2007 Alternate Oscars

I wrote this review of There Will Be Blood (along with reviews of Inglourious Basterds and The Grand Budapest Hotel, here) five days after the August 2017 white supremacist / terrorist attack in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Spoilers.

I had actively avoided There Will Be Blood for a decade — perhaps because the famous line "I drink your milkshake!" led me to believe it was a comedy about dairy products.

It is, in point of fact, a tragedy featuring petroleum byproducts. Based on Sinclair Lewis's novel Oil!, Paul Thomas Anderson gives us the story of Daniel Plainview (the great Daniel Day-Lewis winning his second of three Oscars), a would-be oilman who gets everything he ever wanted and loses himself in the process.

But this isn't a morality play about greed, it's a cautionary tale about that most American of virtues and vices, rugged individualism. Plainview's dream isn't to pile up money — he turns down an easy million, for example, opting instead for the hard, risky work of building a pipeline to the sea. No, what Plainview longs for is to cut the middleman out of his business affairs. And not just the railroads and the big oil producers who take a large cut of the profits, but all middlemen everywhere: friends, family, God, and finally dignity and sanity — anyone or anything upon which he might have to rely.

By the end he's living like a feral cat in a giant mansion, free at last.

Many reviews concluded that Plainview is a monster and maybe he is, but there's a certain majesty in his labors. At least he's making something of tangible value as opposed to the worthless paper products Wall Street's fraudsters and slicky-boys fobbed off on a gullible public.

But crazy Plainview most definitely is, the end for all of us who think we can live without regard for our fellow human beings.

Is There Will Be Blood a great film? Yes, absolutely. Unless it's terrible. The movie is two and a half hours long, is virtually silent for long stretches as it contemplates the West like no one since John Ford, and when people do finally speak, they say nothing of value, which is fine because no one is listening anyway. Like Dunkirk which I reviewed here, the characters in There Will Be Blood reveal themselves strictly by their actions.

Do they reveal enough? That is the question. I'd have to see the movie again to decide for sure whether there's as much moving under its surface as I think there is.

Check back here in 2027 for my final verdict.

My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. Best animated feature winners are noted with an @. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.

2006 Alternate Oscars

The most underrated movie of 2006 is Spike Lee's Inside Man, a terrific little caper flick that quickly turns into something a lot more interesting.

My name is Dalton Russell. Pay strict attention to what I say because I choose my words carefully and I never repeat myself. I told you my name, that's the who. The where could most readily be described as a prison cell. But there's a vast difference between being stuck in a tiny cell and being in prison. The what is easy. Recently, I planned and set in motion events to execute the perfect bank robbery. That's also the when. As for the why, beyond the obvious financial motivation, it's exceedingly simple: Because I can. Which leaves us only with the how. And therein, as the Bard would tell us, lies the rub.

As promised in his opening monologue delivered straight into the camera, Dalton Russell (Clive Owen, who also starred that same year in Alfonso Cuarón's dystopian sci-fi classic, Children of Men) has masterminded a meticulously planned bank heist — or has he? His intricate caper immediately turns into a hostage situation as half the New York police force descends on his location.

Enter veteran hostage negotiator Detective Keith Frazier (Denzel Washington, great as always — I'd pay to watch him read the phonebook). So far, it all sounds a bit like a remake of Dog Day Afternoon or maybe even Die Hard.

It isn't.

This is the strangest bank robbery in history. Nobody seems to be in a hurry to steal anything, or negotiate demands, or make a getaway when they're done. Instead, Russell and his crew sit and wait. And wait. And wait.

It's a game of cat and mouse, and Detective Frazier strongly suspects he's the one holding the cheese.

Superb supporting work from Jodie Foster as a sleazy fixer, Christopher Plummer as the bank owner in need of her services, Chiwetel Ejiofor as Frazier's bemused partner, and Willem Dafoe as a trope-busting SWAT commander who is neither a bloodthirsty psychopath or a bumbling buffoon.

Director Spike Lee also treats us to an up close look at how a post-9/11, multicultural New York has changed since the gritty days of classic 1970s crime pictures (The French Connection, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three). Indeed, this might be the best use of the city in a movie since Woody Allen's Manhattan. The most insightful, anyway.

Supporting work and demographic insights aside, though, it's the high-stakes sparring between Denzel Washington and Clive Owen, two of my generation's coolest actors, that makes this movie so much fun to watch.

This is to date the highest grossing movie of Spike Lee's career.

A great Saturday night picture. Highly recommended.

My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.

2005 Alternate Oscars

I have a friend — I'll call him "Domenic" because his name is Domenic — who is as big a fan of the Star Wars prequel trilogy as I am ... not.

He's of the opinion that Revenge of the Sith is the best of the Star Wars movies while I rank it somewhere ahead of The Phantom Menace and just behind every other movie ever made not starring Hayden Christensen, up to and including a student film I took part in when I was in college called Das Volkswagen.

But it's not like his perspective is out of the ordinary. A lot of people share his opinion (see, e.g., here, here and here).

So I'm thinking, what's the deal? How could one of us be so fundamentally wrong about something so unimportant, while I, as usual, am so right? And I puzzled and puzzed 'til my puzzler was sore, then I thought of something I hadn't thought of before — maybe Christmas, I thought, doesn't come from a store Domenic is half my age. And that actually makes a difference.

When I saw my first Star Wars movie, I was sixteen, it was the summer of 1977, and there was and only ever had been the one Star Wars movie, a standalone sci-fi action adventure flick playing in theaters for the first time that year. Han shot first, there was no Jabba the Hut sequence, the attack on the death star was half as long ...

And you also have to remember, there were no science fiction movies in those days. We had 2001: A Space Odyssey from 1968, some B-pictures from the '50s, Star Trek and Lost in Space reruns on television — and that was it! No Aliens franchise, no Indiana Jones, no Terminator, no Blade Runner, no Predator, no Lord of the Rings, no Marvel Cinematic Universe. Not even a Superman movie!

No nothing, just Star Wars ... and it was like nothing anyone had ever seen before.

It was three years before the sequel, The Empire Strikes Back came out, and three more after that before the rather disappointing Muppets in Space, a.k.a. Return of the Jedi, finished off the trilogy.

And then there was nothing for seventeen years.

In the meantime, if you cared about such things, you had to work out Darth Vader's backstory in your own head. Me, I pictured him as a hero of the Clone Wars, a hot shot pilot who, in a moment of extreme peril for his family or friends or the Republic, turned to the dark side and in the process, lost his soul.

Basically, Michael Corleone in space.

Not that it mattered. The original trilogy was the story of Luke Skywalker. Darth Vader was not much more than the evil MacGuffin that kept the plot moving. How he turned out to be Luke's father, well, space pilots are a typically randy bunch, I figured, prone to picking up green hookers in space bars ... you know, it didn't really matter!

And then the prequel trilogy came along and, what the holy hell!, Darth Vader turned out to be a little boy who grew up to be a whiny, cockblocked teenager who took his revenge on the galaxy because he couldn't spend all his time mooning over Natalie Portman.

Talk about your letdowns!

But look at that story from Domenic's perspective. A child of the 1990s, he saw the first six Star Wars movies in the order George Lucas now intends them to be seen, starting with The Phantom Menace and ending with Return of the Jedi. And that series was never about Luke Skywalker, it was about Anakin Skywalker (the future Mr. Darth Vader to you, pal).

For Domenic, Star Wars only ever unfolded in one way. No opportunity to be disappointed, no reason to be.

The point being, no work of art is ever a pristine, unchanging monument to objective truth. You bring a lifetime of experiences and expectations and prejudices with you every time you walk into a theater or a museum and that colors your interpretation of what you see. There's not one Mona Lisa, there are seven billion, and yours is probably just as valid as mine.

Something to think about before you go yelling at the kids to get off your lawn.

My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.

2004 Alternate Oscars

I don't know who, if anyone, will agree with me, but I think Lindsay Lohan's work in the (superior) remakes of The Parent Trap and Freaky Friday, along with the classic Tina Fey comedy Mean Girls (celebrating its twentieth anniversary this year), is proof enough that she was a major talent, at least for a little while.

That Lohan was later undone by her manipulative parents, our vicious, celebrity-obsessed culture and her own inner demons doesn't make it any less so.

As someone once said, "The candle that burns twice as bright, burns half as long" ... or maybe we just like to break pretty girls on the rack from time to time.

We here at the Monkey wish her well.

My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. Best animated feature winners are noted with an @. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.

2003 Alternate Oscars

2003 was a year for very good movies that I'm not sure I've ever watched twice.

When I set up these polls, I voted for Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation and had nearly completed a review of it when I realized The Lord of the Rings is the sort of movie — well-made, wildly popular, with a long-lasting impact on the culture — I often argue the Academy ought to recognize, usually doesn't, but in this case actually did, so figured I should put my money where my mouth is and, despite the fact that it's not my cup of tea, vote for it.

Then I decided I don't have an opinion.

It happens every now and then.

I leave it to you to sort things out.

My choices are noted with a ★. A tie is indicated with a ✪. Historical Oscar winners are noted with a ✔. Best foreign-language picture winners are noted with an ƒ. Best animated feature winners are noted with an @. A historical winner who won in a different category is noted with a ✱.