My Oscar Picks 2020

IMDb listing
Official Website

Dear Readers,

This past year, I was necessarily focused on events in our community / parish, so I didn't have a lot of time to write here.  But I did still see a fair amount of films.  We'll see how this goes next year.  I have enjoyed writing this blog.  It is possible that I'll have more time to write here again.  If not, this may be the last set of Oscar Picks that I will be publishing.

Fr. Dennis




BEST PICTURE
Will Win -- Parasite
Should Win -- Joker, Once Upon in Hollywood, Little Women
Should Have Gotten Consideration -- The Farewell


BEST ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE
Will Win -- Joaquin Phoenix (Joker)
Should Win -- Joaquin Phoenix (Joker), Antonio Banderas (Pain and Glory)


BEST ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE
Will Win -- Scarlett Johansson (Marriage Story)
Should Win -- Scarlett Johansson (Marriage Story), Renee Zellwiger (Judy)
Should Have Gotten Consideration -- 


BEST ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Will Win -- Brad Pitt (Once Upon in Hollywood)
Should Win -- Brad Pitt (Once Upon in Hollywood)


BEST ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Will Win -- Laura Dern (Little Women),
Should Win -- Kathy Bates (Richard Jewell), Scarlett Johansson (Jojo Rabbit)
Should Have Gotten Consideration -- Kate Blanchett (Where'd You Go, Bernadette?)


BEST DIRECTING
Will Win -- Quentin Tarrantino (Once Upon in Hollywood)
Should Win -- Quentin Tarrantino (Once Upon in Hollywood), Todd Phillips (Joker)
Should Have Gotten Consideration -- Greta Gerwig (Little Women)


BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
Will Win -- Once Upon in Hollywood
Should Win -- Once Upon in Hollywood, 1917, Joker
Should Have Gotten Consideration -- Little Women


BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Will Win -- Parasite, Once Upon in Hollywood,
Should Win -- Once Upon in Hollywood, Knives Out
Should Have Gotten Consideration -- The Farewell


BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
Will Win -- Little Women
Should Win -- Little Women, Jojo Rabbit, Joker

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Downton Abbey [2019]

MPAA (PG)  CNS/USCCB (A-III)  RogerEbert.com (3 1/2 Stars)  AVClub (B-)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)


IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
Los Angeles Times (K. Turan) review
RogerEbert.com (M. Zoller-Seitz) review
AVClub (C. Steele) review

Downton Abbey [2019] (directed by Michael Engler characters and screenplay by Julian Fellowes) delivers what it promises ... a two hour visit to a place that millions of viewers across the English speaking world and beyond had come to know and love through the successful television series about "more tranquil times" ... when it was being debated and starting to be settled as to whether paupers, people of darker complexions and foreign tongues, women as a whole, to say nothing of then invisible people like homosexuals were ... worthy of rights.

And so it is here.  And all is regally blessed and proven "fine" at the Abbey as they receive word that the King and Queen were planning a visit to their part of the Realm, were inviting themselves over to the Abbey (I guess, if you're the King, you can do whatever you want, AND "what an honor it would be" in any case), and ... (mild spoiler alert) all turns out well.

But, then, how could it not...?  Directed by the steady guiding hand of the _wisest_ of local patriarchs, Robert Crawley, Earl of Grantham (played by Hugh Bonneville) albeit with an American wife Cora (played by Elizabeth McGovern) but then with a stable, well-trained, LOYAL abbey staff, what could possibly go wrong?

Yes, there are the pesky Irish who want to get a shot at the King (played by Simon Jones).  But even the King "understands" (and arguably _forgives them_).  So ...

There is a loveliness to all this ... and in the crassness of our time it is certainly appealing, just as long as we realize that when we enter stories like this, we enter a world essentially of "Platonic Forms" about as real as that of Middle Earth / The Hobbit.  That said, we all need stories that give us comfort and peace. 


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Judy [2019]

MPAA (PG-13)  CNS/USCCB ()  RogerEbert.com (2 Stars)  AVClub (B-)  Fr. Dennis (3 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB () review
Los Angeles Times (K, Turan) review
RogerEbert.com (M. Castillo) review
AVClub (C. Siede) review


Judy [2019] (directed by Rupert Goold, screenplay by Tom Edge based on the stageplay "The End of the Raindbow" by Peter Quilter) tells the story of the last year of Hollywood legend Judy Garland's [wikip] [IMDb] life as a troubled but still top-billed night-club singer in ... London.  She died there, of an ... accidental barbiturate overdose at 47 in 1969.  What happened to the teenage Dorothy of Wizard of Oz [1939] fame?  Well, life ...

And it was not a particularly good one.  We do get to see the costs of fame in Mid-20th Century Hollywood (1930s-1960s).  To a large extent therefore, the film follows a well beaten path.  One needs only to think of Sunset Blvd [1950].

Still, just because "we've heard the story before," doesn't make it untrue.  And it honestly MAY BE USEFUL for people be reminded from time to time what "costs of fame" are.

Here we see the effects of thirty years of "studio management" on the life of one of its biggest stars, Judy Garland (played as a teenager by Darci Shaw and later as an adult by Renee Zellwiger) who "captured America's hearts" as the wide-eyed innocent / naive Alice in Wonderland like teenager Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz [1939] and yet was even then mercilessly reminded that she could be replaced AT ANY TIME by any number of OTHER wide-eyed, innocent / naive "girl next door" types even arguably more attractive than she was, "So SHUT UP, take the 1930s-era diet and sleeping pills that we're giving you, and just DO WHAT WE SAY..."

We thankfully live now in the #MeToo era, where the worst of this abuse is being progressively exposed.  Yet while there was no indication in the film that Garland was sexually abused by her studio bosses / handlers, the film story makes clear that the Studios and their managers basically _owned_ their "stars" in any case, especially their younger ones, and almost inevitably turned them into the basket cases that we come to read about in the tabloids in their later years. 

Is it worth it?  Do these poor people even know what they're getting into? 

Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, here Judy Garland ... Pray for us.


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Joker [2019]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB (L)  RogerEbert.com (2 Stars)  AVClub (B-)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (K. Jensen) review
Los Angeles Times (J. Chang) review
RogerEbert.com (G. Kenny) review
AVClub (A.A. Dowd) review 


Joker [2019] (directed by Todd Phillips, screenplay by Todd Phillips and Scott Silver) offers an appropriately dark (and rather credible) origin story for The Joker [DCC] [Wikip] [IMDb] (played in this film by Joaquin Phoenix) among most unforgettable American comic book super-villains of all time.

Troubled little man, Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) -- "fleck" literally means "spot" or "stain" in many central European languages, including German -- tries to make the best of his hard, little life in the troubled, timeless, fallen New York City-inspired Gotham (the people of Gotham drive 1960s-70s era cars, use smart phones, 1970-80s era answering machines and watch 1930s era Charlie Chaplin movies...). 

Brought-up by his similarly beaten-down by life, cheated-upon, abused, single mom (not by choice), "worth no more than change," Penny (played by Frances Conroy) for whom Arthur had been the one source of at least some joy in her life ("he was always such a happy boy...") and then told by said mom to "keep putting on a happy face," Arthur ekes out a living as a "clown for hire" ... and suffers ALL the indignities of being dressed as a clown in a hard / cynical town that is NOT laughing (except at someone's expense) ... and he becomes ... well what can anybody expect?

The film makes for an inspired, if yes, dark, character study exposing the cruelty of a society that, well, doesn't give a damn.  Indeed, Robert De Niro, whose breakthrough portrayal of a similarly invisible, troubled titular Taxi Driver [1976] put him, forever, among Hollywood's greats, plays a significant role in the current story, though NOT as another anonymous loser but rather as a Johnny Carson-like "star", whose career actually feeds on the little losers like poor Arthur and Penny Fleck, who religiously stay-up to watch his show even as he largely makes fun of their difficult lives.

Brilliant, if scathing and sad.  Definitely NOT for pre-teens nor for the weak of heart.  But can help us understand some of the madness of our times.


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Dora and the Lost City of Gold [2019]

MPAA (PG)  CNS/USCCB (A-II)  RogerEbert.com (3 Stars)  AVClub (B-)  Fr. Dennis (3 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. McAleer) review
Los Angeles Times (K. Walsh) review
RogerEbert.com (C. Lemire) review
AVClub (J. Hassenger) review


Dora and the Lost City of Gold [2019] (directed by James Bobin, story by Tom Wheeler, screenplay by Matthew Robinson and Nicholas Stoller based on the series Dora the Explorer [2000-] [wikip] [IMDb] created by Chris Gifford, Valerie Walsh and Eric Weiner) is a fun family friendly movie that takes the fun / inquisitive Dora to both high school and the big screen.

In the film, Dora (played first, briefly, as a precocious 6 year old by Madalyn Miranda, and then ten years later as a teenager by Isabel Moner), is sent by her "Indiana Jones"-like / clearly "field-work" enjoying university professor / explorer parents (played by Michael Peña and Eva Longoria) from the Andean jungles of Peru, where she had grown-up, to her "tios" in Los Angeles, so that she could experience, well, "the indigenous peoples of ... high school" ;-).

A little disappointed that her parents wanted to send her away just as they seem to have made a breakthrough in their search of a lost Inca city, she nevertheless takes on the challenge of learning "a whole new culture" with the enthusiasm that one would expect of Dora from the TV series (and the daughter of ethnographers).  The problem of course is that, at least initially, "the natives" of random Southern California high school are not exactly open to being understood by / much less being friends with someone who seems to have come from another world.

A plot twist sends both her and a number of her classmates to back to the jungles of Peru where of course ... much ensues ;-), and the classmates get to experience something outside of their day-to-day experience and ... come to appreciate what Dora has to offer.

Like the TV series that it is based on, the film's got an unabasshedly positive message, reminding us that we all have something to offer, and generally speaking, if at first we don't get along with each other, it's because we still don't really understand them.

Hispanic families will certainly appreciate the care taken to present the role of the extended family -- the tios (uncles/aunts), primos (cousins) and the wise/respected/saintly/kind abuela (grandma) -- in Hispanic (and actually in most non-North American) cultures.

Overall therefore a quite excellent family film!


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Where'd You Go, Bernadette [2019]

MPAA (PG-13)  CNS/USCCB (A-III)  RogerEbert.com (1 1/2 Stars)  AVClub (C)  Fr. Dennis (2 1/2 Stars)

IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (H. Rupprecht) review
Los Angeles Times (K. Turan) review
RogerEbert.com (M. Castillo) review
AVClub (J. Hessenger) review


Where'd You Go, Bernadette [2019] (directed and screenplay cowritten by Richard Linklater along with Holly Gent and Vince Palmo, based on the novel [GR] by Maria Semple [wikip] [GR] [IMDb]), though marketed as a Comedy is NOT REALLY that.  It's a Dramedy, I suppose, but it's serious enough to not really be funny at all.

The film is about Bernadette Fox (played quite thoughtfully by Kate Blanchett) a 40 something once promising young architect (in "sunny Southern California") who for reasons that become increasingly clear, left that world to marry a random if quite successful "development engineer" ("heading his own team...") working for Microsoft named Elgie (played by Billy Crudup).  So together they live in a rainy but wealthy enclave of Seattle among other highly educated 30 and 40 somethings and the two have a lively and almost necessarily naive teenage daughter named Bee (played by Emma Nelson). 

It's a wet golden cage.

And after the drip, drip, drip of the torment of clearly somehow previously frustrated dreams, Bernadette is ready to ... well, you get the picture.

Everything is still presented in a remarkably _gentle_ way (mediated by large amounts of money that most of the film's Viewers will not have), but ... a comedy?  No, there are some real issues being lifted up here.

Further, PG-13 rating notwithstanding, it's not really a film for kids or teenagers either.  It's for the Parents and deals with the central challenge articulated by Freud a century ago: balancing the fulfillment of obligation and desire.

What can religion (not present in the film at all) to the mix?  That (1) God does want us to be happy and (2) God doesn't care if we come to be "important" because God does love us all.  Finally, (3) as St. John Paul II already noted in his second encyclical Laborem Exercens (On the Dignity of Work) we were created by God to create.  It simply isn't good for us to "do nothing" no matter how rich or poor we are. 


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Once Upon a Time in ... Hollywood [2019]

MPAA (R)  CNS/USCCB (O)  RogerEbert.com (4 Stars)  AVClub (B+)  Fr. Dennis (4 Stars)


IMDb listing
CNS/USCCB (J. Mulderig) review
Los Angeles Times (K. Turan) review
RogerEbert.com (B. Tollerico) review
AVClub (K. Rife) review

Once Upon a Time in ... Hollywood [2019] (written and directed by Quentin Tarantino) is IMHO a well-crafted affair, taking full advantage of writer/director's strengths -- creating and more-to-the-point _extending_ suspense (here through the _entire length_ of the 2 hour and 40 minute movie) even as one _knows_ what is coming, and then his capacity to creatively and IMHO utterly satisfactorily "re-imagine" endings to otherwise well known stories -- and actually / thankfully quite "light" on the most problematic aspect of his films -- violence.

Indeed, I've mentioned to a number of friends that someone must have sat down with Tarantino and told him:

"Look the best part of your movies _isn't_ the over-the-top violence.  NO, BY FAR THE BEST PART of your films has been _your ability_ to "stretch out the coming of the inevitable" -- One thinks of the ridiculously long but _fascinating_ "bar scene" or even the earlier "cafe' scene" in Inglorious Basterds [2009] or really the entire film, The Hateful Eight [2015], the latter set largely in a random 19th century mountain lodge somewhere "near the Donner Pass in the High Sierras" during a seemingly unending blizzard, when _every time_ the conversation between the bored, but colorful and ever creatively lowlife characters reaches an some critical juncture, and _everyone_ reaches to their sides for their pistols, ... some _new_ interesting but creatively lowlife character comes barreling through the door from the blizzard outside, and ... everyone lets their pistols slide back into their holsters and ... the conversation/story starts anew ;-).  SO ... no need to 'push' much less _extend_ the violence.  By far the _best part_ of your story-telling is 'getting there.'" 

The current film is _exactly this_.  EVERYONE who knows ANYTHING about what this story is about (hint: it's about the Manson Murders [wikip]), KNOWS ... "what is coming" BUT .... WHEN??? ... AND ... well, "it's a Tarantino film" SO ... ;-)

To say _anything more_ about the film would do it a great deal of damage, except that all three of the main actors in this film -- Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt and even Margo Richie as Sharon Tate [wikip] -- are brilliant in their roles.  They "earned their pay" and probably had a lot of fun doing it, yes, had fun starring in a film about the Manson Murders.  How??  Well, go see the film ;-).

And yes, Parents please be sensible.  It's a film about the Manson Murders (!), so do respect the "R" rating.  It's deserved.  But understanding that, a brilliant film.


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