Fearless Oscar predictions 2021

 

 

Will this be the lowest-rated Oscars telecast ever? Frankly, I don't care if it is.

Hurrah to the studios and filmmakers who still put their movies out in 2020 despite pandemic and shutdown and death and mayhem. Raspberries to those who fled the scene, endangering the entire industry because they didn't want to take a write-down on their flicks.

We needed the movies more than ever last year, not just as an escape or entertainment but to put a mirror up to our collective faces and stare at the blemishes there. Not everyone liked what they saw, nor should they.

So the Academy Awards nominees for last year are bereft of the big-budget blockbusters, superhero flicks, fast cars and slick spies, CGI showpieces and other high-profile flicks we're used to. But those movies also tend not to contend for the Oscars other than in some of the technical categories, so it won't really have much impact on who wins.

But it's likely that TV audiences won't tune in because their favorites aren't represented. Overall I think the quality of films up for contention is about what we'd see in a typical year, or at most a half-step below. 

For those who love cinema, there was plenty to celebrate. As is often the case, my favorite films -- "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom," "Mank," "Wolfwalkers" and "Emma" were my first ranked four -- have not fared very well during the awards season. My fifth, "Nomadland," seems poised for a good showing, including an odds-on favorite to win Best Picture. I'll take it.

So let's get to my annual picks and predictions for the Oscars. As always, I provide my prediction of who will win, and my pick of who I think should win. And, in an act of pure puckishness, I cross out the names of some nominees who I deem undeserving and replace them with better candidates -- the dreaded "Chris Cross."

Best Picture

The Nominees: 
The Father
Judas and the Black Messiah
Mank
Minari
Nomadland
Promising Young Woman
Sound of Metal
The Trial of the Chicago 7

The Chatter: "Nomadland" has led the way for most of the awards season, and for good reason. It's a film of immense stillness and confidence, with another quietly spectacular performance for Frances McDormand. The title of filmdom's "greatest living actor" is unofficial and arbitrary, but for my money the mantle has passed from Meryl Streep to her.

Writer/director Chloé Zhao, in just her third feature film, has reached the heights of Hollywood filmmaking, and seems poised for a long and fruitful career. 

"Mank," an early favorite, has fallen badly, dismissed as stodgy old-school Hollywood filmmaking. (I'm stodgy and old-school, so I loved it.) "Promising Young Woman" has made a late charge, and though I'm not a fan of the movie I respect its audacity and originality. It appears to be the main stalking horse.

"Judas and the Black Messiah" has a chance as the film that best represented unrest about racial injustice happening around us. But I wouldn't be surprised if "The Trial of the Chicago 7" sneaks in. It's an "actor's movie," and they make up the biggest voting branch.

Prediction: "Nomadland"

Pick: "Mank"

Chris Cross: Nothing on the list of nominees I disliked, though I'll take "Emma," "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" and "The Personal History of David Copperfield" over "Minari," "Sound of Metal" or "Woman."

Best Actress

The Nominees: 
Viola Davis, "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom"
Andra Day, "The United States vs. Billie Holiday"
Vanessa Kirby, "Pieces of a Woman"
Frances McDormand, "Nomadland"
Carey Mulligan, "Promising Young Woman"

The Chatter:  This has been the hottest race of the awards season, with McDormand, Davis and Mulligan trading blows during the preliminary award contest. Davis won at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, so I think she's going to overtake McDormand, one past Oscar winner against another. The Oscars often give Best Actress to a film that wasn't even nominated for Best Picture, so there's much precedent for a Davis win. Mulligan will have her day.

Prediction: Davis

Pick: McDormand

Chris Cross: Let's kick Kirby to the curb in place of the captivating Anya Taylor-Joy from "Emma."

Best Actor

The Nominees: 
Riz Ahmed, "Sound of Metal"
Chadwick Boseman, "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom"
Anthony Hopkins, "The Father"
Gary Oldman, "Mank"
Steven Yeun, "Minari"

The Chatter: Fairly weak field this year. Boseman appears to be the sentimental favorite, and it's the Academy's last chance to honor the late icon. Wisely, they chose not to do it for the awful "Da 5 Bloods."

Hopkins and Oldman are past winners collecting more laurels just by being nominated. I thought Yeun was rather flat in a movie where the female characters outshone him. Ahmed was terrific in a tiny movie few people saw; as they say, "the nomination is his award."

Prediction: Boseman

Pick: Oldman

Chris Cross: I'll once again defend the much-ridiculed "The Call of the Wild" because it has one of Harrison Ford's best performances. Really. Go check it out, the CGI dog isn't as bad as they say. Goodbye, Yeun.

Best Supporting Actress

The Nominees: 
Maria Bakalova, "Borat Subsequent Moviefilm"
Glenn Close, "Hillbilly Elegy"
Olivia Colman, "The Father"
Amanda Seyfried, "Mank"
Yuh-Jung Youn, "Minari"

The Chatter: Really solid list, apart of the head-scratcher of Bakalova for the barely-watchable "Borat" sequel. Close, nominated a million times without winning, has a shot but Youn would see to be the favorite in a battle of the grandmas. I was very happy to see Seyfried make the list in a career-changing performance. Colman wowed me way more in "The Father" than she did for her best actress win (really a supporting) for "The Favourite."

Prediction: Youn

Pick: Close

Chris Cross: Nix to Bakalova and yay to Lily Collins in "Mank."

Best Supporting Actor

The Nominees: 
Sacha Baron Cohen, The Trial of the Chicago 7
Daniel Kaluuya, Judas and the Black Messiah
Leslie Odom, Jr., One Night in Miami
Paul Raci, Sound of Metal
LaKeith Stanfield, Judas and the Black Messiah

The Chatter: Typically one of the most competitive categories, rather limp this year. On the one hand, I'm thrilled that LaKeith Stanfield, one my favorite young film actors, got his first Oscar nomination. On the other, it's in the supporting category even though he's clearly the lead of "Judas." Worst, he'll compete against co-star Daniel Kaluuya, who appears poised to win. I can't even pick him because it's such an egregious example of category-hopping.

Sacha Baron Cohen was fine in a movie that's basically just a series of characters delivering speeches to each other. Raci is a strange pick, an unknown actor in a not particularly interesting role. Strange we're not hearing pushback about the two hearing actor playing deaf characters both getting nominated. Odom was fine but I thought Kingsley Ben-Adir as Malcolm X was the standout of "Miami."

Prediction: Kaluuya

Pick: Kaluuya

Chris Cross: Can't hear you Raci, talk less Cohen, wrong guy Odom. Instead let's invite Caleb Landry Jones from "The Outpost," Ben-Adir and Peter Capaldi for "The Personal History of David Copperfield."

Best Original Screenplay

The Nominees: 
"Judas and the Black Messiah," Will Berson, Shaka King, Keith Lucas & Kenny Lucas
"Minari," Lee Isaac Chung
"Promising Young Woman," Emerald Fennell
"Sound of Metal," Derek Cianfrance, Abraham Marder & Darius Marder
"The Trial of the Chicago 7," Aaron Sorkin

The Chatter: I would bet Fennell will win here, because the Academy loves to dole out screenwriting awards as consolation prizes or encouragement for up-and-coming filmmakers. 

I still can't believe David Fincher's "Mank," based on a screenplay written 20 years earlier by his deceased dad, Jack, was ignored. I guess screenwriters really don't get any credit.   

Prediction: "Promising Young Woman"

Pick: "Judas and the Black Messiah"

Chris Cross: I'll replace "Trial" with "Emma" and "Woman" with "The Personal History of David Copperfield," two lovely, vibrant adaptations of musty old British novels. Plus "Mank" for "Minari."

Best Adapted Screenplay

The Nominees: 
"Borat Subsequent Moviefilm," Peter Baynham, Sacha Baron Cohen, Jena Friedman, Anthony Hines, Lee Kern, Dan Mazer, Erica Rivinoja & Dan Swimer
"The Father," Christopher Hampton & Florian Zeller
"Nomadland," Chloé Zhao
"One Night in Miami," Kemp Powers
"The White Tiger," Ramin Bahrani

The Chatter: What the hell is up with the Borat love? It was so long and so not funny. Plus it has too many screenwriters to be taken seriously. But it tweaked the right politicians, so I guess it's golden.

Ironically, "Nomadland" is the favorite even though it seems like such an original, distinctive vision. Chloé Zhao came up with a fantastic character from a nonfiction book about modern nomads. The only other film that has a shot is "One Night in Miami."

Prediction: "Nomadland"

Pick: "Nomadland"

Chris Cross: Kaput, "Borat." Hooray, "The Outpost."

Best Director

The Nominees: 
Thomas Vinterberg, "Another Round"
Emerald Fennell, "Promising Young Woman"
David Fincher, "Mank"
Lee Isaac Chung, "Minari"
Chloé Zhao, "Nomadland"

The Chatter: Zhao looks to be as close to a lock as any contest this year, and deservedly so. A lot of people were surprised by Vinterberg making it onto the list, including me.

Prediction: Chloé Zhao

Pick: Chloé Zhao

Chris Cross: I'll keep Fincher and Zhao and say goodbye to the rest. Instead let's laud George C. Wolfe for "Ma Rainey," Autumn de Wilde for "Emma" and Regina King for "One Night in Miami."

Best Documentary Feature

The Nominees: 
Collective
Crip Camp
The Mole Agent
My Octopus Teacher
Time

The Chatter: A strong year for docs but oddly none of my favorites, such as "Desert One," made the list. "Collective" was by far the best of this bunch.

 Prediction: "Collective"

Pick: "Collective"

Chris Cross: I'll take "The Painter and the Thief" and "Desert One" over "Time" and "The Mole Agent," which was pleasant but is basically a documentary about making this documentary.

Best Documentary Short

The Nominees: 
Colette
A Concerto Is a Conversation
Do Not Split
Hunger Ward
A Love Song for Latasha

The Chatter: Alas, I did not get to see any of the doc shorts this year, just ran out of time. 

Prediction: “A Love Song for Latasha”

Best Animated Feature

The Nominees: 
Onward
Over the Moon
A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon
Soul
Wolfwalkers

The Chatter: We may be getting close to thinking about putting this category out of its misery. Instead of eliciting a wave of terrific animation, it's led to a lot of perfectly serviceable movies getting Oscar nominations. The Disney/Pixar film usually wins, though the Irish-produced "Wolfwalkers" is vastly superior.

Prediction: “Soul”

Pick: "Wolfwalkers"

Chris Cross: "Onward" and "Shaun the Sheep" don't deserve to be here, but I don't have anything to replace them with.

Best Animated Short

The Nominees: 
Burrow
Genius Loci
If Anything Happens I Love You
Opera
Yes-People

The Chatter: Disney/Pixar always wins... but there isn't one this year!
 
Prediction: "If Anything Happens I Love You"

Pick: "If Anything Happens I Love You"

Best Live Action Short

The Nominees: 
Feeling Through
The Letter Room
The Present
Two Distant Strangers
White Eye

The Chatter: TERRIFIC slate of shorts this year.

Prediction: "Two Distant Strangers"  

Pick: "Two Distant Strangers"  

Best Foreign Language Film

The Nominees: 
Another Round
Better Days
Collective
The Man Who Sold His Skin
Quo Vadis, Aida?

The Chatter: I didn't see enough of these, but "Collective" was terrific. Since "Another Round" also scored a director nomination, it would seem to have an edge.

Prediction: "Another Round"

Pick: "Collective"

Best Cinematography

The Nominees: 
Judas and the Black Messiah
Mank
News of the World
Nomadland
The Trial of the Chicago 7

Prediction: "Mank"

Pick: "Nomadland"

Best Film Editing

The Nominees: 
The Father
Nomadland
Promising Young Woman
Sound of Metal
The Trial of the Chicago 7

Prediction: "Sound of Metal"

Pick: “The Father”

Best Sound

The Nominees: 
Greyhound
Mank
News of the World
Sound of Metal
Soul

The Chatter: The Academy has combined the categories of Sound Editing and Sound Mixing into a single award, mostly to avoid confusion because nobody really understood the difference, even the Academy voters. It makes sense although the two are really entirely different crafts done by separate teams. Obviously the movie all about aural loss and dissonance is the standout.

Prediction: "Sound of Metal"

Pick: "Sound of Metal"

Best Production Design

The Nominees: 
The Father
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
Mank
News of the World
Tenet

Prediction: “Mank"

Pick: “Mank"

Best Original Score

The Nominees: 
Da 5 Bloods
Mank
Minari
News of the World
Soul

Prediction: “Soul”

Pick: “Soul”

Best Song

The Nominees: 
“Husavik” from Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga
“Fight For You” from Judas and the Black Messiah
“lo Sì (Seen)” from The Life Ahead (La Vita Davanti a Se)
“Speak Now” from One Night in Miami
“Hear My Voice” from The Trial of the Chicago 7

Prediction: “Speak Now”

Pick: “Husavik”

Best Makeup and Hair

The Nominees: 
Emma
Hillbilly Elegy
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Mank
Pinocchio

Prediction: "Ma Rainey"

Pick: "Ma Rainey"

Best Costume Design

The Nominees: 
Emma
Mank
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom
Mulan
Pinocchio

Prediction: "Ma Rainey"

Pick: "Emma"

Best Visual Effects

The Nominees: 
Love and Monsters
The Midnight Sky
Mulan
The One and Only Ivan
Tenet

The Chatter: God help us, "Tenet" is going to win more Oscars than "Mank."

Prediction: "Tenet"

Pick: “The Midnight Sky”

Review: "Together Together"

"Together Together" is a sensitive and fairly smart take on modern relationships that at first seems like a fairly predictable flick that gradually gets deeper and more interesting. Writer/director Nikole Beckwith sets us up for the obvious plot movements and then surprises us by continually disdaining the easy or most obvious path.

I guess you'd call it a comedy, and the presence of Ed Helms as one of the two main characters underscores that. He's doing a variation on his Andy Bernard character from "The Office," a well-meaning but rather clueless dude who needs some tutoring in basic human interactions. 

He plays Matt, a 45-ish well-to-do app creator who wants to have his own baby but hasn't found the right woman. He settles on a service that connects people like him -- though usually couples -- with young women who will serve as their surrogates and carry the baby they can't. Through this he meets Anna (Patti Harrison), a 26-year-old barista who agrees to fill the role. She's implanted with an embryo created with Matt's sperm and a (anonymous) donor's egg.

The story is that they are supposed to keep things distant and businesslike but find themselves drawn to each other. Matt has an entire book from the surrogate service that gives careful instruction about how to keep things professional, including dictums that he should not ask her about her personal life, or even what she's doing with the money he is paying her. 

Anna sees it as a way to make a hunk of money and go back to college to finish her bachelor's degree and pursue a master's, having graduated late from high school because -- wait for it -- she had a baby and put it up for adoption as a teenager. She wants to be cool and above it all but keeps getting roped in by Matt, who's rather glommy in a harmless, awkward sort of way.

We get the clear sense that if Anna just told Matt to eff off and not talk to her until it was time to give birth, he'd go along with it... but be miserable. He wants to be involved in every step of the pregnancy.

Part of their business arrangement is that they talk to a therapist, played by comedienne Tig Nataro, who I would never have thought of as a therapist but seems perfect in the role. They share candy and talk after sessions, which turns into coffee, then lunch, and so on.

Matt is pretty much alone in life, so he doesn't really know how to keep boundaries with Anna. He drops by her coffee shop with "pregnancy tea" or new shoes, and trades icy stares with Jules (Julio Torres), her acerbic, gay coworker. 

One of the best running jokes is that Matt created the app "Loner," which is like Tinder in that you scroll through pictures of strangers but never actually connect with them in any way. Jules is a fervent user, acknowledging it's a tool for lonely people to feel connected without the expectations of sex or dating.

Matt and Anna soon are having deep, intimate conversations with each other, the sort of things you only share with a best friend or lover. Will they become lovers? I'm not going to say, because that's really the heart of the movie lies: Can two such different people in a strange arrangement truly create a lasting bond that will endure past the baby's birth? And what form will it take?

This is a movie about asking questions, not providing easy answers.

There's plenty of nice, soft humor and insightful moments. They actually talk about the optics of what the two of them dating would look like, with the comparison to Woody Allen's on- and off-screen relationships as an icky benchmark. They name the baby bump "Lamp," since Anna doesn't want to know its gender and Matt agrees to not learn this himself, since he knows he'd blurt it out.

I liked how the movie has strong, distinct supporting characters, even small walk-on parts like the ultrasound technician (a terrific Sufe Bradshaw) who Matt and Anna see at various stages in the pregnancy. Officially sworn to not insert herself into their relationship, she does so in a subtle yet commanding way.

"I know everything, I'm just not allowed to say it."

Nora Dunn and Fred Melamed turn up for a few scenes as Matt's parents, supportive but exhausting. They hold a baby shower which is really Matt's party, and Anna has to be on display as the surrogate, as invisible as a maid until someone wants to feel the tummy, which is everyone. 

I think the movie's weakness is Helm's performance. With a puckish smile or twinkly eye, he seems to continually look to english every moment into the comedy zone, whether it belongs there or not. It's his groove and he strives to stay in it. I've seen him do straight roles quite well such as in the criminally unseen "Chappaquiddick," and I wish Beckwith had nudged him to go a little deeper and not always chase the laugh.

The movie also needed to spend a little more time exploring Anna's backstory. She has a great scene where she talks about her fractured relationship with her parents, who never forgave her for having a baby as a child and then giving it away. Other than a voice message from her mom, the film doesn't pull at that tantalizing story thread any further.

Still, I can report I was never bored during "Together Together" and finished with a feeling of warmth for two people who mean well but don't always say or do the perfect thing. Who among us does?

Review: 2021 Oscar-nominated live action short films

 

Two Distant Strangers

31 minutes

"Two Distant Strangers" is an incredibly compelling film on a familiar, harrowing topic that manages to keep surprising us. Carter (Joey Bada$$) is a young black artist waking up from a one-night stand with Perri (Zaria), a lovely young woman. He's really into her but is also in a rush to get back to tend to his dog. He runs into a white cop, Sergeant Merk (Andrew Howard), who racially profiles him and instantly escalates a harmless encounter into a deadly one. Worse yet, Carter awakes the next morning to find himself back in the same situation. Over and over again, he tries to replay the encounter, but it always ends in his death. Stuck in a mirthless "Groundhog Day" scenario, Carter finally takes a tack of engaging with the police officer as a person, leading to an enlightening conversation on how they see each other across a huge societal divide. A stunning look at a right-now issue that makes us feel and think. Directed by Travon Free and Martin Desmond Roe from a screenplay by Free.

Feeling Through

18 minutes

A beautiful, simple story from writer/director Doug Roland. A young man, Tareek (Steven Prescod), has no place to go. He hangs out on the street with some buddies, while texting others for a place to crash. Finally getting lucky, he runs into a strange man standing on the street corner. This is Artie (Robert Tarango). It turns out he is deaf and blind. He communicates by writing on a notepad, and asks Tereek for help getting to the bus. It's late, but he agrees, taking Artie by the hand. A stop at a bodega -- where Tereek pockets $10 from Artie's wallet while buying an iced tea -- makes them miss the bus. Again and again, Tereek has an opportunity to dump this fellow and ease his own path. But he chooses to stay. A little grace inside all of us.

The Present

23 minutes

In this tense Palestinian short, a father named Yusef (Saleh Bakri), must travel each day through an Israeli checkpoint to get to his home. It's a humiliating experience, but one he endures stoically. On his wedding anniversary, he takes his young daughter, Yasmine (Mariam Kanji), through to buy groceries. Yusef suffers further humiliation at the hands of the smirking young soldiers, who single him out for for hours of meaningless detention. Eventually they make their way through, and Yusef reveals the surprise of buying a new refrigerator to replace their failing one for his wife, Noor (Mariam Basha). Of course, this means getting through the checkpoint again, and tempers flare to a dangerous point. A poignant and telling tale about human dignity, and what happens when it is trod upon.

 

 

White Eye

21 minutes

An Israeli man (Daniel Gad) who had his expensive white bike stolen last month finds it locked up on the street in a rough part of town. He's sure it's his because of a dent and purple sticker. He calls the police but they say they can't let him take it without filing a complaint or identifying the thief. He's ready to pay a workman 250 shekels to cut the lock when an immigrant from the meat-packing shop next door steps out, claiming the bike is his and he bought it a week earlier. Things escalate, and the Israeli is on the right side of the law for demanding his rights -- but is he on the right side of humanity? A probing look at otherism and alienation.

 

The Letter Room

32 minutes

No often you see a star of Oscar Isaac's caliber in a short film. He plays Richard, a middle-aged guard at a prison who is reassigned to Director of Prisoner Communications, which is a fancy way of saying he reads their mail for any dangerous material. He helps out Jackson (John Douglas Thompson), an older inmate on death row he gets on with, to see about any missing letters from his daughter. Richard becomes entranced with the sensual, moving letters from Rosita to her boyfriend, Cris (Brian Petsos), another man on death row who never talks -- or reads the letters. A surprisingly expansive portrait of one man, as we wade into Richard's own loneliness, with lots of imagery of him eating and drinking by writer/director Elvira Lind, as if he craves sustenance as a replacement for human contact.

Reeling Backward: "Black Gravel" (1961)

 

It's debatable if "Black Gravel" belongs to the film noir tradition. That largely described American crime dramas of the 1940s and '50s, usually in urban settings with the rot of the big city wallowing underneath the gilded prosperity of the post-war era. "Gravel" is a 1961 German drama set in a sparsely populated town on the outskirts of a American military base being built.

It does boast plenty of bleak, tilting black-and-white cinematography -- which, of course, the Yanks pretty much lifted from German Expressionism of a few decades earlier.

The film, directed by Helmut Käutner from a screenplay he co-wrote with Walter Ulbrich, is an unsparing look at the slow-burning animosity between the defeated Germans and their American occupiers. The U.S. wants a place to launch its fighter planes and build nuclear missile silos, while the humbled Germans service the soldiers and workers with drink, prostitutes and more than a little black market enterprise.

The title comes from the material currently most valued, truckload after truckload of pulverized rocks being used to build roads, airstrips and other parts of the base. Robert Neidhardt (Helmut Wildt), the ostensible lead character, is a shady independent truck owner who hauls for the Americans and also works with a fellow former POW, Otto Krahne (Wolfgang Büttner), to milk a little extra off on the side.

It's a fairly comfortable arrangement for all parties involved, and the new American overseeing the operation, Maj. John Gaines (Hans Cossy), understands that a bit of grift serves as grease for the wheels of smooth operation.

However, the rub comes with Gaines' relatively new wife, Inge (Ingmar Zeisberg), a German native who used to roll with Robert back in the day during the early years after the war, always on the move and running some scam or another. They lived freely and lustily, an existence Robert is still practicing and Inge is trying to set aside for a straight life that will lead her, eventually, to the States.

Robert gives the Gaineses a tow after their car breaks down, and the rest of the movie plays out as one long slow burn as he tries to woo Inge back, she protests but not too much, and they get caught up in a horrid accident that turns into a major local scandal and military investigation.

I was less interested in the contretemps of the plot, which frankly get a little dull and repetitive after the one-hour mark, than the portraiture of Robert and Inge. Both Wildt and Zeisberg give impactful, "in the now" performances that reminded me a lot of the French New Wave.

Robert brims with the confidence of a sulking Jean-Paul Belmondo, a certain lunkhead machismo that is like catnip to more strata of womenfolk than an of us care to admit. John by contrast is upstanding, kind and practical, but can't hold a candle to Robert's practiced cruelty. 

Of course, it's all a front, and when the going gets tough Robert breaks down quicker than anyone expects.

I was quite taken with Zeisberg, a willowy brunette with large, emotive eyes and a passing resemblance to Hilary Swank, one of my favorite modern actresses. Her Inge is smart and tough, takes one look at Robert and knows he's exactly the same cad he was before, and seems unafraid of his machinations and come-ons. 

And yet, she's truthful enough with herself than when the breaking point is reached, she knows she'd rather choose a doomed existence with Robert than the quiet haven with John.

"Black Gravel" is quite unrelenting in its tone and sense of tragedy, in a way that American films of the same period flirt with but never quite dive all the way into. It starts with the death of Inge's dog, Tub, who is killed with a rock by one of the truckers because the pup is overly friendly while they're trying to dump their loads. 

Robert isn't at all bothered by this, flinging the carcass into the road bed where the gravel is being dumped -- first being careful to grab the new expensive-looking collar, always on the lookout for a few pressed Deutschmarks. Meanwhile, Krahne uses the distraction to fraudulently stamp out a few extra loads of gravel on the logbook. 

The older man is looking to cash out and move to Canada to go in business with his brother, which Robert considers a cowardly act of desertion -- to him, to their scam, to their country. Both were soldiers though not Hitler enthusiasts, more survivors who understand how to tack into whatever wind prevails.

Robert lives above the bar/brothel in Sohnen, the tiny village on the outskirts of the burgeoning base, and is pretty much the only game in town for the Americans. He works the payphone just outside his one-room place, which is frequently also occupied by Elli, (Anita Höfer), who is a barmaid, whore, or Robert's girlfriend, depending on her mood.

A bountiful blonde in the Brigitte Bardot mold, Elli seems very much in charge of her own little corner of the world, though like Robert much of it is a front. When Krahne tries to convince her to run away with him, Elli teases Robert with the possibility and is incensed when he's happy to cut her loose.

Höfer has a couple of brief bare-breasted scenes -- first the right, then the left -- which is still a fairly shocking thing to see in movies of this vintage. She spends much of her time in the movie lying in bed in various states of undress, playing footsie with Robert's ear or whatever piece of him she can reach. Teasing is her essence.

There are number of shots that seem to linger on women's legs and feet, and I think it's less of an icky Tarantino thing than a commentary on how these females are bound to this place and their fleshy vessels that are controlled by the whims of uncaring men. 

The other big notable shot of legs, of course, are those of Anni (Edeltraud Elsner), a sweet local girl who accidentally gets run down along with her American boyfriend, Bill (Peter Nestler), while Robert is fleeing after being tipped off by Inge that the police are wise to the gravel theft. The site of her legs splayed out from underneath the truck bed, with her beau's mangled corpse behind it, is a pretty arresting image for that era.

My attention waned as the movie went on from that point, as Robert decides to dump the bodies and cover it up rather than report the accident, which was no fault of his own. But "justice is for the rich," he growls, and so the rest of the story is spent in a predictable unrolling of nervous stares, whispered conversations, face-offs over who knows what, and so on.

"Black Gravel" was quite controversial in its day for its harsh depiction of German-American relations, and in fact the original ending was cut to remove Inge's death in the theatrical version -- another victim of Robert's big damn truck. He dumps her body in the gravel, too, also throwing himself in at the end. Strangely, the original ending just has him driving off into the mist with no resolution at all.

The film also had a moment that was labeled antisemitic and excised under pressure from the Central Council of Jews in Germany. It's strange because the scene is brief and anything but anti-Jewish. 

A drunken old patron calls the pub owner a "dirty Jew" because of his insistence on playing something other than old Nazi-era folk songs on the jukebox. The entire bar instantly grinds to silence at the insult, the camera lingering on the proprietor's arm with the tattooed serial number, and we are clearly made to feel sympathy for him and anger at this doddering relic of a poisonous past.  

The deleted scenes were thought lost to time, but were uncovered in an uncut print about a decade ago, which led to a restoration of the film. 

I can't say as I found "Black Gravel" to be a magnificent piece of cinema with or without these bits, but it does serve as a significant time capsule documenting a place and time, jammed in between showier pieces of history, that has largely been forgot.

Review: "Supernova"

 

Simple and sweet as can be, "Supernova" is a heartfelt love story that will make you ache with sorrow and empathy.

Is this movie a bit of a cliche? It is. Two lovers, one of whom is dying, dance around each other in a sort of long goodbye. The one that's going has to convince the other to let them go, and the one staying clings stubbornly to what they had.

The only difference from gosh knows how many other iterations we've had of this tale -- "Love Story," "Me Without You," "Our Friend" -- is that in this case the couple is older, probably in their early 60s, and both are men. They decide to go on a road trip together... their last.

I think about a time, not so terribly long ago, when a story like this would seem bold or challenging. Now this romantic drama starring Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci is utterly conventional. I mean that as a compliment.

Having two gifted actors tackling this material is a gift. I loved the fact that they don't go for big showy moments, but give us the tender in-between stuff where the real meat of the relationship lives.

This movie is pensive, sad, and not a little whimsical. Sam (Firth) and Tusker (Tucci) share plenty of tender moments, motoring around the Lake District in northwest England in their aged little RV. There is much mirth and teasing. They don't seem to have much of a destination, other than a couple of stop-ins to stay with Sam's sister (Pippa Haywood) and a concert performance by Sam, a pianist and composer.

They just have their dog -- fairly new to the family, and we guess an intended replacement for Tusker -- a few odds and ends, and lots of memories. They putter around the countryside, which gives cinematographer Dick Pope ample opportunity to photograph the gorgeous countryside of hills and lakes. 

Tusker is a novelist with mid-stage dementia. He's at the point where he seems fully functional, but he tends to wander off and forget where he is, misplace simple words like "triangle," and -- worst of all -- struggles to put any words on paper. At a dinner gathering he wants to read a letter but finds he can't, so Sam reads it for him. We can sense how much effort and love went into this bit of prose.

There really isn't any more to the movie than that. Just one development, which I'll not divulge. Though this is a movie less about "what happens" than the moments and moods these two characters share together. They seem as real to us as our neighbors or friends. Thanks to writer/director Harry Macqueen for introducing us.

It's often been said that love is not something that just appears and disappears, but a living that is born, grows, sometimes decays, and eventually ceases to live. But, like the people who are connected through it, even the memory of it has a power over us that lingers. 

Review: "Dreamland"

 

Hollywood has always loved outlaw movies, almost since the very first celluloid clacked through a projector, and since "Bonnie & Clyde" in 1967 it's had a particular fascination for doomed couples on open-sky crime sprees. It's been imitated countless times, from the gritty "The Getaway" to the hazy, dreamlike "Ain't Them Bodies Saints."

"Dreamland" is closer to the latter, a story less concerned with the actual mechanics of robbing banks than the inner emotional journey of its two protagonists. It's an astonishingly beautiful film, set in the 1930s Texas dust bowl, with cinematographer Lyle Vincent's vibrant warm hues giving way to nearly colorless stretches of gray-brown.

You could snip out most any frame of the movie and have a nifty postcard keepsake.

Margot Robbie stars as Allison Wells, a notorious bank robber on the run after things went to hell on her last job. Several people were killed, including a little girl and her lover/partner in crime, Perry (Garrett Hedlund). The lawmen and newspapers have been playing her up as a cold-hearted she-devil, though she's got another story to tell. Actually, several versions of it.

Robbie's blue eyes and tawny skin seem to fill the screen like a small sun, hurtling toward burnout. 

Shot in the leg, Allison holes up in the barn of 17-year-old Eugene (Finn Cole), a kid with his nose in the dirt and head in the clouds. He steals detective comic books and dreams of reuniting with his long-departed father, who ran out on them when he was little and moved to Mexico. 

He loathes his deputy stepdad (Travis Fimmel), who wears a strange, vaguely Hitler-esque haircut. His own blue eyes are the icy counterpoint to Allison's heat. Gene does have a soft spot for his hard-pressed mom (Kerry Condon) and kid sister, Phoebe (Darby Camp).

The wonderful Lola Kirke provides the narration as Phoebe's grown self looking back long years to the events that took place in 1935.

There really isn't a whole lot of story to speak of. Director Miles Joris-Peyrafitte and screenwriter Nicolaas Zwart concentrate on setting up situations and character impulses, and then seeing how the pieces will move around on their own.

We know that Gene will be completely ensorceled by Allison, and she will do little to discourage this sentiment so long as he's helping her hide out and heal up. And that the $20,000 bounty on her head will lead the locals to start closing in on the couple, with Gene's stepdad as the head bloodhound. 

And eventually, she will need to move on and Gene will go with her. I'm not giving anything away; the narration says as much in the very beginning, Phoebe talking about the legend of her brother and "the Wells woman."

I just loved the look of this film, with great attention detail paid to the frayed edges of the people's clothing, the rusty screws in the bed of the family truck and the slight sheen of sweat that hangs on people's foreheads to remind us of the Texas crop-killing drought. 

When things go south, people tend to get squirrelly, acting normal on the surface but ready to jump at the slightest chance to change the dire direction of things -- even if it chances things getting worse. Gosh, that sounds familiar...

Even the smallest supporting actors are right in the groove, never altering the sense of well-worn authenticity. I especially liked Stephen Dinh as Joe, Gene's American Indian friend looking for his own way out, and Joe Berryman as the gimlet-eyed local sheriff, who eats BS for breakfast. 

There's one terrific sequence where Gene goes off to take a peek at the evidence the police have against Allison while everyone is at a town dance, as an old-timer performs energetic hambone -- percussive knee-slapping and such -- supplying the tension-building music underneath. Marvelous.

The film does seem to be missing a few pieces, a little more backstory for Allison and more about Gene's longing for his dad's memory to fill out the connective tissue. In an age where I'm constantly harping about how many movies are too long, here's a handsome one that needed a little more fat on the bone.

Review: "End of Sentence"

If you're a follower of indie cinema then the name John Hawkes is well familiar to you, though if you're not it's entirely possible you never heard of him. He was robbed of a Best Actor Oscar nomination for his transformative performance in "The Sessions" a few years back, and continues to do consistently excellent work, mostly in little films most people don't get to see.

His newest, "End of Sentence," is another terrific turn for Hawkes. He's playing a very closed-in character, the sort of person where most of the emotional concerto is taking place on the interior. Frank Fogle seems like the kind of guy where there's not much there, until you gaze long enough to see past the still waters to the roiling depths beneath.

Frank is the father of Sean, played resonantly by Logan Lerman, and despite being blood relatives are as different as two men can be. As the story opens Sean is being released from prison after a stint for various crimes, car theft chief among them.  Frank's wife and Sean's mother, Anna (Andrea Irvine), has just passed away, and it seems like the last cord tying them together has been severed.

However, she had one last dying request: that Frank and Sean travel to her ancestral homeland in northern Ireland and scatter her ashes at a remote lake. Thus begins a prototypical cinematic road trip story.

Frank is an odd duck. He dresses primly, doesn't drink or swear, is painstakingly polite and deferential to everyone he meets. Sean considers him a pushover, who lets people walk all over him -- and the people he's supposed to protect. There's a family history of violence, and Sean blames his dad for not protecting him.

Sean has a job lined up in Los Angeles, but agrees to go to Ireland in return for a plane ticket to the West Coast. There's also the matter of some property his mother owned, which will become his if he complies. It is understood by both men that the culmination of their mission represents the end of their relationship.

Of course, events transpire to delay their progress, dig up buried feelings and renew old conflicts -- but also open up opportunities for rapprochement. The primary vehicle for this is the entrance of Jewel, a local Irish girl played by Sara Bolger, into the story. Sean makes eyes at her at a pub, they  hook up for seemingly a one-night stand, and she winds up accompanying them on their journey.

Bolger is terrific at displaying a woman who has tremendous stores of vulnerability but also steely armor. She says upfront that she's running away from an abusive boyfriend. Sean, with his brusque exterior but little-boy-lost soul, appeals to her in a way that surprises her. Bolger also gets to sing a couple of tunes during the movie, and has a lovely plaintive quality to her voice.

Things go on. Attending a wake for his wife's Irish friends who couldn't make the trip for the funeral, Frank is surprised to learn of her having a wild past, including running off with a handsome fellow on a motorcycle. His curiosity soon becomes an obsession in plumbing the depths of this mystery, causing more detours and delays.

Frank is man full of fears who has been kept upright for the last 30 years by the love of a good woman. Now his only support is gone and he is unmoored in life, so he finds it difficult to throw a lifeline to a son in search of his own identity and home plot.

Elfar Adalsteins, directing his first feature film, and screenwriter Michael Armbruster have given us a beautiful film that is both familiar and novel. It is a story of loss, isolation and betrayal. And yet, when this yarn is all wound up we feel a sense of calm and even joy.

Just as hurt is unavoidable in life -- "Sometimes you're the pigeon, sometimes you're the statue," Frank says -- it's never too late to start the healing process. Scar tissue is tougher than unmottled flesh.

Review: "The Vast of Night"

"The Vast of Night" is a weird, moody, slow-moving but often mesmerizing science fiction thriller. Made for a tiny budget with unknown actors, it's an ambitious piece of work by director Andrew Patterson and screenwriters Craig W. Sanger and James Montague, all of them making their feature film debut.

I got the same sort of feeling watching this movie as I did after seeing Trey Edward Shults' debut film, "Krisha" -- clearly, these people are going places.

Set in the late 1950s in the tiny New Mexico town of Cayuga, it's essentially a two-character story about a pair of young people exploring a deepening mystery. Virtually everyone in Cayuga is attending the high school basketball game, leaving local radio DJ Everett (Jake Horowitz) and 16-year-old part-time telephone operator Fay (Sierra McCormick) essentially running things.

Everett doesn't seem much older than high school age himself, but with his geeky swagger, perpetually dangling cigarette and sharp patter on the air, it seems clear he's not long for Cayuga. California's where they're doing cool stuff on the radio, so that's where Everett is aiming.

Fay is just as smart as he, but is more embedded into the roots and rhythms of the city. You see her going on to be the head librarian or the first woman city council member or something. She has just bought her own tape recorder and starts out the story following Everett around like a fangirl, looking for tips and maybe open to a little flirting.

With her pulled-back crimson hair, huge slanted glasses and saddle shoes, Fay is very much the picture of a mid-century brainy girl.

Things start to get weird when Fay encounters a weird noise during a phone call -- this being the day when everything went through an operator working a switchboard, sticking and swapping big plugs into an impressive array of jacks, one for each phone in town. Later a woman calls reporting mysterious sights and sounds in the sky before she's cut off.

She gets the noise to Everett who puts it on the air, eliciting a phone call from Billy (voice of Bruce Davis). He's an old black man who spins a tale of the Army sending him and a bunch of others to a strange place long ago to build a mysterious facility where he often heard sounds like that. Now he and many of the other soldiers are sick.

This radio conversation leads to another caller, Mabel Blanche (Gail Cronauer), who insists Billy come to her house and hear her tale. As a young woman who bore a son out of wedlock, she was shunned by the townsfolk and was astonished to discover her baby son speaking in a strange tongue -- much like the woman on the air.

The mystery deepens from there. Are the Russians about to attack? Is it little green men from outer space? Is anybody else going to emerge to help unspin this tale?

Two things that work strongly in the movie's favor are the music (by Erick Alexander and Jared Bulmer) and the cinematography (by M.I. Littin-Menz). The screen will sometimes go to all black for several minutes at a time, and we're carried along by the voices and the music score. Or it will transition to a 1950s-style television image, monochrome and squarish with curved edges

The camera will also go off on trips of its own, spiraling through long journeys across town, through the gym where the game is still going on, out the window and then on again until we rejoin Everett and Fay. It's really arresting imagery, and some of it I genuinely scratched my head in wonder at how they achieved it.

The film also has a very authentic period look with vintage cars, costumes and set decoration. Aspiring filmmakers should take a look at this movie for points in how to achieve a terrific, polished look without a lot of resources.

Story-wise there's not a lot of depth to "The Vast of Night" -- it very much relies on the sharp performances, haunting visuals and disturbing tone to gradually stir up feelings of fear and elation. But it's an extremely watchable flick that combines old-school nostalgia with impressive storytelling technique.

Oscars postmortem 2020

It was a historic night at the Oscars, though not a particularly great one if you think the best films should prevail. C'est la vie.

"Parasite" became the first foreign-language film to win Best Picture, and also the first Cannes Palme d'Or winner to also take the Academy Award in 65 years, the last one being "Marty."

It's pretty rare for my favorite movie to win Best Picture, so I'm used to disappointment. I liked "Parasite" but it didn't make my top 10 or even my list of also-rans. I found it intellectually interesting but not very emotionally engaging. None of the characters really stood out to me.

Oddly, the maid is the only person I found myself somewhat identifying with. It seemed like it borrowed too obviously from other movies, particularly "Shoplifters" and Kurosawa's "High and Low," and the Tarantino-esque bloodletting ending pretty well lost me.

Lack of competition

Still, in an overall weak year for films there wasn't really a strong frontrunner to oppose it. Even though "1917" won most of the key preliminary awards, including the usually predictive Director's Guild prize, I think the groundswell of support for picking a foreign film swept people up.

I hear a lot of people calling for this to be the start of a trend, with more foreign films vying in categories beyond the International Feature. "Cinema is the global language," yada yada.

Honestly, I hope not. Aside from truly exceptional films from abroad, the Academy Awards have always explicitly been part and parcel of the Hollywood industry.

As I've said before, whenever people complain about foreign films not winning more Oscars, I ask them to remind of all the American films that won a slew of prizes at the Korean/Spanish/Swedish/whatever film awards. There's nothing wrong with being an institution primarily aimed at celebrating work from a particular country or language.

Nobody complains when the BAFTAs always go to British movies.

(Notably, Cannes and many other film festivals that give out coveted awards are explicitly international by design.)

I've noticed more and more foreign films creeping into the short film, documentary and animated categories in recent years, to the point of dominating them. Only one out of five documentary features and live action shorts were set in America, and as it turned out they both won.

I guess nativism is fine for those "smaller" categories.

I think "1917" was hurt by not having any acting nominations. Actors make up the largest bloc of Academy voters, and they love movies with meaty parts. Casting a couple of unknowns who were as much stuntmen as thespians undoubtedly diminished its chances, even with a few name actors in bit parts.

Playing footsie with QT

So it fell to "Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood" to take up the slack, and I think in the end people recognized it as a wonderful-looking movie with some nice performances and a haphazard train wreck of a script. But I lost track of how many times Quentin Tarantino drew praise from the stage, even by people who weren't in his movie.

It's the oldest story in the world: young, rebellious upstart becomes part of the institution. Strange the way he's beloved in the #MeToo age, given the fetishistic way he divides up women's bodies into subjects for his leering gaze. In an age focused on giving women their voices, here's a guy who literally resurrected a starlet so he could render her wordless.

Bong Joon Ho paid homage to both Tarantino and Scorsese in his acceptance speech, and then seemed to realize he couldn't leave out the other two guys, so he slipped in some half-hearted praise.

It was definitely a spread-the-love around night, with the four for "Parasite" leading the parade. All four favorites in the acting categories won, which is a little boring. Usually when you go into the ceremony with four locks, it means there's going to be one upset.

My money was on Renee Zellweger, who ended up winning for "Judy," a perfectly fine but not great movie. That's actually a not uncommon occurrence for someone to win Best Actor or Actress without their film receiving any other nominations.

I honestly don't pay much attention to the speeches -- that's when I'm tweeting out my responses to the award -- though I couldn't help zero on Joaquin Phoenix's utterly kooky and cryptic callout for... not stealing baby cows' milk, or something. It's not too often you hear an Oscar speech that talks about artificial insemination.

Look, dude, eat what you want and I'll do the same.

The utterly placid "Toy Story 4" won animated feature, thus securing this as the Disney/Pixar award even when they produce substandard fare. Thus it goes that the "How to Train Your Dragon" saga comes to a close with zero Oscar wins, losing to a Mouse House movie every time. How depressing.

In terms of predictions scorecard, I was right on 20 out of 24, which is pretty good for me. I think my best ever was 21. I missed on musical score, best picture, best director and sound editing. I actually got all the short film categories right, which is usually where I run astray.

So we pull the shroud over 2019, a slightly subpar movie year imho. Many of my favorites didn't even rate nominations, which isn't all that unusual. In the scramble to find foreign films to honor, a lot of terrific homegrown ones like "Harriet," "Late Night" and "The Last Black Man in San Francisco" were overlooked.

Fearless Oscar picks and predictions 2020

I'd say 2019 was a slightly below-average movie year. I saw three I'd deem excellent, another handful of bordering-on-great ones and then a bunch of merely goods. Drops off pretty hard after that.

We entered the awards season with no clear front-runners, though a consensus has definitely emerged, especially in the acting a categories. "Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood," "1917" and "Parasite" appear to be the major contenders to take the biggest prizes.

The usual yipping about diversity, but as I've always said the Oscars are a reflection of the filmmaking business. What goes in the front is what you get out the back. So the movies that get made are too white and male, resulting in a slate of nominees that follow.

Trying to pump up decent but hardly outstanding fare like "The Farewell" doesn't help the case.

The biggest area of complaint is five men nominated for director, with Greta Gerwig held up as the woman who got screwed. I do think several of those nominees don't deserve a nod, but Gerwig's utterly safe, conventional "Little Women" -- after the ravishingly original and bravura "Ladybird" -- just doesn't rate.

So here are my picks and predictions for this year's Academy Awards. As always I pick the film I think will win, and the one I think should win (of those nominated). And I cross off some unwarranted nominees in favor of some more deserving ones: the dreaded-but-delicious Chris Cross.

Best Picture

The Nominees: 
"Ford v Ferrari"
"The Irishman"
"Jojo Rabbit"
"Joker"
"Little Women"
"Marriage Story"
"1917"
"Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood"
"Parasite"

The Chatter: As soon as I saw "1917" in late November I said it would be a serious Best Picture Contender. It has all the classic "Oscar pedigree" ingredients: period picture, antiwar, British, great costumes and production design, made by people who previously had Oscar wins or nods. The Producer's Guild gave it its award, which is usually a good predictor.

"Parasite" is the main stalker, as it would be the first foreign language film to ever win the top award. ("The Artist" from 2011 is not counted, even though it was French, because it was an ersatz silent picture.) In the end, I think the voters will feel winning the foreign award will be enough. After all, there aren't any American films winning Korea's top film award, are there?

Hollywood loves movies about itself, and OUaTiH has been much stronger than anyone expected. But "Parasite" won the Screen Actors Guild Award and they're the largest voting bloc, so I'm guessing the voting will be split and leave enough room for "1917" to narrowly win.

A few months ago everyone thought Martin Scorsese's "The Irishman" would be an awards juggernaut, then it came out (barely) in theaters and most people recognized it as an overlong buffet of warmed-over gangster tropes. "Jojo Rabbit" and "Joker" are a little too weird/dark for Oscar voters.

I'm happy that "Ford v Ferrari" got a nod. It's the best sports flick in awhile, and they tend not to get much Oscar love. My two favorite movies were "Late Night" and "Harriet," though I recognize I'm an outlier on those.

Prediction: "1917"

Pick: "Ford v Ferrari"

Chris Cross: Out go "Little Women," "Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood" and "Parasite." All fine films but not without obvious failings or flaws. In go "Late Night," "Harriet" and "The Last Black Man in San Francisco."

Best Director

The Nominees: 
Bong Joon Ho, "Parasite"
Martin Scorsese, "The Irishman"
Todd Phillips, "Joker"
Sam Mendes, "1917"
Quentin Tarantino, "Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood"

The Chatter: Despite the outcry over all men getting nominated, director has actually been the most diverse award in terms of recent winners. Nine of the last 10 who took the prize were people of color, women or non-Americans. Being a white Yank dude may help get you nominated, but not take home the prize.

This one's a tough call. Sam Mendes won the Director's Guild Award, which historically has been the most predictive prize for the Oscars. But I think Bong Joon Ho has got a lot of juice. Plus, concerns about diversity may prompt voters to go for the one non-Caucasian nominee.

Usually when I make daring picks I get burned. Let's go the safer route with Mendes.

Personally, I'll throw out the entire lot except Mendes. People tend to downplay the "one shot" aspect of "1917," but it's hard to pull that off logistically and still have it work artistically. And it does.

I did not see a better-directed film last year than "Portrait of Lady on Fire," so Céline Sciamma would be my pick if she were nominated. And let's get the people in the chair for "Marriage Story," "Harriet" and "Ford v Ferrari," too.

Prediction: Sam Mendes

Pick: Sam Mendes

Chris Cross: Noah Baumbach, Kasi Lemmons, James Mangold and Céline Sciamma replace Bong Joon Ho, Martin Scorsese, Todd Phillips and Quentin Tarantino. If I could add a sixth, it would be Jordan Peele for "Us."

Best Actress

The Nominees: 
Cynthia Erivo, "Harriet"
Scarlett Johansson, "Marriage Story"
Saoirse Ronan, "Little Women"
Charlize Theron, "Bombshell"
Renée Zellweger, "Judy"

The Chatter: I'm not really sure what happened with this year's acting categories. A couple of months ago it looked absolutely wide open in all four races. Now the same quartet has run the table at every single major award leading up to the Academy Awards.

Historically, that means one of them is going to be a surprise. But since I can't fathom which one it will be, I'm going with the safe predictions.

Lead actress was a very competitive category this year. Hard to strike any of the women here as they are all well-deserving of the nominations.

One of the biggest perceived snubs was Lupita Nyong'o for "Us." I get why it happened: horror is not a genre that gets attention from Oscar voters. And some found her strange, eerie voice used for the dual character funny (or offensive, bizarrely). But I thought it was next-level work for her.

The one that really kills me was Emma Thompson not getting nominated for "Late Night." Again, I get it -- it's from a streaming studio, it got little media buzz, it's a comedy, albeit a dark one. But it was a fierce and uncompromising portrayal of a complex older woman, which is not something we see a lot at the movies.

Of those nominated I'll take Erivo with Theron as a close second. I loved "Harriet;" I think it's a lot more nuanced and interesting than people give it credit for. Theron's transformation into Megyn Kelly was so convincing it was almost unsettling. 

Zellweger has this thing locked up. Hollywood loves movies about itself, and it loves comeback stories, and "Judy" has both.

Prediction: Zellweger

Pick: Erivo

Chris Cross: I want Thompson and Nyong'o in badly, tough call on who to knock out; I'll go with Ronan and Zellweger.

Best Supporting Actress

The Nominees: 

Kathy Bates, “Richard Jewell”
Laura Dern, “Marriage Story”
Scarlett Johansson, “Jojo Rabbit”
Florence Pugh, “Little Women”
Margot Robbie, “Bombshell”

The Chatter: As strong as Best Actress was, the supporting category was a little limp this year. I liked all the nominees, though for me Johansson was the standout. It's the perfect sort of supporting role: distinctive, memorable, yet utterly in service to the story and the journey of the main character. 

Being a double nominee is not really a good thing, as no one's ever won both awards and usually they end up losing both as perhaps a backlash against their good fortune. 

People are complaining this is a lifetime achievement award for Laura Dern, and I'm actually fine with that. It's long been a tradition in the men's categories to honor an outstanding body of work by giving them an award for something other than their finest performance -- see Newman, Paul, for "The Color of Money" -- so I don't see any reason against doing it for the women. 

Dern is only 52 years old but has been around seemingly forever doing consistently fine work. And she's Hollywood royalty, daughter of Diane Ladd and Bruce Dern. Between the three of them they have eight Oscar nominations, and this would be the first win for the clan.

Not a lot of standout contenders to knock any of these ladies out. They're calling Noémie Merlant a supporting actress for the wonderful "Portrait of a Lady on Fire," though really it's a co-lead. 

Kathy Bates is another pro who always shows up and does great work, but her nomination for "Richard Jewell" was really based on just one or two substantive scenes. Aka the Ruby Dee Effect.

Prediction: Dern

Pick: Johansson

Chris Cross: Merlant for Bates. 

Best Actor

The Nominees: 

Antonio Banderas, "Pain and Glory"
Leonardo DiCaprio, "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood"
Adam Driver, "Marriage Story"
Joaquin Phoenix, "Joker"
Jonathan Pryce, "The Two Popes"

The Chatter: Usually this is a busy category, but I thought it not so competitive this year. I was very happy to see Banderas get in for the underrated "Pain and Glory." His career has been so marked by machismo and a vibrant masculinity, so I loved seeing him play a rather passive character, wounded both physically and emotionally.

Phoenix is a shoe-in to win in the sort of big, showy, dark performance that tends to do very well in this category. This is his fourth nomination without winning and he's probably had at least a couple other times he should have been.

Like Matthew McConaughey, there's very much a sense that "it's his time."

It's telling as the comic book genre reaches middle age that no one's ever been nominated for playing a hero but two people will have now won for playing villains -- and the same one, at that.

Adam Driver was terrific, and has grown so much as an actor. I remember first seeing him as the lunkhead boyfriend in an early episode of "Girls" and didn't think too much. A very layered, authentic performance in "Marriage Story." Speaking of time: His will come.

Pryce was terrific, despite using another actor for the flashback sequence and somebody else's voice for the Spanish lines. "Just Mercy" may just be the most overlooked movie of the season, so let's get some love for Michael B. Jordan. I didn't really see DiCaprio having to work very hard in that role, other than that one acting-within-acting scene.

Prediction: Phoenix

Pick: Driver

Chris Cross: Michael B. Jordan replaces DiCaprio.

Best Supporting Actor

The Nominees: 

Tom Hanks, “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”
Anthony Hopkins, “The Two Popes”
Al Pacino, “The Irishman”
Joe Pesci, “The Irishman”
Brad Pitt, “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”

The Chatter: This is historically one of the toughest categories to break into with many worthy nominees, and this year is no exception.

I hate that Brad Pitt is going to win for playing himself. Stroll in, take your shirt off, be the coolest motherf*cker in the room. And that horseshit scene with Bruce Lee still rankles.

Similarly, Tom Hanks didn't play Fred Rogers; he played Tom Hanks playing Fred Rogers. Like David Oyelowo in "Selma," Hanks makes the odd choice of playing a historical figure whose iconography is closely related to their voice/speech, and not sounding anything like them. 

Pacino gets nominated for playing the blustery firecracker and Pesci gets nominated for playing the close-to-the-vest chessmaster, in basically a trade of their signature styles. Pacino was a hoot but I'm bewildered by the praise for Pesci, who I thought was very flat.

Hopkins is the best of the lot here, but in all honesty I can easily come up with five better. Christian Bale getting snubbed for "Ford v Ferrari" feels like highway robbery.

Prediction: Pitt

Pick: Hopkins

Chris Cross: Bale, Jamie Foxx, Shia LaBeouf ("Honey Boy"), Rob Morgan and Tim Blake Nelson replaces the entire board. Yes, I'm aware that's three from one film, "Just Mercy." Kills me that even with a five-swap I can't make room for Marc Maron ("Sword of Trust") or Jon Lithgow ("Bombshell").

Animated Feature

The Nominees: 

“How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World”
“I Lost My Body”
“Klaus”
“Missing Link”
"Toy Story 4" 

The Chatter: Terribly weak category again this year. I can't even remember the last time I thought there was more than a couple of deserving nominees. "How to Train Your Dragon" concluded a decade-long run with three feature films, a handful of shorts and eight seasons of a TV show. The GOAT animation franchise.

But "Toy Story 4" will win, because the Disney/Pixar film always wins.

Even Laika, the stop-motion studio that's made fantastic films like "Kubo and the Two Strings," had a substandard entry with the listless "Missing Link." Even "Frozen 2" didn't get nominated.

I like the idea of "Klaus," an old-school hand-drawn feature, more than the movie they actually made. "I Lost My Body" went over my head.

Prediction: "Toy Story 4"

Pick: "Dragon"

Chris Cross: I'll throw out "Missing Link," "Toy Story 4" and "I Lost My Body," but I don't have anything to replace them with. They just don't deserve to be here.

Best International Feature Film

The Nominees: 

“Corpus Christi”
“Honeyland”
“Les Miserables”
“Pain and Glory”
“Parasite” 

The Chatter: "Portrait of a Lady on Fire" is my pick, but it wasn't even eligible under the Academy's arcane rules for International Feature, as the former Foreign Language Feature is now called.

Every year I lament that I didn't get to see enough foreign movies, though I did better this year. The only one I'd knock off is "Honeyland," for categorical reasons rather than artistic merit. I think it's weird to be nominated as both best documentary and alongside fictional features. 

"Parasite" has a mortal lock on this category, and while I liked it I don't see it as the dazzlingly brilliant and original tale others do. Superficially and thematically it's very similar to the previous year's "Shoplifters," which I thought much more emotionally gripping, along with shades of Akira Kurosawa's "High and Low."

I saw "Corpus Christi" very late in the season and was dazzled by it. "Pain and Glory" would be second; it isn't among Pedro Almodovar's best, but it's autobiographical and touching.

Prediction: "Parasite"

Pick: "Corpus Chisti"

Chris Cross: "Portrait of a Lady on Fire" for "Honeyland"

Best Documentary Feature

The Nominees: 

"American Factory"

"The Cave"

"The Edge of Democracy"

"For Sama"

"Honeyland"

The Chatter: I saw a lot of great docs in 2019, none better than "One Child Nation." It took a subject you though you already knew, China's prohibition against multiple children, and dove deep into a much richer and darker story. 

It's interesting that "The Cave" and "For Sama" look at the same plight in Syria with slightly different angles. I liked "Sama" but in the end it's more difficult to do journalistic reportage on a bunch of people than just turn the camera on yourself.

I am outwardly suspicious of the veracity of "Honeyland." I won't belabor the subject here but it seems like they went well beyond recreation of events -- a commonly used tactic in documentary filmmaking, though most people don't know it -- to outright scripting of a narrative. It's pretty rare that real events play out like a three-act William Faulkner novel. 

"American Factory" will probably win because it has the Obamas' name attached to it. Though their involvement was more tertiary than is generally perceived; their production company didn't even form until a couple of years after the footage was shot.

"The Edge of Democracy" is actually the most traditional and best documentary here, exploring a complex foreign subject in a way understandable to American lunkheads like me.

Prediction: "American Factory"

Pick: "The Edge of Democracy"

Chris Cross: "One Child Nation" replaces "Honeyland"

Best Adapted Screenplay

The Nominees: 

“The Irishman,” Steven Zaillian
“Jojo Rabbit,” Taika Waititi
“Joker,” Todd Phillips, Scott Silver
“Little Women,” Greta Gerwig
“The Two Popes,” Anthony McCarten

The Chatter: I'll take "Jojo Rabbit" as the clear best in a weak field. It also won the Writers Guild Award, though that's not a terribly accurate indicator of the winner. I'd say Gerwig has a good chance at an upset here, buoyed in part by the perceived snub of her in the directing category.

The Academy has a long history of using the screenplay awards as a consolation prize, so picking "Jojo" to win is a bit risky.

Personally, I think the script for "Little Women" is the weakest piece in its puzzle. The parallel timelines, which pretty well represent the only divergence from seven (!) previous film adaptations, tended to leave people feeling confused or, in my case, distracted.

"Just Mercy" again deserves some love.

Prediction: "Jojo Rabbit"

Pick: "Jojo Rabbit"

Chris Cross: "Just Mercy" replaces "Little Women."

Best Original Screenplay

The Nominees: 

“Knives Out,” Rian Johnson
“Marriage Story,” Noah Baumbach
“1917,” Sam Mendes and Krysty Wilson-Cairns
“Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood,” Quentin Tarantino
“Parasite,” Bong Joon-ho, Jin Won Han

The Chatter: Other than "Marriage Story," the Academy got a lot wrong here. 

I liked "1917" a lot but the direction, cinematography and music are what carried it, not the story. It seems like you could write out everything that "happens" in the movie in a couple dozen pages.

Also liked "Knives Out" but I guess to me it seems overly obvious in what it's doing -- mocking the conventions of the mystery whodunit genre while indulging in every last one of its tropes. A fun but forgettable movie.

I would guess that workaday screenwriters (who don't direct or produce) seethe whenever Tarantino gets lauded for his scripts. He has a great nose for individual scenes but little ability at connecting them into lucid, satisfying narrative arcs. OUaTiH is borderline incoherent, and might still win if "Parasite" doesn't.

One of my complaints about "Parasite" is it didn't have one single likable, or at least identifiable character in the movie. They all felt like constructs to me. 

"Marriage Story" is very much an "actors' movie" with a lot of long dialogue scenes. But the characters are also very well-realized on the page, and in all that dialogue there's not one false moment.

I'm fine with booting the rest of the nominees in exchange for films from my top 10 list.

Prediction: "Parasite"

Pick: "Marriage Story"

Chris Cross: "Late Night," "Harriet," "Ford v Ferrari" and "The Last Black Man in San Francisco" replace "Knives Out," "1917," "OUaTiH" and "Parasite."

Cinematography

The Nominees: 

“The Irishman,” Rodrigo Prieto
“Joker,” Lawrence Sher
“The Lighthouse,” Jarin Blaschke
“1917,” Roger Deakins
“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” Robert Richardson

The Chatter: The most important aspect of a film's success after the direction, writing and acting is usually how it was shot. This is especially true with "1917" and its highly touted, or disregarded, "one single shot" aesthetic. 

Say what you will, this was an incredibly difficult undertaking, and Roger Deakins is liable to win his second Oscar in three years after being overlooked for a half-century or so. The only thing I can even compare it to is "Days of Heaven," which was shot entirely in the "golden hour" before sunset. 

The other nominees are solid, but I have to find a spot for the most beautiful-looking film of the year.

Prediction: 1917

Pick: 1917

Chris Cross: "Portrait of a Lady on Fire" for "The Irishman."

Best Film Editing

The Nominees: 

“Ford v Ferrari,” Michael McCusker, Andrew Buckland
“The Irishman,” Thelma Schoonmaker
“Jojo Rabbit,” Tom Eagles
“Joker,” Jeff Groth
“Parasite,” Jinmo Yang

The Chatter: I'm hoping "Ford v Ferrari" will do well in the other "technical" awards, since it is a work of tremendous craftsmanship. It's hard to tell the story of a car race in a way that translates both logistically and emotionally, and certain that was the case here.

Normally the Best Picture favorite is heavily favored to run these categories, but it's hard to argue "1917" had the best editing since there hardly is any. (For the record, I counted 10 hidden edits.)

No other big blockbusters like "Star Wars" or superheroes contending here, so the only real competition is probably Schoonmaker, a master of the trade who's been around forever.

Prediction: "Ford v Ferrari"

Pick: "Ford v Ferrari"

Chris Cross: "Avengers: Endgame" for "Parasite"

Best Sound Editing

The Nominees: 

“Ford v Ferrari,” Don Sylvester
“Joker,” Alan Robert Murray
“1917,” Oliver Tarney, Rachel Tate
“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” Wylie Stateman
“Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,” Matthew Wood, David Acord

The Chatter: Time for my annual primer on the difference between sounding editing and mixing, which not even most Academy voters seem to really understand.

Despite the name, sound editing involves the actual production or recording of a sound on set or on location. Sound mixing is a post-production process by which those sounds are brought together, modified and blended to create the non-music soundscape.

There's actually a movement afoot to combine these two categories, which seems insane since they are done at completely different times and often by different teams. It's not like hair and makeup, which are generally performed simultaneously by a contiguous team of people.

Tough call here, but the sound in "1917" was pivotal as there were long sequences with no dialogue and often not even music.

Prediction: "1917"

Pick: "Ford v Ferrari"

Chris Cross: I'll stand pat with this list.

Sound Mixing

The Nominees: 

“Ad Astra”
“Ford v Ferrari”
“Joker”
“1917”
“Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”

Prediction: "1917"

Pick: "Ford v Ferrari"

Chris Cross: Ditto, standing pat.

Production Design

The Nominees: 

“The Irishman,” Bob Shaw and Regina Graves
“Jojo Rabbit,” Ra Vincent and Nora Sopkova
“1917,” Dennis Gassner and Lee Sandales
“Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood,” Barbara Ling and Nancy Haigh
“Parasite,” Lee Ha-Jun and Cho Won Woo, Han Ga Ram, and Cho Hee

The Chatter: I feel like the nerd standing in the back of the room spouting, "Akshually, production design is critical to the final result of a motion picture" when it comes to these down-ticket categories. But it's true! Production design encompasses the sets, backgrounds, vehicles, props -- basically, everything you see onscreen that's not an actor or creature.

A lot of great work here among these nominees, all of which are period pieces except "Parasite." One area where that film genuinely succeeded was in the labyrinthine sense of nightmarish space in the two houses.

I think OUaTiH will prevail because it was a bright, colorful depiction of a dark era in American and showbiz history. And Hollywood loves seeing itself looking good.

I'll take "1917" as my take. In a bit of a flier I'll take the little-seen "The Last Black Man in San Francisco," which probably had a teeny fraction of the production design budget of these other films but reflected a very specific place, both physically and spiritually.

Prediction: "Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood"

Pick: "1917"

Chris Cross: "The Last Black Man in San Francisco" replaces "The Irishman."

Original Score

The Nominees: 

“Joker,” Hildur Guðnadóttir
“Little Women,” Alexandre Desplat
“Marriage Story,” Randy Newman
“1917,” Thomas Newman
“Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,” John Williams

The Chatter: I seem to be outside the mainstream in believing that the best musical scores are often the ones you don't even notice. With rare exception, if you're sitting in a movie theater thinking, "Wow, that's great music!", then the composer has failed.

For instance, Hildur Guðnadóttir's excellent score for "Joker" doesn't really have a distinct melody you can put your finger on -- it's a somber tone poem of mood and layers of disquiet.

"1917" appears to be the favorite here, and it's a terrific score that largely drives the action in a film with little dialogue for long stretches.

I love John Williams but I'm not sure how he keeps getting nominations for doing variations on the same score he wrote more than 40 years ago.

In case you're wondering, yes, Thomas Newman and Randy Newman are related; they're cousins.

In general I've loved Alexandre Desplat's scores, but I found his one for "Little Women" overly cloying and distracting. Once again, please go rent "The Last Black Man in San Francisco."

Prediction: "1917"

Pick: "1917"

Chris Cross: "The Last Black Man in San Francisco" replaces "Little Women."

Original Song

The Nominees: 

“I Can’t Let You Throw Yourself Away,” “Toy Story 4”
“I’m Gonna Love Me Again,” “Rocketman”
“I’m Standing With You,” “Breakthrough”
“Into the Unknown,” “Frozen 2”
“Stand Up,” “Harriet”

The Chatter: Elton John seems to have this locked up. I think if his song from "Rocketman" came out back in his heyday, it'd be a B-sider that no one would even remember.

To me it's crazy that Cynthia Erivo's song from "Harriet" isn't the runaway favorite.

I didn't think "Wild Rose" was a better than good movie, but Jessie Buckley's singing of "Glasgow" was rapturous. 

Prediction: “I’m Gonna Love Me Again”

Pick: "Stand Up"

Chris Cross: "Glasgow (No Place Like Home)," "Wild Rose" for "I'm Gonna Love Me Again."

Makeup and Hair

The Nominees: 

“Bombshell”
“Joker”
“Judy”
“Maleficent: Mistress of Evil”
“1917”

The Chatter: "Bombshell" would seemingly have to win, right? It transformed Charlize Theron, who doesn't even really look much like Megyn Kelly, into an unnerving carbon copy. And Nicole Kidman into a very good fasciilimle of Gretchen Carlson.

OK, Jon Lithgow didn't look very much like Roger Stone. But he looked very different from Jon Lithgow.

Zellweger is actually older than Judy Garland was when she died, but they had to age her up considerably to play the part. I guess the latest version of the Joker makeup was fine. "Maleficent" would be the only real competition here.

I'm not even sure what "1917" is doing on this list, as there didn't seem to be anything out of the ordinary, other than that one scene where a soldier turns frighteningly pale in moments.

Prediction: "Bombshell"

Pick: "Bombshell"

Chris Cross: "Just Mercy" replaces "1917."

Costume Design

The Nominees: 

"The Irishman," Sandy Powell, Christopher Peterson
"Jojo Rabbit," Mayes C. Rubeo
"Joker,” Mark Bridges
"Little Women,” Jacqueline Durran
"Once Upon a Time in Hollywood," Arianne Phillips

The Chatter: "Little Women" appears to be the strong favorite here, and indeed the March women had fantastic, beautiful clothes in every scene. Those poor, utterly destitute March women in their sprawling home with tables piled high with food prepared by their live-in maid. So wretched, they were.

Brad Pitt's spark-plug-T-and-Hawaiian-shirt combo became an instant classic in OUaTiH, but is that enough for an Oscar? And I've seen Scorsese's "murderous goombahs in killer suits" shtick before.

I'd actually argue that of the five nominees, costumes were must central to the storytelling in "Jojo Rabbit." The mother's shoes become a totem of the boy's lost innocence.

Ridiculous that "Dolemite Is My Name" isn't on this last -- and the favorite to win.

Prediction: "Little Women"

Pick: "Jojo Rabbit"

Chris Cross: "Dolemite Is My Name" for "The Irishman."

Visual Effects

The Nominees: 

“Avengers Endgame”
“The Irishman”
“1917”
“The Lion King”
“Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker”

The Chatter: I'm throwing a dart on this one. I'm not sure how "Avengers: Endgame" is not the favorite here; people complain the superhero movies are all special effects and then don't want to reward them for that work.

It's not actually all that common for the Best Picture winner/favorite to be nominated in this category, so I'll take a guess that "1917" wins in the wake of its other awards.

I guess the animal CGI in "The Lion King" was very good, but the whole thing was such a cynical enterprise that I struggle to grant it credit.

I'm astonished "The Irishman" made this list since virtually no one thought the de-aging effects were very good. Whereas everyone thought the racing in "Ford v Ferrari" was very authentic.

Prediction: "1917"

Pick: "Avengers: Endgame"

Chris Cross: "Ford v Ferrari" knocks out "The Irishman."

Best Documentary Short Subject

The Nominees: 

“In the Absence,” Yi Seung-Jun and Gary Byung-Seok Kam
“Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone,” Carol Dysinger
“Life Overtakes Me,” Kristine Samuelson and John Haptas
“St. Louis Superman,” Smriti Mundhra and Sami Khan
“Walk Run Cha-Cha,” Laura Nix

The Chatter: Always a tough category to predict. I still haven't seen all of them so I'll hold off on a pick for now and update when I do.

Prediction: “Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (If You're a Girl)”

Pick: *

Best Live Action Short Film

The Nominees: 

“Brotherhood,” Meryam Joobeur
“Nefta Football Club,” Yves Piat
“The Neighbors’ Window,” Marshall Curry
“Saria,” Bryan Buckley
“A Sister,” Delphine Girard

The Chatter: Very strong slate of nominees this year. If it were possible for actors to get nominations for short films, Maria Dizzia deserves one for "The Neighbors' Window."

Prediction: "The Neighbors' Window"

Pick: "The Neighbors' Window"

Animated Short

The Nominees: 

“Dcera,” Daria Kashcheeva
“Hair Love,” Matthew A. Cherry
“Kitbull,” Rosana Sullivan
“Memorable,” Bruno Collet
“Sister,” Siqi Song

The Chatter: A Disney/Pixar film always wins this category. Always.

"Kitbull" is nine minutes of perfection. All the feelz.

Technically, both it and "Hair Love" are products of the Pixar machine, but only the latter played in front of an animated feature film.

Prediction: "Hair Love"

Pick: "Kitbull"