OSCAR OSCAR WHO WILL WIN: Here come the actors or as I like to say Can we double the men's category?

Before I begin to dissect the Oscar nominations for lead acting I feel compelled to have a moment for those who got away. 2013 gave us an embarrassment of riches when it came to actor in a leading category. I know many believed Tom Hanks turn in Captain Phillips deserved to be there along side Joaquin Phoenix in Her. Anyone who saw All is Lost knows it may very well have been the performance of Robert Redford's career. For me however the two egregious misses for the lead performance by an actor were that of Oscar Isaac as the namesake for Inside Llewyn Davis and Michael B. Jordan in Fruitvale Station. Oscar Isaac masterfully crafted a character who was not at all likable and yet managed to create great empathy for the talent who is destined to remain a near miss in his career and in life. It's a beautiful nuanced performance that reminds me why less is more and why the Cohen Brothers are great. Michael B. Jordan had the yeoman task of depicting the life of Oscar Grant in the 24 hours that preceded his horrific and tragic murder on a subway platform in California just past the midnight celebration of New Years Eve. In a film that strikes you viscerally, it is no small feat that Jordan deftly navigates the complexity of a young black man who is neither villain nor martyr. He is simply a young man trying to pivot out of a series of bad choices so he can course correct his life for his daughter and the family he loves. There is a sequence in a supermarket that shows the full range of emotions that you would find in most young men, cocky, confidant, angry, short tempered and full of bravado. The sadness lies in the reality that as a young black man at a crossroads life is pulled out from under him based on nothing more than the bias and racism that sits just beneath the surface. Both are worth the time, in spite of the lack of Oscar love this year.

Now, onto the actual nominees:

Best Actor in a Leading Role

Christian Bale (American Hustle) Bruce Dern (Nebraska) Leonardo DiCaprio (The Wolf of Wall Street) Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave) Matthew McConaughey (Dallas Buyers Club)

This race should be more interesting than it currently feels. First we can dispatch with the odd choice of Christian Bale who is not even in the conversation and Bruce Dern who while terrific is also the victim of the above overstuffed number of performances this year. For me, all roads lead to the Oscars jumping onto the McConassaince. Fact is McConaughey had an obscenely good year. His quiet and powerful performance this summer in Mud was effective and sincere. His cameo in The Wolf of Wall Street a surprising highlight in the high octane mayhem of excess that film was. But Dallas Buyers Club was different. It was the most daring performance of the year. Not because of the subject matter, but because McConaughey attacked all aspects of his character's contradictions and innate bias. The performance was defiant and it is why I believe he will ultimately win.  However, Leonardo DiCaprio's central focus in The Wolf of Wall Street was shockingly charismatic and invincible. The film has suffered blow back because most expected a redemptive retread of Wall Street and what they got was an unapologetic satire. I ate the entire 3+ hours like candy and a large reason is because of the steady mania that DiCaprio brings to the screen. It's his best performance since Revolutionary Road and he is an actor who is due. Chiwetel Ejiofor is thoroughly admired for his talent and this portrayal. As much as I adore him, I didn't love this performance. I thought it was uneven and suffered from a difficult script. However, if he does pull it out on Sunday it will be on the strength of the earnest conviction he brings to Solomon. There is a moment that hasn't made the clip reels that I actually think is what makes this performance heartbreaking. It is watching the conviction of hope and survival drain out of his character only to be replaced with resignation. It is a tight shot without the flare of a monologue and it is the strongest set of frames Ejiofor has in the entire film. 

Will Win/Should Win: Matthew McConaughy (although I will cry no rivers if Ejiofor or DiCaprio walks away with the statue). 

 

    

Best Actress in a Leading Role

Amy Adams (American Hustle) Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine) Sandra Bullock (Gravity) Judi Dench (Philomena) Meryl Streep (August: Osage County

And welcome to the sure thing of the 86th Academy Awards. Cate Blanchett will catch no blow back for the sideshow that is her director. She will waltz up to the stage to collect the last of the many prizes she has earned for her turn as the modern day Blanche. As someone who had the good fortune to see Blanchett actually play that quintessential role in Streetcar Named Desire, her luminous insanity was not surprising here. She is the money bet for Sunday night.  Now Adams is a dark horse because she is due and has done consistently solid work over the last five years. She should have won for O'Russell's The Fighter, but I don't think it warrants the 'oops' award here. Bullock and Streep's nominations are a bad joke and I say that as a fan of Streep and someone without an ax to grind against Bullock. I sentimentally wish for Judi Dench to take this one home. It is my personal wish, founded in nothing more than the fact that she is pure genius. In Philomena she balances the tragedy of circumstance, the carriage of grief and the humor of someone who has lived with the former two with such ease you forget she's acting. It's what makes her great, but won't put her over the top here.

Will Win/Should Win: Cate Blanchett

MOVIE REVIEW: Fruitvale Station, why this portrait of a young black man MUST be seen.

 

There are seminal films that explore the human condition and specifically the realities of urban America. Do the Right Thing and Boyz in the Hood immediately come to mind. I believe we can now add Fruitvale Station to the mix of movies that create an image that flies in the face of media stereotypes and more importantly offers an honest look beyond the headlines. Fruitvale Station is an intimate look at the life of Oscar Grant in the 24 hour run up to his untimely and horrifying murder.

The Story
In 2009, Oscar Grant was fatally shot in the back by a transit officer at Fruitvale Station of the BART system shortly after midnight on News Years Eve. He was on his way home from celebrating in San Francisco with friends. In an altercation captured on cell phone video the case garnered national outrage and attention due to the senseless horror of his death. He left behind a 4-year old daughter, a family and a life unfulfilled. He was was 22 years old.

As a movie
Fruitvale Station is a difficult, heartbreaking, outrage inducing, honest portrait of a young man who was so much more than the sum of his parts. First time filmmaker Ryan Coogler offers a quiet peek into a moment in the life of Oscar Grant during the 24 hours that precede his death. The moving script was written from first hand accounts and countless family interviews ultimately providing the audience a riveting look at this flawed, loving, angry young man who is trying to find his path in life.

This is simply one of the most painful movies I have watched. Knowing the outcome going in does not buffer that pain. On the contrary it heightens the inevitable outcome of this life being snuffed out at the precise moment you see its potential. Coogler doesn't seek to build Grant up as merely a victim of profiling nor does he sanctify him. Instead he directs us through an unvarnished look at a day in the life of a young black man. One who is a father, a son, an individual struggling with balancing bravado, ego and stereotypes that would all seek to define him.

To understand the sadness and outrage, viewers need to be able to glimpse through the prism of what that community of people sees. In Oscar Grant we get a young man struggling to pivot from the mistakes he made in his desperation to carve out a life not only for his daughter, but for himself. He wants to be better, he's just unsure of how. Over the course of the film we learn that Grant (marvelously played by Michael B. Jordan) loves his girlfriend, but has cheated on her, is trying to go straight after serving time in prison for dealing drugs, but was fired from his supermarket job for repeatedly showing up late. It is a typical two steps forward, one step back dance most people endure in their 20s. In Fruitvale Station we get a full idea of the man, not just the circumstances that placed him in an altercation that ended his life and the tragedy that he is never afforded the time or space to overcome those mistakes.

This movie does not work without the extraordinary performance of Michael B. Jordan as Oscar Grant. Jordan quietly (and often in tight frame) captures the nuance around how quickly emotions rise into physical response and are repressed as his temper cools. His scenes with Octavia Spencer, playing Grant's mother are truthful, the image of a tired woman who loves her son but is at the breaking point surrounding his choices. The interplay with his young daughter give important insight that Oscar wasn't the only victim that night. Through her we see how much Oscar Grant had to live for and the innocence he desperately tried to preserve in her. 

The re-enactment of the murder is excruciating to watch and it should be. However I appreciate Cooger's restraint in how he shot the series of scenes forcing us to see without graphically sensationalizing the moment. The closing moments of the film will leave you emotionally distraught and in my case haunted. It is a terrific piece of film making and needs to be seen.


As a conversation
I almost didn't see Fruitvale Station. I thought long and hard about subjecting myself to the raw emotions I knew it would invoke based solely on the story. Then I realized if we don't look in the mirror at the hard societal truths we can't make progress as a society. I don't get a pass on that mirror simply because I have a predisposition to be empathetic.

In response to the coincidence of the film opening in the wake of the George Zimmerman verdict, Ryan Coogler said of the public depiction for both Trayvon Martin and Oscar Grant "They're either a martyr and a saint, or everything they ever did was wrong. The truth is more complicated." In Fruitvale Station he succeeds at showing us that complexity.

If you want to have an honest conversation about race and bias turn off the likes of MSNBC, Fox and CNN along with their combined punditry and arm chair sociology. Instead go see Fruitvale Station with a group of colleagues or friends. Take a look at the honest portraits of the struggles, flawed decency and humanity of what young men of color actually look like. Then reconcile it with the images you see and hear through media everyday. If we don't filter what is fiction vs. what is real what dystopia will we be passing along for our children? Worse than that, we will continue to condemn an entire class of young people to a stereotype that leaves them not caught between a rock and a hard place, but in the cross-hairs of a gun and dead on the cement floor.