A look at the Oscars’ Best Picture nominees

The Oscar nominations are out—and that means that the Best Picture nominees will be making a return to cinemas in the month before the ceremony, which takes place on February 25. Doubtless you’ve heard a lot about these films already, so let’s just take a little time off from the normal procedure and, take a brief look at each of the Academy’s nominees for Best Picture of 2006.

I’ve said my piece on “The Queen” here a few months ago, and my thoughts on it still stand. A relevant recap from my October 26 review: “The script, constantly claiming to tackle tough issues, seems instead to be a facile attempt to allow its actors to step forward and claim their Oscar nominations, with nary a clue that its platitudes adversely affect its actors’ performances.” It seems that Helen Mirren’s all-too-expected nomination for Best Actress has carried the film to heights thought unimaginable—or, at least, by me. Its subtext is overblown and its emotion is forced, leaving me to believe that its status as a nominee for Best Pic is strictly meant as the infamous who-cares “fifth nomination”—which seems particularly egregious considering the number of worthy contenders out there.

I’m somewhat notorious as a broken record for my stance on “Babel,” but the inexplicable adulation that surrounds it forces me to step back onto the soapbox and repeat myself. The film itself carries with it some nonsense about miscommunication between our fellow man, but really it’s just an excuse to turn its audience into a punching bag—the film’s every move is so ripe with the potential for tragedy that you find yourself ducking whenever it introduces any concept at all, regardless of how inconsequential, for fear that you will be emotionally violated down the road. And for all of that nauseating manipulation, it’s got nothing to show for it.

My suggestion would be to catch Alfonso Cuaron’s infertility panic “Children of Men” while you still have the chance—that film is quietly disappearing after being shut out of the Academy’s “major” categories. It’s told with immense sadness, logically feeding into Orwell’s worry that mankind itself is so slanted toward self-destruction that it’ll grasp at any straw (religious extremism, general indifference, destruction through external means) to achieve that end, while still holding out faith and hope that we will eventually find our way. In short, “Men” subscribes to a necessary political urgency that “Babel,” in its vaguely liberal but ultimately worthless rambling, can’t even compare.

“Little Miss Sunshine” has been called “the little movie that could” by just about every pedantic entertainment publication around, a statement which never fails to set off my gag reflex. Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s a good film, but a hopelessly calculated one—the kind of indie fluff that is, in the end, formulaic, but just quiet enough to make you feel smart for liking it. I’ve got a real problem with the film’s wishy-washy stance toward nihilism (Condoning? Condemning?)—it gets scared and eventually retreats into feel-good sitcom silliness. But it’s pleasant enough in that retreat, suggesting that sometimes you need a break from deciphering life’s mysteries.

Clint Eastwood’s “Letters from Iwo Jima” is no doubt a fascinating film, but perhaps a little weighted down by forced association with its inferior companion piece, “Flags of Our Fathers.” The two films share a disdain for the moral absolutism that we often attribute to World War II (or any war, really), insinuating that it means precisely nothing on the actual field of combat—it’s the same screed against romanticizing violence that carried Eastwood’s “Unforgiven.” However, “Letters” is several steps above “Flags”’ one-dimensional dismissal of heroic iconography—it features an uncompromising look at a “foreign” society that reaches several levels deep. Told from an American’s perspective (Eastwood’s, that is), “Letters” seeks to determine how its audience views a typically faceless enemy, and hopes that they understand that individual cultures are so helplessly divided amongst themselves that the insanity of war is made that much more insane.

Finally, there’s Martin Scorsese’s “The Departed,” a film that’s so deceptively simple that its brilliance can be easily summed up while leaving a wealth of debate to the viewer: examining the nature of lawbreaker and law keeper. They’re intertwined to such a dizzying degree that we must not only question the necessity of wrongdoing from the law keepers, but also the necessity for lawbreakers to maintain some form of sanity and status quo. It’s not Scorsese’s best film, but it’s certainly up there, and with the Best Picture and Director race boiling down to the same “Clint vs. Marty” head-to-head from two years ago, it would seem particularly cruel to deny what the man has wanted for far too long. It’s only been 30 years since he deserved it the first time, after all.