Saturday, February 25, 2017

2017 Oscars: Personal Nominations

If I was all the Academy voters, what would my favorite categories look like?  I’m sure inquiring minds are dying to know (that I’m an incurable nerd, evidently, by my choices.)

Best Picture – Last year, I kept it mostly with movies that could at least be construed as Oscar-type films, but now, I’m just going for it.  Three of what I thought were the best films I saw this year were genre pictures, and I’m putting them all in here!

Arrival
Captain America:  Civil War – This film has such a huge task to fulfill, and it executes it amazingly, juggling its enormous cast with aplomb and balancing a really compelling story amid the insane action.
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them – I loved this movie so much.  Not sure if it would get the hypothetical win in any of my hypothetical categories, but it definitely deserves to be here.
Florence Foster Jenkins – This one really surprised me, but here we are.
Hell or High Water
Hidden Figures
Lion
Moonlight
Rogue One:  A Star Wars Story – I can’t believe my initial review of this film was anything less than glowing.  For me, it’s the gift that keeps on giving and such a valuable addition to the Star Wars canon.
Zootopia – Smart, savvy, fantastically creative, and ludicrously sophisticated.  Yes.

Best Leading Actor – A lot of changes here, even though the majority of my nominations are from this year’s Best Picture nominees.  (And then there’s Eddie Redmayne – Newt needs to be here, and no one can convince me otherwise.)

Hugh Grant (Florence Foster Jenkins)
Dev Patel (Lion) – If you read my post yesterday, you knew this one was coming.
Eddie Redmayne (Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them) – All my love to Newt; a gorgeous character, and it’s nice to have Redmayne lending his talents to a role I can love unreservedly.
Trevante Rhodes (Moonlight) – I thought about doing a shared nomination thing, here and with Lion, but in the end, I picked one actor each, and Rhodes’s performance as the adult Chiron is beautifully heartbreaking.
Denzel Washington (Fences)

Best Leading Actress – I’d have liked to keep Ruth Negga in Loving, but this was a pretty packed category for me, and I didn’t have the room.

Amy Adams (Arrival)
Viola Davis (Fences) – Where she rightfully belongs.
Meryl Streep (Florence Foster Jenkins)
Taraji P. Henson (Hidden Figures) – Had to spread the Hidden Figures love around.
Natalie Portman (Jackie)

Best Supporting Actor – The most genre-y of my acting categories.  I’m okay with it.

Mahershala Ali (Moonlight)
Chadwick Boseman (Captain America:  Civil War) – Yeah, I said it.  Is it 2018 yet?  Black Panther can’t get here soon enough.
Jeff Bridges (Hell or High Water)
Simon Helberg (Florence Foster Jenkins) – And the Florence Foster Jenkins love, surprisingly, keeps on coming, but it’s true.
Donnie Yen (Rogue One:  A Star Wars Story) – This might be a bit of a cheat.  In a way, Yen is my stand-in for the whole awesome Rogue One ensemble, but Chirrut forever, so he’s the one to make the cut.

Best Supporting Actress – Only one holdover here, even though I did genuinely love all the nominees I saw (in my defense, Viola Davis got upgraded to Leading rather than removed.)

Greta Gerwig (20th Century Women)
Kate McKinnon (Ghostbusters) – I feel absolutely secure in this choice.
Janelle Monáe (Hidden Figures) – All the Hidden Figures ladies need a little love, in my opinion.
Lupia Nyong’o (Queen of Katwe) – Yes, this movie is pretty live-action Disney, but Nyong’o is sublime in it.
Octavia Spencer (Hidden Figures)

Best Direction – This is the one category where I debated leaving La La Land in.  I thought about it, and the directing is probably my favorite about the movie, but in the end, it just got crowded out.

20th Century Women – I thought this film was really interestingly done all around, and the direction was a major part of that.
Arrival
Captain America:  Civil War – Again, pulling off its incredibly tall order was a major achievement for this film, and the Russo brothers deserve a lot of credit for that.
Lion
Moonlight

Best Original Screenplay – Okay, so I have, not one, but two animated films in here, and I don’t even think it was a very tough choice.  Speaks both to the quality of those animated films’ storytelling and how tough it can sometimes be to find an original story in Hollywood.

Captain Fantastic
Hell or High Water
Kubo and the Two Strings – That monkey made me cry.  What more do I need to say?
The Lobster
Zootopia – One of the most creative films of the year, hands down.

Best Adapted Screenplay – Another genre-heavy category, but I fully stand by it.

Arrival
Captain America:  Civil War – Yeah, the writers deserve a ton of credit as well for this film being amazing instead of the overstuffed, disjointed mess it so easily could have been.
Lion
Moonlight – It still seems a little weird for this to be an adapted screenplay, but it’s how the Academy ruled it, so I’m sticking with that.
Rogue One:  A Star Wars Story – This is my solace for not nominating more of the actors, because really, I love these characters as scripted and as performed, and I think the story is so great.

Best Cinematography – Probably my weakest category, if I’m being honest.  Unless the cinematography is truly wonderful (hello, Emmanuel Lubezki!), I don’t necessarily notice it if I’m not specifically looking for it.

Arrival
Jackie
Lion
Loving
Moonlight

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