The MacGuffin

Remember that one girl in school that everyone hated? She was the popular girl with the hot boyfriend that everyone felt was destined for great things? In Young Adult, Mavis (Charlize Theron) was this girl, and she has never really gotten over the high school life entirely. Her job is writing young adult books about a popular girl in high school, so she has been able to live this part of her life over and over in her head. Beyond that, her days are spent getting drunk and keeping herself beautiful and fit.

I think Top 10 lists are fun. Many critics write beleaguered sorts of “I don’t really want to be doing this and it’s stupid and rankings are meaningless” disclaimers at the beginning of their lists. Ugh. Look, it should go without saying that any list (or review) is a reflection of the writer’s personality and their un-duplicate-able individual experience. If you’ve read the rest of my writing this year, you will not be shocked by my list. What I’d like to say before I dive in I don’t consider to be a disclaimer, but just necessary context: the films I didn’t/couldn’t see that are on my mind anyway.

Trying to figure out the Best Picture Oscars is based on looking at many things, including: what actors are in it, what director is making the film, whether it’s the kind of film the Academy has responded to in the past, and just plain old guesswork. Also, I am not saying these will be the best movies of the year, just the ones that could strike the Academy’s taste. Keeping that in mind, here are a list of seven more movies that I think have potential to be Best Picture contenders.

If there’s one thing I hope I’ve done with this column so far, it’s show that though the overall percentages may be very skewed toward male filmmakers, there are many, many interesting projects out there being made by women. The numbers are getting better all the time, too—for this list of my five anticipated projects, I really had a hard time narrowing things down. Creating excitement and buzz for these films before they’re released is almost as important as seeing them when they are, so if I can contribute to that just a little bit, I’ll be a happier person.

I get why (2009), from screenwriter Diablo Cody and director Karyn Kusama, wasn’t going to be loved by everyone. Probably the two genres that are the most subjective as far as whether they “work” for a viewer are horror and comedy, and a mash-up of those two things provides a wide scope of ways a movie might go wrong for someone. You’ve got to be Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright to pull off something that’ll be nearly universally loved. I’m also aware that the stylized dialogue that many view as Cody’s signature grates on some—I fall into the camp of not always wanting movie characters to sound like real people, but it’s fine if you do. (Even though it still hurts me how much Allen disliked Juno…)