Mark Wahlberg and Christian Bale in The Fighter
Way to go, Jerell. It’s Oscar season, and you couldn’t even get through all the Best Picture nominees. It’s not your fault – the category in question is the only one with ten nominees, and they’re a tough batch to get through. I’ve been left with those films still lingering in theaters or pre-DVD limbo: The Fighter, Black Swan, True Grit and The King’s Speech. Each is also nominated for Best Director, which means that all of them have pretty equal chances at winning Best Picture.
Along with The Social Network, The King’s Speech is the frontrunner of the night. Along with Best Picture, the film is nominated for another eleven awards, including Best Original Screenplay and every acting nomination except Best Actress.
Colin Firth is going to win Best Actor. He was nominated last year for A Single Man and it’s a travesty he didn’t win. This year, he’s against last year’s winner Jeff Bridges, but this time it’s his. He turns awkwardness into heartbreak as a stuttering king reluctantly forced into WWII. Geoffrey Rush, as Firth’s speech therapist, is delightful, while Helena Bonham Carter, playing the Queen Mum, is underused, although it’s nice to see her as something other than Bellatrix Lestrange or a Tim Burton standby. Director Tom Hooper chooses unusual, almost distracting camera positions, and the two girls playing the princesses are creepily identical, like the twins from The Shining.
I’ll be satisfied if The King’s Speech wins the top honor this Sunday; however, this is the kind of movie which often wins at the Oscars. It would be nice to see something youthful and equally as well-made, like The Social Network, win, although if it doesn’t, I won’t be upset.
I’m no sports movie fan, but The Fighter hit a chord with me. This mostly had to do with the movie’s Massachusetts setting and the fact that I felt like I knew these characters. Mark Wahlberg, unfortunately missing an acting nom, has the hardest job playing real-life boxer Mickey Ward: he has to play the straight man opposite absolute lunatics. Melissa Leo is horrifyingly real as Ward’s manager-mom, her blond hair teased out and her skin orange and leathery. She’s the best bet for winning Best Supporting Actress. If I had my way, the award would go to Jacki Weaver’s similarly scary role in the crime drama Animal Kingdom, but Leo has more recognition so far. Christian Bale is super-skinny (a feat not unfamiliar to the actor, who memorably lost sixty-two pounds for 2004’s The Machinist) and wacked out as Ward’s brother Dicky, a former boxing star and current crack addict. Like Leo, he’s a sure thing for Best Supporting Actor. As far as Best Picture, the film is great but so is the competition. In another year, The Fighter would have swept the awards. Director David O. Russell’s ingenious use of 1990s-era HBO sports cameras to film the fight scenes is pitch perfect, and Wahlberg’s dedication to the film, which he worked to get made for years, cannot be ignored.
Black Swan is perhaps the weakest movie on the list, but that doesn’t make it the least enjoyable. In fact, I’m always entertained by movies where the main character (in this case, Natalie Portman’s ballerina Nina) is going insane, because it gives the director so much room to play around. In Black Swan, Nina sees feathers growing out of her back, her mother’s paintings moving, and a hangnail turning into something much more grotesque; it’s constantly up to the audience to decide what’s real and what’s Nina’s slowly deteriorating imagination. Portman is excellent, although I do think it’s her character, as well as Mila Kunis’s rival character Lily, who causes most of the film’s problems. Nina is fragile, Lily is adventurous; Nina is virginal, Lily exudes sex; Nina orders a salad, Lily orders a hamburger. Their dichotomy is so obvious that one has to wonder if director Darren Aronofsky is treating his audience like children. Annette Bening probably deserves the Best Actress award a little more – not because she’s been nominated four times, but because her work in The Kids Are Alright is far more subtle and impressive. However, the Academy loves actors who sacrifice for their art; Portman, like Bale, emaciated herself to play Nina, as well as training like a real ballerina for months, and apparently she nearly drove herself insane with the subject matter.
Now, some people are going to be mad at me here: True Grit was my least favorite Best Picture nominee. There, I’ve said it. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad movie. It’s my personal opinion, and I do recommend it to anyone who loves Westerns, the Coen brothers and Jeff Bridges.
To be honest, I probably had the most difficulty with Bridges. I couldn’t watch the movie without thinking, “Oh, that’s Jeff Bridges on that horse being a crazy drunk badass.” It’s because of this reason that I think Matt Damon should have gotten more recognition; he completely disappeared into his role, making me forget that he was even in the movie (in a good way), and he’s not even nominated. Hailee Steinfeld is good, although I didn’t find her character or her dialogue all that believable. She’s not going to win for her debut, but she will probably be in a lot more movies after this. As for the picture itself, the ending is anticlimactic and the pace is slow. I don’t see it winning anything except perhaps Best Cinematography for Coen brothers staple Roger Deakins, who has been nominated for such films as The Shawshank Redemption and No Country For Old Men but has never won.
That’s my two cents. Keep your eyes peeled for Jerell’s live reactions to the awards on Twitter this Sunday night. •
