The Oscars 2019

Predictions:

Best Picture:
My top movies of 2018:
1. If Beale Street Could Talk
2. Sorry to Bother You
3. The Old Man and the Gun
4. Black Panther
5. First Man
6. Eighth Grade
7. Won't You Be My Neighbor?
8. The Death of Stalin
9. Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse
10+. The Favourite, Roma, Shoplifters, Widows

Will Win: Roma
Should Win: Black Panther

Best Director:
Will Win and Should Win: Alfonso Cuaron, Roma


Best Actress:
Will Win and Should Win: Glenn Close, The Wife
Honorable Mention: Lady Gaga, A Star is Born

Best Actor:
Will Win: Rami Malek, Bohemian Rhapsody
Should Win: Christian Bale, Vice

Best Supporting Actress:
Will Win and Should Win: Regina King, If Beale Street Could Talk
Honorable Mention: Rachel Weisz, The Favourite

Best Supporting Actor:
Will Win: Mahershala Ali, Green Book
Should Win: Richard E. Grant, Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Best Adapted Screenplay: 
Will Win: Blackkklansman
Should Win: If Beale Street Could Talk

Best Original Screenplay:
Will Win: Green Book
Should Win: The Favourite

Best Cinematography:
Will Win and Should Win: Roma

Best Costume Design:
Will Win and Should Win: Black Panther
Honorable Mention: The Favourite

Best Editing:
Will Win and Should Win: Bohemian Rhapsody

Best Makeup and Hairstyling:
Will Win: Vice (haven't seen Border or Mary Queen of Scots)

Best Production Design:
Will Win and Should Win: Black Panther
Honorable Mention: Roma

Best Score:
Will Win and Should Win: If Beale Street Could Talk (I love the score and any other winner would be a travesty)

Best Song:
Will Win and Should Win: Shallow, A Star is Born

Best Sound Editing:
Will Win: Bohemian Rhapsody (haven't seen A Quiet Place)

Best Sound Mixing:
Will Win: Bohemian Rhapsody

Best Visual Effects:
Will Win and Should Win: First Man

Best Animation:
Will Win and Should Win: Spiderman: Into the Spider Verse (haven't seen Mirai)

Best Documentary:
Will Win: Free Solo
Should Win: Minding the Gap (haven't seen Of Fathers and Sons or Hale County This Morning, This Evening)

Best Foreign Language Film:
Will Win: Roma, Mexico
Should Win: Shoplifters, Japan (haven't seen Capernaum, Never Look Away)

Best Animated Short:
Will Win: Bao

Best Documentary Short:
Will Win: Period. End of Sentence
Backup: End Game

Best Live Action Short:
Will Win: Fauve


Result: 20/24 isn't bad. Live Action Short and Score are one thing. But the big upsets were in Best Actress and Best Picture. Olivia Colman is very deserving and her speech was hilarious, but who would have bet against Glenn Close, now a 7 time nominee without a win? Best Picture going to Green Book, though, is Driving Miss Daisy all over again.

The Wandering Earth (2019)

Make no mistake, this film is a landmark, China's first foray into science fiction. And it is a film of great ambition and imagination. Based on a book by the highly regarded author of the Three Body Problem, The Wandering Earth is hard science fiction. I really quite liked it. It is a little wanting in the execution--the dialogue is sort of cheesy in an action movie kind of way, and the style is distinctly Chinese. You can be sure that the film is made for a Chinese audience, that's where the money is, expected to make a billion dollars in China alone. It won't necessarily resonate with Western audiences accustomed to the Hollywood polish, but if you can get past that and enjoy the high concept science fiction, it's a good time.

The Lego Movie 2: The Secon Part (2019)

It's not as original or clever or novel as the first Lego Movie. It's passable. It's a typical kids movie, but nowadays good kids movies are much deeper and more imaginative. Especially following Lord and Miller's recent Spiderman, this comes up short.

They Shall Not Grow Old (2018)

A documentary film of soaring ambition, They Shall Not Grow Old was commissioned by the Imperial War Museum in London. They chose Peter Jackson of Lord of the Rings fame, a WWI-buff who also happens to be an excellent director. After the end credits is a  short documentary narrated by Jackson about the making of the money and it is maybe even better than the movie because he's such a nerd and he's funny. They used his uniform collection to match colors in the movie. They use his authentic WWI weaponry for sound in the movie. They use his WWI propaganda collection for stills. The Museum could not have chosen a more apt director. The discussion about the sound and color and lipreading and look of the movie is fascinating. These are soldiers that had never seen a movie camera before, they didn't even know what to do! He went through hundreds of hours of archival footage they had to enhance and archival sound recordings from the BBC. The amount of research that went into this movie is very impressive.

The beginning and end of the movie, the black and white parts outside of the trenches, are excellent. I admit I fell asleep in the colorized trenches portion. Not because it was bad. In the parts I was awake, it was actually stunning. The color pops in 3D like a moving painting. I love the concept of the movie (and the trailer beautifully, perfectly explains it) keeping film alive. I know it's kind of controversial that the footage was given color and sound. But I think it's a brilliant way to breathe new life into this excellent footage that no one would otherwise have seen, some of which was literally unviewable without his digital restoration. Film is meant to be seen.

Solo con tu Pareja (1991)

Alfonso Cuaron's first feature is a raucous romantic comedy. He has come a long way since then. It's almost hard to believe that he has excelled in so many different genres, everything from rom-com to Harry Potter to art film to space epic. This movie is kind of darkly hilarious. It's sort of dated and pretty un-PC. There's a whole AIDS plot twist that is kind of funny but kind of cringy. The whole first act is executed perfectly.