ACADEMY AWARDS 2017 - Oscar Review

 Hello there puny humans,

oh boy, what a night. Even people who didn't watch the show on Sunday have heard at least of its flub ending. It was an outrageous finale to a show that so far had actually been going incredibly well. So in a similar fashion as last year, let me re-cap these 89th Academy Awards for you with all its Ups and Downs:

The Good

The Musical Performances

Musical performances at the Oscars are a time-honored tradition. Every year at least the Nominees for Best Original Song will take the stage. In the past this has sometimes gotten out of hand. With the host opening with a musical number, five Nominees performing and additional musical tributes to past films, it could get a little exhausting. This year however the producers chose and placed the music very well. First of all, they opened with Justin Timberlake's Can't Stop The Feeling, checking off one of the Nominees at the very beginning. Not only was it a nice way of saying "We are going to have fun tonight", but it also saved the mainstream pop number from unfavorably standing out compared to its more profound competitors. Then, since La La Land was nominated with two songs, they were able to combine these two Nominees into a smooth medley. Lastly, it was great to see how the sixteen year old Auli'i Cravalho got hit by a flag during her performance of How Far I'll Go, but just kept going like true pro. Hats off, to this young lady.

Oscars Not So White Anymore

Last year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences came under fire when it turned out that no person of color had been nominated in any of the 24 categories. The hashtag #OscarsSoWhite became trending and the ceremony was only rescued by black comedian Chris Rock handling the issue incredibly well. The Academy certainly learned their lesson: An Iranian movie was named Best Foreign Film, two of the four acting awards were handed to African-Americans (including Mahershala Ali as the first Muslim actor to win the gold) and the (real) Best Picture Winner was Barry Jenkins' Moonlight. Especially the latter win was an important one. Not only did it show that small independent films can come out on top of big studio productions. But it also honored a movie that tells the highly relevant story of a young black man, who struggles with his homosexuality while growing up in a rough neighborhood. In these times, this was a necessary victory for minorities.

Jimmy Kimmel: The Greatest Host in Years

When I heard that Jimmy Kimmel had been chosen to host, I wasn't sure if he'd be up to the task. I had always liked the guy, but felt that he was "too TV" for Hollywood's biggest night. Something that I thought was a problem Ellen DeGeneres had in 2014. Kimmel however ended up proving me very wrong. His jokes were well balanced and a perfect mix of everything. He had punchlines about people that hit hard, but never went below the belt. He addressed racism, sexism and Hollywood's pretentiousness. He got political without ever getting too serious, and even had a few very sincere lines during his opening monologue. Also his fake feud with Matt Damon is a joke that never gets old, and he utilized it perfectly for this ceremony. Then, when the big Best Picture blunder came along at the end of the night, he kept his cool and charismatically controlled the damage. And even though he made a quip about probably not being asked back, I really hope we will see him in that Dolby Theater again!

The Bad

Academy Award Winner Suicide Squad

Yes, it is true. One of the biggest clusterf**ks when it comes to summer blockbusters is now an Oscar winning film. Granted, it is "only" an award for Best Makeup and Hairstyling, but Suicide Squad was an allegory of everything that is wrong with the movie industry today and thereby so bad that it should have gotten a universal ban from prestigious award shows. To make matters worse, this means the DC Extended Universe got an Oscar before the Marvel Cinematic Universe did. These two massive franchises might be Hollywood's biggest rivals at the moment. But while Marvel has been going extremely strong for nine years (with fourteen films and five tv-shows), the DCEU has not yet managed to produce a single film that is generally thought of as a good movie. Seeing them take home the gold before the MCU does, hurts more than listening to the poorly-written lines of Rick Flag.

Unrecognized Amazing Movies

With the exception of the afore mentioned film, you couldn't really complain about Sunday night's winners. Actually the accolades were spread out quite well across the nominees. But there were two movies that stole my heart this award season that left empty handed. One of them was My Life as a Zucchini (orig.: Ma vie de courgette), a Swiss and French stop motion film that was nominated for Best Animated Feature. Sure, I was more than fine to see Zootopia win (having had it on my Top Ten List of 2016), and it was clear that such a small film wouldn't stand a chance. But My Life as a Zucchini was a completely unexpected gem. Since it was heavily marketed as a kids movie, I would have never bothered to see it if I hadn't planned to watch as many nominated films as possible. In fact this is a film that kids can enjoy, but only adults can truly cherish. Its beauty lies in the fact that it deals with incredibly serious topics through the innocent viewpoint of children. Making it heart-breaking and heartwarming at the same time. The second film was Lion. The real-life story of a man who sets out to find his family that he has lost 25 years before, is incredibly uplifting. Among other things it deals with the issue of cultural identity crises, something I can definitely relate to. At its center it has two outstanding performances by Sunny Pawar and Dev Patel, both playing the main character as a boy and a young adult respectively. Being only eight-years old, Pawar was probably too young for the Academy, but Patel actually had a shot. Weirdly enough, he was nominated for a supporting role, even though he clearly played the lead, and even then lost out to Mahershala Ali. Ali was barely in his movie, and while his performance was fantastic, I thought Patel was still the stand-out in that category. Unfortunateley, Lion couldn't make up for it in any of the other five categories in which it was nominated. It is really too bad, because it was quite an impressive film.

The Ugly

The Best Picture Mix-Up

Of course, we need to talk about the big screw up that made this ceremony go down in Oscar history. Here is what happened: 

Moonlight and La La Land had been battling it out in the major categories the whole night. Moonlight scored statues for its supporting actor and its screenplay. La La Land missed out on those, but won Best Director and Best Actress in a Leading Role. Then the final and most important award of the night came up. Best Picture. In celebration of Bonnie and Clyde's fiftieth anniversary, Warren Beatty and Faye Dunawaye came on stage to present the award. Beatty opens the envelope and just stares at the card for a few seconds, then reaches into the empty envelope and takes a short look backstage. What turned out to be genuine confusion, was at this point interpreted as a failed attempt to build up the tension. You can even see Dunawaye growing impatient next to her co-presenter and so when he hands her the card to look at it, she makes short work of calling out the winner: La La Land. The crowd claps, the music plays and the whole cast and crew get on stage. The producers get their awards handed to them and start their acceptance speech. It isn't until the third speaker, Fred Berger, when things start getting strange. Men with headsets enter the stage and and a commotion arises. They are the producers of the show, and after Berger interrupts his acceptance speech to quickly ask the people behind him what is going on, he turns back around with the words: "We lost, by the way." Now nobody knows what the hell is going on. Another one of La La Land's producers, Jordan Horowitz, still holding his Oscar, goes up to the microphone and explains that there has been a mistake and that Moonlight was the real winner. To prove it he pulls out the correct card from the new envelope Beatty is holding now and shows it into the camera. When Jimmy Kimmel confirms the news, Horowitz says "I am going to be really proud to hand this to my friends from Moonlight." It is an awkward moment, but also a grandiose gesture. It would have been the first time for this man to receive Hollywood's highest honor, and it got taken away from him. He would have had all reason to be absolutely devastated and/or furious but instead showed true greatness by being the best loser in Oscar history. As the crew from Moonlight makes their way to the stage, Warren Beatty tries to explain himself. The card had said "Emma Stone, 'La La Land'" which had confused him. Faye Dunaway is long gone at this point and it stays unclear whether Beatty showed her the card to escape responsibility or if he actually wanted her opinion on what to do. Sure, Beatty could have handled the situation much better, for example if he had simply said that the card seemed not to be right, but I guess he was under pressure and the real question is, how the wrong card ended up in his hands in the first place. Those who took a closer look realized, that he was indeed holding an enveloped saying "Best Actress in a Leading Role". While the internet jokingly started blaming Leonardo DiCaprio, because he was the last person to be seen with that envelope after presenting the Best Actress Award, Emma Stone stated she had taken that card and kept it for the entire show. By now some light has been shed into the darkness, so here is how it happened: 

It turns out that there are always two envelopes for each category brought separately to the theater inside a briefcase. During the show, one briefcase is placed on each side of the stage so that the presenters can be handed the envelopes regardless of the side from which they enter. Responsible for these cases are two employees of the accountant firm PwC, Brian Cullinan and Martha Ruiz. It was their job to get the envelopes to the theater in time and hand them to the presenters during the show. Ruiz had handed the Best Actress envelope to DiCaprio, and so it was Cullinan who accidentally handed the same (and therefore wrong) envelope to Beatty. PwC has taken full responsibility and has stated that "once the error occurred, protocols for correcting it were not followed through quickly enough". Embarrassingly so, Cullinan tweeted a  backstage picture of Emma Stone just moments before the Best Picture Winner was to be announced (picture on the left). Whether this tweet was the distraction that led to him making the mistake is not clear, but it is worth noting that it has since been deleted. So I think we do have our scapegoat.

It is cringe-worthy to re-watch that moment, especially when you think of the poor producers of La La Land who, for two brief minutes, thought their dream had come true. The most unfortunate thing about this flub however was that it distracted from an otherwise extraordinarily good show that had a lot of awesome and most of all important moments. Once the turmoil has died down, I hope people will start talking about some of the exceptional acceptance speeches or simply about the fantastic movies that were honored that night. So go out and watch films like Moonlight, Manchester By The Sea, Lion and even My Life as a Zucchini. Till then, don't forget to like, share or leave a comment.

Sincerely,

Your Cinemartian

SPLIT - Ending Explained [Spoilers]

 Hello there puny humans,

recently I have watched and reviewed M. Night Shyamalan's latest film: Split. I quite enjoyed it and even though it didn't blow my mind in a way, say, Inception, Memento, or Fight Club did, I feel like I want to talk about its ending. So be aware, there is big spoilers ahead:

What happened?
In the final act of the film, Kevin's 24th identity, the so called "beast", takes over his body. The theories stated in the beginning of the film turn out to be true: People with Dissociative Identity Disorder are able to change their body chemistry. Thus, the beast gains superhuman strength and abilities. Convinced that privileged people are lesser beings and that they do not have the preconditions for such an evolution, he eats two of the abducted girls. When he confronts his last victim, Casey, he finds out that she has been "broken" too (by the sexual abuse of her uncle), and so he spares her and flees the scene.
After Casey has been rescued by the police, we see some people in a diner watching a news report about the events that occurred in the film. The anchor calls Kevin and his different identities "The Horde". As the camera pans across the diner, a girl says that this sort of naming reminds her of the "guy in the wheel chair" they covered in the media a couple of years back. When she tries to recall the name they had given him, a man's voice answers "Mr. Glass". The camera moves around her and that man is revealed to be David Dunn, Bruce Willis' character from the 2000 M. Nigh Shyamalan film Unbreakable.

What does it mean?
Well, it means two things: First of all, that Split was in fact a secret sequel to Unbreakable. Secondly, it means that what we have witnessed is not just a simple thriller about a man with DID, but rather the origin story of a super-villain.

Unbreakable, 2000

To refresh your memory (or if you just never knew), Unbreakable is the story of David Dunn. A security guard that, after being the only survivor of a horrible train crash, realizes he might be, indeed, unbreakable. With its serious tone and the exploration of the character's life, it was the first superhero drama. It grounded the story of a man discovering his superhuman powers long before Christopher Nolan came along with his Dark Knight-Trilogy. Furthermore, it was a story that demanded continuation. Or at least fans thought so, as it popped up in conversations again and again (most notably Patton Oswalt on the The Screen Junkies Show).
Split now apparently takes place in that same heightened reality cinematic universe. And from the looks of it, David Dunn has an eye on the man with 24 identities. In fact, Shyamalan has revealed that he had initially written the character of Kevin for Unbreakable. He scrapped the part from early drafts however, because he thought it distracted from the main story. As a result, some of the scenes in Split were written as far back as 15 years ago. Remember Unbreakable's sequence with the Orange Suit Man? That was supposed to play out like the Split story-line, only with Bruce Willis rescuing the girls.

Why is all of this so cool?
When Split reached its conclusion and it became clear that this film is not going to end in a down-to-earth way, I wasn't sure if I was completely on board. And I think that some people in the audience felt the same way. As soon as I realized though that this movie was part of a superhero world, it recontextualized the whole film. In the fictional world presented by Unbreakable, something like this really could happen. In addition, as said before, it also turned the entire film into a villain origin story and the prospects of exploring that character in a sequel was more than intriguing.
The brilliant thing that Shyamalan did here was that he created two films that completely stand on their own as two different works of art. And still, these films ultimately belong together.
Especially in a time where it is almost painful to see how Warner Bros. and DC create incredibly convoluted films for an interconnected cinematic universe, it is awesome to see that it is actually possible to tell a contained original story that still fits into an overarching concept. Did you ever see a franchise that gave its villain his own solo movie? It's fantastic. It's as if in the end of Nightmare on Elm Street you found out that Batman was looking for Freddy Krueger. (To see how cool Freddy VS Batman would be watch this video).
On top of that, it is also thematically great: On one side is Kevin, who is obsessed with people that are broken and who himself is quite literally split. Four of his personalities want to escape an ordinary life to become something greater. On the other side is an unbreakable man, who at first is reluctant to use the power within him, because he just wanted to live an ordinary life. They are in that way, perfect opposites from their mind-set, but similar enough in their powers that it wouldn't be clear who had the upper hand in a fight. 

So what will happen next?
Long before Split hit theaters, Shyamalan has said that he had planned Unbreakable as a trilogy. Now, where the sequel has been released, he has reassured people that he was working on a final film of the series. Apparently he already has an outline, but he wants to take time to work on it further until it meets the audience's expectations as well as his own. As it was to be expected, the plan is to have Bruce Willis' and James McAvoy's characters face off against each other. Nonetheless, Shyamalan has stated that just like its predecessor's, the third film was supposed to be able to stand alone. How he will manage that is not quite clear, and neither is the question of how long it will take him. Still, the writer-director has already managed to do something that I never thought to be possible after seeing After Earth: He got me excited for an M. Night Shyamalan film.

The poster should have given it away...

So these are my thoughts on the ending of Split. How did you like the film? Are you excited about the Split/Unbreakable-crossover? Do you even remember Unbreakable? Leave your thoughts in a comment below and don't forget to share this article to let the readership grow.

Sincerely,

Your Cinemartian

SPLIT - Movie Review

 Title: Split

Running Time: 117 min

Director: M. Night Shyamalan

Writer: M. Night Shyamalan

Starring: James McAvoy, Anya Taylor-Joy, Betty Buckley

Review:

"The next Spielberg!" That's what Newsweek called M. Night Shyamalan after he had impressed with his six time Oscar-nominated "The Sixth Sense", the superhero thriller "Unbreakable" and Mel Gibson's last commercial hit "Signs". Then the tide turned. Big time. From 2006 to 2013, the writer-director earned himself a total of 15 Golden Raspberry nominations, winning the infamous award 6 times including accolades for Worst Director, Worst Picture and Worst Screenplay. In fact, "The Happening", "The Last Airbender" and "After Earth" are considered to be some of the biggest piles of garbage when it comes to motion pictures (especially the latter is exceptionally hated by me). The name Shyamalan became synonymous with box-office poison. His career seemed to have ended, but the Indian-American didn't give up, claiming he was simply misunderstood. Sure enough, he made "The Visit", a film that (considering his past entries) was surprisingly well acclaimed. Critics wondered if it marked the beginning of M. Night Shyamalan comeback, and now the director set out to answer that question with his latest flick.
"Split" is indeed the writer-director's return to old form. While not being a perfect film, it is an entertaining thrill ride that is fun to dive into. Revolving around a man with 23 different personalities living inside of him, this film demanded a lot from its leading actor James McAvoy. He was up to the task though, and his performance is a tour de force that makes the supporting cast look pale in comparison. McAvoy manages to play the different parts so distinctively that you often know which personality he switched into, before he even talks. Just by a look on his face or the posture of his head. And yet, his portrayal is subtle enough not to make any of the characters cartoonish. It is a blast just to see him act.
Fans of Shyamalan's early work will be pleased. The director orchestrates this claustrophobic thriller brilliantly. Rather then cutting quickly back and forth, he remains in certain shots, which immediately creates tension. Moreover he plays with off-camera space in such a way that taps into our natural fear of the unknown. West Dylan Thordson's score perfectly accompanies that style.
If however you were buying your movie ticket to see a truthful depiction of DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder), then you will not quite get what you are looking for. Holding a degree in psychology myself, I feel like I have to address this. Additionally, I was lucky enough to watch this film with a friend who even has some practical experience on the matter and so obviously we discussed the realism of it all. On one hand, James McAvoy's way of transforming, as well as his characters' description of his mind as a room where the personalities sit and have to wait until they "get the light" is pretty much accurate. Also differences in gender and age between the identities are not uncommon for people with DID. Even the presented reasons for a so-called "split" are, though simplified, principally correct. On the other hand, the film does not refrain from the Hollywood cliché that there is somehow always one or more identities that are evil in nature. Later in the film it becomes even more fictitious but in such a way that I believe the audience understands that this is not how DID works. Furthermore the psychotherapist in this film is quite incompetent (as 45% of psychologists in movies are according to a study by Bischoff & Reiter, 1999). From the get-go she fails to keep a professional distance to her patient and the "facts" she explains about DID are often of speculative nature at best. To the film's defense however, these are all elements that serve the purpose of the story it tries to tell: A fanciful one, with its own philosophy.
So, when you can accept that this psychological thriller isn't fully grounded in reality and take that little leap of faith, you are in for an attentively crafted, pretty cool movie with a masterful leading performance at its center. If you are familiar with the director's first few movies, you will also be able to put this film into a different context, that will definitely enhance your experience. I certainly had a good time.

For Fans of:

10 Cloverfield Lane (2016)
Identity (2003)
Unbreakable (2000)
Signs (2002)
Hannibal (TV Series, 2013-2015)

Click Here To Watch Trailer!