The Official TWC Oscars Preview Post: 2020

It’s that time of year again, folks, and I’m back with something to prove after going a lowly 3 for 7 on my predictions last year (I had to check the tape on this one – still can’t believe that ratings for the awards show itself actually went up last year).  I’m looking to reattain the 5/7 glory of 2018 on another lucky number 7 predictions, and I’ve seen the same fraction of Best Picture nominees that I did that year as of this writing (I’m 5 for 9, and it looks like I was 5 for 8 last year on that front – seems like 5 critically lauded movies a year is all I can really stomach), so anything is possible.  For the curious, those movies are: Joker, Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood, Marriage Story, The Irishman, and Parasite.  In my past few reviews, which have featured The Irishman and Marriage Story, I’ve made my opinions on my personal hierarchy of these movies somewhat clear, so I’ll refrain from saying it again here, other than to say go Parasite!  Now, on with the baseless speculation you all presumably came here for.

When does the Joker-Irishman crossover drop?

Brad Pitt will win Best Supporting Actor for his performance as Cliff Booth in Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood.  This is definitely the lowest-hanging fruit as far as my predictions go, given that Brad Pitt won the Golden Globe and the SAG award in that category, so it’s the one I’m leading off with to try to get into some kind of rhythm.  Furthermore, it’s also the award that I think Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood most deserves to win, besides maybe Best Production Design (seriously, Quentin Tarantino has to be one of Hollywood’s most overrated directors, and he’s maybe Hollywood’s most overrated writer, but I digress).  With the votes on The Irishman in this category likely being split between Joe Pesci and Al Pacino, the path to a win for Pitt is fairly clear, unlike Leo‘s path for Best Actor, which is littered with standouts like Joaquin Phoenix and Adam Driver.  Which brings me to my next, much hotter take…

Brad Pitt stoically fighting off other Best Supporting Actor contenders.

Adam Driver will pull off a surprise Best Actor win for his work in Marriage Story.  Ever since writing about this movie last week, I’ve been thinking about what I said about how Joaquin Phoenix still probably deserves the win over Driver in spite of Kylo Ren’s great performance in Noah Baumbach‘s divorce movie, and I think I’m here to go back on that statement.  It’s potentially (definitely) wishful thinking, but I’m hopeful that the Academy will realize on Oscar night how overrated Joker is as a whole, and also realize how much Marriage Story caters to California-based audiences and critics (I talked about this last week as well), and while Joaquin Phoenix doesn’t necessarily deserve to suffer due to any of those things, he’ll probably be just fine with his SAG award and his multiple Golden Globes.

Adam Driver closing the door on ScarJo’s Oscar hopes.  Or opening the door to his maybe?

Conversely, Scarlett Johansson will be blanked in both female acting categories.  Being nominated for both Best Actress (Marriage Story) and Best Supporting Actress (Jojo Rabbit), is a big win for Johansson, as I imagine she may be currently struggling to extricate herself from the Marvel machine (this year’s upcoming Black Widow suggests otherwise), but she’s faced with stiff competition in each category.  The Academy’s inexplicable love for biopics is poised to rear its ugly head with further recognition of Renee Zellweger‘s work in Judy, which is nominated for little else, and which won her the Golden Globe for Best Actress earlier this year.  Somewhat less understandable to me, especially considering that I haven’t seen Judy and therefore probably shouldn’t knock it so much, is Laura Dern‘s near-universal praise for her turn as a sleazy divorce attorney in Marriage Story, but then again, I haven’t seen Jojo Rabbit either, so I really don’t have much of an idea of how Johansson’s work would stack up.

I haven’t seen this one yet, and I know this caption is supposed to be about ScarJo, but I’m really here to say I love Sam Rockwell.

Knives Out will win Best Original Screenplay.  Not much to say about this, other than that it’s probably wishful thinking of a similar brand to my last prediction, but it’s a hill I’m willing to die on.  I’d be fine with Parasite or Marriage Story winning this category as well – they’re both cleverly and and realistically-written stories dripping with originality – but the indulgence of Tarantino’s script simply shouldn’t be rewarded (it will be).  Read about my love affair with Rian Johnson‘s whodunit – which manifested in the form of three theater viewings in the span of a week’s time – here.  It’s the only film besides Parasite (also nominated in this category, and the winner of the WGA’s Best Original Screenplay award) that’s nominated for anything that I saw multiple times, and for good reason.

CSI KFC?

Steve Zaillian’s adapted screenplay for The Irishman will win over Greta Gerwig’s for Little Women, because the Academy has an aversion to even nominating women for awards.  Disregarding the fact that The Irishman features a script almost equally as indulgent as Tarantino’s, and is probably close to double the length, my frustration with it is that it’s a movie that we’ve all seen before.  You could probably say the same for Gerwig‘s creation – after all, I’ve just learned via Google that Little Women has been adapted for the screen a whopping seven times – but based on what I’ve heard about Little Women (I haven’t seen it – yet) and based on the sourness of my experience with the slog that was The Irishman, I’d rather her win for something unoriginal than Zaillian, if only because she was snubbed for Best Director.  Which again gracefully transitions me into my next prediction…

When you head out to go clubbing with the girls only to ultimately realize that it’s 1868.

Parasite is going to surprise a lot of people.  This Korean film, which I talked about here, is nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Foreign Language Film, Best Production Design, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Film Editing.  It pains me to say I think it’s a long shot for Best Picture, but don’t be shocked (I wouldn’t be) if it picks up some of the other lesser statuettes, including but not limited to Best Director, over the likes of Academy darlings Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino (not to mention Sam Mendes, who won the Golden Globe for his work on 1917).  Parasite only won Best Foreign Language Film at the Golden Globes, but I expect/want this under-the-radar pick to fare better on the ninth, leading people to ask what the heck that movie is.  And yes, this prediction is purposefully open-ended – gotta pad the stats for next year.

You know how you sleep in matching silk pajamas in a house almost entirely made of glass because you’re super rich? Me too.

Roger Deakins will win Best Cinematography for his work on 1917.  If there’s one thing I’ve heard about 1917, it’s that it looks like it was filmed in one shot, which can be gimmicky for sure but certainly paid off for 2014’s Birdman.  As it stands, there are also few cinematographers more due for accolades than the oft-overlooked Deakins, who was nominated a whopping 13 times (for a number of little projects like The Shawshank Redemption, Skyfall, No Country for Old Men, and Prisoners, to name a few) before finally winning his first Oscar last year for Blade Runner 2049.

Still haven’t seen this one yet – might be a weekend project.

There you have it folks!  Now for the fun part: sitting back and waiting for the big reveal of how wrong I am.  Tune in next week for either an actual movie review or a sidebar about Super Bowl trailerfest (like this one from last year) – I haven’t decided yet.

Parasite Review

Prior to Parasite, I had never seen a Bong Joon-ho movie – and in fact the only one I’ve ever even been close to watching is Snowpiercer (soon to get a television series adaptation on TNT) – and that may simply be because I don’t watch very many foreign films in general.  This isn’t (as I think it is for many) due to the fact that I don’t like reading subtitles – the subtitles are typically on whenever I’m watching scripted TV, as it were – but more because I think I’m generally exposed to them a lot less than other movies.  Other than a semi-recent viewing of Hirokazu Koreeda‘s Shoplifters at the suggestion of a friend – the very same friend who I saw Parasite with – and distant-past viewings of L’Enfant, After the Wedding, Good Bye Lenin!, and an absolutely disastrous encounter with The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (which is as dreadful as it sounds, albeit in an altogether unexpected way), my catalog of viewed movies from across any pond is thin, but Parasite, which is garnering rave reviews from pretty much anyone who runs across it, seemed as good a candidate as any with which to expand my horizons.  In retrospect, I’d say I was right about that, and while I think I have a bit less to say in the manner of concrete details, I want to pontificate a bit about it if that’s alright.

The Park family – the unsuspecting victims of the Kim’s Matchstick Men-style con.

After taking a trip to the theater to see this film, the most interesting thing about it also happens to be the thing that makes it difficult to write a review about, and that’s the fact that Parasite doesn’t seem to fit into any conventional genre box.  While it’s apparently billed as a comedy, Parasite is for the most part only comedic in the first half, with a midpoint reversal (no spoilers) that instead takes its viewers into suspense thriller territory.  Indeed, you’re as likely to laugh while watching it as you are to be on pins and needles (at one point in the viewing I was quite literally on the edge of my seat), but the common thread that ties the experience together is that socioeconomic themes – ones that I’m told tend to commonly permeate Bong Joon-ho’s existing filmography, Snowpiercer included – are challenged throughout, and are found to be what drives the humor and the horror alike.  Though I make this correlation hesitantly, I’m at times reminded of Jordan Peele‘s recent work as I look back on my Parasite viewing in that his work is largely branded as horror but also contains a lot of other elements that make it a bit harder to make that distinction, especially given his comedy roots and his well-founded insistence on tackling difficult social issues in the process.  The Cabin in the Woods would be another similar genre-bending experience, albeit with slightly less of a head on its shoulders.

That faraway gaze immediately preceded by looking into an empty pizza box is of course one that I know well.

I can understand, though, why Parasite is billed as a comedy, both because it is genuinely funny – even with the potentially-neutering fact that I’m reading the jokes instead of hearing them, and therefore timing and delivery tend to take a backseat to writing – and because calling it such eliminates any possibility of foretelling what the second half of the film will be like.  Again, I won’t spill the beans here, but what I will say is that the relationships between most of the characters and the class-war themes that the movie pervasively grapples with turn into struggles if they aren’t already, and are overall kicked completely into overdrive, motivating some wild character choices.  I do feel that the ending does get away from itself a bit, and of course it wouldn’t be a foreign art film if there weren’t a number of things I didn’t feel I completely understood, but the transition from happy-go-lucky caper film with no regards for consequences to…what it is after that is something else to watch, and no doubt enjoyable.  It’s also well-written, with more layers of metaphor than a literary parfait, with each layer ranging from obtrusively prominent to (to me) entirely invisible.  Its plot holes, which are few but present, are easily forgotten and readily abandoned in favor of what they give way to, and similarly, the fact that the Wikipedia plot summary (obviously spoilers here) reads like the rantings of a lunatic seems like a shockingly unimportant detail.

Tfw when you only get Wifi in the bathroom, but you don’t have to poop.

As was the case with my Shoplifters experience, another thing that I noticed quite often in my unavoidable penchant for comparing Parasite to American cinema was the difference in composition.  The camera work is largely far more static than things here typically are, employing wide shots that rely primarily on the viewer to track any action – characters moving from one point or another, etc. – rather than spoon-feeding.  This of course lies in sharp contrast with much of what Hollywood produces, with movies like Kingsman going so far as to ensure that all action is at the center of the frame to ensure that audiences don’t miss anything.  What results from the former approach, though – at least in the case of Parasite – is a more ambient insertion of the viewer into the story, with most things laid bare enough that they can be seen by anyone who wants or chooses to see them.  Quick cuts are seldom, if ever, found, and the camera is never used as an agent of emphasis or a character in its own right.  The visual style is also aurally complemented by a soundtrack that’s both eclectic and well-curated for punctuating lighter and tenser moments alike.

For anyone who has seen this movie – what does the rock even mean?  Leave me a comment, thanks

Parasite is South Korea’s entry for Best International Film consideration at the 92nd Academy Awards, and on top of that it’s the first film to win the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or in a unanimous vote since 2013 (Blue is the Warmest Color), so if you’re into high-profile award-y movies that track record alone makes it worth watching.  Even outside of that, though, it has legitimate everyman merit that should keep anyone from balking at the potential snootiness of the 99% Rotten Tomatoes score, and it’s perhaps that merit that has vaulted it into commercial success (a $113 million box office haul on an $11 million production budget ain’t bad) that’s unheard of for anything resembling an art film.  While a certain measure of opacity probably remains, it’s an expectation-defier in a number of ways that include its accessibility, and I’d myself recommend it to foreign film viewers ranging from novice (like me) to global cinephile.