A list of alternative Oscar picks ahead of this year’s awards.
The Oscars are here again! Soon in Hollywood, the filmmaking capital of the world, the most coveted award in the industry will be handed out to a collection of films deemed the “best” of 2019. While I’m personally pulling for Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood to take home the top prize, Antonio Banderas to be crowned Best Actor and for Parasite to win any award it can get its hands on, I can’t help but reflect (as I do every year) of the films left out of the upcoming festivities.
There are always going to be titles which, despite some hard-fought campaigning and attempts to be seen by the industry, are just destined to end up unacknowledged by the Academy. Worse still is the fact that there are numerous titles which never even had a chance to contend for any of the prizes tonight, despite being more than worthy. But winning an Oscar is dependent on quality (at least in most cases) as well as visibility. So for those who feel that not all of this year’s nominated films met the requirements needed to take home an Oscar, please enjoy the collection of alternative nominees which definitely do.
Best Picture: A Hidden Life
Known this awards season as that other war movie, A Hidden Life has been curiously absent from the conversation despite being such a compelling piece of filmmaking. Director Terrence Malick returns to a more conventional form of narrative to tell the true story of an Austrian farmer Franz Jägerstätter (August Diehl) who is sent to prison for going against Hitler’s regime during WWII, declaring himself a concientious objector. Many have taken Malick to task for his recent output of work and an overuse of style over plot. While his latest isn’t short on style by any means (the Austrian countryside is shot so dreamily and exquisitely), it’s the conflict of the main character which drives the film. The bravery of Franz’s act isn’t lost at all throughout film and watching him cling to what he firmly believes even as his family’s well-being and his very own life hangs in the balance is astonishing. It might not have the visceral power of 1917, but in its own way, A Hidden Life is about the value and importance of conviction and believing in the choices we make; whatever their cost may be.
Best Director: Todd Haynes- Dark Waters
As a filmmaker, Haynes has ventured, nay soared, in the realm of provocative drama (Far From Heaven, Carol) and children’s literary adaptations (Wonderstruck), proving his skill and sensitivity at both. Still, few expected him to take on a “ripped from the headlines” feature like Dark Waters. Based on a true story, the film recalls how a high-powered corporate attorney (Mark Ruffalo) discovered that the Dupont corporation was dumping poisonous chemicals into rural America’s water supply. The movie lives up to its title as it paints a bleak and somber picture of the ordinary man trying to take on an unbeatable force. Haynes takes the opportunity to craft something of a character study as we watch the main protagonist wrestle with his principles and career he’s devoted his life to. But this film is an indictment of what a high-powered corporation thought they could get away with and the stark, yet strangely poetic way Haynes captures it makes Dark Waters another worthwhile achievement for the director.
Best Actor: Andrew Garfield- Under the Silver Lake
When the surrealist mystery/comedy Under the Silver Lake was finally released following a series of delays, critics and audiences found themselves bewildered by the film’s incredibly dense screenplay which delighted some and frustrated others. The story details the journey of an L.A. slacker (Garfield) who follows one obscure clue after another in an effort to find the mysterious girl (Riley Keough) he’s fallen for. Even after multiple viewings, there’s still so much about Under the Silver Lake which still requires deciphering. However Andrew Garfield’s wildly committed performance ranks not only as one of the best of the year, but could possibly be one of the actor’s best turns on screen. As Sam, Garfield weaves cluelessness with quiet strength and determination as he ventures into a true wonderland (bizarre, even by L.A. standards), maintaining a vulnerability all the way through and making his character almost as compelling as the mystery he’s trying to solve.
Best Actress: Penelope Cruz- Everybody Knows
Cruz has been an actress with the ability to continuously wow audiences with the way she is able to convey emotion through such poetry and fire. Any one of her many accomplished performances shows an ability to let the material and character take her over in a way that’s beyond transcendent. The actress proved this once more with her work in this year’s Everybody Knows, in which she starred as a mother who returns home for her younger sister’s wedding only to have her oldest child kidnapped. The movie wonderfully mixes Spanish culture, an Agatha Christie-like mystery with a story about ghosts from the past. None of it would work as effectively as it does however, were it not for Cruz, who commands the screen through her character’s desperation to find her missing child and the grief she acknowledges towards some of the choices she’s made in her life.
Best Supporting Actor: Billy Crudup- Where’d You Go, Bernadette
In so many of his film appearances, Billy Crudup has always been an actor who’s been easy to overlook. None of this is due to his capabilities as an actor, but the fact that he so rarely is given the kind of part that allows him to soar. However Richard Linkater definitely mended that problem by casting Crudup as Cate Blanchett’s concerned husband in the film adaptation of the novel, Where’d You Go, Bernadette. As the eternally supportive, if distracted, husband of a once renowned architect(Blanchett) who is slowly suffering a breakdown, Crudup is at his most heartbreaking. It’d be easy to write off his character as a former free spirit who lost his soul when he found wealth and success, but Crudup plays him as a man who never believed the woman who inspired him could fall so far. It’s the way the actor illustrates his character’s slow realization of the present, his recollection of the past he shared with his wife and his determination to find the real woman he fell in love with, which makes this Crudup’s finest role to date.
Best Supporting Actress: Marianne Jean-Baptiste- In Fabric
When a performer finds themselves in one of the nuttiest horror movies of recent memory, it’d be safe to assume that the project wouldn’t provide them with the kind of material worthy of awards. However Jean-Baptiste proves this isn’t always the case and does some of the best work of her career in the bizarre A24 horror tale, In Fabric. The film is about a killer red dress that’s sold in a department store that’s right out of Suspiria, which begins to wreak havoc on all who wear it. In the film, Jean-Baptiste plays Sheila, a divorced bank teller living with her 20-something son who dreams of finding love again. Much of In Fabric’s twists and turns are straight up bananas, but Jean-Baptiste plays it straight as she brings out her character’s desire and determination to change her life. Watching as she takes Sheila from hopeless romantic, to a woman finding her own voice is so incredibly moving, that it almost becomes easy to forget she’s in such an insane film to begin with.
Best Adapted Screenplay: Edward Norton- Motherless Brooklyn
The definition of a passion project, Edward Norton starred, directed, produced and adapted the film version of this Jonathan Lethem novel about a 1950s private eye suffering from Tourette’s who takes it upon himself to solve the murder of his mentor (Bruce Willis), unveiling a world of corruption within New York City. Few films last year came off as stylized as Motherless Brooklyn with its recreation New York in the 1950s. It all makes for a sumptuous visual experience for sure, but Motherless Brooklyn really comes alive in Norton’s script, which transports the novel from the late 90s to the mid-50s and playing up the class and racial divides plaguing the city during that time. Norton skillfully navigates the novel’s dense plot into a dark trail that becomes all the more involving with every person his character encounters. Of course the best part about a movie like Motherless Brooklyn will always be the dialogue, with plenty of jewels to be found, especially in Norton’s narration. “Frank told me once if you’re up against someone bigger than you, someone you can’t beat toe to toe, make ’em think you respect their size, and then cut a deal that lets you walk out in one piece. Then figure out a way to stick it to ’em later without leaving your prints on the knife.”
Best Original Screenplay: Dan Gilroy- Velvet Buzzsaw
Maybe it was the abundance of praise given to 2014’s Nightcrawler and the expectations that came with it which played a part in the lackluster reception given to each of writer/director Dan Gilroy’s subsequent follow-ups, Velvet Buzzsaw. Set in the heart of the L.A. art world, the film followed the paths of various dealers, artists and minions within the scene and the supernatural force that changes their lives. Initially sold as a horror film, Velvet Buzzsaw is more dark comedy than anything else. The sheer absurdity of that world in its normal form is humorous enough, but the hilarity that comes with each supernatural death is priceless. A dead woman is mistaken as an art piece by gallery patrons until her assistant (who spends most of the film encountering one dead body after another) points out she’s actually dead and Gilroy’s dialogue is the perfect send-up of the self-important nature that flows throughout that world. Of course the best lines come from Jake Gyllenhaal’s pretentious and revered art critic. “A bad review is better than sinking into the great glut of anonymity,” he muses at one point. “Was that a joke,” a woman asks him. “Not that I’m aware of,” he earnestly replies. With top work from him, Rene Russo, Toni Collette and John Malkovich, Velvet Buzzsaw is the kind of high-concept, surrealist comedy that we could always use more of.
Best Cinematography: Piercing
One of the oddest releases to come out last year, Nicolas Pesce’s Piercing started off 2019 with a story about a homicidal married man (Christopher Abbott) who hires a prostitute (Mia Wasikowska) he intends on killing who, unbeknownst to him, has plans of her own. Piercing was Abbott’s follow-up to 2016’s The Eyes of My Mother, which garnered the filmmaker plenty of prizes for his unique style. Piercing furthers the director’s artistic eye thanks to the vibrant colors shown throughout the grim film. Garishly bright reds and yellows mixed with the obscure angles which transform them give the film a truly surreal feeling as it creates a world that’s strangely intoxicating. With all its twists and turns, Piercing is a disturbing ride that’s heightened by its otherworldly look.
Best Score: Maleficent: Mistress of Evil
Since critics weren’t that kind to the first Maleficent, it would stand to reason that they wouldn’t be to the second one either. One of the more darker Disney sequels, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil is able to inject references to both Nazi Germany and Trumpism in what is a partial origin story for the main character. The plusses however, are there. Besides Michelle Pfieffer credibly camping it up as the icy Queen Ingrith and a gonzo finale, it’s Geoff Zanelli’s score which does more for the movie than perhaps anyone expected. Where the movie approaches many of its moments and overall themes with a highly pedestrian approach, Zanelli’s lush and grandiose compositions manage to give them the kind of importance that the movie’s half-baked script was initially going for. With a pair of seasoned and formidable leading ladies at its center, a plethora of special effects and (once again) that finale, crafting a score which could keep up, let alone stand out, alongside all of that is no easy chore. Fortunately, it’s one which Zanelli managed perfectly.
Best Documentary: Making Montgomery Clift
So much has been written about the legendary actor Montgomery Clift. Biographies, past documentaries and film historians have spent years crafting and perpetuating the idea of the tortured artist who found himself undone by depression, homosexuality and a dependence on pills and booze. Directed by Hillary Demmon and Clift’s own nephew, Robert Anderson Clift, Making Montgomery Clift shatters the image as it offers up what is perhaps the most accurate portrait of the actor. Through personal letters and recorded conversations, the film shows the humor, warmth and compassion Clift possessed which those have studied him failed to acknowledge. A great documentary which successfully separates the man from the myth.
Best Foreign Film: Non-Fiction
Writer/director Olivier Assayas has to be France’s boldest and most original directors ever. After the intoxicating Clouds of Sils Maria and the deeply haunting Personal Shopper, the director went a more grounded route with his latest venture, the drama Non-Fiction. Re-teaming with Juliette Binoche, the film follows a variety of people in the world of television, publishing and journalism as they try to live their lives without being consumed by the constantly evolving nature of their professions. More dialogue-driven than his recent works, Non-Fiction asks a lot of questions about how to exist in a present-day society that is driven by technology and where the struggle to exist apart from such elements is constantly being fought. Binoche and the cast help sell Assayas’s words and the cosmopolitan drama he crafts is a solid one. But it’s the ultimate question Non-Fiction asks which makes it worth any cinema lover’s time. To what extent should a person adapt to the state of the world around them and how much should they cling to the way of life that’s worked for them thus far?
Best Visual Effects: The Aeronauts
On the surface, a movie about a pair of mismatched people flying around in a hot air balloon wouldn’t seem like the most exciting of prospects, particularly for this category. However this film (loosely based on a true story) about a scientist (Eddie Redmayne) who believed that weather could indeed be predicted and the female pilot (Felicity Jones) who takes him far enough to help to prove it, was one of the most invigorating movie experiences of last year. The Aeronauts is a lot of things; it’s an adventure movie, an unorthodox love story, a human drama and a period piece. However none of these sides would be able to come alive as well as they do were it not for the movie’s impressive effects. Tom Harper’s film offers up plenty of wondrous aerial shots, but they’re nothing compared to the scenes in which his main characters must contend with gail force winds as they intend to fly higher than any pair of humans have gone before. Each of these sequences sees the camera take the audience on a dizzying spin like no other, making us feel as if we’re in that very balloon. Nothing however, beats the sequence in which frost-bitten Jones must climb up to the very top of the balloon in an effort to keep it from freezing over. It’s the most terrifying moment in The Aeronauts that’s made with the kind of movie effects magic that’s simply breathtaking.
Best Original Song: The Lion King- “Never Too Late”
Nobody really wanted 2019’s The Lion King, but enough people embraced both it, and the reworking of the classic soundtrack, which included a couple of new tunes. In the rush to praise “Spirit,” Beyonce’s stunning addition to this live-action update, it was easy to forget that Elton John likewise made a new stellar contribution to the whole affair.Played over the end credits, “Never Too Late” makes for one of the most inspirational songs John ever wrote. With an upbeat melody and lyrics that proclaim: “ It’s never too late to get up off the ground. Don’t have to be noticed, don’t have to crowned. I did what I’ve done and I don’t try to hide. I lost many things, but never my pride,” the song is virtually impossible to embrace. Sure, John has crafted much stronger material, but “Never Too Late” can’t help but resonate as it proves itself to be the perfect anthem for the current age of perpetual reinvention. Whether or not the legacy of this version of The Lion King will be as long-lasting as that of its predecessor, “Never Too Late” at least should be.
Good luck to all of the nominees and congratulations to all of the artists who made 2019 in film the year that it was!