One Category at a Time: Original Score

There are all sorts of theories on how the Academy votes for Best Original Score, arguably the most subjective of the craft categories. Appraisal of music is so prone to personal tastes that just when you think you've got the Academy pegged, they go and do something unpredictably awful (like award Gustavo Santaolalla a second consecutive Oscar for a score that makes liberal use of pre-existing compositions) or go and do something unpredictably cool (like give Trent Reznor an Oscar for an extremely atypical electronic soundtrack).

My Award nominations: Original Score

I find myself repeating what I did with my Adapted Screenplay nominees: I hate to be negative on such a great year for film, but I gotta say that it was not a particularly great year for Original Scores specifically. The five listed after the cut are good, but in a normal year I think only a couple of them would have made my ballot. But enough crapping on my own nominees! Here are the five that made it:

Review - Her

Boy meets computer, boy loses computer in Spike Jonze's Her. But if you think this in any way resembles a typical love story, you'd be wrong... and right. Admittedly, how much you get out of this singular experiment in screen romance will hinge entirely on whether or not you can get past its bizarre premise. If not, you may find it to be unintentionally funny at best. But if you can bring yourself to buy it as more than a farfetched swing-and-a-miss, you may indeed discover a weirdly moving film whose subversive satire and thought-provoking themes border on the profound.

Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix following up his career-best work in The Master with yet another brilliant performance) can read people, but not connect with them. He works at a company that specializes in writing touching personal letters for people who lack the time or eloquence to do so themselves, and as gifted as Theodore is at anticipating the words that will move his clients, he is a lonely man – smarting from a painful breakup – who fears that he could never again be as moved as the readers of his ghost-written letters.