'Moonlight', 'LaLaLand', 'Pariah' and the Oscars - Inevitability Upended

It's the morning after the upset of Moonlight winning the Best Picture Oscar, after a flub by some idiot stage managers, duplicate envelopes, and Faye Dunaway just willing to read whatever film title was on the card in front of her. No, I don't believe it was a conspiracy plot or Russian hack. Save that for Trump's win last November.

Barry Jenkins' Moonlight was one of my favorite movies from last year (along with 20th Century Women, Arrival, among a few others) and well-deserving of its win, not as some kind of token Oscar nod but as a fierce and deep, but also hypnotically calming film full of strong messages.

LaLa Land was a fluffy, candy-colored, puddle deep film that was technically lush and well-made, but more or less an escapist rom-com. You can read my original thoughts on it here.

Moonlight's deserved Oscar win for Best Picture was the first for a film centered around a gay character and most certainly the first, or one of the firsts, to feature a cast entirely of people of color. It's also one of the smallest-budgeted films to win the prize. All of these firsts are important, and important to document for reflection. They would seem like just statistics if the film itself wasn't filled with outstanding performances, beautiful cinematography, and a haunting score.

The quiet, meditative tone and slow pace of the movie is in such contrast to much if not most of the films up for Oscars this or any year. It had the glacial movement of a European art film but a steadfastly American modern location and situation.

Having a young, gay man of color be the center of a small independent film pushed into the mainstream, catching on, then exploding all the way up to the pinnacle Oscar win is something to be remembered. Will next year's Best Picture winner be back to business as usual? Does this change anything for Hollywood in terms of reflection or visibility?

When seeing Moonlight for the first time, I was reminded of a film that felt like a precursor to it, almost. A small, critically praised but little-seen movie called Pariah (2011) by Dee Rees, about a black lesbian teenager in NYC and making her way through the resistance to her truly being herself. I hope people who loved and praised Moonlight discover this film.

Ho-Hum Land - La La Land and the Oscars

We're less than a week away from the annual Oscars award show and La La Land is poised to nab many awards, presumably the highlight of the night, 'Best Picture.' The film has tied Titanic for the title of most nominated film in Oscar's 89-year history, with 14 nominations. Quite impressive numbers, but I wasn't quite impressed with the film.

Watching the much talked about traffic jam/flash mob-style musical opening number, I was doubtful of this film immediately. It didn't seem like West Side Story but more like that terrible Coke commercial I see every time in the multiplex theater before the trailers start. I was worried. No, I don't want your passed-around, bird flu-infected popcorn and soda.

Director Damien Chazelle's film is an ode to old Hollywood Technicolor musicals of the mid-20th century (An American in Paris, Singin' in the Rain, to name a few) with a dash of '60s French Jacques Demy musicals like The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, in all of its candy-colored glory.

And that was one of the main problems I had with LaLa Land. Its "odes" and "valentines" were a bit too homage-y, too assemblage-y to hold any emotional weight for me or be wowed by its lack of originality. The big, lushly backdropped dance sequences between the two lovers Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone (in the Griffith Park Observatory, for example) were quite beautiful and technically well shot but they were gem moments adrift in a lackluster romance.

The film lack's the bite and grit of his previous feature Whiplash (about a teenage drumming prodigy) that could have made this film even richer. My main disappointment with LaLa Land was that it didn't push the extremes of each situation enough. The hum-drum lives of Gosling and Stone as they pursue their dreams, didn't seem tough and dreary enough to make the fantasy sequences of breaking into song pop. The stakes didn't seem high enough.

She works as a barista but owns a brand-new Prius (huh?) and he works some nights playing piano in a middle-brow restaurant but has his own large apartment in L.A.? It seems nitpicky but I wanted their "suffering" to have a bit more reality to make their dreams and romance a bit more epic. In a movie about movies, it should have been elevated.

I kept thinking of two possible directorial choices that could have upped the epic feel of this Oscar-contender.

What if all of the non-musical moments were shot in black and white (or at least very sun-bleached, desaturated color)? Wouldn't that make the grand peaks of the Gosling/Stone song and dance sequences shine even more? That Wizard of Oz trick of escaping the humdrum would have made their fanciful wishes really sing. Instead we get a CW network meet-cute that we could have seen on TV.

And the moderate, but not memorable, singing and dancing of the two leads? What if Chazelle would have upped the idea of these two wanna-be stars in L.A. trying to "make it" by actually casting two unknown, up-and-comers in the roles? Two whiz-bang singers and dancers that would run circles around Gosling/Stone and beat them at their own game, instead of "falling for" two established, big-name stars.

Wouldn't it be more effective, more exciting to root for these John and Jane Does who haven't made it yet actually "make it"? Watching winners win isn't very exciting. Where's the fire inside?

Her? - Isabelle Huppert and 'Elle'

You don't come to actress Isabelle Huppert's films expecting warmth. And she doesn't fail to deliver her own signature brand of ice-cold stares, chilly conversations, and an almost bored looking sense of dismissal in Elle, the latest film by provocateur director Paul Verhoeven.

Huppert has played shades of this type of role before: the brutal, desperate title character in The Piano Teacher, and the off-kilter, incestuous widow in Ma Mere; she almost begs you to try and like her heroines while simultaneously not caring one bit if you don't.

The oddness of the role of Michele, the titular character in Elle, is the universal praise the role is getting this award season. She has played remote, damaged women before in film, with the usual critical darling praise, but now her hard work is finally showing in the big leagues of American mainstream award recognition, in spots usually saved for Natalie Portman and Jennifer Lawrence.

Huppert won the Golden Globe award last month for Best Actress for this role, and now has an Oscar nomination (her first) for the same. Winning the Golden Globe was the only time I've ever seen Huppert onscreen seem happy, smiley, and sweet.

So, the main question: Is she deserving of the award? Simple answer: Yes. Is the movie any good? Complex answer: Kind of. Verhoeven is known for his black humor, wink-wink naughty side (Showgirls, Basic Instinct) and his political satire/shoot-em-up action side (Robocop, Starship Troopers). This movie might oddly fall somewhere in between, a crime thriller with some gratuitous titillation.

I don't want to reveal a lot of the plot because it all seems to be spoiler-centric, but Huppert's Michele plays a wealthy video game company CEO who is raped/attacked in a home invasion. She's trying to find out the identity of the attacker, and seek revenge, through her own means. Verhoeven tends to overlay his movies with too many characters and subplots, and red herring, go-nowhere twists. Elle is no exception.

Verhoeven also loves his non sequiturs and over-the-top, deliciously crass dialogue. Though not a rip-roaring, quotefest like Showgirls, I caught myself rolling my eyes more than once through the film and the silly and trashy lines that pepper the film.

Is Huppert's performance award-winning? Let's just say (or pretend, rather) that the Golden Globe win and Oscar nom are for her entire multi-decade career of playing sullen, remote, troubled women and not just for Michele in Elle. Let's add Erika in The Piano Teacher, Augustine in 8 Women, Anne in Time of the Wolf, Maria in White Material. She plays 'fractured' like no one else.