Fall of the House of Usher(s): 10 Most Anticipated Movies

Ruben Ostlund's Palme d'Or winner, The Square

Labor Day has passed, the film industry’s official end to summer, and this will go down as the worst summer box office in 25 years. Labor Day weekend was the worst on record. Grosses are way down, which means, given the steep rise in ticket prices, attendance has fallen off a cliff. Studios will fall all over themselves, trying to figure out where they went wrong, then come back next year and repeat the same mistakes. Analysts will present their theories, and some will be compelling, others less so. Ultimately, cause and effect will remain murky, and business will proceed as usual.

There certainly is not one answer to this problem, if we want to call it that, but if I may humbly suggest a possibility: This summer’s movies just were not that good. Audiences see good movies. This is a fact of moviegoing. People go to films with positive reviews and see movies their friends like. Should a movie tick both boxes, so much the better. Over the past four months or so, there has been a dearth of films that meet either category, let alone both.

As someone who spends much of his life in theaters, even I have had a hard time getting excited about any of this year’s crop of films thus far. I hope soon to take a deeper dive into the year so far – both the highs and lows – but suffice it to say I am ready for the fall movie season, when smart movies made by and for adults rule the day.

Last year’s list featured what would turn out to be some of the best films of the year, including Martin Scorsese’s Silence, which was the No. 1 most anticipated film and finished at No. 2 on our year-end best-of list. Beyond that, there were Jeff Nichols’ Loving (No. 3 most anticipated) and Ava DuVernay’s 13th (No. 8), which both earned honorable mentions. I have no doubt we will be talking more and more about the following films in the months ahead, so without further ado, Last Cinema Standing’s 10 Most Anticipated Movies of the Fall:

10. Downsizing, directed by Alexander Payne

Release date: Dec. 22

Payne really started to catch fire around Election in 1998. I was a little later to the party, going into Sideways blind and with no forewarning of the acerbic wit and naked humanity (and naked humans) I would witness. Since then, the director has refined his observational style and honed his ability to make us care about and root for even the schlubbiest schlubs. Here, he reteams with his Sideways and Election co-writer Jim Taylor to take on a fantastical science-fiction premise to which they will no doubt add a grounded sense of reality and frailty.

9. Suburbicon, directed by George Clooney

Release date: Oct. 27

A double-dose of Matt Damon to kick things off, this one looks like a wild ride indeed. If the trailer, particularly its final joke, gives you the impression of a latter-day Coen Brothers comedy – think Burn After Reading or Hail, Caesar! – there is a good reason for that. Joel and Ethan Coen share a writing credit with Clooney and his writing partner, Grant Heslov, on the script. While Clooney the director has tackled an array of filmmaking styles to varying degrees of success, this satirical take on suburban paranoia looks to be right in his wheelhouse. With the Coens jumping in, as well, expect this to be one you cannot miss.

8. Lady Bird, directed by Greta Gerwig

Release date: Nov. 10

Gerwig is the talented writer-actor behind films such as Mistress America and Frances Ha, and after appearing in three of last year’s best films – Jackie, 20th Century Women, and Weiner-Dog – she steps behind the camera with a chance to deliver one of this year’s best. This will be Gerwig’s first solo directorial effort – she co-directed the 2008 mumblecore comedy Nights and Weekends with Joe Swanberg – and she appears to be sticking firmly to what she knows, subbing in her Northern California hometown for her usual New York City milieu. With the promise of a great Saoirse Ronan performance in tow, Gerwig needs only to bring her consistently deft touch with human foibles to make this a sure-fire success.

7. Kings, directed by Deniz Gamze Ergüven

Release date: TBA (Toronto International Film Festival

Halle Berry, in Kings

Ergüven, the writer-director behind the brilliant coming-of-age protest film Mustang, would at first seem an odd choice for this material. A Turkish woman with a French education would not likely jump to the top of most people’s list to direct a film about the Rodney King riots, and indeed, there has been controversy around Ergüven taking on the project. However, she proved with her directorial debut Mustang she is capable of making an angry, powerful film about tearing down the structures that oppress and dehumanize. If that is not precisely what we want from a film about the L.A. Riots, then I don’t know for what it is we are looking.

6. Battle of the Sexes, directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris

Release date: Sept. 22

Dayton and Faris do not work nearly often enough. The list of projects the husband-and-wife team have had fall through is extensive and storied. After breaking through with the influential independent hit Little Miss Sunshine in 2006, it took six years for them to return with the underappreciated romantic comedy deconstruction Ruby Sparks. It is now five years since that feature, and Battle of the Sexes arrives. The performances by Emma Stone and Steve Carell look to be stellar, the subject matter timely, and the approach dead-on. Dayton and Faris have been gone from cinemas too long. Let us hope they do not depart so long again.

5. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, directed by Martin McDonagh

Release date: Nov. 10

Another director gone from multiplexes since 2012, McDonagh’s absence can be attributed mostly to the fact he is a rock star in the theater scene. The famed Irish playwright has written and directed just three feature films, but each is an event, and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri looks like his best chance yet for mainstream cinematic success. Although, if mainstream success were something McDonagh were interested in, I am quite certain he already would have achieved it. Operating in the darkest possible realms of comedy, as always, here McDonagh brings along Frances McDormand, Sam Rockwell, and Woody Harrelson for a journey that looks to be his most fun but most human yet.

4. Mother!, directed by Darren Aronofsky

Release date: Sept. 15

Not that she needs the help, but Jennifer Lawrence looks here to be getting the Black Swan treatment from Aronofsky, which is to say the director will run the “it” actress of her generation through the emotional wringer. Aronofsky’s most recent film, Noah, was troubled but unfairly maligned, mostly due to its impossibly high budget. This time, he scales back for the kind of psychological horror story that put him on the map in films such as Pi and Requiem for a Dream. Aronofsky is as much the stylist as ever, and Lawrence seems to be taking her gifts to another level. The combination of the two should produce nothing short of magic.

3. The Killing of a Sacred Deer, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos

Release date: Nov. 3

Greek auteur Lanthimos made the jump to English-language features with last year’s wondrous The Lobster, in which he teased out career-best work from Colin Farrell. Farrell now is joined by Nicole Kidman and Alicia Silverstone for a film that won the best screenplay award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. Co-written by Lanthimos and his The Lobster collaborator Efthymis Filippou, The Killing of a Sacred Deer seems to take the director’s icy, detached view of human endeavors and marry it to the intense thriller we might expect from someone such as Michael Haneke – think Cache or Funny Games.

2. The Square, directed by Ruben Östlund

Release date: Oct. 27

As the winner of this year’s Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, The Square would already be high on my must-see list. That it comes from Östlund only raises its profile. The Swedish filmmaker’s previous effort, Force Majeure, is among the century’s best films, a landmark of emotional exploration and familial disintegration that should be watched and studied for years to come. If The Square, the satirical targets of which seem fitting for our current era, equals or even nears those heights, it will be a transcendent experience.

1. Wonder Wheel, directed by Woody Allen

Release date: Dec. 1

My favorite filmmaker directing my favorite actress, there could be no film more anticipated for me. Allen’s late-career output at this point is famous for its unevenness. For every Match Point, there is a Whatever Works. For every Blue Jasmine, there is a To Rome with Love. I am a fan even of much of the director’s most slapdash work, while still admitting to some of its haphazard construction. The reason: Despite it all, Allen still has the potential to dazzle – Vicky Cristina Barcelona and Midnight in Paris being just two recent examples.

In Wonder Wheel, Kate Winslet is said to deliver a career-topping performance. The New York Film Festival has selected it as the closing-night film, not an honor bestowed lightly. It is scheduled at the height of awards season, whereas much of Allen’s work lately has been offered up as a summer trifle. For these reasons and more, there could be no other film at the top of this list.

*A quick note: Paul Thomas Anderson’s new film surely would have made this list if I could be reasonably certain it would come out this year. I cannot be. As of now, it has no official title and a tentative release date at the end of December. Anderson can work as long as he wants to make the best possible film, and when it finally does come out – with what is sure to be another brilliant Daniel Day-Lewis performance, I will be first in line.

First Tuesday Book Club: Life Itself

Max in writer-director Adam Elliot's Mary and Max, joining us this month for the Last Cinema First Tuesday Book Club

Welcome to the Last Cinema First Tuesday Book Club, a monthly dive into the world of film through the pages of books. From memoirs and biographies to historical accounts and critiques, we will try to view the legacy of cinema through the words of those who shaped it and those who have explored it.

The Last Cinema First Tuesday Book Club presents:

Life Itself: A Memoir, by Roger Ebert (2011)

Four years ago today, Roger Ebert died. If you will forgive the whimsical contradiction, it feels like so much longer that we have been without him, but in ways real and imagined, it seems he has never left. Such is the impact of a great man.

I do not need to tell you Ebert was my favorite writer; that I have written copious words to that effect here and here.

I do not need to tell you Ebert’s prose stands alongside that of any of the giants held dear by the literary canon; that he could toss off in the middle of paragraphs words of such beauty and poetry other, lesser writers would base entire novels around them.

I do not need to tell you his opinions shaped the cultural conversation; that to this day, no lover of film goes to the cinema without wondering, ‘What would Roger think?’

Roger Ebert, in his office

I do not need to tell you praise from Ebert could craft the legacy of a film, of a director; that much of what we appreciate in the past half-century and more of moviemaking we owe both directly and indirectly to his influence.

I do not need to tell you any of that because you are here and, thus, must already know, but it bears repeating Ebert was the first and last word for most of the film-going public on what mattered at the movieplex.

In 2012, I was writing a feature on Little Miss Sunshine filmmakers Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris in advance of their second feature, Ruby Sparks. While interviewing Dayton’s mother for the piece, I mentioned to her Ebert had given the film three stars and written kindly of it. She said, “Well, if Roger liked it, that’s good.”

Life Itself is a memoir filled with the recollections of a life well lived, deeply felt, and extensively explored, but it is as much about the idea of memory as the memories themselves. Though a fair portion of its chapters were pulled from the blog that made Ebert foremost among the internet commentariat, a majority of it was written as he approached the end of his life. He knew it was coming as his body betrayed him time and again – cancer – but his mind was as alive as or more so than ever.

The prologue of Life Itself is titled “Memory,” and it ends thusly:

The blog let loose the flood of memories. Told sometimes that I should write my memoirs, I failed to see how I possibly could. I had memories, I had lived a good life in an interesting time, but I was at a loss to see how I could organize the accumulation of a lifetime. It was the blog that taught me how. It pushed me into first-person confession, it insisted on the personal, it seemed to organize itself in manageable fragments. Some of these words, since rewritten and expanded, first appeared in blog forms. Most are here for the first time. They come pouring forth in a flood of relief.

From there, we are whisked away into the world of the most prominent film critic of his time or any other. All the highlights are there, the stories you want to hear about the glitterati and the celebrities, the film festivals and the films, but those tales – as wonderfully told as they are – are but a small fraction of the book’s intrigue.

Its heart and soul exist in Ebert’s reflections on his youth, particularly regarding his mother, his friends and their wild times in the Chicago newspaper scene of the late 1960s and ’70s, and most of all Chaz, his wife, the love of his life, and the person he credits with helping him hang onto this life as long as he did, in more ways than one.

He writes in chapter 19 “All By Myself Alone”:

Roger and Chaz Ebert

I may appear to suffer from some sort of compulsive repetition syndrome, but these rituals are important to me. I have many places where I sit and think, “I have been here before, I am here now, and I will be here again.” Sometimes, lost in reverie, I remember myself approaching across the same green, or down the same footpath, in 1962 or 1983, or many other times. Sometimes Chaz comes along on my rituals, but just as often I go alone. Sometimes Chaz will say she’s going shopping, or visiting a friend, or just staying in the room reading in bed. “Why don’t you go and touch your bases?” she’ll ask me. I know she sympathizes. These secret visits are a way for me to measure the wheel of the years and my passage through life. Sometimes on this voyage through life we need to sit on the deck and regard the waves.

More than anything else, Ebert’s memoir is an opportunity to sit on the deck with one of the great communicators of his time and regard the waves of one of the great lives of the 20th and 21st centuries. One wishes perhaps there had been just one more high tide, one more swell on the seemingly endless ocean of words and ideas he left us.

It is like the exchange between Steve Carell’s and Keira Knightley’s characters as they face down the possibility of oblivion at the end of Lorena Scafaria’s Seeking a Friend for the End of the World. She says: “It isn’t enough time.” He replies: “It never would have been.” And isn’t that always the case? When we lose a loved one or a hero, we cry over the life lost, yes, but more, I believe, we cry over the life not yet lived. We wish for one more smile, one more joke, one more kind word, and while we recognize it could never be enough, well, at least we would have had one more.

I do not only think of Ebert when I sit in the dark of the cinema, though I always think of him when I am there. Rather, I think of him also when I read the news, when I look out on the world and wonder what the hell has happened. As cited before in this space, Ebert was the person who said movies are “like a machine that generates empathy.” I would argue Ebert’s writing functions in much the same way because throughout his life, particularly on his blog but in all his work, he focused on the experiences of others, on their lives, on their hopes, dreams, and fears.

He understood not one among us is better than any other, and he pulled no punches in calling out the hypocrisy and absurdity of believing any differently. Sometimes I am thankful he did not live to see the ugly turn this world and this country in particular have taken. But at other times, I wish we had just one more piece from him, one more reflection, one more word about the state of things. Maybe it would not change the state of things, but at least we would have one more wave to ride gently across the sea before we came crashing down again on the reality of the shore.

Next month: Young Orson, by Patrick McGilligan

First Tuesday Book Club: Silver Screen Fiend

Grace Kelly in Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window, joining us this month for the Last Cinema First Tuesday Book Club.

Welcome to the Last Cinema First Tuesday Book Club. This marks the inaugural column in what I hope will be a monthly series joining some of my favorite things: film, writing about film, reading about film, and book reports. Okay, perhaps leave that last one off the list, though if there is a way to turn something ostensibly fun and relaxing into work or a chore, I will find it.

In that spirit, I thought I would make use of all the time I spend reading – when I could be watching movies or enjoying a sunny day, god forbid – and turn it into a project for the site here. It seemed best to wait until after Oscars season to tackle another big project, but with that in the rearview mirror and the next nowhere on the horizon, let’s dig into something new.

Have no fears. This remains a cinema site, first and foremost, and in keeping with that policy, we will be discussing books about the movies. I almost never read fiction. The last fiction book I read for pleasure, in fact, was Richard Yates’ marvelous Revolutionary Road in 2008 before the film version was released. I am certain I am missing out on some fantastic literature, but non-fiction appeals to the journalist in me, whether as a well-researched deep dive into history or a subjectively involuted memoir documenting an extraordinary life.

My goal is to make these columns fun and engaging – a goal I seek with varied success in all my writing. These will not be book reports, not really reviews even. They are my personal reactions to these works, and I hope, if you have read them, you will share yours. I’ll include next month’s book at the end of the piece, just in case anyone would like to read up in advance and join the discussion. So, here we go. Let’s have some fun.

The Last Cinema First Tuesday Book Club presents:

Silver Screen Fiend: Learning About Life from an Addiction to Film, by Patton Oswalt (2015)

It should be immediately clear from the title alone why I chose to kick off this series with Patton Oswalt’s 2015 memoir, which chronicles the four years from May 20, 1995, to May 20, 1999, when the comedian locked himself in a cinema cell and lost the key. Hollywood and pop culture in general have produced countless addiction memoirs, but none follows the path of Oswalt’s journey into the church of cinema and back out into the light.

The beautiful thing about autobiographies and autobiographical memoirs is the author can never be anyone but himself or herself. The best feature interesting people telling the stories of their lives in interesting ways and read as naturally as if the author were trading tales over drinks with a group of close friends. The author’s personality necessarily shines through, and the comedian and natural showman in Oswalt appears on every page of Silver Screen Fiend.

The one-page introduction concludes with this paragraph:

“This will be either the most interesting or the most boring addiction memoir you’ve ever read. I can’t promise it ever gets ‘harrowing,’ but I can promise that I tried – I really tried – to make it funny. Here we go.”

Oswalt, of course, needn’t have been so earnest in his assurances. The book is funny because he is funny, and while he correctly points out it never matches the depths of despair of its addiction-chronicling ilk, that is precisely what makes it such an engaging and relatable read. We all have vices that are mostly innocuous and simply make up part of who we are. Coffee comes to mind as particularly popular. Most of these things will not destroy us and certainly would not be worthy of a book, however brief – Silver Screen Fiend runs a brisk 222 pages, including a 33-page appendix – but they belong to us and illuminate parts of ourselves we may not even have known were there.

Oswalt turned to cinema to mask or avoid his true needs, using his addiction to satisfy on the surface a feeling that ran much deeper. Like scratching your coat when it is your skin that itches, this can only work so long. Oswalt’s addiction to the movies coincided with his early rise in the alternative stand-up comedy world, a secret club the book chronicles just as lucidly and just as humorously as that of the “movie freaks” and “sprocket fiends” of the cinema, as he dubs them.

He moves to Los Angeles to pursue his artistic dreams and at the same time discovers the New Beverly Cinema, which would become his home for four years. Coping with the upheaval caused by his new surroundings, his fledgling career, and general mid-20s malaise, Oswalt immerses himself in a whole universe of repertory screenings and revival houses, classic film marathons and B-movie madness. He details his travails as he races from theater to comedy club and back to theater, trying to jumpstart a career while living in fear of missing the opening credits.

It is absolutely exhilarating and all-too familiar to one such as me. Here, I was going to tell of my much-storied Year of A Thousand Movies, which those who lived through it with me will remember, hopefully with some small amount of fondness. However, I realized to do so would require more words than I have space or time. If I ever get around to writing that book – that mythical work of literature, which if completed, means I as a writer will have actually accomplished something in my life – I may start there. Suffice it to say, I have traveled many a quixotic path in my film journey, a fact which will surprise no frequent reader of this site.

In the details, Oswalt’s story is unique, but its larger themes ring true for us all. I had the good fortune to see Oswalt speak at a book signing for Silver Screen Fiend the day of its release. He spoke eloquently and passionately about many of the book’s major themes, but one in particular struck me, and I know it struck my companions that day, as well.

Oswalt’s odyssey ends where it began four years later to the day at the New Beverley Cinema in L.A. By this time, he has gotten to know the theater’s longtime owner and programmer, Sherman Torgan, quite well. On this final day, Torgan tells Oswalt: “Figured you’d be handing me a script to read by now.” There are many little moments Oswalt details that pulled him out of his addiction, but this one felt monumental to me in reading it.

In relating the story during his book-signing appearance, Oswalt equated it to downloading and uploading. He spent four years downloading movies but forgot to upload anything back into the system. He began his obsessive movie watching with the goal of learning how to make a film by diffusion, soaking in the language of the cinema so that he might speak it as fluently as those he observed onscreen. By the end, however, the obsession became the goal in itself.

Torgan’s gentle jibe hit Oswalt like a sack of stones, and it hit me similarly when Oswalt gave it voice. I have spent my life downloading – watching films and television, listening to music, reading books, a never-ending procession of consumption. I have tried my best to give back, to upload something of value, but I long deluded myself into believing it was enough. I spent far too much of my youth downloading to have made up for it yet, but I’ve tried – I’ve really tried – to be better.

Silver Screen Fiend is an amusing, well-told tale of navigating your young adulthood, battling your demons, pursuing your dreams, and finding major triumphs in minor victories. It is worth the read for these reasons alone, but its true value lies in its ability to inspire. Any among us who have aspirations of producing art have surely spent our lives consuming art. Silver Screen Fiend is at its best when it jolts us out of the complacency of consumption and instills in us anew the need to create.

Next month: Life Itself, by Roger Ebert

Wrap it up: La La Land huge, but Moonlight triumphs to close out Oscars season

Writer-director Barry Jenkins celebrates onstage after his film Moonlight won Best Picture at the Academy Awards.

Even after a night of sleep, it’s still hard to fathom what went down at the Academy Awards yesterday evening. Writer-director Barry Jenkins’ brilliant, beautiful coming-of-age story Moonlight took home Best Picture after an absurd envelope mix-up led to the announcement of La La Land as winner initially. We talked about the error a lot last night in the immediate aftermath. Today, I want to shift the focus back to the awards and the winners.

The biggest question is how the awards prospects of La La Land were so badly misjudged. Now, make no mistake, Damien Chazelle’s musical romance was one of the night’s bigger winners, taking home six awards, but its haul was projected to be much greater. It was nominated by and won with essentially every industry guild where it was eligible. It was widely loved. It was a box-office smash. It looked unstoppable, so what caused it to stumble at the finish line?

The most likely answer is the preferential ballot. Voters are asked to rank the Best Picture nominees 1-9. The film with the fewest votes after the first round is eliminated, and the votes are redistributed to the No. 2 films on those ballots. This process is repeated until a movie ends up with 50 percent plus one vote. The victory of Moonlight suggests that it not only appeared No. 1 on a lot of ballots but was also many voters’ second- or third-favorite film of the bunch.

Let’s take a look at how the whole evening played out:

Picture & Director

Moonlight producers Jeremy Kleiner and Adele Romanski with Jenkins

This is the fourth year in the last five Picture and Director have split. Once seen as inseparable awards – of course if you directed the Best Picture, how could you not be the Best Director? – the preferential ballot and the expansion of the Best Picture lineup have created a schism. Now, it seems like the most audacious or breathtaking film from a technical standpoint wins Director, while the most important, best-told story wins Picture.

In each of the last four years featuring a split – Birdman took home both awards in 2014 – this dynamic holds true. In 2012, Argo, a well-made thriller about nations coming together in an act of quiet heroism, took picture, while Ang Lee won Director for the visually masterful Life of Pi. In 2013, 12 Years a Slave took home the top prize, for my money the greatest film ever to win Best Picture, while Alfonso Cuarón won Director for the technically astounding Gravity. Last year, Spotlight, the handsome drama about the team of journalists that uncovered the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal, won Picture, while Alejandro González Iñárritu took director for the formally brilliant The Revenant.

This year repeats that same split. While I felt Jenkins was the more deserving winner, it is hard to argue with Chazelle’s accomplishment in bringing an old-school Hollywood musical firmly into the modern age while losing none of the classical charm. Chazelle is a star on the rise, and I cannot wait to see his next picture, based on the life of Neil Armstrong and starring Ryan Gosling as the first man on the moon. I imagine another visual feast, well told. It seems likely we will see him back at this ceremony.

Jenkins, meanwhile, should get a profound career boost from this. His first feature film, Medicine for Melancholy, was trending on Twitter this morning. I doubt many had heard of it prior to yesterday’s ceremony. Eight years went by between Jenkins’ first film and his second, Moonlight. If the industry is smart, we won’t have to wait eight years for his third. I doubt we will.

The acting categories

Casey Affleck wins Best Actor for Manchester by the Sea.

These went precisely as predicted – Casey Affleck (Manchester by the Sea) for Best Actor, Emma Stone (La La Land) for Actress, Mahershala Ali (Moonlight) for Supporting Actor, and Viola Davis (Fences) for Supporting Actress. Ali and Davis knocked it out of the park with their heartfelt, moving speeches. Stone was gracious and humble, while Affleck just seemed in utter shock. One of the best crowd reaction shots of the night came in the image of two-time Oscar winner Ben Affleck crying tears of pride and joy as his younger brother reached the pinnacle of their profession.

The screenplays

Jenkins, who was not a nominated producer on Moonlight, won his only Oscar of the night for his adapted screenplay, an award he happily shared with Tarell Alvin McCraney on whose play the film was based. Their speech was elegant, impassioned, and important. Another playwright and Pulitzer Prize finalist Kenneth Lonergan earned Best Original Screenplay for Manchester by the Sea. It was a wonderful moment for Lonergan, and I know his was a victory many people wanted to see.

The crafts

Kevin O'Connell (center) wins his first Oscar from 21 nominations.

La La Land picked up four below-the-line awards, predictably winning both music categories, as well as Cinematography and Production Design. Elsewhere, the Academy spread the love at the expense of La La Land. Arrival surprised in Sound Editing, while Hacksaw Ridge pulled off a huge upset in Sound Mixing. Rarely do Best Picture-nominated musicals lose that award, or musicals in general when they are cited, but Kevin O’Connell finally made it up on the stage in another of the night’s best moments. The 21-time nominee is now an Oscar winner.

Hacksaw Ridge also picked up Editing, with the Academy falling in love once again with the big, flashy action sequences of a wartime action picture, and the Academy reaffirmed its love for costume designer Colleen Atwood, who seemed genuinely bowled over by winning her fourth award. It was the first Oscar for the Harry Potter series, as well. Suicide Squad won Makeup and Hairstyling, a deserved honor for the wonderful artists who went home with the award but a certification of Suicide Squad as perhaps one of the worst Academy Award-winning movies in history, certainly recent history. The Jungle Book’s Visual Effects win was well deserved for an overall underrated movie.

While I was of course pulling for Lin-Manuel Miranda, who seemed to be having a great time last night, in Original Song, it is hard to argue with a La La Land win. However, I do wish “Audition (The Fools Who Dream” had pulled ahead of winning composition “City of Stars.” “Audition” really is the film’s signature number. Composer Justin Hurtwitz won for both Song and Score, and Chazelle has to be happy his longtime buddy won for their collaboration.

Of the nine Best Picture nominees, three were shut out completely with Lion going 0-for-6, Hell or High Water 0-for-4, and Hidden Figures 0-for-3. La La Land led with six wins, while Moonlight finished second with three, all in above-the-line categories. Hacksaw Ridge and Manchester by the Sea each earned two awards, while Fences and Arrival went home with one apiece. No film outside the Best Picture lineup won multiple awards, which since the expansion of the category has been the norm.

Documentary, Foreign, Animated, the Shorts

Apart from Moonlight’s Best Picture victory, I was most overjoyed to see my No. 1 film of the year take home Best Documentary. Director Ezra Edelman’s O.J.: Made in America is a towering achievement and one of the finest examples of the form. I could not be happier for him and am so pleased the Academy saw fit to recognize this film’s monumental achievement.

Iranian-American astronaut Anousheh Ansari accepts on behalf of Asghar Farhadi.

While politics were front and center all night in host Jimmy Kimmel’s material, the speeches, and the films, nowhere were they felt more than in Best Foreign Language Film. Iranian director Asghar Farhadi’s The Salesman brought home the gold, but the filmmaker chose not to attend the ceremony in protest and out of respect for his countrymen and peoples all over the world unfairly targeted by the U.S. president’s inhumane and frankly un-American immigration ban.

It is an open question whether the controversy raised the film’s profile in voters’ minds and made it the must-vote-for movie in the category over early frontrunner Toni Erdmann. The political climate, however, should take nothing away from Farhadi’s film, which is an astounding achievement, and its victory provided another of the night’s brightest moments. Iranian-American astronaut and entrepreneur Anousheh Ansari accepted the award on Farhadi’s behalf and read a speech from the filmmaker blasting the travel ban and exalting the shared humanity that defines us all.

Best Animated Feature was also a triumph for shared humanity with Zootopia, Disney’s fable about overcoming racism and prejudice, taking the award. Award co-presenter Mexican actor Gael García Bernal took the opportunity onstage to blast the proposed border wall, a politically charged moment that was perfectly in keeping with the evening’s theme.

Also keeping with the theme were wins by Sing for Live Action Short – a film about joining together to confront abuses of power – and The White Helmets for Documentary Short – another show of support by the Academy for the peoples of the Middle East. Meanwhile, Piper finally put Pixar back on the stage for Animated Short after a 15-year drought for the company. It is a truly great film, both as a technical marvel and a touching tale of parenthood.

The final analysis

Our last “final analysis” before we close the book on this Oscar season. It has been a tumultuous year, to say the least. World events have rightly overshadowed the cinema to some degree. I understand how for some it can be difficult to care about handing gold statues to mostly rich people, but for nearly half of American history, the movies have been there for us. Through two world wars, Vietnam, and Iraq. Through a Great Depression, a Black Monday, and a Great Recession. Through 20 presidential administrations and now a 21st. The movies aren’t going anywhere, and I don’t see anything wrong with celebrating that.

Moonlight is a wonderful winner, whose ultimate message of empathy is among the most important we could have in these trying times. I hope many more people discover this fantastic little film as a result of this award. Like 12 Years a Slave before it and Schindler’s List and Casablanca, its victory means something and will stand the test of time. The world is a disturbing place right now, filled with hate and fear and deep feelings of mistrust. Moonlight is a film that allows us to step into the world of another and love, not hate, embrace, not fear, and understand one another deeper than perhaps we could have before. In short, it is a perfect film for the here and the now.

La di da, la di da, La La … Moonlight: Best Picture winner stuns in more ways than one

Writer-director Barry Jenkins accepts the Academy Award for Best Picture for Moonlight.

I am still processing what I just saw. The erroneous announcement of La La Land as Best Picture will go down as the biggest gaffe in Academy Awards history. There can be none bigger. Moonlight is your Best Picture winner of 2016. It is the most deserving of the nominated films, and writer-director Barry Jenkins and his cast and crew earned their spot in the sun. But, wow, what a way to step into that moment.

Your heart just sinks for the producers of La La Land, particularly Jordan Horowitz, who was standing at the microphone, pouring his heart out in gratitude, and clutching his Oscar when that frankly shocking announcement took place. I cannot begin to imagine the heartbreak to have achieved your dream for nearly a full minute before it is dashed to pieces on a stage in front of 100 million viewers the world over. Horowitz was incredibly gracious, standing tall in the face of an impossible moment, and stating his pride at getting to hand the award over to such a remarkable film as Moonlight.

Best Picture presenter Warren Beatty’s explanation was both reasonable and confounding, leaving several questions, including how he ended up with the wrong card in his hands. Most importantly, though, the Academy has safeguards in place for just such an occurrence, so how did the folks behind the scenes allow the La La Land filmmakers onstage and almost completely through their speeches before correcting their mistake?

La La Land producer Jordan Horowitz shows the card naming Moonlight Best Picture.

It was an embarrassment of great magnitude for everyone but the artists involved. It stole away what would have been a truly stunning moment of victory for Moonlight, a moment that would have gone down as one of the greatest in recent Academy history, and turned it into a circus. We are not more than a half-hour removed from that moment as I type this, and it remains hard to understand what we witnessed. I am overjoyed for Jenkins and Moonlight, but I will not feel the full weight of the win until tomorrow, when the fog of this absurd ending hopefully will have cleared.

The shame is that this ceremony was on its way to being one of the best Oscars ceremonies in a long time. Jimmy Kimmel made for a wonderfully funny, self-effacing host, if not particularly fleet for an evening that ran just a tad long. The recurring gag with the snacks falling from the ceiling was delightful, and the trick of bringing in a busload of tourists for the most amazing surprise party in history was inspired.

The winners gave uniformly magnificent speeches that spoke to everyone across the world and delivered messages of love, hope, acceptance, and defiance in the face of oppression. In particular, Best Supporting Actress winner Viola Davis stole the show – at least until the evening was hijacked by a misplaced envelope. Wins for movies like The Salesman, The White Helmets, and O.J.: Made in America showed a streak of protest ran deep through these awards, and the power of their victories hopefully will outlast the memory of the only moment anyone will talk about tomorrow and the next day and the next.

Moonlight’s victory, even apart from its circumstances, was a genuine stunner, but there were indications throughout the night Damien Chazelle’s front-running Hollywood musical was vulnerable. The first came in when Colleen Atwood picked up her fourth career Oscar for Best Costume Design for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, beating out Mary Zophres’ work on La La Land. If Chazelle and Co. were going to sweep, it would have started there.

Next came the sound awards, which went to Arrival (Sound Editing) and Hacksaw Ridge (Sound Mixing). La La Land would have been a mild surprise in Sound Editing, but rarely do nominated musicals lose Sound Mixing. By that point, the presumed juggernaut was 0-for-3. The headline in the sound categories, though, really should be Kevin O’Connell, a winner for Hacksaw Ridge and no longer the record holder for most nominations without a win. On his 21st try, O’Connell finally made it onto the stage, and it was among the best moments of the night.

La La Land did not pick up its first award of the night until nearly two hours into the show for Best Production Design, but after losing Best Editing to Hacksaw Ridge, it felt like something might be in the air. A lot of movies with no realistic shot at the top prize were picking up awards that had been earmarked by most pundits, yours truly included, for La La Land. Meanwhile, Moonlight kicked off the proceedings with a well-deserved win for Mahershala Ali as Best Supporting Actor. Jenkins and playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney later picked up Best Adapted Screenplay, while Chazelle lost Original Screenplay to Kenneth Lonergan for Manchester by the Sea.

Viola Davis wins Best Supporting Actress for Fences.

Heading into the final four awards of the night, La La Land had gone just 4-for-10, bolstered by a pair of wins for Original Song and Original Score that were as good as preordained, though on this night, such impressions were proved foolish at best. However, when Chazelle picked up Best Director and Emma Stone Best Actress – in between Casey Affleck (Manchester by the Sea) beat out Denzel Washington (Fences) at the wire for Best Actor – it felt like the musical was back on track.

Six awards in tow, La La Land was back and chugging its way to the big one, which it won ever-so briefly. Its train was not just derailed, though. It was a crash of epic proportions, and all the blame falls on the shoulders of the Academy. The group’s detractors will laugh and point, and the U.S. president, perhaps with nothing better to do with his time, will probably tweet derisively. There is no doubt Hollywood’s biggest night ended in unprecedented fashion, a manner that will overshadow, hopefully only in the short term, all the good that was accomplished.

In time, I hope the underlying truths of the evening will lodge better in the cultural consciousness than a poorly timed mistake. For roughly the first three hours and 35 minutes, the Oscars ceremony was a beautiful ode to connection and transcendence through art. It delivered a message of hope and inclusivity to peoples all over the world. The final 10 minutes were a colossal disaster, but the triumph of Moonlight as Best Picture of the year only reinforces the ideas of hope, tolerance, love, and acceptance that I will take away from the evening, scandal be damned.

For a full list of winners, click here.

Totally Accurate, 100 Percent Guaranteed 2016 Academy Awards Predictions*

This is the third year running I have put out theses absolutely perfect predictions (with wide, wide margin for error), and in the previous two, there have been open questions extending even to the top award. This year, that question does not exist. The only major question is how high Damien Chazelle’s throwback Hollywood musical La La Land can soar. Can it set the record with 12 wins? Count ’em below if you want to know what I think.

That does not mean there is no intrigue. Far from it. From Best Actor to Best Documentary to Best Foreign Language Film, we will be in the dark until the moment the envelope is opened and someone’s life changes forever. So, sit back, relax, and embrace the mystery. Here are Last Cinema Standing’s Totally Accurate, 100 Percent Guaranteed 2016 Academy Awards Predictions*. Click on any category to see a full breakdown of the nominees, and check back here after the show for a full recap and analysis. Have fun.

*Guarantee this year is valid everywhere but no requests for refund will be honored.

Picture

Will win: La La Land

Should win: Moonlight

Director

Will win: Damien Chazelle for La La Land

Should win: Barry Jenkins for Moonlight

Actor

Will win: Casey Affleck for Manchester by the Sea

Should win: Denzel Washington for Fences

Actress

Will win: Emma Stone for La La Land

Should win: Natalie Portman for Jackie

Supporting Actor

Will win: Mahershala Ali for Moonlight

Should win: Mahershala Ali for Moonlight

Supporting Actress

Will win: Viola Davis for Fences

Should win: Viola Davis for Fences

Original Screenplay

Will win: La La Land

Should win: The Lobster

Adapted Screenplay

Will win: Moonlight

Should win: Fences

Cinematography

Will win: La La Land

Should win: Silence

Editing

Will win: La La Land

Should win: Hacksaw Ridge

Production Design

Will win: La La Land

Should win: La La Land

Costume Design

Will win: La La Land

Should win: Jackie

Makeup andHairstyling

Will win: Star Trek Beyond

Should win: Star Trek Beyond

Sound Editing

Will win: Hacksaw Ridge

Should win: Hacksaw Ridge

Sound Mixing

Will win: La La Land

Should win: La La Land

Original Score

Will win: La La Land

Should win: Jackie

Original Song

Will win: “Audition (Fools Who Dream)” from La La Land

Should win: “How Far I’ll Go” from Moana

Visual Effects

Will win: The Jungle Book

Should win: The Jungle Book

Animated Feature

Will win: Zootopia

Should win: Moana

Foreign Language Film

Will win: The Salesman

Should win: Land of Mine

Documentary Feature

Will win: O.J.: Made in America

Should win: O.J.: Made in America

Live Action Short

Will win: La Femme et le TGV

Should win: Sing

Animated Short

Will win: Pear Cider and Cigarettes

Should win: Piper

Documentary Short

Will win: Watani: My Homeland

Should win: 4.1 Miles

Predicted big winners

La La Land – 11

Moonlight – 2

From O.J. to Benghazi: All 62 Oscar nominees ranked

Two years running now, I have seen every nominated film. In a fun bit of symmetry, the earliest nominated film I saw this year was Production Design nominee Hail, Caesar!, which I saw in theaters Feb. 24, 2016, and the last one I saw was Animated Feature nominee My Life as a Zucchini, which I saw Feb. 24, 2017, the day of its release. One full year to the day to watch the 62 nominated films – 47 features and 15 shorts – and the reasonable question one might ask is: Why?

I spend a lot of time thinking about that. As a person who loves film, I would see movies anyway, but why these movies? I don’t know that I have a complete answer for that other than pointing to the collective quality of the group. The power of the Oscars is and always has been their power to draw attention to movies, be they good or bad. So, take an entirely subjective list like this with a grain of salt, but if it can be useful in any way guiding you to movies you might not otherwise see, then that is what it is here to do.

Here they are, then, all 62 2017 Academy Award nominated films, ranked for your amusement:

1. O.J.: Made in America

2. Silence

3. Moonlight

4. Fences

5. The Lobster

6. Land of Mine

7. Moana

8. Jackie

9. I Am Not Your Negro

10. 13th

11. Loving

12. Fire at Sea

13. 4.1 Miles

14. The Salesman

15. La La Land

16. Lion

17. Hell of High Water

18. Toni Erdmann

19. Sing

20. The White Helmets

21. Elle

22. 20th Century Women

23. Arrival

24. Piper

25. Watani: My Homeland

26. Hidden Figures

27. The Jungle Book

28. Manchester by the Sea

29. My Life as a Zucchini

30. Timecode

31. Hacksaw Ridge

32. Zootopia

33. Sully

34. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

35. La Femme et le TGV

36. Joe’s Violin

37. Deepwater Horizon

38. Tanna

39. A Man Called Ove

40. Kubo and the Two Strings

41. Borrowed Time

42. Life, Animated

43. Nocturnal Animals

44. The Red Turtle

45. Hail, Caesar!

46. Extremis

47. Doctor Strange

48. Pearl

49. Ennemis Intérieurs

50. Jim: The James Foley Story

51. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

52. Pear Cider and CIgarettes

53. Silent Nights

54. Allied

55. Blind Vaysha

56. Florence Foster Jenkins

57. Captain Fantastic

58. Star Trek Beyond

59. Trolls

60. Passengers

61. Suicide Squad

62. 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Picture

Writer-director Barry Jenkins' masterful Moonlight is among the nine nominees this year for Best Picture.

Welcome to Last Cinema Standing’s Countdown to the Oscars, our daily look at this year’s Academy Awards race. Be sure to check back every day leading up to the ceremony for analysis of each of the Academy’s 24 categories and more.

Best Picture

The nominees are:

Arrival

Fences

Hacksaw Ridge

Hell or High Water

Hidden Figures

La La Land

Lion

Manchester by the Sea

Moonlight

It has been a few years now since a movie ran away from the pack. Last year, it felt like any of four films could have been called out for the top award. Before that, Birdman and Boyhood battled it out for the big prize, and 12 Years a Slave and Gravity the year before. You have to look back to Argo in 2012 for the last time a film gobbled up everything on its way to the big win at the Oscars. Jack Nicholson and Michelle Obama presented that award. Can you imagine such a thing now? Damn it, it has only been a month, and it seems so long ago that hope mattered or was even possible.

We have talked in this series about the new president and his administration and how these awards reflect a cultural backlash against our just-beginning national nightmare. It is no coincidence we see films nominated like Iranian master Asghar Farhadi’s The Salesman, Ava DuVernay’s 13th, and shorts like The White Helmets, Watani: My Homeland, 4.1 Miles, and Ennemis Intérieurs. All of these films directly confront the most pressing issues of the day.

I have every hope the winners of Academy Awards on Sunday will use the platform of the ceremony to speak out, to protest, and to sound a rallying cry to the rest of us. There is no doubt the administration and its supporters, in an attempt to stoke class divisions and nurture their beloved us-vs.-them mentality, will point to this as yet another example of Hollywood elitism. I prefer to think of the Academy as speaking for the majority of Americans, who do not support the hate, racism, sexism, bigotry, and ignorance spewing from and encouraged by the White House.

The Academy Awards are a big, fancy-dress ball being held at a time when it almost does not seem worth it to get out of bed in the morning. It has been hard all season to look forward to Sunday evening with any real joy or anticipation. Political events seemed to have sucked the very idea of joy out of our national consciousness. So, I understand if some people do not want to watch (mostly) rich people get dressed up and award each other gold statues, but I would also argue it means more than that.

Th nine Best Picture nominees listed above and discussed below are about us and how we feel right now in this place and time. Some of us want escape, some want confrontation, some need inspiration, and others just need to see themselves reflected in a world turned upside down. Roger Ebert, that greatest of all film writers, once said: “For me, the movies are like a machine that generates empathy. It lets you understand a little bit more about different hopes, aspirations, dreams, and fears. It helps us to identify with the people who are sharing this journey with us.” If ever there were a time we needed that machine, it is now.

La La Land (directed by Damien Chazelle) – As an Oscar contender, there is nothing that compares to La La Land in the history of the Academy. It is just the third film in 89 years of ceremonies to garner 14 nominations. The first to do so was All About Eve in 1950. While both films are ostensibly show-business films, All About Eve is a dark, cynical satire, while Chazelle’s film is an earnest paean to the magic of art. The other film with 14 nominations is Titanic, which like La La Land is a romance, but let’s not compare the scale of the two. No one need be reminded of the epic nature of James Cameron’s historical fiction, and by comparison, the Hollywood musical seems small.

Chazelle’s film, then, is in a class by itself. It has pulled away from everything else in such an historic manner, I would not be surprised to see it break the record for Oscar wins, shared at 11 by Ben-Hur, Titanic, and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. La La Land is double nominated in Best Original Song, so there is one it cannot win, except in the unlikely event of a tie. Ryan Gosling is not among the frontrunners for Best Actor, so there are two. That leaves 12 and the record within reach.

Here are the Awards we can be nearly certain of: Picture, Director, Actress, Cinematography, Art Direction, Costume Design, Original Song, Original Score, and Sound Mixing. That’s nine, which would be an impressive haul and the most since The Return of the King in 2003. Editing and Sound Editing are a toss-up between La La Land and Hacksaw Ridge, while Original Screenplay is between this and Manchester by the Sea, and that is all that stands between Chazelle and history.

The question lingers: Why? Why this film? Why now? A starry-eyed musical romance about two dreamers following their lives’ passions – how does this speak to us today? Well, it is an escape into a fantasy land of hope and optimism, two hours during which you can sink into your chair, click your heels, and be whisked away into another world entirely, a happier world. It is natural, in times such as these, to need such an escape.

I have felt every day since the election: ‘Just bring me another drink, in bed; no worries, I’ll pull the covers back over my head myself.’ I do not suppose I am the only one. La La Land is the briefest of respites from the national depression. It is also a marvelously realized film, and whatever minor flaws it has are covered by its audacity and unbridled enthusiasm.  With it, Chazelle takes his place as one of the modern visionaries of cinema.

Moonlight (directed by Barry Jenkins) – There are a couple films here with an outside shot of upsetting the apple cart, and we will discuss those in a moment, but the only film with a reasonable chance of toppling La La Land is Moonlight. It is the critical favorite by a wide margin. It is second in nominations total behind La La Land, tied with Arrival at eight. More than any of that, though, and what will linger long after the awards have been handed out, it is a uniquely artistic, gorgeously rendered examination of a life. Talk about a machine that generates empathy.

As the film opens, Little (Alex R. Hibbert) could be any of us. He is a small, shy, sensitive boy being bullied for who he is. He meets his mentor, Juan (Mahershala Ali), a drug dealer but a kind man. He grows and becomes Chiron (Ashton Sanders), who is not yet comfortable in his own skin and has difficulty adjusting to the emotional and physical upheaval of adolescence. Finally, he is Black (Trevante Rhodes), a man who embodies all of that – the shy boy, the angry teen, the kind mentor – but still has little idea who he truly wants to be.

Moonlight is glorious because it charts the path of a life that could be any life, but in its specifics and details, it opens a door and invites us to step into this life, which we perhaps only understood intellectually. Jenkins helps us understand emotionally. At the margins of this society are people with the same hopes, fears, dreams, and aspirations as everyone else, but because opportunity never knocked on their doors, their lives took a different path. Most of us will never walk a mile in those shoes, but Moonlight shows us what it is like to lace them up.

Hidden Figures (directed by Theodore Melfi) – Every year, there is a popular favorite, a movie everybody saw and everyone liked and everyone thinks should win Best Picture. Call it the People’s Choice. In the recent past, that would have referred to movies like The Martian, American Sniper, and Gravity. These movies are usually well made, conventional but with an arty pedigree, and huge hits at the box office. Enter Hidden Figures, a well-made flick that feels conventional but has a degree of artiness and is the highest grossing of these nine nominees.

USA Today conducted a recent poll, in conjunction with Fandango, asking 8,000 movie-goers – a sample size a little larger than the Academy – what should win Best Picture. Hidden Figures led with 26 percent of the vote, followed closely by La La Land. Now, 26 percent will get you nowhere on a preferential ballot, which requires 50 percent plus one vote to win, but it is still informative. In a group that contains several crowd-pleasing entertainments, Melfi’s film is the one that pleased the crowd most. That it happens to be about three smart, black women is a wonderful bonus.

Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer), and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe) are American heroes for what they accomplished, yes, but more for how they accomplished it. To be black in this country has never been easy, and to be a woman in this country has never been easy, and black women have had perhaps the toughest time of anyone. The story of these brilliant people and their work at NASA is inspiring, the script is witty, and the performances are superb, but what matters most is if one more young, black girl – hopefully many more – decides to pursue a career in science or mathematics. That is what we mean when we talk about the power of these movies.

Manchester by the Sea (directed by Kenneth Lonergan) – There is no formula for winning Best Picture or making the kind of movie that will even be nominated. The more cynical among the film commentariat will sometimes see a log line or cast list and declare a film signed, sealed, and delivered for the Academy. Often as not, they are wrong. Speaking in the most general terms, a film needs one of two things to win Best Picture: wow factor or importance. If a film features both, so much the better. The last three Best Picture winners could not be more dissimilar, but they all had one or the other – Spotlight (importance), Birdman (wow factor), and 12 Years a Slave (both).

I mention all of this because Manchester by the Sea was tabbed as an early favorite for the top prize based on the critical response, which was breathless, and its cast and performances, which are universally superb. While it has found love in the nominations process everywhere, it has not caught on anywhere but for lead actor Casey Affleck, though even he is battling off a late charge by Denzel Washington. The reason, it seems to me, is that it lacks either the wow factor of some of these contenders, such as La La Land, Hacksaw Ridge, or Arrival, or the importance of films like Moonlight, Hidden Figures, and even Hell or High Water.

None of this is to say Manchester by the Sea is not a wonderful film, which it is, nor that it failed to accomplish what it sets out to accomplish, which I believe it does. Lonergan’s script is a remarkable achievement of character development, emotional resonance, and quiet humor, and he very well could win an Oscar for it. The work by Affleck, Michelle Williams, Lucas Hedges, and the rest of the cast is outstanding. However, next to the frontrunners, and indeed some of the films ostensibly trailing it, Manchester by the Sea lacks that essential element that would drive Academy members to vote for it.

Hacksaw Ridge (directed by Mel Gibson) – The Oscar story of Hacksaw Ridge is the story of Gibson’s return to the good graces of the Academy. The film, Gibson’s first as director since Apocalypto in 2006, premiered out of competition at the Venice Film Festival and received a 10-minute standing ovation. Its adequate, if not stellar, domestic box-office numbers are mitigated by a solid overseas haul, and the capper came nominations morning with six nods, including Best Picture. Mel Gibson, at least for now, is fully back. We talked a lot about the ethical quandary of that in discussing Best Director, so I will not rehash it here. The work stands alone.

And what beautiful work. Gibson’s credentials as a filmmaker have never been in doubt, and his twin Oscars for directing and producing Braveheart are hard-won, if not necessarily the choices I would have made. What he has needed – what all directors need – has been a story worthy of his gifts. He finds it in the true-life tale of Desmond Doss, a Quaker and conscientious objector during World War II who nonetheless joins the U.S. Army in an effort to preserve as much life on the battlefield as he can while refusing to take a life or even to carry a gun.

For a film that is ostensibly about the virtue of nonviolence, Gibson packs a hell of a lot of blood and guts into his picture, but at no point does he fall into the trap of making war look pretty or poetic. It is gritty, grimy, gross business, and the film depicts the honest darkness with a refreshing lack of sentiment. This is the big action star and action filmmaker in Gibson putting his talents to use in service of a cause larger than mere thrills or entertainment. Hacksaw Ridge uses its trappings as a brutally gory war flick to hide its true nature, that of a grand, glorious anti-war statement.

Arrival (directed by Denis Villeneuve) – Speaking of films that hide their true nature, anyone walking into Arrival expecting to see a traditional alien-invasion movie, with all the attendant firepower and destruction, left sorely disappointed. That is, unless they were able to give themselves over to one of cinema’s truly unique experiences this year – an elliptically told story about the power of words and virtue of patience that ultimately speaks volumes about the world in which we live.

The short story on which the film was based – “The Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang – was published in 1998, nearly 20 years ago, but its themes and ideas grow more relevant with each passing day. It is a story of communication, of seeing the world through eyes that are not your own, and of accepting that our lives and views are not so big in the grand scheme of things. In a world of radical self-importance and nihilistic individuality, this is perhaps not the message most want to receive, but it is the message we all most need.

Villeneuve’s direction, Amy Adams’ central performance, and the script by Eric Heisserer combine to make sense of a story that by design, has no beginning or end. Events occur, or have occurred, or will occur, seemingly at random, but as the pieces fall together, we get closer to understanding what it all means and how it all fits. This is the character’s journey as well, slowly, methodically coming to understand the whys of the world around her and finally coming to grips with that understanding.

Lion (directed by Garth Davis) – Some movies sneak up on you. You are not prepared for their depth or beauty. You cannot conceive of their brilliance until you are awash in it. I did not expect much from Lion. I had heard all the rave reviews, but most described it as a sort of weepy, which to me suggested it would be emotionally manipulative in some way, that it would not play fair with our hearts and minds. Its trailers did it no favors in selling it as just that kind of film. I went in with decidedly lowered expectations. How wrong I was to have doubted.

Davis’ film is anything but the generic, based-on-a-bestseller melodrama I so dreaded. It is a contemplative, quietly moving, deeply affecting look at the inner turmoil and emotional upheaval of a person whose life is split in two and who cannot move forward until the pieces are put back together. In addition to the remarkable, heart-on-its-sleeve story, the artistry put on display by first-time feature director Davis is positively splendid. The director daringly transitions from a neo-realist, nearly silent opening half into a more dreamlike, surreal second half that blends memory and reality, sensation and absence into a whirlwind of competing emotions that perfectly mirrors the main character’s headspace.

Lion is one of those rare pleasant surprises at the movies. I see enough and read enough that I know what to expect when I buy my ticket and take my seat – most of the time. When a movie comes along like Lion, though, and from the first frame to the last simply bowls me over with its intelligence, its grace, and its beauty, I can do nothing but marvel and appreciate that I have had an experience that does not come around very often.

Hell or High Water (directed by David Mackenzie) – I have a little game I play every year, like a thought experiment, in which I try to guess which Best Picture nominees my dad would enjoy most. I learned my love of film from my father, then as I grew older, I grew a different appreciation for the art of cinema from the one I knew as a child renting VHS tapes from the video store across the street. Suffice to say, my father’s and my taste have diverged.

While there are few films he enjoys that I do not – apart from a few tiresome comedies, which I would not begrudge anyone – I feel certain most of my favorite films would not appeal to him. This does not bother me and is perfectly normal, but when I find a movie I know my father will love, I get excited. It is fun to show something to the man who showed me everything when I was growing up. All of this is a long way of saying Hell or High Water is the kind of rollicking, adventure thriller that will appeal to anyone with an appreciation of cinema or anyone who just wants to have a good damn time.

The magnificence of Mackenzie’s film, written by Taylor Sheridan, lies in its ability to be two things at once. It is a whip-smart, down-home thriller about a couple good ol’ boys on the run from the law and the lawman chasing after them. However, it is also an earnest condemnation of the big-business world and the politics of money that have depressed entire regions of this nation, destroying livelihoods and wrecking futures for generations to come. So few movies can be all things to all people, but Hell or High Water succeeds in entertaining and informing in a way of which I think my dad would approve.

Fences (directed by Denzel Washington) – In just the past two months, I have written thousands of words about the greatness of Fences – its performances, its direction, and above all its writing. There is not much more I can do to convince the unconvinced, to interest the disinterested. I simply sit and wonder how anyone could not be shaken to the bone, moved to their very core, by the story of Troy Maxson (Washington), his wife, Rose (Viola Davis), their son, Corey (Jovan Adepo), Troy’s first son, Lyons (Russell Hornsby), his brother, Gabriel (Mykelti Williamson), and his friend Bono (Stephen Henderson).

Playwright August Wilson’s masterpiece is about these people and the way they live. It is about how they communicate, how they interact with the world, how the world treats them. It is about the ways they wrong each other, care for each other, love each other, and find equal amounts of joy and sorrow in one another. No work of American literature has better captured or better expressed the basic humanness of us all. It is not a blueprint for how to live our lives but a blueprint for how we have already lived. Wilson writes as if he knows who we are, what we have done, and what we will do. He writes this way because he knows all of this of the Maxsons, who stand for every one of us and yet stand alone.

The play, as Wilson’s only true peer Shakespeare once wrote, is the thing. Every bit of brilliance in Fences stems from the words on the page. But Washington’s task does not end there. He is the first director to bring a work by Wilson to the big screen, and his responsibility in so doing is immense. Of course, lest we forget, this is Denzel Washington, one of the great talents of our time, and he lives up to every responsibility he has to the text. He mounts the picture marvelously, performs in it incomparably, and directs it admirably. We are lucky, now, to live in a world where such greatness was captured, even for an instant.

The final analysis

There are certain years in Academy history that stand out for their Best Picture lineups. The first, and most often cited as the greatest year in film history, let alone Academy history, is 1939, when nominated for Best Picture were winner Gone with the Wind, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Stagecoach, The Wizard of Oz, and Wuthering Heights, among others.

Another is 1967, 50 years ago now, and as is my understanding the subject of one of those strange, themed Academy Awards ceremony tributes that honor films that came out in the anniversary of the ceremony year, not the year of the films being celebrated. For instance, the ceremony of 50 years ago, honored the films of 1966, much as this one celebrates the achievements of 2016. I digress. In 1967, the nominees were winner In the Heat of the Night, The Graduate, Bonnie and Clyde, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, and Doctor Doolittle.

Less often spoken of but to my mind no less miraculous is 1976, when the nominees were winner Rocky, Taxi Driver, Network, All the President’s Men, and Bound for Glory. It has been a while since we have had a year of such vintage, though I would argue 2005, which honored Crash alongside Capote, Goodnight and Good Luck, Brokeback Mountain, and Munich, belongs in the conversation.

La La Land will win Best Picture this year. It will probably sweep the awards in a possibly record-setting fashion. It will do so, however, at the head of a class of nominees that deserves a place on that illustrious list of best years in Academy history. Moonlight and Fences belong to the ages. La La Land is an invigorating, admirable champion from an exciting, young visionary director, and it will be looked back upon fondly.

The other six nominees are all glorious achievements and a year featuring any one of them could not have been a bad year for the movies. These nine films speak to who we are today, the people we were yesterday, and the people we could be tomorrow. Their individual accomplishments are many, but taken together, it is one of the greatest groups the Academy has ever produced, and years from now, generations yet to be born will look back on these films and know something good came from the mess we made of this world. If we cannot say the same about the society we have fostered, at least we do not have to be embarrassed of its cinema.

Will win: La La Land

Should win: Moonlight

Should have been here: O.J.: Made in America

This weekend: I will have up a couple more fun items tomorrow and Sunday morning, including a ranking of all 62 nominated films, so be sure to check back for that, and then, at long last, the big show arrives.