Completed Category: Directing

 Oh boy, let's kick off some completed category posts! 

Achievement in Directing: 

Anora *Sean Baker
The Brutalist * Brady Corbet
A Complete Unknown * James Mangold
Emilia Perez * Jacques Audiard
The Substance * Coralie Fargeat 

Directing is always so intense.  And in this category, there are always directors nominated for some very serious flicks, and some staggering accomplishments, and more often than not there is a "what the heck did I just watch," and sometimes those three things overlap. Ooh, like in a Venn diagram! 

As we will discuss several times throughout the course of this bloggage, The Brutalist  should henceforth be known as The Brutal-est, as it pummels you for four unmerciful hours. Well, that's not actually true: you get an intermission!  I like intermission at the theatre; I can easily go get my popcorn refill. Anyway, should Brady Corbet win for The Brutalist?  I mean, he really might do so.  And there are all sorts of #SeriousCinema reasons, but also he took years and years, apparently, to film the thing, and no one thought he could pull it off, of course. The Los Angeles Times called it a "whopper of a film."  At the very least!  And there were some things I liked about it very much - the Original Score for example, which is not this category, and the way he shot the early-on-in-the-flick men-paying-for-sex scene without making it about gazing at women's bodies. At all. This is the complete exact precise opposite of... 

Anora.  Well, well, well, what have we here? Sean Baker (who? I know. This category has all first-time-in-this-category nominees for the first time since James Cameron was the king of the world! Sean Baker is the director of The Florida Project, that's who, so we know he) has a way of getting his movies' long-haired, sharper-than-you-think-they-are, but-also-sharper-tongued, young women  to carry us through a motion picture.  In both of these films of his that I've seen, we watch these people who are a bit less "there but for the grace of god go I" and a bit more "good god, will someone, anyone, make some better choices, please!"  But Anora has captured a lot of viewers' hearts, and as one person I know put it, "That was way better than it had any right being."  I personally very much dig the misfit friends stories, and hooo-boy do we get one of those here.  I can't exactly say that I never wanted this long dark night of lost souls to end, but it was entertaining and propelled you right along. I am not here for anyone to blather on about mistreated "sex workers" and I do not feel sorry for the character Ani, nor her colleagues, and least of all would I ever feel a shred of sympathy for the many, many, many gross disgusting men both in the film and in the real world who buy human flesh. If I walked out of The Brutal-est saying "What just happened to me for four hours?" I walked out of Anora saying "Why are men."  That said, she (the main character) reminds me of the gals from Long Island I met when I lived in New York. Also, Sean Baker is Gen X! We need more Gen  X winners. Like maybe...

Coralie Fargeat!  Who's she?  She was born in the mid-1970s like the coolest kids were, she's French, and she directed The Substance.  I loved The Substance.  Yup, I'm sold.  Did it spiral just a wee bit out of bloody control as it careened toward its ending?  It did.  Do I forgive it this flaw? I absolutely do.  This film is a marvelous work and it's a wonder, but nothing at all like other films I've called "marvelous" or a "wonder" over the years.  It's wild and bizarre and so very L.A. and it tackles profound societal issues and it might earn Demi Moore - Demi Moore! she's one of those very-very-late Baby Boomers who feels like an honorary Gen-Xer - an Oscar. #TeamTheSubstance? Maybe. But I could also find myself on ... 

#TeamACompleteUnknown.  Wow, do I love me some Bob Dylan and some Joan Baez, which you already know if you've known me for more than about five minutes, not that anyone I know is reading this so I still have to document these things for posterity.  And this film with pitch-perfect (no pun intended) performances is not a traditional biopic; it's more of a study of some personalities that came together like atoms bonding and clashing and sharing electrons for a time and exploding into something more and sometimes causing damage and sometimes creating something heretofore undiscovered. It got three well-deserved acting nominations (more on Ed Norton, who is a revelation as Pete Seeger, in his category post coming soon), and the whole thing is so immersive and carefully considered and real, and someone like me whose go-to karaoke song has long been (like, for 2 decades+) Dylan's "Like A Rolling Stone" was primed and ready for A Complete Unknown, and yes, yes, I treasure it, and James Mangold's magnificent directing is a big reason why.   

You know what I don't treasure?  Emilia Perez. Why does this movie have to be. It is such a freaking trainwreck in so many ways, but oddly, it's not the Directing per se, just the whole entirety of the thing. I mean, don't get me wrong: director Jacques Audiard made a lot of terrible choices, such as making the film in the first place, pretending men can be women, collecting a bunch of terrible songs and terrible song-and-dance numbers and sprinkling them throughout the most implausible nonsense while pretending to take everything seriously, and pummeling the audience with a mix of zaniness and tragedy and plot holes. But it's not like Mamma Mia-shit-production values bad, nor like Everything Everywhere All At Once we-are-in-the-hands-of-10-year-old-boys bad; it's just bad-bad. 

Chronological order in which I saw the flicks over a month and a half:
Anora, A Complete Unknown, The Brutalist, Emilia Perez, The Substance

Order in which I like the flicks: 
A Complete Unknown 

The Substance

[--gap--]
Anora

[major gap]
The Brutalist

[major serious chasm gap]
Emilia Perez

Order in which I think they will win: 
The Brutalist, Anora, gods forbid Emilia Perez uggggh, A Complete Unknown, The Substance

I would be very happy to be wrong about my winner prediction!  But 4 out of 5 of these can win; the other will cause me to throw things at the TV.