Or How to Maintain One’s Self Respect When Things Start to Get Ugly…
The New York Film Festival opens next weekend, where Gone Girl, Inherent Vice and Birdman will be seen by regular festival-goers and critics. The first word on Gone Girl won’t be coming out of the NYFF, however, as it had with Social Network, Life of Pi and Hugo. The first word has come from critics already.
But let’s assume all three of these films are in the race from here on out. Where does the race go from here?
We are in the critics phase of the race, that is to say, films are offered up for the critics to review before they hit theaters. I have written a much longer piece about the changing face of film criticism which will be posted later but for our purposes now, critics do matter. A universal pan of a film can make the difference between Oscar nominations and better box office for films that don’t have a built-in opening weekend in their near future (like Interstellar, for instance).
The reason for this? Perception. The Oscar race is all about the right now. Time sorts out the rest. The critics set the tone and most of the time the industry follows suit. Not always, of course. Sometimes films can fly right on by the critics and hit with both audiences (The Blind Side, The Help) and industry voters (Extremely Loud, Incredibly Close). A good awards strategist will know if they have that kind of movie and they will invite high-powered celebrities to parties and have screenings for voters. The critics or bloggers will have virtually no impact on whether the film will succeed or fail.
After the critics review the films, they next conduct their own awards. First out of the gate are the New York Film Critics. They announce their winners with a live vote in early December, like December 4th. I don’t believe they have announced their date for this year. Right after they announce, the National Board of Review. Here it how our calendar looks about now.
In bold, the most influential.
Early December:
New York Film Critics
National Board of Review
December 1 – 15
Top ten reviews from TIME, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly
A hundred million top ten reviews come in
Movie City News charts those top tens
Washington DC Area Film Critics Announce first week of December
New York Film Critics Online Announce
Boston Film Critics
Los Angeles Film Critics
Online Film Critics
St. Louis
Detroit
AFI announces Top Ten American films of 2014
Screen Actors Guild nominations (12/10/14)
Golden Globe nominations (12/11/14)
Chicago Film Critics nominations
NY Times top ten lists
San Francisco Film Critics
December 16 – 31
Critics Choice nominations
London Film Critics
Southeastern Film Critics
December 29, 2014
Oscar nomination voting begins
January, 2015
Producers Guild nominations (ten Best Picture contenders) January 5, 2015
Oscar voting ends – January 8, 2015
Writers Guild nominations (Five Original, Five Adapted)
DGA deadline to vote January 12, 2015
DGA nominations (Five contenders) January 13, 2015
Oscar Nominations announced January 15, 2015
PGA Awards January 24, 2015
BAFTA nominations
Scripter nominations
Ace Eddie Award nominations
February 2015
DGA final ballot deadline – February 6, 2015
Oscar final voting begins – February 6, 2015
DGA awards – February 7, 2015
Oscar final voting ends – February 17, 2015
The Oscars February 22, 2015
Though we’re not yet into November, things are about to get very heated. The reason for this are all the movies that have not been seen that are still coming that could shake up the race significantly, and those are, for starters:
Interstellar
American Sniper
Unbroken
Fury
A Most Violent Year
Into the Woods
Selma
Between now and early December, or right on top of it, critics and bloggers will be invited to see these films long before the public gets the chance. They have to start screening them for guild voters, specifically the PGA, the DGA and SAG. Better if they can screen them for the New York Film Critics if possible, and the LA Film critics. With all of those people getting to see films no one else has seen, word starts to get out about whether they are good or not.
Hopefully that word is confined to whether it’s good or not as opposed to whether it’s an Oscar “contender” or not. Theoretically, good movies SHOULD be Oscar contenders. The better they are, the better their chances. Good reviews plus that elusive “buzz” can make the difference, but nobody knows anything until the films are put to the bigger voting bodies.
With Gravity, 12 Years a Slave and American Hustle dominating the critics awards last year, the latest entry, American Hustle, got hit with some last-minute bad buzz as more people saw it. Gravity and 12 Years had the advantage of already running the gauntlet early in Venice and Telluride, and then Toronto, before hitting the critics awards. American Hustle did not have that advantage, though its late entry probably helped it make a lot more money cashing in on awards buzz.
The New York Film critics surprised everyone when they picked American Hustle out of the gate and launched it headlong into the Oscar race — though, in fairness, Oscar bloggers had already been holding its place in line. It didn’t just come out of nowhere. No film really comes out of nowhere anymore. People always see it coming and project upon it the dreams of a hundred Oscar-watchers.
The Los Angeles Film Critics didn’t want to copy New York and they certainly didn’t want to pick the Best Picture frontrunner, 12 Years a Slave. They split their vote between Her and Gravity. The National Board of Review also picked Her.
The guilds followed in step with what the critics were doing, with Alfonso Cuaron dominating all of the awards for Best Director. 12 Years a Slave, heading into the race, was not the expected winner. The best in the business Steve Pond, Pete Hammond, Kris Tapley, Greg Ellwood all had Gravity to win Best Picture. But we holdouts knew, if given the choice, that the Academy would do the right thing and make history. Sure, they could have made history with Gravity, too, not just with Cuaron as the first Mexican director to win but to have a 3D space movie with only two actors win would have been unheard of.
I was standing in the press tent at the Spirit Awards explaining my theory to Steve Pond as to why I thought 12 Years was going to win. It was the In the Heat of the Night versus The Graduate theory. The industry and critics groups had mostly agreed upon a split — Mike Nichols would win Director and In the Heat of the Night would win Best Picture. It was such a solid comparison I knew it could not loose. But Steve Pond, like the rest of my colleagues, thought: she’s a crazy bitch. She wanted 12 Years a Slave to win too much so that it clouded her judgment. Well, how do you like me now?
No, no, only kidding. Choosing Gravity was the logical choice (Tapley still owes me $20). It was an exciting year to watch because there wasn’t one winner. There were many. It was a vibrant, alive Oscar race, the kind that don’t come around very often. That makes heading into this dreaded year all the more exciting. When you come off a good year, hope springs eternal.
Already, 2014 is shaping up to be an embarrassment of riches in the Best Picture category. Oscar season will likely ruin much of this afterglow because the truth is, films are art. And art doesn’t belong in a competition that pits teams against each other and requires campaigns. In the end it comes down to a consensus vote, what most people agree is the best of the year.
The numbers make the difference. The critics group with the largest voting body are the Critics Choice, with over 200 members. Compare that to:
PGA – 4,500
DGA – 14,500
SAG – 100,000
Oscar – 6,000
Because they vote at roughly the same time, you won’t find much variety in these larger consensus votes. But you will find your Oscar winner.
![2025 Oscars: Can a Late-Breaker Still Win Best Picture? [POLL]](https://www.awardsdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/gladiator-350x250.jpg)
It was such a solid comparison I knew it could not loose. But Steve Pond, like the rest of my colleagues, thought: she’s a crazy bitch. She wanted 12 Years a Slave to win too much so that it clouded her judgment.
Well sure, 12 Years a Slave won, but I’d argue that it was the logical choice the whole season through, perhaps save a week or so when I think American Hustle appeared to be the favourite. I never believed in Gravity and I don’t think there was ever a compelling reason to expect it to beat 12 Years. The thing is, the whole In the Heat of the Night comparison is baloney. Different eras, different Academies, different races, different fucking films in the first place. They can’t be compared.
Inception had a pretty huge ensemble cast of stars… but yeah, that was 4 years ago. Your progression argument makes sense, for sure, it’s a very good point, and it’s also true that the movies in question have been getting more substantial with each passing year, Life of Pi and Gravity being rather serious stuff; in Hugo the stakes aren’t too high, I would say, and Avatar is clearly all effects, at least as far as I’m concerned, no matter how much it tries to be meaningful. Even Inception, while totally fascinating and awesome (and my favorite movie in recent memory), might easily be perceived as just a sci-fi adventure, whereas Life of Pi and Gravity are visibly more serious, grave movies, effects notwithstanding. Let’s see if Interstellar lands on the serious side as well, like you anticipate. Like I said, I just think it’s too soon (and I do think Gravity not winning last year is – not definite, but somewhat – proof of that). But I hope I’m wrong! 🙂
I hear what you mean, Claudiu, but I somewhat disagree with the argument that The Academy isn’t ready to award a film like Interstellar Best Picture or that Gravity was the one to do it and didn’t so it won’t happen. My point in showing the noms/wins of the last 5 years is that I see a progression. When The Academy opened the field to potentially 10 films it meant they were opening themselves up to recognizing and potentially awarding films different than what they’ve been known to award. In the last 5 years we see them nominate these showy IMAX/3D films in more than just effects categories and we’ve seen them award them in those other categories more and more with every year. I predict that all culminates this year in Interstellar because Interstellar marries the effects trend with the character-driven story that so often resonated with The Academy in the past. Avatar, Hugo, Life of Pi and Gravity had small casts either in terms of actual characters or star power, and I think that’s why they couldn’t come up with a Picture win. Interstellar has EVERYTHING we’ve seen rewarded recently. It just has to succeed at what it’s promising and I think it’ll sweep in a major way.
Of course, I’m not saying Interstellar won’t get nominated for BP. Your arguments make perfect sense, it has a very good chance. But winning it is a different matter – other movies will surely have lots of nominations as well, so 10 is definitely not an unbeatable number. And, of course, if Gravity couldn’t break the rule that says space/sci-fi movies don’t win Best Picture, it’s hard to imagine Interstellar will, the very next year…
But, having seen none of the contenders up to this point (I don’t think The Fault in Our Stars really qualifies as a contender) – which I hope to rectify in the coming weeks -, “a l’aveugle”, and considering my pure love for pretty much every single Nolan movie I’ve ever seen, I’m definitely hoping you’re a visionary and are right about this one, and I’m wrong. Of course, that day will come – when a movie like this wins BP. Pretty much all rules are broken at some point, given enough time; but I don’t think it’s now, I think it’s too soon. Possibly much too soon. 3D hasn’t been around long enough either, the Academy probably isn’t completely comfortable with it just yet. And, of course, last year’s events back up my theory. 12 Years was a very, VERY vulnerable BP favorite, about as vulnerable as they get, and it still managed to beat the space movie…
Just a note for those dismissing Interstellar’s chances:
– since 2010, when The Academy reinstated the more-than-5 nominees for Best Picture, all 5 films that won Visual Effects were also Picture nominees (Avatar, Inception, Hugo, Life of Pi, Gravity) and of those 5 only 1 didn’t also get a Director nomination (Inception, which admittedly is a huge subtraction from my theory bc lol Nolan).
– since 2010 and only in 2010 was there a second Visual Effects nominee that was also a Picture nominee (District 9).
Now if we can run with the idea that Interstellar is the only Picture-contending film that could possibly show up in Visual Effects in 2015 then we might as well just assume that it will in fact contend for Picture. The only other possibility is that Birdman finds its way into Visual Effects, but then again there’s precedent that says they both could. Even so, the likelihood that Birdman BEATS Interstellar for the Visual Effects award seems low.
– Also since 2010, the Visual Effects winner has also been the Cinematography winner, even up against other Picture-nominated films as is typical in the Cinematography field.
– Also since 2010, the Visual Effects/Cinematography winner has, without fail, also been nominated in Production Design, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing and Score. Inception was the only one to not also be nominated for Film Editing, but the correlation between Director and Film Editing is one we’re all quite familiar with so that isn’t surprising.
That being said and still running with the “Interstellar as the Visual Effects film of 2015” idea then Interstellar already has 6 nominations secured. SIX! Correct me if I’m wrong, but no film, certainly not since 2010, has ever had six below-the-line nominations without a Best Picture nomination. Should it also pick up Film Editing, Director and Picture then it would have 9 nominations. With that many, I’d be surprised if it didn’t also get a Screenplay nom, 10. Maybe Jessica, Matthew or Anne gets nominated? That’s more than 10. At that point, it either performs like American Hustle or as the culmination of The Academy’s 5-year gradual acceptance of visual effects-heavy films:
2010 – Avatar, 9 noms/3 wins
2011 – Inception, 8 noms/4 wins
2012 – Hugo, 11 noms/5 wins
2013 – Life of Pi, 11 noms/4 wins (incl. Best Director)
2014 – Gravity, 10 noms/7 wins (incl. Best Director)
I’d lay my money down for Interstellar. But I’d use Monopoly money, haha!! 🙂
Not sure what you mean by “shocker,” Sasha, but to take your lead, you and I can table this discussion until Interstellar gets the 10 nominations I’m guessing it will and the Best Picture win over Boyhood and its 4 nominations/losses. And for the record, I’ve been anticipating big things for Interstellar since mid-summer. Based on the cast & crew and the trend of large-scale, visual effects-heavy films being more prominent at the Oscars, in addition to very real statistics about the correlation between the Visual Effects, Cinematography and Director categories as of late there’s just no way Interstellar isn’t going to perform really well.
“BUFORD T JUSTICE
SEPTEMBER 26, 2014
CLAUDIU….if you had to pick a winner right at this moment AND bet a large amount of money on it , what would it be ?”
Well, I don’t do (confident) early BP predictions, as you may have guessed – I’m “stats guy”, and there are no real stats this early. You know I’m all about the guilds… 🙂 But, of course, I can venture a guess. Just don’t expect it to be any good – I remember I thought “The Butler” was going to win last year, around this time… 😀 Although I did say 12 Years a Slave was the only other one that sounded like a potential winner; but that one’s just about my best early prediction ever. So I wouldn’t say I’m opening myself up for too much criticism later on, if my guess right now is wrong (which it almost certainly will be).
Anyway, right now, looking at the perceived major contenders (bear with me, I haven’t done this in my head yet – I’ll get to the “pick one” part eventually), Interstellar and Dawn are sci-fi/effects movies, I would imagine, so they’re out. Into the Woods is fantasy, so ditto. Unbroken looks baity (I could EASILY be wrong about that), and they don’t go for that sort of stuff anymore (12 Years a Slave, the actual movie, not what people thought it might be, was anything but bait – I guess The King’s Speech was, but it’s a rare example among recent winners). Fincher is, I think, perceived to be overdue (and probably is, too), and Affleck is obviously gold for the Academy, who might just want to “justify” their picking Argo for BP a little bit, so I think Gone Girl is looking strong (3 RT negative reviews right now, which is “meh”, percentage-wise, so that’s a minus, but not a big one). Boyhood – I don’t think they like Linklater’s style enough to give it BP, despite its strong RT score. Birdman looks much more up their alley – but a movie about actors/movies again? Like, 3 times in 5 years? Seems a bit too much. Plus, foreign director. Foxcatcher – doubt it, for many reasons. The Imitation Game I figured had a good shot, but now I’m thinking it’s a bit baity, and I’m looking at its RT, and it’s early days, but already 4 negative reviews… Same comment (second part) for The Theory of Everything – and others that I’m not even mentioning here. Mr. Turner has 0/23 negative reviews on RT, but it seems to me the title character is too controversial (see what happened to Inside Llewyn Davis). The Grand Budapest Hotel – no way, for many, many reasons.
So, OK, I guess right now for me the most likely right now is Gone Girl – followed by, I guess, The Imitation Game (so I’ll at least have one backup). Third is probably Birdman, but I don’t know… And I’m sure there’s loads of stuff I’m not taking into consideration – which is why, like I said, I don’t really do such early predictions. 🙂 These are guesses, at best.
Ryan – It’s good to be back! 🙂 Although I’m not technically completely back just yet – that should be around early December. Not much (major) data out there to analyze yet, and I haven’t seen much so far, either. But I might make some comments before that, from time to time. I definitely check out the site more often than I did during the summer, now that the race is shaping up a little bit…
If I had to pick a Best Picture winner today and bet a lot of money on it I’d put everything I have on Interstellar.
Shocker.
If I had to pick a Best Picture winner today and bet a lot of money on it I’d put everything I have on Interstellar. It’s going to have the most nominations of any film (10+) and statistically those films are always major contenders. Given the growing interest in visual grandeur over the last 5 years (starting with Avatar and coming to Gravity last year) I’m expecting The Academy to finally come together for both Interstellar and Nolan. Unless, of course, Interstellar isn’t the culmination but rather just another step and next year the Oscar goes to Everest 😛
.if you had to pick a winner right at this moment AND bet a large amount of money on it , what would it be ?
I like this question and I hate this question, but love/hate, I’m interested to the answer anyway.
Claudiu Dobre, buford t justice. feels like old times! Welcome back.
I’d like to hear an answer from everyone, not just from Claudiu. Let’s hear it. Lay your best card on the table. We’ll have this page to return to months from now.
====
And then, hey, here’s an idea, maybe we can get back on topic and talk some more about this review? I’ll say that I’m glad to have a discussion that revolves around the psyche of Amy Dunne. I get the sense that Sasha has found a very useful hook to probe the story in ways that not a lot of other critics will bother to explore. Not that I’ll ever read what Armond White has to say because I have no patience with his brand of crazy, but I doubt someone White will spend much time delving into the mind of the modern woman.
Eventually, long after I see Gone Girl for myself, I’ll get around to reading what other critics are saying. For now, as much as I abhor the hinky math machinery of metacritic, that site does serve to give me a bunch of capsulized glimpses into which way the critic winds are blowing. Just a sentence or two is all I care to read from anyone right now, and the minions at metacritic at least know how to pull a good pull quote. The previews lines are reliably representative.
Interesting, it’s been noted that a couple of other preeminent female critics, Dargis and Zacharek, appear to have reviewed the movie most sternly. (so far.)
I’m actually enormously relieved to see that there’s not a Girls Team and a Boys Team on metacritic. So it’s not at all surprising that girl critics are grumbling about a movie written by girl with a central girl character. Why not? Boy critics come down hard on boy movies every week. Although the Boy Movie of the Year — maybe the Boy Movie of All Time — has been lucky. So far. We’ll see. We’ll see how firmly that favoritism holds when the critics groups start handing out plaques.
Back to the grumblers though, funny that so many of the review excerpts all talk about whether Gone Girl is “fun” or “funny” enough, or not.
Sasha touches on funny in her own review, in the context of the famous “Cool Girl” sequence from Flynn’s novel (which is itself tons of fun):
Worth noting that most everyone who’s reviewing Gone Girl talks about it being fun or funny. Even the critics who had other reservations find it fun and funny. Must mean Morgenstern and Zacharek don’t have the right sense of humor or maybe their sense of what’s fun needs adjustment. They’ll both need to loosen up if they want to be seen as “Cool Girls.”
I know Sasha sees the fun in it because we’ve been talking about the book off and on for nearly a year.
The book. That’s something else I wonder about. We talk about adaptations of world-wide bestsellers in terms of the built-in audience that wildly popular books guarantee. But I’m always happily surprised to see so many people psyched for a movie who haven’t read the book, people who will go into the movie cold, not knowing what to expect beyond the bare bones.
If we’re expecting (as we do) that Gone Girl will earn $100-150 million domestic (as it will) then the 2 million Americans who bought the novel are fraction of the movie audience. Of course there’s a lot of value to be derived from discussing the movie in relation to the novel, but in the big picture, the movie will become the definitive version of the story, the only version that upwards of 70 million people around the world will ever know. That’s obvious. Worth remembering though.
CLAUDIU….if you had to pick a winner right at this moment AND bet a large amount of money on it , what would it be ?
You Oscar holdouts knew that 12 Years was going to win? If I recall, there was a lot of griping on this site and others that Gravity had gained momentum and 12 Years wasn’t going to win because the Academy voters are older, white male, blah blah blah. Just sayin’
1. Her
2. 12 Years A Slave
3. The Wolf Of Wall Street
4. American Hustle
5. Gravity
6. The Act Of Killing
7. Blue Jasmine
8. Before Midnight
9. The World’s End
10. Fruitvale Station
Oh, and Sammy: BOYHOOD is definitely on the level of those 2007 masterpieces.
Since we are all sharing our top 10…
1. Her
2. Before Midnight
3. 12 Years a Slave
4. Gravity
5. Blue Is the Warmest Color
6. Stories We Tell
7. Stranger by the Lake
8. Inside Llewyn Davis
9. Frances Ha
10. Upstream Color
Taken at an absolute surface level, and away from the Awards noise ….. I quite enjoyed it this second time. I still wouldn’t have nommed it for anything but Costumes. But I enjoyed it more.
That’s good to hear. I always assume that Oscar season ruins movies for people but once that pressure is off it seems like they can be enjoyed again. I think with American Hustle a lot of people did enjoy it. But the importance of winning awards …
Your theory that 12 Years wasn’t the favorite among pundits.
“Choosing Gravity was the logical choice”
We’re still on this, Sasha? 🙂 I hate to sound like a broken record, so I won’t go into all the stats I kept hitting people on the head with last year, and which had 12 Years as the undoubted, though not big, favorite. I’ll just add another piece of information – I did a little analysis of all the lists of Oscar predictions you have (or had, don’t know if they’re still there) on your site for previous years, and I came up with a top 6 best predictors, based on their success rate in all categories over the years (and giving certain categories more weight than others – as, obviously, predicting the shorts or technical awards isn’t as easy, due to fewer stats and generally less info being available for those, therefore, mistakes made there are much more understandable) – they were: Paul Sheehan, Tom O’Neil, Nathaniel Rogers, Brad Brevet, Kris Tapley, Dave Karger (I also added a seventh predictor – AD’s Most Likely, which also seems to have done very well). Well, out of the six, four had 12 Years a Slave to win, and only Sheehan and Tapley went with Gravity. So I’m not sure your theory above holds up… 🙂
As for my top 10 of 2013 – I haven’t rewatched much. I love last year’s movies so much that I’m actually putting off rewatching them for special occasions… 🙂 So my list is, I expect, much the same as it was around the time of the Oscars:
1. 12 Years a Slave
2. Dirty Wars
3. Frozen (I think I had this under TWOWS before)
4. The Wolf of Wall Street
5. The Great Gatsby
6. August: Osage County
7. Saving Mr. Banks
8. Philomena
9. Before Midnight
10. Gravity (which keeps growing on me, so it might climb further still in the future)
I see what you mean, Steve, when it comes to McQueen. After hearing so much about 12YAS I was a bit stunned to discover what a relatively straightforward film it was (when I finally got the opportunity to see it in January), but I don’t think it applies to Gravity. I don’t see how that movie is more conventional than his earlier films. Yes, he could have made an even more challenging movie if he had cut out all the Clooney banter and instead insisted on silence, and yes, the backstory with Stone losing a daughter is unnecessary, but a conventional movie would have chosen a completely different approach. We would have seen Stone back on Earth making preparations before lift off, we would have seen her reunited with her loved ones etc. By focusing solely on Stone’s own journey and nothing else (plus the way the movie plunges us into the action, in medias res), I think Cuaron demonstrates his chops as a pleasingly unconventional filmmaker.
“Conventional is not the first word I would use about Gravity.”
Actually, I would call both Gravity and 12 Years “conventional” when compared to both directors’ previous work. They are both relatively simple, straight-forward, unambiguous narratives elevated considerably by their great directors’ style and, in the case of Cuaron, technical innovation. No character grey areas or anything thought-provoking about the damsel in distress, unless I’ve missed something.
There’re all kinds of people in this world. No reason to feel alone. I was never under the impression there was a shortage of J.C. Chandor fans in this website. I know many who prefer ORCA to JAWS too — and ORCA’s score was composed by Morricone and a glorified vuvuzela was not.
The films which stood out for me last year were:
1. The Great Beauty (I’ve fallen in love with this film)
2. The Wolf of Wall Street (Jonah Hill should have won Best Supporting Actor)
3. Blue Jasmine (with a couple repeated viewings, the brilliance of this movie really shines through)
4. The Great Gatsby (if it had been released in December, it would have been a contender)
5. American Hustle (a good, solid movie . . . very funny . . . all the actors were at the top of their game)
6. Only God Forgives (Kristin Scott Thomas should have won Best Supporting Actress – the meanest mother I’ve ever seen on screen)
7. Saving Mr. Banks (it could have been schmaltzy and I was sure I wouldn’t like it . . . but the film won me over; I was quite moved by the end)
8. The Family (a very funny black comedy which hardly anybody saw – Robert de Niro was hysterical)
“Philomena” was the most overrated film of last year. It’s a good movie, but not a great one.
My worst films from last year? I hated “Prisoners”, “Oz, the Great and Powerful”, and “The Butler”.
A lot of us preferred All is Lost over Gravity.
Conventional is not the first word I would use about Gravity.
Is there any movie this year at the level of say No Country for Old Men or There Will Be Blood?
I just watched American Hustle for the first time since December.
FAR removed from the “it was ok” feeling I had walking out of the theater, and FAR removed from my agitation that it scored amazing reviews, and FAR removed from my agitation that it received so many accolades including 10 Oscar nominations …….
Taken at an absolute surface level, and away from the Awards noise ….. I quite enjoyed it this second time. I still wouldn’t have nommed it for anything but Costumes. But I enjoyed it more.
Time does that to movies. Moves them up, moves them down (on personal lists, preferences).
As for THIS year, of what Ive seen, tops for me include Boyhood, How To Train Your Dragon 2, Life Itself, The Homesman, Belle, and The Drop.
Eagerly looking forward to soooooo many, including Gone Girl very soon. Yay.
And on paper, I still see Unbroken as being THE one unless it winds up being less-than-stellar.
You guys aren’t helping my compulsion. Lists are the enemy!
Top 10 American Films 2013
1. GRAVITY, Alfonso Cuaron
2. THE WOLF OF WALL STREET, Martin Scorsese
3. HER, Spike Jonze
4. SPRING BREAKERS, Harmony Korine
5. MUD, Jeff Nichols
6. TO THE WONDER, Terrence Malick
7. INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS, Joel & Ethan Coen
8. BEFORE MIDNIGHT, Richard Linklater
9. THE COUNSELOR, Ridley Scott
10. COMPUTER CHESS, Andrew Bujalski
Damn meant to say 2013 not 2014.
oops – forgot Captain Phillips, which slips in right behind Fruitvale Station. So much for The Counselor.
“the directors’ branch will likely wait for the yet another Chandor film to evidence a clear return to form after the slump of his last two features.”
What!? Most directors would pray for such a “slump”, especially for their first two features. As far as proving oneself first is concerned, two words:Michel Hazanavicius.
True, though, that most BD winners had a long wait. Cuaron is a perfect example of someone who wasn’t recognized for better films but had to wait for the magnificent but more conventional Gravity.
Last year’s top ten:
Inside llewyn Davis (by a country mile)
12 Years a Slave
Wolf of Wall Street
Her
Fruitvale Station
The Great Beauty
All is Lost (you’re not alone, Robert)
Gravity
Frances Ha
The Counselor (enjoyed the hell out it)
I need to see All is Lost again. First time I saw it I thought it was a complete bore. I feel as though I need to give it a second chance.
My top 10 of 2014 would be:
1. Wolf of Wall Street
2. The Great Beauty
3. Ain’t them Bodies Saints
4. Before Midnight
5. Upstream Color
6. Prisoners
7. Nebraska
8. Inside Llewyn Davis
9. 12 Years a Slave
10. Mud
I still haven’t seen The Wind Rises. Once I see it i’m sure it would be in my top 10. Seeing as how Miyazaki is one of my all time favorites.
I don’t believe J.C. Chandor stands a chance at a Best Director nod, not even close. Even if A MOST VIOLENT YEAR turns out to be as great as some trustworthy readers expect it to be, the directors’ branch will likely wait for the yet another Chandor film to evidence a clear return to form after the slump of his last two features. In other words he will need to further redeem himself — because (totally speculating here) the writers’ branch probably feels that was an unfortunate call that they made in ’11.
We won’t see the true picture until the Golden Globes announce their nominees (on 11-Dec). All the Oscar BP winners have this trio of Golden Globe nominations:
Best Motion Picture Drama or Comedy
Best Director
Best Screenplay
Last year it was 12 Years a Slave, American Hustle and Nebraska ticking all the three boxes (Gravity missed out a Screenplay nod). Yes, only three films and ultimately 12YAS went on to win BP Oscar.
The Philippines just chose Norte: Hangganan ng Kasaysayan as its entry for Oscar’s Foreign Language Category. We are so winning this year!
Robert A.,
Funny, but I had just read this tonight. “After all, Chandor’s last film All Is Lost, which starred Robert Redford, was preferred by many over Alfonso Cuaron’s award winning Gravity”. Here is the entire article: http://www.filmoria.co.uk/2014/09/a-most-violent-year-gets-a-new-trailer-and-poster/
“I know this is a very unpopular opinion but I actually felt that The Wolf of Wall Street was the weakest of the nominees. It’s a good movie for sure, with an incredible performance from DiCaprio, but it essentially reiterates the same point for three hours, finding little depth in its characters or expanding on its storyline in a way that warrants its running time. I liked it (especially while I was watching it) but I didn’t love it.”
No worries. It was my favorite movie from last year, but I don’t mind at all if people didn’t care for it as much as I did, or at all. Frankly, I’m always grateful when people at least see it all the way through before they make up their mind. Leo was very good in it, and I might have given him the Oscar, even though as time passes, I keep feeling stronger and stronger for Chiwetel Ejiofor and Bruce Dern. I actually think the person people will remember best from The Wolf of Wall Street is Jonah Hill. He has some of the best jokes, and he was SO incredibly vibrant. Who didn’t laugh a little when he was stoned and telling Jordan, “Smoke crack with me bro”?
But, what you said about American Hustle is interesting, and I’ll give some time to ponder that. 🙂
Robert A’s Top 10 of Ryan’s Top 20 for 2013:
1) Inside Llewyn Davis
1) 12 Years a Slave (a tie for #1 because I’m too weak to do a Sophie’s Choice)
3) Her
4) Before Midnight
5) All is Lost (I’m about the only person on the planet who preferred All is Lost over Gravity)
6) The Wolf of Wall Street
7) Francis Ha
8) American Hustle
9) Blue Jasmine
10) Captain Phillips
Admittedly, 8-10 are pretty fluid. I’ve switched them around several times before posting this. I haven’t seen a few movies on Ryan’s list (such as Upstream Color, Enough Said, and The Counselor). And I feel like I need to see Nebraska again before I can accurately rank it.
This is one of those posts that will be of no interest to anyone but me!!
My top ten of last year went like this:
1. 12 Years a Slave
2. Gravity
3. Before Midnight
4. American Hustle
5. Her
6. Short Term 12
7. The Spectacular Now
8. Captain Phillips
9. Blue Is the Warmest Color
10. Fruitvale Station
I disagree that American Hustle is a shallow film with no staying power. I think it’s quite the opposite, an intricate movie that constantly shifts as it progresses. The sheer unpredictability of that film mirrors the personalities of the characters in it, and the characters themselves feel like actual human beings. It’s a terrific film, and in a year without two gargantuan masterpieces like Gravity and 12 Years a Slave I would have been happier to see it win.
I know this is a very unpopular opinion but I actually felt that The Wolf of Wall Street was the weakest of the nominees. It’s a good movie for sure, with an incredible performance from DiCaprio, but it essentially reiterates the same point for three hours, finding little depth in its characters or expanding on its storyline in a way that warrants its running time. I liked it (especially while I was watching it) but I didn’t love it.
Overall, Jesse Crall is right. All of last year’s Best Picture nominees were great, and deserve to be revisited years from now. Every single one of those films is better than Crash (which I actually do like, by the way) and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (which I dislike).
“The industry and critics groups had mostly agreed upon a split — Mike Nichols would win Director and In the Heat of the Night would win Best Picture.”
Too bad it wasn’t the other way, with The Graduate winning BP. That shouldn’t matter, but I think the movies that win BP are better remembered than the ones that win BD, unless of course, the same movie won both, or you are Life of Pi.
December 29, 2014 – Oscar nomination voting begins
That CAN’T be good for A Most Violent Year coming out wide in January, and merely a limited release on New Year’s Eve.
Haha Ryan! You made me have to re-review which BP nominated films you liked less than American Hustle. My reaction was “Duh, that’s right”. I think DBC and Philomena were most people’s least favorites also. Me included there. How I currently rank last year’s BP nominated films
1. The Wolf of Wall Street
2. Gravity
3. 12 Years a Slave
4. Nebraska
5. Captain Phillips
6. Her
7. American Hustle
8. Dallas Buyers Club
*Philomena
I still haven’t seen Philomena, and I probably won’t. BTW, I’m surprised you didn’t rank The Counselor in your top 10. You had sounded so sure it would be.
All those movies on your list are very good/great.
I didn’t get to see American Hustle until opening night, but I did go into it totally blind. Had no idea what to expect.
For the record, (now it can be told) I emailed Sasha as soon as the lights came up and said something like: “Just had a blast at American Hustle! Nominations across the board!”
I was jazzed, but the jazz faded fast, didn’t stick with me at all. Then the more I read about the actual story on which the movie was barely based, the more I felt conned.
So I deliberately decided to let it bother me that the movie turned J Lawrence’s character into a sizzling firecracker, when the real-life crime story led to that woman’s suicide.
It was still a fun movie. But less than a month after I saw it, there were too many other movies I liked a lot more.
best American movies, for me, last year:
1. Inside Llewyn Davis
2. 12 Years a Slave
3. The Wolf of Wall Street
4. Fruitvale Station
5. Gravity
6. Her
7. Captain Phillips
8. Mud
9. Before Midnight
10. Upstream Color
11. Nebraska
12. American Hustle
13. Short Term 12
14. The Counselor
15. Enough Said
16. All Is Lost
17. Frances Ha
18. The Place Beyond the Pines
19. Blue Jasmine
20. The Spectacular Now
so, American Hustle would not have been on my Oscar ballot — but you’ll notice that American Hustle rates higher for me than a couple of other BP nominees that were not even in my top 20.
(a roundabout way of saying that American Hustle wasn’t the worst Best Picture nominee for me last year)
That initial excitement for a movie that sometimes fades after a couple of weeks is the best reason studios have for waiting till the last minute to spring intense but empty movies on awards voters.
The strategy works. That’s why we end up with so many Best Picture winners that don’t age well at all. It’s one of the simplest and slimiest tactics studios use to foist movies down the throats of voters.
Most people definitely went into Oscar night fully expecting 12 Years a Slave to win.
HA, I should have remembered. I wrote an article in opposition to the Daily Beast hit piece and it got tens and tens of hits… http://jessecrall.com/2014/01/28/american-hustle-fire-joe-morgan-edition/
I guarantee that GONE GIRL will maintain a terrific score on Metacritic, entertain 10 million audience members (at least), and then lose steam in the Oscar race because two or three assholes decide to “generate buzzzzz” by composing weeks-after-the-fact diatribes against it. A few bloggers will agree with the pieces, a few will write pieces opposed to the nastiness, and a cloud of negativity will spread like rancid farts under a blanket. And then another frontrunner will undergo a similar process and then something else and something else and something else and…A dozen of the most favored Oscar picks will get dumped on weeks or even months after their releases because it’s not enough to write a thoughtful, mixed-to-negative review once before receding politely into the night.
No, the mewling crowds of the internet must sound the trumpet and drive discussion at the expense of sensitivity and decency. It’s a shame; all of last year’s BP nominees were quality films as I’m sure all of this year’s will be. They won’t necessarily be the BEST of the year, the most deserving of the attention the Oscar race can lavish upon a movie. But bright people worked hard on them and with very few exceptions, they deserve respect. It’s painful to watch writers in possession of an income and a readership work beneath their intellect by composing tactless thinkpieces. If you don’t dig a movie, write your piece when it comes out sans snark and hyperbole, then move on to what you do enjoy. Sacrifice a few Facebook likes for the preservation of your soul.
Jamdental- whatever the NYFF secret screening is, it is a 2015 release as per the press release. So no.
“American Hustle, currently nominated for 10 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, reminds me more and more of last year’s winner Argo: a well-acted, coolly costumed, high-energy period caper that is exactly as well-made as all movies should be, but, against the backdrop of our superhero blockbuster economy, gets mistaken for something truly special. American Hustle, like Argo, is perfectly good, but not nearly as good as it thinks it is. It’s sloppy and self-obsessed, masquerading as edgy when it only ever plays it safe. It is, in the parlance of the film’s original title, some bullshit.”
That’s a pretty good summation of American Hustle–and, for that matter, Argo. I’ll be interested to see what the general feeling about them is a decade down the line. My guess, Hustle will be mostly forgotten, and Argo will be viewed as an okay film that beat better films (namely Django).
I remember an article in a high profile magazine saying how bad the movie was – was it Daily Beast or Huffington Post?
Slate.com:
“Doing the Hustle”
“American Hustle is the worst Best Picture nominee of the year”
“The flashiest, emptiest Best Picture nominee, American Hustle”
Selma should be on there – an oversight!!
Jesse, I’m talking more about how American Hustle wound out the year – started strong then something seemed to take hold. I remember an article in a high profile magazine saying how bad the movie was – was it Daily Beast or Huffington Post? The bad buzz took hold right before voting, which explains why it went home with no Oscars.
I’m going to make a bold claim, but hear me out.
In 2011, the NYFF’s Secret Screening was Hugo. In 2012, it was Lincoln. (There was none in 2013 for some reason.) Those films combined went for 33 nominations and 7 wins at the Oscars alone. Now, there’s a lot of speculation as to what the 2014 Secret Screening will be, but rumor has it that it’ll be Noah Baumbach’s While We’re Young. (I figured it would be Selma, but that’s apparently been discounted–unless that discounting was deliberate misdirection?) If indeed it is, I think WWY might be an unforeseen contender. It might have to content itself with Picture, Original Screenplay, and a few acting noms, but it’s not, I think, to be discounted.
Of course, there’s also a good chance it’s A Most Violent Year, in which case, enjoy your Best Director nomination, J.C. Chandor.
GONE GIRL will be a major player. Having finally seen it, I can honestly say that it breaks through its pulpish noir vibe and is one hell of a statement on the role of a women in society and the role marriage/union in general – sure is heavy stuff to ponder for a film that everybody thought would just be about its pulpish murder-mystery plot.
Did AMERICAN HUSTLE really get “bad buzz”? The reviews were almost universally positive and the worst things I hear about it from major journos/bloggers were in the “it’s entertaining but kinda silly” vein. WOLF had bad buzz, populating thinkpieces composed by the shallowest of intellects but HUSTLE always seemed like the fun potential spoiler to 12 YEARS’ subject heft and GRAVITY’S technical explorations…
I got lucky, in a way, with HUSTLE. Before it screened anywhere, I went to a David O. Russell talk in Hollywood and he showed the 1st 5 minutes (Bale dicking around with his hair, Adams in a plunging dress…). I watched and went “Okay, it’s a comedy. It’s not even a dramedy; it’s a straight laugher.” So I was prepared for the frothiness and batshit characters and had a great time with it (HUSTLE ended up being my #3 last year, after WOLF & LLEWYN DAVIS). I think a lot of the maybe…muted responses to HUSTLE arose from people expecting more historical heft because of the subject matter. Then again, there were people going in expecting a comedy who still didn’t like it so what the fuck do I know?
Didn’t include SELMA on your list. Do you know something we don’t?