At the Cinema - February 2019 (and Oscar)

BlackkKlansman – 10

Director Spike Lee’s career is sprinkled with overlooked high-quality movies, but BlackkKlansman netted him his first Best Picture and Best Director nominations.  He deserves them.  This is his epic and it encapsulates all the racial issues he has wrestled with in his films. 

This is the story of Ron Stallworth, played by John David Washington, a rookie Colorado Springs state trooper.  He’s black, but on the phone he is able to fool the local KKK president into believing he’s white when he answers a membership recruitment ad.  The police put together an infiltration plan in which another cop, Flip (Adam Driver), will assume the face to face part of the undercover operation.  Flip has to become Ron.

Spike Lee’s got a couple of unique tools.  He recreates the early 70’s as authentically as he did the late 70's in Summer of Sam.  In that film he has Myra Sorvino disco dancing, and it is still the best depiction of that dancing ever put into a movie.  Here, with the hair styles, the dress, and particularly the joyous music, he just captures it.  There’s another great dance scene, this one to “It’s Too Late to Turn Back Now.”  Unfortunately, he also captures the language, and it is tough to stomach at times. 

His other great tool is humor.  This has that real-life humor we all live with every day, not rom-com punch lines.  Fortunately, it breaks the considerable tension.  The only drawback to the film, and it's a minor one, is that some scenes go on too long, just like most movies do.

As it turns out, this chapter of the KKK has some dastardly action planned when the Grand Wizard David Duke (Topher Grace) comes to town and Ron and Flip are right in the middle of it.  Spike Lee never uses a scalpel when a hammer will do, and he saves the biggest clobbering for the final five minutes when he uses live footage to make sure you haven’t missed his point. 

BlackkKlansman is terrific filmmaking and is the last of the Best Picture Oscar nominees for me to see.  Yep, this year I’ve seen them all.  While Alfonso Cuaron is a Hollywood darling, I have a sneaking suspicion that Spike Lee may score an upset win as Best Director, and if so, watch out for that acceptance speech.

Which brings me to my Oscar predictions for the ceremony tonight:

The first column is my pecking order of best to worse among the nominees for Best Picture.

                               

Green Book

BlackkKlansman

Black Panther

Bohemian Rhapsody

A Star is Born

Roma

Vice

The Favourite

Here’s my prediction of the likelihood of a Best Picture Win, in order.

Roma

Green Book

Black Panther

A Star is Born

Vice

The Favourite

BlackkKlansman

Bohemian Rhapsody

In other words, I have no idea.  I give them all a chance, with the momentum growing for Green Book and Black Panther.  When you have this many nominees, who the hell knows?  But, I will reiterate that Mission Impossible:  Fallout got robbed. 

Here’s the rest of the majors.

Best Director

Should Win:  Spike Lee

Will Win:  Alfonso Cuaron

Best Actor

Should Win:  Rami Malek

Will Win:  Rami Malek

Best Actress:

Should Win:  Olivia Coleman 

Will Win:  Glenn Close in The Wife, which I haven’t seen

Best Supporting Actor:

Should Win:  Sam Elliott

Will Win:  Mahershala Ali

Best Supporting Actress:

Should Win:  Amy Adams

Will Win:  Regina King

Other predictions:

Best Documentary:  RBG

Best Song:  Shallow

Technical Awards:  Black Panther

My Snubs:  of Course Mission Impossible, and A Quiet Place:  Best Picture, Emily Blunt for Best Actress, John Krasinski for Best Director.

The Commuter – 4

One last 2018 movie, which deserves to be forgotten as quickly as 2018 is The Commuter.  I’m sure there has been a more preposterous movie, and maybe even a more preposterous Liam Neeson movie, but I doubt it.  Ridiculous from beginning to the end, which can’t come soon enough once he gets on a train.

Scanning the Satellite

True Detective – 10

The mini-series format that now permeates TV, perfect for streaming, binging, and chillin’, has produced some fantastic television.  HBO has been the pioneer, but Netflix is snapping at their heels.  I could name 10 great ones off the top of my head.  The first great one was The Wire.  Then came The Sopranos, Game of Thrones, Treme, and True Detective.  How about Fargo, Homeland, Billions, The Sinner?  These are great, and I’m only skimming the surface.

And yet….

This, the third season of True Detective, may be the best single season of any of them.  What makes this one so good?  A few key things, like writing and acting.  We have gotten used to seeing back and forth chronology in movies, but this one examines this mystery in three tiers spanning 45 years.  It haunts the two detectives, played by Mahershala Ali and Stephen Dorff, in two of the greatest performances you will ever see.  It’s Ali’s physical appearance that gives away the time period as he tries to solve a murder/missing person crime.  Yet, it’s the third tier, as an elderly Wayne Hays (Ali) battles his fading memory and the unresolved mystery that sets this production apart.  It’s heartbreaking and amazing.  Don’t miss this.

Counterpart – 10

Starz greenlighted two seasons of this wild series and it's already over.  For Science Fiction enthusiasts, this was a dream come true.  There are basically two earths, parallel universes, with a pathway in between.  It appears that one side may have tried to kill the other side with a virus, so spys go back and forth, sometimes coming face to face with their “other” from the other side.  Chief among them is Howard Silk, played by JK Simmons.  The Silk’s don’t have a lot in common, as their lives have differed radically, and they’re not the only ones.  Great story, great television.

                     

The Many Lives of Nick Buoniconti – 10

This HBO sports documentary is something special.  What an interesting life.  Today the former all-pro linebacker of the Miami Dolphins suffers from Alzheimers’ but there is so much to cover, such as his son’s Nick’s paralysis, and his term as President of a smokeless tobacco company.  The ups and downs have been very high and very low and it makes for great television.  Another terrific documentary.