The year’s Academy Awards nominations were released this morning. Let me be honest: Since I’ve been doing this gig, I don’t think I’ve seen a more positive collection of films in the running for Best Picture.
First, let’s run down the nine nominees for Oscar’s top honor: The Artist, The Descendants, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, The Help, Hugo, Midnight in Paris, Moneyball, The Tree of Life and War Horse.
The first obvious thing to note: Just one of the nine nominees is rated R (The Descendents). One. (And our reviewer Adam Holz even had some positive things to say about that R-rated outlier.) When was the last time that happened? No, really. I’m asking, ’cause I have no idea. Last year, I remember being pretty impressed with how positive the nominees were (relatively speaking), when six—more than half of the nominees, in other words—were rated R.
Now, this is not to say that these films don’t have their share of content issues. They do. Nor does that mean that all these PG-13 films are made for a family audience. I can’t imagine too many families flocking to Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, quite frankly. And are all the middle school kids really clamoring to see the black-and-white, silent film The Artist?
And yet when you look at some of these movies (Hugo and War Horse are the most obvious examples), it seems like they were made with families in mind. This year punctures the myth that edgy content walks hand-in-hand with artistic merit. Family films can, as it turns out, be pretty excellent.
And that underlines another notable feature of this crop of nominees, at least for me: Lots of these are fantastic films—the best crop of nominees that I’ve seen since I’ve been working at Plugged In. It’s not that they’re just intellectually stimulating (like last year’s The Social Network was). It’s not just that they’re communicating messages that I think the culture at large should hear and embrace (like, say, a Courageous). They moved me. They engaged me. And that’s what films are designed to do.
War Horse, with its epic, old-school vibe, might be my favorite movie on the list (sorry, Adam’s mom). Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close was the picture that moved me the most. I love the sheer artistic audacity of The Artist. And yet, if I had to pick my “best picture” out of the bunch? It’d probably be The Tree of Life—a beautifully spiritual dreamscape that, love it or hate it, tends to stick with you. Or at least it stuck with me.
Another thing to note: There’s still a broad divide between these critically acclaimed movies and what most of us actually go and see. The biggest moneymaker on the list is The Help, a surprise $169.6 million phenomenon from late last summer. But even that didn’t make 2011’s Top 10 list of money-makers (it settled in at No. 13). That suggests to me that there’s still a pretty big gulf between what people pay to see and what the Academy deems worth seeing.
But enough from me: I want to hear your thoughts. What did the Academy get right this year? Where did they whiff? And what about the other nominees? You think Meryl Streep will snag her third Oscar for her turn as The Iron Lady? And who in the world is Demián Bichir?
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