Jake Gittes

I'm not even a big Zimmer fan and you just made me want to add a few of his scores to my list so good job.

I've seen it twice, first in theaters and again a couple of years ago, and loved it even more the second time. Deliriously fun and maybe the most visually striking and inventive major studio movie of the past decade or two. I couldn't get enough of it.

I have two fundamental issues with it. First, the three-act structure that covers two decades while only focusing on very small and particular periods of time allows certain characters and small events that occur during these periods to be appropriately impactful and linger in memory, but in the process forces the script to rely on some wildly convenient coincidences - the bullying incident in the second part is the biggest offender, - and the movie's insistence on either catching up with the same supporting characters in the flesh or namedropping them if they aren't around (Juan's name comes up at least twice within the span of a few minutes in the second part, as does Teresa's name in the third part) makes the film's world feel inauthentically tiny, as if Chiron lived for two formative decades and by the end of that time there was still no one important to him other than the same four people he already had in his life before he was even a teen. Which leads me to the second issue - Chiron himself is the least interesting major character out of everyone here, which is especially a shame considering what a rare film protagonist he is as a gay black man. The decision to have him be perpetually bottled-up and wary makes sense on paper considering who he is, but in execution it's not dramatically interesting since it robs him of visible personality and depth, with him just ending up the same wounded little kid inside a tough, ripped dude's body. He's more a concept than a character. Not only does the movie not convey what his other significant traits or interests are, it's damn near impossible to even imagine what he's doing when the camera isn't on. Don't really get either the praise for the three actors portraying Chiron, considering the role doesn't really demand any subtlety or complexity from them all together, or the Boyhood comparisons, since that film is much more about the small inconsequential moments and idle activities whereas this goes out of its way structuring itself around significant events in the protagonist's life. Major things I loved with no reservations: the cinematography and André Holland's performance, which combine to make the third act the best one (plus the writing is at its most relaxed and least clumsy in the diner scene). Ali and Monae are a pleasure to watch as well. That's about it.

Fixed that a little

Basically your typical blandly inspirational (with a touch of activist) doc that tries to function as a dramatic feature, and completely sucks at it. The only part I found in any way worthwhile was the 20-30 minutes near the beginning after Saroo gets lost - it still shamelessly milks drama and tears out of a little kid asking for his mommy every few minutes and clichéd shots of him dwarfed by his surroundings (get it?! He's all alone in the big and scary world!), but at the very least it presents a picture of a certain experience that has an idea and a focus behind it. What follows is lots of mechanical, utterly lazy "and then this happened" style storytelling and random asides centered on supporting characters that don't add anything meaningful to the main story. It never really explores either ideas or character, glossing over the most interesting things about Saroo's story (like his actual process of adapting to an entirely different world from the one he knew) and just spinning its wheels until the climax in which Dev Patel stares intensely at a laptop screen and the ending which literally has random extras applaud what happens before the final onscreen text asks the audience to visit a website. Fuck this pandering, hacky middlebrow puddle of a movie.

I was skeptical about this through the entire awards season, but I shouldn't have underestimated Nichols. His penchant for making quiet, elegant, human-centric films is exactly right for the story of people who never sought historical significance but simply wanted to live their life together, and he honors them by making the heart of the film the warm, unforced family and community scenes, stories told around the kitchen table, the quiet exchanges, the small gestures and pauses, without trying to get the Lovings (wonderfully portrayed by Edgerton and Negga) closer to the modern audience via big emotional speeches and whatnot. I was hooked from the first shot. Later on, once the Lovings' case gets more attention, there's the questionable decision to suddenly have supporting actors speak in over-enunciated lines like "You do realize that this could alter the Constitution of the United States?!", and given how much the rest of the film opposes all that, I really suspect it was deliberate on Nichols' part to execute this part of the story with these hacky inspirational-movie beats in order to underline the contrast between the Lovings' ordinary life and what other people saw them as. Regardless, it leads to an awkward conflict within the film that never quite gets resolved. Overall, though, one of the better and more overlooked movies of last year.

Black Book is absolutely essential and Bug is another one I'd recommend wholeheartedly. An all-timer of a performance from Ashley Judd opposite Michael Shannon already being great at his whole Michael Shannon thing a couple of years before his Revolutionary Road breakout.

I don't care for about 98% of mainstream American comedy from the rise of Apatow onwards, but Walk Hard is the biggest exception. I assume it's the combination of the period sets and costumes and the fact that they were spoofing a very specific type of movie and had to save some time for the musical numbers that forced them to rely on an actual comedy script (!) with strong jokes in it (!!!) instead of just endless scenes of people standing around and riffing, and thank fucking god for that. Great music, great central performance, and it actually looks like it had a budget, too.

Cotillard's performance was the only good thing about La Vie en Rose. And it still didn't make the overall film good.

My Winnipeg is incredible but it wasn't released in the US until summer 2008 so it wouldn't have qualified anyway.

Shotgun Stories, Margot at the Wedding, Brand Upon the Brain!, Bug. No idea if you'd like any of them of course. @Telemachos Is Black Book eligible if it wasn't commercially released in the States until April 2007, but was submitted for a foreign language Oscar to the February 2007 awards? See also The Lives of Others which was also released in theaters in February 2007 but won the Oscar at the same ceremony which was honoring the best films of 2006.

Well now there are the films that had a festival premiere in 2006 but didn't come out in the US until 2007. The biggest example is 300 which IMDb still lists as a 2006 movie because it premiered in December at the butt-numb-a-thon. Away from Her is another one that springs to mind (premiered in Toronto in 2006, didn't have a commercial release until May 2007) although I don't think enough people here saw it for it to find a spot on the eventual list. But still.

I'm not an Arrival fan. If the top 3 had to consist of these three movies I'm glad it was the third.

That was also when we didn't do preferential ballots. And didn't The Master win by a single vote? It was great to see, anyway. I still remember CJohn's meltdown.

Cool. Including Zootopia getting ahead of Arrival.

Dude even your avatar is embarrassed by your desperately wishing to die on this hill. Let it go.

I didn't think y'all could top nominating Daisy Ridley for Best Actress last year but kudos. Edit: okay, you got me.

Understand and Hell is the Absence of God are other ones I really loved. Wouldn't go as far as to say all of them are great but just the ideas he floats are always fascinating enough to carry the stories all by themselves. I voted Elle (best screenplay of the entire year I think, with the caveat that I still haven't seen Manchester and Fences) with Wilderpeople as my #2. And Silence was obviously snubbed there.

American Honey had the best soundtrack but what am I saying according to these awards the movie might as well not exist at all.

Arrival is a decent screenplay on its own but not a good adaptation. All of its fans who haven't read the original short story really need to do so.

Hell or High Water's editing is underrated, even with the Oscar nom. It's an amazingly efficient movie in the way it's cut.

Ali is perfectly solid in Moonlight but Andre Holland should be getting all of his awards.

No living deliciously for us.

Someone in the Crowd is very fun but the least essential song in the movie by a mile.