Oscar long shots that deserve a nomination

Possibly the most underrated film this year, Denis Villeneuve's "Blade Runner 2049" is a triumph that not only expands upon, but also improves Ridley Scott's 1982 original. Instead of retreading the original film's futuristic film noir, "2049" gives audiences something even bigger to think about, as a replicant Blade Runner (Ryan Gosling) ponders the meaning of his own artificial life while trying to piece together a puzzle that includes finding Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford). An achievement in both story and visuals, it deserves a shot at the big prize.

If there was a film more underrated than "Blade Runner 2049," it has to be director Taylor Sheridan's "Wind River." Released by The Weinstein Company after they had acquired the film at the Sundance Film festival, it had the misfortune of being wrapped up in Harvey Weinstein's scandal just weeks into its release, but this tale of a rookie FBI agent (Elizabeth Olsen) shoved into a situation she isn't wanted in to investigate the murder of a local girl on a remote Native American Reservation with only the help of a tracker with a haunted past of his own (Jeremy Renner) is one part cracking police procedural, one part cultural drama that shows ignoring wounds never helps them heal any faster. Director Taylor Sheridan fought to get control back from the Weinsteins, saying "I can't have a film about violence against women silenced by the perpetrator of that very act."

It's a rare pleasure to see an actor go out on his own terms, and with the death of Harry Dean Stanton in September 2017, we were left with one final gem of a performance in "Lucky." Stanton plays the titular character as a man with no belief in god, who faces his own mortality at the age of 90, despite having a heart and soul much, much younger. Stanton approaches this final performance in an almost autobiographical fashion reminding audience that cool is ageless, and this is one actor that we'll miss in the years to come.

Not only was "Split" a return to form for twist master M. Night Shyamalan, it featured a revelation of a performance from James McAvoy, who lit up the screen as a man suffering from multiple personality disorder, waging a war within himself as he struggles with the thing he seems destined to become. Quite possibly the best origin story for a supervillain we've ever seen, McAvoy is never once not convincing as he jumps personalities, leaving viewers with equal amounts of empathy and disgust for a character who evolves into true evil.

Often typecasting happens for action heroes, and is looked upon as a detriment, but for Judi Dench, her third turn as a queen and second as Queen Victoria is nothing short of a pleasure in "Victoria and Abdul." As a pseudo-sequel to her Oscar-nominated turn in 1997's "Mrs. Brown," Dench returns to her role as if she never left, giving audiences a coda that feels wholly deserved, and absolutely worthy of an Oscar nod.

Yes, "Wonder Woman." While also saddled with appearing in the loathsome "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice" and the even-worse "Justice League," Gal Gadot's middle performance in Patty Jenkins' "Wonder Woman" is not only a fantastic performance deserving of recognition, it also sets the tone for how women in superhero films should be portrayed. As Princess Diana in her early years, she emotes an earnest charm and an indefatigable determination to help humanity, even if they don't always deserve it. While it may seem like a drop in a bucket of a seemingly overflowing genre, Gadot owns her role, and elevates it in a way that begs for a nomination.

Taylor Sheridan didn't even start screenwriting until he was 40, debuting his talent in 2015's "Sicario." Since then, he's only hit them out of the park with scripts like last year's "Hell or High Water," and now he directs his first major motion picture with "Wind River," and although most of its publicity has been part of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, it is a film that stands tall on its own merits, and Sheridan directs with the confidence of an old pro, giving us a new take on not only police procedurals, but also modern-day westerns. 

At some point, director Denis Villeneuve is going to have to get the Oscar he absolutely deserves, and a good place to start is with his revelatory work on "Blade Runner 2049." It can be a difficult task to improve on something well-established as a classic film, but Villeneuve's success comes from not even trying. He doesn't try to give you his version of Ridley Scott's original, but rather expand the story so much, so expertly, that Scott's original film simply fits inside of Villeneuve's much larger construct. While general audiences may have been turned off by the film's length, every moment of the film's 163 minutes is packed with story, both visually and in the film's script, which he utilizes to great effect.

While he may be best known for his portrayal of Billy Black in  the "Twilight" films, Gil Birmingham has become an unsung hero of the acting profession in his last two projects with Taylor Sheridan. Snubbed for his amazing performance in last year's "Hell or High Water," Birmingham looks to suffer the same fate with his brief, but heartbreaking performance in "Wind River,'  as the father of a slain daughter who is so crippled by grief, it shakes him to his core not only as a man, but also as a Native American whose warrior spirit feels castrated in a world that deprives him of dignity. His "Death Face" scene at the conclusion of the film might be the best scene of 2017 alone.

James Mangold's "Logan" was never meant to be just another superhero film, it was meant to be a eulogy for them, and while so much focus was given to Hugh Jackman's final turn as Wolverine, the highlight here is the utterly human performance of Patrick Stewart as X-Men patriarch Charles Xavier, wracked with guilt and hobbled by old age and dementia as his gift is finally a curse, making him a burden in his swift decline. Stewart mixes his performance with gentle wit and abrasive cantankerousness delivering a bittersweet look at what happens when a hero becomes helpless.

In so many comedies of its type, Tiffany Haddish's role as Dina, the loud-mouth brash friend, would come off as one-dimensional, but in Haddish's hands, she balances the comedy with a fierce earnestness that in turn gives the character much more life than maybe it deserves, elevating not only the performance but also the film itself. Without Haddish, "Girls Trip'" wouldn't nearly be the film it ended up being, and that alone deserves a serious look at a well-deserved Oscar nomination.

To be sure, much of "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" is a mixed bag, but one thing that wasn't was the supporting performance of Laura Dern as Vice Admiral Holdo, tasked with running what remains of the rebel Resistance fleet in the wake of an attack that puts its leader, General Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher) in a coma. In a universe full of familiar characters, Dern takes her heretofore unknown character and creates a cinematic footprint with a performance that gives you more than what you might expect, and doing it in an unexpected way. 

We've already extolled the virtues of Taylor Sheridan's work directing the sublime "Wind River," but we'd be remiss if we didn't include his original screenplay. Even if he didn't direct the film in a way that few directors could've improved upon, the secret sauce here is his script, which does a better job of seamlessly melding genres and social issues than his previous effort in "Hell or High Water." Sheridan writes characters that are never cardboard, even down to the least bit players. Everyone plays a part, but it's always more than the bare minimum.

Edgar Wright did more than write a screenplay for his latest film, he wrote a symphony, because that's essentially what "Baby Driver" is, an action symphony, set to a soundtrack that drives the film every bit as much as the action. The scenes are less set pieces and more musical movements as every bit of the film is synched perfectly in style, substance and musicality, something that absolutely begins on the page, and in Wright's case, done with grace and utter enjoyability. 

When Hampton Fancher originally adapted Phillip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep," he did so as a hardboiled film noir set in a futuristic time. Returning to his material for "Blade Runner 2049," Fancher wants his audience to see even more than that, even if he doesn't show everything. Concepts mentioned in the original film, such as Off-World colonies are once again mentioned, and still not shown here. That ability to create a world without having to show every bit of it in the script is a strength few scripts share, and a huge reason Fancher, along with co-writer Michael Green, deserve Oscar recognition.

Director Matt Reeves (and co-writer Mark Bomback) closes his initial trilogy featuring those damned dirty apes with a script that demands recognition. In the original "Planet of the Apes" films, the Apes were the antagonists, ruling a world turned upside down where humans were the chattel and devoid of any power. The final film of the trilogy shows Caesar (Andy Serkis) come full-circle, becoming the icon all apes would revere in the decades and centuries to come. The script succeeds in delivering that final evolution in a way that makes audiences forget they're watching CGI apes instead of real, live characters.

Tragedy and humility take center stage in director Feras Fayyad's visceral and exquisite documentary about the Syrian Civil Defense's 'White Helmet' volunteer group. It's hard to watch "Last Men in Aleppo" and not feel a sense of helplessness, of impotence as we're given a bleak look into a world that barely feels human, yet is beset on all sides by the darkest parts of humanity, speckled with aspects of hope that never seem like its enough. The result is an immediate, stark portrait of a land still under siege today.

One might suggest that last year's Oscar-winning "O.J.: Made in America" told the ultimate tale of minority strife in Los Angeles juxtaposed against the rise and ultimate fall of O.J. Simpson, but director John Ridley's documentary takes a much broader look at a critical decade through an oral history that features all sides, from the much-maligned police through to the justified minorities who saw L.A. fall before and knew it could happen again, a bet that no one took pleasure in winning. Culturally, the post-civil rights era is largely untapped, so to see even more stories about this time deserves recognition.

Paul Thomas Anderson's tale of a self-absorbed fashion designer (Daniel Day-Lewis) and his bizarre love affair leaves much to be desire, but for all the negative that can be said about this overrated film, the score, by Jonny Greenwood, is lush, operatic and seems to exist on a plane of its own as it lays out the events of the film, feeling like a character or a Greek Chorus. Reminicent of big band jazz at its roots, the score demands your attention and speaks at just the right tone for a film whose tone goes just about everywhere.

Admittedly this is a cheat since we're offering up two scores from John Williams, but it feels necessary as Williams, at 85, is producing some of the most complex and utterly enjoyable scores now than he has at any point of his career. Two prime examples of this is his work on "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" and Steven Spielberg's "The Post." Both scores are complex and ironically, while "The Last Jedi" is more subtle, "The Post" exudes an urgency that drives the narrative not in a rousing sort of way, but in a cautious, foreboding fashion that seems to give viewers both a time capsule and a flash forward into the past, present and future of journalism in America.