It’s another year and another set of Best Picture nominees to compare and rank accordingly.  This is a rare year in that hadn’t seen ANY of the pictures before the nominations were announced, so I had to do some cram-watching.

There is a popular theory in storytelling that there are only 7 basic plots that all stories fit into.  This became a theme for me as I watched these films and had feelings that many were tweaked  versions of other movies that I had seen before.  The films stacked up oddly for me this year.   About half of this year’s nominees would have trouble being nominated in other years, but still there are no films that I severely dislike as I did in previous years (I’m looking at you Birdman, The Revenant and Mad Max).  Let’s get started.

Lion (4.5 outta 5)

Based on a true story about a 5 year old Indian boy getting lost from his family and his quest to find them two decades later, Lion is clearly the best of this bunch.  The film is split into two parts: the calamitous event that resulted in the boy finding himself 1,500 miles from his home and the grown man trying to trace back what happened in an effort to find home.   Saroo, the main character, is played by child actor Sunny Pawar and later portrayed by Dev Patel.  In filming Sunny Pawar, they could not have made him look any smaller or helpless than they did.  This hooks you in for the rest of the film.  Of course, the first movie this compares to is Slumdog Millionaire, which also starred Patel and dealt with the forgotten children in the streets of Calcutta, but Lion has a much more focused view in portraying Saroo’s journey.  Nicole Kidman does a great job as Saroo’s adoptive Austrialian mother.  I’m pretty bummed at the lack of buzz for this film as a potential winner.  It’s really good.  If you havent yet, GO SEE IT.

Arrival (4 outta 5)

Close Encounters of the Third Kind if M. Night Shyamalan directed it.  Amy Adams portrays linguist tasked with trying to communicate with aliens that have suddenly ported their spacecraft on earth.  The Adams character and her scientist cohort played by Jeremy Renner actually enter the spacecraft hovering over American soil (several ships have arrived all over the world) to learn the basics of each others language in order to converse.  Adams comes to learn the alien’s language is not linear like ours and this factors into their way of thinking and viewing life.  This film introduces some pretty high concepts that provokes a lot of post viewing thought and questions. Recommend.

Fences (3.75 outta 5)

Based on the August Wilson play, Fences is set in 1950’s Pittsburgh and follows 50-something black garbage collector, Troy Maxon and his wife of 18 years, Rose.  Denzel Washington and Viola Davis reprise the roles they both won Tonys for in the 2010 revival of the play.  The film still has the beats of a stage production.

Washington, who also serves as a first time director, plays Maxon like many of his characters: immediately accessible, but as we get to know him, we sense a simmering, acerbic discontent that climaxes to a boiling point.  Maxon feels the world coming down around him as he is  growing older as a black man a decade before the Civil Rights Movement.  The maddening struggle in trying to  reconcile where his own shortcomings end and the limitations enforced by systemic prejudice begin eats at him throughout the film.

Viola Davis’ performance is the highlight of the film.  She’s a lock for the Best Supporting Actress award.  She very well could have been in the Best Actress category.

Hidden Figures (3.5 outta 5)

Based on the true story of three black women who were crucial players in NASA’s efforts in the 1960’s space race settles in like a fine comfort food.  That comfort is also why it isn’t higher on my list.  It often plays like a made for TV movie that you would see perhaps on HBO or Showtime.  There isn’t much character depth here.

I love any story about smart women.  Smart women are hot.  It’s also nice to see Taraji P. Henson in a non-Empire role.  I’m sorry, but I hated that kind of crap TV when it was called Dallas and Dynasty (Get off my lawn!!).  I also must say that  personally I’ve grown mega tired of the white hero trope in these stories of people overcoming prejudice. The Kevin Costner character isn’t a hero for doing the right thing, the problem is there weren’t (and aren’t) enough people doing the right thing until it directly affects them.  Still, the over all feel-good tone of the film is refreshing.

La La Land (3 outta 5)

Ranking this film was hardest for me.  In La La Land, Ryan Gosling’s Sebastion is a struggling musician with aspirations to open his own jazz club that meets Mia, played by the resoundingly mediocre Emma Stone, who is an aspiring young actress.

Neither Gosling or Stone are particularly good singers or dancers, so it is peculiar that they are both cast in this musical in which the two leads are involved in nearly all the music.  In fact, it’s not a stretch to say the two best songs in the movie do not include either lead.  “Another Day of Sun”, the energetic opening ensemble number set in a LA traffic jam (think R.E.M.’s video for “Everybody Hurts”, but really happy) and “Start A Fire” with vocals provided by John Legend both rise above all the Gosling/Stone work.

Somehow, this film lives up to adage “The whole is greater than the sum of it’s parts.” Thanks Aristole! There is enough nostalgia in the depiction of the whimsical old Cinescope musicals that the charm of the movie is hard to deny.  I’m giving it this ranking, but I feel dirty about it because I know I’m being manipulated.

Oh yeah –  hey Hollywood, cut it out with the self-congratulatory Oscar bait movies about your own industry.  They’ve done this twice before in recent history, with Birdman (2015) and The Artist (2012) both winning best picture.

Moonlight (3 outta 5)

Mahershala Ali gives the best performance of all the Best Picture nominated films in his portrayal of Juan, a drug dealer who becomes a male role model for Chiron, a painfully introverted 5 year old boy from a broken home.  Ali is nominated for Best Supporting Actor for the role.  I’ve seen all the other performances except for Michael Shannon’s in Noctural Animals and judging by what I’ve seen Ali deserves to win.  Ali and Janelle Monae, who plays Juan’s girlfriend Teresa, were both also in Hidden Figures.  Actor Stephen Henderson also appeared in two of the nominees, as Denzel Washington’s best friend in Fences and a single scene in Manchester By The Sea.

Ali’s performance is so strong, that you miss him when he is not on-screen.   The film tracks the life of Chiron with time jumps that follow him through pivotal moments during 3 points in his life. Those jumps gave me a Boyhood feel.

Hell Or High Water (2.75 outta 5)

A less interesting No Country For Old Men.  It’s a solid, well shot western/heist film set in the Texas plains. Jeff Bridges does good work in his Best Supporting Actor nominated role of the old Texas Ranger days before his retirement in pursuit of two bank robbing brothers (Chris Pine and Ben Foster).  I’m calling it now: Chris Pine will win an Academy Award in the next 5 years.  I think he’s going to start getting those jobs that Matt Damon is too old for now.

Hacksaw Ridge (2.5 outta 5)

How in the hell is Mel Gibson still able to work on anything?  A film based on a true story, Andrew Garfield plays a conscientious objector on the front lines of the WWII battlefield in Hacksaw Ridge.  As the only soldier to be on the front lines in WWII without a weapon, he was credited on saving 75 lives. Again, this is another film that could be seen as a TV Movie, with the exception of the battle scenes that definitely remind the viewer of Saving Private Ryan.

Manchester By The Sea (2.5 outta 5)

I really don’t get the praise heaped on this film.  Casey Affleck plays a custodian living in a tiny below ground apartment in Boston that returns to his small New England hometown when his brother dies suddenly.  He must then deal with the grief of losing his brother while acting as the guardian to the his 16 year old nephew.  As he stays in Manchester, he must also come to terms with the reasons why he left.  This is the kind of movie you’d find while flipping around cable on lazy weekend and 2 hrs later, you’d be surprised that you watched it until the end.  Fine work, but nothing special.

It appears that the front-runners to win this category are La La Land or Moonlight.  It should be Lion.