Nine nominees, but only one can be crowned the Movies Up Close best film of the year… Here we go!
#9: Ford vs. Ferrari
There’s not that much to say about Ford vs. Ferrari. It’s formulaic and light, a feel-good flick similar to endless horse racing, high school football, and boxing dramas. It has all you’d expect from such a movie—a washed up genius back from retirement, the aghast faces of stuffy old guys, a but-honey-how’ll-we-pay-the-mortage subplot—and hardly anything else. I’m all for a big Best Picture nominee field, but aren’t we stretching this a bit?
#8: Jojo Rabbit
Somewhere buried underneath this movie is a kernel of a good idea. But director Taita Waititi’s craftsmanship is lacking, and it brings down the film. The main problem is Waititi’s handling of the movie’s central character, 8-year-old Jojo. Unlike Wes Anderson, a natural with precocious children, Waititi struggles with the basics. How smart is Jojo, exactly? What does he know about the world, and what doesn’t he? What are his basic personality traits?
Different scenes portray him differently. For example, Jojo usually displays wit and cunning beyond his years; but toward the end of the film, it becomes clear that he dimwittedly believes that he has deceived his new friend with comically obvious forged letters. And whereas Jojo typically comes across as sensitive and big-hearted, weighed down only by blind faith in an evil government, he incongruously makes mean comments to his overweight friend, and toward the end of the film commits a disappointing act of rank selfishness. How does one describe Jojo the character? By the end of the film, it’s still unclear.
There’s also the issue of Jojo’s apparent imaginary friend, Adolf Hitler, who summons arcane WWII references for comedic effect—surely not the feasible conjures of an eight year old, or of anyone else. Is this truly Jojo’s imagination?
These aren’t trivial inconsistencies: they subconsciously confuse us, precluding the film’s intended emotional payoff. So while Jojo Rabbit is funny (thanks, Rebel Wilson), it’s also an exercise in failed sentimentality, aiming for the toylike pathos of Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) but, due to its flaws in craft, accidentally coming off as flippant about the Holocaust, soft on Nazism. Again, this one probably doesn’t deserve its place in the field.
#7: Little Women
After the wonderful Lady Bird, it’s tough not to be a little disappointed by director Greta Gerwig’s well-made but safe period piece follow up. The greatness of Lady Bird lied in its personal, intimate filmmaking, while Little Women juggles the many characters of a classic novel; there’s simply no opportunity here for Gerwig to write and direct the kind of hyper-relatable, two-character scenes that made Lady Bird so enjoyable. The attempts that she does make to inject her personal sensibility into the familiar tale feel forced and, unfortunately, not very personal at all—instead feeling general in their would-be inspiring rhetoric, even cliché. One finishes the movie with the sense of a talented director constrained by an old story that isn’t quite hers.
I think Gerwig’s third film will be the make-or-break. She may have chosen Little Women as a sort of vehicle for collaborating with stars like Emma Watson and Laura Dern, and one hopes that Gerwig will shortly parlay those new relationships into a more ambitiously creative filmmaking project.
#6: Marriage Story
I really enjoy these types of movies, so maybe I’m a little biased toward Marriage Story. I like when things are said between characters on screen that typically don’t or can’t come out in real life. Let’s face it: we censor ourselves a lot in our daily interactions, so in my opinion characters letting loose in all their meanness and wild emotion is a filmmaking sweet spot.
Adam Driver, who was likely chosen based on his work in relevant scenes from Girls, pulls off his share of the lead, as does Scarlett Johansson as his somewhat less likeable counterpart. But I throw my hat in the large ring of folks declaring Laura Dern the true star of the show. As a go-getter at the top of her profession, incredibly impressed with herself, she provides even her character’s most reasonable lines a shroud of falsehood, so that by the time she proves her true colors with an absurd final tweak in the settlement, we already know her for what she is: a phony within a phony.
Yes, Marriage Story is too cutesy at times. That scene with the gate closing between the two leads, for example, is just hideous. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the film, and it deserves whatever acting or screenplay awards it might receive.
#5: Parasite
Writer-director Bong Joon-Ho (Snowpiercer) has created a premise worthy of Dickens or Mark Twain: a resourceful lower-class family manages to better themselves through a sequence of ruthless trickeries, becoming employees of a wealthy family. Endless insights and social commentaries seem inevitable.
But alas, Joon-Ho can’t quite deliver. Although scarcely a negative critical word has been said about Parasite, I have a few. The fact is that Joon-Ho’s vision is thinner than most have concluded, which I began to suspect when I realized that, almost an hour into the movie, I was still watching the setup: the protagonists still hadn’t completed their infiltration. A simple jump-cut would have sufficed for at least one of their devious plots, but Joon-Ho prefers to dwell here, because, as I had begun to worry, he doesn’t know what to do with his characters after his first act.
Various character arcs have been set up by this point in the film, most intriguing among them a budding romance between two characters that promises to bring dramatic conclusion to the film’s class tensions. Joon-Ho, however, de-prioritizes these arcs, and the movie consequently undergoes a rapid decline in quality after the protagonists have succeeded in their plans. What had promised to be an incisive class satire devolves into, essentially, a spy movie, with a second act that consists of the characters scampering about the mansion trying to avoid detection. Dickens, meet Mission: Impossible.
And when real tomahawks eventually appear, inexplicably, at a kid’s birthday party, anyone who’s seen Joon-Ho’s prior feature, the dystopian Snowpiercer (2016), knows what’s about to happen. It’s a real disappointment. An ending like this lacks any poignancy. No character reflects on what they’ve done, no character vows to change their ways, no character reaches a goal. It kind of feels climactic, because there’s blood, but what has been resolved? Argh, wasted premise!
I can’t deny what’s obvious: Parasite is one of the most inventive movies of the year, and has some of its funniest and scariest scenes. I have to give special recognition to Cho Yeo-Jeong, who plays the clueless mom of the Park family and is responsible for virtually all of the movie’s satire. But while many have said that Parasite is Joon-Ho’s breakout after the impressive Snowpiercer, I say that it’s about on par with Snowpiercer: another nightmare of class conflict—improbable, bloody, and cruel—that falls back on its director’s fetishes at pivotal moments. Joon-Ho may have big dreams, but his director’s playbook is still too small to fill them.
#4: The Irishman
This was the hardest movie for me to rank among the nominees. We’re dealing with strictly legendary talents across the board here, and they don’t disappoint: Scorsese weaves his camera with his usual ironic flair, Pacino and Pesci steal scene after scene, and of course De Niro truck-drives us through the life of an average Joe who ascends into the upper echelons of organized crime.
At times, though, these legends seem to be displaying their brilliance in a vacuum, with no larger purpose to their scenes. It’s like watching hall-of-fame baseball players take batting practice: it’s entertaining, but without the context of a real game, there’s just no thrill to it. For example, in one particularly well-done scene in The Irishman, a hit is executed in a barbershop, complete with great set design, stylish narration, and Scorsese’s signature tracking camera playing its fun tricks. But what’s the point of this scene? It doesn’t lead anywhere; it’s just another hit job in a movie with many, many hit jobs. The hittee wasn’t even a character, but I guess he’s dead now. Scene after scene is just like this: acted perfectly and shot beautifully, but without any clarity about what kind of story it’s meant to be a part of. At times you want to shake the elderly Frank Sheeran, narrating all of this for us, and ask: what is your point??
Maybe Scorsese doesn’t feel the need to make a point at this stage in his career. He’s playing with house money (hiya, Netflix), so he can direct the kinds of scenes he likes to direct and let us figure out the rest. I’m up to the challenge, so here it goes: I think The Irishman is a film about evil. The three main characters represent the three ways of arriving at it. Pesci’s Russ Bufalino represents cold, calculating logic: fixated on results, devoid of feeling. Pacino’s Jimmy Hoffa is wild vengeance: uncontrolled, unforgiving, maniacal. And De Niro’s Frank Sheeran is the worst of all: unthinking loyalty.
Sheeran doesn’t seem like much of a villain for most of the story; after all, he’s liked by everyone and merely follows orders. But toward the end of the film, when a priest hears Sheeran’s “confession,” and he attempts to reconcile with his family, the truth becomes evident: this simply is a man with no morals. Unlike Michael Corleone in The Godfather Part II, the film’s closest non-Scorsese parallel, and unlike even the grim reaper-like Russ, who seeks out a priest voluntarily before his death, Sheeran feels no remorse for what he’s done—not even the killing of his best friend. The only thing he knows is loyalty to Russ (he goes to a priest because Russ did it first); nothing else registers. No wonder the gangsters liked him so much. Sometimes, I suppose, likeability is a poor barometer for goodness: many people only cherish those they can control, and the absence of a moral compass can, in such cases, be an immense social aid.
#3: Joker
I already devoted an entire article in praise to this movie, and if you’ve read it, you may only be wondering, given my tenor in that piece, why I didn’t rank it #1.
Well, most of the film’s deficiencies spring from its unfortunate responsibilities to its source material: Bruce Wayne’s parents die again (ugh), Arkham Asylum is name checked, etc. It’s really too bad, because this version of the Joker has at most superficial similarities to the comic book version; it would have been more appropriate just to give the character a new name and acknowledge that the creative team started from scratch. But then again, such a movie wouldn’t have grossed over a billion dollars, so.
The screenplay is also heavy-handed and lame at times (“You’re on seven different medications, Arthur…”), which I can’t overlook. Still, I stand by my praise in my original article, and I sincerely hope that Joker’s authentic grappling with present day issues, even in the face of controversy, inspires similarly discussion-provoking movies in the near future.
#2: 1917
When you go to a movie theater, 1917 is exactly what you want to experience. It’s smart, scenic, powerful, and it doesn’t waste your time: within minutes, the action has begun, and it never stops. Character development isn’t sacrificed either for this expediency: director Sam Mendes works it into the action with skill and feeling.
Mendes puts dialogue in the backseat, which I always prefer—we’re watching a movie, after all, not listening to a podcast—and the film’s visuals and music create overwhelming tension throughout, placing the viewer right with the main character as he experiences the brutality and confusion of war. In an early scene, he accidentally sticks his finger with barbed wire, and Mendes makes clear that the character is in real pain despite the mundane nature of the injury, a bold directing choice. It pays off, because we know thenceforth that Lance Corporal Schofield is no Marvel superhero, which allows his final dash across a developing battlefield to be the showstopper that it is. In fact, it’s the kind of movie moment that reminds one of the highlights of old Hollywood: an act of individual heroism captured in an original shot that peaks the emotional arc of the film.
I loved 1917, but I admit that I have a strange feeling that it’ll soon be forgotten, even if it does win Best Picture, as it’s predicted to. Like Dunkirk (2017) before it, 1917 uses the newest technology to spike maximum adrenaline. But how long before even newer technology spikes even more adrenaline? In this genre, the next big effort is never far behind: Dunkirk has already faded from memory a bit. We’ll see how history treats Mendes’ impressive filmmaking achievement.
#1: Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood
What is going on in this movie? That’s what I thought to myself a half-hour into Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood, when no plot lines seemed to be forming, and alarmingly long tangents were being indulged. It might be a pretty movie, I thought, but where was Tarantino going with this?
The film, essentially, revolves around a fading actor (played by Leo Decaprio) and his loyal stuntman (Brad Pitt), the latter a WWII veteran, in 1960’s Hollywood. Already this exposition is interesting: DeCaprio’s character is an actor, but Pitt’s character, the handy veteran, is the real thing—the kind of rough hero that DeCaprio’s character plays onscreen. But since all of this is itself an actual movie, we can observe that Brad Pitt himself is doing the sort of job—playing the rugged hero—that Decaprio’s character does in the film. The two characters, their actors, and their occupations reflect back on each other in this mind-bending manner, leading to the question: who, if anyone, is the most authentic in this setup? Pitt’s character? DeCaprio’s character? Pitt? DeCaprio’s character’s…character? My advice: don’t think about it as much as I have.
What follows from this heady premise is even riper for analysis. Essentially, Tarantino is chronicling the end of Hollywood’s Golden Age, which is often marked historically with the brutal murder of Sharon Tate and four others at the hands of Charles Manson’s followers in 1969. But when this moment inevitably arrives for Tarantino to portray, something strange happens: it doesn’t happen. Instead, through a fortunate coincidence, Manson’s followers are redirected toward the war-trained Cliff Booth (Pitt), who whoops the three of them with the help of his trusty dog and his friend Rick Dalton (DeCaprio), who incinerates a would-be killer.
Tarantino, then, rewrites the tragic history of the Golden Age—especially tragic in his eyes, because, as his scenes make clear, he adores the work of this period—using the rules of the very films and shows that comprised it. The rules are as follows: good guys win in style, bad guys get their asses kicked.
We shouldn’t be surprised: the movie is called Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood for a reason. It doesn’t show how things were or are; it shows how things would have been if the Golden Age’s ethos were reality. Many other scenes exemplify this. In one, Booth rides out to the Spahn Ranch, where Manson’s followers are living. But instead of being killed, as stuntman Donald Shea was on that actual ranch in August 1969, Booth coolly beats up a menacing “hippie,” demands he change his tires for him, and rides away untouched. The moment feels surreal—because it is. In real life, a stuntman was murdered; in “Once Upon a Time” land, as in the shows and movies of 1960’s Hollywood, cool vets like Booth always come out on top.
In another example, former star Dalton shows up to a new set hungover and struggles with his lines, while a dedicated child star puts him to shame. We know where this is going: he’ll screw it all up, escalate his drinking, let his career spiral into oblivion, and die a sad death. But wait! In “Once Upon a Time” land, Dalton somehow forces himself to learn his lines during break, crushes his scene, and awes the child prodigy. This leads to some decent roles in solid Spaghetti Westerns, and along the way he finds a wife in Italy. At the close of the movie, he’s about to meet big shot director Roman Polanski, promising even more success. Huh?
Many have said that Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood is Tarantino’s “love letter” to the Golden Age—so many, in fact, to provide near-insurmountable proof that top critics plagiarize one another so as not to be outliers. And indeed, Tarantino makes clear that he loves this period. But the effect of his complex filmmaking is much darker than such a simple summary implies. When Sharon Tate walks inside at the film’s close unharmed, we don’t feel happy—at least I didn’t. We feel, despite Tarantino’s ahistorical interventions, the sadness of her death. We feel reminded that in real life, good guys don’t always kick bad guys’ asses. Each of Tarantino’s choices only emphasizes that. He knows that he’s created a fantasy world, and he knows that we know that he has. Thus, every time he averts an imminent tragedy with the brazen gusto of the Golden Age—so unconvincing when applied to real history—we feel it all the more.
–Jim Andersen
For more rankings, see my reviews of Best Picture nominees from 2021.