Catching Up on Oscars Movies

Linda and I are spending time this week catching on some of the Oscar winning and nominated movies that we have missed.

This, of course, was the big one.  The winner of Best Picture, Director (Paul Thomas Anderson), Supporting Actor (Sean Penn), Adapted Screenplay (Anderson), and two others.  This movie opens in the early part of the 21st century, and we see that a group of radical and quite violent "revolutionaries", among them Leonardo DiCaprio, are using any means possible to protest.....capitalism? government immigration policy? does it really matter?  

Anyway, Leo is in love with one of his fellow revolutionaries and they have a baby.  The woman get captured and turns states' evidence and goes into witness protection, leaving Leo and the baby behind.  We then flash forward to the present day.  The baby is now 16 years old, and Leo is doing his best to raise her while he drowns himself in booze and drugs.  His days as a revolutionary are far behind him.

Then, his daughter gets kidnapped and Leo has to revert to his old ways and his old network of radical friends to help him rescue her.  There is  humor in this as DiCaprio tries to get back in the game but keeps forgetting passwords and other such things from his old gang, but this is no comedy. It is a straight up thriller of a movie as he tries to save his daughter. Thrown into this mix is Sean Penn as fascist-like Army Colonel Steven Lockjaw, who has a personal interest in finding the missing girl.

Oh, and the movie culminates in a car chase involving DiCaprio, Penn, and the daughter, Willa, played by Chase Infiniti, but let me tell you, this is unlike any car chase scene that you have ever seen in a movie.  Director Anderson has filmed what has become a movie cliche in a way that is new and different, and just as exciting as Steve McQueen in "Bullitt", Gene Hackman in "The French Connection", or any chase in any James Bond movie.  Trust me on that.

If I had to vote, I still think that I would cast my ballot for "Sinners" as Best Picture of the Year, but I won't argue that Academy's Choice of "One Battle After Another" for the big prize.

In addition to Penn, who certainly deserved that Oscar, this movie scored three other acting nominations:  Teyana Taylor for Best Supporting Actress as Perfidia, Leo's lover and the mother of Willa, but I think that Miss Infiniti, as Willa, probably deserved that nomination every bit as much if not more that Miss Taylor.  Benicio Del Toro was nominated as Best Supporting Actor and he was terrific as the guy who helped DiCaprio in his quest without ever losing his calm demeanor as all Hell was breaking loose around him.

Finally, Leonardo DiCaprio was nominated for Best Actor.  Michael B. Jordan was most worthy of that Oscar this year, but DiCaprio was terrific in this one, and he, too, would have been a deserving winner.  In fact, after watching this I had the thought "Has DiCaprio ever been less that terrific in anything that he has ever done?"  I don't think so, and to that end, I commented that he has become this generation's version of William Holden, who was also terrific in everything that he ever did.

Four Stars from The Grandstander.

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"Blue Moon" tells the story of famed lyricist Lorenz Hart, who teamed with songwriter Richard Rodgers to write and produce some of the greatest songs of the first half of the twentieth century, songs that populate the Great American Songbook.  The movie takes  place on one night in 1943, the night that "Oklahoma!" debuted on Broadway.  That show went on to redefine musical theater in America, and it was also the first show that Rodgers wrote with Oscar Hammerstein II, after his falling out with Hart years earlier.  As Hart bemoaned, "the biggest hit of Rodgers career will be the first show that he wrote without me."

The movie is essentially a filmed play.  It takes place in one setting, Sardi's Bar and Restaurant, and Ethan Hawke as Lorenz Hart carries the show.  He has probably 75% of all of the dialog in the movie.  Hawke was deservedly nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for his role in this one.  Andrew Scott, who I liked so much in the 2024 Netflix series "Ripley", played Richard Rodgers, and Margaret Qualley played Elizabeth, a 20 year old girl with whom the 47 year old Hart was smitten.  A scene of a conversation in the Saudi's coat check room between Hawke and Qualley towards the end of the movie was positively terrific.

Andrew Scott, Margaret Qualley, Ethan Hawke

I knew who Lorenz Hart was, but I certainly did not know his story, so this movie was an education as well as an entertaining movie experience.  The movie is worth seeing on many levels, not the least of which the terrific music on Rodgers, Hart, Hammerstein, and others of that era that plays throughout the entire movie.

Three Stars from The Grandstander.

"Licorice Pizza"

"Licorice Pizza", written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, was released at Christmas and has been getting Oscar buzz and making many critics' Best Ten lists for 2021, so it was one that I definitely wanted to see.

It is a coming-of-age story of sorts set in the San Fernando Valley of greater Los Angeles area during the Nixon Administration, when oil embargoes were put in place, and there were long lines to get gas for your car.  Remember those good ol' days?

The story revolves around 15 year old Gary (Cooper Hoffman, son of Phillip Seymour Hoffman), a high school student and a semi-star child actor who meets and falls for 24 year old Alana (Alana Haim), a wannabe actress who Gary meets when she comes to his school as an assistant to the photographer who is there to take school pictures.  Naturally, Alana tells the little punk to buzz off, and naturally, this only fuels Gary's ardor.  The two then form an odd partnership as Gary hustles his way into different business ventures (his acting career seems to have gone into the tank after he hit puberty): selling waterbeds, opening a pinball emporium, filming videos for political candidates, trying to get Alana acting gigs.  When does the kid ever go to school?

It's a fairly sweet story made notable by several oddball characters: an American friend of Gary's family who owns a Japanese restaurant, a female casting agent who continually harps on Alana's "Jewish nose", and Bradley Cooper as real life person and total off-the-wall whack job Jon Peters at the time when he was Barbra Streisand's boyfriend.  (Was Peters really like that?)  There is also a city councilman running for Mayor of LA who is trying to hide the fact that he is gay, and co-opts Alana, who is volunteering for the campaign, to act as a beard for his relationship with his partner.  It is a pivital scene in the movie, and it again highlights the best part of the movie, the character of Alana and how she is portrayed by Haim.  The scene of her navigating an an out-of-gas truck backwards down the twisting roads of her San Fernando Valley town is terrific.

I liked the movie, but I'm not sure that it is an Oscar worthy movie.  Cute and entertaining, but not a masterpiece.

Two and One-half Stars from The Grandstander.

 Alana Haim and Cooper Hoffman