Movie – Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

After a thirty year wait Max Rockatansky returns in Mad Max: Fury Road…probably.  (More on that in a bit.)  This is a balls to the wall, completely insane action film and it blows my mind that it somehow got nominated for Best Picture.  Don’t get me wrong; I think it’s entertaining as hell.  It’s just that these kinds of movies pretty much never get Oscar nominations beyond ones for visual effects, sound, and editing.  Well, Mad Max: Fury Road (MMFR) received nominations for no less than ten Oscars, including one for director George Miller.

Movie – Bridge of Spies (2015)

What do you get when Steve Spielberg directs a film from a screenplay written by the Coen Brothers?  Bridge of Spies.  It’s a period drama (Coens) starring Tom Hanks (Spielberg) and a bunch of lesser known actors (Coens), done on a lower budget than most mainstream studio releases (Coens) about a man who is principled and steadfast (Spielberg).  The result works pretty well.

Movie – Room (2015)

Room is nominated for four of the big five Oscars – Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, and Best Adapted Screenplay.  I don’t know that it will win any of them because of the flaws in the film.  Brie Larson probably has the best chance of winning because her best scenes are during the better parts of the movie.  Overall, I’m guessing this got its Best Picture nomination because of the subject matter, not because of the actual quality of the film compared to the other potential nominees.

Movie – Spotlight (2015)

Spotlight is a film about the work Boston Globe journalists did to research and expose the vast scope of child molestation and cover-up that had occurred in the Boston-area Catholic churches.  The title of the film comes from the name of the team of journalists within the Globe who would get assigned months-long investigations of important stories.  This is a good film about a tough topic.  The best thing it does is treat the subject with the respect it deserves and not try to be sensationalistic with it, even though that has caused those who want more excitement and action to label the film “boring”.

Movie – The Big Short (2015)

As I write this The Big Short just became the unexpected winner of the Producers Guild Award for Best Picture.  Since the PGA winner has presaged the Oscar’s Best Picture winner for seven years straight, and since The Big Short was not considered the Oscar front-runner, this has thrown the Oscar race a big curve.  Making it even more unsettled is that if The Big Short were to win it would be the most comedic film to do so since at least American Beauty (1999).

Movie – The Martian (2015)

I have seen five of the eight Oscar nominees for Best Picture so far and among them The Martian is my favorite.  It combines the best aspects of Apollo 13, Castaway, and Gravity.  And I’ll address this right up front – despite the Golden Globe wins for the film and star Matt Damon in the comedy categories, this is a drama with some lightly humorous moments, not a comedy.  It’s also a great story.

I like movies where smart people deal with issues by being smart, or to paraphrase a line from the film - by sciencing the shit out of it. We have far, far too many movies about idiots being idiotic, so it's nice when every once in a great while a film like this gets made.  This is easily Director Ridley Scott's best movie in quite some time.  Drew Goddard (who got his start with Joss Whedon writing Buffy the Vampire Slayer) delivered a great script, too.  It’s all based on a book that started out as free, serialized posts on the blog of writer Andy Weir.  He got so many requests to turn it into an e-book that he finally did and was selling it for 99 cents.  It attracted Hollywood’s attention and the result was this film.

Movie – The Revenant (2015)

As I write this The Revenant appears to be the emerging favorite to win Best Picture at the 2016 Oscars.  That is still more than a month away, though, so we will have to see if it keeps its momentum or if it starts to fade.  It is a simple tale of survival and revenge very loosely based on the story of Hugh Glass, a frontiersman in the 1820s who was attacked by a bear, left for dead, but managed to make his way back to a fort.  It stars Leonardo DiCaprio in what might finally be an Oscar winning performance for him.  It’s got a lot of good things going for it, but The Revenant also has some flaws.

Observations on the 2016 Oscar Nominations (with No Bitching About What Didn’t Make It)

The 2016 Oscar nominations were announced Thursday.  Going down through them there are a few eyebrow raisers, but no out and out WTFs like a few years ago when Ben Affleck didn’t even get nominated for Best Director for the movie that ended up winning Best Picture (Argo).

Here are the eight Best Picture nominees:

The Big Short

Brooklyn

Bridge of Spies

Mad Max: Fury Road

The Martian

The Revenant

Room

Spotlight