Who Should Really Win An Oscar

Like many cinephiles, I have a complex relationship with the Oscars. It’s not nearly as shameful as the Grammys, but still, The Harmony Korines, Béla Tarrs, Gaspar Noes and Lars von Triers of the film industry are never nominated. Instead, the 86th Academy Awards — which takes place tonight — normally advocates hefty dramas without ambiguity, experimentation, nor dick jokes. Still, I persist to hold onto hope that my own idiosyncratic tastes will, eventually, be validated by an awards ceremony I marginally respect — and there are always so many pretty dresses!

As usual, this year’s films nominated only overlap slightly with my favorites of 2013. But it seems like maybe the Oscars’ palette is expanding, or at least becoming more daring, leading them to embrace a philosophical romantic comedy about human-siri love, a Hayao Miyazaki film, and even The Act of Killing. While I’m not necessarily holding my breath for most, I am eager at the possibility of some of these nominees taking home a statue of a shiny gold man.

Here are my personal picks for the major categories.

Best Animated Feature:

The Wind Rises

A master of narrative pacifism in cinema (his villains are never really villains, but simply misunderstood characters), Hayao Miyazaki’s final film finds him dealing with pre-WWI Japan life through the eyes of an ambitious young flight engineer whose inventions ultimately became weapons of mass destruction. With his trademark flights of fancy here instead confined to the world of dreams, Miyazaki directs a slow-burning lament for the arms industry while delivering the rare animated film that nobly tests the limits of sincerity rather than drowning you in it. And yes, you can bring your kids.

Best Foreign Film:

The Hunt (Denmark)

The Oscars usually plays it safe when awarding sugar-coated miss-steps for a place in film history, and they’ve certainly committed this sin plenty when picking a mixed bag of unusual foreign films. Last year I felt most films were overstuffed, overhyped critic darlings being shoved down my throat, so I appreciated a film where Mads Mikkelsen’s stray dog looks represented an alternative to his town ruled by alpha-men. What begins with the best of intentions becomes the worst nightmare for any man that transforms him into a target misplaced sexual and social hatred. Subtle and expertly executed, The Hunt was not your typical thriller, gripping you with a tale of moral justice gone horribly wrong.

Best Documentary:

The Act of Killing

Duh. What, did you think I was going to pick, none of the other nominees in this category even came close. There’s no argument about which film, let alone documentary, was one of my favorites from last year. The Act of Killing was not just better made than other films, it was revelatory and disturbing. Director Joshua Oppenheimer’s access to the horrifying practices of Indonesian death squad leaders Anwar Congo and Adi Zulkadry was almost unbelievable. How surreal was it to watch mass murderers reenact torture and executions with laughter and joy? It was visceral, nightmarish, terrible, and true. When you are exposed to atrocities, the images can stay in your head for weeks. But The Act of Killing was epochal in film-making. The carnival atmosphere of Congo and Zulkadry’s films was as repulsive as it was strange, and their preferred method of strangling by wire made torture porn seem humdrum. As I write this, I can see that fat, repulsive Zulkadry in a headdress and eyeshadow, sitting on his throne and holding up a severed head. That visual will not go away any time soon. The fact that te western world was complicit in the atrocities or turned a blind eye was not what was most surprising. It was that these events occurred, and we have living human proof.

Best Actress in a Supporting Role:

Lupita Nyong’o (12 Years a Slave)

It should be easy to look away from 12 Years a Slave. At times I wanted to. But the film is alluring, drawing us in with beautiful cinematography, clever narrative points, and, of course, masterfully poignant performances. Chiwetel Ejiofor, Quvenzhané Wallis, Michael Fassbender, Michael K. Williams, and Benedict Cumberbatch all, at one point or another, almost halt the film’s barrage of true historical horror, to turn it into a thing of exquisite meditation instead of inescapable despair. But Lupito Nyong’o manages to execute both with ease. As the slave named Patsey, Nyong’o becomes a site physically and psychologically scarred with America’s history of dehumanization and misogyny. Even as the film breaks her down into less than an object, she is always more than just a body. It’s as if the character isn’t debuting on the big screen, but rather has been there all along.

Best Actor in a Supporting Role:

Jonah Hill (Wolf of Wall St)

Who else thought it was so terrific to watch Jonah Hill pull off this character? Admit it. We could spend hours talking about the films excess and the problems with the implications it ignores e.g. The Financial Sector = Evil, but what’s important here is Hill got rid of his acting-like-Jonah-Hill tendencies to play one of the slimiest and touchingly pitiful characters ever filmed. It’s not often a performer initially famous for slapstick comedy can pull off a meatier role without reinvention, but Hill’s acting in The Wolf of Wall Street seemed natural yet accomplished.

Best Actress in a Leading Role:

Sandra Bullock (Gravity)

(Note: I haven't seen Cate Blanchett in Blue Jasmine yet, which seems to be everyones favorite)

Sandra Haters: Along with Gravity, she was in The Heat last year, which was awful; she was in not just Miss Congeniality once, but twice; The Blind Side; Crash, Speed 2 etc.

Sandra Lovers: She was in Speed. Almost twenty years later she acted against a green screen in Gravity and still delivered. Somehow, being in a movie that was put together on computers diminishes a performance to people; Sandra knows otherwise. Sandra knows that acting against nothing is hard, but she also knows that she can own it just like she owns everything else and all of us. Sandra knows that all those fancy graphics and animations aren’t what made Gravity whatever it was; it was her fevered breath, frantic screaming, utter mastery. She knows. She is not scared.

Best Actor in a Leading Role:

Matthew McConaughey (Dallas Buyers Club)

It’s been barely three years since the start of the much talked about McConaissance, but McCounaghey’s role as a white trash, homophobic Texan who contracts AIDS might be his magnum-opus from climbing out of the rom-com swamp. Post-Buyers Club, there seems to be little chance the actor will return to making bullshit like Maid in Manhattan or Surfer, Dude: on his follow-up, the T.V. show True Detective, McCounaghey’s performance as an existential mystery-detective gives new fans like me more thrills each week than Dallas Buyers Club did in its entirety. Still, Dallas Buyers Club in my opinion stands alone as the only film nominated for Best Picture that owes nearly everything to its lead actor’s performance.

Best Director:

Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave)

Except for American Hustle (am I the only one who thought this movie was empty, flashy and a boring mess?) this was not an easy choice for me. Scorcese made his most energetic film since Bringing Out The Dead, Cuarón made a benchmark sci-fi that immersive good on the promise of Children of Men, and Payne made my favorite film of his career. But Steve McQueen sticks out as a powerfully determined film maker that took a awards-made project and made it his own work of art. He’s a fucking serious film maker. Throughout his career, whatever story McQueen might be telling, he makes sure the raw emotions are there. A member of his audience doesn’t get a chance to contemplate (or sometimes even exhale) – we’re just immersed. Unquestionably creative, resonant story tellers such as himself are desperately needed and are certainly the reason for any award show to exist in the film industry.

Best Picture:

12 Years a Slave

Although I was impressed by Captain Phillips, loved Nebraska, and was moved in one way or another by most of this year’s nominees, nothing overwhelmed me like the gorgeous, horrific 12 Years A Slave. From a narrative standpoint the film is nearly perfect. I’ve written in abundance why this film deserves your attention, from the cinematography, so beautiful it heightens the dread and isolation woven into the landscape, to Chiwetel Ejiofor’s reaffirming performance as Northup. 12 Years A Slave is an imposing piece of art that delivers everything the Academy could desire for a Best Picture winner – it’s a period piece, it’s a gritty biographical drama, blah blah blah – but it also pushes back at the audience in ways most of the recent winners of the Academy’s top prize have not. Seriously: Let’s stop fucking around and give Steve McQueen the award already.