Ranking the 2012 Academy Award Nominees

Maybe I was grouchier this year; unlike last year, there were quite a few nominees I flat-out didn't like. Here's the combined list of Best Picture and Best Animated Feature nominees, ranked best to worst.

1. Moneyball

Jonah Hill helps Brad Pitt build a baseball team. A thoroughly enjoyable entry from the Men Solving Problems genre.

2. The Descendants

Great heart, great comedy. You leave this movie feeling like a decent person–one of many decent people in the world.

3. Chico & Rita

Jazz, romance, and a history of Cuba. More ambitious than a lot of live-action films.

4. Rango

Oddball, imaginative western critter comedy.

5. Kung Fu Panda 2

One Kung Fu Panda film should have been enough, but some very fine writers came up with some more original ideas for a surprisingly touching movie.

6. Puss in Boots

I doubted the cat from the Shrek franchise could carry a film. I shouldn't have. Very entertaining.

From here on I am a sourpuss.

7. The Tree of Life

Terrence Malick shot for the moon here. The middle section is lovely, but the outer sections don't transport.

8. The Artist

Kind of a humdrum story. I know that broad smiles and outstretched arms were supposed to make me applaud, but, sorry, my reflexes must have been off.

9. Hugo

Martin Scorsese is a blessing to the film world, but this film started with Professor Scorsese Demonstrates a Continuous Shot and ended with Professor Scorsese Insists That Preserving Old Films Is Important. The shot was crudely attention-grabbing, and film preservation is certainly a worthy cause, but I wanted to be entertained.

10. War Horse

Maybe I'm too jaded to fall for that ol' reliable manipulative movie magic.

11. Midnight in Paris

I think I understand why the characters out of the past were drawn so flatly–they arose out of the main character's limited imagination–but to understand is not to enjoy.

12. A Cat in Paris

The dog in the snow was funny. Otherwise, pretty much everything was routine or downright dumb.

13. The Help

You can tell a character is noble by how heroically she deals with insult. And because we think you're a moron, we're going to lay on a lot of insult so you get the point.

14. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

Because I am a bad person, I thought the kid was thoroughly irritating. Because I live in the real world, I thought the story was thoroughly preposterous.

Religious Freedom? Really?

I confess it. I have gotten exercised about the whole issue about what should be provided in women's health insurance. I have Taken The Bait.

Here's how I look at it. Try to follow along.

First, a completely imaginary case:

You're an election judge. Your job is to provide ballots to people who come to vote. But now something occurs to you, in a flash of overwhelming righteousness: Women who do not cover their heads in public are shameful beings. When women with uncovered heads come to the polls to vote, you do not acknowledge their existence. Certainly you do not give them a ballot.

News flash: I have it in for you. You have taken a job and then decided that the job is unworthy of you. You will not besmirch yourself by doing what the job requires. I demand you either find someone–an election clerk, perhaps–who can handle the work that is beneath you, or you get out of the election judge business.

Now to reality:

You are a church. But you have chosen to get into non-churchy things, such as health care. And now you have decided that a part of health care–providing women with contraceptive services–will diminish your unfathomable holiness.

My stern advice: Find a way to accommodate these women, or get out of health care.

If you have taken a job, and then decided you are too noble to do the job, but will not give up the job: To hell with you. The fist of your religious freedom is smashing my face.

No rabbi or imam or bishop gets to decide what health care women should get. (Women or anyone else, for that matter.) Not in my America.

Resemblances

The first time it happened was in 2005.

I was watching the movie Bad Day at Black Rock. Spencer Tracy plays John J. Macreedy, a World War II veteran who pays a visit to an isolated town in the West. Robert Ryan is Reno Smith, the informal leader of the town, and it's pretty clear that he's a bad guy.

Macreedy is puzzled by the townspeople's secretive behavior, and early in the film Smith confronts him at a filling station and tries to bully him into leaving town. That's when the resemblance hit me: Smith (Ryan) looked exactly like George W. Bush! And his pugnacious attitude solidified the likeness.

Then a few weeks ago it happened again.

This time I was viewing Water for Elephants, in which Christoph Waltz plays August, a handsome, hard-nosed circus owner. Early on I saw that August was the spitting image of Mitt Romney! And there were several character elements that also linked the two: August enriched himself by taking over the assets of other circuses; he enjoyed firing people; and he didn't always have his animals' best interests at heart.

Chilling.