Here are some of my thoughts on the recently announced Academy Award nominees for Best Picture:
American Hustle
Along with The Wolf Of Wall Street and maybe Her, this is one of the most enjoyable films nominated for Best Picture. Set during the 1970s, the film goes beyond the awful period hairstyles to become something much smarter and self-aware (the first scene involves Christian Bale's character glueing on his wig). The playful plot is good, but the real draw here is the performances. Bale is good, Bradley Cooper even better, but the film belongs to the women; Amy Adams shines as she reigns superior over the two male leads, and Jennifer Lawrence steals every scene she's in as Bale's disastrously insensitive wife. However, I felt the film dragged to much at times - the screwball nature of the heist demands a quicker pace, although I appreciated the extended focus on character. Perhaps undeserving of its 10 nominations, and unlikely to win Best Picture, this is nevertheless a solid and recommendable film, if not quite a masterpiece.
Captain Phillips
Out of all the people to dramatise the story of the 2009 hijacking of the Maersk Alabama by Somali pirates, Paul Greengrass was probably the best man for the job. Much like United 93, Captain Phillips is a documentary-like approach to a true story, which goes to great efforts not to distort facts for the purpose of creating Hollywood heroes and villains. The preparation of Phillips (Tom Hanks) and his crew is contrasted with the recruitment of the Somalian pirates - similarities between both sets of men can be found which neither would be willing to admit. Yet the undertones of globalisation are simply one layer of a complex, intelligent story, in what I would consider one of the best films in Greengrass' career. It's a shame the director hasn't received a nod, and even more appalling is the omission of Tom Hanks in the Best Actor nominations - without spoiling anything, his performance in the final 10 minutes of the film is some of the finest acting I've seen all year. Although it was nice to see the excellent Barkhad Abdi nominated for his role as the pirate chief.
Gravity
Gravity is the best film I saw in 2013. It's become a cliché to say such a thing by this point, but it doesn't make it any less true. The film was impressive not only for its technical accomplishments - and these cannot be understated, the special effects on display here are simultaneously awe-inspiring and terrifying, with the best use of 3D to date - but also for weaving in an exciting and strangely moving story about human survival. This is in part due to a career-best performance from Sandra Bullock, who pleasantly surprised me in her ability to completely carry a film by herself (it's hardly a spoiler to say that George Clooney doesn't stick around for long). She excels as the graceful humanity of the piece, the anchor the audience desperately needs to make sense of Alfonso Cuaron's uncompromising vision - the two talents complement one another perfectly. Without her I would not have been moved to tears by the end, although this can be attributed to sheer emotional exhaustion (never has a cup of tea been more welcome). It's certainly the film which deserves to win Best Picture, but, without wanting to sound too cynical, this seems unlikely - much like The Social Network and Avatar which came before it, the award will probably go to a more traditional Oscar-worthy film like 12 Years A Slave. Of course, one can always hope.
The Wolf of Wall Street
Martin Scorsese continues the loosely-connected series of films he began in 1990 with Goodfellas and continued in 1995 with Casino with The Wolf of Wall Street, the adaptation of controversial Wall Street broker Jordan Belfort's autobiography of the same name. All three films essentially follow the same story structure; a naive young man gets drawn into a criminal life of wealth and luxury, often represented by the consumption of drugs and incitement of violence, before everything comes crashing down, and he has to reluctantly give up everything and turn his friends over to the law. Yet while you could accuse Scorsese of sticking to familiar territory, I don't think we've ever seen this story told with such confidence and glorious bad taste. I went in to this film with an open mind and was still floored by the places this Hollywood picture dared to go - within the first ten minutes or so we've seen Belfort receiving oral sex in his Ferrari and blowing cocaine into a prostitute's anus, and during a sequence where Belfort gets high on pills (called "Quaaludes") he describes how his body has entered the "cerebral palsy stage". It's easily the most riotously funny film of Scorsese's career, complete with solid performances from Leonardo DiCaprio and, perhaps more surprisingly, Jonah Hill as his partner-in-crime. It's received some accusations of glorifying Belfort's real-life crimes, most notably from the daughter of a Stratton Oakmont employee who accused the film of making celebrities out of fundamentally bad people, but I don't think this is fair. DiCaprio's character receives little reprehension for his crimes because that's what really happened - the Wall Street brokers did get away with it, leaving destruction in their wake, and I saw the film as a fierce indictment of that kind of lifestyle. However, I did feel that the film was too long (at a very indulgent 179 minutes), and that the last forty minutes or so required some tightening up. And while this didn't particularly bother me, some people have a problem with the film's choice of style over substance - we never quite get under the skin of these characters like we did in Scorsese's previous efforts. It's still a very good film, one which likely won't win a single Oscar for being "too edgy" but makes a splash nevertheless.
