Best Director Preview – 2016 Oscars

Where exactly has Alejandro González Iñárritu come from?

Sure, he was behind a few well received films (21 Grams, Babel and Biutiful), but following Biutiful he didn’t make a full length film for four years and is now a genuine powerhouse.

Iñárritu looks set to win back to back Best Director Oscars, a feat only matched once in history, by Joseph L. Mankiewicz.

Where will this end? Well the streak will probably come to an end with Iñárritu without any upcoming credits on IMDb except for a television series, but his next film will be so highly anticipated that it can’t possibly live up to expectations.

His competition in this award is surprisingly thin and weird. George Miller started the race strongly and his work was excellent but behind him are three first time nominees, one a guy nobody knows, another who is best known for being an actor in The Wire and another who directed Step Brothers.

Who else could have been nominated:

Ridley Scott stands out as a missed nominee from The Martian, Todd Haynes drew a Golden Globe nomination for Carol, while Steven Spielberg directed a well received, Best Picture nominee and couldn’t draw a nomination.

Early pundits would have penciled Quentin Tarantino, because he made a movie and David O. Russell would have been a good early prediction.

There was probably too much going on for JJ Abrams to draw a nomination for The Force Awakens, while Creed‘s Ryan Coogler put up arguably the best sporting direction since Raging Bull.

Who was nominated:

Lenny Abrahamson for Room

Alejandro González Iñárritu for The Revenant

Tom McCarthy for Spotlight

Adam McKay for The Big Short

George Miller for Mad Max: Fury Road

The nominees:

Lenny Abrahamson

Why he will win: Abrahamson had the difficult task of making a singular room look interesting for 45 minutes and he did a decent job working the angles. The escape scene in Room was exhilarating for it’s vibrancy, so he should score points for that.
Why he wont win: Nobody really knows who Lenny Abrahamson is. He has a couple of credits to his name, but to win an Oscar without much background a director has to put up something really stunning and that didn’t happen here.

Alejandro González Iñárritu

Why he will win: Iñárritu’s work was the best in this category, and he has won everything including the crucial Directors Guild Award. No director has ever helmed back-to-back Best Picture winners and Iñárritu is on track to do so. The man is a force.
Why he wont win: Could the difficulty of the shoot come into play? A director is supposed to run an efficient and smooth show and Iñárritu certainly didn’t do that on The Revenant.
Only Ang Lee and Spielberg are still consistently working and have multiple Best Director Oscars and Lee is the only member of the 19 multiple winners to win both his awards in the last 20 years. But what his history but an excuse to tear things down?

Tom McCarthy

Why he will win: McCarthy showed impressive restraint in his work on Spotlight and kept an easily confusing film on the straight and narrow.
Why he wont win: This seems like an encouragement nomination, McCarthy was never really in the running here and will have to settle for a probable win for Original Screenplay.

Adam McKay

Why he will win: What a story! McKay throws off the shackles of Will Ferrell and reveals his true form as a sharp, funny but ultimately serious and smart director.
Why he wont win: The visuals were the problem with The Big Short and McKay’s jumpy style was a bit of overkill. Much like McCarthy, this feels like a push for McKay to continue doing good work and he will also to likely pick up the Adapted Screenplay award.

George Miller

Why he will win: Miller hadn’t directed live action since Babe: Pig in the City in 1998 and then came out of nowhere with the most visually enthralling film of the year. The way Miller made Fury Road look dirty, beautiful, ridiculous and sensible all at once was a masterclass. Some early wins and critical adoration had Miller neck and neck with Iñárritu early and he is best placed to pull off an upset.
Why he wont win: While he has picked up the critical awards, Miller has fallen short with the guilds and Iñárritu just has more important wins historically.

Who could win: George Miller
Who should win: Alejandro González Iñárritu
Who will win: Alejandro González Iñárritu

 

Mad Max: Fury Road – Review

“My world is fire and blood.”

The concept is fundamentally ridiculous.

A resurrected franchise form a director who hasn’t done anything aside from Happy Feet films in 17 years.

A two hour car chase about something we never really understand, led by a titular character who mumbles only a handful of lines.

The outcome is ridiculous.

And what a ridiculous triumph it is.

Mad Max: Fury Road is a collection of ideas blended up with dust into a truly marvelous visual delight, it really is a lovely day in the wasteland.

Things happen that can’t be fully explained and the entire plot escapes me at this point, but it doesn’t matter.

What George Miller gives us is an exhilarating ride through the desert, a ride full of crashes, explosions, guitar-inspired fireballs and feminist victories.

Tom Hardy fills the once big shoes of Mel Gibson as the titular character, in a great bit of casting.

Max is captured early in the piece by the followers of the mental Immortan Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) and strung onto the front of a car by Nux (Nicholas Hoult) and driven out into the desert.

One of Joe’s top soldiers, Furiosa (Charlize Theron) is out there driving a truck, but also planning an escape with the rig and Joe’s five wives, because you know, I wouldn’t be so keen on being selected for breeding by a disgusting man either.

Once Joe realises that his wives have veered off for mythical greener pastures, all engines are fired up to begin a pursuit, which includes Nux, which in turn includes Max.

That’s about all I can tell you about the plot, not because of spoiler fears, but more because there isn’t much else.

Furiosa and Max team up to help the wives, and shove is up the men. Joe gets angry, that guitar guy keeps playing fire emojis.

It doesn’t really matter, although it is great to have the blokes get beat, because Fury Road is an attack on the senses.

It doesn’t necessarily look beautiful, rather things just happen that look crazy and sound crazy and are crazy.

That’s probably because Fury Road is just crazy. But in a great way. It’s constantly entertaining and enthralling and it really is just a wild chase for two hours before your brain catches up to what is going on.

If you missed it, I have a new rating style. Read up on it here.

Direction/cinematography

The sets and vehicles may have been, but Miller certainly wasn’t rusty.

Coming back into big budget action really out of nowhere, Miller brings the energy required to what is essentially a 120-minute set piece.

With John Seale keeping things suitably desolate and raw and Margaret Sixel‘s editing outstanding, Fury Road keeps things suitably chaotic.

But through Miller’s guidance, it’s still easy to keep up with what and who we are following most of the time, and where we are going.

It’s a crucial steady hand and with Miller saying he wont be back to direct further sequels, whoever takes the role will have a big task.

1.8/2

Writing

As mentioned above, there isn’t much of a script to follow and there isn’t exactly a twisting and turning plot.

Some decisions made in the simple plot though are outstanding in the screenplay from Miller and Brendan McCarthy and Nick Lathouris.

Max may be the title character but he isn’t the main one, and making Furiosa the key character to the plot is a genius move that allows Max to remain gruffled and quiet.

Fury Road empowers the wives, Furiosa and a couple of extras in trying to throw over the establishment, whatever that is in this desolate version of Australia.

The pining for a place of green amidst a landscape devoid of colour sends a message pretty consistent with the situation of our planet.

But dialogue? Nah, there’s not much to write home about there.

1/2

Acting

Theron really is a treasure of cinema.

Consistently good in everything, even when the actual film isn’t, Theron can just cover every base.

She carries Fury Road, particularly in the middle when the action slows a little with a quiet rage and determination.

The five wives – Zoë Kravitz, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Riley Keough, Abbey Lee and Courtney Eaton – get varying roles but mostly pull off their timid, distressed roles.

Hardy does the grizzled, quiet Max a service and his ability to just become characters is on display yet again.

Hardy willingly slips into he background and performs his duties admirably, althought he doesn’t really have much of a range to go through.

Hoult is another highlight, bringing a strange vulnerability to his role as a redemptive chrome sniffer.

The raging antagonists flyring across the flats all do a lot of yelling, so that’s cool.

1.7/2

Re-watchability

Second time around, I’d skip the first 15 minutes or so as it is pretty forgettable once the engines start roaring, but once they do it’s thrilling stuff.

There are so many sequences that require second looks just to catch up with everything that is going on on the screen that Fury Road has to be re-watched again and again just to catch up with everything.

To try and figure out what is going on with the chrome spray, what’s with that guy’s face and that goddamn guitar guy, Fury Road must be re-watched.

And it’s really fun too.

1.9/2

Zeitgeist

At least in Australia, Fury Road is like of the biggest film ever, so that has to boost the home grown zeitgeist.

Elsewhere, 10 Oscar nominations, a multitude of awards across the season including the AFI Film of the year, Fury Road clearly has the prestige angle covered.

But in terms of a film that is just so memorable, so bat-shit crazy and ready to spawn more sequels, Fury Road has to land high in the zeitgeist.

1.9/2

Mad Max: Fury Road – 8.3 out of 10