In a few days’ time, a bunch of well-dressed famous people will gather at an opulent theater in Hollywood and hand out little golden action figures in commemoration of another year spent making more money in a week than most people make in a lifetime. Yes, it’s time for the Academy Awards, the movie award show to end all movie award shows. And whether you’re attending the festivities in style or, more likely, sitting on your couch with a bag of Cheetos and snickering at that RIDICULOUS outfit what’s-her-face is wearing, you’ll want to be prepared. That’s why we at Pixel Apocalypse have created a helpful breakdown, complete with predictions, of the nine movies nominated for the Academy’s top prize, the Best Picture Oscar. Except that we haven’t seen three of them. What? We’re busy.
The Artist
Most people in the film industry will tell you that silent movies have been irrelevant since at least the 1930s. Those people are Americans. In a turn of events so ludicrously self-indulgent they only could have happened in France, director Michel Hazanavicius made The Artist, a modern day silent movie. It tells the story of George Valentin, a popular silent film actor living in the 1920s who has trouble keeping his career afloat after movies switch over to sound. It’s all very meta, you see. Once you get over the shock of watching a movie where no one talks, The Artist actually becomes pretty entertaining. There are a lot of corny but amusing jokes, the emotion is played very near the surface, and the audacity of the whole thing is interesting in and of itself. Silent films aren’t on their way back, but The Artist is a fun novelty.
The Descendants
The Descendants was directed by Alexander Payne, a man whose credits include kick-ass movies like Election, About Schmidt, and Sideways. If those movies were simmering slices of fine filet mignon, The Descendants is a slightly singed T-bone. It’s not BAD, exactly, but it’s not terribly good either. George Clooney stars as a wealthy lawyer living in Hawaii. His wife is in a coma, his relationship with his daughters is disintegrating, and his relatives are pressing him to make a decision about selling the family land. Over the course of the movie he learns important lessons about fidelity and family and some other stuff while I sat there trying to care. The stakes are pretty low here; it was hard to sympathize with the Clooney character when I knew that, land sale or not, he was going to be pretty much okay. Let’s hope that Payne steps it up for his next flick.
The Tree of Life
This movie is about… I actually don’t know how to finish that sentence. Director Terrence Malick is a guy known for making movies about the big questions. Who are we, why are we here… that kind of stuff. As a result, his films tend to be maddeningly vague. The Tree of Life is nominally about a family living in the 1960s. The father is professionally unsuccessful and takes some of his anger out on his sons, who love and resent him in about equal measure. But Malick doesn’t stop there. He cuts in footage of the birth of the universe, and dinosaurs, and flash-forwards to the son’s adulthood. No one talks much, but there are a lot of significant glances. If you find this meandering description off-putting, you’ll know how I felt while watching this movie. I’m willing to concede that Malick has some great big artistic vision here, but I didn’t get it. I was bored.
Midnight in Paris
Woody Allen, a director known mainly for making a couple of good flicks in the 70s and for marrying his step-daughter in the 90s, is a popular punching bag among pundits. Every year he comes out with a new movie, and every year critics note that it’s not nearly as good as his earlier work. Whatever his track record, I’ll be damned if I didn’t have more fun watching Midnight in Paris than I had watching any other movie in 2011. This thing is packed to bursting with charm. Without giving too much away, I’ll say that the movie is about a professionally successful but creatively unsatisfied screenwriter who comes to Paris on vacation. A lot of his literary idols have lived in Paris, and he’s hoping being there will inspire him. One night he goes for a walk, gets into a strange car, and then… is taken somewhere surprising. Allen has a ton of fun riffing on Paris and the many famous people who have lived there, and the movie’s casting call’s worth of actors clearly have a blast inhabiting their roles. I admit that Midnight in Paris’ particular brand of funny and sweet may not be for everyone, but for a culture geek like me it was terrific.
Hugo
Like The Artist, Hugo is about the early day of the movie industry. Adapted from a children’s book, Hugo tells the story of a young orphan named, uh, Hugo, who lives in the attic of a Parisian train station in the years after World War I. Eventually, Hugo’s life intersects with that of Georges Méliès, a giant of the early cinema who has since become a bitter old man. Then more things happen. Look, this isn’t the kind of movie that gets by on its tight plot. It’s more the kind that follows around an ever-increasing number of endearingly eccentric characters as they live and laugh and learn and love and stuff. And unlike The Artist, which looks like a lost movie from the 1930s, Hugo looks like it only could have made in the 21st Century. Versatile director Martin Scorsese, most famous for making gangster pics like Goodfellas and Gangs of New York, takes advantage of every special effect known to man to create a dizzying, fairy tale version of Paris that’s pretty memorable.
The Help
Finally, a film that has the conviction to take a stand on social issues and say the hard things that need to be said: racism, as it ends up, is bad. Based on the popular book of the same name, The Help is about a group of black maids living in Mississippi during the 1960s. The movie sidesteps a lot of the uglier issues involved with that topic in favor of giving us a procession of empowering, yes-we-can moments. The weary but resilient maids keep their dignity in the face of their blatantly racist, mustache-twirling white employers while the audience sits by satisfied in the knowledge that the bad guys got theirs. Impromptu exclamations of “You go, girl!” would not be unexpected. The Help is as close as we’re ever likely to get to seeing a feel-good movie about racial subjugation, and if that sounds like your thing you’ll probably enjoy it. I did. Just know that a hard-hitting examination of America’s dicey history with race relations this is not.[divider /]
I didn’t see Moneyball, War Horse, or Extremely Loud and Extremely Close. I think they’re about baseball, World War I, and post-9/11 New York respectively. If any of these flicks win Best Picture, I will eat my hat.*
Because no article about the Oscars would be complete without predicting at least one of the winners, we at Pixel Apocalypse will now use our superior foresight to identify the recipient of this year’s Best Picture award. We take no responsibility should we choose wrongly, but we are brilliant and our guess is absolutely guaranteed to be correct.
Will (probably) win: The Artist. The press has had a pretty big hard-on for this movie since it came out back in November. Critics fell all over each other to praise it, and it seems like the kind of artsy gamble Oscar voters go for. That said, it doesn’t really appeal to a large swath of the viewing public, so the industry might switch it out for something more marketable, something like Hugo, or…
Please, please don’t win: The Descendants. Somehow, this middling piece of undercooked beef shank won a Golden Globe for Best Drama back in January. I hope that doesn’t give the Oscar voters ideas, cause I would hate to see this kind of mediocrity rewarded. Again. With an award that matters. Relatively speaking.
Should, but won’t, win: Midnight in Paris. Maybe it was just because I went in without any expectations, but I enjoyed this one more than any of the other movies on the list. The thing has charm for days, but the Academy will probably pass it over because it doesn’t have a high enough profile. Too bad for Woody, who at the rate he’s been going won’t make another movie good enough to be nominated until around 2025.
* No, I won’t. I don’t even own a hat.
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