The Pre-Fall Oscars

Or, the movies and roles that the academy better damn well not forget about. Every year there are numerous Oscar season previews: The Onion A.V. Club just came up with a good one, but I haven't seen any of those movies, and I couldn't speculate on their chances.

Instead, I decided to come up with the major nominations I'd submit if the awards were on September first. What are the best movies and performances released before "awards season"?

Best Supporting Actress

Olympia Dukakis, Away From Her
Laura Morante, Moliere
Michelle Pfeiffer, Hairspray
Adrienne Shelley, Waitress
Maggie Smith, Becoming Jane

I'll admit that this category was pretty thin- I haven't even seen Hairspray, but I hear that Pfeiffer's getting some buzz. Maggie Smith puts in a similar bitchy turn in a different context, but I gave her the lifetime achievement nod, really. Adrienne Shelley's tragic death proabably still won't push her film to any more prestigious nominations, as it's just too cute in the end, but I decided she deserve's some respect for playing a wallflower friend in her last directorial effort. Olympia Dukakis has an Oscar already, and really brings a much needed cynicism to a moving film. But it's Laura Morante for the win, as she really keeps the Moliere biopic from becoming a farce.

Best Supporting Actor

Robert De Niro, Stardust
Robert Downey Jr., Zodiac
James McAvoy, Becoming Jane
Gary Oldman, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Seve Zahn, Rescue Dawn


Robert De Niro plays a wopsy, cross-dressing, flying pirate: enough said. Downey Jr. makes you wish all of Zodiac had followed him instead of Jake Gyllenhaal's cartooonist. Gary Oldman is the best part of a series that's growing in acting gravitas in leaps and bounds, and James McAvoy continues breaking hearts with aplomb. But for my money, Steve Zahn is the one guy that should be among the five nominees in February, no matter what else comes out- he's pure desperation as the less willful friend of a prison-of-war camp escapee.

Best Actress

Julie Christie, Away From Her
Marion Cotillard, La Vie En Rose
Anne Hathway, Becoming Jane
Angelina Jolie, A Mighty Heart
Keri Russell, Waitress

So it's been a slow year for leading actress as well- I had to include Cotillard and Jolie as likely candidates, even though I haven't seen the films in question. Keri Russell finally sheds the WB Network classification in Waitress, and Anne Hathaway is pretty solid in yet another author biopic. But if you've been reading this blog through its short history, you had to know I'm already giving this Oscar to Julie Christie in Away From Her.

Best Actor

Christian Bale, Rescue Dawn
Romain Duris, Moliere
Joseph Gordon-Levitt, The Lookout
Gordon Pinsent, Away From Her
Adam Sandler, Reign Over Me

Yeah, that's right: Adam Sandler- I still have no idea why that film was puched back from last December (to qualify for the most recent Oscars) to March. It turns out he can act, when we wants to apparently. Duris is more grandiose as the famed satirist than I would have expected, given his deer in headlights previous roles in movies like L'Auberge Espagnole. Gordon-Levitt continues his evolution into the relative Pacino to Ryan Gosling's De Niro. But it all comes down to a tough call between my man Christian Bale, and Gordon Pinsent in my favorite film of the year. I'm tempted to say Pinsent just for his awesome voice, but I say this should be Bale's year when all is said and done. By a hair.

Best Picture

Away From Her
Once
Reign Over Me
Rescue Dawn
Zodiac

Yeah, I can't really see a low-budget, under the radar film like Once being nominated, either. But it's honestly as good as anything else I saw this year so far.

As for what I pick to win, do you really need to ask? Did you know it recently won big at the Director's Guild of Canada Awards? That's a homer pick, but still. Also, did you know it came out on DVD on September 11th? You should buy it. Seriously, you should probably start heading to the store right now.

3:10 To Yuma Review

With all the goodwill that Christian Bale has built up among discerning movie-goers between Batman Begins, The Prestige, and generally having an anti-Affleckian ability to choose good scripts, it’s easy to root for him in 3:10 to Yuma as soon as he appears onscreen.

His sunken-eyed, world weary portrayal of a Civil War veteran is already so emotionally bare that we don’t even need his wet-blanket wife (Gretchen Mol) or his annoying puissant son (Logan Lerman) to get us on his side, and this is even before the local railroad company burns down his barn to drive his family off their small plot of land.

And just in case your heart is made of stone, he’s got a wooden leg from the war, too.

Russell Crowe, however, is immediately likeable as a psychotic outlaw. He sketches things, he woos the ladies, he cracks jokes, and he’s not quite as nuts as his uber-psycho right hand man (Ben Foster), so we warm up to him quickly as well.

So when Bale joins the posse bringing Crowe to justice, justice being a train to Yuma prison, it’s hard to not to cheer as the other members begin to get knocked off along the way, victims of Crowe’s ruthlessness or troublesome Apaches, and the film begins to focus more on the interplay between the two.

Don’t get me wrong- all the supporting turns in this movie are good, especially Foster and a very grizzly Peter Fonda. It even has one of my favorite things in the world- the unexpected appearance of Alan Tudyk! (Seriously, I had no idea. Even Luke Wilson shows up for about two minutes. Surprisingly convincing as a yokel, too). But it’s Bale’s browbeaten determination and Crowe’s casual malevolence that eventually get your heart to jump with every gunshot in a finale that has hundreds of them.

The journey to bring Crowe to justice soon becomes Saving Private Ryan-like, in that you question the logic of a near-suicidal mission just on account of one man (why not just shoot him, and be done with it?) But it becomes quickly clear, as other characters find ample reason to turn back, that it’s about one man just trying to get something right for a goddamn change.

Bale is amazing, and he holds the movie together where it could falter. Before he leaves, in an impassioned speech to his wife, he drops lines a lot like “I’ve been running for three years, on one leg, and I’m tired of it.” It’s a speech that could have been awful and schmaltzy in a lesser actor’s hands, but he absolutely sells it.

Crowe is excellent, of course, but takes the background to Bale despite first billing, at least for me. Ultimately his character’s struggle is to balance his gradually growing respect for this tired, put upon rancher trying to bring him in against his own self interest.

When to See it: As Soon As Humanly Possible*

*Note: In lieu of things like stars, thumbs, grades, whatever, I’m going with a level of When to see it. The different levels:

As Soon As Humanly Possible
Before It Leaves Theatres
If You Get Around To It
On DVD
On Spike TV
When Hell Freezes Over