'Suffragette' crashes on rocks of Oscar season, while 'Peanuts' dares to be different by staying the same

Not all movies that dare to land in the thick of awards season land on their feet. Word had been getting around for a few weeks before now that Sarah Gavron's well-meaning Suffragette just doesn't have the goods, and I have to sadly agree. It's unfortunate that in a year that features so many female-driven films contending in the awards race, that this one -- which was also written and directed by women -- should become such a visible casualty.

But it is what it is. The film just isn't very good. The subject matter it tackles is noble (at times unflinchingly brutal), but importance is not equal to quality.

Review - The Great Gatsby

When Baz Luhrmann announced that he was adapting the American literary classic The Great Gatsby, anticipation and skepticism abounded in equal measure. Would the Aussie auteur's in-your-face-stylistics be the right fit for the F. Scott Fitzgerald's subtext and symbolism? An unexpected schedule change that shifted its release date from the thick of last year's awards season to a less crowded May 2013 slot only heightened the nervous curiosity. The production became enshrouded in as many rumours and unsure whisperings as the mysterious titular antihero of the novel itself.

At first it appears as though Luhrmann might be adopting a style more conducive to his source material. In a opening that recalls Citizen Kane, we push on a flashing green light – just one of the story's many recurring symbolic motifs – before meeting our narrator; Nick Colloway (Tobey Maguire), a baby-faced but disillusioned Wall Street pencil pusher now confined to a sanitarium where he recounts his experiences with a wealthy and elusive tycoon named Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio).

My Awards nominations: Supporting Actress

Not the strongest year, in my opinion. These Supporting Actress performances are good, but none of them truly stands out to me as an obvious winner. I'm actually interested to find out which one I'll decide upon!

JESSICA CHASTAIN in The Help:

I could just as easily slotted her down for her graceful work on The Tree of Life, but she had more to chew on here; her character bubbles with infectious eccentricity to suppress her messy and complicated feelings of grief and shame.

ELLE FANNING in Super 8:

For being in a second-rate monster movie, she is surprisingly memorable. Her puppy love affair with Joe ratchets up the cute factor, and her rehearsal scene for the movie-within-a-movie seems to be the unanimous highlight of the film.

BRYCE DALLAS HOWARD in The Help:

She takes up the thankless task of playing the waspish queen bee of Jackson's privileged elite, an easy-to-hate but tricky-to-perform character in whom can be detected a frighteningly human element. Her final scene = perfection.

MELANIE LAURENT in Beginners:

Laurent is softly radiant as the love interest in this melancholy romance. You can't help but smile at her light comic touch, nor can you help but sigh at the fragility of her tender heart. Exquisitely supports the tone of the film.

CAREY MULLIGAN in Shame:

Mulligan shows us her range with a spikier, worldlier character than the naïve nymph that first brought her to our attention in An Education. She exceptionally plays the clingy, complex relationship with her sex-addicted brother.

Just missed:
Jessica Chastain in The Tree of Life, Evan Rachel Wood The Ides of March,
Shailene Woodley in The Descendants, Cate Blanchett in Hanna,
Vanessa Redgrave in Coriolanus

Review - Drive

A few thoughts on Nicolas Winding Refn's Drive, an art house character study wrapped in a violent crime drama and advertised as a high-speed action movie:

Ryan Gosling plays a nameless driver for hire, running the gamut from Hollywood stunt work to manning the getaway car for various mob jobs. He is a soft spoken man of few words, but beyond his humble facade lies a dangerous disposition. When the mother and son who live down the hall from him become innocent, unintended targets of a tense mob conflict, the circumstances unleash the driver's deceptively powerful sting.

My Award nominations: Actress

What an outstanding year it's been for Best Actress. It killed me to leave some of the contenders off. Here's who made it:

KATIE JARVIS in Fish Tank:
Jarvis gives a searing portrayal of youthful anger, repression, longing, disillusionment, and self-liberation with furiously commanding yet completely authentic flare. She perfectly embodies what it means to feel trapped inside one's own life, and the pain that's involved in mustering up the willpower to simply leave it all in your rear view.

NICOLE KIDMAN in Rabbit Hole:
Kidman gives one of her finest performances to date as a grieving mother struggling to cope healthily with the death of her son. Her caustic wit serves as a defense mechanism from comforters, but we can see how desperately she needs comfort as her maternal urges begin to override her stubborn sensibilities.

CAREY MULLIGAN in Never Let Me Go:
Mulligan's performance is a devastating blend of unrequited love and graceful maturity. She is a moving centre for a film that is unfortunately not all that moving. She aptly communicates a girlish fear and shyness that evolves into gracious but heartbreaking resignation, all of it underlined with a quiet but immeasurably deep compassion.

NATALIE PORTMAN in Black Swan:
Portman's transformation from 'sweet girl' Nina Sayers into the confident but vicious Black Swan is one of the best descents into madness put on film. Another impressive feat is her dancing; That she is able to exude character and arc on the stage while maintaining complete discipline of technique is astonishing.

MICHELLE WILLIAMS in Blue Valentine:
Every bit as raw and unfiltered as her costar Ryan Gosling, Williams finds genuine pain, joy, love, and heartbreak somewhere inside of her and brings it out onto the screen. Not unlike her outstanding work in Wendy and Lucy (2007), the performance feels lived-in and uninhibited.


Just missed: Annette Bening in The Kids Are All Right, Jennifer Lawrence in Winter's Bone, Julianne Moore in The Kids Are All Right, Hailee Steinfeld in True Grit, Emma Stone in Easy A.

Review - Never Let Me Go

As based on the acclaimed novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, Mark Romanek's Never Let Me Go tells the story of three young people who grew up together at an English boarding school with a “special” purpose, and the strained love/hate triangle that form between them.

Taking place in an alternate reality between 1978 and 1994, the film (adapted from Ishiguro's text by Alex Garland) is technically a science-fiction, whose details I won't explain here although they've been made pretty apparent by the film's trailer. Romanek is wise to not dwell on any genre trappings, but instead to focus solely on the three central characters; Kathy (Carey Mulligan), a sensitive and compassionate girl who harbours feelings for Tommy (Andrew Garfield), an awkward but soulful misfit, and Ruth (Kiera Knightley), the jealous one who snatches him from under Kathy's nose. As they grow older, the relationships between these three people shift and evolve, leading them to reconciliations and revelations.

I found myself more admiring of Garland's script than the movie as a whole. It somehow failed to really move me. Perhaps it has something to do with the literally chilly atmosphere Romanek paints, or that Rachel Portman's score (which is quite lovely, in and of itself) is mixed in too often and blatantly. Nevertheless, I could certainly detect – even if I couldn't feel it – that the passion was there on the page and in the performances, especially Mulligan's, who is the film's greatest trump card and one of the best female leads I've seen this year. Garland's script works in themes about the intangibility of love, and how, in the grand scheme of things, the amount of time we spend on this earth cannot quantify the lives we lead.

In a thick Best Actress field, I don't expect Mulligan's campaign to gain much traction, as the movie has been largely forgotten. Portman's score could find room, though. It's the delicate, elegant kind of music we've seen the Academy honour countless times before.

*** out of ****