‘Tis The Season For Oscar Bait Biopics: MAESTRO, FERRARI, and NAPOLEON

Yes, it’s that time of year again when the studios drop the big prestige pictures, and this round of Oscar-bait biopics are for sure the most prestigious this season. As these three films, each big ass, lavish productions with big ass names behind, and in front of the camera, are going to be in theaters or available streaming over the holidays, I thought I’d give ‘em the ole Film Babble Blog appraisal, so here goes:

MAESTRO (Dir. Bradley Cooper, 2023)

Bradley Cooper’s follow-up to his acclaimed 2018 directorial debut, A STAR IS BORN, garnered criticism when early buzz revealed that the actor (also the film’s co-writer, and producer) wore a large prosthetic nose to enhance his resemblance to his subject Leonard Bernstein, but upon being incredibly charmed by Cooper's lush, loving tribute to the iconic composer/conductor, it is not a critique that holds much weight.

For the nose just fades convincingly into the face of Cooper’s Bernstein, or Lenny to his friends, fronting a lived-in, layered, and authentic-feeling performance that is sure to get plenty of accolade action in the weeks, months, and years to come. Cooper’s portrait has a predictable structure - the narrative is initially told in black and white flashbacks (the film switches to color as it moves into the modern era) structured as remembrances in interviews by the elder Bernstein shown in crisp color - but it transcends this convention with its fluid style, and poetic, tuneful tone.

In a portrayal that rivals Cooper’s, Carey Mulligan beautifully plays Bernstein’s wife of 26 years, Felicia Montealegre Bernstein. Their relationship is the crux of the story as we see that despite his homosexuality (i.e. affairs with men), Felicia loved Lenny, and put up with his infidelities, though we witness that taking its toll.

For the uninitiated, Cooper and Josh Singer’s screenplay serves up Leonard Bernstein 101, from his debut with the New York Philharmonic in 1943 to scoring such Broadway classics as On the Town, and West Side Story or classic motion pictures like ON THE WATERFRONT to his legendary conducting of Mahler's Resurrection Symphony at Ely Cathedral in 1973, among other career highlights sharply shot by cinematographer, Matther Libatique (PI, REQUIEM FOR A DREAM).

With superb supporting work by Sarah Silverman, Matt Bomer, and Maya Hawke, MAESTRO is Cooper’s moving love letter to Bernstein, and the evolving emotional languages of the times he lived in, and helped shape musically. It’s one to stream on up when it hits Netflix tomorrow (December 20).

FERRARI (Dir. Michael Mann, 2023)

Michael Mann makes sleek, streamlined, manly movies about powerful, conflicted men and his latest fancy flick about Italian car racing entrepreneur Enzo Ferrari is no exception. A coiffed, gray haired Adam Driver plays the motor mogul in a measured, stoic manner, which is offset by the tirades by his wife, Laura (Penélope Cruz), who, in an early scene shoots at him with a gun his mother scoffs at him for giving her.

“Your mother missed on purpose,” Enzo says as he visits the tomb of his dead son, Dino. “One day, she won’t, and I’ll be in here with you.” Such sets the tone as the movie veers from the love triangle between Enzo, Laura, and his secret mistress (a possibly miscast, but still affecting Shailene Woodley) and his race track excursions in 1957, when the tragedy of the Mille Miglia occurred killing nine spectators - a profoundly disturbing shot as Mann, via Director of Photography, Eric Messerschmidt, stunningly captures (with the help of some CGI, of course).

Driver and Mann’s approach may be cold, and overly slick, but FERRARI is a purposeful portrait with a lot of gusto and glorious oomph especially in its racing sequences. It doesn't reach the heights of previous Mann movies like HEAT or COLLATERAL, but it is far and above his last works, PUBLIC ENEMIES and BLACK HAT for certain. It's well worth getting out of the house for when it opens Christmas Day.

NAPOLEON (Dir. Ridley Scott, 2023)

Since its release at the end of last month, Ridley Scott’s long awaited historical epic about the infamous French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, has gotten mixed reviews, and underperformed at the box office - bad news for a movie that cost 137 million.

But does the film deserve that unimpressive reception? Well, yes and no, but mostly yes, as it suffers from horrible dialogue (“You think you're so great just because you have boats!” is an actual line), uninspired performances (actually Joaquin Phoenix does his best with a questionably written role, but no one else in the cast offers much energy) has lengthy sequences that drag, and overall left me with an empty feeling.

This is largely because Scott’s treatment, scripted by David Scarpa (a screenwriter whose previous work including THE LAST CASTLE, and the 2008 remake of THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL is less than stellar), is all about how pathetic its subject is, despite having conquered most of Europe in the 19th century.

Napoleon calls his wife, Joséphine (Vanessa Kirby) a slut because while he’s off at war, she's taking lovers, which inspires ridicule in the press, and much of the narrative concerns their rocky relationship. This material is strained, and dull, with the more successful scenes being the battles. Scott, with the aid of cinematographer Dariusz Wolski, takes us convincingly into such major skirmishes as the Battle of Austerlitz, which, taking place on a frozen lake, visually pops more than anything else in the movie.

More than once, I was reminded of a moment in Woody Allen’s LOVE AND DEATH, a parody of War and Peace that also features Napolean, where Allen’s character observes that the battle he's in looks different to the generals up on the hill, and the film cuts to a flock of sheep instead of soldiers being driven forward.

So, yeah, NAPOLEAN is a very mixed bag that proves that the Joaquin Phoenix movie to see in 2023 is Ari Aster’s BEAU IS AFRAID.

So, two out of three ain’t bad when it comes to this season’s Oscar-bait biopics.

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Hey Kids! Funtime 2021 Oscar® Predictions!

On Sunday night, April 25, the 93rd Academy Awards will be held at the Dolby Theatre and Union Station in Los Angeles, but, you know, mostly on Zoom. Obviously this ceremony was delayed until much later in the year than usual because of the pandemic, and that same factor is what may mean even a smaller audience. The ratings for last year’s Oscars, which took place on February 9, 2020, hit an all-time low, and it seems like fewer people are even aware of the upcoming event.

There’s also the factor that a lot of folks haven’t seen or even know about many of the nominees. Sometimes the quarantine binge-watching of some show on Netflix, Amazon Prime, or Hulu, to name but a few streaming platforms is more appealing than watching some possibly depressing indie film. Still, there were some fine films that were released in the last year, and some of them got nominations.

Here are my predictions for the winners, a few of which I feel confident with, but most are definitive examples of “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe.”

1. BEST PICTURE: NOMADLAND

2. BEST DIRECTOR: Chloé Zhao for NOMADLAND

3. BEST ACTOR: Chadwick Boseman (MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM) Looks like everyone is in agreement on this one.

4. BEST ACTRESS: Carey Mulligan (PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN) There’s buzz aplenty that Frances McDormand is going to win for NOMADLAND, but she’s won twice before, and I have a feeling that Mulligan’s stunning performance in PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN will get more votes. Consider it this year’s wild card.

5. BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Daniel Kaluuya (JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH

6. BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Yuh-Jung Youn (MINARI)

7. PRODUCTION DESIGN: Donald Graham Burt, Jan Pascale for MANK

8. CINEMATOGRAPHY: Joshua James Richards for NOMADLAND

9. COSTUME DESIGN: Ann Roth for MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM

10. DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: MY OCTOPUS TEACHER

11. DOCUMENTARY SHORT:   A CONCERTO IS A CONVERSATION (Kris Bowers, Ben Proudfoot)

12. FILM EDITING:  SOUND OF METAL

13. MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING: MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM (Mia Neal, Sergio Lopez-Rivera, Jamika Wilson)

14. VISUAL EFFECTS: TENET (Andrew Jackson, David Lee, Andrew Lockley, Santiago Colomo Martinez)

15. ORIGINAL SCORE: SOUL (Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross and Jon Batiste)

16. ORIGINAL SONG: “Speak Now” from ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI (Leslie Odom Jr.)

17. ANIMATED SHORT:  IF ANYTHING HAPPENS I LOVE YOU

18. LIVE ACTION SHORT: TWO DISTANT STRANGERS

19. SOUND: SOUND OF METAL – I’m so happy that they combined the BEST SOUND EDITING and SOUND MIXES categories into this one, as I hated trying to figure what deserved what, and also the same film would often win both awards.

20. ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Emerald Fennell for PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN

21. ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: Christopher Hampton and Florian Zeller for THE FATHER

22. ANIMATED FEATURE FILM: SOUL

23. BEST INTERNATIONAL FILM: ANOTHER ROUND

As I always say, tune in Monday to see how many I got wrong.

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NEVER LET ME GO: The Film Babble Blog Review

NEVER LET ME GO (Dir. Mark Romanek, 2010)

The set-up for this film based on the best selling book by Japanese author Kazuo Ishiguro: a trio of young students (Keira Knightly, Carrey Mulligan, and Andrew Garfield) growing up in a English boarding school discover they are clones grown for the sole purpose of organ donation.

The school is called Hailsham and in ominous gray tones we find these youngsters – at first played by Ella Purnel, Izzy Meikle-Small, and Charlie Rowe – in a love triangle that lasts until their later teenage years.

Knightly and Garfield pair up while Mulligan is left out. Another couple in their new living quarters they are moved to after their school years called “The Cottages” tell the trio about a rumor that lovers might be granted a stay of execution for several years into their adulthood.

The story is told in flashback from the point of view of Mulligan who after “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps” you’d think was all cried out.

But no, there’s plenty here to make her all misty eyed. Especially when things takes tragic turns. The icy cold Charlotte Rampling as Hailsham’s headmistress has harsh answers to the kid’s questions – ignore the trailers if you don’t want spoilers about that.

It’s an affecting and haunting film in many respects. Romanek’s imagery is bleak but purposeful and the performances hit the right unrestrained notes.

Garfield, who can also be seen at a theater near you in THE SOCIAL NETWORK and will be a household name in the next few years as the new Spiderman, uses his angsty shakiness to his advantage while Knightly overcomes her previous performances’ emptiness nicely.

It’s Mulligans movie however, and she owns it. Her refined acting matched with the stirring score by Rachel Portman elevates the movie’s emotional core.

The sci-fi elements of the screenplay are at a minimum so it’s easy to buy this poignant premise and savor the sad soulfulness on display.

NEVER LET ME GO may be too somber and strained for some folks, but it got under the skin of this reviewer.

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WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS: The Film Babble Blog Review

WALL STREET: MONEY NEVER SLEEPS

(Dir. Oliver Stone, 2010)

Spoiler Alert!: This review gives away a number of key plot points because, well, I just don’t care.

Despite that last year I wrote that a sequel to Oliver Stone’s seminal 1987 WALL STREET was one of 10 sequels to classic movies that should not happen, I still had a tiny sliver of hope inside that the controversial director might pull off another timely indictment of America’s financial system.

Sadly, the return of Gordon Gekko to the silver screen is no such film. It’s as unnecessary a retread as BLUES BROTHERS 2000, which incidentally also began with the prison release of a major character.

In 2002, Michael Douglas as Gekko, 67 years old with his lion's mane of hair now gray, walks out of Sing Sing Maximum Security Prison after serving 8 years to find nobody waiting for him. The camera circles his head to let this sink in.

The film flashes forward to 2008 and for a while it’s Shia LaBeouf’s movie. LaBeouf is an ambitious trader – think Charlie Sheen in the first film but with more ethics – engaged to Douglas’ activist blogger daughter (Carey Mulligan). LaBeouf’s mentor (Frank Langella) at his firm commits suicide after rampant rumors cause the company’s stock to crash.

LaBeouf suspects Josh Brolin, as an old school Gekko-ish hedge fund manager, to be the source of the rumors. Going behind Mulligan’s back, LaBeouf consults with Douglas who wants to be close to his daughter again.

Mulligan wants nothing to do with her father. She blames him for the overdose death of her brother and she’s vehemently against the Wall Street world which makes it hard to believe that she’s surprised to find out that her fiancé is a “Wall Street guy.”

LaBeouf wants to avenge Langella, make a name for himself, and sincerely help a renewable fusion-energy company run by the always nice to see Austin Pendleton – in the same manner that Sheen wanted to help out his father’s ailing airline.

Upon learning that Douglas set his daughter up with a Swiss trust fund worth $100 million, LaBeouf finds himself caught in a web of convoluted double crossings.

Stone uses every visual trick up his sleeve to shape this material – at a point in one of several flashy montages full of split screens, tangled neon cable news ticker tape, and computer animation I felt like I was trapped in a MSNBC hall of mirrors.

The problem is that what made the first movie great is that Gordon Gekko was not a redeemable character. He was a symbol of corporate evil and a necessary one, for there are horrible fiscal creatures out there that destroy thousands of people’s lives with no remorse.

If Gekko truly isn’t a sociopath (as his daughter calls him early on), but a visionary that predicts the economic collapse in 2008 and can be won over by a disc containing his future grandson’s ultrasound – what does he symbolize now?

Douglas’s Oscar winning performance of Gekko in the first film was named by AFI as number 24 of the top 50 movie villains of all time in 2003. After his defanged depiction here that number will surely drop next time they update the list.

It’s understandable that Stone and Douglas wanted to revisit this terrain, but with its predictable plot and pat happy ending this is more than a missed opportunity – it’s a failed follow-up of epic proportions.

One of the only enjoyable elements is the soundtrack provided by David Byrne and Brian Eno. As the first film ended with the Talking Heads’ “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)”, this one obviously tries to match the mood with a fine selection of the duo’s collaborations. When these melodies appear it’s the only time that this film feels anywhere near the league of the original.

Beyond that, MONEY NEVER SLEEPS (awful title) has little point to it, except maybe to unleash a bunch of new Gekko-isms on the public.

Of the many so called pearls of wisdom the slick slimy Gekko spouts - “Idealism kills every deal” – sticks out. By sparing us the true cutthroat nature of the beast in favor of trite sentimentality, the deal is definitely dead as a doornail here.

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AN EDUCATION: The Film Babble Blog Review

AN EDUCATION (Dir. Lone Scherfig, 2009)

It certainly isn’t a “meet cute” when 16 year old school girl Carey Mulligan is offered a ride home from Peter Sarsgaard in his snazzy sports car, but it isn’t exactly a “meet creep” either. Though Sarsgaard has a creepy reputation (his monologue on SNL a few years back was completely about how creepy he can be) here his character is a charming witty Englishman who has the ticket to an opulent new life for Mulligan, one filled with elegant culture and reams of romance. Or so it seems.

Set in a pre-Beatlemania Britain that Mulligan repeatedly calls “boring”, and based on a recently published memoir by Lynn Barber, the story is a simple coming of age one. Mulligan is impressed by Sarsgaard – a man able to charm her parents (a wonderfully befuddled Alfred Molina and a smirking Cara Seymour) into letting her go to a concert and dinner for their first date. 

Sarsgaard then reaches further with overnight trips to Oxford and Paris while Mulligan’s school mates blush with envy and her teacher (Olivia Williams) and headmistress (Emma Thompson) disapprove.

Our pithy protagonist is a bit taken aback when she discovers that her new beau is an art thief and a slick wheeler and dealer involved in blockbusting (the practice of moving minorities into apartments to make old racist women vacate so the apartments can be purchased cheaply), but she’s still soft for Sarsgaard.

As the first solo screenplay written by Nick Hornby (“High Fidelity”, “About A Boy”, “Fever Pitch” and their respective film adaptations) one of the best modern novelists working today, AN EDUCATION is tightly written with sharp realistic dialogue and a touching tone. It is, perhaps is a bit too tightly written as the last act has some pat payoffs and all too tidy summations of character’s realizations. 

That doesn't stop it from being a sweet little gem of a movie with great chemistry between the actors and a very satisfying ending. I doubt it will win any awards but I bet it’ll make a bunch of “best of 2009” year end lists. Although, not sure yet if it’ll make mine.

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