Thoughts on the Oscar nominations and the Golden Globe Winners

(Click HERE to see the full list of Oscar nominees, and HERE for the full list of Golden Globe winners)

Best Picture

I had been saying since mid-October that Argo would win Best Picture, and it’s been an interesting week for that prediction. When the Oscar nominations came out on Thursday, that prediction seemed to get squashed on the spot, with director Ben Affleck being inexplicably left off of the nominations. Only three films in history have won Best Picture without their director being nominated, and only one of those (Driving Miss Daisy in 1989) has been released in the last eighty years.

But then a funny thing happened on the way to the Kodak Theatre: Argo won the Golden Globe for Best Picture (Drama). Does this mean it’s still in the running? Maybe so. One thing we can say for certain is that the Golden Globe voting was completed before the Oscar nominations were released, so Argo didn’t win the Globe based on any sympathy votes from people rallying against a snub. Everything that happened with the Oscar nominations seems to point towards a Lincoln sweep, but that’s what seems so unsettling about it. Because the nominations were so across-the-board shocking, it seems unlikely that the awards themselves will be so boilerplate. But all of the voter fatigue I’ve been saying Lincoln will suffer from might not seem so rote to Oscar voters who just watched the film get virtually shut out at the Golden Globes. For Lincoln, suddenly having all of the attention pulled off it might be the best thing that could have happened.

Best Director

Well… that sucked. In my entire life, I can only ever recall one truly shocking Oscar snub prior to this year, when Hoop Dreams was left out of the Best Documentary race in 1994. People were totally outraged. And that’s the key difference that signifies what happened to Ben Affleck this year was serious. Every single year the Oscar nominations come out and include surprises. But those surprises generally involve the people who weren’t considered “locks” for nominations. Look at every single prediction for the Best Director nominations you can find (including mine), and I guarantee they will all have three names in common: Spielberg, Affleck, and Bigelow. So the fact that two of those names didn’t end up on the final ballot is more than just perplexing. No amount of analysis seems to explain what happened. And Affleck’s Globe win only further illustrates how weird it is. It’s the first time since 1988 that the winner of the Golden Globe for Best Director didn’t get nominated for the Oscar. (Interestingly, that instance was another actor fighting for acceptance as a major director—Clint Eastwood. And he won the Oscar four years later.)

So who will win the Oscar now? Well, with his major competition sitting the bench, Spielberg looks like he’s unstoppable here. But I still think voter fatigue may play a major role. While Spielberg has lost and been snubbed far more times than he’s won, that doesn’t change the fact that he’s still one of only four living directors with two Oscars, and no living director has three. (Only three directors in history have ever won more than two Oscars: William Wyler and Frank Capra won three, and John Ford won four. But they were all Golden Age Hollywood directors, and the last time any of them gave an acceptance speech was during the Eisenhower administration.) Spielberg will never have a better chance of winning a third Oscar, but that still doesn’t mean voters will be eager to give him one. Watch out for Michael Haneke here. I’ll write more on this as we get closer to Oscar time, but I think he has a great chance at an upset.

Best Actor

How snubbed was John Hawkes of a nomination? So snubbed that the guy can barely even get credit for being snubbed. He was thought to be the best chance to beat Daniel Day-Lewis before being left off of the ballot entirely, but with all of the attention on Affleck and Bigelow, Hawkes has just been left out of the conversation entirely. But his snubbing is just as bizarre and inexplicable; I challenge anyone to find a set of nomination predictions that didn’t include him.

Anyway, without Hawkes here, we might as well not even have other nominees. Daniel Day-Lewis should just start walking to the stage as soon as the presenters come out.

But that raises an important question: Are we ready to officially call Daniel Day-Lewis the greatest actor of all-time? Only two other men have ever won three acting Oscars, Jack Nicholson and Walter Brennan. Brennan won Best Supporting Actor three times, while Nicholson won Best Actor twice and Supporting Actor once. But winning Best Actor three times is totally unprecedented, and it would seem to separate Daniel Day-Lewis into a category all his own. Is that warranted? Are we okay with this? Are we ready to pseudo-officially unseat Marlon Brando, or Laurence Olivier, or Robert De Niro from the top of the acting mountain? Perhaps we are. While Daniel Day-Lewis hasn’t reinvented acting to the level of any of those aforementioned legends, he’s probably perfected it just as much, and maybe even more.

Best Actress

We knew before last weekend that this was already a two-woman race, and seeing both Jennifer Lawrence and Jessica Chastain collect their Golden Globes only further confirms that. But a great speech at the Golden Globes has been known to help people’s Oscar chances. So the question is, did Jennifer Lawrence give a great speech, or was she too snarky? She definitely gave a memorable speech, but that’s not quite the same thing, is it?  I think she’s the frontrunner, but only by a tiny bit. An equally interesting element of this race is the ongoing controversy surrounding Zero Dark Thirty, and what it may do to Chastain’s chances. Will voters feel like she’s the only opportunity to honor the movie, which remains critically adored? Or will the controversies keep voters away? If this weekend’s box office results are any indication, the controversies certainly haven’t kept audiences away. Zero Dark Thirty could pass Silver Linings Playbook in domestic gross by its second week in wide release.

Best Supporting Actor

This is the only category on the board that doesn’t seem to have any kind of front-runner. All of the nominees are previous Oscar winners, and everyone but Philip Seymour Hoffman has already won this category. Christoph Waltz won the Golden Globe for his portrayal of bounty hunter in Django Unchained, but it’s difficult to see him winning an Oscar for a Tarantino movie just three years after winning an Oscar for a Tarantino movie. My guess is Tommy Lee Jones has the best chance. He feels like an actor that deserves to own two Oscars, he’s in the most nominated film (Lincoln), and he gives a memorably showy performance. But he also looked memorably not amused during the Golden Globes, and that could be the kind of image that sticks with people.

Best Supporting Actress

This is the most boring category because no one has any chance of beating Anne Hathaway, and unlike Daniel Day-Lewis running away with Best Actor, this inevitability doesn’t allow us the opportunity to talk about any greater historical implications. Had Hathaway given a disastrous speech at the Golden Globes, she might have hurt her chances. But she gave the best speech of the night.

Other Categories

Because of the monumental snubs in the Best Director category, a lot of other bizarre omissions have been ignored or forgotten about. But for the record, here are some more: The Master was left out of the Best Cinematography race, a race in which it should have been the front-runner. Cloud Atlas didn’t get a single nomination, despite being the presumptive winner of Best Makeup, and being more than deserving of nominations for Best Original Score and Best Costume Design. Flight was left out of the Best Visual Effects race despite the amazing plane crash sequence that opened the film. And Looper failed to get a much-predicted Best Original Screenplay nomination, which it more than deserved. 

But on the positive side, Oscar host Seth MacFarlane is also an Oscar nominee for his song from Ted. Have we ever seen someone win an Oscar while hosting the show? Without really checking, I’m thinking no. And even in the midst of so many bizarre and disappointing nominations, I still found cause to celebrate. One of my favorite films from the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival, Norway’s Kon-Tiki, received a much-deserved Best Foreign Language Film nomination. 

New In Theaters: The Impossible

The Impossible

Directed by Juan Antonio Bayona

The Grade: C

While I was watching The Impossible, the true story of a family’s survival against the tsunami that hit Southeast Asia in 2008, my mind kept lingering on the 2010 Danny Boyle film 127 Hours. While both films chronicle true tales of unlikely survival, they are almost nothing alike. And thinking about that was what made me realize The Impossible should have been far better than it was.

Naomi Watts and Ewan McGregor star as an affluent British family with three young boys vacationing in Thailand when the tsunami hits. And what follows is how they survived and found each other again. Had I never seen 127 Hours, it’s likely I would have liked The Impossible much more. And it’s not because the latter steals from the former. Quite the opposite. 127 Hours is a movie that exists in the mind, and it’s a story of human perseverance and refusal to accept death as an inevitability. The Impossible isn’t really any of those things. I suppose the characters persevere, but their survival and finding of one another is more luck than anything else. We don’t see any of them make difficult choices or do difficult things, aside from the mother sticking out a gruesome leg injury.

And that’s a very frustrating thing about The Impossible, that the impossibility of it all only comes down to luck, and not to any sort of human action. While it’s certainly wonderful and heart-warming that this family all survived and found one another, it never feels inspiring. And inspiration is the most important ingredient for this type of story, one that 127 Hours had in spades.

And were that the only problem with the film, I would still mostly recommend it. But I can’t recall a time I was left with a worse taste in my mouth by a film’s final moments. Spoiler that doesn’t really spoil anything: the family’s survival is made (I suppose) more official when their insurance company flies them on a private jet from Thailand to Singapore, where they can receive better medical treatment. So in the final moments of the film we see this family of five good looking white people shuffle past hundreds of critically injured Asians and get on a huge jet, where every other seat is empty, and fly off into the sunset. Roll credits. All I could think about leaving the theater was “Oh, so the best way to survive one of the most devastating natural disasters in recorded history is to be rich and white. Good to know.”

Had they gotten on a small helicopter, I wouldn’t have been bothered so much, but the film went to great lengths to show us the following: 1) How overcrowded and inadequate the Thai hospitals were, 2) How many critically injured people were in those hospitals, and 3) How the huge plane they got on didn’t have a single other person on it!! Why couldn’t they have taken others with them to Singapore for all this great medical treatment? Why did the film have to go out of its way to show the family walking past so many other injured (non-white) people to get on the plane? Couldn’t that shot have been left out? Did it really not occur to anyone how it would look on screen?

In all fairness, The Impossible isn’t all bad. In fact, there’s a lot to praise here, particularly Watts’ physically demanding performance and the production design/visual effects team that amazingly recreated the tsunami and its devastation. And it is a good story that’s being told. But it’s just told in a way that never reaches a real emotional crescendo, and leaves a wretched taste in the mouths of anyone sensitive to socio-economic disparities. My advice to anyone that sees this film: Just walk out once the family gets reunited. Nothing more to see here. 

New in Theaters: Hitchcock

Directed by Sacha Gervasi

The Grade: B+

While Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 masterpiece Psycho certainly has many attributes—really, entire books have been written on the subject—the greatest is undoubtedly the sleight of hand trick the film pulls on the audience of making us think the film is about one character, when really, it’s about someone else. How appropriate then, that Hitchcock, a film ostensibly about the making of Psycho, is actually about something else entirely?

Hitchcock begins with the director searching for his next project and ends with the Psycho premiere, and in between is certainly a lot of history and dramatization of the circumstances that molded Psycho into the great film it became, but none of that is really what Hitchcock is about. Hitchcock is the story of a marriage reaching a potential breaking point, yet finding the strength not to break. And it’s a damn good one.

A few years ago, I believe in a review of The Kids Are All Right, a writer (sadly I can’t recall who) mentioned how sad it is that most films treat a couple’s journey to the altar as the pinnacle of the relationship, and that there’s apparently no narrative value in anything that happens after that moment. Hitchcock begs to differ. With Anthony Hopkins playing the eponymous director and Helen Mirren as his wife, Alma Reville, their marriage is portrayed as a wonderfully complex, organic, loving, and incorrigible thing. And that makes sense, given that in his role as a director, Hitchcock spent his “work” hours making millions of people fall in love with beautiful women, and then watch horrible things happen to them. It can’t be easy being married to someone like that, especially if you’re an intimately involved creative collaborator, like Reville absolutely was.

The plot of the film is pretty basic and mirrors every story you’ve ever heard about great works of art: Hitchcock wants to make Psycho, the studio doesn’t think it will be good and doesn’t want to finance it, Hitchcock finances it himself but now feels the pressure to make it great lest he go belly-up, then lo and behold, a masterpiece is created. But from this paint by numbers outline, the real film emerges, and that’s the film about a marriage being torn at its seams by ambition, pressure, temptation, and pride.

The film is cast with name actors even down to minor roles (Scarlett Johansson, Jessica Biel, Danny Huston, and Toni Collette, among others), and they all do a good job, but Hopkins and Mirren are really the stars of the show here. Both give spectacular performances, though wildly different ones. With Hopkins, it’s all about how well he embodies Hitch (and the answer is, quite well), but with Mirren, it’s more about how she embodies an idea. Mirren plays the good wife that’s slipping away, who wants both to be saved and let go in near equal measure. Mirren creates a fascinatingly complex character, and by the time the film ends, it’s her you want to spend more time with, not Hitch (“Hold the cock,” as he says in the film when someone uses his full last name).

Hitchcock was directed by Sacha Gervasi, whose only previous film was the absolutely hilarious documentary Anvil: The Story of Anvil. With both films, Gervasi has demonstrated an ability to find the hidden story about a subject we thought we already knew, and to show how much mere entertainers wrestle with inside their heads. It’s rare to get films that succeed well on more than one level, and Hitchcock does. As film history, it’s entertaining and informative. But as the story of a marriage between two strong-willed people, it’s even better. And that’s a twist of dynamic that even Hitch himself would have appreciated.

Predicting the Oscar Nominees

Click HERE to read this post on Detroit's Metro Times.

Start your engines, it’s awards season time! The nominations for the Golden Globes, the Screen Actor’s Guild, and all of the other guilds have already been released, the Golden Globes are this Sunday, and the Oscar nominations come out tomorrow. What will they be? I’m so glad you asked…

In each category below, everything is listed in order of how likely I think a nomination is, and the films in bold are what I think actually will be nominated. And thanks to Grantland, whose format I stole for this piece.

I’m weighing in on 45 potential nominations, with the goal of getting at least 40 of them right.

BEST PICTURE

The Locks

Lincoln

Zero Dark Thirty

Argo

The Near Locks

Silver Linings Playbook

Les Miserables

Life of Pi

At Least One of These

The Master

Moonrise Kingdom

Amour

Beasts of the Southern Wild

Other (Unlikely) Possibilities

Django Unchained

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

The Sessions

The Impossible

Flight

Skyfall

The Dark Knight Rises

This is the toughest category to pick, because we don’t even know how many nominees we’re getting. Starting last year, the voting changed, so now we can get anywhere from five to ten nominees, purely dependent on how the voting gets spread out. The crux is this: for a movie to get nominated, at least five percent of the ballots have to list it number one. There are close to 6,000 people in the Academy, so that means a minimum of around 300 Academy members have to think a movie was the best of the year for a nomination to occur. And that’s the key here—it doesn’t matter if every single person in the Academy thought something was in the year’s ten best, it only matters if 300 or so people thought it was the very best.

Consensus agreement suggests this was a very strong year for movies, and a lot of people assume that means we’ll get the full ten nominees. But the math doesn’t necessarily support that theory. Because there’s so much agreement about what this year’s very best films were (Lincoln, Zero Dark Thirty, & Argo), that’s likely to take a huge amount of the first place votes. If each of those films gets somewhere in the range of 15-25% of the first place votes, then that already leaves precious little space for the rest of the field.

Silver Linings Playbook, Les Miserables, and Life of Pi all feel pretty safely in, but after that, just about anything could happen. And one possibility is definitely that the nominations stop there. Some people are predicting that films widely liked by either younger Academy members (Django Unchained) or older Academy members (The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel) have a great chance to be nominated. But remember, the key isn’t how widely liked a movie is, it’s how passionately liked a movie is. Can you imagine 300 Academy members choosing either of those as the best film of the year? Perhaps you can, but I’ll be over here, respectfully disagreeing with you.

And that leaves the “art” films that gain small, yet passionate (there’s that important word again), followings. For many prognosticators, The Master has fallen out of the race and appears to be a peaked-too-early also-ran. But I think it’s just the kind of movie that will succeed in the Academy’s new voting system. Between it’s memorably amazing acting and cinematography, and its high-brow artiness, it’s easy to picture this being the type of film that a small group rallies around and puts at the top of the ballot (just like Tree of Life last year). But The Master is just one of four films that could benefit from this voting possibility, and that means they could all become victim to vote splitting. But my guess is Moonrise Kingdom comes through, while Amour and Beasts of the Southern Wild fall just short.

And as for the rest of the crowd pleasers, blame the system. Until the voting policies change again, the days of movies like The Full Monty, Seabiscuit, and The Blind Side sneaking into the Best Picture race are over. 

BEST DIRECTOR

The Locks

Steven Spielberg – Lincoln

Kathryn Bigelow – Zero Dark Thirty

Ben Affleck – Argo    

The Near-Lock

Ang Lee – Life of Pi

Probably Someone From This Group

Paul Thomas Anderson – The Master

Michael Haneke – Amour

Probably Not Someone From This Group

David O. Russell – Silver Linings Playbook

Tom Hooper – Les Miserables

Quentin Tarantino – Django Unchained

Robert Zemeckis – Flight

We basically know what four of the nominees will be here, but predicting the fifth is a bit tricky. The Golden Globes nominated Tarantino, while the Director’s Guild chose Hooper. But the Oscars have a longstanding tradition of awarding the fifth slot to a “visionary” director who tends to get unfairly ignored elsewhere (what I like to call the Terrence Malick Memorial Nomination). This year, there are two obvious choices for that slot, Anderson and Haneke. It’s basically a 50/50 toss-up, but I’m giving the edge to Anderson, just because his career is a little more user-friendly than Haneke, whose films often stretch viewer patience to the limits. But it should be noted that Amour is regarded as the most accessible film of Haneke’s career, while The Master is undoubtedly the most inaccessible of Anderson’s, so Haneke taking this slot definitely wouldn’t be a shock.

BEST ACTOR

The Lock

Daniel Day Lewis – Lincoln

The Near Locks

John Hawkes – The Sessions

Denzel Washington – Flight

Pick Two

Hugh Jackman – Les Miserables

Joaquin Phoenix – The Master

Bradley Cooper – Silver Linings Playbook

Better Luck Next Year

Richard Gere – Arbitrage

Anthony Hopkins – Hitchcock

Bill Murray – Hyde Park Hudson

Jack Black – Bernie

This is an immensely difficult category for me to analyze objectively, because I thought Phoenix’s performance wasn’t just the best of the year, but among the five or ten best acting performances I’ve ever seen. And because of this I find it unfathomable that he wouldn’t make the field of five, despite any evidence to the contrary, and regardless of how many comments he makes about not caring. So I’m going with my gut, and predicting he’ll find himself a nomination, because I desperately want to believe that quality of that magnitude matters more than the politics of how this all works.

Now having said that, the safe bet is that Jackman and Cooper will be the final two nominees. But I think both are vulnerable, Jackman because a lot of people disliked Les Miserables, and Cooper because some see his performance as slight and lacking depth. Because of Jackman’s impeccable singing, I’d give him the edge. And Richard Gere is looming as a potential spoiler. He already received a Golden Globe nomination for Arbitrage, and he’s been campaigning hard. Plus he’s never gotten an Oscar nomination, which some voters may see as an oversight that’s due to be corrected.

BEST ACTRESS

The Locks

Jennifer Lawrence – Silver Linings Playbook

Jessica Chastain – Zero Dark Thirty

Someone Has To Get Left Out

Naomi Watts – The Impossible

Helen Mirren – Hitchcock

Emmanuelle Riva – Amour

Marion Cotilard – Rust and Bone

Unlikely (But You Never Know)

Judi Dench – The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

Rachel Weisz – The Deep Blue Sea

Quvenzhané Wallis – Beasts of the Southern Wild

Maggie Smith – Quartet

This is already seen as such a two-(wo)man race that the other five nominees feel virtually inconsequential. And yet, arguing over the inconsequential is what I’m here for! I think Watts is basically a sure thing for her physically demanding performance, and Mirren should get in on name-recognition alone. So it’s down to Riva and Cotillard for the last slot, and both are in French subtitled films that many voters will have to talk themselves into watching. But Amour is light-hearted and beautiful, while Rust and Bone is heavy and depressing. That may be the deciding factor between which screener makes it to the DVD player and which screener stays on the coffee table. Plus Riva, at 85 years old, would be the oldest Best Actress nominee in history, and voters love a good narrative to latch on to.

While I wouldn’t rule out Dench and Weisz—two beloved actresses who consistently churn out great work—I am ruling out Wallis. I know other people are predicting she’ll make the cut, but, as Mark Harris wrote on Grantland last summer, what she does isn’t even really acting. She’s six years old, so it’s not like she’s really considering the different ways to approach a scene. And Wallis even said as much when asked about her performance. She just said that was her up on the screen. While this certainly doesn’t take away from how good she is, it’s also distinctly non-Oscar worthy.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

The Locks

Tommy Lee Jones – Lincoln

Philip Seymour Hoffman – The Master

The Near Lock

Alan Arkin – Argo

Pick Two

Javier Bardem – Skyfall

Leonardo DiCaprio – Django Unchained

Christoph Waltz – Django Unchained

Robert De Niro – Silver Linings Playbook

Sorry Guys

Matthew McConaughey – Magic Mike

Ewan McGregor – The Impossible

Samuel L. Jackson – Django Unchained

This is a fascinating category, because of the seven legitimate contenders for a nomination, six have already won Oscars, and five of them have already won in this category. Because of this, I really like DiCaprio’s chances for a nomination, as voters might see him as the only breath of fresh air in a category filled with people who probably don’t need any more accolades.

Out of the four actors vying for the final two slots, I think De Niro is the closest thing to a longshot, because it could be argued that this is his first role in over a decade that wasn’t simple check cashing. And it might be hard for voters to talk themselves into rewarding that. I’m also operating on the assumption that Bardem is pretty close to a lock. He didn’t get a Golden Globe nomination, but he’s on SAG’s list, and voters who loved Skyfall (and apparently, they are legion) will probably feel like this is the best chance to reward that film. Plus, after 22 other Bond movies, coming up with a totally refreshing and totally creepy villain ain’t no easy task. And there’s recent history of this award going to the year’s best villain, which happened three years in a row from 2007-2009.

The real question here will be whether DiCaprio and Waltz split each other’s votes, and even if Samuel L. Jackson siphons some away from both of them. But DiCaprio is playing both a supporting role and a villain for the first time in his adult career, and that should gain not just the curiosity of the voters, but also their attention.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

The Winner Lock

Anne Hathaway  - Les Miserables

The Near Locks

Sally Field – Lincoln

Amy Adams – The Master

Probably

Helen Hunt – The Sessions

Maggie Smith – The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

The Spoiler

Nicole Kidman – The Paperboy

Possible Surprises

Ann Dowd – Compliance

Jacki Weaver – Silver Linings Playbook

Samantha Barks – Les Miserables

Kerry Washington – Django Unchained

This feels like kind of a boring category because Hathaway appears to have it in the bag, but whether or not Kidman can sneak into the field will be one of the most interesting elements of the nominations. And that’s because The Paperboy is a legitimately awful movie. To be fair, Kidman is quite good as its southern-fried sexpot, and there are (fleeting) stretches where she almost makes the movie tolerable. But getting voters to watch their screener copy given the savage reviews heaped upon the movie is no easy task, while Hunt and Smith (Kidman’s most vulnerable competitors) are both in happy feel-good movies that voters will likely love watching. And that’s why I think Kidman will sit this one out despite getting nominated by both the Golden Globes and the Screen Actor’s Guild.

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

The Winner Lock

Mark Boal - Zero Dark Thirty

The Near Lock

Wes Anderson & Roman Coppola - Moonrise Kingdom

Anything Could Happen

Rian Johnson - Looper    

Quentin Tarantino - Django Unchained    

Paul Thomas Anderson - The Master

Michael Haneke - Amour

John Gatins - Flight

Zero Dark Thirty is the only sure thing here, and I can imagine virtually any scenario for the other four nominees. But ultimately I think Flight will fall short because it’s seen as more of an achievement for Denzel Washington and the special effects team, and I think Amour is more likely to get honored in other categories. Plus Tarantino and Anderson are such mainstays of this category that it’s hard to picture either of them getting left out.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

The Locks

Tony Kushner - Lincoln

Chris Terrio - Argo    

David O. Russell - Silver Linings Playbook

The Near Lock

David Magee - Life of Pi

One of These

Stephen Chbosky - The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Ben Lewin - The Sessions

Lucy Alibar & Benh Zeitlin - Beasts of the Southern Wild

We’re really only debating the last slot here. While Beasts of the Southern Wild is probably the most loved film of the likely possibilities, and I happen to think The Sessions is the most deserving, the consensus seems to be that Wallflower will claim the last slot. Stephen Chbosky adapted his own novel for the screenplay, which is probably nerve-racking, and this is likely the only category for voters to recognize the film.

Why Ben Affleck’s Argo Will Win Best Picture

A little under three months from now, in the late hours of Sunday, February 24, 2013 (or the early hours of Monday, February 25, as these things sometimes do carry on a bit), Ben Affleck’s Argo will win the Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director. While I’m certainly no stranger to hyperbole, I don’t trend towards bold declarations without merit. This is not that. Argo is winning the top two Academy Awards, and I’m certain of it. (Or at least 95% certain; I am nothing if not mostly committed.) Here’s why:

It’s a Deserving Winner

We’ll get this out of the way first, because it’s not only the least complicated argument to make, but it’s also the least convincing. Twenty years ago, in Unforgiven, Clint Eastwood famously said, “Deserve’s got nothin’ to do with it.” He might as well have been talking about the Oscars. If you think the Oscar always goes to the most deserving nominee, well, Martin Scorsese would like to have some words with you out back. While it’s not quite true that being deserving “has nothin’ to do with it,” it is but one of many factors on the minds of voters, and it’s never not always the top one. But having said that, it never hurts to be worthy, and Argo is.

Argo is a truly fantastic film. It is, in many ways, a film that has a little bit of everything: comedy, satire, history, suspense, great acting, great dialogue, topical themes, classic style, human triumph over adversity, a happy ending, bad 70’s haircuts… it’s all there. It’s a film that stands up incredibly well to repeat viewings. I’ve seen it twice now, and what really grabbed me on the second viewing was how well everything was pieced together. Editing is one of the fundamental elements of cinema as an art form, and you won’t find many better-edited films than Argo. (And here’s an Oscar history lesson for you: The film that wins Best Editing also wins Best Picture about half of the time.) Argo is also two films for the price of one; On the one hand, it’s a truly funny Hollywood satire, and on the other, it’s a pulse-pounding suspense film, created with Hitchcock-level precision. The degree of difficulty here is larger than you think, because you can’t have audiences laughing for an hour and then suddenly expect them to be on the edge of their seat. But that’s precisely what Argo does. It’s a balancing act as good as any you’ll ever see.

It Will Age Well

We movie fans don’t ask for much, but damn it, we don’t want our Best Picture winners to look embarrassing five years down the road. Argo won’t. Of course it’s too early to know whether Argo is the best film of the year, but it’s not too early to know that Argo is a (capital ‘G’) Great film. It’s not exactly a dirty little secret to say that Best Picture doesn’t always go to the year’s best film, so the goal is really just to give the award to a great one. Sometimes even that doesn’t work out, and within a few years, the winner is like a stain on film history (I’m looking at you Crash). But most of the time, the winner stands up as a classic, and that’s the most important thing. You might think Rocky was less deserving in 1976 than Network or Taxi Driver (and you’re probably right), but Rocky is certainly a great film that has stood the test of time, and really, that’s all we can ask for out of our Best Picture winner. And I promise, Argo will never be uttered in the same sentence as Crash (well, except for this one).

Public Enthusiasm Matters

The first time I saw Argo, at its Toronto premiere in September, it received a standing ovation, which even at a film festival, isn’t very common. (I’ve seen about 100 movies in Toronto over three years of going to the festival, and maybe 6 or 7 of them received standing ovations.) But even still, people tend to view film festival screenings through rose-colored glasses that inflate quality a little bit. It’s natural and contagious to think that everything you’re seeing is a minor masterpiece. But when I saw Argo again when it opened in theaters, something amazing happened: the audience started applauding and cheering during the movie. I cannot stress that highly enough. The movie was still playing when everyone in the theater erupted into contagious clapping. We were still a good ten minutes out from the end credits. And this wasn’t at a film festival, this was on a cold Sunday afternoon at an Ann Arbor multiplex.

When The Hurt Locker won Best Picture three years ago, much ballyhoo was made over its financial failure at the box office. It was the lowest domestic gross a Best Picture winner had ever had. The moral of the story is that Best Picture tends to go to successful movies. But more specifically, Best Picture tends to go to movies that audiences really loved. And there’s substantial proof that audiences love Argo far beyond what I’ve witnessed myself. Cinemascore, the organization that polls audiences leaving the theater to see what they thought, has reported that Argo has earned an extremely rare A+. Meanwhile, box office reports show that Argo had an incredibly minimal drop from its first to second week in release, and then did the unthinkable—went to number one at the box office in its third week of release. Not only is this an amazing achievement in itself, it means that word of mouth has been nothing short of outstanding. While it’s true that critical and public tastes don’t always overlap, the Oscars have a long tradition of pretending they do. And Best Picture has a long tradition of going to a film that audiences truly responded to. For 2012, that film appears to be Argo.

The Other Contenders Aren’t Really Contenders

Now here’s the part where you say “But how can you be sure Argo is better than all of the other movies coming out over the next two months?” Well, the truth is, I’m not. But I also don’t have to be. Let me explain: One of the great-unwritten rules of the Oscars is that the wealth must be spread. Voter fatigue plays an enormous role in what the ballots end up looking like. It’s true that many of the highest profile films of 2012 haven’t been released yet, and some haven’t even screened for critics yet. They might all be better than Argo. But it won’t matter, because they aren’t winning Best Picture.

The Hobbit may be based on a book that’s subtitled “There and Back Again,” but the Oscars won’t be. The third Lord of the Rings film won eleven Oscars in 2004, so the Academy will feel like they’ve been there and done that with regards to Tolkien adaptations. Life of Pi and Django Unchained both have high expectations and great pedigree, but one is about a boy and his CGI tiger stranded on a boat, and the other is a darkly comic, slave revenge western. Both immediately fail the crucial “Does this sound like a Best Picture winner?” test, and they ain’t winning. Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty, about the black ops operation that killed Osama Bin Laden, could be outstanding, and so could Tom hooper’s Les Miserables, which looks to finally be the adaptation of the play that audiences and critics have been waiting for. But both films are by directors who have won the top two Oscars in the last three years (The Hurt Locker and The King’s Speech). History just doesn’t repeat itself that quickly. For any of these films to pass Argo in the eyes of Oscar voters, they would need to be once-in-a-generation great. And even that probably wouldn’t be enough.

That basically leaves just two real contenders to potentially derail Argo’s Oscar hopes, and both are in theaters right now: Lincoln and Silver Linings Playbook. Lincoln has rave reviews and audience support on its side, but no movie will suffer from voter fatigue quite like it will. Only four living directors have two Oscars, and Steven Spielberg is one of them, so any conversation about who will win Best Director essentially has to start with crossing his name off the list. Can Lincoln win Best Picture without also winning Best Director? Maybe. It’s happened four times since 1990 (in ’98, ’00, ’02, and ’05), so there’s certainly precedent. But there are two important things to note about those instances. First, they all happened in a brief seven-year span when the Academy was clearly struggling with the whole art-versus-commerce thing, so the top awards would split between the “art” film and the “commercial” film. But in the six subsequent years since Crash toppled Brokeback Mountain in 2006, Best Picture has gone to films like No Country For Old Men and The Hurt Locker, so this crisis of self appears to be over. (Yes, I’m disregarding The King’s Speech over The Social Network. Indulge me.) And second, each of those times Best Picture and Best Director went to separate films, it was the prestige art film that won Best Director and the audience crowd pleaser that won Best Picture. If we accept that Lincoln won’t win Best Director, then a Best Picture win for it would be the opposite scenario of every other Picture/Director split we’ve seen. Add to that the fact that voters will still look at Lincoln as the Spielberg/Daniel Day Lewis movie (heavy voter fatigue alert), and its path to the podium just seems too laden with obstacles.

And that leaves Silver Linings Playbook, David O. Russell’s mental disability romantic dramedy starring Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence. This is the film that won the Toronto International Film Festival People’s Choice Award, which also went to Slumdog Millionaire and The King’s Speech in recent years (do you see the pattern?). I’ve seen Silver Linings Playbook twice now, and it is quite good. It’s funny, insightful, heartfelt, very well acted… In a different year, it probably could have been the feel-good Shakespeare in Love that topples the heavy downer Saving Private Ryan. But Argo isn’t a heavy downer, it’s the opposite. As mentioned, audiences have loved Argo, and it’s a defiantly happy movie. And Playbook’s Toronto win can partially be explained by the slight Canadian backlash to Argo; The CIA operation that it dramatizes was long thought to be the work of Canadian Intelligence until Bill Clinton declassified the files in 1997. There’s some lingering Canadian bitterness over the loss of credit for the operation, and the Toronto People’s Choice Award is voted on mostly by Canadians. The Oscars are not.

At this point, the best chance either of these films have to announce themselves as the front-runner is to make a killing at the box office. But Silver Linings Playbook had a dismal opening weekend, and Lincoln—while certainly a hit—looks like it will have a pretty similar gross to Argo. That just won’t be enough. 

Hollywood Loves to Market Itself

Here’s where we get to Argo’s secret weapon: Hollywood loves nothing more than itself. Over the last several years, as hi-def TVs and Blu-ray players have taken over living rooms, piracy is running rampant, and television has gotten noticeably better, it’s no secret that box office receipts have been taking a plunge. Recent Oscar telecasts have started doing these annoying montages about The Power of Movies, or Why We Love the Movies, and the like. It’s been a semi-shameless attempt to try and remind audiences that we should go to more movies, like an undersexed housewife donning a lacy new negligee to try and regain her husband’s attentions. Hollywood has been trying to resell people on its own magic, but failing to do so.

Well Hollywood, look no further. Argo is the movie of your dreams. For as many shots as Argo takes at Hollywood (and they are plentiful), there’s no denying the film’s resolution. Argo is a true story about Hollywood literally helping to save six American lives. It’s a film about the magic and seduction of the movies actually helping to combat terrorism. And Argo is no Indie movie. It was made and financed by a major studio (Warner Brothers), and shot partially on that studio’s back lot. It is honestly the greatest marketing campaign Hollywood could ever create for itself. And that campaign will be sealed with a Best Picture win. 

The Oscars Love Actor/Directors

What do Clint Eastwood, Robert Redford, Warren Beatty, Kevin Costner, and Mel Gibson have in common? They were all bankable Hollywood movie stars who took a stab at directing, and won an Oscar for their efforts. All but Beatty also directed their films to a Best Picture Oscar. This isn’t just coincidence. The Oscars love to reward movie stars for doing something other than relying on their sculpted cheekbones. Giving leading men Oscars for directing isn’t really any different than giving Nicole Kidman, Charlize Theron, and Marion Cotillard Oscars for roles where they wore prosthetic faces. The trend is the same: show us you’re more than a pretty face and you get a little gold guy. And three films into his directing career, Ben Affleck has emphatically announced that he’s much more than a pretty face.

Everyone Loves a Comeback

In Good Will Hunting, the movie that turned Ben Affleck into an overnight star in 1997, his character (Chuckie) gives a semi-famous speech to Matt Damon’s title character. Chuckie tells Will that he’s “sitting on a winning lottery ticket,” and that the best part of Chuckie’s day is each morning when he goes to pick Will up, and he thinks that maybe today he won’t be there. That maybe today was the day Will finally wised up and cashed in that winning lottery ticket. “I don’t know much, but I know that,” Affleck says at the end.

It’s important to understand that Affleck helped write that speech. To some degree, those words really did come from him. And this means that, in theory, through all of the terrible movies Affleck made between 1998-2004, those words were still lurking there in the back of his mind. It’s difficult to really blame Affleck for the choices he made in his late twenties. He was suddenly given the opportunity to be a major movie star and he jumped at it. There aren’t many of us who wouldn’t do the same. And he made a lot of bad choices that led to a lot of bad movies. But Affleck was still the same guy that a few years earlier had helped write that “winning lottery ticket” speech. And Ben Affleck is very smart, and very talented. We know that now even if we didn’t know that then. But it’s reasonable to assume that he knew that then. It’s reasonable to assume that he was watching those terrible movies he made, he was reading those awful reviews, he was seeing himself all over TMZ, he was hearing people call him “Bennifer,” and he was thinking about the winning lottery ticket he was sitting on, and wondering why he wasn’t cashing it in. 

Argo is the third film Ben Affleck has directed. The first two, Gone Baby Gone and The Town, are very good, occasionally great films. But Argo is the winning lottery ticket getting cashed in. It fulfills every good thing that’s ever been said about Ben Affleck and every ounce of faith that’s ever been placed in him. And that’s why he’s going to leave the Dolby Theater a few months from now clutching two shiny gold Oscars, one for directing and one for producing (Best Picture). I don’t know much, but I know that.

Fall Movie Preview: Advice on What To See

Click here to read this post on Annarbor.com

With the release of Ben Affleck’s Argo today, what we think of as the fall prestige movie season, or Oscar season, really kicks off in earnest. Appetites were wetted last month by The Master (well, at least some appetites), but this is the real start of a three-month stretch where a major Oscar hopeful is basically being released every week. Several of the movies that will vie for audience attentions and accolades premiered last month at the Toronto International Film Festival, and I was lucky enough to see some of them. I’ve prepared this guide to help you, the all-important ticket-buyer, best decide how to use your hard-earned entertainment dollars.

Argo (October 12)

Directed by Ben Affleck (Gone Baby Gone, The Town)

Starring Ben Affleck, Bryan Cranston, Alan Arkin, and John Goodman

Argo tells the unbelievably true story of a 1980 CIA rescue operation that successfully extracted six American embassy workers from Iran by posing them as a Canadian film crew on a location scout for a Star Wars-like science fiction movie. Affleck stars as the CIA agent heading the mission, Cranston plays his operations director, and Goodman & Arkin are the Hollywood power players who help him create just enough of a fake movie to sell the lie. The film is equal parts funny, suspenseful, and uplifting, and the level of tension created in the climax makes you seriously doubt a conclusion that you already know is coming. In his third outing behind the camera, Affleck proves he’s on the shortlist of the best contemporary American filmmakers.

You should see this film if… You appreciate any of the following: Hollywood satire, well-crafted political drama, entertaining history lessons, Hitchcock style suspense, and/or inspiring true stories of human triumph.

You should skip this film if… You tend to measure movies by explosions, violence, gratuitous nudity, or complete historical accuracy.

Seven Psychopaths (October 12)

Directed by Martin McDonagh (In Bruges)

Starring Colin Farrell, Sam Rockwell, Christopher Walken, Woody Harrelson, Olga Kurylenko, Abbie Cornish, and Tom Waits

Seven Psychopaths tells the sordid tale of three bungling dog-kidnappers who accidentally take the prized Shih Tzu of a local gangster, and inadvertently set off a Los Angeles crime war. At the very least, the film is never boring. The gratuitous violence is consistently over-the-top, but it never over-shadows the ridiculousness. The dialogue is generally funny, as are the characters and situations, and the great cast always seems to be enjoying themselves at such a level that it’s contagious to the viewer. But having said that, this is a slightly disappointing movie if you go into it with any level of expectation (as I did). There’s nothing here even remotely resembling the character depth of director McDonagh’s great debut, In Bruges, and there are times when the movie is a little too reminiscent of the worst of the late 90’s Tarantino wannabes.

You should see this film if… You love Pulp Fiction because it’s awesome, hilarious, and violent.

You should skip this film if… You love Pulp Fiction because it’s artistic, innovative, and groundbreaking. (Or, I suppose, you should skip this movie if you don’t like Pulp Fiction. But why would you be reading a film column if you don’t like Pulp Fiction?)

The Paperboy (October 19)

Directed by Lee Daniels (Precious)

Starring Zach Efron, Matthew McConaughey, Nicole Kidman, and John Cusack

Lee Daniels’ hotly awaited follow-up to Precious, The Paperboy is a gothic redneck murder tale told through the eyes of Zach Efron, who has the hots for Kidman’s southern belle temptress. She’s trying to get Cusack out of prison because she loves him (even though they’ve only corresponded through mail), and McConaughey is the lawyer she hires to help find new evidence that acquits him of the murder he’s been convicted of. Efron is McConaghey’s brother, and is helping him with the case. Sadly, those are the straightforward elements of the story, and the second half of the movie just skips around from one terrible plot twist to another. I loved Precious, and I had high hopes for this, but it did nothing but disappoint. If you’re looking for silver linings, here’s the best I can offer: the lighting and color-tones are kind of interesting, Kidman does a good job (though she’s much better playing a similar character in the pseudo-classic To Die For), Cusack actually takes a role against type, and there’s a great scene of Kidman pantomiming a blowjob to Cusack while she visits him in prison. And I think that exhausts the good things I can say about The Paperboy.

You should see this film if… You’re willing to pay $10 to see Zach Efron in his tightie whities.

You should skip this film if… You have good taste.

Smashed (October 19)

Directed by James Ponsoldt (Off the Black)

Starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Aaron Paul, Octavia Spencer, and Megan Mullally

A small character-driven film about a young married couple (Winstead and Paul) who drink themselves into a stupor every night, and about the strain it puts on their relationship when she decides to go sober, but he doesn’t. Smashed isn’t a great film, but it’s an interesting one, and it wears its heart on its proverbial sleeve. Winstead is the best thing here, and she shows a depth of ability that has never been apparent before (and I’ve always liked her). Paul is good, but he just plays a slightly altered version of his Breaking Bad character, and it feels like a missed opportunity. He should be taking roles that display his range, not that increase the likelihood of his being typecast. The film is generally more redemptive than it is heavy, and at only 90 minutes, it moves by incredibly quickly. Several of the scenes have a nicely compelling gravitas, and there’s a palpable authenticity to the proceedings, but overall, it feels like the struggles are a bit too simplified and the emotional journey is a little too truncated.

You should see this film if… You like your indie films to feel really, really indie, or if you’re always on the lookout for the next potentially important actor/actress/director.

You should skip this film if… You like having strong reactions to films.

Cloud Atlas (October 26)

Directed by Andy & Lana Wachowski (The Matrix) and Tom Tykwer (Run Lola Run)

Starring Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Hugh Grant, Jim Sturgess, Jim Broadbent, Hugo Weaving, Ben Whishaw, and Susan Sarandon

Adapted from the allegedly unfilmable novel, Cloud Atlas weaves together stories from six different eras to chronicle the epic journey of a soul across the past, present, and future, and about how acts of kindness can ripple throughout time. From that synopsis (and the pedigree of directors), you should just about know whether Cloud Atlas is your kind of flick or not, but I’ll keep going just for the hell of it. If films were measured purely on ambition, there’s no question that Cloud Atlas is one of the best films of this year or most others. There is a LOT going on here, the least of which is that twelve actors play every single role in the film, across all six time periods (generally, each actor has a character in each era, but they are not the same characters). Even if you don’t ultimately fall for the grandiosity and the themes of the film, it’s still an unbelievably captivating journey that finds a heightened level of drama in the early goings and then latches on to it for nearly three unforgettable hours. And make no mistake, this is an unforgettable film, even for the people that ultimately won’t like it (and they will be legion). The people that love this film will probably spend two solid months talking about it, and the people who hate the film will hate it very loudly and publicly. But I’m in the love camp. This is a film that asks you to believe and I believed. I was swept along on the journey that is Cloud Atlas and it was an experience that deeply moved me.

You should see this film if… You’re interested in hugely ambitious works of art, you still appreciate the communal aspects of the cinema, you value being a part of the cultural conversation, you’ve ever used the phrase “go big or go home,” or if you’ve ever wanted to see Hugh Grant playing a post-apocalyptic tribal warrior with tattoos and face paint (yes, really).

You should skip this film if… You’ve ever used the word “hogwash,” you strongly dislike leaving a theater unsure of what you just saw, or you have a morbid fear of seeing Tom Hanks with a goatee.

The Sessions (October 26)

Directed by Ben Lewin (Georgia, Paperback Romance)

Starring John Hawkes, Helen Hunt, and William H. Macy

John Hawkes (an Oscar nominee in 2011 for Winter’s Bone) plays Mark O’Brien, the real-life poet and polio survivor who was unable to move below the neck and lived in an iron lung. Taking place in the 1980’s, this true story catches up with O’Brien as a middle-aged man who decides that, even if he never marries or finds the love of his life, he still wants to lose his virginity, and Helen Hunt plays the sex surrogate he hires to help him do so. The concept could easily have been played for cheap laughs (and to be fair, there are a lot of laughs here), but director Lewin—a polio survivor himself—prevents the films from ever going that route. Instead, we get a totally honest, and unapologetically graphic, portrayal of a man just trying to have sex. Hawkes and Hunt spend a good portion of their screen time nude, but the film never feels exploitative or gratuitous. The trick is that the viewpoint is funneled through Hawkes, who sees the beauty in every simplistic aspect of life, and who never feels sorry for himself, so we don’t either. The film doesn’t cash in on sympathy, but on the simple pleasure of an accomplished goal.

You should see this film if… you like simple movies about complicated things, you like movies that make you feel the beauty of life, you like the idea of William H. Macy playing a priest while keeping his Shameless haircut, and if you want to see the performance that will win the 2013 Best Actor Oscar (yep, you heard me).

You should skip this film if… You don’t experience human emotion, or if you’d rather see full frontal nudity clips for free on the Internet than pay to see them in a theater.

Silver Linings Playbook (November 21)

Directed by David O. Russell (The Fighter, Three Kings)

Starring Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro, Jacki Weaver, Chris Tucker, and Julia Stiles

Bradley Cooper stars as a just-released mental patient living with his parents (De Niro & Weaver) in Philadelphia, in a story about how he embraces the road to recovery with the help of a beautiful young widow trying to cope with problems of her own (Lawrence). Treading a somewhat similar ground as As Good As It Gets, this film had ample opportunity to go off the rails and disappoint, but it amazingly never does. Cooper proves he can carry a movie whose box office won’t be driven by frat guys, and Lawrence turns in her best acting performance yet (and for anyone that saw Winter’s Bone, you know that’s saying something). There are a few minor flaws here—the film never goes for a big emotional payoff moment, a few of the comedic sequences feel a little too contrived, and the climax seems to swipe a page from the Little Miss Sunshine script—but none of these are obvious while you’re watching. It’s just too enjoyable.

Note: Silver Linings Playbook won the audience award in Toronto, which has become something of an Oscar predictor in recent years (Slumdog Millionaire and The King’s Speech also won it), but I think the safer Oscar bet here is Jennifer Lawrence’s scene-stealing performance. In my mind, she’s the lead actress to beat.

You should see this film if… You like movie stars at the top of their game, good dramedies, unconventional romantic comedies, memorable dance sequences, or if you want to see Robert De Niro actually earn a paycheck for the first time since the 90’s.

You should skip this film if… You think serious movies ought to be serious, and that happy endings are too formulaic and sappy.  

Rust and Bone (November 23)

Directed by Jacques Audiard (A Prophet)

Starring Marion Cotillard and Matthias Schoenaerts

This French character drama stars Marion Cotillard (Inception, Dark Knight Rises, La Vie en Rose) as a killer whale trainer who loses both legs in an accident, and forges an emotional connection with a bare-knuckle street fighter. If it sounds heavy, it is. The acting is generally phenomenal, much of the imagery is stunning, and there are a handful of moments that are as moving and deeply affecting as anything you’ll see this year. But director Audiard, who made the incredible prison crime drama A Prophet (a 2010 Best Foreign Language Film nominee), mostly keeps the dramatic tension out of this one, and it would be a struggle for anyone to really call this film entertaining.

You should see this film if… You like really well crafted character pieces, or if you feel compelled to see every potential nominee for Best Actress.

You should skip this film if… You generally don’t like walking out of a theater feeling as though your soul has been given an anesthetic.

On The Road (December 21)

Directed by Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries)

Starring Garrett Hedlund, Kristen Stewart, Sam Riley, Kirsten Dunst, Amy Adams, Elisabeth Moss, and Viggo Mortensen

Jack Kerouac’s generation-defining novel finally makes it to the big screen courtesy of Brazilian director Walter Salles, who has previous experience making a good road trip film with the Che Guevara biopic The Motorcycle Diaries. The lead roles are played by two talented young actors, Garrett Hedlund (Tron: Legacy) as the decadent Dean Moriarty and Sam Riley (Control) as the Kerouac stand-in Sal Paradise, and both do a fantastic job bringing the legendary characters to life. Kristen Stewart (Twilight) costars, and goes what has to be described as all-in on her first real adult role, playing a sex-object version of the manic pixie dream girl archetype. But even if the individual elements of the film—acting, pacing, photography, and energy—all ring true, it’s the feeling that’s missing. The enduring appeal of the novel isn’t necessarily the characters or the story, but the language, and short of having the characters simply read the novel on screen (which actually does happen a fair amount), the film just can’t recreate that despite a damn good effort.

You should see this film if… You’ve always been interested in the idea of reading “On The Road.”

You should skip this film if… You’ve actually read “On The Road.”

Of course I missed a few movies in Toronto that would have made this preview had I seen them (Anna Karenina, The Impossible, Hyde Park on Hudson), and there are also a number of notable films arriving in theaters this fall that opted not to go to Toronto (Django Unchained, The Hobbit, Life of Pi, Lincoln, Les Miserables, Zero Dark Thirty)… But that’s the great thing about loving movies: you’ll never run out of more to see.

And lastly, here are five wonderful films I saw in Toronto that won’t be hitting U.S. theaters until 2013, but which you should definitely put on your radar:

How To Make Money Selling Drugs—A scathing look at U.S. drug policy and why dealing appeals to so many people, this documentary succeeds on every level; It’s funny, succinct, informative, thorough, and thought-provoking.

Kon-Tiki—The true story of Thor Heyerdahl, who spent the summer of 1947 floating 5,000 miles from Peru to Polynesia on a raft made of balsa wood in an effort to prove that the Polynesian islands were originally colonized by South America. One of the greatest film adventure stories I’ve seen in a long, long time.

Lore—The poetic tale of a 14 year-old German girl at the end of World War II, who must care for her young siblings when their Nazi parents are arrested for war crimes. Filled with powerful imagery and portraying a unique perspective, I was deeply affected by this film.

The Sapphires—The true story of four Aboriginal girls in the 1960’s who formed a Supremes-like soul group and left Australia to go to Vietnam and sing for U.S. troops. This is the best music film I’ve seen in years, and Chris O’Dowd (the cop from Bridesmaids) kills it as their Irish manager.

Thanks For Sharing—A sex addiction dramedy by Stuart Blumberg (the writer of The Kids are All Right), starring Mark Ruffalo, Gwenyth Paltrow, and Tim Robbins, which is equal parts funny and heavy.

And that’s it, happy viewing!

Toronto International FIlm Festival '12 Diary

My 2012 Toronto International Film Festival diary, from Detroit Metro Times' B-Roll film blog:

Day 1 - Bryan Motha fuckin' Cranston

Day 2 - Fake Hit

Days 3 & 4 - Giftedly Undiplomatic

Day 5 - Sex Addiction

Day 6 - Taking it Back

Day 7 - Isopods Attack