Ever since the Motion Picture Academy allowed more than five films to be nominated for “Best Picture,” I’ve considered it a personal challenge to see them all. Most years I fail. This year I made it to all but one, so I feel like a winner already!
Of course, I have some opinions.
If “Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri” wins on Sunday, I think its producers should offer the statue to President Trump — because it is his stunning victory, based in that part of the country, that gives the film a heightened importance.
The billboards were rented by grieving mother Mildred Hayes, who’s incensed that police have made no progress solving the gruesome rape and murder of her teenage daughter seven months before. They read: “Raped while dying…” “And still no arrests?” “How come, Chief Willoughby?”
Sadly, the film feels as fake as its name. There is no “Ebbing, Missouri.”
And I looked at the mountains in the background of virtually every shot and thought, “Where did they film this? Not in Missouri!” More like the Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina, where the tax incentives were better.
Rape and murder are drama enough. But not content with that, director/writer Martin McDonagh tossed on more, like a child with birthday-cake sprinkles.
Most offensive, to me, is the reference early in the film to Police Officer Dixon (Sam Rockwell), as a “(N-word)-torturer” — apparently just so the character can joke that “It’s ‘persons-of-color-torturer,’ now. ” Ha ha, very funny.
The trouble is, the director does none of the work required to earn that reference: What? Torture? You mean, like in Chicago, where the Police Department actually had a building where police “disappeared” African-American arrestees for up to 24 hours at a time, torturing them into false confessions, over a period of almost 20 years?
It ended in 1991 and they’re still dealing with the repercussions.
You can’t just drop something like that into a dialog and run away.
Worst of all, they never solve the murder! No need for spoiler alerts because there’s nothing to spoil!
For a film where American race relations are handled without a single false note, I recommend “Get Out,” by Jordan Peele.
Peele has said that he wanted to make a film that was completely authentic from the black person’s point of view, without alienating any white viewers.
I am precisely the kind of white liberal he might be making fun of — and yet he never lost me once from beginning to end. That’s an even bigger achievement when you know I usually avoid horror movies like the plague… yet I loved this one.
Greta Gerwig’s “Lady Bird” is equally authentic in its own way. I’ve praised it elsewhere, so I’ll just say I’d be thrilled but not surprised if either “Get Out” or “Lady Bird” takes Best Picture.
“Dunkirk,” “The Post,” and “Darkest Hour” are all masterful films, but seem more like history lessons than original creations.
As for “Phantom Thread”: When Casablanca’s Humphrey Bogart told Ingrid Bergman that “the problems of three little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world” — the characters in “Phantom Thread” might just be the three people he had in mind.
There’s a moody fashion designer, who simply can’t bear it when his new girlfriend butters her toast too loudly; the noisy girlfriend; and his sister, who pops in and out as if she owns the place (which maybe she does).
But if they were living and bickering together in a double-wide trailer — say in Missouri — instead of luxury lodgings in Europe, no one would care.
Which brings me to “The Shape of Water.” The characters in this movie have real-world problems. Real Cold-War-1960’s-America problems. There is a cleaning woman who is mute; another who is black; and an aging gay man; and it is up to this band of misfits to save a strange species of fish/man/god from a Dr. Strangelove-military type who wants to dissect the creature.
Add a team of Soviet spies — the old-fashioned kind who shoot bullets and don’t fool around. Spills and chills ensue. And, without giving too much away, there is even some hope that love might eventually conquer all.
One thing I know: when I come out of a movie feeling good about life, that movie is a winner.
That’s why my money is on “The Shape of Water.”
