The 2014 Brando Awards

It’s that time again, awards season.  We’ve weathered the Emmys, the Golden Globes, the SAG Awards, and probably nine others (Are they still doing the Blockbuster Awards? ‘Cause that would just be weird).  But we all know that these shows are just a ramp-up to the granddaddy of them all, The Academy Awards.  I must confess that this year I saw fewer movies than I should have, it could’ve because of my new job, but also because… Well, to be honest, there wasn’t that much variety out there this year.  I’m not saying that every year has to reinvent the wheel, but when every one of the frontrunners for Best Picture are either based on a true story, or based upon what could’ve easily been a true story (I’m not 100% sure that Joaquin Phoenix knew there was a camera on him in Her), there’s not a lot of room for a Life is Beautiful, a Beasts of the Southern Wild, or even a Life of Pi.  However, as we do every year, we will give these films and more importantly the Academy Awards all the respect that they deserve.

Gotcha!

Editor’s note: We really, really tried to talk Brando out of adding that picture again, but he insisted.  Honestly, he doesn’t have a lot going on right now, so we feel compelled to give him these small victories every once in a while.  Seriously, if you see him on the street, offer him some free pizza or something.

I suppose that there was a lot to be celebrated this year.  This was the year that saw Christian Bale stretch himself into a new role that we weren’t expecting, Jennifer Lawrence turn in an amazing performance, DiCaprio make a movie with Scorsese, and… wait just a tic…  

See friends, this is quickly becoming my beef with the Oscars: apparently we’ve only got so many talented people running around in Hollywood and we keep having to nominate them and wait for a year when they don’t get upset by a Marissa Tomei or Mo’nique, so they can get their damn statue and get off the stage and on with their lives already.  

Honestly, if DiCaprio doesn’t win this year, what else does this man have to do? At this point, he’s pretty much played almost every role out there that the Academy loves:  leading man in a dramatic role about a serious topic – Blood Diamond, mentally challenged – What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?, sexually confused – J. Edgar, unlikable everyman overwhelmed by life – Revolutionary Road, tortured genius – The Aviator, likeable rouge in a dramedy – Catch Me If You Can, over the top bad guy – Django Unchained, someone that’s been directed by Christopher Nolan – Inception.  I’m not kidding around, this list just keeps going…

In any event, secure in the knowledge that the Academy will cover the important topics of the last year in cinema, like Best Sound Mixing (or as we call it, the “Best Time To Go Get Another Beer Category” because lets be real, who cares?); I once again, though no one asked me to, will take up the slack and bring you the winners of the categories that we all really care about.

So without further ado, here are your 2014 Brando Awards!

(“And the Brando goes to…”)

BEST TRAILER: Dallas Buyers Club

I know that it’s odd that I’ve seen the film and I’m still giving the award to the trailer, but this thing is almost flawless.  You show McConaughey, known best for his role in Dazed and Confused in which he played a washed up has-been still partying with teenagers, acting a fool and then facing the consequences of that sort of lifestyle. Immediately obvious is the gaunt skeleton the actor has become to play the HIV positive Ron Woodruff, but if you look closely, within the first minute you see him manifest denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance (these are the five stages of grief, folks), and then you see the hustler take charge and have positive results.  And even though this trailer is impressive enough at this point to make you interested in the film, once that Alabama Shakes song “You Ain’t Alone” starts playing, this kicks it up to a different level and all of the sudden this trailer has a heart as big as Texas.  Add in the shots of our leading man hugging not only Jennifer Gardner as his doctor and friend/possible love interest, but also an almost unrecognizable Jared Leto as his cross-dressing partner in crime, and this trailer becomes the one to beat for last year.  

My favorite part of this trailer is the editing and cards that fill us in not only about the backstory of who this guy is, but how being that man enabled him to become what the story is about.  Bonus points for showing (the always welcome) Steve Zahn in a supporting role as a police officer who can’t help himself from chuckling about Ron’s antics as he lies to the authorities about who his clients might be.  So good was this thing the first time I saw it, that I actually made Kyle and his extended family stop what they were doing and watch it on YouTube.  That isn’t something that happens often.  

Side note: like I said, I’ve seen the film and I have to say, it is not impossible that in just a short time, we may be watching McConaughey stand on the Oscar stage saying, “Just keep O-S-C-A-R-I-N!!”

BEST MISCASTING – Joel Edgerton – The Great Gatsby

Any fan of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece has their own ideas about who this character should be.  He’s written as an athletic bully that simply cannot come to terms with the fact that not only are his best years behind him, but that his wife doesn’t love him anymore and his mistress cannot agree to be more than an affair.  In the novel, Tom is portrayed as the undisputed master of his realm (and the only character not sucked in by Gatsby’s tale) and he is certain that he is in complete control of his world, until the moment arrives when he realizes that he isn’t.  And in the final showdown in the hotel suite at the Plaza, Tom breaks down and confronts his wife’s lover, desperate to maintain some sort of power in the situation.

To be completely fair, I think Joel Edgerton is a good actor and his work in the film Warrior is one of the best “good guy just doing the best he can” roles that I have seen in a long time.  But when I saw the trailer for this movie and learned of his casting as Tom, I couldn’t help but think, “Well that doesn’t fit, not even a little bit.”  

And on the outset, it doesn’t.

But there were a lot of things in Baz Lurman’s opus to extravagance (to be fair, almost every film old Baz directs could fit that mold) that do not fit. Carey Mulligan’s Daisy is even more uninvolved than the book sets her out to be, and Tobey MaGuire’s Nick is less of a narrator than someone who is often getting in the way of the story.  This film really hampered Nick by not only having him be the narrator of the plot after he’s experienced it (conveniently having him author the story he is telling, much like Christian in Moulin Rouge), but also by completely excising his romance with the vapid socialite Jordan, which in the book was often Nick’s cover for keeping so intertwined with the plot. 

So while I was ready to turn away and count this film off as a complete misstep, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Edgerton’s performance was the one that I watched the closest.  Giving up an inch and change to DiCaprio on screen, Edgerton’s Tom has to intimidate though bluster and bravado and the result is that he is compulsively watchable in this role, at times giving this film what little energy it has.  During the aforementioned showdown at the Plaza, DiCaprio’s manic fury is drowned out by Edgerton’s cold refinement and ability to dissect the fraud that he sees in front of him.  As a fan of this book it was very difficult to side with the bad guy, but his performance made it possible.

BEST IMPROVISATION – Chris Hemsworth - Thor: The Dark World

Some of the best moments on film occur because of great improvisation (and fantastic editing).  We all know that Indy shooting the sword-toting bad guy in Raiders of the Lost Ark was one of the best, but also note Tommy Lee Jones’ line “I don’t care” as a response to Harrison Ford’s assertion that he didn’t kill his wife in The Fugitive.  These are some great moments on film that come from an actor taking a chance and asserting their viewpoint of their character into the film.  

And every once in a while, this impulse gives us something else entirely: a sight gag.  This film is not a bad follow up to the unexpected enjoyment that was 2011’s Thor, but for the most of the movie the seriousness of the plot didn’t leave time for the fun they were having the first time around.  Luckily for us, Hemsworth loves playing this role, because when the film takes a break from the crazy action that is presents, Thor and Jane head over to Darcy’s apartment to figure out an earthly solution to an Asgardian problem.  After Darcy opens the door and freaks out about where Jane has been since she disappeared (Asgard, for a surprisingly large chunk of the movie) and starts laying out the conflict that will become the final act, there’s just not a lot for a god of thunder to do in a one-bedroom efficiency apartment.

However, in a throwaway take, Hemsworth took the time to hang his mystical hammer (and the source of his power) on the coat rack in Darcy’s apartment, and the editors knew how good that moment was and put it into the final film.  I know it sounds like I’m picking something out of nothing, but this scene made me laugh like crazy in the theater, so it gets my vote, hands down.

BEST REINVENTING OF AN ACTOR – Sam Rockwell – The Way Way Back

If you’ve ever been on a flight home from a bachelor party while one of your buddies was still in a hospital of the town that you were visiting (Apologies to the gentleman, and his wife, for my part in that fiasco), then you know that one of the last things that you would ever expect to do is start watching the in-flight flick, and even more surprisingly turn out to love it.  But that is exactly what happened to me with this film.

Hoping to kill a couple hours between Boston and home, I tuned into the movie, and was immediately confronted with two factors that gave me a long pause; first of all, this was an independent film (in fact at times, its very much an independent film) and second of all, it had Sam Rockwell in it, an actor that over the years I’ve simply come to hate.  Granted I can’t swear that I’ve sampled his entire catalogue, but in every role he plays, from the purposely manic Chuck Barris in Confessions of a Dangerous Mind to the unfortunately manic Justin Hammer in Iron Man 2, Rockwell seems to have one speed for every role he takes: the actual narcotic speed.  He’s always about three levels higher in energy and excitability than everyone else in the cast, and after a few films, I felt that I could predictably say the following with conviction, “Oh, he’s in it? I can go ahead and skip that one.”

But then came this one performance and turned it all around.  

To be completely fair, Rockwell is doing a pretty good job channeling Ryan Reynolds’ shtick from Van Wilder in his role as Owen, the aging theme park manager who’s doing his best to not grow up and actually face the real world.  Not only is Rockwell compulsively likable as he steals absolutely every single scene he’s in, an impressive feat considering that he successfully outshines Mya Rudolph, Nat Faxon, (Dean) Jim Rash, Allison Janney, and Steve Carell; but in the end its Owen that gives the film a lot of the heart that it has.  His mentoring of Liam James’ Duncan makes us love him, while his wide-eyed affection for Rudolph’s Caitlin as his long-suffering girlfriend makes us root for him at the same time.  Add in the fact that he gets literally all of the good one-liners in the film and it’s a perfect recipe for turning around this author’s opinion of the guy.

*As a side note, after watching this film I took a look at 2012’s Seven Psychopaths, and while its not a perfect film; the writer in me absolutely loved it, and Rockwell’s performance in that was much better than what I’d given him credit for in the past.

BEST CAMEO – Pierce Brosnan- The World’s End

"I didn't know I was in it either!"

Wrapping up their Three Flavors Cornetto Trilogy with their most audacious and special effects laden effort yet, Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg decided to ratchet up the stakes from a horror spoofing zombie apocalypse and an action spoof about a town gone mad to an outlandish comedy about aliens taking over humanity through the use of robot replacements.  Borrowing heavily from most conventional ‘alien/robot replacement’ movie set pieces just like they did with their last films’ respected genres, this film sets up the story in these guys’ signature style, throwing us a lot of back story combined with lightning fast editing and hilarious writing.

Pegg’s Gary King has gone nowhere since high school, but he’s so self-deluded that he thinks his biggest regret is that he never finished an epic pub crawl with his best buddies on their last day in their home town.  In order to get his life back on track, he manipulates his four friends, all of whom have moved on with their lives and agree to go along with the plan in an effort to intervene in Gary’s life (although no one brought an Intervention Banner), into heading back home and taking a second stab at ‘The Golden Mile’ the pub crawl encompassing twelve pubs all in one night.  

In proper Wright and Pegg style, this film is filled with just as much pathos as it is zaniness and I was surprised by how unlikable they made the loser-like Gary seem in the first reel.  And just when I started to worry that these guys might have lost their comedic edge, the boys get caught in a men’s room with some aggressive college kids with blue ink coursing through their veins.  From then on it’s a manic romp through The Village of the Drunk & Damned, with the body count and the one-liners piling up by the second. 

The film does take a break from the action in order to squeeze in not only a little exposition, but also the year’s best cameo.  After only showing up in one flashback as the only teacher that understood young Gary, Pierce Brosnan’s Mr. Shepherd materializes in a pub to sit the boys down and try to talk a little since into them (and to explain to the audience just what the hell is going on).  And while he makes a convincing argument that submission to the will of the aliens could make all of them happy again, once Gary’s well-timed burst of a foul-mouthed, humanity-loving diatribe gets out, even the calm and collected Shepherd loses his cool and demands that they toe the line.  This scene is also used to show how impossible it is to kill the replacements, as Gary has to dispatch his former mentor, only to have a perfectly whole replacement walk in seconds later.  

What makes this scene work so well is that even though Brosnan is pimping for the bad guys the entire time, his standard charm and likeability are right there in the performance, and he almost talks the boys into his plan.

Bonus points as well for these guys getting not only a second James Bond to be in one of their films (Timothy Dalton – Hot Fuzz), but also Bond Girl Rosamund Pike as well.

BEST SURPRISE PERFORMANCE – Colin Farrell – Saving Mr. Banks

If you’re going to make a movie produced by Disney about Walt Disney, you’re going to have to bring the best of the best to the table, and in this day in age, that means you’re going to need Tom Hanks.  But you’re also going to need a foil for such a charismatic character, so you’ll need someone who can play controlling and unlikable while not alienating the audience and Emma Thompson is the go to actress for that type of thing.  And if you really want to push it over the edge, you’ll probably need to throw in a nice guy with some legitimate acting chops in a supportive role to get through to the ice queen, say someone like Paul Giamatti.  Now that’s a cast that can make a film fly.

And who’s to say, it very well could’ve.

But in the end it didn’t have to, because the biggest surprise in a film about a magical studio making a film about the world’s most magical nanny was Colin Farrell, playing Thompson’s P.L. Travers’ father in the film’s flashback sequences.  Shown as a loving but terribly flawed man who is killing himself slowly with alcoholism (and kudos to Disney for allowing this harsh of material into such a personal film), Farrell’s performance is what is going to cause the lump in your throat by the end credits.

Equal parts endearing as he indulges his children’s every fantasy, and maddening as he refuses to see the world around him crashing in because of his unwillingness to put down the bottle and do the right thing for his family, Farrell’s character spends the whole movie tragically attempting to get his daughter to believe in a magic that he knows first hand doesn’t exist in this world.  

Known for his leading man looks and acting style, Farrell is not known for performances that are as vulnerable as this one, probably because he’s never really played one before.  Completely gone from this role is any of the cocky swagger of his most notable characters, and as awkward as the scene is where he gives a speech at his banks’ county fair, he pulls it off almost single-handedly.  I’m not kidding around, I literally walked out of the film thinking to myself, “who knew he could do that?” and really I hope this role becomes a springboard that leads better roles for the actor.

Damn...

And there they are folks, the 2014 Brando Awards.

Last year, in an attempt to churn up some discussion, I gave you my picks for best of all time from the seven major categories.  And seeing as I still won’t predict who I think will win on Oscar night until the actual night arrives (you’d understand if you knew how cut-throat the Oscar watching party I go to can get), this year I’m going to give you my list of runners up to last year’s best of the best.  Feel free to comment away!

BEST SCREENPLAY: Nora Ephron - When Harry Met Sally  

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Kathy Bates – Primary Colors

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Tom Wilkinson – Michael Clayton

BEST ACTRESS: Hilary Swank – Boys Don’t Cry

BEST ACTOR: Gregory Peck – To Kill a Mockingbird

BEST DIRECTOR: Mel Gibson - Braveheart

BEST PICTURE: JFK

From all of here at SpoilerAlert Podcast, please do your best to safely enjoy the Academy Awards.

“And the Oscar goes to…”

- Brando