Awards Season

CultureMap film critic's guide to the 8 Best Picture Oscar nominees of 2019

Roma, which garnered 10 Oscar nominations, is the favorite to win Best Picture at the 2019 Academy Awards.

Photo by Carlos Somonte

The nominations for the 2019 Academy Awards have been revealed, with eight films garnering nods for Best Picture. But are all of them deserving? Take a look back at what CultureMap's film critic, Alex Bentley, had to say about each of the nominees when they were originally released. The Oscars will be handed out on February 24.

Black Panther
I declared Black Panther a contender for the best movie of 2018 when it came out in February, and nothing has changed. It's not going to win simply because it's not your "typical" Oscar movie, but it's a perfect superhero movie that actually has something cogent to say about the real, non-movie world. Director Ryan Coogler and stars Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita N'Yongo, Letitia Wright, and more have bright futures in front of them.

BlacKkKlansman
Writer/director Spike Lee is in peak storytelling form in this film that tells the story of the first African American policeman in Colorado Springs who infiltrated the local KKK organization. It joins a growing line of movies, like Black Panther, that successfully address racial issues and entertain audiences at the same time. It's Lee’s best film in years (he was nominated for both writing and directing), and proof that, given the right story, he still has the ability to be a powerful and insightful filmmaker.

Bohemian Rhapsody
All art is subjective, but even given that, there's no reason that this film belongs among the nominees for Best Picture at the Oscars. Star Rami Malek does give an Oscar-worthy (and nominated) performance as Queen lead singer Freddie Mercury, but the film is little more than an excuse to revel in the greatness of Queen's many hits. There's no valuable insight into Queen as a band or Mercury as a person, and the filmmakers include too many cheesy moments for the film to be considered great.

The Favourite
Remember what I said about art being subjective? The Favourite is a supremely strange movie from the king of bizarre filmmaking, Yorgos Lanthimos (nominated for both writing and directing), that won over most other film critics. I found it to be a drag, as Lanthimos and his team are more interested in odd diversions than actually getting to the point. Still, all props go to Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz, and Emma Stone, whose Oscar-nominated performances keep the movie interesting even when it shouldn't be.

Green Book
Many critics are still standing behind Green Book, but for the life of me, I can't understand why. Directed and co-written by Peter Farrelly (he earned a nomination for the script), the broadness of the film makes it feel like it’s a movie that’s 20-30 years too late. It preaches racial harmony, but through the lens of the white protagonist, one that stands at odds with the nuanced messages of movies like Black Panther and BlacKkKlansman. The strength of nominated actors Mahershala Ali, the favorite to win for Best Supporting Actor, and Viggo Mortensen keep it afloat, but just barely.

Roma
The most personal film yet from writer/director Alfonso Cuarón, who's the favorite to win both Best Director and Best Cinematography, is a slow-moving yet engrossing film shot in sumptuous black and white. The mostly plotless film reveals significant developments almost in passing, allowing the focus to remain on the intimacy of the central characters while still acknowledging the importance of bigger things. The compelling story and the astonishing re-creation of a time more than 40 years in the past make it a front-runner to win the whole thing.

A Star is Born
Like most critics, I thought the first 30-45 minutes of A Star is Born was some of the best storytelling of the year. And then writer/director/star Bradley Cooper puts the film into fast-forward, getting away from the personal aspect that made the beginning so great. The story arcs of both Cooper's Jackson Maine and Lady Gaga's Ally (Cooper and his co-writers are nominated) aren't given the depth they deserve, rendering flat what should be an emotional ending. The music, including Best Original Song favorite "Shallow," is deserving of accolades, but the film as a whole is not.

Vice
My personal No. 1 movie of the year, Vice features Best Actor nominee Christian Bale at perhaps his career best thanks to his terrifyingly entertaining turn as former Vice President Dick Cheney. He's aided by superb performances by Best Supporting Actress nominee Amy Adams as Lynn Cheney, Steve Carell as Donald Rumsfeld, and Best Supporting Actor nominee Sam Rockwell as George W. Bush, and unique style of writer/director Adam McKay (who's nominated for both), who again tackles serious material in a satirical manner.

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Movie Review

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma gives horror a surreal twist

Photo courtesy of MUBI

Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson in Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.

The horror genre really ramped up in the 1970s and ‘80s, bringing with it a new subgenre - the slasher - that gave audiences new visuals of gore, but also a reliance on sexism and homophobia that would come to define the era. The new film Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma wrestles with that legacy in ways that are funny, thought-provoking, and downright strange.

Kris (Hannah Einbinder) is a queer filmmaker who has been hired to reboot the moldy IP that is the Camp Miasma franchise, one that was fresh in the 1970s but which numerous shlocky sequels have rendered irrelevant. In an attempt to get to know the property better, Kris has scored a meeting with the reclusive Billy (Gillian Anderson), the star of the original film who has shunned the public eye for decades.

Turns out that Billy lives deep in the woods at Camp Rivoli, which served as the location for the first film. As Kris tries to get to know Billy and convince her to be a part of the new film, she starts to fall under Billy’s spell and the lore of the franchise as a whole. That includes believing that the movie’s villain, Little Death - a transgender person who has an air conditioning vent as a head/mask - may not just be a character created for the movies.

Written and directed by Jane Schoenbrun (I Saw the TV Glow), the film at first feels like it’s going to go the straight-up comedy route, with comic explosions of blood, a strange fascination with candy brands, and a production design that does nothing to hide that the two main actors are on a movie set with painted backdrops. This is backed up by Kris’ phone conversations with her girlfriend, Mari (Jasmine Savoy Brown) and her agent (Sarah Sherman), as well as numerous other details.

But the film starts to go down the surreal route the longer Kris stays at the camp with Billy, especially when they sit down to watch the original Camp Miasma. An extended sequence shows a good amount of that film-within-the-film, demonstrating why Kris and Billy have a love/hate relationship with the property. For Kris, though, the lines between the film and the real world start to blur, and Schoenbrun uses a variety of out-there elements to drive the point home.

The final act of the film can barely be described as Kris goes deeper down the rabbit hole, with Schoenbrun using her film to comment on the horror genre as a whole, its treatment of women and LGBT people, the movie industry, and more. All the while the “camp” of Camp Miasma maintains a presence, with candy wrappers showing up everywhere and the tongue-in-cheek references to Little Death (the French term La petite mort, which means “the little death,” is a euphemism for orgasm).

Einbinder, an Emmy winner for Hacks, is the perfect person to inhabit her role. Her established real-life and fictional personas color everything she does in the film, with her enthusiasm and curiosity shining through. Anderson leans heavily into another reference - Norma Desmond from Sunset Boulevard - to create a character that is as mysterious as she is alluring. Supporting actors like Brown, Sherman, Patrick Fischler, Dylan Baker, and Eva Victor keep the movie at the right pitch all the way through.

While other films have made fun of horror movie tropes before, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma finds a wholly unique way of doing so. It’s a funny and daring trip into the psyches of two women who may be victims of their own obsessions, and of the movies that made them that way.

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Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is now playing in select theaters

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