Sun Jan 01, 2017 2:53 pm
Two years ago, end-of-the-year Oscar bait had the theme of Hollywood Comes Out Boldly In Favor of Women's and Black Rights Because White Men are Pigs; last year, the theme was Based On a True Story Because We Can't Make Up One On Our Own. Having seen three of them since Friday, I am now prepared to announce that next month, the Oscar Bait Theme for 2016 will be declared officially as Compassionate Character Study of an Unhappy Failure In Which Nothing Is Resolved, including such critically praised crapola as Manchester By the Sea and the really good Fences.
I saw the third in the series this morning with my cousin. 20th Century Woman, which stars Annette Benning as the miserable failure of a mother and combines this popular theme with favorite of a decade or so ago, the It Sucks To Go Through Puberty in a Well-To-Do family in the 1970s theme. Miss Benning (who is wonderful in the role; I've been an admirer since The Grifters) is a Strong Woman raising her son on her own, but doesn't know what to do with a teen-age son, because she's a woman, so she enlists two other women, of course: Elle Fanning, who's friends with her son (who is in love with her) and sleeps with other boys; then she comes over to the house so she can TALK with the boy and sleep IN the same bed, but they're friends, really, so she can snuggle up to him, but he can't touch her. Also Greta Gerwig, who makes him read radical feminist tracts.
Also Billy Crudup. I expect Oscar noms all around. I'm sick of the lot of them. Florence Foster Jenkins for best picture!
Bob
Last edited by
boblipton on Mon Jun 19, 2017 6:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
New and vigorous impulses seem to me to be at work in it,[the cinema] and doubtless before long it will drop all slavish copying of the stage and strike out along fresh paths. -- Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree