Tag: Memento

Oscars: The Case of Guy Pearce in The Brutalist

As we do every year on this here blog, Oscar nominations lead to my Case Of series. What are they? Glad you asked. These are 35 posts covering the nominees for Picture, Director, and the four acting contests. For each one, I give you the case for the movie/director/actor winning and the case against it with a verdict tidying it up. It’s like a trial, but no one goes to prison.

It began with the ten Best Picture contenders and now alternates alphabetically between the hopefuls in the other five races. The BP nominee posts are up and they’re readily available for your perusing pleasure. Today is our fourth entry in Best Supporting Actor and that’s Guy Pearce in Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist. If you missed my posts covering the first three contenders, they’re linked at the bottom.

Previous Acting Oscar Nominations:

None

The Case for Guy Pearce:

After a distinguished career that includes acclaimed leading roles in L.A. Confidential and Memento and supporting appearances in Best Picture winners The Hurt Locker and The King’s Speech, a Guy Pearce performance finally enters the award convo. As a cold-hearted industrialist in Corbet’s acclaimed epic, he’s been nominated at the Globes, Critics Choice, and BAFTA.

The Cast Against Guy Pearce:

Pearce lost to all three of the aforementioned prizes to Kieran Culkin in A Real Pain. He was surprisingly snubbed at SAG and lead Adrien Brody is The Brutalist performer most likely to win gold.

The Verdict:

Culkin appears way out front and that SAG omission looms large.

My Case Of posts will continue with our fourth hopeful in Director and that’s Coralie Fargeat from The Substance…

Oscars: The Case of Yura Borisov in Anora
Oscars: The Case of Kieran Culkin in A Real Pain
Oscars: The Case of Edward Norton in A Complete Unknown

Oscar Predictions: The Brutalist

Brady Corbet’s The Brutalist is a three and a half hour historical epic about a Holocaust survivor played by Adrien Brody. 22 years ago, Brody became the youngest actor to ever win Best Actor (at 29) as another survivor in Roman Polanski’s The Pianist. It was a surprise victory over such heavyweights as Jack Nicholson (About Schmidt) and Daniel Day-Lewis (Gangs of New York). Two plus decades later, Brody appears in the awards mix again at age 51.

Early word-of-mouth from the Venice Film Festival indicates that The Brutalist could be a contender in numerous categories. Some reactions have used the masterpiece word while others have been more tempered in their praise. All have seemed impressed by its scope.

The director’s predecessor, 2018’s musical drama Vox Lux with Natalie Portman, drew more mixed notices and didn’t end up as an awards player. That’s unlikely to be the case this time. Corbet’s third feature is definitely a possibility in Picture and Director for the 97th Academy Awards (assuming a distributor snatches it up for a 2024 calendar release).

Brody’s filmography has gone through some valleys since his gold statute for The Pianist, but a second Best Actor nom seems highly achievable. The supporting cast includes Felicity Jones (a Supporting Actress victor for 2014’s The Theory of Everything), Joe Alwyn, Alessandro Nivola, Jonathan Hyde, and Guy Pearce. General consensus is that Pearce is the standout as Brody’s father. A Supporting Actor nod would mark his first trip to the dance despite a lengthy and distinguished career (many thought he deserved recognition for 2001’s Memento).

Original Screenplay, Cinematography, Film Editing, and Production Design are also potential inclusions as The Brutalist could be an across the board hopeful like last year’s The Zone of Interest. My Oscar Prediction posts will continue…

Oscars: The Case of Christopher Nolan for Oppenheimer

As we do every year on this here blog, Oscar nominations lead to my Case Of series. What are they? Glad you asked. These are 35 posts covering the nominees for Picture, Director, and the four acting contests. For each one, I give you the case for the movie/director/actor winning and the case against it with a verdict tidying it up. It’s like a trial, but no one goes to prison.

It began with the ten BP contenders and now it alternates alphabetically between the hopefuls in the five other big races. Today we arrive at our third filmmaker in Best Director and that’s Christopher Nolan for Oppenheimer. Let’s get to it!

Previous Oscar Directing Nominations:

Dunkirk (2017)

The Case for Christopher Nolan:

Where to begin? Oppenheimer is easily the frontrunner for BP and leads all nominees with 13 overall. Nolan, one of the most visible and well-known filmmakers of the 21st century, has won all significant precursors. That includes the DGA (which has a sterling track record of matching with Oscar), the Golden Globes, Critics Choice, and BAFTA.

The Case Against Christopher Nolan:

There’s not much of one honestly. However, the Academy does have a history of snubbing Nolan. He missed the cut for Memento, The Dark Knight and Inception even though he picked up DGA nods for all three.

The Verdict:

If Nolan were to lose, it would be a jaw dropper. This is one of the easiest races to forecast. For someone whose pictures consistently deal with the concept of time… it’s his time with the Academy.

My Case Of posts will continue with Carey Mulligan in Maestro…

Memory Box Office Prediction

Can Memory reverse the string of forgettable Liam Neeson pics we’ve seen lately or will it fall in line with his recent underwhelming performers? Slated for April 29th, this casts him as an assassin dealing with cognitive lapses. Martin Campbell (who kicked off the Brosnan and Craig 007 eras with Goldeneye and Casino Royale) directs. He most recently helmed the lackluster The Protege with Maggie Q and Michael Keaton.  Costars include Guy Pearce (who starred in the acclaimed Memento which covered similar themes) and Monica Bellucci.

It’s been nearly a decade and a half since Neeson resurged his career with Taken. This second life as an action star resulted in some hits, but there’s been more misses recently. The Marksman and Blacklight took in $3.7 and $3.5 million, respectively, in the COVID era. I see no reason why Memory wouldn’t suffer a similar fate and the gross may even dip a bit.

Memory opening weekend prediction: $3.3 million

Tenet Review

What time is it?

It’s an often asked question that usually elicits a clear and simple answer. Not in Christopher Nolan’s movies. The answers in his movies are complicated, often maddening, and frequently grandly entertaining. We’ve seen it in Memento, Inception, and Interstellar with the latter being a mixed bag and the first two being pretty great. His latest is Tenet and it definitely falls more into the maddening territory with big and loud moments of thrills. You may wish you had a physics degree during it, but this is mostly an excuse for Nolan to play in the super spy genre with a bunch of quantum related gobbledygook thrown in. The director’s most ardent admirers may study it endlessly for Easter eggs and clues as to its true meaning. Upon first watch, I’m not so sure Tenet is worth the scrutiny. Yet there’s some car chases and battle scenes played to Nigel Tufnel levels of volume that land pleasingly on screens big and small. Weird science and hundreds of millions of dollars worth of action set pieces… this is Nolan’s rap and he frequently goes to eleven in this one.

John David Washington is (rather annoyingly) known only as The Protagonist. Let’s call him “Pro” for the duration of this review. A government agent who proves his bonafides to his superiors, he’s allowed into a secret organization known as the picture’s title. Pro’s new assignment tasks him with preventing something “worse” than nuclear holocaust in one example of some clunky dialogue. This is where the physics lessons are useful. You see, Russian oligarch Andrei Sator (Kenneth Branagh) is hellbent on destroying the past and future through the concept of “inversion”. Essentially this means playing with time travel concepts that can wipe out what occurred before or after. I’m not sure Doc Brown could properly provide sufficient exposition without multiple viewings and neither can Pro or his partner Neil (Robert Pattinson). You may want to look up “temporal pincer movements” before you watch.

In addition to Pro’s teaming with Neil, his mission to stop Sator also involves the villain’s estranged wife Kat (Elizabeth Debicki). She’s quite good here and she’s really the only heroic figure that’s written with any layers. Washington and Pattinson are just fine, though their characters are quite dull on the page and screen. For Branagh, this is his chance to ham it up in true Bond baddie style and he relishes it. We have also get a bit of Michael Caine (common for a Nolan experience) and internationally known Hindi actress Dimple Kapadia as an arms trafficker.

Tenet does feature the aforementioned action set pieces that are impressive in scope and tech wizardry. The director doesn’t handle these sequences with half measures. If the scene calls for a 747 to be demolished, you best believe that plane was actually destroyed. The inversion concept lends to eye candy moments with backwards cars screeching on the highway and seagulls (!) even flying in reverse.

Very early on, a scientist is explaining the science behind Tenet to Pro with the following dialogue: “Don’t try to understand it. Feel it.” I wrote that piece of advice down immediately. I had a notion these words might aptly describe the next two hours plus. And they do. I certainly felt the decibel levels of Nolan and his crew choreographing expensive battles. They take place all over the globe in Norway, Italy, and Siberia. I did not, on the other hand, feel too invested in the complicated narrative mechanics that cause them. In fact, I wrote down something else I didn’t expect to while watching – “Austin Powers”. In that super spy’s second outing, The Spy Who Shagged Me, Austin attempts to understand the highly confusing time travel plot in a conversation with his colleague Basil. After twisting his brain into a knot discussing it, Basil smartly replies “I suggest you don’t worry about those things and just enjoy yourself.” He then turns to the camera and says to us – “That goes for all of you, too.” It’s a funnier way of asking us to feel it whether we understand it or not. That request succeeds only intermittently with Tenet.

**1/2 (out of four)

The Dark Knight Legacy: 10 Years Later

Ten years ago tomorrow, The Dark Knight was unleashed into theaters. Looking back at the summer of 2008, you could argue that the two most important superhero pics in recent memory were released in that short time frame. Two months earlier in May of that year, Iron Man kicked off the Marvel Cinematic Universe which now stands at 20 films strong. Yet it was The Dark Knight that set box office records and brought critical appreciation of the genre to new heights. In a genre that has exploded in the 21st century, many consider this to be the crown jewel. I believe it’s certainly up on the Mount Rushmore.

A decade prior to its release, Batman had run into some trouble at multiplexes with the deservedly derided Batman and Robin. It was a disappointment both commercially and with reviewers. Joel Schumacher’s two run experiment with the iconic character had dissolved into campy non-fun. In the new century, Christopher Nolan was brought in to resurrect the franchise after making Memento and Insomnia. 

2005’s Batman Begins would achieve that goal, but that was not apparent immediately. Despite glowing reviews, Begins started with $48 million at the box office and $206 million overall domestically. Those are solid numbers but some context is needed. That’s nearly $50 million less than 1989’s Batman made 16 years earlier. In other words, it wasn’t obvious that the eventual sequel would turn into a phenomenon.

That’s what happened. The Dark Knight had the advantage of pitting Christian Bale’s Caped Crusader against his most known foe, The Joker. Many questioned whether Heath Ledger (coming off an Oscar nomination for Brokeback Mountain) had the goods to fill Jack Nicholson’s shoes. Early trailers indicated the answer was yes. And he nailed it with an unforgettable performance. As we know, Ledger never got to witness the acclaim. He died six months before the picture’s release and it added a tragic level of publicity leading up to the premiere.

Once Knight was released, expectations were sky-high and it earned $158 million out of the gate. That was an opening weekend record which has since been surpassed by 14 movies including its sequel The Dark Knight Rises and seven other comic book themed experiences.

The Dark Knight still stands as the 10th highest grossing movie of all time and fourth biggest superhero effort behind Black Panther, Avengers: Infinity War, and The Avengers. It received eight Oscar nominations – something previously unheard of for something in its genre. That stands as another portion of its legacy. While Ledger would posthumously win Best Supporting Actor for his work, many figured The Dark Knight should and would nab a Best Picture nomination. It didn’t. And that caused the Academy to expand Best Picture from a finite five nominees to anywhere between five and ten (nine has been the major number most years in the decade following).

While no comic book film has managed a Best Picture nomination since then (Black Panther could change that this year), that rule change has perhaps allowed non-traditional awards material like District 9, Nolan’s own Inception, Gravity, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Mad Max: Fury Road, Arrival, and Get Out to garner nods.

And The Dark Knight, for many moviegoers, proved what comic book lovers had known all along. This material, done right, could truly be a work of art.