OSCARS TO THE MAX: Looking Back at February 2016 in Film
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From Los Angeles to Iowa and even Grimsby, the world of film has been a busy one this month. Deep Focus Film Studies rounds-up the best of it.
Naturally film news in February is dominated by the 88th Academy Awards, which saw Leonardo DiCaprio (finally!) win a Best Actor Oscar for his role in The Revenant (2016), a film which also won a Best Director Oscar for Mexican film-maker Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. On the run up to the event social media was a flood with gifs and memes concerning DeiCaprio’s nomination because despite being his sixth chance at the Oscar he had never previously won. Odeon cinema even supported him with a brief name change at one of their venues. |
Others who grabbed gold that evening included Brie Larson’s Best Actress Oscar for her role in Room (2015), Mark Rylance’s Best Supporting Actor for Bridge of Spies (2015), Alicia Vikander for her Supporting role in The Danish Girl (2016) and a surprisingly first-time Oscar for veteran 87 year old film composer Ennio Morricone for The Hateful Eight’s (2016) Original Score.
Best Picture was won by priest fun spoiling film Spotlight (2016), which also won an award for Original Screenplay Writing. Disney Pixar’s Inside Out (2015) beat all other nominees for Best Animated Feature while Son of Saul (2015) won Foreign Language Film. The 2016 Academy Awards’ biggest winner however was Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), which scooped up 6 Oscars for Costume Design, Film Editing, Makeup And Hairstyling, Production Design, Sound Editing and Sound Mixing.
Best Picture was won by priest fun spoiling film Spotlight (2016), which also won an award for Original Screenplay Writing. Disney Pixar’s Inside Out (2015) beat all other nominees for Best Animated Feature while Son of Saul (2015) won Foreign Language Film. The 2016 Academy Awards’ biggest winner however was Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), which scooped up 6 Oscars for Costume Design, Film Editing, Makeup And Hairstyling, Production Design, Sound Editing and Sound Mixing.
The Academy had come under a lot of criticism for lacking racial diversity this year, a situation regularly made light of by its host, the famous black comedian Chris Rock. On the run-up to the ceremony previous Oscar winner Jamie Foxx also addressed the matter by stating that his fellow black actors need to ‘act better’ if they want to be nominated. This then led to the popularity of the #actbetter hashtag trending on Twitter, which acted as a counter to the #Oscarssowhite one.
Perhaps even more important to the future of Hollywood than the Oscars is a new AI algorithm developed by the University of Iowa this month. They claim it looks at a plethora of factors that can lead to the success of a movie, such as who stars in it, the director, and what their previous track record is. According to the AI the most important factor for the profitability of a movie is teamwork – it’s all about how well a star and director work with everyone else. They suggest that based on this algorithm the upcoming movies Zootropolis and Warcraft are to be among the most successful this year. Backtracking somewhat though, they did point out that due to Warcraft being based on a game, it may skewer the results, however they are still confident that the AI has a 90% accuracy with its predictions. As Hollywood currently invests an average of $65 million per movie with only a third of them actually making any profit, if the technology genuinely works then it could become an essential tool in the movie-making process.
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#ActBetter #Oscars
FILM OF THE MONTH: GRIMSBY
In part because it has been a poor month for new film releases, but also because it made us laugh ourselves almost to the point of vomiting, our movie of choice for February is Sacha Baron Cohen’s Spy comedy Grimsby, known in the states as The Brothers Grimsby, although what an American audience would make of it is beyond the stretches of our imagination.
Separated as children, benefits-cheating father of nine football hooligan Grimsby local Nobby Butcher (Sacha Baron Cohen) finally finds his long lost brother Sebastian (Mark Strong) after 28 years of looking. Unfortunately Sebastian is now a spy-come-assassin for the British government and has his latest mission botched by his blundering half-wit brother which leads his superiors to believe he has gone rogue. In an effort to clear his name the brothers go on a globe-trotting action-adventure in which they risk their lives for Queen and country. |
Pretty much across the board it has been panned by critics, many of whom refused to leave their middle-class sensibilities at the foyer. To a degree they were right not to do so as previous Cohen films Borat (2006) and Bruno (2009) have leant themselves to satisfying interpretations for both the more intellectually stimulated and those with baser-level tastes, however his latest seems to hark back to the cheaper teenage laughs of Ali G In Da House (2002). That’s not to say it is without any merit for those seeking substance, it’s just that there isn’t much of it. At times the film desperately tries to reach for some meaning or a message about how working class people are still human beings with feelings and shouldn’t be looked down upon by those higher up the social ladder… or something. Whatever they were trying to say it never really materialises, which is fine because its primary goal is to make you laugh by grossing you out. It’s a dose of immature anarchy, not an essay on social equality and liberalism. A guy gets spunked on by a horny elephant for God’s sake.
With the exception that it lacks delving into American politics, Grimsby delivers on the usual Cohen class and social standing based humour that recent film Dad’s Army (2015) spectacularly failed to achieve. Another area it trumped its contemporary is in its portrayal of Britain as a place we can relate to and laugh at (yes we do all live amongst lager-swigging football fans, no we do not live in a twee made-up town). While some commentators have disapproved of the film’s portrayal of Grimsby as a cess pool of teenage girls pushing prams and benefits-cheating alcoholics dwelling in dank pubs, the truth is that the movie is less an attack on one particular town and more of an acceptance of modern Britain as a whole. Look beyond the more recent gentrified streets and you’ll find a Grimsby every few miles on this small island, the main character’s England football top reinforcing the idea that ‘Grimsby’ is actually a stand-in for the whole country.
With the exception that it lacks delving into American politics, Grimsby delivers on the usual Cohen class and social standing based humour that recent film Dad’s Army (2015) spectacularly failed to achieve. Another area it trumped its contemporary is in its portrayal of Britain as a place we can relate to and laugh at (yes we do all live amongst lager-swigging football fans, no we do not live in a twee made-up town). While some commentators have disapproved of the film’s portrayal of Grimsby as a cess pool of teenage girls pushing prams and benefits-cheating alcoholics dwelling in dank pubs, the truth is that the movie is less an attack on one particular town and more of an acceptance of modern Britain as a whole. Look beyond the more recent gentrified streets and you’ll find a Grimsby every few miles on this small island, the main character’s England football top reinforcing the idea that ‘Grimsby’ is actually a stand-in for the whole country.
Far from attempting a hate-fuelled representation of the working class, the movie amplifies the realities of modern Britain for comic effect, and the people who will be laughing the hardest are those who recognise the lifestyles and the area they live in on the big screen – the people of Grimsby themselves. The film isn’t made for middle-class Guardian readers who want to smirk at the Barber of Seville at The Barbican or the latest Woody Allen film (myself included), it’s a crude feast of knob gags, un-pc jibes and farts - they want to laugh at posh twat Daniel Radcliffe contracting aids by swallowing the spewing blood of an ethnic child who has just been shot. Okay, maybe that’s something you just had to be there for, but the bottom line is that films need to be consumed within context, and that seems to be something a lot of the reviewers, some of whom are favourites of mine, don’t seem to be doing with this film.
As discussed, generally the laughs come at the expense of taste, which are outrageously funny but are somewhat devalued by the fact that the well for each gag is almost always revisited at least once too many. The comedy is accompanied and emphasised by a genuinely heartfelt sub-story told in flashback regarding the brothers’ youth and the tragic circumstances that led to their separation, which serves as a welcome break from the film’s more outlandish moments.
The story may be a bit thin, but anything starring Cohen is always more about the character anyway. To its merit the film never ventures into spoof territory when it comes to the spy-thriller plot, opting to keep it a genuine action movie that just happens to have Nobby along for the ride. As a result some of the action scenes are an incredible tour-de-force of fist throwing, gadgets and stunts, The Transporter (2002) director Louis Leterrier earning his keep and then some. One can but wonder at what the French director must have thought of the rest of the film and its exaggerated and grotesque English stereotypes. Perhaps he just left it all to Cohen and threw himself into the action scenes. Or maybe the reason the film works so well is because a Frenchman, England’s most traditional of enemies, was at the helm.
As discussed, generally the laughs come at the expense of taste, which are outrageously funny but are somewhat devalued by the fact that the well for each gag is almost always revisited at least once too many. The comedy is accompanied and emphasised by a genuinely heartfelt sub-story told in flashback regarding the brothers’ youth and the tragic circumstances that led to their separation, which serves as a welcome break from the film’s more outlandish moments.
The story may be a bit thin, but anything starring Cohen is always more about the character anyway. To its merit the film never ventures into spoof territory when it comes to the spy-thriller plot, opting to keep it a genuine action movie that just happens to have Nobby along for the ride. As a result some of the action scenes are an incredible tour-de-force of fist throwing, gadgets and stunts, The Transporter (2002) director Louis Leterrier earning his keep and then some. One can but wonder at what the French director must have thought of the rest of the film and its exaggerated and grotesque English stereotypes. Perhaps he just left it all to Cohen and threw himself into the action scenes. Or maybe the reason the film works so well is because a Frenchman, England’s most traditional of enemies, was at the helm.
Performances from the two leads are strong throughout, with Cohen reliably delivering a fresh character we can instantly gravitate towards. Mark Strong never gives in to temptation to veer from the role of the straight man, remaining the believable James Bond style action spy through and through. Unfortunately, despite featuring some big names, no one else is given any decent material to work with. Penelope Cruz and Ian McShane’s characters could just have easily been played by the guy who sweeps up the set after everyone has gone home, while Rebel Wilson does little else than fart in one scene. Unexpectedly the film also features a menagerie of British sitcom stars in cameo roles who are criminally underused. Ricky Tomlinson, Johnny Vegas and John Thompson all miraculously make their presence felt despite only being given what seems like token lines of dialogue.
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For all the sneering I could do at how crude and immature the film is, the truth of the matter is that it made me laugh out loud, something only Cohen seems capable of doing to me in a cinema (well, who else is going to make me laugh after I’ve just spent a tenner on a ticket? Ben Stiller in Zoolander 2? Fifty Shades of Black?!?! I think not). At the film’s climax Nobby proudly describes the working class as ‘the scum who keep the Fast and The Furious franchise alive’, which really drives home the ridiculousness of the entire subject matter. Ultimately you’ve just got to let go of any sense of taste or class sensitivities and have a good old belly laugh, and that’s what makes Grimsby, despite any flaws it may have, our film of the month.
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