Best Pictures #109: 2024 (97th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee: A Complete Unknown

 by A.J.

Best Pictures #109: 2024 (97th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee

A Complete Unknown

“Don’t think twice, it’s alright.”

If I wanted to show someone a movie that captured the appeal of the enigmatic and mysterious and prickly person of Bob Dylan, beyond just the songs he wrote and sung, I would show them Todd Hayne’s 2007 non-biopic I’m Not There, in which six different actors played Bob Dylan-like characters in different stories (Cate Blanchett as the sunglasses hipster Dylan who goes electric is the stand out of the film and received a Supporting Actress Oscar nomination). Director James Mangold’s Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, based on the book Dylan Goes Electric by Elijah Wald, is a very well-made and entertaining, if standard feeling, film about the musician. This is technically a biopic, but it is less a biography than a dramatization of some of the events in Bob Dylan’s career from his beginnings in 1961 through the infamous and consequential Newport Folk Festival in 1965 where Dylan famously, or notoriously, “went electric.” 

Young Bob Dylan (Timothee Chalamet) arrives in New York to meet the legendary Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy) at a hospital so empty and bleak it reminded me of the hospital where Michael Corleone had to save his comatose father from hitmen in The Godfather. (Guthrie had Huntington’s Disease but I don’t remember if this is mentioned). Guthrie’s regular visitor Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) is there and offers the young musician a place to stay and introduces him to the burgeoning folk music scene. There is nothing of Bob Dylan before he arrives in New York. This isn’t an attempt to explain or understand Dylan—neither the real Dylan nor fans then or now would want that because the mystique, the poetic enigma, is the appeal of not Bob Dylan, but “Dylan.” They’re right of course. There are no scenes showing how or why he came up with his songs; such scenes would be hacky and feel blatantly false. A true feeling moment happens when Dylan confesses that he hates talking about his music because when people ask “where do your songs come from?” they’re really asking, why didn’t they come to me? An annoying moment comes when Sylvie (Elle Fanning, playing a composite character) finds a scrap of paper with lyrics from The Times They Are A Changin’ and recites them to a bashful Dylan. 

Whether he’s an annoying jerk (if you don’t want to be recognized then maybe comb your distinctive hair differently when you go out?) or a brilliant, innovative musician, Timothee Chalamet gives a great performance. He performed all of the songs live to camera, at the urging of co-star Edward Norton, and does a great job sounding like Bob Dylan, speaking and singing, without approaching parody. More importantly, he is believable as the kind of person who other people project their desires and aspirations onto and made people want to collaborate with him, be his mentor, his friend, his lover, even if he treated them poorly. Chalamet’s Oscar nomination may have been a foregone conclusion before the movie was even released, but it is still deserved. 

As good as Chalamet is, the real standouts are his co-stars, specifically Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez and Edward Norton as Pete Seeger, both of whom have also received Oscar nominations in the Supporting categories. Barbaro’s performance is especially noteworthy because this movie is so harsh to her character. In their scenes of conflict, as lovers or collaborators, the movie is firmly on Dylan’s side; after all he is the musical genius and she is just a singer (the movie’s sentiments, not my own). 

Norton’s great success with his portrayal of Pete Seeger, more than performing the music, also live, is in making his unbelievably kind and positive version of Seeger believable. Norton hasn’t played a character this optimistic and positive since Sheldon Mopes in Death to Smoochy, where he played another kind character who believed that music could change the world. 

James Mangold also directed the great Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line (2005), a film so good that it could only be topped by the brilliant music biopic parody to end all music biopics, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, but the problem is that Hollywood kept making music biopics, A Complete Unknown included. As a Johnny Cash fan, the moments that made me perk up were the scenes of Dylan exchanging letters with Cash–I immediately recalled the scene in Walk the Line where Cash can’t remember what he did with the letter to that “young folk singer” because he wrote it on a paper bag because when he was drunk. I nodded approvingly. Much easier to notice is Mangold recycling an entire scene from Walk the Line in which Cash and June Carter play Dylan’s It Ain’t Me Babe while Cash’s wife Vivian looks on with heartbreak and anger. Here Dylan and Baez sing It Ain’t Me Babe while Elle Fanning’s Sylvie looks on, but emotions just aren’t there. Another element of Walk the Line that Mangold reuses, but to positive effect, is shooting concert scenes from the stage or backstage allowing for the spotlights to create brilliant silhouettes. 

Johnny Cash shows up at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival where Dylan is about to displease the organizers and most of the audience when he “goes electric” and changes music history. Boyd Holbrook gives a great performance as Cash, playing him somewhere between comic relief and as an alternative mentor–someone who also bounced between genres while maintaining a rebel persona. He holds out his guitar to Dylan and Dylan taking it won me over. So Dylan wins again.

Dylan sours on Seeger and Baez because he has outgrown the whole folk scene, but no explanation or catalyst is given, just a jump in time and change of clothes and hair. The unknowability of “Dylan” becomes like a crutch because any flaw in Dylan’s character or change in behavior can be chalked up to the “unknowable genius” angle. Yes, no one can pin down why a creative person is creative, but at a certain point that becomes a cop out. You can probably guess what the final image of the movie will be; Mangold tries to draw it out and then, yes, it happens, epilogue cards and all.

Nominees: Fred Berger, James Mangold and Alex Heineman, Producers

Director: James Mangold

Screenplay: James Mangold and Jay Cocks; based on Dylan Goes Electric! by Elijah Wald

Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Edward Norton, Elle Fanning, Monica Barbaro

Production Companies: Searchlight Pictures, Veritas Entertainment Group, White Water, Range Media Partners, The Picture Company, Turnpike Films

Distributor: Searchlight Pictures

Release Date: December 25, 2024

Total Nominations: 8 including Best Picture

Other Nominations: Director-James Mangold; Actor-Timothée Chalamet; Supporting Actor-Edward Norton; Supporting Actress-Monica Barbaro; Adapted Screenplay-James Mangold and Jay Cocks; Sound-Tod A. Maitland, Donald Sylvester, Ted Caplan, Paul Massey and David Giammarco; Costume Design-Arianne Phillips

Best Pictures #108: 2024 (97th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee: The Brutalist

by A.J.

Best Pictures #108: 2024 (97th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee

The Brutalist

“Is there a better description of a cube than that of its construction?”

The Brutalist begins with a powerful and most memorable image: refugees cramped and huddled on a ship pushing their way topside to their first view of the United States: the Statue of Liberty upside down. This chaotic, joyous sequence is among the best in the 3 1/2 hour movie, which includes an intermission. The rest of this epic length immigrant story about art, the post-second-world-war world, and the American dream comes close but never quite lives up to this brilliant opening.

The upside down view of the Statue of Liberty belongs to the fictional architect László Tóth, a Hungarian Jew and survivor of the Buchenwald concentration camp, played by Adrian Brody. After a brief stay in New York he arrives in Philadelphia to live and work with a cousin, played by the always good Alessandro Nivola, who immigrated years before, changed his name from Molnar to Miller, converted to Christianity, has a pretty blonde wife, and a small furniture business. He seems to be living the ideal immigrant life but none of it feels right to László, including the style of furniture. László’s opportunity to shine and be creative again comes when they are hired to renovate the library of a wealthy American businessman, Harrison Van Buren, played by the always good, but especially good here, Guy Pearce. Years pass and Van Buren tracks down László, now shoveling coal, to hire him to build a massive community center for the suburb of Doylestown, Van Buren’s getaway. With a few phone calls and letters Van Buren brings László’s wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones) and niece from Hungary to live with László on the Van Buren estate. Van Buren does this not so much for their well being but to make László a happy worker and show off how he can make seemingly anything happen.

If you are unfamiliar with the architectural style of brutalism, you will remain so because there is no scene explaining it or why László’s style is so striking and different. There’s only one scene where László talks about what his architecture makes him feel—it’s built to last—and Brody makes the most of it. In small moments like this and bigger ones, Brody’s performance, his best in recent years outside of a Wes Anderson movie, is a major part of what sustains The Brutalist through its runtime. Brody has earned an Oscar nomination for his performance and rightfully so. 

Guy Pearce, who has had a long and impressive career with performances to match, whether he is the do-gooder cop in LA Confidential or the tough guy action hero in Lockout (AKA Space Jail) has finally earned major recognition and also a Best Supporting Actor nomination. Pearce plays Van Buren as entitled and insidious as any supervillain, only he is far more disturbing and unsettling because he feels so realistic. Felicity Jones seems to get short shrift at first, and perhaps she does. Erzsébet used to report on foreign affairs in Hungary before the war, but we learn this only in passing. Her frustration with her new job—which Van Buren conjured up to keep her from distracting László—writing a "women’s column" is also dealt with only in passing. However, the climactic confrontation with Van Buren—an intense scene of pain and triumph through defiance—belongs to her. Jones’s performance, combined with the score and camerawork, make this another of the strongest scenes.

The liveliest scenes by far are of László designing and building. While still working for his cousin he creates a post-modern (brutalist) chair. The camera looks up at him as sparks fly into the bottom of the frame. This image was wisely used as the poster. Another memorable scene, perhaps the most visually stunning, is the awe inspiring sight of the world renowned marble quarry at Carras, Italy where entire sections of a mountain have been cut out and removed. The brilliant Oscar nominated cinematography Lol Crawley and score by Daniel Blumberg are at their best in these scenes, but unfortunately there are not enough of them. There is simply not enough brutalism in The Brutalist. 

The conflict between László and his ultra-wealthy, demanding, and unrealistic patron should be the main driving force of the movie but it is only one of many threads. There is also the immigrant story thread; the Holocaust survivor thread; the post-war American dream thread. Then there is the story of a marriage. When act two begins after the intermission, László is overcome with emotion at being reunited with his wife, but then their dynamic becomes hard to pin down. Is the strain they feel now a result of the trauma of the war and Holocaust? Or were there troubles in their marriage before the war? There is also László’s heroin addiction which seems to be a problem only when the movie needs it to be and forgotten about the rest of the time (I have no personal experience with the terrible drug but films like Trainspotting have led me to believe that a heroin addiction is not quite so manageable.). 

I really enjoyed director Brady Corbet's previous film, the strange portrait of a fictional pop star played by Natalie Portman in Vox Lux. There are aspects of The Brutalist that are unfortunately less strange and more odd. The use of a newsreel, whether authentic or created for the movie, to explain the idea of Pennsylvania is odd and unnecessary. Audio of an old newsreel explaining the dangers of heroin as László is on a bender is honestly more amusing than anything else. An epilogue set at the first Biennale in Venice in the 1980’s that raises more questions than it answers is another odd choice. The screenplay co-written by Corbet and Mona Fastvold has the makings of an epic tale but lacks focus. So The Brutalist presents the surprising conundrum of a 3 ½ hour movie being both too long and too short. 

Nominees: Nick Gordon, Brian Young, Andrew Morrison, D.J. Gugenheim and Brady Corbet, Producers

Director: Brady Corbet

Screenplay: Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold

Cast: Adrian Brody, Guy Pierce, Felicity Jones

Production Companies: Brookstreet Pictures, Kaplan Morrison

Distributor: A24

Release Date: December 20th, 2024

Total Nominations: 10, including Best Picture

Other Nominations: Actor-Adrian Brody; Supporting Actor-Guy Pierce; Supporting Actress-Felicity Jones; Director-Brady Corbet; Original Screenplay-Brady Corbet,Mona Fastvold; Cinematography-Lol Crawley; Editing-Dávid Jancsó; Production Design-Judy Becker (production designer),Patricia Cuccia (set decorator); Original Score-Daniel Blumberg

Best Pictures #107: 2024 (97th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee: Nickel Boys

by A.J

Best Pictures #107: 2024 (97th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee:

Nickel Boys

"This is just one place. There are Nickels all over this country."

It is not necessarily a bad sign for a movie to have a gimmick, whether it is being done in one take (Aleksandr Sokurov’ Russian Ark), or only seeming to be one take (Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu’s Birdman), or being shot over time as the actors age (Richard Linklakter’s Boyhood). The gimmick of Nickel Boys, based on the Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Colson Whitehead, is that the film is shot entirely from the first person point of view of both of its main characters. I'm not sure that the dual POV enhances the experience or substance of the movie but it at least does no harm. Thankfully there is more, much more, to Nickel Boys than its gimmick.

Set in the Jim Crow Florida of the 1960s, the story follows Elwood from his early childhood with his adoring and caring grandmother played by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor to him being a teenager (Ethan Herisse) given the opportunity to attend college classes at a technical school. He just needs a way to get there and unfortunately hitches a ride from a stranger in a flashy stolen car and Elwood’s future goes from bright to bleak. Instead of prison Elwood is sent to the Nickel Academy. On the surface it is a reform school and home; it certainly seems that way looking at the boys on the white side who are pretty happy playing football, but things are different on the segregated black side which more resembles a work camp or prison than a school. Elwood befriends Turner (Brandon Wilson) who has been at Nickel longer and has a hardened, cynical, if not realistic, outlook while Elwood retains a sense of social justice. 

Director RaMell Ross, in his confident and impressive feature film debut, has a great sense for effective storytelling, especially in knowing what of the abuses to show, what to hold back, and what to imply. It is a wise choice to present the Nickel as an insidious thing because it lures us into the false sense of security that many of its “students” surely felt. When Elwood and Turner overhear the Nickel headmaster (Hamish Linklater) ask a student to take a dive in the boxing match we know that only bad things will happen. Flashforwards show an adult Elwood (Daveed Diggs) reading news stories about graves and bodies being uncovered on the grounds of the since closed academy. More affecting than any depiction of abuse or violence is a flashforward of Elwood meeting another Nickel survivor, Chickie Pete (Craig Tate), at a bar. Their session of “remember when” turns dark and terrible when Pete recalls the abuse he and others ensured. It is a brief but moving performance by Tate and Ross knows this is all we need to understand what the Nickel boys endured and survived.

Perhaps even more than the difficult subject matter, the dual point of view perspectives might be the most difficult barrier to entry for audiences. Other movies shot from a first person point of view have certainly given me headaches and confusion. However, here Ross and cinematographer Jomo Fray use a delicate touch and after the opening sequence of Elwood's childhood the cinematography finds a nice rhythm and is easy to follow. The shifts between Elwood and Turner are easy to keep track of for the most part. Scenes of them talking to each other end up being no different from conventional shot-reverse-shot camera work. The flashforwards have the camera behind a character's head and some confusion may ensue but astute viewers may pick up on Ross's decision for this new perspective. Another shot of the grandmother remains confusing–whose perspective was that?

Nickel Boys is an arthouse film I suppose, even so it remains accessible and moving while conveying the horrors and trauma endured by black youths at such "schools" (Nickel Academy itself may be fictitious but it is based on very real counterparts). There are interstitial moments that I can only assume are in the imaginations of the characters based on bits of news they hear (these serve to let the audience know the passage of time). Still, the impression I got was that Ross is less concerned with impressing audiences than telling a story in an affecting way. The human story is strong and does not become lost in the method, but I have a feeling that Nickel Boys is more likely to be remembered and studied for its cinematic techniques and experimental approach. Nevertheless, this film has stayed on my mind while other 2024 Best Picture nominees have not.

Nominees: Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner and Joslyn Barnes, Producers

Director: RaMell Ross

Screenplay: RaMell Ross & Joslyn Barnes; based on The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

Cast: Ethan Herisse, Brandon Wilson, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor

Production Companies: Orion Pictures, Plan B Entertainment, Anonymous Content, Louverture Films

Distributor: Amazon MGM Studios

Release Date: December 13th, 2024

Total Nominations: 2, including Best Picture

Other Nominations: Best Adapted Screenplay-RaMell Ross & Joslyn Barnes

13 Nights of Shocktober: Beetlejuice

by A.J.

Night 13: Happy Happy Halloween!

“There’s a word for people in our situation: Ghosts.”

Beetlejuice 

Even though I've recommended well seen, popular, and classic movies for Shocktober before, I hesitated at including Beetlejuice for those very reasons. If you haven't already rewatched Beetlejuice because of the sequel released just last month, there's a good chance you've already watched it or are already planning on watching it for Halloween. However, if it's been a while since you've seen it or even if you just watched it, you can't go wrong with combining this horror comedy classic and Halloween. 

There's a certain fondness for this movie from people that grew up in the late 80's and early 90's. It's not really a family movie or a kids movie, but it is zany and silly and very funny. There is certainly horror movie imagery, including unsightly creatures from the beyond, but it’s not really a horror movie either. The heightened, cartoonish atmosphere makes everything about this movie, from the look to the subject matter, easier to take and easier to enjoy than if it had a serious, straightforward tone. Director Tim Burton’s distinct surreal, goth macabre style is fully on display and is really the only explanation for a lot of things in the movie. 

It's strange that Beetlejuice begins like a pleasant, wholesome movie about pleasant wholesome people living in a country house, and somehow ends as a movie about wholesome, pleasant people living in a country house, but some of the people are now ghosts. Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis play the pleasant and wholesome Maitlands, who are surprised to find out after a car accident that they are in fact dead. The real shock for them comes when their house is sold to a nouveaux riche couple (Catherine O’Hara and Jeffery Jones). Their death obsessed goth daughter, Lydia, can see the ghosts and she finds more sympathy with them than her father and eccentric stepmother. The ghosts are horrified by the changes the new owners are making to the house, a sort of avant-garde post modern look to match the stepmother’s sculptures, which are bizarre but perfect for a Tim Burton movie. They can’t scare the new owners out (because possessing them and making them dance around to “Day-o” is actually pretty fun for everyone), so they turn to a “bio-exorcist” named Betelgeuse. Of course, Betelgeuse isn’t trustworthy to say the least and has ulterior motives. And yes, even though the title of the movie is spelled BEETLEJUICE, the character’s name is spelled like the star, Betelgeuse. Since he can only be summoned by saying his name three times, this becomes a running gag with Baldwin calling him Beetlegeist and Beetlemeyer. 

It's crazy that Beetlejuice has not one but two signature performances for performers with impressive careers: Michael Keaton and Winona Ryder. Keaton’s Betelgeuse is gross and decaying and obnoxious and lascivious, but Keaton also plays him like an undead Groucho Marx: fast talking, wisecracking, and scheming. He lets Betelgeuse really enjoy being Betelgeuse and that adds a very strange charm to the character. Maybe it is because of how he is introduced that we don’t really hold it against him. When he starts causing chaos after the Maitland’s summon him, your reaction is more along the lines of, “well what did you expect?” Winona Ryder does not have as much screen time as you might remember but she really brings substance to her character so she’s more than just a moody kid. She’s still mourning the death of her mother and is even contemplating suicide so she can join her ghost friends. The scene where they have to talk her down is brief but surprisingly poignant. 

The special effects and makeup are still impressive. The stop motion creature effects might seem dated at first, but this artificial animated look, then and now, adds to the movie’s surreal nature. The monstrous worm from Saturn is pretty unsightly and even frightening but impressive so you can’t look away. The score by Danny Elfman, a long time Burton collaborator, with its booming horns is very memorable. It’s likely that whenever you think about Beetlejuice, you’re also hearing the score in your head.

I don't think it's a stretch to call Beetlejuice a classic, neither the movie nor the character ever fully left the pop culture consciousness. It still feels as wild and zany today as it did in 1988. I was cynical about the sequel–which so far has gotten very good reviews from critics–thinking that the original would be buried or swept aside, but there is no need to worry about that with this movie. It will be around for as long as there are misfit kids, people that love spooky things, and people that love creative, crazy movies. Happy Halloween.

Beetlejuice is available to stream on Max.

13 Nights of Shocktober: Thanksgiving

by A.J.

Night 12: Holiday Horror Night

“This year there will be no leftovers.”

Thanksgiving

Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving began as one of the fake trailers that played in between features in the Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino double feature spectacular Grindhouse (2007). The Thanksgiving trailer was the best and funniest of the fake trailers (the others were Robert Rodriguez's Machete, Edgar Wright's Don’t, and Rob Zombie's Werewolf Women of the SS, all of which are pretty funny). After Robert Rodriguez made a full feature out of his fake trailer, Machete, it seemed that these comedic trailers only work as fake trailers. However, the feature length version of Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving is a solid movie and is easily Roth’s best film in a long time. The key to the success of the feature length version is the approach taken by Roth and screenwriter Jeff Rendell. Instead of making a parody, like the trailer, they took a serious approach to the material and the result is a great modern slasher movie.

Set in Plymouth, Massachusetts on, you guessed it, Thanksgiving, a prologue shows us a gruesome and deadly riot at Ritemart, a big box store, that happens after the obnoxious teenager friends of Jessica (Nell Verlaque), daughter of the store owner, who got in early, tease and taunt the massive crowd waiting outside. The crowd charges the store and mayhem and carnage ensue. One year later, the greedy store owner has decided to open his store on Thanksgiving night again but this time he will hire more than two security guards. Jessica and her friends are being tagged in cryptic social media posts. Her ex-boyfriend who mysteriously disappeared after his arm was mangled in the riot–ending his hopes of a baseball career–mysteriously returns, embittered loved ones of the people killed in the riot are protesting the store, a restaurant is handing out masks of John Carver, first governor of Plymouth, and the stage is set for a slasher movie.

If you guess who the killer is way ahead of the reveal, and you just might, that doesn’t spoil any of the fun. It makes sense narratively and Roth and Rendell are more concerned with crafting a good story and entertaining the audience instead of outsmarting them. This is a bloody, gruesome horror movie, so if the violence you see in the riot is too much, then find a different Shocktober movie because the violence only gets more graphic and over the top. This movie does not cut away for effect or leave things up to the viewer’s imagination. We see the gruesome elaborate kills start to finish. And the kills get quite elaborate. The killer dunks one victim in a restaurant sink then sticks her face to the door of the walk-in refrigerator and eventually ends up running her over in an alley so that she is bisected by a dumpster. Yet, Thanksgiving definitely does not have the atmosphere of doom and dread that were a major part of Roth’s Hostel movies and the love it or hate it Cabin Fever. This is like a rollercoaster or amusement park dark ride: the goal is to excite and thrill and even scare you and then deliver you back to the ground where you can laugh off the scares and enjoy the experience you just had.

Nell Verlaque as Jessica Wright is a good “final girl", without feeling like she has been constructed as such. Among the other teens, Tomaso Sanelli as the obnoxious jock Evan deserves recognition for playing a character so believably crass and hateable, but still you don’t really want him to die. Gabriel Davenport as Scuba is also another stand out because he is a hothead who even buys an illegal gun, but then doesn’t know what to do with it. Among the adults, Patrick Dempsey is the stand out and pretty much the star of the movie as the town sheriff. Rick Hoffman is great as the greedy store owner and his redemptive turn midway through the movie is believable. You end up not wanting him to die too–which is impressive since it’s clear he is to blame for the entire fiasco that spawned a revenge driven killing spree. There is a lot of death and a lot of blood but the body count is relatively low. Nothing feels like a foregone conclusion so you never feel like you’re just watching a line up of teenagers/victims die elaborately.

Slasher movies are simple and are something of an oddity as a subgenre. If they are done well they are effective and memorable horror cinema. If they are done poorly they can be just as entertaining, maybe even more so. Thanksgiving is not a parody or a copycat. It does not seek to transcend or redefine the genre, and this is a welcome thing. It is effective, thrilling, gory entertainment in its own right while also being an homage to the genre.

Thanksgiving is streaming on Netflix.