AARON BILGRAD MOVIE AWARDS 2022

BEST MOVIE THAT SPEAKS TO THE COLD, HARD DIVIDED TIMES OF THE TRUMP-ERA THROUGH THE LENS OF HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL SOURCE MATERIAL:  WEST SIDE STORY

Whenever Steven Spielberg wants to make a commentary on society, he chooses to use film, his mastered medium, to hold up a metaphorical mirror to society.  In an era when people are at each other’s throat over the controversial issues of our times (i.e. 2018, when the film went into production, and 2020 when the film was supposed to be released), the best remedy is certainly source material from a 1960s musical that many people auditioned for in High School or forcibly acted out in 9th grade English class.  

The issue is that nobody wants to look at his metaphorical mirror, especially when this artful metaphor consists, save for some wonderful songs, of some very corny numbers.  So while Spielberg is beyond talented and has the financial and human resources to bring any vision to life, you still have to wonder about his ‘intent’ in making this movie.

I’m sure Spielberg remembers West Side Story as the iconic American classic of film history, but over the past 4 decades, it has certainly devolved into merely the High School spring play.  The West Side Story remake is fine — nothing truly bad to say about it, performances are strong, looks slick, etc.  I simply have an issue with its existence.  It was a huge financial flop (underperforming at $76Million, which is approximately only half its production budget), and this should have been easy and obvious to see coming.

Instead of actually making the movie, Spielberg could have just given a speech referencing how we live in a divided society… just LIKE West Side Story.  There, done, money saved.  But Spielberg now loves lightly commenting on the ills of society using his art.   He originally did this with the movie The Post back in 2017, commenting about exposing a madman in power, which I wrote about HERE.  But it seems that this is just how he handles his frustrations now.  If he wanted to show how manipulative demagogues keep rising to power in government, would Spielberg remake 1962′s The Music Man, intending for audiences to detect the hidden important metaphor of a manipulative con man?  And even if they get the metaphor, so what — how does it matter?  This is worth asking because Spielberg thought that a new West Side Story should have a role in the zeitgeist, which had absolutely no chance of happening.

So, let’s run a classic and fun of exercise of ‘Pretend You’re The Head Of 20th Century Fox Studios’ and your job is on the line,.  Steven Spielberg (who you admire, respect, and believe is the greatest commercial director of all time) walks into your office and says:

STEVEN:  We live in a divided society.    As a duty of Hollywood — it’s time to remake West Side Story.

YOU AS STUDIO HEAD:  Um… well… you mean the one with the Sharks and the Jets n’ such?

STEVEN:  Yes, YES! That one.  We need to do this, and I want a budget no less than $120,000,000 to make it.

YOU AS STUDIO HEAD:  Um, gee, um… maybe.   You sure that’s what you want to do?  I’ve noticed Spider Man movies have been making  a looooot of money.  Wanna make something like that?   Maybe we can make the mean villain some type of allegory that makes people think about the importance of democratic elections or whatever.

STEVEN:  No, no, no, you’re not getting it.  America will see themselves in this movie.  I won’t take ‘No’ for an answer.  Trust me, this will make a fortune.

YOU AS STUDIO HEAD:  Sure, I see.  But if you want to make a musical, how about a musical with new or at least modern music that some newer audiences might like.  People seem to like that Hamilton — it has hip hop music and such.  People think that’s pretty neat.

STEVEN:  No, gotta use the same music as the original — in the same style.  That’s very important.

YOU AS STUDIO HEAD:  The exact same?

STEVEN:  Basically, yeah.  Just think about it and let’s talk tomorrow.  This is gonna be GREAT!

In your role as the studio head, before you make your decision, do another role-playing exercise.  Just imagine that you are a potential audience member for this new West Side Story remake, an audience member with  anti-immigration views for whatever reason.  Would the song and performance of “Gee, Officer Krupke” change your mind?  Would this song in THIS style (of which it is rather similar in Spielberg’s remake) make you tell your friends to go see West Side Story?  For purposes of driving this home, I have included a video of a High School production of West Side Story to show how naive it is put West Side Story in front of modern, younger audiences.  What are the odds of this song and this performance bringing America together?

BEST MOVIE THAT MADE PEOPLE WITH GOOD TASTE FEEL THE SAME WAY NERDS DID WHEN 1999′s ‘THE PHANTOM MENACE’ WAS RELEASED:  THE SOPRANOS PREQUEL — THE MANY SAINTS OF NEWARK 

I, like many, absolutely loved The Sopranos.  There is no time to rehash why The Sopranos was excellent, but the primary reason was certainly the character of Tony Soprano — the head of the mafia with a lot of mental anguish that many of us can relate to in some way.  Thus, when it was announced that the creator, David Chase, was making a prequel to examine the origins of Tony Soprano, and some of the reasons he became who he is, we certainly didn’t expect:

1) That young Tony Soprano would only be in approximately 40% of the movie.

2)  That the story wouldn’t be about his relationship with his mother (which is pivotal to Tony Soprano’s character development in the HBO Series), but about his relationship with a new uncle, mentor-type character we have never heard of before.

3) Pretty much the only scene in the film in which we get to see an insightful slice of life between a young Tony and his mother Olivia merely consists of a young Tony Soprano’s excitement that Olivia made him a hamburger.

4) That the backdrop and texture for the film would be set against the New Jersey riots, which didn’t really play into the context of the Sopranos universe.  For example, the film could have also been set against young Tony’s interest in the 1967 New York Yankees, and it wouldn’t have affected young Tony’s role much in the story.

5) That the movie would center on Tony’s relationship to his mentor, Dickie, which causes us to follow Dickie’s own family dynamic for most of the film.   Meanwhile, Tony Soprano’s actual father, who in The Sopranos is spoken of as a fascinating and almost mythical character, only appears in one scene in which he is meekly walking a tiny dog.

Why not do just a full film of Tony Soprano trying to get through the rigors and social nuances of High School?  This would have been 10 times more interesting than Ray Liotta playing twin brothers.

BEST MOVIE THAT IS MAKING ME DOUBT MY LOVE OF SLOW MOVING CINEMA:  DRIVE MY CAR

The voice in your head may be saying “I’ve never heard of ‘Drive My Car’”.  This is because Drive My Car is this year’s darling foreign film that snuck into the Oscar best picture race.  Two years ago, a Korean movie, Parasite, won best picture.  I loved Parasite.  Creative premise, strong writing, excellent acting, everything you would want in a best picture.  But Drive My Car, while still a good movie, wasn’t exactly an enjoyable movie.

Slow-moving films tend to be exclusive to art house movies.  For example, you are unlikely to hear someone say of an Avengers movie:  “Man, EndGame was three hours, super slow, nuanced, and with lengthy scenes where people sit in silence, but DON’T WORRY, because you will be so rewarded for your patience”.  However, if someone described a film as “artistic”, these qualities would seem normal.  Drive My Car is good, but it’s not great, and it’s helping me identify a trend in cinema that I’m starting to find a little tiring.

The issue I’m having is that even though I’m certainly up for the 3 hour slow burn, and I’m most definitely up for any type of nuanced scene that the director feels is supposed to indicate the character’s emotion — I find myself feeling that much of scenes are not necessary.  The writer/director would of course dispute this, but sometimes watching a car drive back and forth for 30-45 seconds multiple times in the film does not add to my emotional impact.  I feel like I already know what the character is feeling or have already identified any particular emotion or vibe the director intended, but… here we still are, watching the characters sit in relative silence.

Again, I respect the director’s vision, but I have seen many of this type of film the past decade or so, and they are starting to feel draining.  For example, I have watched many UNEDITED scenes in which the character drives their car for 30 seconds in silence (the actor, I suppose, acting as they would imagine the character would if they were driving to the grocery store), slowly pull into the parking space, get out, shut the door, say a ‘realistic’ “How are you?” to a stranger, enter the store, walk down the aisles, look at the different options on the shelves, make a decision, walk to the register, provide another authentic/genuine/in-character “How Are You?” to the cashier, and then exit the store.  The whole scene lasts 3-4 minutes, but nothing really happens.  The filmmaker would likely argue that this ultra-realistic, albeit mundane scene allows you to empathize with the character in a way that feels super genuine (e.g. when they say “How Are You?” to the cashier, we feel the pain of the character’s broken marriage in their voice).  But it feels like cheating, and a way to fill time when they don’t have much of a story to tell, nor much of a point to make.  But because it feels realistic, it gets the hard stamp of “artistic” and “smart”.

I’m fine with this, as I am actually the audience for these movies.  But the odds that I would ever watch their movie again are very low, and it’s also just not very enjoyable.

The art house crowd (and I am a member of this dying club) would criticize me for ‘not getting it’ and perhaps say something condescending like “If you don’t like it, go watch Hulk Smash!”.  But I would like to, every year, at least have a handful of movies that are not comic-book/wizard/magic movies, but still engaging, entertaining, meaningful, and, god forbid, re-watchable.   As an example, think back to The Shawshank Redemption.  That movie has a runtime of 2 hours and 22 minutes, and every scene is dense, engaging, well-written, provokes emotion, and thus making the film universally beloved.  There is not one scene of Andy Dufresne just doing the warden’s taxes in silence for 3 minutes.  In my opinion, Shawshank’s type of character study requires more effort than some modern films merely stitching together many scenes of straight nuance.  Quiet nuanced scenes that MIGHT move toward an emotional payoff, even though the payoff would would have worked just as well if the film was 45 minutes shorter.

BEST MOVIE THAT SYMBOLICALLY PROVES THE TRADITIONAL HOLLYWOOD SYSTEM FROM THE PAST 100 YEARS IS OFFICIALLY DEAD AND HAS NOW BEEN REPLACED BY RISK-FREE MACHINE-ART:  THE LONG GOODBYE (NOMINATED FOR A BEST SHORT FILM OSCAR)

Circa 2014, I was working on a difficult project for a client.  The project involved a composing a robust and lengthy Power Point presentation (about 35 pages) full of many different pictures.  When I finished a draft of the presentation, the client requested I send it over for review.  I attempted to email it, but gmail informed me that “this attachment is over 25MB and too large to send via email”.  In order to solve this problem, I googled “large file transfer websites” and discovered a service called “WeTransfer.com”.  WeTransfer allowed me to easily upload this slightly larger file, and provided a link to my client where they could easily download it.  WeTransfer.com worked great, the client received my larger file, and I was very pleased.

Never did I imagine that this convenient little file transfer website would officially produce a hard-hitting, disturbing, dystopian commentary of a short film in which Muslim immigrants were rounded-up and slaughtered in the streets by British police.  Then, employing magical realism, the main Muslim character (played by the great Riz Ahmed) after being shot multiple times in the back, gets up in surreal fashion and recites a fierce political rap about being an immigrant and the possible legitimate reality of such a brutal attack.

Is this violent and disturbing short film a good movie?  I certainly think so.  Is it a RISKY movie for a tech company that is clearly trying to penetrate the new world in which tech companies like Amazon, Apple and many other also now provide art?  They probably think they are being edgy with such controversial subject matter, but I don’t.  I think it’s just ironically good PR.

In our current time when ‘important’ art is seemingly (and unfortunately) required to make some sort of political statement, a violent short film of this type fits in perfectly.  How can you fault WeTransfer or any tech company for exposing and literally commenting on the racist attitudes of the Western World (i.e. the rap at the end of the film is not a subtle or artistic metaphor in any way — just a straight essay on toxic nationalism), even in such an overtly violent manner.  This makes WeTransfer look heroic, not edgy.

With tech companies now taking over the film/TV landscape and wresting the development of new material away from the traditional Hollywood model, we will likely see more content, especially around Oscar time, that “makes a statement on modern political times”.  But it will be statement that the intended audience already agrees with.   Thus, even though it’s heavy material, it’s not really controversial.  Even though it provokes “thought”, which certainly gives it the distinction of ‘art’,  it’s also just advertising for the company.  WeTransfer didn’t go into the file transfer business to comment on racism and immigration, but they do know that producing films with this type of subject matter will make their customers (or any investors) look upon them in a positive light.

Look how the Netflix film The Power of The Dog, the frontrunner for the Best Picture Oscar, is described by Jane Campion.  Campion compared the film’s meaning about toxic masculinity to Donald Trump, “when things didn’t go well for him, he melted”.   In other words, Netflix only wants to make Oscar movies with at least a tangential and agreeable political statement.  They also released the film Don’t Look Up, also nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, which is an on-the-nose allegory for climate change.  It’s a fun movie, I suppose, and I have no problem with this message, I just notice the tech companies put out this type of film because they won’t be criticized, will win awards, and make Netflix appear like they are doing their best, thru art, to make the world a better place (even though Netflix also just released a reality competition series called ‘Is This Cake?‘, in which viewers think hard to determine, for example, if a bowling ball is an actual bowling ball or… a cake made to look exactly like a bowling ball).

If a tech company really wanted to be ‘edgy’ in the film industry or do something that nobody would expect, they should theoretically go the other way from the political zeitgeist.  Like wouldn’t it be weird and refreshing if, instead of producing this statement short film on ‘hate’, WeTransfer decided to remake the girls soccer film Ladybugs, or create a new goofy film franchise in the vein of Problem Child.  Now that’s a risk — the same brand of risks the traditional Hollywood film system used to make.  Movies that people either might really like, dislike, or even ignore, but not films people were forced to admire; thus subconsciously manipulating them into also admiring the tech company, resulting in the customer giving the company money.

And if you want to see the type of art that results from the transfer of many files over 25MB, here is the short film:

AND HERE ARE THE BEST MOVIES I SAW THIS YEAR IN DESCENDING ORDER:

I didn’t see too many movies this year, and with the exception of Dune, which I justified seeing in the theatre only because I read the long-ass book last year, I didn’t go in person to the theatre for any other movie.  Thus, when a movie was advertised as “only in theaters”, this translated to “Aaron can’t go” (On a side note, without going into detail, the Dune movie seemingly went to painstaking lengths to make sure that all the best and most engaging sections of the book were not featured in the film).  Ok, here’s the list:

11) IN THE HEIGHTS
Always loved the Lin-Manuel musical and it was fun to see the movie version.  Film musicals are always interesting because “setting” becomes an issue.  When you see it on stage, it’s all contained in the center.  So it’s always fun when they come up with creative, cooky ideas for setting just to make it feel fresh (like featuring the anthemic song “96,000″ in a public swimming pool with choreographed water dancing).  Neat but odd.   (HBO Max)

10) DRIVE MY CAR
Sure, why not.  But I’m not watching it again.  (HBO Max)

9) THE LOST DAUGHTER
A nuanced movie about a mother on vacation in Greece who finds a missing doll and decides not to give it back to a dangerous family.  This causes her to reflect about her neglectful relationship with her own daughters.  The movie is engaging throughout with a strong performance by Olivia Colman.  The third act made some peculiar choices, which is why it is sitting at #9, but it’s still very good.  (Netflix)

8) FLEE
An animated movie nominated for the best international film Oscar.  The movie centers around the true story of a gay, Jean-Claude-Van-Damme obsessed teenager who is forced to flee from Afghanistan under very difficult circumstances.  His family escapes to Russia where they are again forced to live an awful life in a society that treats them like dirt.  It’s an interesting, inspiring story made better by the creative manner in which it’s told.  (Amazon Rental)

7) BELFAST
Not a great movie, but a well-made good movie about the Northern Ireland conflict of the late 1960s.  The story is cleverly told from the perspective of a young boy and his family who I couldn’t understand without subtitles.  And sometimes there were other characters the family encountered who I also couldn’t understand, but I could clearly detect that the scene had gravity due to the emotive expressions on the actors’ faces. (Netflix)

6) BAD LUCK BANGING
Ok, if you want an abstract, avant-garde movie that combines a truly ‘out-there’ way to experience a film combined with a some very interesting and captivating writing… this is it.  The movie centers around a school teacher who accidentally had a sex video released on the internet many years ago.   The first act centers around her walking around her city taking phone calls about the reemergence of the video.  The second act is a pure art film with about 85 abstract artful scenes about the ironic darkness of humanity.  And the third act is experienced like a surrealist play in which the teacher, in front of a mob of angry faculty and parents, must ardently defend her right to keep her teaching job, while also commenting on modern education techniques.   It’s certainly not a film for most people, but it will make you remember that there are no rules in filmmaking.  (Amazon Rental)

5) CODA
I watched this movie expecting to strongly dislike it — assuming it would be the schmaltzy, feel-good offering of the year.   And it pretty much was… but I liked it.  Just a nice movie about a deaf family and their daughter, the only family member who can hear, who must choose to either continue assisting them with the family business or move on towards studying music.  Last year’s deaf-centered Sound of Metal was a terrific movie, so if Hollywood wants to continue releasing deaf-centered content, I’m game.  (Apple TV Plus)

4) TICK, TICK… BOOM
I saw this Jonathan Larson off-broadway show back in 2001 and absolutely loved it.  The music is fantastic, but I never imagined it as a film.  However, Lin-Manuel Miranda made one and pulled it off pretty well.  It’s a great story about any artist (or anybody pursuing anything really) who feels like they are running out of time.  Andrew Garfield plays the lead of Jonathan Larson extremely well and I would be happy if he won Best Actor instead of Benedict Cumberbatch’s performance in The Power Of The Dog (Cumberbatch’s character, Phil Burbank, is described as ‘charismatic’ in the Netflix blurb, even though I don’t know why any of the characters in the movie would find his character charismatic)  (Netflix)

3) BEING THE RICARDOS
Aaron Sorkin wrote a very interesting movie about a controversial moment in time in which the beloved Lucille Ball, at the height of her fame, is accused of being a Communist.  I initially didn’t expect to like this movie either, but it’s very sharply written, with several scenes about little nuances that indicate a character’s intentions.  For example, the actress who plays Ethel is served a big breakfast by a kind waiter.   But Ethel realizes that this is an ill-intentioned move by Lucille Ball to fatten her up because Lucy doesn’t want the character of Ethel to look pretty in any way.   There are several scenes and little sly moments like this that make the film highly enjoyable, and it leads to a very satisfying final act.  (Amazon Prime)

2) ZOLA
It’s a shame that this movie didn’t receive more attention.  It was likely dismissed because it was literally based on a Twitter thread about a stripper who is recruited to travel to Tampa by some conniving and mischievous new contacts.  Most would dismiss this subject matter (and it is certainly graphic at times), but it’s so much fun, laugh out loud funny, and full of some sensationally charismatic performances inside of a creative storytelling method.  (Showtime)

1) BO BURNHAM:  INSIDE
I don’t think 2021 was a particularly strong year for movies.  This selection as top movie may seem a bit strange, but when thinking of the best movie I saw that was released in the 2021 calendar year, I can’t think of any movie I saw that was better, original or more memorable than this one.  I wasn’t even going to watch it if my friend Ben didn’t recommend that I take a look.  This movie is a true shrine to the experimental creative spirit.  Comedian Bo Burnham filmed an entire musical inside a tiny apartment during Covid, theoretically with no help, all with the thematic core of what it’s like to be and feel isolated, albeit in a very comical manner.  Some of the songs are so catchy and funny that I find myself listening to them over and over (namely White Woman’s Instagram).  Additionally, Bo takes extra effort to show you the whole filmmaking process of trying to make a very artful movie about yourself, by yourself, and seemingly for himself.  He uses basically whatever he could purchase off of Amazon for all the set design, and this minimalism is exactly the reason the movie works so well.  It didn’t get much attention from the awards because it was categorized as a TV Comedy Special, but that’s inane.   This is a true art film that is simultaneously extremely entertaining, which is content that is unfortunately in short supply.

 To read Aaron Bilgrad Movie Awards from past years, click HERE