The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Directed by: David Fincher

Written by: Stephen Zaillian (screenplay); Stieg Larsson (novels)

Starring: Rooney Mara, Daniel Craig

Rotten Tomatoes: 85%

Flixster: 80%

IMDb: 8.3 out of 10

Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig) is a journalist who was just convicted on libel charges. Deciding to vanish from the media, he takes a job in a remote island in northern Sweden to unravel the unsolved mystery of a girl who was murdered forty years prior. Uncovering overlooked details, he enlists the help of genius computer hacker Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara) who is dark, edgy, and absolutely relentless in solving the mystery of a killer of women.

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NOMINATION PREDICTIONS:

Best Actress: Rooney Mara

Best Director: David Fincher

Best Adapted Screenplay: Stephen Zaillian

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I really hope the Academy awards Mara a nomination, even considering the fiercely talented pool of possibilities. She conveys emotions simply by a glance, and while Lisbeth is generally soft-spoken, Mara compensates for this by her actions on screen. She is tremendous and deserves to be recognized if not for her acting…for the fact that those piercings are REAL.

Young Adult

Directed by: Jason Reitman

Written by: Diablo Cody

Starring: Charlize Theron, Patton Oswalt, Patrick Wilson

Rotten Tomatoes: 80%

Flixster: 72%

IMDb: 7.4 out of 10

Young Adult tells the story of a woman (who acts more like the title suggests) who goes back to her small hometown to reconnect with (and steal) her old high school boyfriend, who is settling down with a wife and a kid. Along the way, Mavis Gary (Theron) is writing a young adult novel that parallels her experiences and anguish in recapturing the love she feels is hers, and meets some unexpected companions along the way who teach her to look at life through different perspectives.

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NOMINATION PREDICTIONS:

Best Actress:Charlize Theron

Best Screenplay:Diablo Cody

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The movie, which is marketed as a quirky comedy, is well, depressing; in the end, Mavis Gary is way too vapid and self-centered to internalize any life lessons she learned along the way, and she leaves us with only a glimpse of hope that she will improve in her ways. That being said, Charlize Theron is perfect in her role and carries the movie along with ease—her acting earns her a spot among the five ladies who will be nominated on Oscar night. Her chances, though, aren’t the greatest, but the Academy usually likes throwing a comedic performance in the mix and most this year seem to be either biopics or tragic.

Hugo

Directed by: Martin Scorsese

Written by: John Logan (screenplay); Brian Selznick (novel)

Starring: Asa Butterfield, Chloë Grace Moretz, Ben Kingsley, Sacha Baren Cohen

Rotten Tomatoes: 94%

Flixster: 84%

IMDb: 8.5 out of 10

Magical and inventive, Hugo perfectly unravels a story about a boy who loses his father and subsequently lives in a train station, fixes clocks, and tries desperately to uncover the mystery of a robot that will write him a message if he fixes it. Along the way, he meets a girl (Moretz) who befriends him, and shows him a key that unlocks the secret of the robot, and then leads him to more mystery and more intrigue about a forgotten director (Kinglsey) and his rich past. The movie is visually stunning, touching and sentimental, and perfect in its grand way of telling a story of adventure, discovery, and love.

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NOMINATION PREDICTIONS:

Best Picture: Hugo

Best Cinematography: Robert Richardson

Best Adapted Screenplay: John Logan (screenplay); Brian Selznick (novel)

Best Director: Martin Scorsese

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WHY?

Hugo is a certainty for the Best Picture category and has a tremendous chance at taking home the statuette at the very end of the night. Scorsese, too, has created a masterpiece that is so unlike his usual genre of a mobs, violence, and curse words. Instead, he shows everyone that he can create a family friendly masterpiece that is as magical as it is a reminder that the power of storytelling is something that will never be lost.

Melancholia

Written and Directed by: Lars von Trier

Starring: Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Kiefer Sutherland

Rotten Tomatoes: 73%

Flixster: 74%

IMDb: 7.5 out of 10

The ending of Melancholia is given away in the film’s first ten minutes: a massive celestial body (named Melancholia) crashes into Earth, completely destroying it and its inhabitants. So, really, that’s not the focus of the long, at times completely overblown, yet stunningly beautiful, Lars von Trier film. The real meaning of the film lies within what Melancholia means for the characters; it is a metaphor for Justine(played perfectly by Kirsten Dunst)’s depression—the looming planet is her illness, ultimately crashing down and destroying her, and her sister Claire (Gainsbourg) is the one trying to ignore it, make it better, all the while fearful of its ominous power to corrupt and destroy. The film is a commentary about depression, dealing with depression, and coping with depression, and ultimately rules that we cannot decide to ignore something that will inevitably destroy us.

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NOMINATION PREDICTIONS:

Best Actress: Kirsten Dunst

Best Supporting Actress: Charlotte Gainsbourg

Best Cinematography: Manuel Alberto Claro

Best Director: Lars von Trier

Best Original Screenplay: Lars von Trier

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WHY?

I will be absolutely shocked if Dunst is not awarded a nomination; she played the part of a helplessly and hopelessly depressed woman perfectly, fragilely, and beautifully. It was Charlotte Gainsbourg, though, who gave the most fearless and stunning performance as Dunst’s sister, who fears Melancholia, loathes it, curses it, and is ultimately its biggest victim. Gainsbourg delivers one of the best performances I’ve seen this year, and yet she has barely received any Oscar buzz, which both baffles me and disappoints me—so, although I believe she fully deserves recognition, I’m not positive of her chances for it.

As for Lars von Trier, it’s a toss-up. He made some outwardly disturbing “jokes” about Nazism in a press release for his film, which has since painted him in a very negative light. So yes, he deserves recognition for both his fine direction and powerful script, but I’m not sure if the Academy will be ready to forgive the words that he has said.

The film itself is beautiful and fearless, but some scenes are just way too long and too purposeless for it to be fully recognized in the Best Picture category.

My Week with Marilyn

Directed by: Simon Curtis

Written by: Adrian Hodges

Starring: Michelle Williams, Eddie Redmayne, Kenneth Branagh

Rotten Tomatoes: 82%

Flixster: 84%

IMDb: 7.3 out of 10

My Week with Marilyn is a delightful tribute to the beautiful, talented, and deeply troubled icon, Marilyn Monroe. The movie details one week in the life of Colin Clark, the third assistant to the director on a movie starring Miss Monroe and Sir Lawrence Olivier, as he pursues his love of film and meets, falls in love with, and discovers the darkness in Marilyn Monroe. The film is superb, but neither the story nor the supporting actors are what make the film great—it’s the star, Michelle Williams, who becomes Marilyn Monroe to such an extreme that you begin to forget it’s a biopic and not a documentary. Michelle Williams shines.

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NOMINATION PREDICTIONS:

Best Actress in a Leading Role: Michelle Williams

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All factors of the film—the supporting characters, the script, the direction, the costumes—are great, but not in comparison to the film’s leading lady, who will not only most certainly receive an Oscar nomination for her turn as the iconic star, but could even take the statue home after her third nomination (Brokeback Mountain and Blue Valentine being her other two.) As of right now, Michelle Williams would have my vote for Best Actress and I think every other actress should start campaigning if they want to beat her.

Like Crazy

Directed by: Drake Doremus

Written by: Drake Doremus, Ben York Jones

Starring: Felicity Jones, Anton Yelchin, Jennifer Lawrence

Rotten Tomatoes: 75%

Flixster: 71%

IMDb: 6.8 out of 10

Like Crazy is the story of Anna and Jacob, who meet and fall madly in love at university, and then are separated by Anna’s student visa violation which forces her back to the UK for an indeterminate amount of time. During their time apart, they find new romances but can never stop thinking about each other and the first time they fell in love. The description sounds like a string of clichés in a romantic drama, but that’s what I liked so much about Like Crazy—it avoided them. The film was authentic and felt absolutely real from the first love note to the very end. The chemistry between the two young actors was so real that is was unreal; there was never a time in the movie when I did not believe that they were in love with each other. 

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NOMINATION PREDICTIONS:

Best Picture: Like Crazy

Best Actress: Felicity Jones

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After winning Best Picture at the Sundance Film Festival, I don’t think the Academy will forget about this surprising gem of a romantic drama. The fact that it is so unique, so oddly shot, so different from the clichéd “impossible love” love stories separates it from many other movies and makes it very memorable. Anton Yelchin was superb, but it was Felicity Jones who gave the best performance in the film and the Academy will not forget it, either.

The Descendants

Directed by: Alexander Payne

Written by: Alexander Payne (screenplay), based on the novel ‘The Descendants’ by Kaui Hart Hemmings

Starring: George Clooney, Shailene Woodley, Amara Miller

Rotten Tomatoes: 91%

Flixster: 85%

IMDb: 8.1 out of 10

The Descendants, in the simplest terms, is about a man who has to rediscover what is important to him. With his wife in a coma after a fatal boating accident, Matt King must reconnect with his two daughters (seventeen and ten), while coping with the discovery that his dying wife was cheating on him and deciding whether or not to sell a major plot of Hawaiian land that would make the Kings millionaires. The plot of The Descendants isn’t its strong part; based off of a novel that I didn’t know about until the closing credits, it fails to focus on the important details as it clumsily switches scenes without much warning. However, the strength of the movie comes in its acting; George Clooney does a superb job as a father who seems to be falling apart and even Shailene Woodley (the star of the teenage hit The Secret Life of an American Teenager) more than holds her own as the angsty adolescent who has lost connection with her father. The story is bittersweet but weak, saved only by the actors.

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NOMINATION PREDICTIONS:

Best Picture: The Descendants

Best Director: Alexander Payne

Best Actor: George Clooney

Best Supporting Actress: Shailene Woodley

Best Adapted Screenplay: Alexander Payne

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I thought the movie was good but not great, but it will fair well on Oscar night (at least with nominations) because there is always a movie with a similar “feel.” (It has a similar feel to Up in the Air and The Kids Are All Right, even though the premise is completely different.) Clooney and Woodley are almost shoo-ins for acting nods, and so is the film, although it isn’t nearly strong enough to take home the gold.

Martha Marcy May Marlene

Directed by: Sean Durkin

Written by: Sean Durkin

Starring: Elizabeth Olsen, John Hawkes, Sarah Paulson, Hugh Dancy

Rotten Tomatoes: 88%

Flixster: 81%

IMDb: 7.8 out of 10

Martha Marcy May Marlene details the struggle of a young girl named Martha, who isolates herself by joining a cult in the Catskills. Martha meets her “new family”, is renamed Marcy May, and begins to learn the customs of the strange cult; strange dining customs (men eat before women), assigned job (each person must find their unique skill), sexual initiation, and the gradual acceptance of the beauty of death. Martha Marcy May (and Marlene, the name she uses to answer the telephone) escapes from the cult and must learn to assimilate herself with societal norms she seems to have forgotten; Olsen balances this transition with a deeply moving, delightfully subtle performance. She is paranoid, but she tries to keep it together; MMMM must live with her increasing paranoia and her desire to feel accepted again.

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NOMINATION PREDICTIONS:

Best Actress in a Leading Role: Elizabeth Olsen

Best Actor in a Supporting Role: John Hawkes

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MMMM was absolutely phenomenal. It was simply one of the best movies I have seen in the longest time; simultaneously creepy yet eerily captivating, Elizabeth Olsen delivers a tremendous performance that is subtle but deeply disturbing. It will be a travesty, an absolute shame, if the Academy does not award Olsen an Oscar nomination for this film. 

I don’t think MMMM will be nominated for Best Picture, although I personally believe it should be. And I’ll tell you why. It was released too early, for one. The bulk of the major Oscar contenders are released for public viewing usually in mid-December (last year’s Best Picture winner wasn’t released until Christmas Eve). In addition, MMMM is just not the type of movie the Academy pays close attention to; Winter’s Bone was a similar type of movie and I was shocked (and incredibly happy) that it was nominated for Best Picture, but I’m not sure it will be a repeat occurrence given the handful of bigger movies that have already caught the attention of critics and moviegoers alike.

Love Crime (Crime d’Amour) 

Directed by: Alain Cormeau

Written by: Alain Cormeau, Nathalie Carter

Starring: Ludivine Sagnier, Kristin Scott Thomas

Rotten Tomatoes: 65%

Flixster: 44%

IMDb Rating: 6.3 out of 10

Love Crime, a French foreign language film, takes place in a corporate office and chronicles the relationship between Isabelle, a young and successful employee of Christine, a ruthless boss who thinks she can take advantage of her young employee. Love Crime is the classic story of betrayal and dishonesty, revenge and ruthlessness. The movie had all of the right elements to be a riveting, successful film, and to some extent it was very enjoyable, but at the end of the day, it didn’t gain enough intrigue to be a showstopper.

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NOMINATION PREDICTIONS:

Best Foreign Language Film (but probably not): Crime d’Amour

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Why?

The film was intentionally shot as if it were made with a small budget, but it didn’t work. The characters were forgettable and borderline ridiculous. There was no connection between Isabelle and the audience; maybe if a connection was made, the film would have been more successful.

The Help

Directed by: Tate Taylor

Written by: Tate Taylor (screenplay); Kathryn Stockett (novel)

Starring: Emma Stone, Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, Bryce Dallas Howard, Jessica Chastain

Rotten Tomatoes: 75%

Flixster: 92%

IMDb Score: 8.1 out of 10

Set in the midst of the civil rights movement in 1960 and based on Kathryn Stockett’s critically acclaimed novel of the same title, The Help is an excellent contender for the 2012 Oscars. When Skeeter (Emma Stone) enlists the help of the help in writing a book called The Help, the Southern town erupts with both support and rage. The film would be nothing without the superb acting; Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer, two maids who are central to Skeeter’s anonymously-published book and to the story in general, deliver performances of a lifetime in this excellently crafted film.

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NOMINATION PREDICTIONS:

Best Picture: The Help

Best Actress in a Leading Role: Viola Davis

Best Actress in a Supporting Role: Octavia Spencer

Best Adapted Screenplay: Tate Taylor

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Why? 

I don’t think many people can argue with the acting predictions; both Davis and Spencer will always be remembered for their poignant performances. The fact that The Help  was released in the early summer and not in prime time for Oscar contenders may hurt its chances at a nomination for Best Picture, but still I don’t think anybody quite prepared themselves for just how well done the film would be made. Movies this enjoyable should never go unseen.