2014 Muriel Awards Postmortem

"Well... that certainly was visual."

After two-plus weeks of awards leading to today's marathon Best Picture countdown, the Muriels have finally wrapped up for another year. As always, I'd like to thank all of our readers and followers, and particularly this year's voters:

Jason Alley
Danny Baldwin
Josh Bell
Andrew Bemis
Christianne Benedict
Scott Black
Danny Bowes
Sean Burns
Donald G. Carder
Kevin Cecil
Paul Clark
Dennis Cozzalio
Andrew Dignan
Kevin Dufresne
Philip Dyess-Nugent
Jim Emerson
Alex Engquist
James Frazier
Kenji Fujishima
Daniel Getahun
Luke Gorham
Jaime Grijalba
Russell Hainline
Glenn Heath Jr.
Darren Hughes
Daniel C. Johnson
Sam Juliano
Peter Labuza
Adam Lemke
Michael Lieberman
Craig Lindsey
Matt Lynch
Sam C. Mac
Jeff McMahon
Patrick Miller
Matt Noller
Mark Pfeiffer
Cole Roulain
Jason Shawhan
Melissa Starker
Catherine Stebbins
Andreas Stoehr
Vern
Scott von Doviak
Clayton Walter
Patrick Williamson
Bryce Wilson
George Wu

Of course, there's plenty still to be done. I'll be working on the Web site over the next month or two so that everyone can view the ballots (I'll work on 2013 as well, I promise). Then after that there's the Hall of Fame elections this summer, and the ongoing search for new voters for next year. If anybody knows of any good candidates to join us (particularly female ones) feel free to let me know.

But that's all in the future. For now, I'm fried, and I'm going to go crash. See you soon!

And the 2014 Golden Muriel Award for Best Picture goes to...

"The neck and neck Oscar contenders for Best Picture, Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Birdman and Richard Linklater’s Boyhood have both been heavily criticized for gimmickry - Birdman for its long, uninterrupted takes and Boyhood for being shot over the course of 12 years – but the criticism is extremely reductive to these very vital films. Both have individually driven techniques, not gimmicks, to how they approach storytelling, and both are crammed with visionary gusto. But while I was happy that Birdman took home the gold Oscar night, it’s Boyhood that will always resonate with me deeper, the way art that imitates (and nails) life, for me will always win over surrealism.

"Linklater’s premise of capturing the span of childhood to young adulthood, via filming a young actor (Ellar Coltrane) and his co-stars a little bit each year from 2002-2014 works wonderfully largely because it feels like you’re watching real life naturally unfold, albeit in scattered, sketchy fragments at times.

"It’s principally the journey of Coltrane’s Mason, but we got a lot of glimpses of what’s happening in the lives of his family members on the side – his mother (Patricia Arquette, who deservedly won the Best Supporting Actress Academy Award), his flighty father (Ethan Hawke), and his sister (Lorelei Linklater, the director’s daughter).

"No titles tell us what year it is, or what age our protagonist is, but every scene has clues whether in the technology of the times, what Harry Potter book is being released, or whose names adorn campaign signs. We get so caught up in the flow, that suddenly we notice everybody is aging, and what would be throwaway, mundane moments in other films are elevated to great meaning. An original title for the film was 'Always Now,' which is telling in what the film’s ultimate theme in its treatise on time is: the ongoing desire to live as completely in the moment as possible.

"The website Screen Junkies echoed a lot of the film’s detractors with its installment of the Honest Trailers web series devoted to Boyhood, which stated: 'It’s a beautiful film, but honestly, if you took the same script and shot it over a few months it would suck.'

"This asinine argument irritates me greatly. The screenplay and the film, despite having acknowledged planned arcs, were developed year by year for well over a decade with the actors contributions to their roles affecting what was written and shot – an ongoing process that the result of which could never have been written and executed in the course of one year. And the film about which that the Screen Junkies speculate, shot over a few months, with what I presume would be different actors playing characters at different ages would indeed suck as it wouldn’t at all be a convincing approximation of real life.

"That’s the very point of what makes Boyhood so special, and why the ‘but if they had done it this other way, it wouldn’t be so great' stance is so stupid. On the other hand, the Honest Trailers’ line about Arquette’s character, set to the tune of what could be considered the film’s theme song, Family of the Year’s 'Hero': 'And there she goes, dating a string of drunk a-holes, should’ve saved a lot of trouble, by choosing her ex - he wasn’t that bad,' is pretty funny and actually accurate.

"Boyhood is, of course, Linklater’s most ambitious piece of work, but it wouldn’t have the emotional effect it has without the sincerity and heart given to its subjects on display. In the writer/director’s first film Slacker, he pieced together a single day in Austin, Texas through the scrambled random yet connected narratives of over a dozen different characters, in the Before series, he’s taking us through the ongoing relationship of a couple of star-crossed lovers who we catch up with every nine years, but with Boyhood, he makes his most profound statement yet. And it’s a simple one too – that everybody, young and old, is just winging it through time." ~ Daniel Cook Johnson

"The versatility and talent of Richard Linklater never ceases to amaze me. I’m sure that no one reading this needs to be reminded of his filmography, but I am continually astonished that the same filmmaker directed Slacker, Dazed and Confused, suburbia, the Before… trilogy, Tape, Waking Life, School of Rock, A Scanner Darkly, and Bernie (not to mention several others). There is an astounding amount of difference among those films, from filmmaking styles to genres to overall tones. Some through-lines do emerge, though.

"With a few exceptions, Linklater’s films tend to be about searching, inquisitive people trying to make sense out of the many mysteries of existence, and more than anything they like to talk about it. The aimless wanderers of Slacker, the philosophical stoners of Dazed, the angry dead-end teens of suburbia (when is that movie getting a DVD release, anyway?), Jesse and Celine from the Before… trilogy, Wiley Wiggins’s otherworldly companions from Waking Life, etc… they talk and talk, in dialogue that sounds both musically precise and loosely off-the-cuff, about everything under the sun (and beyond it), usually not professing to have all the answers but just wanting to ask questions and make one another think, in the process encouraging the audience to think as well.

"Obviously, one of Linklater’s most intense fascinations is with the passage of time, and how it changes and shapes us as human beings. I had thought that the two-decade-spanning Before… trilogy, and its ingenious exploration of how time affects a love affair, was probably his definitive statement on the subject, but then came Boyhood. To say that Boyhood is a great film is actually selling it short. It’s the rare movie that is actually, really not like any other ever made. I would argue that it re-shapes the medium of narrative film altogether, all the while never seeming even the slightest bit pompous or pretentious. It was simply a great idea, executed wonderfully, and no one else ever did it before.

"No, style and technological ingenuity alone would not be reason enough to proclaim it my favorite film of 2014. Boyhood, though, has it all. The performances are uniformly excellent, including Ellar Coltrane as Mason, who, especially in his earlier years, had a thrillingly genuine and unaffected screen presence. He was passed over for awards nominations and most critics’ praise in favor of established stars Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke (who are both outstanding), but the truth is that he’s just as good in perhaps the most demanding role of all. Additionally, Lorelai Linklater is a delight as the wry, sarcastic older sister (the awkward 'sex talk' scene in the bowling alley is one of my many favorite, stand-out moments). The screenplay is great (even aside from the monumental audaciousness of its central idea), and it’s got real, honest-to-goodness heart.

"What stands out to me the most, though, and gives the film its cumulative impact, are the most understated moments. When we notice that a character’s priorities have changed from when we knew them earlier. When we notice that the actors are physically changed by time, watching wrinkles appear and fashions change. The recognition that someone is gradually fundamentally changing who they once were ('You’re not turning into one of those ‘God people,’ are you Dad?') It begins to remind us of our own lives, and how no one is unchanged by time, not the people we know and certainly not ourselves (despite how much we might like to think so sometimes).

"It may not be 100% 'flawless,' (it has a few perhaps-unavoidable rough edges, all of which only serve to make the entire project that much more fascinating to me) but for a filmmaker and a cast to undertake the difficulties inherent in an idea this bold, adventurous, original, and difficult, and for it to wind up not just coherent but great, that’s real art. And in my book, it’s far and away the best film of 2014." ~ Jason Alley

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2014 Muriel Awards: Best Picture Countdown - #2

Note: this piece is edited from a version originally posted at Cinema Enthusiast on May 2, 2014. Used by permission of the author.

"The covert and beguiling Under the Skin rattled me to my core. The film is, first and foremost, image-centric storytelling, with roots in experimental cinema, that distances itself from mankind. Birth to death, human as alien, alien as human. Firmly divided into two parts, routine and the failing quest for basic human pleasures, with the key transitional scene being the Laura’s (nobody has any names, including Laura, but she’s billed as such so it’s just easier for me to follow suit) (Scarlett Johansson) encounter with a man with neurofibromatosis. Before that, she goes about her business, luring and leading men into an abstract and oily black digestive space. There’s no connection between her and her body, her victims, or feelings. But gradually the loneliness starts to sink in, and with it the isolation that humans may experience. She begins to seek out basic human pleasures like eating, sex, and companionship, inquisitive and nervous like a child. She knows she needs something, but is unsure how to go about it.

"When Under the Skin ended, I felt like I’d been scooped out from the inside. It’s one of the saddest and loneliest films I’ve ever seen. Scarlett Johansson is mainly a presence for the first half, removed and captivating. And then in the second half she is heartbreaking; confused, yearning and unfulfilled. The final minutes, in which she is pursued by a man in the musky never-ending forest, is so palpable; you can feel her fear. Predator to prey. The second she desires the human instinct she loses so much agency. She becomes vulnerable and susceptible, her lair further and further away, unable to reconcile that yearning. We sense the irreparable loss of that center, her time dwindling. My boyfriend found something peaceful about the one-with-the-snow ending, but I didn’t. I just can’t; it’s not in my nature.

"The formalism contributes to a new withdrawn perspective of ourselves, as something Other and incomprehensible. The thick Scottish accents further that distance, as does Mica Levi’s slinky and exotic high-pitched string score, and the sound design where much is compressed and blanketed over. Take for instance, as an example of said withdrawn perspective, the way Glazer shoots the scene on the beach, in which attempted rescue causes a chain reaction of familial death, a wailing abandoned baby as sole survivor. Laura, and thus we, take all of it in at once and for what it is (death) with unfeeling coldness. The discrepancy between what is happening, and how we see it, is very disturbing. And then Laura murders a man with a rock, and it’s the opposite of how murder is usually depicted in film. There is no close-up, no sound effect, and no clear view because Laura is crouching with her back to us. The impact of the scene is that there is no impact, and that lack of impact in turn translates to its own unique impact for the audience.

"The film does not pass judgment on Laura. As she observes us, we observe her, and ourselves through her. Another layer to this is gradually added when Laura begins to observe herself, in a successive set of mirror scenes as she considers her new form. This observation becomes out-of-body in the end. No mirror is needed in her last moments.

"Generally, I think more filmmakers and producers need to put their trust in the communicative power of the image (and in viewers), especially since it’s what the medium inherently is to begin with. Under the Skin hypnotically uses impressionistic imagery and Scarlett Johansson’s face as narrative (there is very little dialogue overall) for a final product about existential isolation and irreconcilable cognizance that I still haven’t been able to shake." ~ Catherine Stebbins

2014 Muriel Awards: Best Picture Countdown - #3

"Inherent Vice was pretty close to my favorite movie last year, but this is the first time I've tried to write about it. I walked out knowing it was so dense I'd regret trying to decode it without a second viewing. But the feeling of it stuck with me. It's hazy and meandering, unfolding mostly like a normal private detective mystery, but introducing so many characters and motivations that I eventually had to concede that I'd lost track of what the hell was going on. Fortunately that didn't seem to matter that much. 'What the hell is going on' might be beside the point.

"Our hippie P.I. protagonist Doc Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix) has an almost Looney Tunes­-esque rivalry with the closeted macho police detective Bigfoot Bjornsen (man­out­of­time Josh Brolin), but I'm not sure which one is Bugs Bunny and which is Elmer Fudd. Bigfoot harasses Doc not only by making weird phone calls, taking him in for questioning and kicking his door down, but by having a SAG card and haunting him through crappy local TV ads. Both actors fully inhabit these weird characters and find ways to deftly slide into physical comedy and broad goofiness. Phoenix elicitly tip­toes around a residencelike he's in a Scooby­Doo episode, rolls himself into a ball to avoid police brutality (but gets picked up like a piece of luggage), stares in comical horror for an entire long take of Brolin fellating a frozen banana.

"You could argue that Doc is a lazy person ­ he lives a laidback lifestyle with little regard for sideburn or foot maintenance ­ but his adventures are exhausting. He gets bludgeoned with a baseball bat, kidnapped, set up separately for murder and for heroin smuggling. Yet, unlike mine, his drug­addled brain is able to keep straight a tangle of mysteries involving missing persons, an insane asylum, a brothel, black militants, white supremacists, international drug smugglers, a cult, a dopehead dentist, a real estate developer (Eric Roberts!) and surely other factions that I'm forgetting.

"The only obvious cinematic comparison is The Big Lebowski, another witty, tangent­filled post­modern California noir story that affectionately parodies hippieculture through its alternately clever and slow­witted stoner kind­of­detective hero. But Paul Thomas Anderson steeps his in the bad vibes of early '70s period detail. Inherent Vice is deeply funny, but with a creepy fever dream undercurrent. You don't so much watch this movie as you ride it out. But in a good way." ~ Vern

2014 Muriel Awards: Best Picture Countdown - #4

"The Grand Budapest Hotel somewhat defies classification, beyond its resemblance to a layered Mendl’s confection, and is perhaps best exemplified by the hotel’s famed concierge, Monsieur Gustave H. (Ralph Fiennes), a man of his own invention. Like M. Gustave, the film is impeccably presented, and perfumed heavily in an air of panache.

"The elegant fictional setting becomes the stage for a nostalgic return to a bygone era of civilized behavior -- in fact, an era that may have never existed. The marvelous script undermines Gustave’s meticulous style (with implied olfactory pleasures) and shows it to be a façade that allows him to pass among the rich and elderly, and prey upon them for tips, sexual trysts, and occasionally, priceless riches. You see, darling, for all the fineries and poetry M. Gustave enjoys, his vulgar tongue and questionable origin suggest that he can never rise above working class.

"However, for all his flaws, he is respectful and mutually respected among his well-dressed colleagues. In one of Grand Budapest’s most glorious sequences, a group of resourceful concierges dubbed The Society of the Crossed Keys, conduct an orchestrated telephone chain to pull strings and provide Gustave a swift (albeit third-class) escape from the law. Indeed, his kindness wins a devoted confidant in young protege Zero Moustafa (depicted in different life stages by Tony Revolori and F. Murray Abraham). Though only a lowly lobby boy,Zero quickly earns Gustave’s respect and eternal devotion, even during funeral art heists and mountaintop toboggan chases.

"Their continued friendship remains the heart of writer-director Wes Anderson’s picture, told through the adult Zero’s perspective. In different hands, Zero’s sad narrative about an old friend from better days may have been merely melancholic, but Anderson deftly sidesteps it with wit, lively set pieces, and whipsmart direction. Grand Budapest is a truly fun ride, as well as a compassionate one, crafted with invention and light, and wrapped in a precious pink box." ~ Patrick Williamson

2014 Muriel Awards: Best Picture Countdown - #5

"In many ways, Only Lovers Left Alive is the film to which Jim Jarmusch has been building for his entire career. Since he broke through with Stranger Than Paradise three decades ago, Jarmusch has trained his camera time and again on society's outsiders- inept pimps, down-and-out deejays, cab drivers of all stripes, accountants in the Old West, and self-styled samurai assassins. Here, he focuses on a pair of centuries-old vampires, social rejects out of necessity. Eve (the otherworldly Tilda Swinton) and Adam (Tom Hiddleston) still drink blood- albeit largely obtained through medical sources, an unethical but decidedly less murderous and certainly cleaner alternative to traditional means.

"But what to do in between meals? Like many Jarmusch heroes, they immerse themselves in culture, primarily the culture of the past- though to be fair, they're old enough that it still counts as their past. Eve partakes from a seemingly endless supply of books written in countless languages, caressing the pages softly as she reads each one in the flick of an eye, when she's not paying visits to her old-in-multiple-senses friend, Christopher "Kit" Marlowe (a memorably cadaverous John Hurt). Adam, by contrast, devotes most of his time to his career as a reclusive recording artist, laying down one fashionably funereal track after another in his makeshift studio. When he's not creating, he's amassing an enviable collection of vintage guitars or grooving on his collection of classic vinyl, or just driving around post-industrial Detroit.

"If nothing else, the way Jarmusch depicts Adam's adopted hometown makes it easily the best Motor City movie since RoboCop. The city Adam surveys on his nightly drives is little more than a hollowed-out husk of its former glory, but it has lost none of the shoot-from-the-hip industrial sensibility of the town that gave the world Motown and MC5, Eminem and Jack White (it's the Rust Belt-dwelling spiritual cousin to Jarmusch's Memphis-set Mystery Train). It's a nighttime city that belongs to the outcasts- in addition to Adam, we mostly see young rocker dudes who are seemingly unaware that the heyday of rock is behind them, along with a hepcat doctor played by Jeffrey Wright who gets the film's best line when he looks at Adam and mutters, "that cat's gotta be from Cleveland."

"Only Lovers Left Alive is full of pleasures both large and small, but those pleasures rarely dove with the traditional vampire-film formula. Adam and Eve aren't the suave throwbacks of the classic Dracula stories, nor the desperate characters of the vampire-junkie indie films of the mid-1990s, and they certainly wouldn't be caught dead at a Cullen family get-together. Jarmusch is less concerned with paying tribute to vampire legends of yore than he is in forging his own path with his material, and indeed, just when the film is about to provide the expected vampire-movie payoff, he rolls credits.

"While both the storytelling and the filmmaking on display in Only Lovers Left Alive are first-rate in a no-sweat sort of way, its true greatness lies in the way that, more than any film I've seen in years, it feels like a great hangout movie, creating a world and filling it with people I'd like to revisit again and again. To put it another way - I'd love to live in Only Lovers Left Alive, but for the sad fact that I'd eventually wind up on the menu." ~ Paul Clark

2014 Muriel Awards: Best Picture Countdown - #6

"I'm just going to assume people who have money bore the hell out of the Dardenne brothers.

"The Belgian siblings have based their whole careers making movies about people who struggle, internally and externally, often making questionable decisions in order to get by just one more day. The heroes and heroines of their films are usually systemically oppressed, male and female cogs in a consistently stuck machine where the only way they can move slightly is if they get themselves a little dirty. Much like Norm's wife Vera on Cheers, the upper class is nonexistent in Dardenne films, but their looming presence is always hinted at.

"Even when the Dardennes don't completely venture into dark and uneasy territory, like they do with their acclaimed latest, Two Days, One Night, the struggle is always real. Once again shot in their trademark, neo-realist style, Jean-Pierre and Luc follow around Sandra (Marion Cotillard, who got a well-deserved, Best Actress Oscar nomination for this) as she spends the titular amount of time trying to convince co-workers to be on her side as she fights to keep her solar-panel factory job. The fragile Sandra is hardly a fighter; a vague, offscreen accident led to a nervous breakdown she still has yet to fully recover from. Still, with her ever-supportive husband (Fabrizio Rongione, who didnât get a well-deserved, Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for this) pushing her to move forward, she keeps the crying jags to a minimum and sets out to corral supporters.

"The movie is a continuously riveting journey through the Belgian working class. As Sandra knocks on the doors of her various co-workers, we see some are more financially stable than others. Just like they've done in their previous films, the Dardennes never cast a judgmental eye on these folk. Even though they've been forced by superiors to consider kicking one of their own to the curb, they're still all in the same oppressed boat. Their jobs and livelihoods hang in the balance just as much as Sandra's, and she knows this.

"Even though this movie is set in an industrial town in Belgium, this movie speaks more to our stateside working class than any American film I've seen in years. I dare anyone who's had to scrape and scuffle to keep their nine-to-five not to sympathize with Sandra or any of the poor bastards who populate this flick. In its own weird way, this film, which definitely isn't as grimy or fatalistic as the Dardennes' previous work (cinematographer Alain Marcoen keeps everything sunny even though a dark, dismal cloud constantly hangs over this thing), is practically their most optimistic. Not to give anything away, the movie ends with Sandra having a reassuring phone call with her husband, virtually walking into the future with a strong smile on her face. I don't know how these bleak sons-a-bitches did it, but they made me happy for a character who I knew was going to be all right no matter what." ~ Craig D. Lindsey