Ultimately I think this is a pretty solid group - while I didn't love all of them, I didn't hate any of them. The shift from five to ten nominees worked about as well as the Academy could have hoped; they managed to include both blockbusters and indie fare, and there wasn't the usual December back-loading (half are already on DVD). Also, I have to give it up for an Oscar-disproportionate percentage of movies with female characters who are a) badass, b) complex, or c) otherwise not scenery.
10) The Blind Side
Well, this is kind of obviously the odd film out, right? Not that it's bad, necessarily, just getting a significant boost from a strong performance by Sandra Bullock. It wasn't as sunshiny about the complicated interpersonal dynamics at play as I thought it would be, particularly in depicting the Tuohys' obscene wealth and the NCAA's questioning of their motives in assisting Michael Oher (although I did feel that the NCAA rep was portrayed as a bit...evil...for someone who is asking entirely reasonable questions. But I digress.) Ultimately, I felt the film suffers, and opens itself up to valid criticisms of its depiction of race, by being entirely exterior to Oher; while it's understandable due to what most report as reticence to share on his side, descriptions of the book on which the film is based depict the work as more balanced. It's ostensibly Oher's story, but The Blind Side is not really about Oher in the end.
Three films I'd rather see nominated: Bright Star, which is so insanely beautiful and got shafted in multiple different categories; Fantastic Mr. Fox, which ideally served Wes Anderson's filmmaking style; A Single Man, which was styled within an inch of its life but was also heartbreaking and gorgeous.
9) A Serious Man
This was the last one of the ten I saw, partly because I was sure that I wouldn't like it - I can't say I was particularly into either Burn After Reading or No Country for Old Men. (I'm a little Coens-illiterate, having not seen some of their classics like Raising Arizona or The Big Lebowski, but what films I have seen of theirs haven't put me in any big rush to get around to them.) However, I was pleasantly surprised by this one. I'm sufficiently self-aware to recognize that a large part of that is the scenes that focus on academia; Larry's increasingly fraught meetings with the tenure committee representative (especially his tearful admission of having seen a Swedish art film and the rep then insisting that the tenure committee doesn't make moral judgements) constituted one of the more hilarious sequences of scenes I've seen this year. However, I couldn't help but feel that if it were made by someone less Academy-vetted than the Coens, this movie wouldn't have received the attention that it has.
8) Up
Look, I was as moved by the opening montage as anyone, okay? And I loved the rest of the movie - whichever Pixar employee came up with the concept of the talking dogs deserves a bonus. However, I don't feel like it's as strong an effort in terms of originality and heart as Wall-E, or even Ratatouille. It almost feels like they felt like the emotional wallop of the first ten minutes meant that they didn't have to try as hard through the rest of the film. I don't have a problem with it being nominated, but it's just Top-Ten rather than Top-Five in my opinion.
7) Up in the Air
I liked Up in the Air when I saw it, but reflecting on the field of ten has made me realize that it didn't really stick with me. Jason Reitman did one of the better recent jobs of placing George Clooney in a role that plays off of his public persona (as did Wes Anderson in Fantastic Mr. Fox) but the movie doesn't seem to know how (or whether) it wants to redeem Ryan and kind of loses its focus after the wedding scene. I can recognize that ambiguity is the point there, but it felt more scattered than purposeful. Well acted, timely, etc. It just ultimately didn't feel "great" to me. I hope Anna Kendrick will get an industry boost from UitA's hype - her performance here plus her hilarious post-zombie-movie monologue in New Moon were delightful.
6) District 9
I was really pleasantly surprised by how much I liked District 9 - it's one of the only movies I've ever seen where I felt myself actively desiring a sequel upon its conclusion. To some extent, I have more respect for the technical work shown in District 9 than I do for that of Avatar. The director of Terminator and Titanic, working with millions upon millions of dollars in his budget, should turn out a visually stunning film. It's more impressive, in my opinion, to see a relative newcomer present such a fully realized fictionalized world. (I will say that when I was watching the BAFTAs, I felt like there was an air of relief in the acceptance speeches from Avatar's tech people. Like, maybe a few years back they had some days where Cameron was all, "Yes! Yes! I SEE YOU!" and they were secretly like, "Oh, Lord. What if this is the biggest flop of all time?") District 9 also gets props for featuring one of the year's most astonishing debut performances in Sharlto Copley.
5) An Education
An Education's coming-of-age narrative is not necessarily novel, but it is rescued from the jaws of cliche by a great screenplay and a uniformly excellent cast. High marks for execution, if you will. Carey Mulligan in this film is like Ellen Page in Juno to me; they are not necessarily the only actors who could have played their respective roles, but what they bring to the character is totally unique and deserving of recognition. If you've seen the film (or don't mind spoilers), I have to recommend Lynn Barber's piece on her experiences that are dramatized in An Education.
4) Avatar
I'd place this lower, but I can't argue with the technological accomplishments of this film, even if it is one of the cheesiest things I've seen in quite some time; it's really a very unique feeling to frequently roll one's eyes while wearing 3-D glasses. Gorgeous visuals, played-out storyline. I'd probably feel more strongly about this if the film had received an undeserved screenplay nomination; Giovanni Ribisi's dialogue in his various scenes may as well have been "Evil Plans, Evil Plans, Evil Plans!" The film's general lack of originality has been combed through elsewhere. My major criticism is this: the film has no postcolonial sensibility. The battle scenes clearly wear their inversion of the cowboys-and-indians paradigm, but I frequently found myself distracted wondering what kind of world the humans had left behind them. Watching the scene where the crazy military dude hypes up the crowd to go indigenous-population-hunting, my eyes focused on the brown faces in that crowd as I thought "Are you supposed to come from where I come from? What are your histories?" District 9 isn't a perfect film (pointless demonization of Nigerians, anyone?), but it is clearly rooted in South Africa's postcolonial history and the recent fallout from apartheid. Avatar shows no such thematic clarity. Additionally, while it's done an insanely good business in theaters I can't help but feel that it will suffer in the transition to home entertainment, and it's truly too soon to say how significant it will ultimately be in the annals of film.
3) The Hurt Locker
A very good film, and I'm glad that the awards season prompted me to seek it out as I'm generally not a big watcher of war movies. Its set pieces work together and flow in and out of each other like the well-calibrated moving parts of a machine and the trio of Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty was the year's best small ensemble. While it's not my absolute favorite, I wouldn't be disappointed if The Hurt Locker won Best Picture.
2) Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire
If this makes any sense, Precious was so good at telling its story that I don't know whether I could bear to watch it again. There were times when the force of the film was so visceral and powerful that it felt like the whole entire film could break through the fourth wall and I felt myself shrinking back into my seat. (I read something within the past few days where apparently Martin Scorsese was arguing that any film genre could translate to 3-D, citing Precious as an example. I thought to myself, "If Precious had been in 3-D, I would have ended up watching it peering up from under my seat.") "Harrowing" is the word that kept popping up in my mind, hours after I left the theater. Lee Daniels got great, lived-in performances from all his actors, de-glammed pop stars, comedians and unknowns alike. As much as the praise surrounding Mo'Nique's performance feels hyperbolic, it's also entirely deserved.
1) Inglourious Basterds
I can pinpoint the moment I fell totally in love with Inglourious Basterds - in the first segment in which the Basterds appear, when Raine introduces Hugo Stiglitz to the German they've captured. The retro font that blasts his name across the screen, the introductory riff from "Slaughter" - the "ex-German-solider as rock star/badass" intro is so quintessentially Tarantino and exemplifies the movie's mash-up of period and genre. (Side note: How many professional athletes do you think have now tried to make that their song for opening lineups?) I would never argue that Basterds is a perfect movie, but I think that what it lacks in focus it makes up for in great performances and sheer originality. Having done a lot of dense, oft-tedious "but what is history?" work in recent months, this film's audacious revisionism felt liberatory to me.
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