Photo credit: Sony Pictures
Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (2019)
No nod from the Academy for Us? That’s one big surprise among the nominations for 2019. How about no women in the Best Director race, notably Greta Gerwig? Well, she’s young and her film, Little Women, received six nominations including Best Picture. Someday, her time will come—along with the (too slow) ascent of female filmmakers in Hollywood.
As a film critic, I sometimes feel bound more by duty than desire to comment annually on the Academy Awards. As anyone who thinks about it already knows, the awards are only a marker of what key members of the industry define as quality (balanced against studio politics) at a given moment in time. After all, 1941’s How Green is My Valley beat Citizen Kane for Best Picture.
However, I’m guessing that history will look back on 2019 as both a pretty good year for motion pictures and a turning point—maybe not for female and minority filmmakers, but for production and distribution. The cinema awards season is acknowledging that Netflix and other streaming services are pushing aside the tired old studios and multiplexes with their increasingly stupid “tent-pole” franchises. Netflix, Amazon Prime et al. are giving filmmakers the opportunity (increasingly denied to them elsewhere) to produce quality programming, even if much of it is consumed at home rather than at the cinema.
Still, the old studios were behind several excellent films released theatrically in 2019. It’s a competitive Oscar season with many strong choices among the nominees. Why not start with Best Actress? Saoirse Ronan was fully engaging in Little Women, but the chatter seems to favor Renée Zellweger’s heartrending role in Judy. That Bombshell’s box office was deemed disappointing works against its star, Charlize Theron. Scarlett Johansson carries the flag for Netflix with Marriage Story, a film that has won several awards in the run-up to Oscar nominations but is something of a long shot. Cynthia Erivo, the lone black nominee this year for her lead role in Harriet, is generally regarded as that historical film’s best asset.
Joaquin Phoenix will likely win Best Actor for his gut-wrenching performance in Joker. However, his competition is outstanding: Jonathan Pryce, who disappears into his role as Francis in The Two Popes; Adam Driver as Marriage Story’s soon-to-be-divorced dad; Antonio Banderas’ powerful lead in Pain and Glory; and Leonardo DiCaprio’s jokey turn as a second-tier actor in Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood.
Someone calculated the average age for Best Supporting Actor contenders at 70 and Supporting Actresses at 40, a statistic supporting the contention that older women are harder pressed to find roles than their male colleagues.
Don’t ask why—OK, you will—but I think Al Pacino will win Supporting Actor for playing Jimmy Hoffa in The Irishman. Maybe it’s because now seems a good time to recall the lost power of organized labor, the corruption that has always existed (Make America Great Again?) and honor Martin Scorsese’s most enjoyable film in decades. Pacino is up against another Irishman star, Joe Pesci; other strong contenders are Brad Pitt (Once Upon a Time…), Anthony Hopkins (The Two Popes) and Tom Hanks (A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood).
As for Supporting Actresses, Kathy Bates (Richard Jewell) and Margot Robbie (Bombshell) were in movies that underperformed at box offices. That leaves veteran Laura Dern (Marriage Story) and—here she comes again—Scarlett Johansson (JoJo Rabbit), as well as Florence Pugh’s memorable performance in Little Women.
No surprise that there will be overlap in nominations for Best Picture and Best Director. Recent arcane changes in the Academy’s rules have allowed for a greater number of Picture than Director nominees. I think odds are against the films whose directors went unnominated (Ford V Ferrari, JoJo Rabbit, Marriage Story, Little Women). Parasite from Korea’s Bong Joon Ho is the art-house dark horse and will probably lose. The race is on between Martin Scorsese (The Irishman), Todd Phillips (Joker), Sam Mendes (1917) and Quentin Tarantino (Once Upon a Time… ). Although Phillips is no newcomer, Joker was a remarkable career leap and many Academy members may want to wait for what he does in future years. Scorsese is an old favorite but maybe too old—and he’s with Netflix! Maybe Mendes and Tarantino are neck to neck?
If I had to wager two bits, I’d put them behind Once Upon a Time… and Tarantino. For Hollywood, World War I was really a long time ago, but the movie industry is always interested in its own history—even (especially?) when someone rewrites it with a happier ending.
