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OSCARS DEATH RACE: Surveying the race for Best Actor

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Sarah D. Bunting of Tomatonation.com is watching every single film nominated for an Oscar before the Academy Awards Ceremony on February 26, 2012. She is calling this journey her Oscars Death Race. She has completed the category for Best Actor and now surveys the competition. For more on how the Oscars Death Race began, click here. And you can follow Sarah through this quixotic journey here.]

The Best Actor category is more interesting, to my mind, for who didn't get a nomination than for who did, although I guess the actual nominations are interesting. "Baffling" counts as interesting, right?

Let's get to it.

The nominees

Demián Bichir (A Better Life): The performance looked better than it was thanks to subpar acting by his castmates. A solid outing, no more.

George Clooney (The Descendants): The Cloon did his best under the circumstances, and I acknowledge that the performance proceeds from the script, but I hated the script and the performance is not very good in the second place. It's not Keanu, but it's not very good. The blocking is lazy; a lot of the scenes land like first rehearsals, or he's letting the ugly shirts craft the character beats. From a craft standpoint, I don't get this nom at all. From a "sometimes, the universe wants — nay, needs — to remind the Cloon that he is loved" standpoint, it makes more sense and I can mostly live with it. A win would kind of gross me out, though — and Vegas has him sitting at short odds…

Jean Dujardin (The Artist): …but SAG went for Gallic charisma, and that award is a pretty reliable indicator. Dujardin is very good, and while this isn't my favorite performance nominated, I won't mind if it wins, and it probably will.

Gary Oldman (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy): Initially, I had a "wait, seriously?" reaction to this nod, but much like the movie itself, the idea grew on me. But he's good here because he's so quiet in the role…and he might be too quiet. Should win for something one of these days; probably not for this.

Brad Pitt (Moneyball): Great, welcoming, confident performance by an actor who has finally grown all the way into his face. Born to play the role; hit all the notes in it. He'll likely have to content himself with a job well done, though.

Who shouldn't be here: Bichir and Clooney don't rate, given the talent that got passed over entirely.

Who should be here, but isn't: Hope you packed a lunch: Woody Harrelson in Rampart, Tom Hardy and/or Joel Edgerton in Warrior, Michael Fassbender in Shame, and Ralph Fiennes in Coriolanus. You could make an argument for Paul Giamatti in Win Win; you could also argue that you've seen that work from him before.

Who should win: Pitt.

Who will win: Dujardin, I'd say, but Clooney isn't a waste of your money.

Sarah D. Bunting co-founded Television Without Pity.com, and has written for Seventeen, New York Magazine, MSNBC.com, Salon, Yahoo!, and others. She's the chief cook and bottle-washer at TomatoNation.com. For more on how the Oscars Death Race began, click here.

OSCARS DEATH RACE: RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Fearless Sarah D. Bunting of Tomatonation.com is making it her mission to watch every single film nominated for an Oscar before the Academy Awards Ceremony on February 26, 2012. She is calling this journey her Oscars Death Race. For more on how the Oscars Death Race began, click here. And you can follow Sarah through this quixotic journey here.]

A pensive, moving exegesis on the perils of primate resear– oops, sorry. Thinking of Project Nim. Rise of the Planet of the Apes is a straight-ahead enjoy-the-AC summer movie, and if you can't see it in a theater, you needn't bother. I did not see it in a theater, so I could not derive the enjoyment the foggy climactic shoot-outs and chopper crashes surely provided for in-person filmgoers — and that only left lines like "These people invest in results, not dreams" and James Franco's master class on phoning it in, "101 Troubled Frowns."

The very short form: Franco (the "character" is barely realized, so why name him) is developing a medicine to cure Alzheimer's, from which his father (John Lithgow) (…right?) suffers. Primate research shows it works, but also points up some serious side effects; chimps dosed with ALZ-112 (…right?) get crazy smart, but also crazy mad. That includes Caesar, the chimp Franco kind of accidentally adopts, then raises with the help of his with-it-again dad, and also his girlfriend Frieda Pinto (Slumdog Millionaire) and her glorious eyebrows. She's a primatologist, maybe? Or a vet? Right, my mistake: she's a delivery system for lines about how some things shouldn't be changed.

The movie wastes no time getting straight to plot, which is good; it's an economical 100-ish minutes, which is also good. But that still leaves viewers time to wonder why Franco and Lithgow's neighbor doesn't just move away if he's going to get constantly harassed by chimps, car-wrecked by Lithgow, and bloody-sneezed on by that chunky fella from Reaper — or why, as Extra Hot Great commenter Will asked, "This movie took place over 8 years, and no one ever got a haircut?"

But we come to praise the visual effects, not to bury the script, I guess. Alas, the effects are not that awesome. Something about the way the chimps move is not quite right — there's a quickness of motion that makes them seem too light. One chase scene is a treetop shot of chimps moving through the trees that shows only the leaves rustling, which is pretty cool, but that's not going to get it done against work like Hugo.

OSCARS DEATH RACE: HUGO

Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield) lives in a fairy tale, in both senses of that word. He's not troubled with real-life adolescent bagatelles like homework, and he lives unsupervised in the clock tower of a Parisian train station, where he's in charge of keeping the clocks running.

But Hugo is unsupervised because his parents have both died. (…I believe? I'm not entirely clear on what has become of his mother; his father, played by Jude Law, is consumed by a fiery backdraft in flashback, and this is not explained either.) Hugo's druncle Claude (Ray Winstone) takes custody of the boy, sticks around long enough for Hugo to learn the station-clock trade, then goes on walkabout, and Hugo is left to fend for himself. Fortunately, he's gifted at fixing things, so he keeps the clocks running in the hopes that nobody will notice Claude has gone missing, and dodges the station inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen), an orphan-phobe with a mechanical leg and an equally hostile Doberman. Hugo nicks pastries from bakeries, and spare parts from Georges, the sour proprietor of a toy stall (Ben Kingsley), because on top of keeping the time and staying out of the boys' home, Hugo has a third job: trying to fix an old automaton repatriated by his father from a museum, in the hope that the machine will send him one last message from beyond the grave. And it does, in more ways than one.

Hugo is beautiful entirely aside from the thoughtful 3D effects. Snow looks real, and cold; clock gears look real, and old; the characters frequently compare movies to dreams, and the visual style has a heightened, almost Burton-y dreaminess, in the small touches almost more than the big showy bits (the bishop's sarcophagus; the weave of Hugo's sweater). The characters, and the way they're shot, contribute to the fable feeling; Hugo shortly finds an ally in Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz), Georges's goddaughter, a girl who loves libraries and big words and longs for one of the adventures she's enjoyed within them, and her ally is the peerless Christopher Lee as bookseller Monsieur Labisse. Labisse is usually shot from an angle that emphasizes his towering size, which both intimidates and protects.

The mythological story — the labors to earn back the notebook, the redemption of the warrior of the past who now toils in heartbroken obscurity — might not seem like an intuitive choice for Martin Scorsese. But the story is a love letter to film, and to the "indoorsy kids" through the ages who, confined to quarters, learned the world through the stories of others. That sort of elegy could pall quickly, and the speeches about the magic of cinema are…just that, but they're also relatively short, utterly sincere, and backed by Scorsese's voluminous knowledge. I liked The Artist well enough, but Hugo makes it look even gimmickier by comparison.

The superstitions of children that aren't just children's; Law, examining the automaton and recalling the company he kept in AI; Isabelle's horrified "DON'T YOU LIKE BOOKS?!" and Georges's defeated "Please, just — go away" — there is a bittersweet current running through Hugo that makes it much more than its technical achievements, and a wonderful note to hit for Scorsese. I love the man's work, but he can present at times as alienated from the concept that movies are by and about human beings. Here, he's operating from that idea's lap, and that shift shows up all over the movie; just when you feel like you've had enough of the glowering station agent and the gags with his leg locking on him, Cohen delivers this line from the depths of a sinking chest: "Yes, I was injured in the war and it will never heal, good day mademoiselle." And there's the character in three dimensions, no special glasses required.

OSCARS DEATH RACE: Surveying the race for Best Supporting Actress?

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Sarah D. Bunting of Tomatonation.com is watching every single film nominated for an Oscar before the Academy Awards Ceremony on February 26, 2012. She is calling this journey her Oscars Death Race. She has completed the category for Best Supporting Actress and now surveys the competition. For more on how the Oscars Death Race began, click here. And you can follow Sarah through this quixotic journey here.]

Picking the winners in Oscar categories reminds me a lot of the arguments about the MVP in baseball, and how we should define "valuable" — is it the guy with the best stats? is it the guy who made the biggest difference to an otherwise mediocre team? a combination?

I'll compare almost anything to baseball, given a chance, but the MVP-argument parallel is apt in many of Oscar's acting categories this year, where several of the nominees represent not just a notable achievement in acting, but also the only thing worth a damn in the film in which it appeared.

The nominees

Bérénice Bejo (The Artist): I liked her well enough, but I wouldn't say she put a stamp on the role, more than anyone else would have.

Jessica Chastain (The Help): Adorable in this part. Absolutely sold me on a movie I expected to loathe with her sheer delight in shaking the chicken.

Melissa McCarthy (Bridesmaids): I like McCarthy, I like the idea of that character, but the writing of it seemed like a man's notes on a woman's guess at what a real person like that character would act like, if that makes any sense at all. Points for the effort, but it's too broad, and the nom reads like the Academy trying to show that it doesn't discriminate against comedies.

Janet McTeer (Albert Nobbs): Here's where the MVP conversation comes into play. McTeer keeps an inconsistent and overworked script on the right side of twee whenever she's onscreen. It's a steady and inviting performance, not too studied, and it would get my vote.

Octavia Spencer (The Help): The oddsmaker's pick, as of this writing. Another nomination for an above-average rendering of too-broad writing.

Who shouldn't be here: Bejo probably got filed in Best Supporting so she wouldn't run into the twin buzzsaws of Viola Davis and Meryl Streep in Best Actress, but I think her role's too big for this category.

Who should be here, but isn't: I wouldn't have minded seeing Robin Wright get a nod here for Rampart; she really raised her game in 2011. Ditto Amy Ryan in Win Win, which also threw a shutout at the Oscars. Hat tip to members of the Bridesmaids and The Help casts (Rose Byrne; Sissy Spacek) who could just as easily have slotted in here.

Who should win: McTeer.

Who will win: It's not impossible that voters give Davis Best Actress, then decide to share some wealth to Bejo in Best Supporting. (You could argue that two actresses from The Help might split the vote; I don't see Chastain figuring in this one, though.) But Spencer is the safe pick.

OSCARS DEATH RACE: RIO

A serviceable but obvious animated tale about a blue macaw named Blu (Jesse Eisenberg, typecast even in avian-cartoon form) who reluctantly returns to his roots in Brazil, then finds love…and his wings. Awww! But also, kind of zzzz! Rio's most striking visuals and renderings of animal physicality will only remind you of How To Train Your Dragon, a smarter and more thoughtful film across the board, which you will then want to watch instead!

You've seen it done before, and better, but Rio is not terrible. It has flashes of wit, like the monkey text-message exchange, and it does right by chase scenes and fight sequences; the birds-versus-monkeys rumble in the bird nightclub is fun. The voice acting is fine, screeches and strains less than you might expect, and George Lopez is enjoyably low-key as Rafael the toucan, despite the damp counsel and one-liners he's tasked with disgorging. Casting Bebel Gilberto as Rafael's wife is a clever touch, but it's a pity Gilberto wasn't tapped to write or perform the nominated song. Instead, it's a loud, generic pastiche that should prompt a conversation at the Academy about what the Original Song category is trying to do in the twenty-first century. Assuming that "not suck" is an action item, perhaps it's not necessary to award this Oscar when the "selection" is as thin as this year's.

That the Academy has failed to acknowledge changing times isn't Rio's fault. Yeah, the movie's version of Brazilian culture makes Epcot look like a grad seminar, but it's for kids, and basically it's unobjectionable — more than I can say for some of jalopies double-parked in the Best Picture lane. I just don't know what it's doing here; Brahms could have written that song, it wouldn't beat the Muppets.

OSCARS DEATH RACE: THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO

A disgraced journalist, Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig), is called to the home of aging magnate Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer) to investigate an ancient crime in the magnate's family — the disappearance and presumed death of Vanger's niece, Harriet, decades ago. Parked in a drafty cabin on the island where many of the Vangers still live (and back-bite), Blomkvist looks into the locked-room mystery, and as matters become more complex, he requires a research assistant — the same researcher, it turns out, who dug into him at Henrik Vanger's request. This researcher is, of course, the eponymous Girl, Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara): pierced, bony, rendered by turns mute and blunt by traumas past and present.

(Spoilers ahead.)

It takes about 45 minutes for their paths to converge, but the time is enjoyable. The entire movie is enjoyable, even when it's difficult (That Scene) (also, That Other Scene), or predictable (you can throw as much Stellan Skarsgard at the trope as you want, but it's still a Talking Killer), or disappointing (it's not a travesty that Mikael and Lisbeth start Doing It or anything, and it leads to a couple of good lines, but Craig and Mara had such sparky and fun partner chemistry that that subplot came off lazy). I hadn't read the books or seen the previous version of the filmed story, so I had no preconceptions about Fincher's version — except that I would only spend two and a half hours plus with that material because of Fincher.

I should warn you now that I'm one of Those Zodiac Cultists who bangs on about how the Academy jobbed that movie, Downey is awesome in it, blah blah blah, and I'll skip the bulk of the harangue, but that film showcases what I liked about Dragon Tattoo: the little moments in longtime/working relationships. Fincher's good with a credits sequence (Panic Room) and good with a tricksy time lapse (Zodiac), he varies his shots in their angles and lengths and his cutting team keeps things interesting and on pace. But my favorite Fincher thing is how he lets his actors work with each other, letting gallows humor percolate up, waiting for that exchanged eye-roll. There's an understanding that the characters have interior lives, opinions about sushi and double-parking, entirely outside of the film's plot. Some of that proceeds from the scripting, obviously, but it's seldom the same writer on each movie, and that wouldn't explain the seemingly uniform respect the films have for the partnership vibe. Nobody gets better play on an actor's face when his/her character is struggling not to call a higher-up a fucking moron than David Fincher. Probably not what he wants on his tombstone, but it's nice for Rooney Mara under the circumstances.

Mara's very good; she doesn't take shortcuts where many actors would, and her stoniness isn't uniform — sometimes it's just stony, blank, but at other times her face wavers, and you can see the effort of control and how tightly the lid is clamped. She lets us know Lisbeth as who she is, not just what we get to see her do. That nuancing is one of those "if you don't notice it, that's how you know it's good" things, so it's nice to see it recognized by the Academy even if the performance functionally can't win. Mara works fantastically with Craig, too; at the end of the movie, I was bummed, not because of the lonely-hearts twist (that was merely annoying) but because I wanted to keep watching them hang out together. I felt the same way at the end of Zodiac — can't Downey and Jake Gyllenhaal get a TV show and solve cases together while wearing terrible '70s scarves? One that airs every day? At…my house? Kudos to Fincher for getting these performances, and also to his casting director(s), who always set him up nice. (Robin Wright, usually not my jam, turns in the second textured performance of the year that I loved and nobody else noticed. And yes, I am also That Guy Who Won't Shut Up About Rampart.)

Probably the best possible treatment of the material, based on what I know of it; solidly captivating and nice to look at. Hard to say why it didn't get a Best Director nod, but it wouldn't have won that anyway, and it likely won't win anything else. Still, as my man Joe Reid says, it's a good sit.

OSCARS DEATH RACE: REAL STEEL

[EDITOR'S NOTE: Fearless Sarah D. Bunting of Tomatonation.com is making it her mission to watch every single film nominated for an Oscar before the Academy Awards Ceremony on February 26, 2012. She is calling this journey the Oscars Death Race. For more on how the Oscars Death Race began, click here. And you can follow Sarah through this quixotic journey here.]

Real Steel is one of those trailers that makes you turn to your movie-going companion and say, "You know, I really like [above-the-title star who's talented, attractive, and doesn't take himself too seriously but apparently just hit some kind of alimony balloon payment]. He's a nice man. I want him to make lots of money. Are you telling me there's no better way for him to do that than to star in the robot-boxing version of that infernal arm-wrestling Stallone movie from the '80s?"

I actually never saw the infernal arm-wrestling Stallone movie from the '80s, although I saw the hateful Kenny Loggins video from same approximately 17,000 times — but I'm pretty sure Real Steel is the same shit (but with, you know, robot boxing). Robot-boxing impresario/dillweed Charlie (Hugh Jackman) is down on his luck and behind on his rent when he finds out that an ex-girlfriend has died, leaving him in custody of a son, Max, he's never seen (Dakota Koyo). The ex's sister, Debra (Hope Davis), wants t– you know what, who cares. Robots box; the flimsy backstory excuse for Jackman to develop those magnificently ridonk biceps is totally justified; everything works out.

And the movie is pretty fun, despite going on too long, co-starring Evangeline Lilly, and trading cynically on the deep love some of us have for Iron Giant. Four things to like about Real Steel:

1. The robot boxing is fairly rad. It didn't blow my mind or anything, but I bet it looked amazing on an IMAX screen, and they get some cool shots out of it (one early fight features a disturbing visual of a robot with its leg blown off). The country-fight scene gives off a basement-cockfight vibe, and the title fight has a robot ring girl, so it's clear the visual-design team paid attention to little things.

2. The film is totally committed to the fiction that its story capital-M Matters: soaring strings, 12-o'clock camera positions of Max in the rain, old newspaper clippings of Charlie's (people-)boxing career.

3. Koyo is quite good as the kid, despite the character as written bearing Hollywood's customary tenuous resemblance to an actual fifth-grader — and when he gets old enough for this comment not to be a felony, he's going to be really cute.

4. Lilly is fine! I had a bitchy crack all ready to go about how I understand that the Liv Tyler we already have is barely serviceable but it doesn't mean we need a second one, but then Lilly went and turned in a nice performance. I'm-a say it anyway because this is a Death Race and you take your shots where you can, but she's likeable and un-Kate-like in a thankless role. She could put on a bra now and then, though. So…I guess that's really five things to like about Real Steel for you gents, and ladies who like ladies, out there. …Wait. Six. Seven if you count the "I've got her Real Steel right here IN MY PANTS" joke I just handed y'all.

Anyhow! The Oscars. Real Steel got a nod for Visual Effects, and as deeply as I've come to resent the tech categories for horking up hairballs like this, and Tron, and the 654 hours of Harry Potter and the Masterpiece-Theatre Reunion I've sat through, now and then you get a fluffy, crunchy thing like Real Steel. No shot at a statue, but I'm not mad at it.

OSCARS 2012: PRESS PLAY contributors argue for their favorites

OSCARS 2012: PRESS PLAY’S staff picks their favorites

After last week’s announcement of this year’s Oscar nominees, a handful of Press Play contributors gathered together via email to discuss the highs and lows in some of the major award categories. Below are some of the highlights of the conversation, and as always, we encourage you to keep the discussion going. The site's consensus picks for the films and individuals that should win be announced next week, starting Monday.

Matt Zoller Seitz: Has anybody seen A Better Life, for which Demián Bichir was nominated as Best Actor? That seemed out of left field. I feel like Gary Oldman might be a lock for that one, what do you think?

Glenn Close and Rooney Mara nominated for Best Actress is interesting, too. Some thought Close's work was too stunt-y. Mara seems a total surprise for me, as her character is so not Academy-friendly (in terms of looks and demeanor), and Mara is not anywhere close to a known quantity.

Ali Arikan: Rooney Mara has been lauded by the critics and the industry, and the studio had been hyping her since the summer, so I'm not at all surprised that she got a nomination. Despite the fact that the Millennium books are terrible, people seem to love them, and Lisbeth Salander has become an iconic character. Plus, she also did sterling work in a solid film. What is interesting, however, is that either she or Glenn Close edged out Tilda Swinton for We Need to Talk About Rosemary's Omen. I thought she would be a lock.

I am happy about Moneyball, a film I thought I would hate, but ended up loving. I am one of the few in "our circles" who felt The Tree of Life was lacking, and I don't think it deserved a Best Picture nomination over Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

Extremely Loud and The Help are just risible. The latter was always going to be in there, but I thought Bridesmaids might have snuck in instead of Extremely Loud. Either way, having nine nominees obviously shows that the field is still pretty wide open.

Matt: I like The Tree of Life best of the Best Picture nominees, though I know opinion in this thread is mixed. It's the most unconventional of any nominated film, so much so that I am pleasantly surprised that it became a sort of event when it hit theaters. I think more films that experimental should be made at the Hollywood level. There are not too many directors holding down the fort for that kind of experience, not even Malick's fellow '70s movie brats Spielberg and Scorsese.

Aaron Aradillas: I would argue that in their own ways, both Hugo and Tintin are experimental films. I mean, if it wasn't for their directors, I seriously doubt a studio would've rolled the dice on 'em.

Sarah D. Bunting: Margin Call got a Best Original Screenplay nod. Shut up, Oscars. Barf.

Ali: I also second Sarah's barf. Ewww.

My feelings about Melissa McCarthy mirror Scott Tobias' thoughts on Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. I disliked Bridesmaids, but I despised her performance.

Aaron: I've yet to fully grasp the dislike for her performance. I know it exists, but I don't get it. I don't remember anyone being offended when Kevin Kline won for making a mockery of being a dumb, sexist man.

Nick Nolte is terrific in Warrior, but it is clearly a great performance of something he does well. He makes look effortless what Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton huff and puff and make look so tiring. Besides, Nolte did a better version of this in Affliction.

Christopher Plummer gives his career performance. There's no fat on it. Unlike The Insider, where he's a hoot, Plummer doesn't push it in Beginners, and that's why he leaves such an impression on those of us who love the movie. The way he embraces life at such a late date is funny, touching and ultimately quite sad. Ewan McGregor's character never acknowledges it, but he learns his father's final lessons and that's what leads to the movie's astonishingly hopeful and romantic ending. He is finally his father's son. Plummer's presence is felt in every scene. It be McGregor's story, but it's Plummer's film.

I'm a fan of Midnight in Paris, but Woody Allen's screenplay is not entirely original. It's kind of a variation on The Purple Rose of Cairo. Margin Call is a script written about how we're living right now. It trumps Mamet by not getting all tangled up in being clever with its verbal scenes.

Mara's my second choice in the Best Actress category, but Viola Davis is the only lead actress who literally has to create a character from scratch. The other performances all have something already existing that they're working off of.

Ali: I am not basing my dislike of McCarthy's performance on a curve. It was too easy, without any nuance and did not add anything to a film that definitely needed some sort of a breakout-star factor to make it less boring (and, you know, funny). So, I'd love to hear the case for her.

Aaron: The beauty of McCarthy's performance is there isn't a trace of self-loathing or self-doubt that would probably get in a dozen other comedies with a character like hers. She is the most confident and aware person in the circle of Bridesmaids.

I'm willing to make a gentleman's bet that Meryl Streep will not win Best Actress. I think Viola Davis is going to "surprise" everyone and take it home.

Kevin B. Lee: If anything, Davis is the odd sober person surrounded by a carnival of sass, crass and crazy in The Help. Octavia Spencer and Jessica Chastain are like intrepid migrants from John Waters-land, while Davis anchors it in gravity and respectability ‒ she's the whipped cream atop the shit pie. I'm not sure whether she saves the movie or adds a layer of Oscar-mongering disingenuousness to what really should be an all-out camp farce. But her final scene standing up to Bryce Dallas Howard is a feat of acting gymnastics, going through a series of emotional states in lightning succession.

In contrast, The Iron Lady is pretty much all Meryl Streep (and everything that implies, good and bad). But it's an MVP performance; she actually made me like Margaret Thatcher for two hours.

Lisa Rosman: The Help is a tepid movie at best, offensive at worst, but as is so often the case, the performances far outstrip the film. Viola Davis never gives up an inch ‒ she may cater less as an actress than anyone else in Hollywood ‒ but so much goes on behind the eyes that she ignobles what could be a wretched role. And on that note, I love Rooney, but this is not the film for which she should win an Oscar. It's a one-trick-pony role and though she does it well, it doesn't have enough shades to win a golden naked man.

I hate hate hate hate the idea of McCarthy winning this. The role is not just unfunny; it's mean-spirited and she executes it more poorly than she's done anything else in her career. (Wherefore art thou, Sookie?) Nay, for me it's Janet McTeer, who does everything that Close herself fails to do in the otherwise craptacular and super outdated Albert Nobbs. It's a finely tuned performance that brings real pathos and humor and at least three dimensions to the kind of person that Hollywood always, always gets wrong.

The rest I am less adamant on. I love Malick but The Tree of Life is not legible in ways that actually matter to me. Scorsese should take Best Director for Hugo, but I can understand why others do not agree. Gary Oldman should, of course, take it; it's a terrific performance, and Tinker Tailor the Thief Cook should get Best Adapted Screenplay. I don't love any of the Best Picture nominees but think Moneyball comes closest to being what I want a big movie to be. And sorry for the barfers, but I love Margin Call for Best Original Screenplay.

Aaron: I'm for Brad Pitt. I think he gives a star turn and acting powerhouse at once. George Clooney is great (and I have no problem if he wins), but he was going deeper into a character he does best: the good-looking asshole who is brought up short by life.

There is real mystery to Pitt's take on Billy Beane. He loves the game, but knows the game is changing. He knows he has to get wins in order to keep his job and is more than willing to modernize for that reason. But he also knows there is something you can't calculate about the game of baseball. The scenes of Pitt driving to work or sitting in the locker room show a man who is constantly trying to figure out the odds and knowing deep down that there are some things you can't figure out. Also, Pitt is a great subtle comic performer in the scenes where he's making deals or bossing around others in the room. Like Jesse Eisenberg, he is a natural when it comes to Aaron Sorkin's writing.

Kevin: I think Pitt's performance falls under the same school of acting I endorse. (Clooney, on the other hand, is on autopilot).

Aaron: Clooney's not on auto, but I'll leave it at that. I do know Pitt is happy as can be to be nominated in the same category as Gary Oldman. His death scene in Fight Club is inspired by Oldman. Pitt says on that film’s commentary, "No one dies like Gary!" It should also be noted that Pitt gets a slight advantage in that his work in both Moneyball and The Tree of Life show how wide a range he truly has.

Lisa: I actually agree Clooney's not on auto, but I disliked the conceit of the casting of that film immensely. (Alexander Payne loves to get notoriously charismatic actors to play schlubs; it underscores his misanthropic view of "average people.")

Ali: I, too, am for Pitt, even though I liked Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy Doo-Dah Doo-Dah more than any other American film this year. Goldman is magnificent as George Smiley, closer to John le Carré's vision than Alec Guinness' portrayal, and he explodes with understated pathos (paradoxically) the one time he shows his emotions (the incredible Soviet national anthem scene where he sees his wife having it on with Colin Firth).

That said, I have a problem with his voice and accent. He sounds like a constipated baboon trying to do an impression of Ian McKellen. It was but a minor quibble when I first saw the film, but after three times, it's just grating. (For what it's worth, Tom Hardy gives the best performance in that movie.)

As for Brad Pitt, first of all, his is an almost old-fashioned movie star performance. He's charming and cheeky and funny, and hella good looking. (Yes, I've just used "hella" ‒ I am a 14-year-old kid from 1998.) I have no idea who Beane is, so this is my estimation of the character as he is seen on the screen: as Aaron said, here is a person who decides to ride the waves of change. Pitt plays him as a nexus of frustration; he never made the big time, so he is trying to make up for that lost opportunity. He is clever, though. He knows that he is unable to see the forest for the trees (the final scene with Jonah Hill, the earlier conversation with his daughter, etc.), but that's what obsessive-compulsive people are like. They know what they're doing is irrational, but they have to keep doing it.

Also, the final shot shows him in full command of his face ‒ an incredibly important skill for a screen actor.

Matt: What about this Demián Bichir fellow? Nobody's really mentioned him as a contender….

Aaron: A Better Life is good, and he's really good, but not award-worthy, especially when you consider someone like, say, the criminally underrated Steve Carell or Kevin Spacey's triumphant return to good acting in Margin Call. If one is going to label his nomination the Indie Nod, I much prefer Michael Shannon. Take Shelter is far from perfect, but Shannon is amazing.

The biggest problem with A Better Life is the character of the 14-year-old son. The actor is pretty bad and the character, as written, is pretty thin. An old-school Mexican dad would not put up with half the shit this kid gives him. Compared to the father-son dynamic in A Bronx Tale, A Better Life comes up short.

Can I make my case for The Help one more time? If the best 9/11 movies are not explicitly about 9/11 (Zodiac, Munich), then why can't one of the best films about race today be a movie about recent history? The outcry from so-called open-minded liberals was telling in that just because the movie was supposedly playing it safe by telling a story we all can agree on that it wasn't also making people think about the here and now.

Race is the one truly unspoken-about issue in this country. When it is spoken about, it is in an obvious safe way. The Help is about the moment when an open discussion was needed in order for change to occur. What the movie also makes clear is that discussion needs to be ongoing. And that is simply not the case right now.

Just because the movie delivers its "message" in bawdy, emotional, mass-appeal entertainment doesn't make it unworthy of praise (or awards). The Help not only attempts to keep recent history fresh in our minds, but also old-fashioned awards-worthy entertainment alive as well.

OSCARS DEATH RACE: UNDEFEATED

It's not generally a compliment to say that a film reminds you of other films, or has the DNA of other films; the phrases "a poor man's" or "but with less" seem inevitable. To call a documentary "well made" isn't the highest of praise, either, suggesting as it does the absence of anything extraordinary. "Every shot in focus — a triumph of competence!"

Undefeated did remind me of other stories, and it is well put together, but that doesn't mean it's derivative or dull. It's a straight-ahead chronicle of a year in the life of a North Memphis football team that has never darkened the doorstep of the state playoffs in the school's long history. Practice is held on a hillocky field surrounded by abandoned buildings, and presided over by a plump ginger volunteer coach named Bill Courtney who will bellow the same speech about failures contributing to character until his team hears it.

The film has echoes of everything from Hoosiers to Hoop Dreams (the rising and falling fortunes of Money and Chavis) to The Blind Side to the late great Friday Night Lights, but that's a pretty impressive list of memorable narratives to have echoing down your movie. (Well, I loathed The Blind Side on film, but I'm told the book is good.) Directors T.J. Martin and Daniel Lindsay trust their story, and their subjects, and rightly so; Bill Courtney probably knows what the filmmakers are going for, and he's good at boiling those things down, but not in a sound-bitey way. In one longish interview, he ruminates on giving up on people, how you know if it's a test or a lost cause. Elsewhere, he grumps that football does not build character, "football reveals character."

Martin and Lindsay (the latter of whom also made a doc about the road to the world beer-pong championships; awesome) don't try to reinvent the wheel, or get all hectic with interstitial fonts in an attempt to apologize for a straight-ahead conventional documentary. It's kids, hope, and grown men getting their crying done through football. You don't have to spread much mustard on that. (And that crying scene is a killer.)

More on this when I write my Best Doc overview, but it's a nice piece of work that basically has no shot.

OSCARS DEATH RACE: MONEYBALL

When I heard that Moneyball was set to become a film, I didn't get it. It's a good book, and I'm a huge baseball fan, but as far as a narrative with wider cinematic appeal, I didn't see a there there. It's a story about a guy using statistics to exploit market inefficiencies, so…good luck with that?

It's not that it's uninteresting material per se, or difficult to follow, in the hands of the correct writer. (Like, say, Bill James, the godfather of statistical baseball analysis who's mentioned frequently in the film.) I love that stuff. But how do you get people who don't care about baseball to care about it on film, for two hours plus, using arithmetic — and without alienating diamond nerds like myself who would sit there, arms folded, the Nit-Find-o-Tron 4000 ready to start picking?

I can't speak to what baseball atheists got out of it. I can name maybe two other people who got the same frisson of hilarity out of the casting of Chad Kreuter as Rick Peterson as I did. I know for a fact that nobody else snickered at "No bunting whatsoever," but I of course collect comments like that. But I'm pretty sure "Who's Fabio?" "He's that shortstop from Seattle"; the "I'm just saying, his girlfriend is a six, at best" sequence; and Billy Beane's ex-wife's new husband and his man-dals got laughs from other people, because I'm pretty sure Moneyball is a good movie qua movie, sharply observed and well acted across the board.

It's not perfect. The last half hour is draggy, and co-writer Aaron Sorkin couldn't resist one or two of his patented And Now My Proxy Will Lecture You In A Tone Of Self-Congratulation (Supplemental Oxygen Will Not Be Provided) speeches. But one of those speeches is about not getting sucked into the romance of baseball, which is good advice for baseball-movie screenwriters — in a script that miraculously avoids 98 percent of the hero-journey mawkishness the sport tends to churn up. And Brad Pitt as Billy Beane is fantastic. The performance grew on me steadily, and by the time Beane snarked at Art Howe (Philip Seymour Hoffman, also very good and styled authentically, which is to say he looks like hammered hell), "Every time we talk, I'm reinvigorated by my love of the game," then did that herky ass-out-of-joint walk out of Howe's office, he had me. Ever since Ocean's 11, Pitt is usually having more fun than anybody else onscreen; here, part of that is Beane, but Pitt gets that a strong, thoughtful performance doesn't have to look like a Metamucil ad. He's fun to watch.

Every performance is good. I don't get Jonah Hill's Best Supporting nomination here, because we've seen the performance before, it seems like. But he won't win, so it's fine, and he and Pitt have flawless boss/underling bro chemistry onscreen. I want them to do another movie together. This movie probably isn't in the Best Picture discussion, which I'm okay with, but it exceeded expectations as far as splitting the difference for both fans and agnostics. A little too long, but the best possible iteration of the material.