Oscar Wannabes

My film of the year: Brooklyn

Odeon Screen Unseen

This time last year I started going with the family to the Odeon Screen Unseen showings – usually Monday nights, usually critically acclaimed, usually £5 a ticket.  All good. The risk is you sit down not knowing what is going to come up on the screen! That way we got to see Nightcrawler, Whiplash, Selma, and It Follows last year – all fascinating in one or more ways. This week it was Room and when the title came up I was happy (and worried) because it was a book I had raced through earlier in the year, astonished at the tension built up by the narrative voice in Emma Donoghue’s novel. It could have gone either way.

Emma Donoghue, Jacob Tremblay, Brie Larson - Room

Room
Room was excellent, I thought. The lean screenplay, the photography and editing, the final shot of the suburban garden in the snow…. All worthy of prizes but equally wonderful were the performances from the sublime Joan Allen as Nancy to the heroic Tom McCamus as Leo, from an intense William H Macy as Robert to Wendy Crewson as a devastatingly smooth TV interviewer – all cameos of great power. But could an Oscar nomination go to a 7-year old? Jacob Tremblay as Jack certainly goes through a convincing gamut of emotions in the film, spending half of the running time looking horribly ill. But I will be very surprised if Brie Larson isn’t nominated for a Best Actress Oscar. She, I think, plays unpredictably, sometimes unsympathetically, maternal but highly-strung, dead-eyed but full of life force, strong and vulnerable – and at all times, in my opinion, playing truthfully to the dramatic situation.

In the Heart of the Sea, Murphy, Gleeson, Fairley, Whishaw, Hemsworth

In the Heart of the Sea

Ron Howard’s film about the loss of the whaling ship Essex and how it inspired Herman Melville’s Moby Dick is less obviously award-winning except possibly in the special effects categories. I wasn’t bored but my daughter spoke the truth when she said it had elements of the cartoon version of Thumbelina – ie one disaster after another. Chris Hemsworth scrubs down well (and looks truly wasted at times) and Ben Whishaw, Brendan Gleeson and Michelle Fairley can do no wrong in my eyes; as for Cillian Murphy, I would watch him read the phone directory. But there was something about the structure of the movie (the script, maybe?) that meant I cared very little about the outcome, though absolutely cheered for the whales (and excellent dolphin performances, too.) Oscars for the special effects, I think, and thank you to Cineworld who presented this in an early Secret Screening, Cineworld's equivalent of Odeon Screen Unseen.

Carol, Mad Max: Fury Road, Mr Holmes, Diary of a Teenage Girl, Ex Machina

My Oscar hopes

My film (and book) of the year has been Colm Tóibín’s Brooklyn and I will be delighted if it wins every award going; if it wins nothing, I won’t care because it’s permanently lodged in my psyche. I also enjoyed Bridge of Spies, Carol, The Martian, Mad Max: Fury Road, Mr Holmes, Inside Out, Ex Machina, Diary of a Teenage Girl and Steve Jobs. I’ve yet to see (but am looking forward to) Spotlight, The Revenant, The Danish Girl, The Big Short, The Hateful Eight and Trumbo.  I would definitely add Room to my list of great films of the year now, if only for Brie Larson’s performance. I’m already booked in (twice) to see a galaxy far, far away but will be going with phantom trepidation as much as new hope….

Beginning to Look Back

Looking Back

As 2014 ends, I can only hope 2015 and future years contain less personal trauma. I hope in future years I can compose blogs more regularly and without obscuring too much of what I am truly thinking and feeling. The images below contain (for me) total pleasure and excruciating pain. And also contain (for me) love beyond belief. And some bewilderment. The end of the year is a good time for looking back…. 

Harriet home from India/Nepal, Egypt, goodbye teaching, home from the hills and, in images below, Emily home from Dorking, Kerry and Norah on the Moors, Surrey and the South, Barr-Lancelots, the Tower of London, Fountain's Abbey, the wonderful Margaret Atwood at the Ilkley Literature Festival

Last Christmas

Between October and December 2013 everything changed – in my world, at any rate. Last Christmas felt very fragile but this Christmas, everything feels different. No doubt next Christmas will feel different again. And the one after that. Change happens.

Change and the Illusion of Time Management

Change happens. Constantly. I used to believe in Time Management. But I now think it is a redundant concept. Time cannot be Managed. All that can be managed is what you do and what you say. You give your attention to chosen actions and that attention affects naturally occurring changes, hopefully changing things in a direction you want. Anything you ignore will undergo changes anyway. Because change is a constant. Time marches on. Change happens. Constantly.

Get Everything Done: and still have time to play

So I’ve increasingly over the years tried to live by the following philosophy, espoused by my friend Jane Howson and written about eloquently by Mark Forster: you must Give Attention to the things you want to affect. You can never Manage Time; all you can do is Give Attention to what you do and what you say. Because Change will happen anyway. Give Attention to the things you want to change. As Linda Loman says in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman

attention must be paid.

Resolutions

Approaching 2015 is a time to look back and a time to look forward. Next year I’ll be 55. 55 years before I was born it was 1905 - a lot of Change has happened since 1905. A lot of Change will no doubt happen in 2015.... and in the five years following.... what will 2020 be like? Time will tell. Excelsior!

Odeon Screen Unseen

Riz Ahmed and Jake Gyllenhaal

Take Your Chances

Odeon cinemas have started doing a Screen Unseen scheme where you attend without knowing what you’re about to see.

Last month my family and I saw Nightcrawler with Jake Gyllenhaal as Lou Bloom, an instantly memorable movie character who will be counted alongside Travis Bickle and Michael Corleone as emblems of the corruptions of the age.

Nightcrawler is the disturbing tale of an ambulance-chasing media hound who starts to manipulate the stories he covers. Riz Ahmed as his intern Rick and Rene Russo as news producer Nina are equally brilliant in more tragic roles; they are characters who are equally as culpable as Bloom but are also damaged irreparably by the protagonist’s increasingly evil decisions. It's great to see Riz Ahmed's rise to major films like this after remarkable performances like his bedtime Lion King story scene in 2010's Four Lions. It won't be long before he's a leading man, in my opinion. And I've always enjoyed watching Rene Russo, after scene-stealing in 1993's In The Line Of Fire and being a convincing Frigga in the Thor films.

Rene Russo

Lighting and editing

In some ways Nightcrawler reminded me of a 1970s art-house film, lit like an urban noir and with editing rhythms that produced an accelerating tension. The ending – where there is plenty of smiling and ‘pep-talk’ is as chilling as anything I’ve seen at the cinema in recent years.

Whiplash

This month we were also lucky to see Whiplash, a film I might not have chosen to see but was glad it was offered to me by Screen Unseen.

Two brilliant central performances

Another terrific but disturbing film. Starting with a black screen and the sound of a neurotic drum roll that starts as if played by a child, gradually becoming military and then turning into a sublime performance of superhuman speed, the sound acts as a metaphor of my journey with this film in the cinema – I felt innocent at first (thinking I was watching Fame, then Full Metal Jacket for drummers and finally Amadeus-meets-Drumline. With two brilliant central performances and switches of tone that induced breathless emotional effects, I would recommend this film to anyone who admires intense acting, character-driven films or films about svengali-like teachers. Or indeed anyone who appreciates fine percussion or jazz music. 

JK Simmons and Miles Teller in brilliant performances

Academy Awards?

JK Simmons may well be nominated for an acting Oscar, though most people would want his character to be hauled before a judge and jury and sentenced to painful hard labour. Miles Teller is horribly believable as a gauche prodigy with family issues, and an unattractive stubbornness – but he occasionally smiles with tender hope and you root for him. Would you want to be his friend or girlfriend? Probably not. If I were in charge of the Academy Awards it would receive Oscars for Film Editing, Music Score and Original Screenplay. JK Simmons and Miles Teller will, though, I expect, be competing with Jake Gyllenhaal and Rene Russo for acting honours in the next awards season. Good luck to them all.   

Thanks, Odeon Screen Unseen for prompting me to see these two memorable films.