in the style of something like Rosemary's Baby or the 1970s version of The Stepford Wives. There's the occasional jump-scare but they're few and far between. The final 20 minutes or so do descend into typical 'horror movie' final act tropes (with Chris as the Final Girl) but, such is the skill that's gone before in making Chris a sympathetic character, you're really behind him and you want him to escape.
Londoner Daniel Kaluuya absolutely nails the American accent and plays Chris with a wonderful balance of nervousness and steel. Becoming slowly exasperated by everyone's niceness (which he attributes to political correctness), he soon finds out there's a much more sinister plot brewing beneath the bonhomie. You could write a whole thesis on the racial politics and representations in the film; Chris is asked several times to comment on 'the Black Experience' (as if he's some kind of spokesman) and there's a sly reference to the fetishisation of black men as sexual objects which comes out of left-field. It's an impressive central performance which has been rightly lauded throughout this awards season.
This is the first thing I've seen Allison Williams in (I haven't ever seen Girls), but she is superb as Rose. Even after the twist is revealed, there's still a magnetism to her performance which is utterly beguiling- you can understand why Chris has fallen in love with her. Bradley Whitford and Catherine Keener play Rose's parents Dean and Missy as almost caricaturistally liberal (a common refrain is they would have voted for Obama for a third term if they could) but there's a definite hint of menace beneath both performances- Keener's in particular- which makes for a nicely ambiguous set-up at the beginning. Caleb Landry Jones is good as Rose's unpredictable brother Jeremy, a more ostensible threat than anything else going on at the house.
Betty Gabriel deserves a mention for her role as housekeeper Georgina- in a pivotal scene which suggests all may not be as it seems in the Armitage household, Georgina becomes confused, starts to cry and then laugh uncontrollably all in the space of a few seconds- it's one of the most uncomfortable but powerful moments in the film. You can literally see every emotion play across Gabriel's face. It's astounding. Finally, Lil Rel Howery provides the majority of the laughs as Chris' fast-talking TSA friend Rod, providing welcome moments of levity amidst the encroaching tension.
There's some interesting visual quirks to the film- the sequences in The Sunken Place are really trippy but nicely realised- as well as a good use of sound design; the sound of a silver spoon stirring a cup of tea might well take on a different meaning after seeing Get Out. Jordan Peele's direction is slick and his screenplay a nice balance of funny and scary.
Get Out is a real hybrid- a blend of social commentary, family drama, comedy, horror, and even some high-concept sci-fi all mixed together to create something that starts out as Guess Who's Coming To Dinner and ends up as more of a Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Even if horror isn't really your thing, give Get Out a go. It's a fine piece of film-making.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Tez
Just a quick awards season update as the Directors' Guild Awards (DGAs) were handed out yesterday (Saturday 3rd February). The film winners are:
Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Films: Guillermo del Toro (The Shape Of Water)
Outstanding Directorial Achievement of a First-Time Feature Film Director: Jordan Peele (Get Out)
Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Movies for Television and Miniseries: Jean-Marc Vallee (Big Little Lies)
Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Documentary: Matthew Heineman (City Of Ghosts)
I don't think anyone is massively surprised by this- this is a major step forward for del Toro taking home the Oscar (especially as his closest rival- Martin McDonagh- wasn't nominated). Good to see Jordan Peele get some recognition for Get Out too.
Next in awards season will be the Writers' Guild (WGA) Awards next Sunday (11th February).
