I bet you weren’t really watching the moment when Questlove accepted his Oscar for Best Documentary Feature for Summer of Soul. Maybe you want to take a few minutes and watch that now:
The Oscars should be about the movies. The artists. The work. But this show was about anything but. I’m almost not even surprised the show will live in infamy for the violence that took place onstage given the way everything else about the ceremony played out. From scuttling key categories to an unceremonious pre-show presentation to introducing hastily organized fan categories, this telecast sought to fix the Oscars without stopping to think about what people actually like about them. (Truly, who was clamoring for the In Memoriam segment to become a cheerful celebratory number where The Academy picked an “elect” group of the dead who got special tributes?)
The result, as I feared all along, is a show that probably brought in few new viewers — but antagonized the hell out of the loyal viewers like myself. People have been asking me if I’ve been excited for the Oscars over the past week or so, and I’ve lied by saying I was. I knew this mutilation of the ceremony was coming. Even though there’s always some fun and excitement that comes when the music swells and the show begins, I dreaded what I knew was the desecration of a yearly tradition that has meant so much to me.
They wanted to make the show shorter (as if movie lovers wouldn’t gladly sit through a full day of the show so long as they found it sufficiently celebratory) and told fans to suffer any number of indignities to achieve a tight three-hour runtime. Instead:
An absolute clown show.
While I was glad to see the show return to the tradition of hosts, it would have been nice for the producers to let them do the thing they were hired to do! The hosts help provide a connective tissue that makes an awards show feel like more than an odd assemblage of prize-awarding. The appearances by hosts Amy Schumer, Wanda Sykes, and Regina Hall were often quite fun (particularly Hall, whose non-standup style played much better in extended bits) but never gelled within the context of the show. The whole thing seemed jerry-rigged, especially the pre-presented categories that they tried to give the impression of happening in real-time.
I felt profoundly disoriented and without an anchor, watching one of my favorite movies of 2021 win a whopping six Oscars (!!) and feeling no sense of triumph. Even though I got to watch the speeches from many of Dune’s skilled technicians, it doesn’t feel exciting when you’ve already learned about their victories two hours earlier via tweets from the trades. Pretty wild that the biggest nominee, the kind of large-scale epic that used to bring tens of millions of viewers to the Oscars telecast, was not put front and center in a year when the Academy was falling over itself to prove it was still in touch with the average movie fan.
Their ham-fisted efforts to bring in that outside perspective backfired as badly as it did predictably. The “Oscars Fan Favorite” and “Oscars Cheer Moment” were both hijacked by films with notably coordinated online fandoms, most notably the noxious “Synder Cut” bros whose improbably successes have proven the industry will indulge the whims of any loud contingency who refuse to take “no” for an answer. The divergence between the fan polls and the movies represented only served to highlight the gap between the two. I get the sense that neither the Oscars nor any group can sustainably bridge the large distance between slick, corporate “content” and meaningful “art.”
Sure, we had nice moments, especially the joyful exchanges between Youn Yuh-jung and Best Supporting Actor winner Troy Kotsur. How wonderful to see communication that can cross culture and language. She embraced the full spirit of what CODA’s wins should mean by taking the time to learn how to sign Kotsur’s name before announcing it. To fully accommodate deaf, hard-of-hearing, and other disabled groups, able-bodied individuals must commit to doing the work to make everyone feel welcome.
But, if I were to sum up tonight in any single phrase, I’d steal it from Joan Didion: “The center was not holding.” If you care about movies, I struggle to see how you don’t come away from this night feeling like this ceremony was a calamitous canary in the coal mine signaling a much-larger industry collapse. I’m sad for all the people who hold the Oscars as a sacred tradition and had to watch cold-hearted corporate interests taking a wrecking ball to a beloved institution. We will not forget this act of violence and betrayal. But, more than anything, I’m sad for the artists who lost their chance to shine in front of a global audience.
Until next year, when I clown myself into maybe looking forward to the Oscars again, here’s bare-chested Lil Timmy Tim summing up how I feel:
ANYWAYS: These 2021 Releases Got 0 Nominations But Are Still Worth Watching!
Barb & Star Go to Vista Del Mar, Hulu
This was technically eligible at last year’s ceremony, but my campaign for “Edgar’s Prayer” is eternal. This ludicrous laugh riot from duo Kristen Wiig and Jamie Dornan is what really should have had Jamie Dornan in awards contention. This comic caper makes for bonkers fun that marches unapologetically to the beat of its own drum.
El Planeta, HBO Max
I really dug Amalia Ulman’s stylish debut El Planeta out of last year’s Sundance. It’s a brassy black comedy that really commits to chronicling the offbeat exploits of a mother and daughter’s entropy in a portion of Spain still feeling the effects of the recession. If you can latch onto Ulman’s distinctive wavelength, this is a real trip. If not, it’s only 80 minutes of your life gone!
The French Dispatch, HBO Max
I’m still shocked that Searchlight couldn’t even get a single technical nomination for Wes Anderson’s latest, The French Dispatch. The production design and cinematography were immaculate as usual, and the script was one of the funniest and tightest we’ve gotten from the filmmaker in at least a decade. I’ve been a pretty vocal critic of how I’ve felt the humanity has evaporated from Wes Anderson’s work as he’s retreated into his world of paper dolls, but this was a welcome return to form. Something about a writer making a film about other writers — in the magazine format of their output, no less — restored a livelihood I’ve really missed in his work.
Identifying Features, HBO Max
If you’re tired of stories from the Mexican-American border that reek of cynical politicking, check out the stunning Identifying Features. With a striking sense of space and sound, Fernanda Valadez charts the journey of a mother headed north out of despair rather than hope. Her son has gone missing on his voyage to America, and now she must retrace his steps in an effort to find him. The film’s quiet devastation sneaks up on you with an ending of immense power.
I’m Your Man, Hulu
The house position on Dan Stevens is still in line with the following observation from Hunter Harris: “Nicholas Hoult is like Dan Stevens with an exponent.” (Not that we have to pit performers against each other, but here we are...) Nonetheless, Stevens really shines as a robot programmed to serve as the perfect life partner to a designated woman in I’m Your Man. It’s a well-calibrated performance that makes every “human” gesture feel as if it’s not entirely organic, and Stevens provides a perfect vessel through which to explore and embody the film’s probing ideas around love and compatibility.
The Last Duel, HBO Max
Will never sto baffling me that audiences and the Academy alike shrugged at Ridley Scott’s handsomely mounted medieval tale The Last Duel. If you’re wondering where all the smart studio filmmaking for adults went, this movie flopping set back your cause by years. Nonetheless, catch up with this perceptive look at how our personal and cultural positions affect how we interpret and remember the same set of intense events. It’s really something!
Mogul Mowgli, HBO Max
If you were a fan of last year’s Sound of Metal, consider Mogul Mowgli something of a companion piece for star Riz Ahmed. He stars here as another musician who’s faced with a debilitating injury that puts his performing career in jeopardy. I’m fascinated by Ahmed’s apparent fascination with men obsessed with their craft who come up against the limits of their own bodies, and this provides another complementary angle to his exploration of imperiled masculinity.
The Souvenir Part II, rental
Frankly, liking The Souvenir Part II after feeling largely indifferent to the first part is still my biggest cinematic surprise of 2021! You can honestly just read the Wikipedia summary and just jump right into the second panel of Joanna Hogg’s diptych, a reflective and reflexive memoir. Through her protagonist, Honor Swinton Byrne’s Julie, Hogg examines our impulse to process life through art or other intermediary devices. It’s a stunning work of emotional insight that pierces the soul while also soothing it.
Titane, Hulu
Kudos to France, still blinded by the Palme d’Or win, for thinking the Academy was bold enough to go for the extreme body horror of Titane in the Best International Feature category. It was worth a shot! But this twisted tale of broken fathers and daughters stretching their own flesh to feel human connection just belongs to the cinephiles now. Frankly, it’s a miracle this exists. (Another warning that this is NOT for the faint of heart, but if you think you can stomach something this grueling, you’ll be richly rewarded.)
Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy, rental
That other Ryûsuke Hamaguchi movie that came out in 2021! I actually think I might have liked Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy more than Drive My Car, believe it or not. While this triptych about chance and coincidence is smaller in scale, I think I found the film more satisfying in its payoff.
WHAT I WATCHED
It was time for a long-overdue Spring Breakers rewatch, and for those who aren’t on board: 🗣 MASTERPIECE
WHAT I HEARD
I promise there’s a good explanation (it will soon be the subject of a newsletter), but I’ve been jamming to this all week:
WHAT I READ
I thought this Letterboxd feature on unit photographers was a great read about some unsung heroes on a film set.
WHAT I WROTE
I have a new streaming guide live over at Decider! I wasn’t sure how Paramount+ compared to its streaming service competitors in terms of movie offerings, but it’s not too shabby. Despite being late to the market, I didn’t find it particularly hard to rank the top 50 movies on Paramount+.
OK, that’s it for today! Now to never think about 2021 releases ever again (or, more realistically, at least not for a few months).
Yours in service and cinema,
Marshall