A closer look at the 2016 Oscar Best Picture nominees, including reactions, reviews, and in-depth features.
Oscars 2016
The Big Short
Director: Adam McKay
Cast: Christian Bale, Steve Carell, Brad Pit, Ryan Gosling
Synopsis: Based on the 2010 Michael Lewis nonfiction book, this film chronicles the few individuals who predicted the 2008 US housing market crash- and decided to make a profit off it.
Screen Review: “There are very few heroes in this film, and even the ostensibly good guys are deeply complicated” [Full Review]
Oscar nominations: 5
Categories: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Christian Bale), Best Director (Adam McKay), Best Film Editing, and Best Adapted Screenplay
Bridge of Spies
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Tom Hanks, Mark Rylance
Synopsis: James B. Donovan is a Brooklyn insurance claims lawyer, formerly an OSS counsel and assistant prosecutor at Nuremberg. Donovan is pressed into negotiating the first East-West spy exchange in the newly divided Berlin of 1962 and risks some unauthorised political brinkmanship to achieve his ends.
Screen Review: “Unusually for a Spielberg movie, Bridge of Spies is tonally uncertain, to the extent that its box-office may suffer” [Full Review]
Oscar nominations: 6
Categories: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Mark Rylance), Best Original Score, Best Production Design, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Original Screenplay
Screen Feature:
Brooklyn
Director: John Crowley
Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Emory Cohen, Domhnall Gleeson, Julie Walters
Synopsis: Eilis Lacey is a young Irish woman who aims for a better life by moving to New York in 1952 and finding a job as a department-store assistant. When she’s called back to Ireland following a death in the family, she has to choose between her new life in America, including a blossoming romance, and a chance to stay in Ireland and imagine a future with the dependable boy back home.
Screen Review: “Brooklyn is refreshing in one respect: So few migrant tales focus on a female experience.” [Full Review]
Oscar nominations: 3
Categories: Best Picture, Best Actress (Saoirse Ronan), and Best Adapted Screenplay
Screen Feature:
Mad Max
Director: George Miller
Cast: Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron
Synopsis: Max Rockatansk lives in a post-apocalyptic world and is tormented by brief, vivid flashbacks of past atrocities which he failed to prevent. Captured by lawless desert raiders called War Boys, Max is carted off to an outpost known as the Citadel, where his uninfected blood will be harvested as fuel for the War Boys, who do the bidding of their merciless, masked ruler, Immortan Joe.
Screen Review: “Preferring practical effects whenever possible, Miller has crafted an action movie that’s stupendously physical, blessedly lacking the disheartening weightlessness that mars a lot of CGI-heavy blockbusters” [Full Review]
http://www.screendaily.com/reviews/mad-max-fury-road-review/5087602.article
Oscar nominations: 10
Categories: Best Picture, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Director (George Miller), Best Film Editing, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Production Design, Achievement in Visual Effects, Best Sound Editing, and Best Sound Mixing
Screen Feature:
The Martian
Director: Ridley Scott
Cast: Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain
Synopsis: In the near future, plucky astronaut Watney is injured and left stranded on Mars. He uses his ingenuity to stay alive and sustain alife on the Red Planet.
Screen Review: “The storytelling techniques work well enough to keep the film engaging, and Scott keeps the pacing breezy and relatively light.” [Full Review]
Oscar nominations: 7
Categories: Best Picture, Best Actor (Matt Damon), Best Production Design, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, Achievement in Visual Effects, and Best Adapted Screenplay
Screen Feature:
The Revenant
Director: Alejandro G. Iñárritu
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Domhnall Gleeson
Synopsis: Set in the 1820s around the untamed Rocky Mountains of the American West, Glass is a scout hired by an expedition of hunters. This tale of survival and revenge is inspired by true events and based on Michael Punke’s 2002 novel.
Screen Review: “Awe-inspiring visuals are offset by the frequent barbarism of The Revenant’s characters.” [Full Review]
Oscar nominations: 12
Categories: Best Picture, Best Actor (Leonardo DiCaprio), Best Supporting Actor (Tom Hardy), Best Cinematography, Best Director (Alejandro G Ińárritu), Best Costume Design, Best Film Editing, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, Best Production Design, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, and Achievement in Visual Effects
Screen Features:
Room
Director: Lenny Abrahamson
Cast: Brie Larson, Jacob Tremblay
Synopsis: Jack is a five-year-old who lives happily in a small shed with his mother. Unbeknownst to Jack, it soon becomes apparent that they are actually being held captive by a man who kidnapped Jack’s mother seven years ago and has been sexually assaulting her ever since.
Screen Review: Sharply stirs understated emotions, his restraint accentuating the inherently combustible subject matter” [Full Review]
Oscar nominations: 4
Categories: Best Picture, Best Actress (Brie Larson), Best Director (Lenny Abrahamson), and Best Adapted Screenplay
Screen Feature:
Spotlight
Director: Tom McCarthy
Cast: Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber
Synopsis: Based on real events, this procedural drama chronicles how, in 2001, a handful of Boston Globe reporters exposed a widespread cover-up of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.
Screen Review: “A polished, engrossing procedural, Spotlight offers plenty of old-fashioned pleasures — chiefly, the sight of smart, scrappy muckraking journalists stopping at nothing to uncover systematic corruption.” [Full Review]
Oscar nominations: 6
Categories: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Mark Ruffalo), Best Supporting Actress (Rachel McAdams), Best Director (Tom McCarthy), Best Film Editing, and Best Original Screenplay
Screen Features:
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