Ranking the 2014 Academy Award Nominees

Finally. I haven't been lapped by the Academy (the next year's nominees have not been announced yet), but it's getting close. Here's my just-for-fun ranking, top to bottom, of the Best Picture and Best Animated Feature nominees.

1. American Hustle.

Reviewers wanted to compare this to GoodFellas, but it's really more like The Big Lebowski: There's not a scene in the movie that isn't aimed toward entertainment–mostly laughs. And to those who say 129 minutes is too long, I say, Really? Because the first scene to be cut from that length would probably be the “Live and Let Die” scene, and I am not willing to let that one go.

2. Gravity.

I splurged on this one–saw it in 3D IMAX. Best amusement park ride ever, and quite a good movie. Ambitious filmmaking, simple story.

3. Dallas Buyers Club.

A heavy topic, covered with a light touch, loaded with audience-pleasing character arcs, and a key film of the McConnaisance. Someone should market a collection of True Texas Tales, which would include this film, Bernie, and I Love You Phillip Morris. Oh, and perhaps The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean.

4. Captain Phillips.

This very solid story has fine performances from Tom Hanks and first-time actor Barkhad Abdi. The American captain's resourcefulness is heroic but he is always human; the Somalis are not so much villains as tragic figures.

5. The Croods.

Perhaps the title of this movie lowered my expectations, but I had a lot of fun with this. The animation is lively, the vocal performances (by Nicolas Cage, Emma Stone, Ryan Reynolds, and others) are pleasing, and the story stays fresh most of the time.

6. The Wolf of Wall Street.

This tribute to the American genius for larceny gets caught in a repetitive rut–I'll raise the Too Long penalty flag on this one–but it features a very funny, relaxed performance by Leonardo DiCaprio.

7. The Wind Rises.

Even though we're taken inside the dreams of Jiro Horikoshi, the engineer who designed the Japanese Zero, the character is still a bit opaque; perhaps there's not much there there. It's a beautiful, imaginative film, though.

8. 12 Years a Slave.

You! Must! Witness! The Horror! Of Slavery! High-class Brussels sprouts for everyone.

9. Frozen.

This feels like an incomplete draft of a musical; songs will surely be added to the second half when the story is staged on Broadway. Luckily it does include the obligatory award-grabbing tune. Overall, professional. Entertaining. Not enthralling.

10. Philomena.

This film is all right, but what on earth is it doing with a Best Picture nomination?

11. Despicable Me 2.

Very heavy on Minions (and we are promised a Minions movie next summer). Yes, the Minions are cute and funny. But moderation, people.

12. Ernest & Celestine.

This is a beautifully animated story of mice and bears, pitched to young people. Very young people. It's sweet, and your five-year-old will love it.

13. Nebraska.

I took a dislike to the script–there was an early bit of dialogue that was way too expository–and I could never shake the bad feeling. It all felt arbitrary and unreal, and by the time we got to June Squibb at the gravesite, I was: Oh, yuck.

14. Her.

Sterile idealism. Didn't feel the least bit real. Or rather, the entire movie seemed to fit into one person's mind, with enough room left over for table tennis.

Ranking the 2014 Academy Award Nominees (Documentary)

OK, I still have a ways to go before I've seen all the narrative and animated feature nominees. But I did manage to catch all the documentary features (they're all streaming on Netflix). I recommend all five. Here's how I rank them, starting at the top.

1. The Square

This account of public protest in Egypt is both inspirational and cautionary. Mass protests bring down the dictatorial regime of Hosni Mubarak. It takes another round of protests to convince the military to give up power and conduct elections. One of the groups oppressed by Mubarak, the Muslim Brotherhood, comes to power, and seeks to impose its own tyranny on the people. (I can hardly believe this, but at one point the Brotherhood's leader proclaimed himself Pharaoh.) This led to yet another set of protests. Mind you, at times the rallies were met with deadly force; these people showed a lot of courage. I scratched out a few notes about the film here.

2. Cutie and the Boxer

By the time the film was over, I was charmed by this portrait of a quirky artistic couple in New York. Vivid, interesting people who sometimes made your heart ache.

3. Twenty Feet from Stardom

This film about unheralded backup singers is comfort cinema. The viewer feels ennobled by proxy as the talented people (mostly black women) who sing behind the stars get some deserved recognition.

4. Dirty Wars

America has done some bad, bad things. Remember the heroes who got Osama bin Laden? They were part of the Joint Special Operations Command, which had been conducting secret raids in various countries for years. Sometimes those raids involved the killing of innocent civilians. There is a logic that justifies such killing, but it is reasoning from a very dark place. This documentary follows a reporter as he learns about the activities of the JSOC. The film doesn't provide any simple answers, but boy does it ask some troubling questions.

5. The Act of Killing

This is the most astonishing film of the lot. Nearly fifty years ago, agents of the Indonesian government murdered many people they didn't like–in particular, people they suspected of being Communists. The killers have remained in power and have never been called to account for their murders. In the film, a documentarian offers to help them stage Hollywood-style reenactments of their misdeeds. They respond with enthusiasm, bullying modern-day villagers into participating in the project. After a while, this perverse form of LARPing becomes repetitive. Still, the mind is boggled.

Kids

I have always felt a bit out-of-step with other film lovers when I consider my feelings toward two early Steven Spielberg films, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. They seem painfully didactic to me–lessons clumsily wrapped inside an entertainment. I'm on board with one of the lessons, that a thing's strangeness does not necessarily make it menacing; the idea was a welcome counter to Nixon-era paranoia. But the other lesson, which could be read as, the innocence of children is the greatest wisdom, sticks in my craw. I think it gets kids way wrong.

For me, the worst moment of both films comes in Close Encounters. A woman and her young son are inside their house when a UFO approaches outside. There are bright lights and vibrations and loud sounds. The mother is terrified, but the child is attracted to the lights, runs outside, and is carried off by the UFO.

I know that there is a point in child development when the child actively separates its identity from those of its parents, but that sort of breaking free comes for children much older than the boy in the film. In fact, in the movie the child is more oblivious of his mother than alienated from her. And that oblivion seems utterly false to me; in a strange, potentially frightening situation, children of that age will look to adults for emotional cues rather than ignore them.

This wrongheaded depiction of a child came to mind recently when I watched a very fine film that gets adult-child relations right. What Maisie Knew (as of this writing, available for streaming on Netflix and elsewhere) updates the Henry James novel to modern New York. Julianne Moore and Steve Coogan play the horrible parents of six-year-old Maisie (Onata Aprile). When it suits them, they are affectionate toward the girl; but mostly they are tied up in bitterness toward one another. Maisie loves her parents but learns that she must entrust herself to other adults as well. There is a point in the film when Maisie, abandoned by her parents, stands curbside next to a man she barely knows (Alexander Skarsgård), a bartender friend of her mother's. Maisie automatically reaches up to take the hand of this unfamiliar adult. That little gesture is an emotionally searing moment in the movie, and it contains more truth about children than either of the Spielberg films.