Every year I try to, at the minimum, see every film nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards because, even though I know the nominated films are in no way certain to be the best pictures of the year, it at least gives an easy starting point and likely the movies won't be total trash. I like to be aware of pop culture to at least a middling extent and so using the Oscars as base line seems serviceable to me. This year, with MoviePass, I saw all 8 films nominated for Best Picture and now here I will rank them in order of my favorites with a short bit about my thoughts.
Also, a quick aside I have a personal rating system for things that started in college with the discussion of women's attractiveness (feel free to judge and berate me, I quite possibly deserve it). Because I like the basic premise of the system which strives to be as simple as possible instead of splitting hairs over the merits of a 1-10 scale, I have decided to use said scale , slightly modified, to rate movies. The scale goes like this:
0: Nope. Would not. Don't go.
1: Not good but if I was really high would be fine.
2: Would see.
3: Must see.
I've included each movie's rating beneath the title.
8. Room
0
I really did not enjoy this movie. Of the bunch it was the only one I considered leaving in the middle of. The story is frustrating and the little boy almost killed me. Also the time in the room seemed overly long or not long enough, though I'm unclear which. I think I would have preferred for the movie to focus either more on the effects of the room afterwards or during but splitting half and half led to a kind of disjointed film with the son character being entirely insufferable. Brie Larson is going to the win the Oscar for Best Actress and that is fine. She gives a good performance and envelops the character. I think I'd favor Saoirse Ronan from Brooklyn but that could very well be my bias in that I liked Brooklyn substantially more. I will certainly agree that Larson's role has a higher degree of difficulty and nuance but I'm not sure she carries the film as well as Ronan does. This list was hard to order in the middle parts but Room was very easily my choice for worst of all the options.
7. Brooklyn
2
Honestly I feel pretty bad putting Brooklyn at 7 because it makes it seem like it is only marginally better than Room when in actuality it is a substantially better film all around I think. If I were giving movies grades instead of just ranking the Oscar nominations, Room would have a 3 while Brooklyn would earn somewhere in the neighborhood of a respectable 7. As touched on briefly above, Ronan's performance in Brooklyn is pretty good and the movie is just overall a well made production. I don't really have terribly much to say about it other than that.
6. Spotlight
2
It is very possible I should swap the positioning of Brooklyn and Spotlight. Both films hit the same technically solid notes and both are well acted pieces. I gave Spotlight the edge because I find the story slightly more engaging than the romance of Brooklyn. That being said, Brooklyn definitely had more heart to the tale whereas Spotlight sometimes felt like watching a movie by numbers, wherein a machine attempted to create an Academy Award winning film. And frankly, I should probably dock it some points for Mark Ruffalo's performance which I found to be waaaaay to try-hard, especially his big monologue which couldn't have been a more blatant attempt of Oscar baiting if Bugs Bunny had been holding a neon sign behind him during it saying "They like me, they really like me."
5. Bridge of Spies
2
Like both Brooklyn and Spotlight, Bridge of Spies is a movie that more impressed me for the general craft of the director than for the film itself. The story is engaging enough and the acting is strong. I strongly believe Mark Rylance deserves the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor even though Stallone is impeccable in Creed because, and this is both unfair and insane, but Rylance had to act whereas Stallone just kind of was himself and the few times he had to reach, didn't exactly hit the mark for me. Anyway, a film hard to find fault with but lacking in a certain joie de vivre for it to rank any higher.
4. The Martian
2
I'm gonna be honest here I did not expect to like this movie when I watched it. For some reasons the previews made me have absolutely 0 interest in it and if I didn't get MoviePass and decide to embark on this little escapade then there is a high chance I'd have never seen The Martian. And that would've been unfortunate because I loved this movie. It was funny and interesting and Matt Damon honestly probably deserves the Oscar for carrying a film which could have easily turned to shit but miraculously didn't. The only reason it comes in 4th on my list is because the films above it do some more daring or impressive stuff but I enjoyed it as much if not more than any film on this list save #1.
3. The Big Short
2
Good all around movie with a captivating story. I'm not overly hyped about the performances in the film like everyone else seems to be, and honestly Bale's turn as Michael Burry felt less "eccentric" and more distractingly Asperger's which, if that is narratively true then my apologies for being a dick but if, as I read it, is the way Bale is choosing to portray an eccentric investor then it isn't something I enjoyed or valued. But really, this movie would've finished in the top 3 even if the rest of the film was total shit because the first expository cut away to Margot Robbie in a bubble bath explaining subprime mortgages was an incredible piece of film-making and pure fucking genius.
2. The Revenant
2
Alejandro G. Iñárritu is a motherfucking genius. Seriously.
I loved Birdman and completely thought it deserved the Oscar last year. I don't
love The Revenant but I did enjoy it quite a bit and the directorial choices
Iñárritu makes are stellar. He really understands how to frame scenes and use
the camera. His story telling is dynamic and honestly I am just in love with
his work. My only qualms with the film are that it slightly fell prey to a
Tarantinoian desire for overt violence that could maybe have been better served
with less and DiCaprio's performance. Let me be clear, he doesn't give a bad
performance and he is going to win his first Best Actor most assuredly, but it
is definitely not his best performance. Leo's performance is like Ruffalo's
over-the-top Oscar scene only stretched out for 2 hours (and admittedly
significantly better). It is so visceral with so much physicality that I
started to wonder whether his desperation was to survive or if Leo's own need
for an Oscar was creeping through. Leo getting the Oscar this year is similar
to his benefactor Scoresese winning for The Departed: sure it is a good but it
isn't his best and really the award is more of a lifetime achievement coupled
with a weak field than a particularly stand out effort especially in comparison
to the balance of his work. But the movie was still excellent.
1. Mad Max: Fury Road
3 (1)*
Best movie of the year and frankly it isn't even close. One
of the few films I've seen where I wasn't even sure what was happening when I
watched it. A triumph of cinema and one that I am confident will live on for
years afterwards, much more so than any of the other films here. I expected to
see a 100 million dollar B-movie action whirlwind and what I got was the best
action film since Die Hard and a technically superior film to that as well. I
genuinely don't think I can find a single thing I didn't love about this movie.
It is iconic and brilliant and marvelous, visually stunning and paced like a
ferret on triple frame rate. It is awaited in cinema's Valhalla, shiney and
chrome.
*Movie is a 3 (must see) but is so visually incredible it
would also be pretty great to see whilst intoxicated.
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