Oscar’s Best picture 2019.
Every year I like to challenge myself to predict who will be the Best Picture in the Oscars, so here I am another year!
I particularly like this festival for two reasons:
- It’s the most famous one, so by watching the 8 best picture nominees, I’m covering plenty of the cinema pop culture out there.
- Every nominee has something that I find outstanding, it has a soul as if I could find a lost city while diving in a lake. (*)
Quoting George R.R. Martin:
“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.”
I find this is also true for cinema. And these movies I’ll be talking about have that capacity to make you live as if you were someone else.
Sometimes by exchanging how a movie made you feel it becomes better or worse, hence I’m writing this to share my experience with you.
We are about to eat from the same popcorn bowl.
What can we find this year?
I ordered them by how much I like them from top to bottom.
2 movies about racial issues (Blackkklansman, Green Book),
2 musical films (A Star is Born, Bohemian Rhapsody),
6 based on real stories (Green Book, The Favourite, Blackkklansman, Vice, Roma, Bohemian Rhapsody)
1 superhero movie (Black Panther)
Let’s go to the point:
Green Book is my winner. Go and watch it!
Why I loved it so much?
Let’s say it louder, I think Green Book is the winner of the Oscars 2019 🎉
BOOM. That’s it. You don’t need to read anymore.
But if you are still here, let me tell you why I enjoyed it so much.
The reason is simple: change. Humans can change. It’s hard to believe, I know, but we have that rare capacity to become better.
And Green Book is a journey where Tony Lip (Vigo Mortensen) and Dr Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali) are going to be challenged continuously and change will be the only possible answer.
What is best for me is that it doesn’t happen abruptly, like a sudden bomb, but rather slowly, like a good roast, like exactly what it is: A road trip where the journey is the most important part.
Isn’t that the key part of every road trip?
So I loved it because it’s full of little details, not only about racism but also about the Macho culture, about pride, about belonging, about opening up to a stranger. And yes, it also has that magic of the cinema hand by hand with a soft educating touch that makes you feel a better being after you finish it. As if you just came back from the meadows of Pennsilvania feeling a little bit better. A little bit more mature. Happier. Touched. Renewed.
The Favourite is my second best.
Why? Because it’s also about change, about how much we can do to survive, and how rotten and greedy our soul can become in the way up, especially when our own lives are at stake.
Abigail (Emma Stone) is superb. It’s worth going to the cinema to see her faces, and how much chemistry she has with the Queen (Olivia Colman), Masham (Joe Alwyn) or her competitive cousin Sarah (Rachel Weisz).
Oh gosh, I loved this movie.
The Favourite is at times, the Revenant of the Royals.
And they can be ridiculous and scary at times. I would be inclined to say that this is the winner if it wasn’t because Green Book is ~ overall ~ much happier and has that Hollywood touch.
Black lives matter.
Black Panther is the black superhero we needed. YES! Wakanda Forever!
It’s indeed super fun to watch, but it doesn’t have that epicness of the Batmans from Christopher Nolan, any of them. That’s why it scores so low for me, low from the good ones is still pretty good, tho! but I appreciate it’s in the nominees because hopefully, that will bring more people into the world of comics, it will bring more minorities into the big screen, so hurray for Black Panther and being more inclusive because that can only have benefits.
If you liked it, I wanna challenge you to do something: check out your nearest book store, go to the graphic novel section, pick a random book and read a few pages, you’ll find true hidden gems there. And no, your age doesn’t matter to read a comic.
We also have Blackkklansman, which is a well-cooked documentary but in my opinion, it loses momentum by being too comical. Sometimes reality is exactly like that, so broken that you end up laughing, so melted that you can’t believe is true, like a parody, and Blackkklansman is good at doing that, at slapping us while we are still laughing, but I would have loved more scary stuff as Get Out did last year, and less of the comedy. More scary punches. We need them.
Green Book does it better for my taste because it tells us a story from start to end, without leaving a can of worms opened up. Blackkklansman is worth watching, I personally just didn’t like it as much.
If you are eager to know more about race, check this list and pick a book.
Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race, is the next one in my reading list because it happens in Britain.
Lady Gaga or Freddie Mercury?
Okay, enough of the click-bait.
I loved both movies, but the documentary of Freddie Mercury is unstoppable. If you like music, go and watch it. Queen is a legend, and with how fast our days move it would be hard for another group to be as legendary, new bands might earn more millions and more views but they vanish as quickly. Rami Malek does such a good job that I wouldn’t doubt he could be the winner as Best Actor.
A Star is Born has that touch of La La Land. It’s cute. It’s loveable. It made me cry. But although I can’t stop singing Shallow, it was way too predictive for me. If I have to choose, I prefer the sour touch of La La Land, or focusing on this year, the story of Queen.
Roma and Vice.
Cuarón says that Roma is autobiographical. I think this is probably the hardest movie to watch from all the nominees, not because of the content but because how is it told.
Probably the best for connoisseurs that love silence and slow plots. I personally didn’t like it and wouldn’t recommend.
It was as looking back to my childhood in Almeria and stepping into one of our poorest neighbourhoods. The stories you’ll hear are as sad as it can get, but as they are not so new to me I couldn’t keep up with the pace. I have to admit the photography is superb, but the pace killed me.
Vice for me was as slow as Roma, or even worse. The fact that there are puppeteers behind the president shouldn’t be new to anyone.
I thinks is because I saw Alejandra Ocasio recently why this movie wasn’t such a big surprise to me.
What dissapointed me was to see how easily he jumps from one position to the next without any mayor emphasis in the journey. Things just happen, but I never got to know how the main character manages to climb the ladder, and that’s why although I think the movie is worth a watch, and it has really powerful content, as a movie the way is narrated totally lost me. Wouldn’t recommend unless you are seeking for a tough and slow sort-of-documentary.
The Zen of Cinema.
I find Cinema ideal for a team bonding exercise or a day out because it shows how the people around you will interpret the same story. How much the same things can change for a different pair of eyes.
Good to remember that these movies are nominees but that doesn’t mean that you are gonna like them, “what is a good movie?” or “what is a movie I like?” is probably something you need to answer for yourself. That’s the Zen of Cinema.
Also * I said that these movies have a soul but I believe this point is not so true for connoisseurs. If you like the rawest, wildest, weirdest, calmest, deepest, bestest cinema probably this will be a simple salted beef for your A5 Kobe palate.
I pretty much love them, hence ~I exist~ I write.
One, in particular, that got my attention last year was The Ballad of Buster Scruggs which is only a nominee in “Best Achievement for Costume Design” and I pretty much loved it more than Roma, for example. Which goes back to the idea of the Zen of Cinema, the fact that I liked it doesn’t mean it will fall in this category, there are many reasons why they are nominees, and I honestly don’t even know them, so if you are eager for more good cinema, have a look at the Toronto Film Festival, Cannes, or BFI. Or platforms such as https://mubi.com/showing.
Thanks for reading. By the way, I only bet against myself with the Oscars. So the only thing at stake is my superpower to look into the future. Nothing to worry about haha.
Until next year.
