As a bonus to the “Who Should Win” video essay series that identifies this year’s truly deserving Oscar winners, this video compiles some of the most impressive visuals from the five films nominated for the Academy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography. Of all the Oscar categories, this one may lend itself best to a simple video compilation of clips that lets you decide for yourself which movie deserves to win. All you have to do is watch and decide. Or is it really that simple?
Of course, one can’t evaluate all the films in their entirety in one sitting. I’ve limited the selections for each film to two standout clips not exceeding a total of 90 seconds. To do this, I enlisted the suggestions of the Twittersphere. Over a dozen people tweeted their standout shots and images from the nominated films, with several moments getting multiple mentions and thus finding their way into this compilation reel. Based on sheer number of enthusiastic tweets on their behalf, it seems that Skyfall and Lincoln are the popular favorites.
I made one additional tweak to the video by removing the audio from the clips. It may be a bit jarring to watch these scenes without a soundtrack, but it’s for the sake of placing sole emphasis on the images and camerawork. I hope you’ll agree with me that, by and large, the visual artistry on display speaks quite well for itself.
Looking at these clips, I have my own opinion on who should win, but I’ll keep mum, as I’d rather see you cast your vote in the comments section. Perhaps a subsequent discussion below might tease out my favorite.
This season's premiere was also very much like the third season premiere, opening with a big happy musical number in the style of Glee (a show Community had mocked mercilessly), before the characters immediately dropped back down to earth. Finally, “History 101” made sense from a character perspective: of course Abed Nadir, resident pop culture obsessive, would find solace in an old-fashioned sitcom form labeled AbedTV. In short, the deliberately confrontational/mocking style, the formal experimentation, and the connection with the characters made it seem like it was exactly what Community should be.
The one storyline that came anywhere near working was the Dean's Hunger Games bit, largely thanks to Jim Rash. His emergence—or perhaps the acknowledgment of his emergence—as one of the show's most important characters was one of the best parts of Community's third season, and that continued in “History 101.” The scene where he and Jeff dance the tango should have been good enough to find a place in Community lore, and maybe it will eventually. But that storyline was squished by all the others, preventing it from being more than an amusing diversion.
The costumes may have been the best part of “Paranormal Parentage,” possibly the best of any of Community's Halloween episodes. You can earn a lot of good will by putting Shirley in a Princess Leia outfit and Annie in a Ringu costume. Every time they appeared on-screen, I got a slight thrill of novelty. But more importantly, Britta in her canned ham costume went a huge way toward salvaging her character after the disastrous premiere. Gillian Jacobs' gifts for physical comedy were on full display: every time she had to move in costume, she made it funny; every time she spoke in costume, she managed to accent the ridiculousness. Her therapist dance, done to get Jeff to open up, was the highlight of the episode.
For this year, it’s tempting to stump for Groundhog Day, but while I love that film’s Capra-inspired understanding of what makes humanity great (the ability of humans to universally empathize and care for each other), the romance between Andie McDowell and Bill Murray isn’t as central to that film as Murray’s transformation is. I tend to think 1993 was dominated by two films: Sleepless in Seattle and The Wedding Banquet. I’ve chosen the latter film because while I love Sleepless in Seattle’s episodic, observational sense of humor, I don’t think the film is as generally thoughtful or as touching as The Wedding Banquet. While both films are essentially progressive, the latter title doesn’t romanticize courtship to the point where gestures are more important than the feelings they connote.
1994’s top two contenders are Barcelona and The Hudsucker Proxy, neither of which neatly qualifies as a romantic comedy. I was initially tempted to pick Barcelona since writer/director Whit Stillman does a fantastic job of re-contextualizing romance as one of a series of theoretical conflicts for Ted Boynton (Taylor Nichols), an American yuppie living in Barcelona. Ted only realizes the extent to which his own neuroses make him ideologically opposed to everyone around him after his gauche cousin Fred (Stillman regular Chris Eigeman) comes to stay with him indefinitely. Ted’s not the empty-headed fascist many Spaniards assume he is because of his nationality, nor is he as stubbornly contrarian as Fred thinks he is when confronted with that reality. Fred’s romance with local Spaniard Montserrat (Tushka Bergen) is doomed because he’s looking for a level of commitment that doesn’t come naturally to her. Ted’s not even sure whether it’s inherently foolish to act on his instincts and pursue women that he’s physically attracted to.
Having watched and rewatched French Kiss so many times with my sister, I was tempted to give that corny but infrequently cute film a shout-out (Hi, Daphne!). Because, what the hell, I do like Kevin Kline’s goofy French accent. But while I like both French Kiss and Sydney Pollack’s disposable, but perfectly adequate Sabrina remake, I ditched both options as soon as I remembered that Kicking and Screaming was also made in 1995. The way that writer/director Noah Baumbach’s characters talk to each other, totally absorbed in their own anally specific theories on the world at large, is similar to Whit Stillman’s style of banter. But unlike the two films that Stillman made prior to Kicking and Screaming’s release, Baumbach’s movie is directly concerned with a trio of young egocentric post-grads who eventually realize that just knowing they’re shallow and self-centered is not the same thing as actively trying to change that sad fact. Grover (Josh Hamilton) can’t get over the fact that his girlfriend Jane (Olivia d’Abo) elected to study abroad in Prague instead of living with him in Brooklyn. At the same time, Max (Chris Eigeman, again) is shaken out of his own adolescent complaisance by Kate (Cara Buono), who, unlike Max, is not well-read, well-spoken, or particularly self-satisfied—basically, she’s nothing like Max or his friends.
While Walking and Talking is tempting, and Iris Blond is staid but perfectly enjoyable, Shall We Dance? is a must. I especially love that writer/director Masayuki Suo (I Just Didn’t Do It) doesn’t shame his married protagonist for falling in love with someone other than his wife. After all, Shohei (Koji Yakusho), a nebbish accountant, only takes up dancing after seeing Mai (Tamiyo Kusakari), a beautiful competitive dancer, standing at her dance studio’s window. Shohei’s interest in dancing starts with romantic attraction, thus creating a power dynamic that doesn’t really go away once wife Masako (Hideko Hara) and daughter Chikage (Ayano Nakamura) have entered the picture.
Chasing Amy may not hold up as the progressive alternative to formulaic romcoms that many of its contemporary defenders thought it was. But it remains a moving unrequited romance, and a juvenilely funny comedy. Here, Smith’s greater ambitions pay off in his actors’ superior performances, and in his relatively polished dialogue. Smith inspires his regular cast of actors to try harder by giving them better roles, and while his direction was never exactly rigorous, his confidence is evident from the film’s pace. Comic book penciller Holden’s (Ben Affleck) vain attempts at understanding why he can’t be with Alyssa (Joey Lauren Adams) are fittingly clumsy, and uninsightful, but his behavior is true to the way a character of a certain mind-set and a certain upbringing might behave. Smith has never stopped writing about what he knows, but in Chasing Amy, he also applies his self-knowledge to a broader canvas, and it pays off. There are big emotional stakes in play, though the three-way gambit that Holden uses to try to win Alyssa back is painfully dopey. Still, Holden’s apparent earnestness comes across thanks in no small part to Affleck and Adams’s palpable chemistry. In the scene where Holden breathlessly confesses his love to Alyssa, you actually believe that such a guilelessly confused character would do anything to win over the girl he knows he can’t have. While it may not sound like much, Chasing Amy remains Smith’s career best, by a sizable margin.
Only a list like this could make me want to compare apples and oranges like There’s Something About Mary? and Buffalo ’66. Realistically, most films come up short when compared to the latter film, a blisteringly weird black comedy that suggests that finding someone with a compatible sexual hang-ups is a great foundation for a relationship. Newly-released ex-con Billy Brown (writer/director Vincent Gallo) kidnaps and persistently berates Layla (Christina Ricci), a slavishly submissive kook who grows to like being abused by Brown’s impotent lover. Everyone in Billy’s hometown is sexually screwed-up, from his best friend Goon (Kevin Corrigan), a guy who's obsessed with strip clubs but can’t think how to describe them (“that place where women take their clothes off…") to his equally deviant parents. While Ben’s mom goes into an orgiastic fit at the sight of a college football player on TV, his dad (Ben Gazzara) tries to seduce Layla with his golden voice, proving that the psychotic apple really doesn’t fall far from the tree. And amidst all the decibel-piercing screaming, Gallo’s film establishes itself as a singular, hilariously strange comedy of inter-related anxieties. If you can watch this movie with a date, and remain on speaking terms with her/him by the end credits, you’ve got yourself a keeper! 
Of the handful of memorable 1999 romantic comedies, a couple stand out. Shakespeare in Love’s tedious, winking style of humor has none of screenwriter Tom Stoppard’s characteristic genius for romantic banter. Runaway Bride has two great leads trapped by a trite story. And while I really like the infectious energy that Ten Things I Hate About You’s cast brings to the film’s already likable update of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, I much prefer the two top choices for the year: Notting Hill and Sweet and Lowdown. I ultimately chose Sweet and Lowdown because it’s not only a fantastic star vehicle for Sean Penn, who plays the second-best guitar player in the world after Django Reinhardt, it’s also another terrific riff on writer/director Woody Allen’s pet themes. As a tongue-in-cheek docudrama, Penn’s Emmet Ray is treated like a historical footnote, one who’s remembered for his music but was a bigger failure in love because he always saw himself as an also-ran.
There’s not a lot of really good choices for 2000, so it’s a very good thing that Matt Zoller Seitz cautioned me against putting Dr. T and the Women on this list, just to see if anyone was still reading by this point. Still, The Tao of Steve stands out in the year in which What Women Want is the year’s top-grossing romantic comedy. While the latter film insists that a man can learn how to get in touch with his feminine side, the former maintains that Donal Logue’s schlubby lothario, can’t just assume he understands women because he knows how to manipulate them. Dex (Logue) is over-educated, over-weight, and under-stimulated. So he makes a game out of casually and effortlessly seducing women, tricking himself into thinking he’s irresistible because he knows how to play hard-to-get. The “Steve” of the film’s title are mythic badasses like Steve McQueen and Steve Austin, men of action that let women come to them. Mel Gibson’s character in What Women Want essentially does that, too, letting a pseudo-mystical meteorological event push him to transform his character rather than naturally realizing why he needs to stop being such a know-it-all prick.
One of the reasons why the 2008 American remake of this records-busting Korean romcom failed so miserably is because the original My Sassy Girl is so painfully earnest. The creators of the original 2001 film try very hard and mostly succeed at impressing viewers with their characters’ spontaneity. This is partly because My Sassy Girl is based on a series of hyper-popular, fictitious blog posts that were later collected in a novel. Though a slapdash pattern emerges later in the film, My Sassy Girl hastily reduces its womanizing protagonist Gyeun-woo (Tae-hyun Cha) to a puling schoolboy through the use of a playful, shit-stirring heroine, simply called “the Girl” (Ji-hyun Jun).
There’s no real competition for this year: not the drecky My Big Fat Greek Wedding, not the poignant About a Boy, not even the half on-target Kate and Leopold. 2002 belongs to Punch Drunk Love, a movie that is best whenever falling in love makes already emotionally-stunted Adam Sandler and Emily Watson regress even more. Take, for example, the scene where Barry Egan (Sandler) helplessly runs around Lena Leonard’s (Watson) building, trying to get back to her apartment–after she has called him at her building’s front desk, just to say that she wanted to kiss him. This is one of many perfect, anxiety-producing moments where you can’t help but wonder how screwed up these characters really are until they magically come together.
Pitting Running On Karma against any other romantic comedy is unfair because Running On Karma is like the Ever-Lasting Gobstopper of movies. It’s not just a great romantic comedy, it’s a great cosmic plea for guidance, a great, bizarro CSI-style fantasy, a crazy Buddhist kung fu film, and so much more. While working with screenwriter Ka-Fai Wai often brings out the crazy in Hong Kong director Johnnie To (Sparrow, Mad Detective), Running On Karma is by far their most exciting, and yes, batshit collaboration yet. Big (superstar Andy Lau, wearing a bulky prosthetic muscle suit) is a body-builder that can see people’s past lives. A former Buddhist monk, Big flees his monastery and becomes a stripper after realizing that he can effectively see people’s karma. When he’s busted by Lee (Cecilia Cheung), a kind-hearted undercover cop, he sees her karma: in a past life, she was a Japanese soldier that murdered innocent civilians during World War 2.
The year 2004 was an especially difficult one to call since it’s the year of Sideways, Shaun of the Dead, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Love is Eternal While it Lasts. Both Eternal films are excellent, but I chose French comedienne Yolande Moreau’s When the Sea Rises instead because it’s somehow melancholic without being overwhelmingly sad. Of the films on this list, Moreau’s film best shows how euphoric romance can make even seasoned lovers feel. In When the Sea Rises, love is a momentary respite from the crushing weight of living alone. Moreau, who co-wrote and co-directed the film, plays Irene, a version of Moreau. Irene is a traveling performer who makes a living from her one-woman show, A Dirty Business of Sex and Crime, the same play Moreau made her reputation with in the ‘80s. Having performed so often on the stage, and then later in so many prominent films, like Amelie and Seraphine, Moreau clearly understands the emotional distance that performing for a live audience has on an actor. She shows that every time Irene mounts the stage, and makes her own morose uncertainty her schtick.
The 40 Year-Old Virgin is the best Judd Apatow-brand film because it’s the one where he most tenderly shows us why it sucks to be an arrested adolescent. While Apatow-directed films like Knocked Up and Funny People show how much harder it is to be juvenile as one gets older, The 40 Year-Old Virgin follows an immature character after he takes steps to grow up and try to overcome his insecurities. It’s accordingly tempting to view Apatow’s more recent films as being more accomplished and/or ambitious, but Virgin is as good as it is because it doesn’t just assume that being gawky and sensitive makes you a diamond in the rough. Andy (Steve Carrell) is an old geek: he carries emotional baggage with him, stuff that makes his awkward-ness more than just goofy. He’s well-meaning, but ill-equipped to talk to single mom Trish (Catherine Keener) or her daughter Marla (Kat Dennings). And while Trish wants to be with Andy, she needs someone who can adapt to her social situation just as well as she can adapt to his.
South Korean director Chan-wook Park (Oldboy, Joint Security Area) makes movies about characters who realize the loaded ideas and defense mechanisms that they use to define themselves are wrong. His protagonists often force themselves into revelatory confrontations that irrevocably change the way they protect themselves from dealing with the world. They’re never totally cured of their delusions, not for long, anyway. I’m a Cyborg, But That’s OK is a fantasy of projection, a romantic comedy where two emotionally unstable people try to bond in spite of their respective problems. Young-goon (Soo-jung Im) is admitted to a mental institution after she tries to kill herself. She thinks she’s a robot that can talk to other machines but can’t process human food. She bonds with Il-soon (K-pop idol Rain), a kleptomaniac who steals people’s personalities when he takes their most prized possessions.
2007 wasn’t a great year for romantic comedies. There was a mediocre remake of The Heartbreak Kid, the mostly sweet Waitress, and the puppy dog-cute Enchanted, and that’s about it. That having been said, Music and Lyrics isn’t anything more than a breezy, formula-based romantic comedy, but the jokes are consistently funny, and the stars have chemistry, two traits sadly rare for a studio-produced romantic comedy. Writer/director Marc Lawrence (Miss Congeniality, Two Weeks Notice) clearly knows what he likes about star Hugh Grant and takes great pleasure in giving him a comfortable but fitting role. Grant plays Alex Fletcher, a has-been pop music composer that gets inspired by Sophie Fisher (Drew Barrymore), the woman he hires to water his plants. She helps him while he predictably has his eye on ex-girlfriend Cora Corman (Haley Bennett), the pop star that Alex rode the coattails of some years ago. The scenario is a familiar one, and is distinguished primarily by how consistently effective the film’s superficial gags are, from music video parodies to frustrated lyrics-writing sessions (“Why would you put a clown in your bed?” “It would not be the first time…”). In that sense, the film is a fitting homage to bubble gum pop songs: it doesn’t go anywhere you don’t expect it to, but it doesn’t need to, because its charms are immediate and plentiful.
Screenwriter David Koepp (Stir of Echoes, Premium Rush) has only directed a handful of films, but Ghost Town is the best example of why his distinctive light touch makes him an invaluable modern B-moviemaker. It’s also a good star vehicle for Ricky Gervais, which is a major relief given how lousy Gervais’s American roles usually are (The Invention of Lying and both Night at the Museum movies are both especially lousy, though for fairly different reasons). Koepp is precise and knows exactly what kind of actors he needs to achieve the kind of effect he’s going for (ex: it’s particularly nice to see Greg Kinnear get a decent role). Gervais is perfectly cast as Bertram, a misanthropic dentist who starts to see ghosts after a routine colonoscopy goes awry. Koepp revels in the absurdity of this dilemma by making Bertram’s laughable inability to talk to people, dead or alive, the biggest hurdle in his quest to romance the recently bereaved Gwen (Tea Leoni).
Role-playing and role reversals are everything in Duplicity, writer/director Tony Gilroy’s comic follow-up to Michael Clayton. Gilroy excels at disorienting viewers by seemingly focusing on everything but what’s important: the love affair between two knowing competitors/accomplices, played by Clive Owen and Julia Roberts. His lovers’ relationship is, in that sense, a perfect foil to the film’s depiction of corporate espionage. The main difference between rival CEOs Dick (Paul Giamatti) and Howard (Tom Wilkinson relationship and Ray (Owen) and Claire (Roberts) is that the latter couple secretly loves each other while the former couple not-so-secretly hates each other’s guts. While determining the extent to which Ray and Claire will double-cross each other is more than half the fun of Duplicity, that’s only because the pair’s apparent attraction can’t really be sublimated. Owen and Roberts make for fantastic sparring partners, Roberts tartly rattling off one-liners while Owen growls rejoinders back at her. While the film’s plot eventually gets distractingly convoluted, Owen and Roberts’s dueling performances are always the film’s main attraction.
Hong Kong writer/director Edmond Pang excels at making comedies where friends, enemies, and lovers are all related by elaborate conspiracies of pleasure. They know each other because in their heads, they’re all involved in a grand scheme whose holistic importance is never the sum of its many vaguely-related parts. In Exodus, a security guard stumbles upon the real reason why women spend so much time in the bathroom while in Men Suddenly in Black, a covert bachelor party gets hunted down by its participants’ spouses. Love in a Puff, similarly, is about two lovers who fall in love through various half-understood urban legends and half-truths, stories that nobody believes but everybody gets taken in by. For example, Jimmy (Shawn Yue) hears a story about a girl who gets her lover’s freakishly-long pubic hair stuck in her bracelet, and consequently draws unwanted attention at a dinner party. The story is the kind of innocent fiction that characters tell each other for the sake of remaking the world as a series of funny, nonsensical anecdotes. It’s no wonder then that Jimmy first meets Cherie (Miriam Yeung) while smoking a cigarette outside his office building. Like the butt in their mouths, the stories Cherie and Jimmy tell each other are unimportant in and of themselves, but their associative power really makes Love in a Puff, recently followed by the decent, but inferior, Love in the Buff, stand out.
This year’s comedies are primarily distinguished by their various whimsical milieux: Lost Generation-era Paris in Midnight in Paris, Seven Oaks College in Damsels in Distress, and, uh, the magical Franklin Park Zoo of Zookeeper, simultaneously the worst and the highest-grossing romantic comedy of 2011. But Extraterrestrial, assuredly the best romantic comedy of the year, could take place in any city as it’s set in the shadow of an alien visitation. City-spanning flying saucers descend on Madrid like angry black clouds, and then do nothing. Extraterrestrial is not in that sense really a science-fiction story. Julio (Julian Villagran) wakes up in Julia’s (Michelle Jenner) apartment, not knowing what happened, but assuming that they slept together. While the slept, the city was evacuated. Now, the only people left are Julia’s nosy, jealous neighbor Carlos (Raul Cimas), and her boyfriend Angel (Carlos Areces). Julia’s feelings for Angel persist but never diminish Julia and Julio’s relationship, nor vice versa. In fact, Julio and Julia have sex while Angel’s out looking for supplies.
While I’d love to give a final shout-out to Amy Heckerling’s Vamps, her long-awaited follow-up to Clueless (No, sorry, Loser and I Could Never Be Your Woman never happened), Moonrise Kingdom really does tower above that film. I can’t help but love the dizzying speed with which Anderson and co-writer Roman Coppola establish Sam Shakusky (Jared Gilman) and Suzy Bishop’s (Kara Hayward) affection for each other: the scene where the two exchange letters is hilariously succinct. The direct-ness with which Anderson establishes Sam and Suzy’s relationship allows him to focus on what he really likes about them. They each have inner lives that nobody else sees because nobody else knows enough to look for them. No revelation is too shocking to these kids, not science fiction novels nor survival skills. Sam and Suzy act as if whatever they haven’t seen can be handled as it comes up, even the tantalizing prospect of sex (“It feels hard.” “Do you mind?” “I like it.”). Anderson and Coppola don’t smother Suzy and Sam in cheap sentiment. In fact, these kids are more emotionally mature than the film’s adults! Seeing them pulled apart from each other on the beach after they’ve danced, and even slept together is heartbreaking. Sam and Suzy really do seem to belong together.
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