And The Nominees Are

One may as well begin with American Hustle. Like six of the ten nominated movies this year, American Hustle, about a con artist with the most memorable comb-over in the history of the movies, who is caught between (or playing?) the mob and Washington, and, perhaps more interestingly, Amy (isn't it funny how the Halstonesque space between my understated breasts is more sexy than all the fastidiously trimmed mons pubi featured in another movie up for consideration this year?) Adams and Jennifer Lawrence, American Hustle is Based On A True Story—which is to say: a dramatic shaping of factual happenings that have themselves been redacted to serve the purpose of making a good story, one that is very much a creation by the time you see it, and with any luck feels true, and entertains, and makes some bank for its makers. Jennifer Lawrence's character, the true one, for instance—she is the very Jersey girl wife of Christian Bale's comb-over con-artist in the movie—was, word has it, fifteen years older than the hustler she was married to. Unless the con artist with the comb-over is Benjamin Button in the third grade, some factual alterations needed to be made if the movie was to accommodate the casting of someone like Jennifer Lawrence in the role, as opposed to, say, Edie Falco, or, better yet, putting some makeup on Carol Burnett and have her be the sort of shrewish nag she played on her variety show back when I was in the third grade. But that would have been a different movie, and I loved Jennifer Lawrence in the part. I loved her in Winter's Bone, and she was the only reason to bother watching last year's Silver Linings Playbook, by the same director, David O. Russell, who made a much better movie on this go round. If it won Best Picture—it could, but I'm thinking it won't—I wouldn't complain. Jennifer Lawrence, however, will probably win as best-supporting, though I worry it might be too much success too soon for the young actress, and am thus rooting for the old, dumpy-looking, hilarious June Squibb, from Nebraska. Amy Adams, who was great, and dark, in last year's overlooked The Master, could shoot the gap between Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench and surprise as best-actress. I would also give it the award for costume design. It or The Great Gatsby, which I liked, but then again I saw it at noon on a Sunday with Donna after two martinis.

Captain Phillips. Also Based On A True Story. I liked it, and so did my kids. It's a good movie. A good story, well-told. I am not among those who think Barkhad ("I am the captain now") Abdi, who, good for him, was plucked from obscurity at a casting call in Minneapolis, deserves to win an Oscar for his performance. While he was very good in the role, and stood out in the movie, and perhaps deserves the nomination, the bigger praise ought to be for the casting director. Moreover, Mr. Abdi memorably delivered a line that someone else wrote, and, being a first-time actor, was directed to play a character that someone else initially imagined with human dimension, rather than a summertime blockbuster caricature of a bad-assed Somali pirate. He was good; but his performance does not match Jared Leto's in Dallas Buyer's Club, or Michael Fassbinder's outstanding, if little noted, portrayal of a sadistic slave owner in 12 Years a Slave.

Dallas Buyer's Club—my choice for best picture of the year. It has pathos in spades, it's funny, the sex is raunchier, and more unsettling, than anything in Wolf, and it has two of the best performances of the year, one of which—Leto's—was, for my money, the best of all, in any category. Yet it won't win, and I'm not really sure why, except that it's my favorite and that's usually a bad sign, a contrarian indicator if you're laying down bets. Directed by Quebec's mostly unknown Jean-Marc Vallee—who, again, for my money, might have easily replaced Gravity's (by all accounts warm and approachable at the pre-Oscar pitch parties) director, Alfonso Cuaron, in the Best Directing category—the movie, Based On A True Story, except word has it that Matthew McConaughey's character might have been a bisexual in addition to being a prostitute-banging, bigot bull rider from Texas in the 80's, features McConaughey as the endearing bigot (with no low-down tendencies in the movie) who contracts AIDS and befriends, initially for business reasons, Jared Leto, a drag queen with pluck, and a drug problem—a light that burns bright and fast. These are performances you've heard of regardless of whether you care a whit about the movies, the sexual habits of Texas bull riders, the FDA's drug approval process, or whether it's okay to be a straight guy and still think Jared Leto was hot in the movie, before he got really sick. Matthew McConaughey, who (as we've now heard a bit too much, perhaps) could have easily maintained his income and his weight by sticking to movie star roles rather than pushing himself toward odder, more interesting material: in Bernie, Magic Mike, Mud, the delicious cameo in Wolf, and even in his Cosmic Skanky Man Murder Cop role in the new, underwhelming HBO series, True Detective, stands the best chance, in a strong field, to walk off with the best actor Oscar (though if someone upsets him, I hope it's Bruce Dern), and, I'm sorry, but if anyone upsets Jared Leto for the best supporting Oscar, it's a travesty.

Gravity. A movie, refreshing if only for its thin story not being Based On A True Story, that arguably deserves the prize in the Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Visual Effects categories, though I'm wondering if the whipped backs in 12 Years a Slave (not nominated, as it happens, in the Best Visual Effects category, nor in the Best Makeup and Hairstyling category) won't stick with me longer than the storming space debris or tumbling Sandra scenes in Gravity. The script is a dud. Unlike 2001: A Space Odyssey or even Planet of the Apes, the movie leaves your mind as quiet as space afterwards. Someone has already suggested that a better way to watch it would be to turn down the sound and substitute Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" as a soundtrack (see: YouTube, with The Wizard of Oz). For me, the most memorable bit from the movie is actually a line Tina Fey and Amy Poehler delivered at the Golden Globes: that George Clooney would rather die in space than sleep with someone his own age. The movie begs for lampooning, a Mystery Theater 3000 (does anyone remember?) treatment. Ms. Fey and Ms. Poehler, and possibly Will Farrell, or David Sedaris, sitting together at the IMAX, in rear-view silhouette, ad-libbing a better sort of dialogue for George and Sandy.

Her. It isn't often that we get a picture of the future that isn't dystopic, where, in uncluttered, bright, vaguely pastel surroundings, the men are pulling up their pants again, and Amy Adams—doing excellent work twice in one year, and this time without makeup—is there to console you, sort of, after Scarlett Johansson's voice has taken you up and down the arc of love as it is generally idealized by educated people in their twenties. But still, popping an O with Scarlett is nothing to scoff at, whether mediated by a machine or not. Perhaps I am getting old, but I wish it had excited me more. Yet I liked the movie overall. It was smart (in a young sort of way), with a big heart. It was nice to see Joaquin Phoenix (however out of place he seemed) expand his talents toward characters who aren't unhinged, battling demons most of us, blessedly, can't understand. He is one of those actors one worries about, since February 2nd.

Nebraska. One of my favorite movies of the year, and by inference another also-ran in this year's collection of nine. To be fair, I saw it with Donna at the Denver Film Festival, at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House, which is a fine place to see a movie, especially after a martini. One of my favorite lines from any movie this year: a woman at the sweepstakes shop in Lincoln wondering if Bruce Dern was a little touched, suffering from Alzheimer's perhaps, and Will Foote, his son, replying, No, he just believes things people tell him, the lady rejoining, Oh, that's too bad. Alexander Payne, from Omaha, who co-wrote the script and directed, is well on his way, along with Wes Anderson, to becoming a national treasure: the kind of person who gets you through the crazy. Either Her or Nebraska should win Best Original Screenplay, but I'm happy to say it's a strong category, with five very different screenplays, all of them good. I'd go to sleep smiling if June Squibb walked home with the Oscar for best supporting actress, and Bruce Dern the Oscar for best actor.

Philomena. About a woman from Ireland who fifty years earlier gets pregnant out of wedlock and is forced to give up her son by nuns who look after her in exchange for getting lots of free work out of her, though not all the nuns are rotten—it is a theme shared to some degree with another movie nominated this year and Based On A True Story, 12 Years a Slave, except that with the nuns you're free to go when you're of legal age, and they might pull your ear but they don't whip the shit out of you if you misbehave, and the movie, Philomena, despite its many heartbreaking moments, is funny—and not entirely because of Steve Coogan, who happens to be the perfect tonic for the skeptical, free thinker's soul. Judi Dench's mellifluous, prolix recaps to him of the pulp novels she's recently finished, and would happily lend him, are virtuosic, and give lilt to a story that, with different casting (without Dench and Coogan), and without director Stephen Frears (not nominated), might easily have been oppressively dour.

12 Years a Slave. Based ( no more unbelievably than Philomena) On A True Story, about a free black man of considerable refinement who, after too much celebratory drink, wakes up shackled, sold into slavery, where the brutality he endures and observes, in the lovely, bucolic South, is shocking. The two much remarked upon whippings are whippings to end all whippings—I am not the first to suggest that the scenes overpower the rest of the movie, or that the characterization, with the exception of Michael Fassbinder's slave owner, lacks range and nuance. The movie shares with Gravity an overwrought preoccupation with survival that could have been counterpointed more imaginatively. Are these small complaints about an otherwise powerful movie, worthy of this year's Best Picture? I'm not sure. It's been remarked that the story is so powerful in its broad strokes that it was wise that Steve McQueen (ostensibly) directed by not directing much. Perhaps. The movie is beautifully shot, and costumed, but so was The Color Purple. Like many of the movies nominated this year, there is something not altogether right in the balance and brilliance of its parts. Still, and despite its imperfections, it is a worthy, powerful counterpoint to the mythology helped along by the likes of Gone With The Wind. There is now a good antidote should one suffer for those wistful days of longing for wisteria and a life kept languorous and rich by the sweat of unpaid bodies.

The Wolf of Wall Street. Had the movie been about a someone interesting, on a subject that isn't by now tiresomely banal, this picture, directed by the great Martin Scorcese, might have, with its romping, epic feel, taken Best Picture. As it is, the movie, Based On A True Story, is a boosted, baroque, better-shot version of Scorcese's Casino—also Based On A True Story, though with more interesting characters, a better branching story, not quite as long. Those who "don't get" The Wolf of Wall Street apparently see the film as a glorification of booze and drug-addled misogyny as practiced by two-bit shitballs with piles of money—guys like Jordan Belfort, the movie's protagonist, played excellently, I should add, by Leo DeCaprio, who has been excellent going all the way back to What's Eating Gilbert Grape—though I don't count myself among that crowd. I don't think the movie glorifies anything. If anything it's a send-up of pieties, a noisy, in your face reminder that the Jordan Belforts of the world are, if anything, less redeemable, and do more harm, than (one ought well conclude, after the unending wallop we get) the Humbert Humberts—the other pedophiles—of the world. Anyway, I get all that. I just found it long and noisy and boring. This in spite of all the female pudenda on display, Leo snorting coke out of the crack of some woman's ass, Margo Robbie showing us all her stuff, and the great scene on the yacht with the cop trying to snag him. This movie, too, was Based On A True Story, a memoir by the protagonist, in the motivational speaking line now (never down for long, these guys, unless one lines them up against a wall … they will be back). A couple of hours into the movie I found myself wondering: why, with all the tits and ass and pussy on display, don't women demand some cock? In the name of even-handedness, to assuage claims of misogyny, to push that envelope if nothing else, why didn't Marty insist that Leo and Jonah show their junk? So the women would have something to talk about afterwards other than having to agree, or not agree, that Margo Robbie ... yup, she sure was hot, and maybe I should shave my pussy, too … Rather than, "OMG! I never would have thought Jonah Hill's cock was that big! Or that Leo's doglegged left like it did—to his left, I mean. He must be quite a wanker!" And the gay guys in the apartment. Weren't there plenty of gay guys watching who might have wanted to see something other than ass? And women too? I'm a straight guy, but I like to watch lesbians get it on. Why wouldn't a perfectly normal Christian woman want to gawk at a variety of well-built, flouncing men, schlongs-a-schwinging, gay or straight (who the fuck cares?), and then talk about it with her friends? Is it wrong of me to think that one of the reasons we haven't had a woman president can be gleaned from their getting naked and not having the good sense to insist on a quid pro quo in the Show Me Your Junk department? That, rather amazingly, the majority gender hasn't reared up and shouted, Fuck um! If they want to look at our stuff, we're going to look at theirs—all of it. Seth wants to sing a song about our boobs, well, we're going to have Amy and Tina sing a song about your junk. And you're going to be a good sport about it, and laugh, or you're going to be jerking off to The Song of Bernadette for a long, long time …

We'll see how that one trends.

Next time you see Based On A True Story attached to the movie you're about to see, just stand up in the theater and shout: ARGO FUCK YOURSELF!

Enjoy the Oscars!