Now, it is my plan to elaborate more on these movies but for now I'm just going to give a quick rundown of how I'd rank the Best Picture nominees.
9 - Fences
8 - Moonlight
7 - Lion
6 - Manchester By The Sea
5 - Arrival
4 - Hacksaw Ridge
3 - Hell or High Water
2 - Hidden Figures
1 - La La Land
So, considering Nickmitch's recently posted opinions on Moonlight and La La Land, I sense there could be some disagreement between us on those films so I do want to elaborate more on my rankings here. However, I do want to make the disclaimer that although La La Land is my number 1 choice, it's kind of a default choice because it is a weak year and the competition is weak.
Might be more than "some" here, LOL.
Like I said in the review thread, I don't think I saw the same La La Land as everyone else. I'm really glad Moonlight won. I haven't seen all the nominees, but I doubt it could be topped.
Well, not to make this a racial thing, but I also hear that La La Land is about a white guy who's trying to "save" Jazz. And there's nothing wrong with that, on the surface, but I haven't seen the film to judge it any deeper than the description that was given to me. But it's also a musical and outside of Disney animated movies, I don't really like musicals.
A more specific synopsis is that Ryan Gosling is trying to start a jazz club to preserve the music. Light spoiler:
He then joins John Legend's band, so that he can have steady work. The band in question does a highly experimental version of jazz that Gosling doesn't like (and it doesn't look like Legend enjoys it too much himself). There's then a big concert scene where the band performs a fun, pop number. So, the weird racial thing about it was that the only foil to this plot point was John Legend's character. I have some problems drawing this conclusion with the major one being that Gosling is really the only white guy you see
playing jazz. Most everyone else that I could remember was black. Other contention, again, light spoiler:
The song from the big concert scene is decidedly not a jazz number. (Yet another premise abandoned by the film.) They clearly weren't going to do a big scene with intentionally terrible music, and John Legend performed a song that was more like something he would play IRL, with Gosling doing a very half-hearted solo.