February Logged, Delayed By The Oscars

better to just get it all out now

Perhaps the slowest, and therefore most agonizing, kind of awards season is when a generationally great movie is the steamroller that it deserves to be. But then I watched Oppenheimer for a fifth time on the Saturday night before the Oscars, when it had been such a lock to win the biggest awards that the formality of it actually happening was a bore even to its devoted fans (“Is this what it’s like when your team wins the Super Bowl?” I saw in one post — it is not like that. A Super Bowl championship is magnitudes greater).

Here’s the thing about Oppenheimer: it is a World War II epic, Oscar bait if there ever was one. But it begins and ends fixed on Cillian Murphy’s face, and has little do to with war, at least specifically. The primary questions that bookend Oppenheimer are significantly more existential, solemn but solitary. Cillian Murphy stares into small bodies of water on either end, and yet the question is not merely what are we doing going to war, but what have we done to this place that we live on for such finite time? What will we do? It’s Christopher Nolan’s Gone Girl: begging for answers to the foundational tenets of our lives, why we enter the contracts and conflicts that most of humanity either takes for granted or is resigned to getting used to.

I haven’t yet cried at any point of Oppenheimer, but I feel like I might tear up any time I think of Ludwig Goransson’s music that plays over the credits. It’s mournful but also powered by that signature electricity that keeps everyone coming back to Christopher Nolan. A steamroller is boring, but in environments like the Oscars…sometimes the boring choice is the right one. This is true of Everything Everywhere etc. last year as well, though I thought that one had a lot more energy behind it and dominated at the finish line, but not necessarily in the beginning or middle of the race.

Cillian Cummerbund!

some other Oscars notes:

• The Dua Lipa song is the best thing about Barbie (mostly because it’s the centerpiece of the best part of that movie), but I’m Just Ken rocked the Oscars. Gosling looked and sounded amazing. Thrilled that Greta and Margot got to be a part of that, as did Emma Stone, who rules.

• I’m bummed that Lily Gladstone didn’t get her moment, because I love her work with Kelly Reichardt and on Reservation Dogs. But Emma Stone always seems to have a grasp of the moment and she seemed earnestly bummed to be up on that stage instead of Lily Gladstone while also being stunned in the moment by the fact that she is officially The Chosen One in Hollywood. And though I liked Poor Things a lot, half of her second Oscar belongs to her work on The Curse. (note to future self: don’t make acting picks until after Costume Design and Hair & Makeup have been announced)

• My Billie Eilish take is that she’s an extremely talented singer who makes the best lo-fi music on the planet.

• Jennifer Lame looked terrific, just like her editing work on Oppenheimer.

• The most I’ve ever seen of John Mulaney is on The Bear but the Field of Dreams bit had me rolling so hard I think I have to seek out his standup.

• What were Octavia Spencer and Melissa McCarthy doing?

• Unsure if Al Pacino is well.

• You’re damn right the Oscars still has a smoking area.

  

  from left: Sophie Mas (Natalie Portman’s producing partner), Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons, Swann Arlaud (from Anatomy of a Fall), and Justine Triet. 10/10

  okay so February and some of March logged:

CRIMSON TIDE: I watched this for the first time on a Saturday night over a month ago and was second-screening and it didn’t matter one bit— five stars. Could watch Denzel and Hackman scream at each other — “We’re all very well aware of what our orders are, and what those orders mean. They come down from our commander-in-chief; they contain no ambiguity. Mr. Hunter. I’ve made the decision. I’m the captain of this boat. NOW SHUT THE FUCK UP!” —while Viggo smokes in the background or offscreen every day.

SEA OF LOVE: I was wide awake after watching Crimson Tide so I put this on afterwards. Sometimes all a boy needs is some asshole cops (Pacino, John Goodman, Richard Jenkins playing a hall of fame cuck) and a beautiful woman to bewilder those idiots, and rightfully so. Sam Jackson cameos don’t hurt either. Shoutout to Richard Price for the screenplay.

SHARP STICK: I am not a Lena Dunham fan per se but my contrarian ways leave me feeling inclined to at least watch her work, and Sharp Stick doesn’t disappoint. Heard it brought up a lot in comparison to Poor Things. Seems a tad reductive to me, though it’s interesting how Dunham operates the movie in a way less showy but still surreal register. Bernthal goated, as always, but Kristine Froseth is a legitimate revelation in both this and How To Blow Up a Pipeline.

THE SWEET EAST: Contender for most laugh lines this decade, and several of them had me laughing before they were even done being spoken. Also has one of the great jump scares of the last few years. Seek this out!! Talia Ryder is a STAR!!!!

A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH: Has a claim to being the best movie I have ever watched. Funny that David Niven was mentioned at the Oscars in conjunction with the John Cena streaker bit, but seriously he is absolutely amazing in this movie. Only the Archers could have come up with a way to use both Technicolor and B&W to an effect like this in 1945.

DRUGSTORE COWBOY: Feels like a huge influence on Showing Up, one of my favorite movies of the year.

PERFECT DAYS: I will not be able to say anything about this movie that matches the poignancy and emotional accuracy that Michael Mann Facts unlocked here

HOUSEHOLD SAINTS: True “novel as film” scenario here, which makes sense considering Nancy Savoca is adapting Francine Prose’s novel of the same name. Kind of a gold rush of character actors here: Vincent D’Onofrio, Victor Argo, Tracey Ullman, Lili Taylor, Michael Imperioli, and more. A spiritual predecessor to The Sopranos, in some ways, Household Saints is the story of a family of Italian-Americans oscillating between generations in their relationship to God and what that relationship looks like through each character’s eyes. Incredible performance of empathy and self-confidence from a young Lili Taylor, who comes into this movie’s second hour (about when my edible hit) and owns it to the very end. I saw it at the SIFF Film Center in Seattle Center, cool to see a movie that had been considered lost for several decades be restored and look like it was shot yesterday.

PHILADELPHIA: Jonathan Demme is one of my north stars and it’s fucking dope as hell that he took the Silence of the Lambs clout to make this. Feels very novelesque like Household Saints, and some people seem to think Philadelphia hasn’t aged well because it’s so obvious that Hanks’s character was discriminated against. It is obvious, but the element of the movie that makes it so compelling is that we never see Beckett’s AIDS diagnosis OR the events that actually led to him being fired. The job of the entire movie, before and after, is to convey the information that we see spread throughout the rest of it. Denzel’s determination is unparalleled, one of the very best performances of his entire career — and also probably the last time he could plausibly be a stealthy lead in a movie in which someone else gets top billing. Another masterpiece of empathy from the master himself.

STEP BROTHERS: Watched it for the first time! Made me laugh a lot! Wish movies like this still got made!

I’M NOT THERE: I probably shouldn’t be logging this on here because it left me kind of speechless by the end. Blanchett is amazing, but man, is this the last great Richard Gere? Whatever happened to the kid playing Woody Guthrie? Has Michelle Williams given another performance even remotely similar to this? (I pray it’s not My Week With Marilyn.) Is it possible this is Todd Haynes’s opus? I miss Heath Ledger so much.

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I’ve really not been reading or writing much at all, which is very frustrating. The Rehearsal is spellbinding, I feel bad it’s taking me so long to get through it. Guess that’s the nature of working an hourly. We’ll get there. I bought Leslie Jamison’s memoir, Splinters, at a Q&A event and she was very kind at the signing — it’s always fun to talk to authors who I find not just inspiring in their work but who make me want to straight-up write more.

I’ve been enjoying Full Swing season 2 on Netflix — the players seem more used to it and it appears they got some people with golfing knowledge to work on the show this season, which was a glaring lack for the first go-around. Good ratio of heartfelt storylines and reality TV slop with professional golfers acting normally around their coworkers and pulling pranks on one another.