Every year, while most awards obsessives wring their hands over the starrier categories, I focus on those below-the-line categories I've grown to love even more than Best Picture. Costume Design and International Feature are usually the focus of my attention, though every "craft" award tends to entice curiosity and honest emotional investment. All that said, the last category I expected to be excited about on nomination morning is Best Visual Effects. And yet, here we are. It seems this oddball awards season insists on surprising until the very end…
Months ago, earlier on in the season, I heard some grumblings about what would become of the Best Visual Effects race in a year so lacking in the traditional blockbuster fare. Admittedly, even I came to be concerned about the ultimate fate of the category, especially now that it has five nominees instead of three. Would AMPAS just bow down to the big studios and nominate anything they put forward, automatically shortlisting subpar work? Would they merely add one more nod to the season's frontrunners, regardless of the worthiness of their special effects?
I'm happy to say that I underestimated the Academy, their taste level, and the variety of effects they were willing to shine a light on. As it happens, when the usual suspects are excluded, AMPAS becomes original and risky in its choices. Some types of VFX work that seldomly get listed suddenly had a chance and were celebrated. For the first time, we have a documentary on the shortlist for Best Visual Effects. There's also an animated feature as well as a movie whose use of CGI is more immersive than show-stopping. They are supporting effects, rather than the main spectacle but no less intricate. Don't believe me? Check out the Academy's shortlist.
From talking animals to Old Hollywood palaces, afterlife visions, and digital masks, here's a personal ranking of the ten finalists in the Best Visual Effects category UPDATE - IF THEY WERE NOMINATED THAT'S NOTED BELOW:
10) MULAN - NOMINEE
Garish and weightless, these effects aim for photorealism but end up being closer to cartoonish kitsch. I suspect it's going to be nominated thanks to the Disney of it all, but it's my least favorite of the bunch as well as the most disappointingly traditional. I do appreciate those supernatural birds though. Even if not especially well-rendered, they were fun to look at.
9) BIRDS OF PREY
That hyena is an eyesore, but the rest of the CGI strikes an impressive balance between DC-brand grittiness and a sense of colorful whimsy. The usual faults of this kind of work, namely the unconvincing physics and murky textures, tend to work in the movie's favor seeing as they underline its irreverent artifice, its poppy aesthetic, the madness and folly of Harley Quinn.
8) THE ONE AND ONLY IVAN - NOMINEE
These talking animals are really impressive, their textures and meaty bodies convincing as much as their colorful personalities. While the movie's nothing special, more schmaltz than anything else, the digital construction of its main cast is a feat deserving of applause. It's a pity how some of the digital set extensions, sky substitutions, and other supporting elements, fail to measure up. It's a bit too glossy for its own good.
7) BLOODSHOT
Nobody's defending Bloodshot as a work of great cinema, but I'd argue its effects are pretty nifty. This is an action movie where the action set pieces are truly the highpoints of enjoyment and visual wonderment, putting its CGI budget to good use. The particle animation is especially brilliant in how it makes a sinewy ballet out of body parts reconstructing out of thin air. It's a mix of body horror and fantasy technology, a match made in gory heaven.
6) MANK
David Fincher flicks always have great visual effects and Mank's no different. The CGI never takes center stage but its role in the success of the movie is impossible to overstate, from the concretization of Hearst's palatial hells to the perfect skies who look more like matte paintings than nature's work. The balance between immersive realism and purposeful fakeness is key, and Mank's team deserves kudos for the contradictory mood their visuals evoke.
5) SOUL
Most animated movies have Visual Effects departments, even when their universes are completely computer-generated. The same people who do character animation aren't necessarily the same folks figuring out how a burst of magic is visualized or how an ethereal set can explode into being. In Soul, the different departments of animation were faced with a common challenge, that of contrasting earthly mundanity and the afterlife's abstract conception of materiality. The final effects are pristine, some of the best Pixar has ever produced. If this is to be their first movie to get a Best Visual Effects nod, it won't be an undeserved accolade.
4) THE MIDNIGHT SKY- NOMINEE
Sometimes, a movie earns trophies for one single moment of undeniable inspiration. The Midnight Sky's quite the visual effects showcase, but the reason why I rank it so high is one particular scene when a simple concept that had never occurred to me suddenly manifested in all its terrifying beauty. As a body dies in space, its insides spill forward, spill out, dark blood filling the air like a serpentine dance of ruby droplets. Visceral and dreamy, it's one hell of a memorable instance of movie violence made majestic by a canny VFX team.
3) LOVE AND MONSTERS- NOMINEE
Traditional, even conventional, this flick's use of VFX is centered on its titular creatures, a rowdy and varied bunch of mutated cold-blooded living beings. More than anything, these gigantic critters are a triumph of ingenious design. It's as if the inane mundanities that crawl through humble gardens had become elastic killing machines, weighty and sharp. The backyard is thus turned into a gate to hell from which a menagerie of great VFX spills forth, ready to devour what remains of humanity in this post-apocalyptic adventure comedy.
2) TENET- NOMINEE
The oldest trick in film history, reversing a shot to make movements happen in reverse, is gorgeously extrapolated and turned monumental in Christopher Nolan's latest movie. Tenet has its fair share of problems, but the little CGI and extensive practical effects aren't one of them. Even the most ludicrous action sequence has a muscular portent that makes it feel both oneirically impossible and visceral reality. What it lacks in originality, it makes for in pure technical precision and a healthy sense of cinematic grandeur.
1) WELCOME TO CHECHNYA
Much has been written about this documentary's visual effects and there's not much I can add to the heaps of praise others have already published. It's the first documentary ever shortlisted for this Oscar, after all. What I have to say is this: I'll never look at identity obscuring techniques in journalistic docs the same way again. This movie shows that such an element can be turned into an inventive spectacle, CGI as a life-saving mechanism. Furthermore, it produced the biggest "wow" moment of the season, when a smokescreen of digital anonymization suddenly evaporates.
Go read Nathaniel's great interview with the director and visual effects supervisor of Welcome to Chechnya for more information on this great feat. What are your feelings regarding this year's Best Visual Effects race?