Golden Globe Predictions

Perhaps not our favorite night of the year, perhaps not even the second.... Regardless, some feel that the Golden Globes hold some weight when it comes to final Oscar outcome. Meaning: Globe winners influence Academy voters. 

Wrong. 

Regardless, this Sunday (January 12th), the Golden Globes will officially kick off the televised awards season, and with some excitement, we can finally see some speeches, dresses, snubs, and triumphs. As they are one of the first major awards to be presented, predicting a winner is oftentimes a shot in the dark. Regardless, these are the official picks of MoJo. 

Best Picture, Drama

1. 12 Years A Slave

2. Gravity

3. Captain Phillips

4. Philomena

5. Rush

A stark lineup of films. In 'normal' situations, the film with the most nominations (12 Years A Slave = 7) is the front-runner. With the Globes, anything is fair game. Gravity has some supporters, but the Hollywood Foreign Press (who votes for these awards) might have a hard time turning down the largely British ensemble that made up "12 Years." 

Best Picture, Musical or Comedy

 1. American Hustle

2. Nebraska

3. Inside Llewyn Davis

4. The Wolf of Wall Street

5. Her

Wow! What a lineup. Without a doubt the strongest grouping of "comedy/musical" films the Globes has ever collected (remember when "The Tourist" was a nominee?). Reaction to "Wall Street" was slim, and with "Hustle" receiving the most nominations (7), and with David O. Russell due from last year, this would make sense. 

Best Actor, Drama

1. Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave)

2. Robert Redford (All Is Lost)

3. Matthew McConaughey (Dallas Buyers Club)

4. Tom Hanks (Captain Phillips)

5. Idris Elba (Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom)

Another impressive lineup. In theory, I think any of the top 4 have a shot. Hanks has the popularity the Globes love, McConaughey had the breakthrough role, Redford has the legacy, and Ejiofor has the best film. My God let's just take this leap and assume Chiwetel will be our guy. 

Best Actress, Drama

1. Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine)

2. Sandra Bullock (Gravity)

3. Judi Dench (Philomena)

4. Emma Thompson (Saving Mr. Banks)

5. Kate Winslet (Labor Day)

The most suspense in this category is whether Kate will be seated near Leo.

Best Actor, Comedy or Musical

1. Bruce Dern (Nebraska)

2. Christian Bale (American Hustle)

3. Leonardo DiCaprio (Wolf of Wall Street)

4. Inside Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac)

5. Joaquin Phoenix (Her)

If there's a 'funny' performance, the Globes aren't afraid to snatch it, regardless of critical acclaim (Robert Downey in Sherlock Homes, Sasha Baron Cohen in Borat, etc). With this lineup, though, they might just go with their favorite film, and seeing Bruce Dern in stage could be a very touching moment. (Many think Leo has this in the bag. That's difficult for me to see happening, but I may be proven very wrong)

Best Actress, Comedy or Musical

1. Amy Adams (American Hustle)

2. Meryl Streep (August: Osage County)

3. Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Enough Said)

4. Julie Delpy (Before Midnight)

5. Greta Gerwig (Frances Ha)

The Globes LOVE Meryl. LOVE. My God, she has 8 of them already. Her performance isn't even terrible - in fact she may be the only person in this list to receive an Oscar nomination. But what about Amy Adams? I don't know... Hustle is most likely winning the Globe, and Adams isn't a stranger to Globe nominations... Part of me wants to go out on a limb and pick someone like Louis-Dreyfus, and part of me wants Meryl at #1. I may regret this choice...

Best Supporting Actor

1. Jared Leto (Dallas Buyers Club)

2. Bradley Cooper (American Hustle)

3. Michael Fassbender (12 Years a Slave)

4. Barkhad Abdi (Captain Phillips)

5. Daniel Bruhl (Rush)

Going back to 2007, this category has lined up with the Oscars every time. Safe bet now would be to pick the current Oscar front-runner.  Lots of buzz surrounding Fassbender, but his character is almost TOO villainous to win. When villains win, they're generally a fun character (The Joker, Hans Landa). A slave-beating Bible-quoting fiend is just too.... heavy....

Best Supporting Actress

1. Jennifer Lawrence (American Hustle)

2. Lupita N'yongo (12 Years a Slave)

3. June Squibb (Nebraska)

4. Julia Roberts (August: Osage County)

5. Sally Hawkins (Blue Jasmine)

As of now, I would predict Lupita to have a slight advantage at the Oscars. Again, though, the Globes are first and foremost a spectacle - they want the star power, they want the young viewers, they want popular winners, and who's a more popular actress than Jennifer Lawrence? (She's the only thing that has been universally raved about in the film, too). 

Best Director

1. Gravity: Alfonso Cuarón

2. 12 Years a Slave: Steve McQueen

3. American Hustle: David O. Russell

4. Captain Phillips: Paul Greengrass

5. Nebraska: Alexander Payne

The last time the winner here went on to Oscar glory was Danny Boyle in 2008... By that logic, Gravity seems like a great choice: high-tech, visual, smart. Don't forget that James Cameron won for Avatar and Scorsese won for Hugo. This makes sense. 

Best Screenplay

1. American Hustle

2. Philomena: Steve Coogan, Jeff Pope

3. 12 Years a Slave: John Ridley

4. Nebraska: Bob Nelson

5. Her: Spike Jonze 

Gah. We know 12 Years will win Adapted Screenplay at the Oscars. Shouldn't it win here? American Hustle would make sense, but movies rarely win a sweep at the Globes (here we have it winning 4 awards). Philomena received a good collection of nominations, maybe they'll want to throw it a bone?

Best Original Score

1. Gravity

2. 12 Years a Slave 

3. The Book Thief

4. All Is Lost

5. Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom

Best Original Song

1. Frozen "Let It Go"

2. Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom "Ordinary Love"

3. Inside Llewyn Davis "Please Mr Kennedy" 

4. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire "Atlas"

5. One Chance "Sweeter than Fiction"

Best Animated Film

1. Frozen

2. The Croods

3. Despicable Me 2

Best Foreign Language Film

1. The Great Beauty

2. Blue Is the Warmest Color

3. The Wind Rises

4. The Past

5. The Hunt

Happy watching, everyone!

The Wolf of Wall Street (*****)

3 hours long and I wore a smile on my face the entire time. A Scorsese movie that is his greatest achievement since "Goodfellas," over 20 years ago. A stellar cast, an explosive screen experience, powerful, extremely funny, and far too controversial for its own good, I dare you to try and find a fault with "The Wolf of Wall Street." Go ahead, try me.

Cinema, yes, has its roots in characters, and it seems like most characters in modern film find their roots in Martin Scorsese. From "Raging Bull" to "Taxi Driver" to "The Departed," the films become less about plot and more about the on-screen portrayal of something transcendent, whether it's a violent boxer or a gangster or Howard Hughes. It's not always easy to pinpoint a Scorsese movie outside of the fast cuts and nostalgic soundtrack. Each of his films are as varied as they come, and on the heels of his recent triumph that is "Hugo," "Wolf" is a burst of energy into the comedy genre, full and grand and smart.

The story concerns Jordan Belfort, a broker who narrates his story (in a similar style to Ray Liotta's character in Goodfellas). He ascends the Wall Street ladder, moving to New York, only to form his own brokerage when his first job goes belly up. He tells us how he made $49 million his first year, which annoyed him because it was just shy of $1 million a week. If that doesn't surmise a character in one sentence, then I don't know what will.

He meets Donnie Azoff (played by the incomparable Jonah Hill), a heavy, bleached-tooth guy with a passion for money. My God, he drops his job the second Belfort is able to show him one of his own paystubs. He is driven yet no less eccentric.

The underbellies of the stock market are spelled out plainly in the first act by Mark Hanna (Matthew McConaughey in yet another stellar (if short) performance), Belfort's first boss. Jordan's idea is to please the customer, make them money, do a service to the community. Hanna's advice? Jerk off twice a day and capitalize on greed. The scene, which takes place over lunch in a fancy New York City restaurant, is one of the best of the film - sharply written and perfectly balanced between comedy and the darker elements at play.

And capitalize Jordan does. Pretty soon, his company "Stratton Oakmont" (how professional sounding) moves from selling penny stocks (literally 3 cents a share) to being featured as a headline in Forbes Magazine. The money is rolling in, but so is the suspicion of the FBI, and in true Scorsese form, crime is always coupled with some sort of balance in the end.

What a ride. As a person inpartial to Leonardo DiCaprio's more recent work, his performance shows flashes of brilliance, echoing elements of Charles Foster Kane and Jake LaMotta. He has power in his position, and Jordan Belfort is a man I would believe could start up a successful brokerage. There are two scenes in which he addresses the company on stage with a microphone, and the level of focus he has in delivering the message is staggering. I was almost taken back by the power of the words he was saying, and though we know him to be a con man, he was someone I would follow right off a cliff.

His interactions with Jonah Hill as Donnie are classic, slapstick routines, and it is clear that the level of craftsmanship in filmmaking was matched toe-for-toe with on screen chemistry. Donnie is about as memorable a character as any I have seen this year, and though he is reprehensible to the bone, it's all the more admirable a performance. Does Scorsese know how to cast, or what.

From "American Hustle," to "Nebraska," and now "Wolf," 2013 might become the year of the unconventional comedy. How to decide on a favorite movie in a year as diverse as this is becoming all the more complicated. The more I reflect on this film, the more I appreciate. We see a man essentially living the American Dream, yet through illicit means, is his fulfillment of the dream any less real? His company has brought so many good people wealth, but since he is a criminal, is it all void? Perhaps Gordon Gekk has a point when he figured that 'greed is good.' Afterall, these men are not prone to charity...

The movie shocks viewers with its level of graphic content (think office party orgies, heaps of cocaine in the air, language that would turn your mother's cheeks red), and for sure this is a film that will throw off many viewers and offend that many more. No one ever said characters in films had to be likable. They just have to be real. And through lines of cocaine and prostitutes and bottles of quaaludes, there is truth to be found at the heart of "The Wolf of Wall Street." Whether or not any modicum of it can relate to us is debatable. I don't care. My God, after all this movie put me through, getting rich quick still sounds like a pretty good deal.....

(Awards potential: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (DiCaprio), Best Supporting Actor (Hill), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Editing, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Art Direction, Sound Mixing)

Frozen (****1/2)

"Frozen," following in the footsteps of "Tangled,"  "Wreck-It Ralph," and "The Princess and the Frog," represents a return to form for the original Disney Studio (not to be mistaken with Pixar, mind you). Now in a full-fledged swing with computer animation, we may be on the verge of a new Golden Age of the Disney Studio. In terms of animated films this year, this is one to beat (again, my apologies to Pixar).

When you think of Disney Princesses, I'm sure your mind immediately races to Cinderella, Ariel, Belle, all strong-minded women who can control the course of their fate. The Prince in all instances is merely an afterthought - the icing on the cake, so to say. What a pleasure to discover that here, we have two Princesses; sisters named Anna and Elsa. They live in an unnamed kingdom that resembles something along the lines of northern Russia or perhaps Sweden. It's remote, it's gorgeous, full of people and colorful characters.

Elsa, though, has a terrible secret, one that she hides from Anna - she has been born with (and not cursed, perhaps a little room here for the sequel) the powers of winter. And by winter, we mean she can literally summon snowfall and freeze anything on touch. She spends her life wearing gloves. She is afraid, with her powers mostly out of her control. In a moment of emotion during her coronation, she accidentally slips the Kingdom into an eternal winter and flees to the mountains, leaving her younger sister, Princess Anna, to try and solve the problem.

Along the way, she meets Kristoff, a blonde-haired northern European type with a reindeer. Together, they haul snow for a livelihood. As you can expect, business goes sour when ice is suddenly in abundance. He joins with Anna to try and end the sudden winter wonderland. You can guess what might happen to them along the way.... Let's just say the term "true love's kiss" is thrown around a few times.

I really admire this movie, and in a broad range of categories. Yes, it's a musical, and the songs are catchy and never overly-hokey. The wide range of details from costumes to sets are all miraculous, as are the animation sequences themselves. One scene depicts Elsa building an ice castle for herself far up the side of a steep slope. Set to a show-stopping song sung by Broadway legend Idina Menzel, it's simply gorgeous.

The theater I was with was absolutely packed, half kids, half adults, and though the running time was nearly 2 hours, the film managed to hold the attention of all watching. It's very much refreshing to see a movie that pulls from the best of your childhood favorites (Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, etc), and to see it done with such skill is even more special. Expect to be wowed.

(Awards potential: Best Animated Feature, Best Original Score, Best Original Song ("Let It Go," "For the First Time In Forever," "In Summer")

Saving Mr Banks (***1/2)

Who doesn't remember the joy of watching "Mary Poppins" as a child, or as an adult for that matter? My God, I still watch it, and the more I see it, the more I appreciate the technical aspects of the film, not to mention the unique and moving storyline. Who never wished to have their room swept up with the snap of their fingers, or fly into a painting at a moment's notice?

What "Saving Mr Banks" attempts to do, then, is find the source of such rich source material. The year is 1963, the author: PL Travers (Emma Thompson), a cold-hearted woman who only agrees to sell the rights to her beloved book on the condition that they do it "her way," meaning: no animation, and no singing. It looks like we're in for a bumpy ride...

Apparently, her books have been plaguing Walt Disney (Tom Hanks) for years, 20 to be exact. He's written her every year, trying to secure the film rights, and Travers ("please, please, Mrs. Travers") has repeatedly denied him.

The marvel of "Saving Mr Banks" is the feeling of the genuine. We see her sit in on the script revision sessions, where she is pitched everything from costumes to song ideas. She insists on tape-recording every session, and only when she feels content will she sign the papers to make Mary Poppins a reality. The fate of the film is in her tightly-clenched fists.

We see Disney, in an iconic performance by Hanks, as a man who clearly knows how to charm his way into a deal. He's Walt Disney, afterall. However, for reasons he can't even begin to grasp, he is unable to win over Mrs. Travers. To her, Poppins will be just another brick in the Disney legacy. For Disney, himself, it's a promise to his children.

Emma Thompson, who I haven't seen in a good performance in a while, is perfect. She is highly unlikeable, but as we get to know her, and her childhood, we begin to see the humanity in her absurd reasonings (she will not have pears present in her hotel, and there can be absolutely NO color red in the picture. Period). It's a marvelous role, simple, taught, and expertly acted. I would be surprised if this Oscar-winner did NOT receive an Academy nomination this year.

Same for Hanks, who at times is indistinguishable from the real Disney we know from video clips and photographs. He is a businessman, yes, he smokes, he flirts, but in the end, he is still a father trying to fulfill his own dreams, perfectly summed up in a scene between he and Travers in which we hear about Disney's childhood in rural Missouri.

The film is not without flaws, and for me, we are trudgened with extended flashbacks to Travers' childhood in Australia. Her father, a drunk, and her mother, a seemingly unhappy woman who begins to lose grip of her own home. Yes, I know we are trying to figure out why Travers is such an unhappy woman, but the awkward transitions between past and present are more jarring than anything. Of course, being produced by Disney, the film at times feels self-congratulatory, and we wonder what PL Travers would think of the adaptation of her own story to the big screen... Perhaps she would find that Disney, once again, white washes everything under a blanket of fairy dust and happy endings.

We are treated to a fabulous score by Thomas Newman (always an Oscar nominee....) and the set pieces are truly fantastic (both in Australia, London, and Los Angeles). Truly though, the strength of this film is in the two leading performances. John Lee Handcock (director of "The Blind Side" fame) is not necessarily a director one would call 'subtle,' but he manages to yield some great film moments. Perhaps they made the film simply to boost "Mary Poppins" sales on its 50th anniversary, or perhaps the story behind such a marvelous film was too good to pass up. In no way does "Saving Mr Banks" surpass its subject film, but it is still a well-rounded and entertaining movie, nonetheless.

(Awards potential: Best Actress (Thompson), Best Supporting Actor (Hanks), Best Costume Design, Best Art Direction, Best Original Score)

American Hustle (***1/2)

Jo says:

(I have revised my review of this film in lieu of a second viewing. The rating has been adjusted from a perfect ***** to ***1/2)

David O. Russell. A man of many films. A man of many actors. His past 3 films alone have garnered an unheard of 25 Oscar nominations. 11 acting nominations. He's obviously doing something right. His films are evocative, natural, focused on characters over story, and herein lies the problem with his latest caper. What initially struck me as a masterpiece comedy - the best con film since perhaps "The Sting" - has simply pulled the wool over the eyes of the audience. The con, in fact, seems to be on us. Here is a film that is glitz and glamour, yet with a simple repeated viewing, I realized it was merely a flash in the pan.

The film still functions on the merits of its plot. We meet Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale, in his career-best role), the great con artist who teams with Sydney Prosser aka Lady Edith Greensly aka Amy Adams, a woman from New Mexico posing as a lucrative Londoner who simply overflows with sex appeal. They are having an affair, because guess what? Rosenfeld is married with a child, and his wife is nutty in all the wrong ways (the ingenious Jennifer Lawrence). No matter, they meet FBI Agent Richard "Richie" DiMaso (Bradley Cooper). Together, they hope to bring down the Mayor of Camden, New Jersey. Together, they plan the ultimate heist. Or so we think. Or do we?

Simple, right? Not so fast. The film is littered with tidbits and supporting characters and locations - they weave together as though part of a larger story waiting to be revealed. Take DiMaso's supervisor (Louis CK) - throughout the film, we hear his story of a childhood ice fishing trip. The story itself is told in fragments, seemingly aimed at giving DiMaso some sort of moral compass. Or something. Or is it? We never hear the end, we never see what the purpose of CK's character was, let alone the absurd dynamic between these two men. In individual scenes, his narration of his time spent on a lake engages you, pulls you in. Watch the film again, and you're left in the dark, wondering why these scenes were ever included to begin with. That seems to be the case with the majority of the film: scenes work beautifully on their own, but what does the final product amount to?

I'll hand it to O. Russell, though. This film is a touchstone in acting, and without a doubt it belongs to Christian Bale. You remember he won an Oscar for "the Fighter" a few years ago. This performance in "Hustle" is astonishing. Gaining 40 pounds and developing a comb-over, Bale slips into character and absolutely floored me with every scene. Masterful acting, and with any justice he will receive a Best Actor nomination. Lawrence is equally good as a scene-stealer, slowly developing into a leading lady (or is she blending with her public persona as a comic relief of sorts?). Amy Adams also delivers the goods, and reminds us why we need her starring in more leading roles.

The film remains gorgeous, with stunning sets, costumes, and hair. Perhaps, then, it's a film that might be even better watched on mute. In a way, I wish I never saw the film again. I wish I could preserve that sense of magic I had the first time I saw it. I wish I could still think of it as one of the year's best films. In the end, I can't lie to myself. American Hustle is a major misfire.

(Awards potential: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Bale), Best Actress (Adams), Best Supporting Actor (Cooper), Best Supporting Actress (Lawrence), Best Original Screenplay, Best Editing, Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design, Best Makeup)