The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences won’t announce its Oscar nominations until Jan. 24. But that doesn’t mean film fans, critics and professionals must wait until then to complain about the choices. Every year, in fact, the academy releases shortlists for certain categories before the final lists are set. And every year, the academy makes inexplicable decisions that have film buffs scratching their heads.
Right now, it’s the shortlist of films competing for the Oscar for best documentary feature that has many of us crying foul. The academy recently released its list of 15 films selected to advance to the next stage of the process.
| Kelly Jane Torrance is The Washington Examiner movie critic. Her reviews appear weekly and she can be reached at [email protected]. |
Some excellent films made the cut. “Project Nim” was ostensibly about a chimpanzee raised alongside humans in an attempt to prove that animals other than humans have the innate capacity for language; instead, it told us more about the creatively destructive hippies who raised him. “Bill Cunningham New York” was also larger than its subject, the man who photographs cleverly creative New Yorkers for the New York Times’ Sunday Styles section.
But even with 15 movies on the list — nearly 10 percent of the 124 films considered — some of the best documentaries of the year were left out.
The biggest omission was that of “Into the Abyss.” Werner Herzog’s feature exploring capital punishment in America was not just one of the best documentaries of the year; it was one of the best films of the year. It was also one of the most intriguing surprises: Herzog is against the death penalty, but made a fair film that is likely to leave most viewers content in the knowledge that an evil man has been removed from our midst.
Academy committee members prefer to labor in anonymity, so we don’t know why they chose, say, “Jane’s Journey,” a debut feature doc about chimp researcher Jane Goodall that features Angelina Jolie, over entries from masters like Herzog. We can only guess. “Into the Abyss” and others got some of the biggest releases of documentaries this year, so one wonders if there’s a sort of snobbery at work here.
Some want to see one of the shortlisted films cut from consideration — more earnestly than any critic could. “Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory” is the third in a set of films made by Joe Berlinger about the West Memphis Three, a trio of men convicted as teenagers in 1994 of the murders of three boys found naked and dead in a ditch in Arkansas. The three were released from jail in August after pleading guilty to lesser charges.
After the academy released the shortlist, the parents of one of the dead boys asked in a letter to the organization that they not allow the film to be considered for an Oscar. “We implore the Academy not to reward our child’s killers and the directors who have profited from one of the greatest frauds ever perpetrated under the guise of a documentary film,” Todd and Dana Moore wrote.
The Oscar ceremony this year could be a lot more interesting than usual.
