Lousy with two-time Oscar winners, and just lousy

The original Predator from 1987 famously had two future governors in its cast, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse "The Body" Ventura.

Predators from 2010? It had two future two-time Oscar winners, one of whom had already won one of his Oscars.

That's just one of the things I wanted to talk about in a post about the two movies in the larger Predator franchise -- if you don't count the Alien vs. Predator movies -- that I hadn't seen before this weekend.

When the movie-watching year resets and I can watch anything I want again, I've made a habit of completing little projects like this in recent years. Last year in February I watched The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and Spider-Man 3, which were the only two Spider-Man movies I had yet to see -- though maybe it would have been smart to wait for my younger son on that one, considering that he's since become a Spider-Man fanatic. Instead we've started this year watching Marvel movies he hadn't seen from the Captain America and Avengers franchises, which is another example of a project like this, though not in this case watching movies that I hadn't seen myself. (We also watched the original Spider-Man from 2002, since he was raised on Tom Holland as Spider-Man and only saw Toby Maguire in the role in that new Spider-Man movie from a couple years ago.)

I thought there was a similar thing in 2024, but perhaps not because I'm not seeing it. Though in 2023 around this time of year, I did complete the Rocky series with a viewing of Rocky II the night after I watched Creed III. 

Enough historical precedent. The reason to watch Predators (2010) and The Predator (2018) seems obvious enough. I'm clearly a new devotee of this series, having placed both of Dan Trachtenberg's live-action Predator movies in my top ten of their respective years, first Prey in 2022 and then most recently, Predator: Badlands just this past year. Although I may like Prey more, Predator: Badlands was even higher than Prey, #5 vs. #7 -- which says more about the quality of the competition than an absolute value for each film. The animated Predator: Killer of Killers also did very respectably in last year's rankings, but nowhere near the top ten. 

I'm going to finish this project off with a rewatch of Predator: Badlands tonight, since it's just recently arrived on Disney+. I suspect I'll write about it tomorrow, but don't hold me to that.

Another reason it was important to watch these movies is that I have been implicitly damning them every time I write about a new Predator movie I like -- which was not exactly fair, given that I'd never seen them. I don't diss them specifically, of course, but I have assumed it was safe to refer to the entire franchise as a "moribund franchise" that Trachtenberg raised out of the depths of its despair. 

I started with Nimrod Antal's Predators on Thursday night, though I didn't finish it until yesterday afternoon/early evening/later evening. Despite the interruptions, I liked it almost enough to recommend it, though in the end it fell short of that at 2.5 stars. I was sort of glad that it dipped in quality near the end, because that added weight to my previously risky argument that the franchise hadn't been any good before Trachtenberg came along. (At least not since the original.)

Shane Black's The Predator, which leaned heavily into what people think is his strength, an almost Joss Whedon-style, f-bomb laden joking camaraderie between the characters? Well that wasn't good from the start. I didn't get anything out of that one, despite the presence of likable actors like Olivia Munn, Keegan-Michael Key and Sterling K. Brown.

In a piece like this, I might ordinarily go into the plot of the two movies, talk about what worked, talk about what didn't work. To be honest, I'm not really feeling that today. So let's get to the headline bit about the two-time Oscar winners from Predators, and see what energy I might have left over to talk about The Predator.

So you'd know that Adrien Brody was the star of Predators -- at least, I knew it, as he was the only one I definitively remembered from the ads I saw of it 15 years ago. You'd also know that Brody just won his second, and presumably final, Oscar last year for The Brutalist, having first won for The Pianist in 2002. (I didn't realize the structural similarity of those two titles until just now.) It being the probable last was one of the reasons he wouldn't get off the goddamn stage.

But you probably wouldn't know that a then-unknown Mahershala Ali was in, and one of the first killed off in, Predators. This is when he was still credited as Mahershalalhashbaz Ali. Ali didn't become known to most of us until he won his first best supporting actor Oscar for Moonlight six years later, before winning his second for Green Book only two years after that. If memory serves, Ali spent only a reasonable amount of time on stage. 

Winning multiple Academy awards is not completely uncommon -- it's also been done this century by Emma Stone, Daniel Day-Lewis, Frances McDormand, Cate Blanchett, Renee Zellweger, Christophe Waltz and Sean Penn, with Hillary Swank, Denzel Washington and Anthony Hopkins having won a second this century after winning their first last century. But having two in the same movie, especially when it's a Predator movie, still strikes me as pretty unlikely. (What little we knew at the time about the potential of Ali.)

Having the characters dropped unconscious from a craft in the sky into a game preserve on a distant plant, and having to awaken mid-air in order to deploy their parachutes, is a good way to get us into the action and set the scene. I was on board for this and thought I could, potentially, be watching another prestige object in the Predator series. In addition to those already mentioned, the film collects a watchable group that includes Topher Grace, Alice Braga, Danny Trejo, Walton Goggins, and a surprise later appearance from Laurence Fishburne as a guy who has been there a lot longer, and has the crazy to prove it.

But as the movie went on, and as the Predators were revealed more and seemed less interesting, it became more and more mid. The affection for this film by Filmspotting co-host Josh Larsen is not totally unfounded, but I'm glad to say this has nothing on Trachtenberg's movies.

The Predator, which I watched immediately after finishing up Predators last night, felt off to me from the start. This is also a frame story featuring a core cast of about seven characters who get picked off one by one, though in this case most of them are part of a ragtag military group who like to give each other shit, almost excessively so, to the point of affectation in the script. They're led by Boyd Holbrook, who has never been a favorite of mine, though as mentioned before, I do enjoy Munn, Key and Brown. There's a Moonlight connection with this one as well, as Trevante Rhodes is also in the cast, though this movie does show the limits of his charisma and I think explains why he hasn't continued to have much work. (Thomas Jane has never been a favorite, though Alfie Allen is always fun to see, because it always makes me think of his sister and the song she wrote about him.)

This story is a bit more all over the place, taking place on Earth and involving alien tech being passed around between shady military people and these ragtag soldiers, as well as a biologist played by Munn. The story also involves the neurodivergent son of Holbrook's character, played by Room actor Jacob Tremblay, who was such a revelation in that movie and so flat in this one, only a few years later. Anyway, it's jokey and messy and for the most part I just wanted it to be over.

The thing I find very interesting about this series -- when I think back to the original and Predator 2, which was actually the first film in the series that I ever saw -- is that I'm not sure any of the movies has any plot connection to any of the other movies. The first sequel would have been the most likely, but because Schwarzenegger didn't return, replaced by Danny Glover, whatever connective tissue there was would have been pretty thin. And it takes place in an entirely different environment. So I'm going to say there was basically none. 

My thought was that Trachtenberg's movies were supposed to connect to each other, but so far, the three are very different. My understanding was that Killer of Killers was supposed to lay the groundwork for Badlands, but an explicit connection between them was thin if it existed at all. I suppose the most similar two movies are Predators and Killer of Killers because both focus on Predators fighting people who have been chosen specifically for representing a different brand of warrior that can challenge them. Did we mention one of the characters in Predators is a Yakuza hitman who's good with a sword? That itself is very similar to one of the three stories in Killer of Killers, albeit from a very different time period.

One funny similarity I did notice? The two movies I watched in the past two days were both exactly 107 minutes, with the one I'm going to watch tonight being only one minute longer than that. The original Predator is 107 minutes and Predator 2 is 108. Trachtenberg's previous two do deviate from that formula just a little, with Prey seven minutes shorter at 100 and the animated movie, perhaps unsurprisingly, running only 85 minutes. 

I'm not quite so interested in getting a holistic view of the entire Predator series that I need to rewatch either the original two movies, rewatch Killer of Killers or Prey, or see the one Alien vs. Predator movie I haven't seen. Besides, there are only so many days in a weekend. But I do look forward to rewatching Badlands tonight, and I'll let you know if any holistic impressions emerge from that viewing. 

How Florida became the backdrop for great independent filmmaking

Florida is among the most peculiar of the continental United States. Hawaii and Alaska may have a leg up in being separated from the rest of the country by miles and miles of ocean or miles and miles of Canada, but among states that are actually connected to other states, there may be no greater odd duck. It's kind of the south, but it's kind of cosmopolitan. It's got swampland and it's got coastal beauty. It has a huge demographic diversity, from rednecks to senior citizens to African-Americans to displaced Cubans. It plays a pivotal role in every presidential election. It attracts such weirdness and such oddity that a Los Angeles morning radio show I used to listen to had a game called "Germany or Florida?", where some outlandish little news item was proffered and you had to guess which of those locations spawned it.

Perhaps all of this has helped make it the go-to destination for independent filmmakers trying to explore serious issues of culture, identity and the American dream, all with the option of palm trees in the background.

The title of this post suggests I'm going to explain how that happened. In fact, I can't do that, though it's possible if I went on the internet and pulled some threads, I might find out. It might be nothing more profound than that Florida offers good tax breaks for films that want to shoot there. Really, I just liked how that title sounded.

The latest example, the movie that gave the idea the critical mass in my head necessary to write this post, is Trey Edward Shults' Waves, a film whose late release date caused it to get kind of lost in the shuffle at the end of 2019. In fact, it hasn't yet debuted here in Australia, an eventuality that will arrive late next week. That release date may have been delayed by coronavirus but it may not have. Sometimes, late-year American releases don't come out in Australia until the following summer -- which is winter here, of course.

I myself saw it as a 99 cent rental on my American version of iTunes. That's also not the first time that has happened, that a U.S. film has reached that point where it's no longer a new video release, so can appear at a discount price for one week, but it still hasn't made its debut everywhere in the world.

One thing setting a film in Florida does is it allows for the collision of dissimilar types, who might not otherwise inhabit the same space. My first example, from back in 2013, does that very well. That's Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers, in which we get the science experiment of what happens when you combine college girls on spring break with drug dealers. Only in Florida, right? In that film -- which you know I think is brilliant, as I ranked it my second favorite of the last decade -- it allows for the college girls to find the drug dealers in themselves, and the drug dealer to find his inner college girl. That's all perfectly encapsulated in a single scene, where James Franco's Alien sits at an outdoor piano and delicately plinks out the notes for the Britney Spears ballad "Everytime," while the college girls in question dance around him wearing pink balaclavas and brandishing machine guns. Only in Florida, right?

The next film, chronologically, deals with a different sort of collision of things that seem diametrically opposed to one another, though they shouldn't. That's Barry Jenkins' Moonlight in 2016, which made my top ten of the year. Here you have the story of Chiron, who has a drug addicted mother and whose best male role model is himself a drug dealer. The twist is, of course, that Chiron is gay, a sexual preference that has a shameful history of acceptance in society in general, and in the African-American community in particular. There's something particularly Floridian about this coming of age story, as Chiron's formative sexual experience takes place on a beach by the titular moonlight. The image of Chiron being dipped in the waves by Juan, that drug dealer with a heart of gold, suggests a kind of baptism into a life of acceptance -- and also, indirectly, a life of crime.

The very next year, Sean Baker came back with The Florida Project, which, like Moonlight, also yielded a best supporting actor nomination, though Willem Dafoe did not win the statue that Mahershala Ali did. Like Moonlight, it also finished in my top ten for the year. The clash of apparent opposites here is between extreme poverty and Disney World. Baker stages the lives of children and their absent parents in a long-term motel that's adjacent to Disney World -- several miles adjacent, but close enough that the reflected glory still rests upon it, and the motels are given the types of names that might ensnare less discerning tourists. That the kids should be free to walk around in abandoned homes, and even set them ablaze, gives an indication of the duty to them that has been forfeited, and the chaos that exists just beneath what in many respects is a pretty surface. That chaos encapsulates Florida in general.

And finally we come to 2019 with Waves, which didn't yield any nominations of any kind, nor get the attention it deserved. Because I had no way to see it in time for my own best of 2019 list, it couldn't make the top ten, but I can pretty much assure you it would have made the top five if I had. Here is our first mismatch between the race of the filmmaker (white) and the race of his characters (black, with a few exceptions). Even six months later that disjuncture might already now seem problematic, but not the way Shults handles it, which is fair and credible and never assumes to know more than it does. The apparent contradiction in this story is that it revolves around an affluent black family -- and that, unfortunately, itself is a sad contradiction in what we expect from our depictions of African-Americans at the movies. Even though the members of this family have worked hard to rise above the limitations society tries to place on them, tragedy still reaches them, blurring the accomplishments of a successful businessman and his overachieving wrestler son. As much as the movie is not "about" race, racial issues bleed around the edges, and again, Florida is both the backdrop for this tarnished American dream, and in some ways, its cause. (The image above even recalls the Moonlight baptism scene.)

Four movies in six years does not a trend make, you might say. It could just be a coincidence that four superlative movies set in Florida, with similarly gorgeous looks, made by similarly visionary directors, happened to come out loosely within the space of a decade. The fact that it's closer to half a decade certainly strengthens the case, but it's still possible it's a coincidence.

However, it could also be true that there is something about the American soul that we need to wrestle with right now -- no pun intended -- that achieves its most profound dramatization in that oddest duck of states.

I'll put it this way: If in 2021 I see another Florida-set film advertised that reminds me of Spring Breakers, Moonlight, The Florida Project or Waves, I will be the first damn person in line.

Chazelle and Jenkins not so different

I saw Barry Jenkins' first film last night, and you know what it reminded me of?

Damien Chazelle's first film.

Ha.

It would seem that the two directors share something more in common than both thinking their movies had won best picture last week. (Jenkins got to hold on to that feeling; Chazelle, not so much, but having just won best director must have helped diminish his disappointment.)

During awards season, a narrative cropped up that the two best picture frontrunners, Moonlight and La La Land, had a meaningful diametric opposition to each other. In part because of unrelated factors that speak more to our society at large, one was seen as the black movie, the other blindingly white; one as the flight of fancy that leaves behind our current problems, the other as the one that delves into them chest deep.

But having just watched Medicine for Melancholy, I have to wonder if the "authors" of those two works are really more similar than they are different.

First, a one-sentence synopsis of each. Medicine for Melancholy is about a man named Micah (Wyatt Cenac) and a woman named Jo (Tracey Higgins) who sleep together at a party, separate awkwardly after breakfast, then spend the day together when he returns the purse she left behind in the cab they shared. Guy and Madeline on a Park Bench, Chazelle's debut, charts through song the end of a three-month relationship -- or is it the end? -- between a jazz trumpeter (Jason Palmer) and a listless introvert looking for work (Desiree Garcia).

Jenkins' first film premiered at South by Southwest almost exactly nine years ago, but made its theatrical debut nearly a year later at the end of January 2009. Only three months later, Chazelle's debut bowed.

The films have a lot more in common than the timing of their respective releases.

Both are very clearly independent films, focusing primarily on a small-scale relationship between a man and a woman. It's not just that they obviously were made on a budget; it's that they wear their independent credentials on their sleeves, as both movies were also shot in black and white as a conscious artistic choice. Jenkins intersperses a bit of red, though I'm not entirely sure to what purpose.

Chazelle's movie is a musical and Jenkins' an atmospheric slice-of-life romance, but their forms are still very similar, both reserving a number of shots for the picturesque surroundings of the cities they're set in, Boston and San Francisco respectively. In fact, you could say the old chestnut about "the location being its own character" applies to both films.

Both movies also have a significant affection for music, Guy and Madeline very textually (Guy plays the trumpet) and Medicine subtextually (the leads discuss music on several occasions and dance to indie rock). Jenkins' use of the score in Moonlight certainly indicates that he has the same type of obvious affinity for music that Chazelle has.

And you know what? In Chazelle's movie, Guy is black and Madeline is white. That may be an unexpected result for people who were fed the very flawed line of reasoning that La La Land was somehow a racist or fascist movie. Yes, there are some problematic bits about the white guy saving jazz and the black guy selling it out, but I don't think those are quite as straightforward as they seem. From the evidence of Guy and Madeline, Chazelle appears to be very comfortable working across racial lines, and he probably would have been just as happy to cast interracial leads in La La Land if he thought he could still get the financial backing to make the project he wanted to make.

The interesting thing is that the interracial coupling between Guy and Madeline is a bone of contention for Jenkins that he addresses very pointedly in Medicine. Micah and Jo have very opposite perspectives on the role race plays in their lives, and the extent to which they must grapple with it. Micah is not what you would call militant, but he never hides his views about race and his own potential disenfranchisement -- when asked what single word describes him, he chooses "black" even more fundamentally than "man." Jo, on the other hand, considers her race incidental to her, and is even committing the cardinal sin of dating (and living with) a white man (upon whom she's cheating with Micah). Micah laments how blacks make up only 7% of the population of San Francisco, and that this leads to more interracial dating than he's comfortable with.

So I guess if Jenkins' perspective is to be taken literally, even the interracial dating in Guy and Madeline would not necessarily win Chazelle any points. Then again, that's only if Jenkins' perspective is to be considered the same as Micah's perspective. There are indications that Jenkins finds flaws in the way Micah sees the world, and some appealing aspects to the way Jo views it -- but of course he wouldn't write the characters' words in the first place if he didn't believe them on some level.

The most obvious thing the two have in common is that they very much seem to be cutting their teeth on these first movies, and it shows. Low-key almost to a fault, the movies win points for a certain verisimilitude (even though one is a musical!) but not necessarily for really sticking with you afterward. Both filmmakers have really blossomed since then, Chazelle in two near-masterpieces (Whiplash also) and Jenkins in one so far. Will be really interested to see what Jenkins offers us next. It will be complex to be sure.

To end on a difference between them, though -- there's a clear disparity in intention here. Jenkins remains interested in grappling with social ills, as demonstrated in the Medicine undercurrent about gentrification and affordable housing. Chazelle wants to entertain first and foremost, though he clearly has a lot of ideas about the struggles and sacrifices of the artist.

They aren't trying to do the same thing, but they're both really good filmmakers, and the differences between them aren't as simple as black and white.

Nor are they, in any fundamental way, even differences.

Da fuq?

Well that was weird.

Remember that time everyone though Jack Palance read the wrong name, leading Marisa Tomei to win an Oscar for My Cousin Vinny?

Well if that did happen, no one was willing to let the mistake be repeated in 2016.

I've only just finished watching and so I'm sure there's a lot of "getting to the bottom of this" that will occur in the next 24 to 48 hours, but somehow, the wrong best picture winner was announced at the Oscars.

It doesn't sound like Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty were at fault, but boy, they sure are likely to take the blame.

Here's hoping that the thrill of winning outweighs the unintentional dilution of the spotlight Moonlight's creative team should have had all to themselves. And congratulations to them. As you know, I was rooting for them.

My biggest "da fuq?" moment of the evening, though, may have come when my #1 of 2016, Toni Erdmann, did not win best foreign language film. It turns out it's "always the bridesmaid, never the bride" for Erdmann, which was predicted to win the top prize at Cannes last year but came away the (presumptive) runner-up to I, Daniel Blake. Then at the Oscars, somehow the least great film Asghar Farhadi has ever made swooped in and won best foreign language film, leaving Toni as the (presumptive) runner up once again.

But which film is getting an American remake starring Jack Nicholson, I ask you?

Also: Would the results have been different without Trump's Muslim ban?

It was a weird ceremony for any number of reasons -- mostly in a bad way. But here were some other good "da fuq?" moments, like:

- The best picture animated feature was not given out by Dory and Marlon

- Sascha Baron Cohen did not come out dressed up as one of the aliens from Arrival

- No famous diva came on and performed an unusual ode to some beloved film from 50 years ago

- Jimmy Kimmel didn't make a joke that the show was at its halfway point just before best picture was announced (oh wait, that did happen)

And some not so good "da fuq?" moments:

- Almost any rehearsed comedic bit between two presenters, most notably that bit with Kate McKinnon and Jason Bateman

- The awarding of two Oscars to Hacksaw Ridge

- The awarding of any Oscars to Suicide Squad, which had one more Golden Raspberry nomination than it had Oscar nominations

- That time Justin Hurwitz didn't thank anybody because he spent all his time talking about how thanking people would bore everybody ... but then did thank them when he won the very next Oscar, something he presumably knew would happen

- The (predictable but still disappointing) shunning of Hell or High Water

As for Kimmel? Mostly flat, though I did get a chuckle or two. His two attempts to create an "Ellen selfie moment" -- the parachuting snacks and the bus of unsuspecting tourists -- were actually reasonably successful, I thought.

And yeah, I liked all the Matt Damon stuff, particularly the We Bought a Zoo bit and the orchestra playing him off ... when he was a presenter.

There's probably more I could say and you certainly deserve a more in-depth Oscar recap, but it's 12:35 a.m. and if I don't hit publish on this right away it will really be yesterday's news by my next chance to do so.

But in closing ... yay Moonlight. The Oscars have "seen the light" for the second year in a row, after Spotlight last year.

Now ... which 2017 film is going to hurriedly change its title to Starlight or Backlight or Flashlight?

Moonlight first-acters vs. Moonlight third-acters

Finally getting a chance to feature possibly my favorite movie poster of 2016 on my blog.

There's no consensus frontrunner for best picture at the Oscars this year. Some favor timeliness in terms of our country's current social ills (Moonlight), while others predict Hollywood's ever-reliable tendency to congratulate itself (La La Land). (Not to mention a number of Oscar nominations tied for the most ever with three other films, all of whom ended up winning best picture.)

But the most universally liked film of 2016 seems clear. It's Moonlight. While some people hate La La Land -- like, really can't stand it -- it's only varying degrees of like for Moonlight.

And that's what I want to talk about today: the levels of like people have for Moonlight, and what factors may contribute to them.

If you want to separate Moonlight's fans into two categories, it's easy enough to do. They seem split between those who like the first chapter the best, and those who like the third chapter the best.

Interestingly, the second seems to be the consensus second-best episode. No matter your thoughts on the first and the third, you seem to think the second is the next most effective. The second has that scene on the beach. Everybody likes that scene. Well, maybe not homophobes, but I don't consider their opinions on this movie -- or anything, really -- to have serious merit.

The fact that everyone likes the middle chapter tends to mean the two categories of Moonlight fans are kind of diametrically opposed to one another. If you like the middle act the second-best, it means you like the other side's favorite chapter the least.

Remember, though, we're talking about degrees of like here. There are no bad chapters. Only less good ones.

Those who like the first chapter groove on things like the performance of Mahershala Ali, the introduction to this world, the most harrowing moments involving Chiron's mother, the swimming scene, and the poignant denouement.

Those who like the third chapter like ... boring conversations between two men, I guess?

I'm kidding, but I'm also tipping my hand. I'm a first-acter, loud and proud. And I'll give a real answer why people like the third act: the performance of Trevante Rhodes, and a quiet, melancholy, yet perfect resolution to this character and his unresolved issues.

And here's another thing I think I've determined.

If you like the first act the best, you have a healthy respect for the movie. Or you even love it, but you don't LOVE IT love it. Like me. It was my #10 movie of the year, but was almost as low as #13.

If you like the third act the best, on the other hand, Moonlight is like your flipping favorite movie of all time.

It seems like any time I encounter someone and we have a disparity between our affections for Moonlight, they always love the way the movie concludes. Like, it blew their mind.

And so I feel a bit defensive about my own position. I feel like if I didn't love the way the movie ended, I don't -- can't -- "really" love it. I feel like I am "appreciating Moonlight wrong."

And maybe they're right -- "they" being a hypothetical set of Moonlight snobs who probably do not actually exist. But if they're right, they're right not because I'm interpreting the movie in an invalid way. Rather, it's because any time a movie ends better than the rest of it, you are likely to love that movie all the more. It's rare that a bad movie redeems itself in its final third, but a good movie can become a great one. Sticking the landing is a huge factor in how much we like a movie. It's the last impression we are left with.

The reverse is of course also true. My last impression of Moonight was too much on the shruggy side for my liking. So yeah, of course I'm going to like it less than those who felt it ended with a sense of overwhelming catharsis.

Why was I underwhelmed, just a little bit? I get into it here, if you want to listen to the latest episode of The ReelGood Podcast. But as a summary, I felt two unshakable cNn feelings: 1) that Chiron, having taken a certain control of his life at the end of act two, would not have failed to further explore his sexuality for the next decade; 2) that Kevin, having played a comparatively small role in his life, would not somehow end up as key to a moment of personal revelation Chiron needed to have. I don't want to downplay the importance of Chiron's first sexual experience. But it was essentially one act of passion and one act of betrayal, surrounded by a bit of convivial friendship. Not the makings of a lifelong cross to bear. (UPDATE: Only eight hours after posting this, while listening to the film discussed on a podcast, did I realize Kevin was actually present in the first episode. I thought he was a new character in the second episode. Duh.)

But I'm not here to debate plot details. I'm more interested in determining the ineffable aspects of the film that seem to have drawn some of us in in radically different ways. And in some ways I guess that does come down to plot.

Interestingly, though, I'd say that the middle chapter is the most plot heavy. That's where the two biggest "scenes" occur, or possibly three biggest -- the beach scene, the scene where Kevin is goaded into repeatedly punching Chiron, and the scene where Chiron breaks the chair over the back of the bully. It's more plot per pound than any other part of the movie, while the others tend to be a bit more like a Terence Malick movie, or what I've seen of David Gordon Green's George Washington.

Still, the first episode and the last episode are fairly dissimilar, and it does come down to a left brain-right brain type of thing. The first episode appeals to me in a concrete, left brain-dominated way. Oh yeah, I appreciate James Laxton's camera encircling the characters as much as the next guy, but the first chapter does appeal to the part of me that likes things explicit. Here is our introduction to this world, to these characters. Here is the detail about this world. Here are the events that start to shape our young hero. Here is a riveting fight between a drug dealer and our hero's mother. Here is a perfect scene in which two imperfect people reveal the things they are ashamed about.

There's plot here too, but more than anything, I think there are conventional narrative payoffs. That's something I need, most of the time. I've acknowledged that and try not to be ashamed of that myself.

The third act appeals more to people who considered themselves more right brain, the part that doesn't call for the explicit and that indulges more in creativity. Separating myself from this group pains me because I feel like I am very in tune with my own creativity, but I know I'm not as in tune with abstraction. Abstraction characterizes that final scene, comprised mostly of conversation between Chiron and Kevin, with what isn't said being as important as what is. It doesn't give us big moments or predictable narrative beats. It ends with a whimper not a bang, but for the people who "get it," it's the most beautiful whimper they've ever seen. They like it because it's a whimper.

When asked how I would end the movie, though, I can think of no better answer. It's not that I don't like that last chapter or consider it a useful scene, a scene that's important to both characters and is all the more truthful for its life-sized scale. I would not want the movie to become a melodrama all the sudden, or end with a big gesture, either of love or of violence. And so I like that ending fine, it just does not have the emotional impact on me that I feel it should.

But that's okay. I still love you, Moonlight. You were my 10th favorite movie of the year, out of 151.

And since many of you probably haven't clicked on that link to listen to that podcast, I'll tell you that I find myself in a similar position to the one I was in two years ago, when Birdman and Boyhood were vying for top honors. I liked Birdman slightly better than Boyhood, my #1 vs. my #8, though a second viewing of each has left me close to reversing my preference. But I still rooted for Boyhood to win best picture, since it said more about what I wanted the movies to be.

The two movies vying for best picture this year are extremely similar to those two in terms of subject matter: one is a movie that celebrates the craft of acting and making movies/entertainment, while the other charts the coming of age of a young man. And again, although La La Land finished slightly higher on my year-end list -- #5 vs. #10 -- I'm rooting even harder for Moonlight to take the evening's top prize. It says more about what I want the movies to be.

Another similarity: I suspect an eventual second viewing of both -- which will be coming, I assure you -- will flip these preferences as well.

Caught in the middle

Every year around this time I start whingeing (to use the Australian term) about what films I'm not going to be able to see before my ranking deadline in mid-January (actually January 24th this year) because their Australian release has been scheduled for February or later.

Not this year. This year, I should miss nothing.

Or so one would suppose, since I will be in the U.S. for three weeks of the prime awards release viewing season, from December 21st to January 12th, and part of that time in Los Angeles, meaning I'll have access even to the limited releases that are only opening there and New York. And even once I get back, I'll have two weeks longer than usual to clean up the things I missed, meaning I don't have to prioritize the big holiday releases while I'm in America, because I can get 'em when I come back.

Or so one would suppose.

Actually, I might be in a position to lose a different set of movies this year: movies that will already be gone from U.S. theaters when I get there.

That's right, I could get caught in the middle, in that dead zone between the movies leaving American theaters and arriving in Australian ones.

Strangely enough, these movies follow a particular theme. And it's a theme Hollywood is going to be really paying attention to, meaning I've got an even greater incentive than usual for catching them.

This Oscar season is going to be the season we look inside ourselves and determine if we can nominate a movie with important black subject matter -- and not just for minor awards, but for the big ones. And not just one, but hopefully more than one.

Unfortunately, three of the top contenders have already come out in the U.S., and are still way off in Australia's future.

Possibly the current best picture frontrunner, especially in a post-#oscarssowhite landscape, is Barry Jenkins' Moonlight, a film that has received adulation from all corners. As you probably know but I'll explain anyway, it's the story of a gay black man growing up poor in Florida, at three different phases of his life between childhood and young adulthood. Especially with no other film garnering certain best picture support -- Sully, anyone? -- this could be the year Moonlight leaves the other films in the dust, representing the best chance to legitimately address the absence of African Americans among last year's nominees.

Oddly enough, despite the deafening roar of critical acclaim, Moonlight has no Australian release date that I can find. And if history is any indication, that means no earlier than late February or early March at this point.

Then there's Loving, Jeff Nichols' portrait of the Virginia couple who challenged that state's law against interracial marriage back in 1958. Ruth Nega is supposed to be amazing in this movie, possibly yielding another acting nomination in addition to the one or more that should be forthcoming from Moonlight.

I'll have to wait for February 9th for that one.

And then finally there's the one-time frontrunner, the movie certain to cure all our institutionalized racism ills until it created a whole spate of its own ills: The Birth of a Nation, the Nate Parker film that overwhelmed viewers at Sundance and got a historic distribution deal, only to be mired in controversy upon the surfacing of past rape charges against its director and co-writer (only one of whom was acquitted). People started to boycott Parker's dramatization of the Nat Turner slave rebellion, and then critics dealt it the decisive blow when they couldn't comprehend what all the fuss was about in terms of its quality.

That, I can't see until February 2nd.

There's a good chance I've just plain missed The Birth of a Nation. As it came out back on October 7th, there's little chance that a film that generally flopped will still be hanging around when I get there nearly three months later -- three months, because my only real chance to pick off some of these movies will probably be in the LA portion of the trip, which starts on January 2nd. And it might not be worth prioritizing this one anyway. I can say that I was on the right side of history with boycotting this movie, despite my impassioned pleas not to do that in this post.

But Moonlight and Loving represent slightly better opportunities. Moonlight came out only two weeks after Birth, but as its Oscar frontrunner status is currently being cemented, it figures to have legs. Even if its wide release has died down by the time I get there, I should be able to find it in a theater that hangs on to its movies a bit longer. Loving is the best bet in terms of still hanging around on its original run, having come out two weeks after Moonlight on November 4th, though its lower Oscar heat might also mean it won't last as long. Then again, there's also a chance I could get it in Australia, as IMDB lists its Australian release date as January 12th. I guess I'll have to reconcile my two release date sources and see which one is correct.

I suppose there's also a slim chance I get any one of these movies, most likely Birth, on the plane. If enough time has passed since they opened, they could fall into that hot new release category that planes sometimes enjoy, seeming to get movies just a tad before they reach BluRay or digital rental.

Whatever happens, I can't jam up my trip with going to the movies, so I've got to be strategic about this.

I've got friends and family to visit, ya know.