THE CANDIDATES

In the Rosenzweig/Gless household, the movies (primarily the submissions by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences) have had to take a back seat to the on-going saga of “Laird” Fraser and his fabulous spouse in Outlander.

We were late arrivals to this incredibly well produced series but have now caught up… having seen all six seasons (on Netflix as well as Amazon Prime). Next is the eagerly anticipated season seven which is currently in production and scheduled for release later this year.

Rather than mourn this temporary loss, my wife and I have turned our attention to this year’s motion pictures… some of which may (or may not) be Oscar worthy. Here is a sample:

I had heard nothing but negative things about Babylon… its excesses, both in story and presentation… and, while conceding that the movie is a bit flabby and overinflated, I commend it to you. There are some delicious moments in this film, both visually and emotionally, and they are enough to make this extravaganza worth seeing.

I do not think Babylon is going to get many awards… and the voting members of the Academy would undoubtedly be correct to withhold them, but La La Land director Damien Chazelle has certainly book-ended his image of Hollywood with these two films, albeit in reverse order---beginning with the present in La La Land and ending with the beginning of it all in Babylon.

As to the cast: I thought Brad Pitt was terrific (as usual) and I have yet to become a Margot Robbie fan.

What, one might ask, have the The Whale and Elvis got in common? No, it is not that both have lead characters who late-in-life gain a lot of weight. The common denominator between the two references is the toss-up as to which leading man in those two films will get the Oscar. I am going to bet on Brendan Fraser in The Whale… but, if I were you, I would not bet against Austin Butler as Elvis Presley in the movie that bears his character’s given name. As to the builders of the “fat suits”… give that prize to Fraser’s team in The Whale over the dudes who blew up Tom Hanks, as Colonel Parker, in Elvis.

Oh yeah… their respective movies: I liked Elvis a whole lot more than The Whale even while admiring the skill sets it took to make the latter. Good as it is… The Whale is still a stage play more than a movie, while Elvis soars on the screen, as films directed by Baz Luhrmann are wont to do.

Genuine disappointments were The Menu and The Fabelmans. Personally, I liked Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None with Barry Fitzgerald and Walter Huston, a whole lot better than this modern-day approach in The Menu. I concede I was only seven and a half years old in 1945 when the Rene Clair version of this thriller was released, but I still remember it fondly. I saw The Menu last week and cannot think of anything memorable about it at all. Were I a bigger foodie, I might speculate as to the influence of this film on the decision to shutter Noma… a Danish eatery generally conceded to be the best in the world. Dunno. Not my table.

The Fabelmans was okay… but just okay. We are all entitled to expect more from Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner. I can tell you without qualification that I certainly do. This sorta autobiography could have been… should have been… so much more clever than it turns out to be.

There is a decent mini-moment or two in the early going of Fabelmans with the Greatest Show on Earth sequence. There is the ending, featuring the movie’s lead, barely out of his teens, with the iconic director, John Ford (a wonderful cameo performance by David Lynch). In between all of that is something like two hours plus of chuffa. Tony Award winning playwright Kushner should have studied Tom Stoppard’s Shakespeare in Love as a model for how to present a fictionalized biography of a renowned artist.

On the subject of artists, we have Cate Blanchett essaying the title role in TAR which is not a movie for everyone, but a movie some folks will want to see more than once. The picture is smart and compelling but not always entertaining or… for that matter… even satisfying. What is the other word I was looking for to characterize the entire piece? Oh yes, I remember now: pretentious. All that aside, Ms. Blanchett nails it (as she so often does) resulting in her being the odds-on favorite to take home the Oscar.

There are some awfully good movie/movies that I have written about in previous Island notes (Batman and Top Gun: Maverick come readily to mind), but perhaps the best motion picture I have seen so far this season is one no one is talking about. It is not only entertaining… it is a testimony to the craft and art of the motion picture. It is Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio.

This adaptation of this story almost everybody knows, highlights the movie maker’s skills first brought to my attention in his previous productions such as Pan’s Labyrinth and The Shape of Water. All the craft that was on display in those films is advanced and enhanced in Pinocchio.

The movie is totally engaging, still it stretches credulity well beyond Pinocchio’s dream of becoming a “real boy” to think the Academy would ever give its best picture award to this film. If I am right, it is the Academy’s loss, for with this interpretation of Carlo Collodi’s 19^th century novel for children, Guillermo del Toro has created his masterwork.

 

 

Barney Rosenzweig