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Originally Posted by evollove
I'm not a big fan of sci-fi, but ARRIVAL is clearly at the top of the heap.
That said, the beginning's slow--do we really need to spend a minute watching her pull into her drive, park, get out and walk to the house?--and the movie goes on a few more minutes than it needs to, well after we "got it." But 97% of the flick is flawless.
Although her nose did pull me out of the film a few times.
It should win best adapted screenplay, although Moonlight probably will.
Oh hey. That's tomorrow.
Best Picture: Moonlight
Actor: Casey
Actress: Not sure. Haven't seen two or three of those.
Supporting actor: Dude from Moonlight
Supporting actress: Viola Davis
Adapted screenplay: Moonlight. Fences would be a nice upset though.
Original screenplay: I dunno. LaLa or Machester. Or The Lobster might be a surprise.
(Lots of black people will win. Too many innocent blacks got shot by cops last year, so it's the least we can do.)
The technical stuff...why bother? Everything looks and sounds great anymore.
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I need to see Moonlight stat! I know the dude you're talking about who's up for best supporting (he was in House of Cards) and he is a hell of an actor.
Re: ARRIVAL stuff
About the beginning, I really think it was expertly paced. Very little "wasted" time. It would never have occurred to me to gripe about watching her go about little mundane day-to-day things. But I guess if it was an issue for you, it's probably an issue for some other folks.
About the end, I really think you're taking the "we-get-it-ness" (ouch... that was a rough one, but I'm in a hurry) of the climax for granted. Not everyone "got" it... right away or at all. Type in "Arrival" in Google and "Arrival explanation" and "Arrival ending" will pop up as frequent searches.
A lot of people are... hmm... I want to say dumb, because that is absolutely the case, but I also don't want to be mean (I realize I just said it anyway, so no need to point that out), so let's just say impatient and/or distracted. The movie's "a-ha" moment was kind of bubbling under the surface with me from about 30 minutes in, but it still made my mouth drop when I realized the extent of what was happening.
I cried, like I said. Cried like a little baby. Not just at the heart-rending personal story, but at the larger commentary on humanity, fear, nationalism. I think it's a relevant enough film that it could take Best Picture and still be meaningful. Black folks need to win acting awards, for real, but I think this film could be part of Oscar's overhaul of conscience.
Re: Sci-fi ...
I think h8kurdt is right thathere have been some genuinely good, truly high-quality SF films over the last several years. Not to beat a dead horse, but I truly think Christopher Nolan is partly to thank for this. Yeah, District 9, but before that there was Dark Knight, and The Prestige. Inception happened that same year (think that may have been the first time two SF-adjacent films were nominated for Best Picture at the same time), and then there have been some real gems at the not-quite-Hollywood levels (Primer, Under the Skin) that could have/should have received some attention from Oscar and company.
I'm an SF advocate. I'm a very literary person, and it upsets me to see SF cast aside by the academic literati. Some of the most powerful and most well-written books I've ever read have been SF. Same goes for movies. Sci-fi is done wrong a lot, but so are all other genres. When it's done right, in film perhaps even more so than in lit, it fucking really shines. It's high time Oscar caught on to this. Literary science fiction can tell us just as much about life, be just as profound and relevant, as anything else. It tells us what people think about the future, which helps us understand how they feels about the present and the past. De-segregate the arts! Let SF in, god damn you all!
I'm also a massive freakin nerdo, so there's that too.
ARRIVAL