And the winner is...

Maybe the academy should hold onto those gold statues this year

The Front Page

Morning Update

Sunday, April 25, 2021

By Ken Tingley

And the winner is...

Sadly, I don’t find I have much of a rooting interest for any of the Best Picture nominees this year.

It was just five years ago that I leapt out of my seat when “Spotlight” was named Best Picture and called my son at college to celebrate the recognition for an investigative journalism story that celebrated my business.

I haven’t had a rooting interest since.

The eight Best Picture nominees are mediocre this year and only “Mank” comes close to being a typical Best Picture nominee, but even it needs about 30 minutes in editing.

“Promising Young Woman” has a clever screenplay and “The Trail of the Chicago 7” is an excellent 60s courtroom drama, but this list of eight finalists could easily have been trimmed to three.

There were good performances. Gary Oldman was as riveting in “Mank” as he was in “Churchill” and Chadwick Bozeman carried “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.”

Audra Day lapped the field for Best Actress with her performance as Billie Holliday and while Viola Davis was good in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” it really was a supporting actress performance.

I usually find some riveting performance in the supporting acting categories, but the mediocrity theme continued there.

The fact that Sacha Baron Cohen was nominated for a screenplay - there is actually a script for what he does - probably tells you all you need to know about this year’s field.

There are a some hidden gems:

- The White Tiger will give you some real insights into culture in India.

- One Night in Miami - which feels more like a play - is an entertaining historical exercise on what might have happened that night after Cassius Clay beat Sonny Liston.

It appears the mainstream movies were just another casualty to Covid this year, although animated, international and documentary features were all strong.

Here are a few other notes from my marathon movie viewing this year:

- Spike Lee has fallen to a new low with his movie “Da 5 Bloods” which would have worked better as a short.

- I have no clue what Tenet was about or what it was trying to tell me about moving back and forth through time.

- Hillbilly Elegy was an entertaining surprise and I was surprised Amy Adams did not get more notice.

- Nomadland and Borat Subsequent Moviefilm seemed more like documentaries than Cinema. 

- Greyhound, starring Tom Hanks, came as close to putting you in combat aboard a destroyer in World War II than any movie ever.

- News of the World, starring Tom Hanks, would have been far more interesting without the kid he was protecting, cut all the gun fights and stuck to the premise of him being an early version of a cable anchor reading the news from the newspapers on frontier backwaters.

The judges for the Pulitzer Prizes have the option of not awarding a prize if they believe none of the entries measure up.

The Academy of Motion Pictures should have considered that possibility this year.

The List

Best Picture winners for the past 10 years:

• 2020 - "Parasite

• 2019 - "Green Book"

• 2018 - "The Shape of Water"

• 2017 - "Moonlight"

• 2016 - "Spotlight"

• 2015 - "Birdman"

• 2014 - "12 Years a Slave"

• 2013 - "Argo"

• 2012 - "The Artist"

• 2011 - "The King's Speech"