Awards Season 2016: Tez's Official Oscar Predictions 2016

Tonight, the great and good of Hollywood will convene to celebrate the best of film-making in 2015 at the 88th Annual Academy Awards, which will be hosted for the second time by Chris Rock. It has become a tradition for me to predict the nominations and the winners in the main six categories (the four acting categories, Best Director and Best Picture).  I've done this since 2003 with varying degrees of success. So, without further ado, here are my predictions for who will win.

Best Supporting Actress: Alicia Vikander (The Danish Girl)

With no disrespect to any of the other nominees, this is a two horse race between Alicia Vikander and Kate Winslet. Both have previous wins behind them (Vikander got the SAG and Critics' Choice; Winslet the BAFTA and the Golden Globe). Both performances are strong, even if I found Winslet's more mannered and more actorly, less naturalistic than Vikander's. There would be a certain amount of pleasure in seeing Winslet win her second Oscar on the same night DiCaprio wins his first. However, because Vikander won the SAG Award- voted on by actors, many of whom make up the Academy voting list- I'm gonna put her ahead. However, I won't be at all surprised if Winslet nabs it. 


Best Supporting Actor: Sylvester Stallone (Creed)

Simply put, I found Stallone's performance in Creed to be exceptional and he actually does act as a supporting character to Donny. He's witty, wise and heartbreaking- he also has a lot of goodwill in Hollywood and a lot of people would love to see him take the main prize tonight (as Critics' Choice and Golden Globe wins have shown). Interestingly, he's won both awards he's been nominated for; I really hope he makes the perfect three tonight.


Best Actress: Brie Larson (Room)

Closest you can get to a cast-iron bet tonight. Larson's moving and emotive performance, having to convey such a difficult situation yet bearing it so bravely, has completely swept the awards season boards- SAG, Golden Globes, BAFTA, Independent Spirits- so any other name tonight would be a huge surprise. And I do mean huge. 


Best Actor: Leonardo DiCaprio (The Revenant)

OK. Do I think Leo deserves to win? No, I don't. His performance in The Revenant is perfectly decent but he's done better performances. Do I think he will win? Without a shadow of a doubt. We're in the same situation as Scorsese and The Departed; it almost feels like 'his turn'. Similar to Larson, he's swept the boards where he's been nominated so it's a fairly foregone conclusion.


Best Director: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (The Revenant)

With BAFTA, Golden Globe and DGA wins, it does look like it'll be second time around for Inarritu tonight. Interesting fact: if he does win, Inarritu will be the first director since Joseph L. Mankiewicz to win back-to-back Best Director Oscars and the first in over sixty years.  His direction is solid enough and his partnership with cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezski is one of the strongest I've seen. I would be shocked to see another director win tonight.


Best Picture: Spotlight

This might come back to bite me, but I genuinely think Spotlight deserves to win the Best Picture Oscar over The Revenant. Whether it will, I don't know. Spotlight is an absolute masterclass in cinema: its script is superb (and will, with any justice, bag the Best Original Screenplay Oscar), the acting performances throughtout the ensemble are on point, the direction is solid, the themes of the film are topical without being polemical or heavy-handed. Were I a member of the Academy, this is where my vote would be going. However, it does look likely that The Revenant might get it. 


Last year, I got 4 out of 6 (all four acting awards) but fell foul of Inarritu and Birdman. I'm not making the same mistake on Best Director this year. However, I'm not sure on Best Picture or on Best Supporting Actress. I reckon another 4 out of 6. 

There'll be a full blog tomorrow discussing my thoughts on the ceremony and a list of all the winners.

Tez

Review: Steve Jobs (UK Cert 15)

When Steve Jobs died in 2011, he was lauded as a genius, the man who revolutionised home computing, a pioneer, a visionary. Even before he passed, his name was one everyone knew. There was a lacklustre (and unofficial) biopic movie released in 2013 starring Ashton Kutcher but this one is based on the official biography by Walter Isaacson, adapted for screen by Aaron Sorkin and directed by Danny Boyle.

The film focuses on three points within Jobs' profession career: the 1984 launch of the Macintosh, the 1988 launch of the NeXT and the 1998 launch of the iMac. Immediately before each launch, we see Jobs preparing to give his trademark speeches, pushing his programmers to deliver the goods, dealing with his Head of Marketing and trying to interact with the girl whom the courts declared to be his daughter (although he initially did not acknowledge her as such).

Michael Fassbender pulls off an amazing balancing act of getting you to admire Jobs whilst simultaneously wanting to punch him in the face. If this is what Jobs was really like, it's amazing that he ever got anyone to work for him: he's a complete control freak, an out-and-out ruthless bastard, a Machiavellian gameplayer, a supremely arrogant, condescending, egotistical bully- and yet utterly charismatic at the same time. There has to be something more there, otherwise he'd never have inspired such loyalty as you see in his Head of Marketing, Joanna Hoffman (who stayed with him for this entire period, even when he was out in the cold from Apple). 

Hoffman is played by Kate Winslet, who affects an Eastern European lilt to play the Polish-born Hoffman. She is the voice of reason, Jobs' anchor, his confidante and 'work wife' who deals with his demands with unflappable equanimity. Winslet's performance is strong, trading verbal spars with Fassbender and being one of the few who can stand up to him. Seth Rogen puts in a decent dramatic turn as Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, pushing Jobs to acknowledge the team who worked on the Apple II in his newer endeavours. There are scenes between Wozniak and Jobs which have a real dramatic punch, especially the one where Wozniak tells Jobs 'you can be decent and gifted at the same time'.

Not all performances are as good as others, however, with Katherine Waterston's shrill and overbearing performance as Chrisann Brennan (the mother of Jobs' daughter Lisa) being particularly grating. I get that the character is supposed to come across as a bit flaky and annoying- trying to get Jobs to accept his paternal responsibilities when he still questions his paternity- but it's the one wrong note in an otherwise solid cast.

Sorkin's script is, as you would expect, tight and quick with lots of staccato punchy dialogue and flashbacks within the scenes. It's very play-like, the dialogue could easily lend itself to a stage adaptation. However, the script never really gets behind the spiky exterior- although it does attempt a last-minute redemption job with his relationship with Lisa which just about works. Do you really get to know more about Jobs the man? A little. For instance, I didn't know that he was adopted and I didn't know he had a daughter. So you get to know more about his biography (for want of a better word). But the psychology doesn't run very deep- the film implies that a lot of Jobs' controlling personality came down to the fact that he was adopted, which is mentioned a lot- and he remains relatively inscrutable.

This is certainly a superior movie to the Ashton Kutcher one and the performances- especially those of Fassbender, Winslet and Rogen- are very strong. However, I think you'd have to have a specific interest in Jobs to really enjoy it.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Tez

Review; Carnage (UK cert 15)

Yasmina Reza’s play La Dieu Du Carnage (‘God Of Carnage’) first premiered in Zurich in 2006. It was translated into English and had a run in the West End in 2008 before a Broadway production in 2009. Now, Reza adapts her own play for the movie version, directed in Paris by Roman Polanski (who also co-writes).

Two sets of parents- Penelope and Michael Longstreet (Jodie Foster and John C. Reilly) and Nancy and Alan Cowan (Kate Winslet and Christoph Waltz)- meet to discuss a playground altercation between their sons. The fragile veneer of civility starts to crumble as accusations start to fly and irrational arguments and tensions boil over. Unfolding in real time over eighty minutes, Carnage is fun but ultimately insubstantial.

All four actors are excellent in their respective roles- Foster self-righteous and highly-strung; Reilly mitigating and balanced; Winslet neurotic and anxious; Waltz sarcastic and caustic. The interplay between the four characters, their petty squabbles and veiled snubs at one another, is the driving force of the film. For a piece that originated in the theatre, it is entirely appropriate that words should be what kicks things off. When writing their deposition, Penelope- a writer- suggests that the Cowans’ son was ‘armed’ with a stick; Alan- an attorney- challenges her on the use of that word. It is this pedantic use of language that causes some of Carnage’s finest moments.

Throughout the course of the eighty minutes, battle lines are drawn, alliances formed and changed; at certain points the women gang up on the men and vice versa, or husbands quarrel with wives. At times the children’s altercation lies abandoned as the four adults tear into one another. Arguably, Waltz gives the best performance- much of the humour came from his delivery and demeanour.

You can tell Carnage started life as a play. It’s very stagy in places and I’m not sure if that’s down to the script, the direction or both. For the most part, the action is contained within the Longstreets’ apartment with occasional forays into the lobby. There is a certain implausibility to the speed at which characters get drunk which may be forgiven on stage but not so much on film. There’s also a slightly ill-advised scene of gross-out comedy when Nancy, constantly nervous, vomits all over the coffee table which, whilst initially funny, seems out of place with the rest of the piece. It also just ends. No real resolution, just a fade to black as the characters sit around.

Nonetheless, it’s worth seeing for the quartet of brilliant performances given by the cast.

Rating: 3 out of 5


Tez