“The Artist” won Best Picture at the Academy Awards – only my eighth favorite movie out of the nine nominees. The ceremony went down pretty much as expected too, with the biggest surprise being “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” winning Best Editing. Exciting, right?
“The Artist” is a tolerable choice for Best Picture, and the Academy at least gave five trophies to Martin Scorsese’s “Hugo” in technical categories. “Hugo” is new this week on Blu-ray and DVD and is most certainly worth your time, by the way.
Rather than griping about the nominees that didn’t win, let’s gripe about the terrific movies and performances that weren’t nominated for anything. A few, in fact, are newly available for your home viewing pleasure.
Take Shelter
Michael Shannon (“Revolutionary Road,” “Boardwalk Empire”) plays a quiet family man who begins having horrifying visions of an impending storm. Believing to be a warning, he throws his time and money into remodeling an old storm shelter. With a history of mental illness in his family, the people around him begin to question his sanity. Is he crazy? Or is the apocalypse on the horizon?
Shannon’s performance is commanding and heartbreaking (especially compared to the lighter than air performance given by this year’s Best Actor Oscar winner).
Jessica Chastain (nominated this year for her supporting performance in “The Help”) also caps off her star-making year as Shannon’s supportive wife. With “The Help,” “Tree of Life,” “The Debt,” “Coriolanus” and “Take Shelter,” the relative-unknown went 5-for-5 in 2011.
Martha Marcy May Marlene
Forget “Full House” and the Olsen Twins. Elizabeth Olsen, the younger sister of Mary-Kate and Ashley, shows genuine chops in “Martha Marcy May Marlene” as a young woman who escapes a cult and begins to emotionally unravel as she returns to normal life.
Her life in the cult is told in flashbacks with John Hawkes (“Winter’s Bone”) terrorizing Martha as the enigmatic leader of group. Now living with her sister, Martha grows paranoid of cult members who may or may not be watching her.
Both “Take Shelter” and “Martha Marcy” end on purposefully ambiguous notes, and the ending of “Martha” will especially frustrate some viewers. Whether or not the ending works, Olsen commands the screen and will hopefully be a force in many future projects. She’s got the horror movie “Silent House” in theaters next Friday.
Project Nim
A companion piece to “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,” this documentary is the true story of a chimpanzee taken at birth to live with a human family and learn sign language. Eventually Nim outgrows the family’s ability to control him, and his path leads to a medical testing facility and, finally, Ape Uprising.
OK, not the last one, but “Project Nim” does follow the trajectory of the first hour or so of the latest “Planet of the Apes.” It’s an extraordinary look at a species we’ve only begun to understand, and Nim will break your heart (or maybe your nose if you cross him). Once considered an Oscar frontrunner, “Project Nim” didn’t even earn a nomination. What a snub.
Super 8 & 50/50
I’ve discussed these movies in this space at length… watch them now if you haven’t seen them already. “50/50” never had a shot in any major Oscar categories except Original Screenplay, and real-life cancer survivor Will Reiser didn’t make the cut in a tough category.
“Super 8,” meanwhile, never gained momentum in major categories, but it’s pretty sad to see it skunked out of technical categories where the atrocious “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” earned nominations. Attention Academy: Best Sound doesn’t mean the Loudest Sound.