Awards Season 2023: Razzies Winners

So, it's Oscars Eve. The great and good of Hollywood will be primping, preening, and preparing for one of the biggest nights of the year. It's also the day that the Golden Raspberry (Razzie) Awards get handed out, dishonouring the cinematic crapulence of the previous year.  

So here are this year's "winners":

Worst Picture: Blonde

Worst Director: Machine Gun Kelly and Mod Sun (Good Mourning)

Worst Actor: Jared Leto (Morbius)

Worst Actress: The Golden Raspberry Awards

Worst Supporting Actor: Tom Hanks (Elvis)

Worst Supporting Actress: Adria Arjona (Morbius)

Worst Remake, Sequel Or Rip-Off: Disney's Pinocchio

Worst Screen Combo: Tom Hanks and his latex-laden face (and ludicrous accent) (Elvis)

Worst Screenplay: Blonde

Razzie Redeemer: Colin Farrell

You may be wondering "Awards Guru Tez, why are the Golden Raspberry Awards the 'winners' of the Worst Actress award?" Well, gather round, my award fans, and I'll tell ye a tale...

When the nominations were announced on 22nd January, Ryan Kiera Armstrong was included in the Worst Actress category for her performance as Charlie in the 2022 remake of Firestarter; she is 12 years old. 

A little history lesson: the Razzies have previous in nominating child actors: at the 3rd Razzie Awards (1983), they gave the Worst Supporting Actress award to 11-year old Aileen Quinn for her performance in Annie. Other minors who have been nominated include:

• Gary Coleman (Worst Actor for On The Right Track [1981], when he was 13);
• Jake Lloyd (Worst Supporting Actor for Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace [1999] when he was 10)
• Macaulay Culkin (a Worst Actor nominee for three films- Getting Even With Dad [1994], The Pagemaster [1994], and Ri¢hie Ri¢h [1994]- all when he was 14); and 
• Olivia d'Abo (nominated for Worst Supporting Actress for her roles in Conan The Destroyer [1984] and Bolero [1984]- in which she appears nude- when she was 15). 

Unsurprisingly (and rightly so), the backlash was quick and fierce. Razzies co-founder John J.B. Wilson made a statement that said "The intent was to be funny. In this particular instance, we seem to have misstepped very badly." No shit, Sherlock. 

Armstrong was subsequently removed from the ballot, and the organisation will no longer allow actors under the age of 18 to be nominated in any category. And, as something of a public mea culpa, the Razzies have given themselves this award. 

Other nominees for the Razzie Redeemer this year- which is given to a former Razzie nominee or winner who has come back from critical and/or commercial failure-  were Val Kilmer (going from The Island Of Dr. Moreau to the subject of acclaimed documentary Val) and Mark Wahlberg (from three-time Worst Actor nominee to biopic Father Stu). 

Blonde, Elvis, and Morbius each won two Razzies apiece. Elvis has the dubious distinction of winning in each category it was nominated for. 

Congratulations to all "winners"!

So, that just leaves the big one: the 95th Academy Awards. I'll be posting my predictions for who will win in six major categories tomorrow afternoon. 

Review: The Killing Of A Sacred Deer (UK Cert 15)

SPOILER WARNING! This review discusses and/or mentions a few important plot points. If you would prefer not to have these spoiled, please stop reading now and come back once you've seen the film.

Dr. Stephen Murphy (Colin Farrell) is a successful cardiologist with a beautiful wife called Anna (Nicole Kidman) and two beautiful children called Kim and Bob (Raffey Cassidy and Sunny Suljic), a beautiful house and- as we keep being told- beautiful hands. He also has a secret: he's been spending time with Martin (Barry Keoghan), a strange teenager who has a link to Stephen's past. When Martin starts to impose his way further and further into Stephen's life, Stephen is forced into a terrible decision.  

I sometimes wonder whether I've seen the same film as other people, especially if it's been praised immensely highly. Here are some of the superlatives that have been given to The Killing Of A Sacred Deer: 'intense, powerful and unsettling', 'venomously funny', 'truly staggering', 'Colin Farrell is perfect', 'one of the finest performance of Nicole Kidman's career'. These are on the poster to advertise the film and some of them are from reputable newspapers. I tend to ignore reviews (because ultimately it's all subjective) but, if I'd been swayed by any of these comments to sit through this tremendous load of old crap, I'd be feeling massively shortchanged. 

Let me unpack some of these statements. 'Intense, powerful and unsettling' (two out of three ain't bad; definitely intense and definitely unsettling- all the characters seem damaged or messed-up in one way or another); 'venomously funny' (I don't think I laughed once); 'truly staggering' (yes, it is staggering; staggering that this film is getting such fulsome praise); 'Colin Farrell is perfect' (he really isn't); 'one of the finest performance of Nicole Kidman's career' (it really isn't; she was better in Batman Forever).

I don't know what irked me more: the fact that everyone seems to speak in a fairly even, dull monotone even in moments where you think they'd be showing some emotion (only twice do either Stephen or Anna break down under the strain of the situation), the incredibly discordant and shoddy sound mixing- where portentous tones suddenly blare over scenes- which actually gave me a headache, or the crashingly implausible moves that Stephen makes as the story becomes more and more ludicrous. 

I'm going to get spoilery now because there's no other way to demonstrate exactly how ridiculous I found this film. Aboiut halfway through the film, Bob starts to get ill. At the hospital, Martin tells Stephen he has to kill either Anna, Kim, or Bob to balance the scales from Stephen killing Martin's father in surgery years ago otherwise all three of them will die of a mystery illness that first paralyses theim, makes them stop eating and then bleed from the eyes before they die. The next shot sees Martin being escorted from the hospital by security. At no point do they ever consider calling the police. There's also no explanation of how Martin has made the children ill (because Kim soon succumbs to the paralysis); all medical tests come back negative. It's utterly ridiculous to think that anyone with a scintilla of common sense would go along with the lunatic plan rather than call the teenage psycho out.   

Frankly this decrepit piece of horseshit has already stolen two hours of my life, and I'm loathe to give it any more of my time. There's an interesting idea buried amongst the pretention but writer-director Yorgos Lanthimos doesn't utilise it. A major disappointment.

Rating: 1 out of 5

Tez

Revlew: Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them (UK Cert 12A)

Let's be fair, the Harry Potter movie franchise is an absolute juggernaut. Eight movies, all expertly written, directed and acted. So the production team are obviously hoping that lightning is going to strike twice with the first of five films in the Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them franchise. 

Written by J.K. Rowling, produced by David Heyman and directed by David Yates (who directed the last four Harry Potter films), Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them sees magizoologist Newt Scamander- author of the titular Hogwarts set text- in New York in 1926, having to hunt down a few of his errant creatures that escape whilst negotiating the hostility of a No-Maj (muggle/non-magical) society and the machinations of a very dangerous dark wizard: Gellert Grindlewald.  

Eddie Redmayne exudes a very lovely eccentric edge as Newt. If he wasn't already an Oscar-winning actor with a major franchise ahead of him, I'd suggest he submits this to the Doctor Who casting office in case they need to start looking for Peter Capaldi's replacement. There is a very Doctor-ish feel to Newt- slightly out of step with other humans, very focused on his own little world and with a dimensionally transcendental piece of apparatus (it's no exaggeration to say that Newt's suitcase is bigger on the inside).  

Katherine Waterston is similarly strong as demoted Auror Tina Goldstein who arrests Newt for being an unregistered wizard and then gets drawn in to his quest to reclaim his missing creatures. Threatening to steal the show, however, are Alison Sudol as Tina's mindreading and flirty sister Queenie and Dan Fogler as Jacob Kowalski, a No-Maj cannery worker and aspiring baker who gets his suitcase swapped with Newt's and also gets drawn into a world he never knew existed. 

The rest of the cast are pretty good too: Samantha Morton is chilling as the dead-eyed fanatic Mary Lou Barebone, leader of the Second Salemers who call for wizards and witches to be destroyed. Ezra Miller is similarly good as her adopted son Credence, a young man with more than a few secrets of his own. It's odd to see an actor with the profile and presence of Jon Voight in a film like this, but he only has a glorified cameo as a newspaper magnate so doesn't bother unduly. The only dud note is Colin Farrell, who I just can't take seriously, especially as he's supposed to be the Head of Magical Security at MACUSA (the Magical Congress of the United States of America).

Visually, as you can imagine, the film is just stunning. Everything from the steam liner that Newt disembarks from at the very beginning to the sweeping grandeur of the MACUSA headquarters and the world within Newt's suitcase is just sublime. A quick trip to a magical speakeasy also provides scale but it's also in the smaller scenes- Queenie magically making a strudel, for instance- where the production design and the visual effects shine. The magical beasts, too, are similarly wonderful.  

This is a 12A so it's not all cutesy- there's some quite dark stuff within there, not least a murderous force created by a magical being suppressing their magical ability. There's child abuse, lost loves, a rather unpleasant near-death experience for one of the main characters and a resolutely downbeat moment in the rain (which, I don't mind admitting, I teared up to). There are glimmers of hope towards the end but you don't half go through the wringer to get there. 

This might sound like a bit of an odd complaint to have about a film called Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them... but I really could have done with there being more beasts. There are some wonderful set-pieces involving Newt trying to catch a Niffler (a kind of avaricious platypus, attracted to shiny things) and also trying to catch an escaped erupment (a large and horny cross between a hippopotamus and a rhinoceros) in Central Park. But the film almost treats these as side-shows, instead focusing on the political situation with the No-Majs versus MACUSA and the ever-growing threat of Grindlewald. I don't know whether they felt it would just be a series of set-pieces strung together with a flimsy plot if it was just Newt turning up trying to find things- nothing more than a big-screen version of Pokemon Go, perhaps?- and perhaps it might not sustain five films. 

This slight niggle aside, I found Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them to be a very strong start to the franchise and I look forward to seeing more.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Tez

Review: Saving Mr. Banks (UK Cert PG)

The Disney multi-billion pound empire; few people sit on the fence when it comes to Uncle Walt. You either love him, and see Disney as having created some of the finest films of the medium, or you put Disney in the same category as McDonald’s, the Disney brand is, first-and-foremost, out to make money and everything else comes (a miles behind) second. With John Lee Hancock’s Saving Mr Banks, Disney has done something surprisingly brave: they have put their business, their legacy, under the microscope.

P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson), author of Mary Poppins, has turned down Walt Disney’s (Tom Hanks) offers to make a film of her beloved children’s book for twenty years. She sees Disney as the “King Midas of Hollywood,” his theme park nothing more than a “moneymaking machine.” Having made a promise to his daughters, Disney is determined to try one last time to persuade the bad-tempered writer to sign over the rights to her book.

Saving Mr Banks could have been a sickly-sweet re-telling of the artistic differences between Travers and Disney, but far from it. Much of this is down to the performances, both Thompson and Hanks being, once again, impossible to find fault with.

If another actress were to play the role of Travers, audiences may have felt detached towards the film’s heroine. Putting down anyone and everyone she comes across, in the wrong hands Travers could have been a cheerless English stereotype. Every minute that Emma Thompson is onscreen is brilliant to watch. Travers’s insults are more out of frustration rather than a vicious streak and, for the most part, her observations are spot on. To be one of the acting greats, it’s not only about delivering assured dialogue; it’s about the mannerisms and expressions. Emma Thompson should run master classes on how to make an audience laugh with a raise of the eyebrows, or conveying pages of backstory solely with a gaze; she makes it look all-too easy.

While most of the film’s praise has been focused on Thompson, Tom Hanks is equally impressive. Rather than the permanently grinning, cheery uncle portrayed in a TV commercial early on in the film, Hanks’s Disney is far more complicated. He is charming, with a glass-half-full approach to life, but he is also a businessman who, one way or the other, gets what he wants. When Travers storms out of meetings, threatening to return to England, or making all sorts of demands, Disney is shaking with rage, refusing to be beaten. Hanks has made a career of delivering spot-on regional American accents, and whatever role he plays, you cannot help but root for him. Hanks gives a well-judged portrayal of Disney: he is the caring father-figure from the intros to his weekly TV cartoons, but Hanks also reminds us that this is a man on a charm offensive and, one way or another, he will bring Mary Poppins to the big screen.

Saving Mr Banks spends half its time showing Travers fighting with her creative team, but also goes back to her childhood to explain why she is so disapproving of herself and others, and why she refuses to let her famous nanny be sprinkled with Disney’s trademark charm. Normally I hate exposition in films; it feels cheap, like the filmmakers are treating their audience like idiots. “In case you don’t get it, here’s why (insert character name here) behaves this way!” For me, very few films have managed to use flashbacks and get away with it. Saving Mr Banks doesn’t just get away with it, Travers’s childhood is part-and-parcel of the film, as well as being gorgeously filmed by John Schwartzman. Travers’s father (played with heart-rending perfection by Colin Farrell) encourages his daughter to use her imagination, to be whoever she wants to be. Yet her father uses his dreams and imagination to escape what is going on around him. He is an alcoholic, unable to hold down a job, committed to his own self destruction.

Disney and Travers are at the opposite ends of the storytelling spectrum. Walt Disney sees life as bleak enough, so why create stories that mirror the worries and problems of everyday lives? P.L. Travers saw writing as a way of facing problems, recovering from them, rather than a form of escapism. Admirably, Saving Mr Banks gives plenty of screen time to both sides of the argument.

For a Disney film about one of Disney’s most successful films, Saving Mr Banks is far from a two hour advert for the Mary Poppins DVD. For the most part, the film avoids the sugary sweetness that Travers loathed about Disney’s films. Screenwriters Kelly Marcel and Sue Smith get the mix of comedy and heartache absolutely right; Travers is razor-sharp right up until the end and, during the film’s poignant moments, at no point do you feel like you are being tricked into shedding a tear.

Like all good “Making of” films, Saving Mr Banks manages to make its source material even more profound than it already was. Mary Poppins is moving enough, but after watching how the Disney film came to be, it’s unlikely you will be able to listen to “Let’s Go Fly a Kite” without welling up.

Saving Mr Banks narrowly misses out on being perfect due to the film’s last ten minutes, when Travers goes to the world premiere and sees her creation, and her father, up there on the cinema screen. The rest of the film is understated and honest. Here this final scene feels like John Lee Hancock is smacking you around the head, making sure you realise that everything you have watched has led to this moment. While the wheels don’t exactly fall off, you feel that this is exactly the kind of candyfloss Travers would have hated.

This is me being picky. Saving Mr Banks is faultless in weaving its two narratives together; Travers’s childhood and her fight with the Disney machine. Other films that have tried the same method generally make you wish one storyline or the other would come back onscreen. The making of Mary Poppins is one of the last great films of 2013.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Matt