Jake Gittes

Knew I might be in for something special when I could vividly imagine the script being written before anyone on screen had even said a word. Writer 1: Okay, tell you what, the absolute first thing we need to do is establish that this Ron Woodroof is a real tough guy, a real masculine son of a bitch. How do we do that? Writer 2: How about - get this - he has brooding sex not with one, but with two women, in a stable, right next to a bullriding arena? [two minutes later] Writer 1: Alright, next thing is, we gotta show that he's a real nasty homophobe. What do we do? Writer 2: I got it! The very first line he says is gonna be, "Can you believe Rock Hudson's a cocksucker"? And he and his friends are gonna throw the word "----" around a bunch of times so the viewer really gets how totally homophobic they are. [two minutes after that] Writer 1: Well, see here, I think a great idea would be to explicitly foreshadow his eventual death before we actually have to get the plot going. Writer 2: Yeah! So here's the scene: they're riding in a car and having this small talk, and we have him casually say something like, "Hey, you gotta die somehow". Me: Fuck, you have got to be kidding me. At this point I got out a notebook so I could write down stuff like this, which thankfully didn't rear its head every two minutes but there was still quite a bit of it. Overall, it's only interesting as an attempt to update your classic Baity Inspirational Drama, where instead of stuff like sentimental score and cheesy monologuing we get almost no music, unpolished cinematography and a fairly light (but not too light) tone, with the film basically becoming a heist movie for a large stretch of it and presenting Woodroof and Rayon as practically a bickering married couple in most of their scenes. At the end of the day, it's still completely safe and unchallenging and can't escape its heavy-handed, crowd-pleasing moments - he's one man vs. the system! he forces his homophobic former friend to shake a trans woman's hand! he delivers a righteous "People are dying!" speech! a judge validates him in the end! a bunch of people give him a prolonged applause! hey, that's the name of the movie! they even make bullriding into a last-second metaphor for his fight with death! And, of course, at least one crying scene for everyone. McConaughey does sell everything he needs to sell, but this is a role tailor-made for him; he's far more revelatory and captivating in Killer Joe and True Detective, to name just two recent examples. As for Leto, I never really saw him disappear into the character, both because the script doesn't bother with creating much of a character and because Leto reminded me of himself with almost every gesture and line reading (although his appropriately unsubtle blunt delivery of "God is helping you. I have AIDS" got to me more than I expected). Classic actoring, but hey, it won the guy all those shiny statues.

Expanding each acting category to 6 noms would make sense to me. Maybe 7, but that's already pushing it. Anything beyond that would be ridiculous. That's not "every great performance", that's "every performance that was campaigned for and/or more than a few voters bothered to see or at least heard about". There are like 2 or 3 great performances in that group, at the most. Also I doubt they'd nominate anyone from Chi-Raq or Tangerine or (insert any critically-praised independent movie way out of the Academy's wheelhouse) even if they had 20 spots in each category.

The sad irony is that if Birth of a Nation won Best Picture it would only give more weight to the notion that movies led by black people can only win big at the Oscars if they're about slavery

Pretty amazing posters on this one.

Yeah and I'd add The New World to that too.

I guess depending on how much time it'll spend in post-production the release date could be anywhere between mid-2017 and mid-2018. Either way I'm pretty stoked.

Yay for mediocrity.

If I were you I'd check out a few of his previous movies beforehand, see if you're on his wavelength.

BAFTA goes with Carol, SAG with Spotlight, DGA with Miller. It won't happen but it'd be great to see if it did.

Yeah I wouldn't be surprised at all to see Manchester by the Sea in the BP line-up next year.

The only biopic I know that follows its subject over several decades and yet does justice to him, never feeling rushed or like it's just checking off boxes. Totally dynamic and gripping for the entire 200-minute runtime, and Washington has never been better.

I'd love it if BAFTA gave the big awards to Carol even if just to throw a ton of shade on the Academy. But it probably won't.

I haven't even seen Lonergan's previous two films but having read about all his struggles with Margaret it'd be nice if he got a break with this one

Oooooh. Gonna wait for this.

Funniest movie of last year hands down. Somewhat unsure of itself in the first half-hour but once they arrive in Connecticut it's just one perfectly timed joke after another. And like Frances Ha (which is still better overall), it becomes really sweet and moving by the end too.

I'm guessing it's Inarritu inventing Leo's Indian wife and kid out of thin air just so they can get killed off and serve as nothing but motivation devices for him. Then there's the moment later when the movie has an Indian woman get raped for no other reason than to give Leo a heroic moment. I'm not terribly bothered by either thing but I'm not a fan either.

Depending on whether you have a hopeful or a cynical reading, either they still find peace, comfort and hope in the idealistic promise of America it describes even when they know it's just a beautiful lie, or Mannix throwing it away is a bitter acknowledgment that, in the end, nothing's gonna change because of something written on a piece of paper - people aren't ever gonna be any less hateful. Or both.

I would have nominated the bear for something if she had actually killed Di Caprio. Goddammit, bear, YOU HAD ONE JOB

Pretty sure I won't get to see any remaining 2015 releases in the next 5 days (sorry Carol, Room and Spotlight), so might as well do this now.

Both. The fact that Morricone's never won obviously plays a major part but it's a pretty kickass score, too.

Hardy's Fitzgerald isn't particularly complex but when surrounded by all the sub-Malick pretensions and Di Caprio making suffering faces his squirmy assholery feels like the most authentic and interesting thing in the world. I'd much rather have watched an entire movie about him.

The ending of Phoenix for Best Scene all the way.

Hardy gives easily the best performance in the movie. Once the (very good) first third was over, I was struggling to stay awake whenever he wasn't on screen.

Eh, it's still got two well-known actresses in leads, a striking look and style and some of the best reviews of the year, and it was riding a wave of buzz for months since Cannes. I'm not saying it ever had the chance be a big hit, but I would have expected it to slowly collect $25-30m DOM at least. Weinstein's mistake was the typical incredibly slow roll-out amidst a lot of competition - where The Imitation Game, The King's Speech and Silver Linings Plybook were crowd-pleasers that could only gain buzz before their wide release, Carol was riskier and probably should have gone wide much sooner. Instead it just fizzled out and got lost in the shuffle. Then again I can't really blame Weinstein for assuming he had a BP nomination locked up.