Summer Movie Season Surveyed

This article originally appeared in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad. It is reprinted here in a revised TFE specific but abridged version...

While summer didn’t technically begin until June 20th and isn’t technically over yet, “Summer Movie Season” is not beholden to the solstice and equinox but to The Blockbuster. Summer has long been the most lucrative season for Hollywood and so they’ve stretched it out to start earlier each year. It now tends to begin sometime in April with the release of the first movie that feels like a Summer Blockbuster proper (this year that would’ve arguably been The Jungle Book on April 15th) and ends on Labor Day, aka Any Second Now. It’s no secret that it’s been a rough summer for the quality of blockbusters. But if you’re lucky enough to live in a big city or smart enough to seek out films without gargantuan ad budgets, there was still plenty of cinema to get excited about. So herewith the Best & Worst of 2016’s Summer movie season…

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Quickie Reviews: The Light Between Oceans and The Jungle Book

by Nathaniel R

Apologies that there's no big review this weekend but I do hope you'll check out the Fassbender & Vikander flick. Here are two quick takes on movie options this weekend.

IN THEATERS

The Light Between Oceans (Derek Cianfrance)
Story: A war veteran (Michael Fassbender) takes a position as a lighthouse keeper where he falls in love with a local girl (Alicia Vikander). Their lives change irrevocably when they discover an orphaned baby in a boat.
Review: A pop quiz. Which is more ravishing?

• Real life romantic chemistry that translates intact to movie screens.
• Romantic dramas that don't stop at sexy but get across how comforting and life-changing love and companionship can be.
• Picturesque rocky islands and lighthouses softened at their edges by grassy tenderness and the windswept beauty of two definitely cinematic brunettes.

Trick question -- they're all super ravishing! I've heard the complaints that The Light Between Oceans is "dull" or "has no edge" and it's definitely soggier and lacking in the instantaneously memorable moments of Cianfrance's previous outings Blue Valentine and The Place Beyond the Pines. But I kind of loved it while I was watching it. At least the first half. It loses its way a little in the third act as the tragedy stretches out and the film shifts to Rachel Weisz but it's uncommonly gorgeous to gaze upon and cry through. 
Grade: B+ (maybe B towards the end)
Oscar Chances: Perhaps it's not potent enough to hold on for months to win acting nominations -- though Fassbender & Vikander are both excellent -- but I'm crossing my fingers for Best Cinematography. Take a bow, Adam Arkapaw. (His previous credits include Macbeth, Lore, and Animal Kingdom). It also feels like a possibility for Score (Alexandre Desplat) though that's a little overbearing. 

JUST OUT ON DVD / BLURAY

The Jungle Book (Jon Favreau)
Story: You know this one already. A boy is raised by animals in the jungle. No, not that white one with the apes. The little Indian boy raised by wolves and panthers and bears, oh my. The problem: a tiger wants him dead.
Review: Can you believe we never reviewed this? Though it's somewhat ravishing to look at as a technical achievement, in truth I was not particularly fond of it and found it difficult to write about. The problem was that it doesn't have an identity of its own to discuss. Favreau trusts that fond memories of the Disney animated classic it apes (pun not intended) will win your love. He and his team trust in this so completely that they even graft on two and a half highly uncomfortable musical numbers despite the fact that this Jungle Book definitely does not self-identify as a musical, it's one characteristic that immediately sets its apart from the original. Until it doesn't.  Great voice work by Idris Elba as Shere Khan. 
Oscar Chances: Most definitely. At least a visual effects nomination. Perhaps sound as well?
Grade: C/C+   

P.S. If you liked it more, I'd love to hear why. Its long legs at the box office indicate that it wasn't just brand recognition but actual audience love that made it an enormous hit.

All Oscar Charts Updated

ICYMI. With Venice & Telluride in swing and Toronto almost in session, the race is off. But a word to the wise - it's a marathon not a sprint.

INDEX 
Handy chart (final pre-festival guesswork) and nomination tallies 

PIC | DIRECTOR | ACTOR | ACTRESS | SUPPORTING ACTOR | SUPPORTING ACTRESS 
The marquee categories

FOREIGN | FOREIGN A-F | FOREIGN F-N | FOREIGN N-Z
Updated Frequently. 15 Official Submissions in foreign language film category thus far. New films added today include entries from Egypt, Bosnia, Hungary, Sweden, and Belgium

VISUALS | AURALS | ANIMATION & DOCS | SCREENPLAYS 
Some of our favorite categories 

Honorary Oscars to Jackie Chan, Frederick Wiseman, Lynn Stalmaster, and Anne V Coates

The Board of Governors from AMPAS have finally announced their selections for this year's Honorary Oscars. This year they're not giving out the Thalberg (for Producing) or the Hersholt (for Huminatarian efforts) but just the regular ol' Honorary Oscars. If such a thing can be deemed "regular" since they're so hard to come by. Consider that James Ivory still doesn't have one despite being a masterful oft imitated but never duplicated director behind three major Best Picture contenders (and many other beautiful films) and never having won an an Oscar and being 88 years old. Nathaniel wept. Oscar remains remarkably stingy with the gays but at least they've noticed the need for diversity in other ways.

Congratulations to this year's esteemed recipients! 

Jackie Chan's starmaking hit The Legend of Drunken Master (1978)

SUPERSTAR JACKIE CHAN
He's a famous actor, producer, and director and his filmography is just enormous with well over 100 films under his belt. What's more he's a major figure in Asian cinema which is about the last place Oscar ever looks to hand honors so good on them. He's only 62 which is young for an Honorary prize but Spike Lee got his while still in his late 50s recently so they appear to be loosening up with their age restrictions. 

EDITOR ANNE V COATES
Though The Film Experience is against Oscar's strange practice of giving Honorary Statues to people who've already won (like Coates) there's no denying that she's one of the best editors the cinema has ever seen. And in truth they've been a bit stingy with her with only 5 nominations and a win (Out of Sight, In the Line of Fire, The Elephant Man, Becket, and her winning film Lawrence of Arabia when she was still in her 30s). I was personally horrified when she was not nominated for her vigorous artful editing on Erin Brockovich (2000). At 91 she doesn't work much anymore but she did edit Fifty Shades of Grey (2015) recently. 

DOCUMENTARIAN FREDERICK WISEMAN
The Academy has been egregiously stingy with this 86 year old. He's never been nominated despite being considered one of the all time greatest documentarians. He has made nearly 40 documentaries including such well regarded titles as Titicut Follies (1967), High School (1968), Hospital (1970), Welfare (1975), Domestic Violence (2001), and At Berkeley (2013)

Lynn Stalmaster at the TCM FestivalCASTING DIRECTOR LYNN STALMASTER
Since AMPAS does not have a category for casting this is a great use of the Honorary award. Lynn Stalmaster is 88 years old and a legend in his field. Within his first three years as a casting director he already had a Best Actress winning film under his belt (I Want to Live!, 1958). Among his many films there are quite a few examples of situations where the perfect actors for that particular project where chosen including: In the Heat of the Night (1967), The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), They Shoot Horses Don't They (1969), Harold and Maude (1971), Deliverance (1972), Tootsie (1982), The Right Stuff (1983), Nine and a Half Weeks (1986) and many more. I adore that he had such a thing for Faye Dunaway though maybe she regrets how frequently he cast her since Mommie Dearest (1981) and Supergirl (1984) were towards the end of it. 

The non-televised Governors Awards will be held on November 12th. As usual we'll be doing some posting on these four careers in the lead up to their honors so we have quite a range of films to choose from. Any requests?

Best Acting. New Oscar Predictions

Having just taken a trip back to 1984 for the Smackdown and memory sufficiently jogged about how dense the acting branch can sometimes be (the discernment skills vary so much annually it can feel like invasion of the AMPAS body snatchers in some calender years) I'm finding myself in the odd position of defending my more extreme hunches from my more cynical side.

Huppert is amazing... and (more importantly) Huppert-esque in ELLEBEST ACTRESS
Whenever you make a call here suggesting that so & so in some non-Oscary film actually has a shot at an acting nomination, people are prone to scoff. But each year's Oscar races have so many intangibles in the acting categories that it's best to keep an open mind. The four acting categories are arguably the categories that are least beholden to the actual movies since a famous actor doesn't need a strong picture to generate buzz nor do they (in some cases) even need for people to actually like their movie they're in or, in fact, see it. And then you have the vaguely opposite case where a particular movie, whether or not people actually warm to it as a whole, can remind the world how fabulous a particular actor or actress always has been...

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