My Oscar Picks

So the Academy Awards will be presented tomorrow.   Will you be watching?   Here are my picks for the biggest movie awards of the year.    (With a few opinions thrown in, of course.) 

Best Picture Nominees

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Frost/Nixon

Milk

The Reader

Slumdog Millionaire

My Pick:  The Dark Knight.  Yes, I know, it’s not on the list.  Actually the best two movies of 2008 didn’t get nominated for Best Picture, for genre reasons – the second best being Wall-E.   But is the award called “Best Picture That Not Animated or Based on a Comic Book Character”?   No.  It says Best Picture.   And, in my opinion, the best picture of 2008 was The Dark Knight.    

That said, I expect “Slumdog Millionaire” to win the trophy, though it was a bit too confectionary for my taste.   My favorite movie on the list was “Frost/Nixon.”   If “Benjamin Button” wins, I’ll puke.  

Best Actor Nominees

Richard Jenkins – The Visitor

Mickey Rourke – The Wrestler

Sean Penn – Milk

Brad Pitt – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Frank Langella – Frost/Nixon

My Pick: Ok, I promise I won’t do this for every award, but once again, the Academy shows a strict adherence to unwritten rules that cripples the award.  Best Actor ought to go to Heath Ledger, for “The Dark Knight.”   Yes, I know, he’s nominated for Best Supporting Actor – but really, who supported who in that movie?   Ledger absolutely dominated it.   That was a leading performance if there ever was one.  

Who will win?  I hope it’s Frank Langella, but my money’d be on Mickey Rourke.  

Best Actress Nominees

Anne Hathaway – Rachel Getting Married

Angelina Jolie – Changeling

Melissa Leo – Frozen River

Meryl Streep – Doubt

Kate Winslet – The Reader

My Pick:  Let’s see.   Anne Hathaway was surprisingly good in “Rachel Getting Married,”  but I don’t think I can forgive her for turning around and making “Bride Wars.”   Jolie was so buttoned up in “Changeling” — and I’m not talking about her clothes.   Melissa Leo was good in “Frozen River,”  one of my favorite movies of the year, but mostly she just looked haggard and desperate.  Meryl Streep maybe had too much fun as the dragon lady in “Doubt,”  though that performance could win any other year.   No, my favorite is Kate Winslet in “The Reader.”    Primarily because, without her performance, that movie would be almost unwatchable.   She not just carries it, she gives it life, meaning and resonance.   That’s what a Best Actress is supposed to do. 

Supporting Actor Nominees

Josh Brolin – Milk

Robert Downey Jr. – Tropic Thunder

Philip Seymour Hoffman – Doubt

Heath Ledger – The Dark Knight

Michael Shannon – Revolutionary Road

My Pick: Last time I’ll do this, I swear.   But this list is kind of ridiculous.  As I said, Ledger ought to be on the Best Actor list.   Downey Jr was great in Tropic Thunder, but that’s not acting, that’s impersonating.  Josh Brolin was absolutely unspectacular in Milk.   it doesn’t really matter.   My pick for Best Supporting Actor is Eddie Marsan, the unbalanced driving instructor in “Happy-Go-Lucky.”  Hoffman was reliably great in  ”Doubt,”  and Shannon was decent in “Revolutionary Road.”  But neither touch Marsan’s performance in a movie most of the Academy voters will probably never see. 

Supporting Actress Nominees

Amy Adams – Doubt

Penelope Cruz – Vicky Cristina Barcelona

Viola Davis – Doubt

Taraji P. Henson – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

Marisa Tomei – The Wrestler

My Pick:  I hesitate to pick Marisa Tomei, for two reasons: 1. My pick for Best Actress spent most of her movie naked, and if I pick a stripper for the other female big award, you might think bad things about me.  2.  She’s already won a Best Supporting Actress award, years ago for “My Cousin Vinny.”   But without her, what are we left with?  Amy Adams needs to show me she can do something besides charmingly naive before I can consider her an above average actress.  Penelope Cruz was fun to watch in “Vicky,”  but it wasn’t exactly a demanding or nuanced role.   Viola Davis has exactly one scene in “Doubt,”  and it was a powerful one, but should you get an Oscar for one great scene?  I don’t even really remember Henson in “Button,”  and I hated that movie so much I’d rather see it get stonewalled at the Oscars.   So that leaves us with Tomei, who really was pretty amazing in “The Wrestler,”  the female mirror to Mickey Rourke’s desperation, weariness, and struggle to hope.   I swear I’m not picking her because she took her clothes off.   Don’t think bad things about me.  

Best Director Nominees

Ron Howard – Frost/Nixon

Danny Boyle – Slumdog Millionaire

Gus Van Sant – Milk

Stephen Daldry – The Reader

David Fincher – The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

My Pick: This is definitely a list that causes me to cast about thinking, “wasn’t there anything else that could’ve been nominated?”    The names are impressive, but this list reads like “my least favorite movies by my favorite directors.”   David Fincher has made some great movies (Zodiac, Fight Club) but “Benjamin Button” is bad, and badly directed.   Its tone is so insistently magical without any real magic, and it’s way too long.   Both director’s mistakes.   And I love Gus Van Sant, and really wish his “Paranoid Park” was on this list instead of the completely by-the-book biopic “Milk.”   And what was up with the fake-documentary feel of “Frost/Nixon?”  Great movie, but who decided that we needed little interview clips inserted between the scenes to function as narration?   Completely unnecessary and distracting.   Whose fault is that?  Oh yeah, Ron Howard.   “Frost/Nixon” has a lot of great things going for it, but great directing isn’t one of them.   

So that leaves Stephen Daldry and Danny Boyle.   Daldry’s direction of “The Reader” is elegant enough to help us forget that the first third is basically 15-year old sexual fantasy onscreen.   And Danny Boyle manages to make the life of a couple of homeless orphans in India seem fun, romantic and exciting.  Both ambiguous achievements, in my book.   

In fact, there is a directorial performance that’s been overlooked.  Jonathan Demme takes a pretty basic plot outline – family love, bonds and dysfunction surfacing before and during a wedding celebration – and breathes new life into it.   The direction of “Rachel Getting Married” really immerses us in the story, captures perfectly the tone and mood of those wild days leading up to the nuptial vows.   That’s the directorial performance of the year.  Hands down.