Best Picture
“American Sniper”
“Birdman”
“Boyhood”
“The Grand Budapest Hotel”
“The Imitation Game”
“Selma”
“The Theory of Everything”
“Whiplash”
Actor in a Leading Role
Steve Carell, “Foxcatcher”
Bradley Cooper, “American Sniper”
Benedict Cumberbatch, “The Imitation Game”
Michael Keaton, “Birdman”
Eddie Redmayne, “The Theory of Everything”
Actress in a Leading Role
Marion Cotillard, “Two Days One Night”
Felicity Jones, “The Theory of Everything”
Julianne Moore, “Still Alice”
Rosamund Pike, “Gone Girl”
Reese Witherspoon, “Wild”
Actor in a Supporting Role
Robert Duvall, “The Judge”
Ethan Hawke, “Boyhood”
Edward Norton, “Birdman”
Mark Ruffalo, “Foxcatcher”
J.K. Simmons, “Whiplash”
Actress in a Supporting Role
Patricia Arquette, “Boyhood”
Laura Dern, “Wild”
Emma Stone, “Birdman”
Keira Knightley, “The Imitation Game”
Meryl Streep, “Into the Woods”
Directing
Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, “Birdman”
Richard Linklater, “Boyhood”
Wes Anderson, “The Grand Budapest Hotel”
Morten Tyldum, “The Imitation Game”
Bennett Miller, “Foxcatcher”
Foreign Language Film
“Ida”
“Leviathan”
“Tangerines”
“Wild Tales”
“Timbuktu”
Writing – Adapted Screenplay
Graham Moore, “The Imitation Game”
Damien Chazelle, “Whiplash”
Anthony McCarten, “The Theory of Everything”
Jason Hall, “American Sniper”
Paul Thomas Anderson, “Inherent Vice”
Writing – Original Screenplay
Richard Linklater, “Boyhood”
Alejandro González Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris and Armando Bo, “Birdman”
Wes Anderson and Hugo Guinness, “The Grand Budapest Hotel”
Dan Gilroy, “Nightcrawler”
E. Max Frye and Dan Futterman, “Foxcatcher”
Cinematography
Emmanuel Lubezki, “Birdman”
Roger Deakins, “Unbroken”
Robert D. Yeoman, “The Grand Budapest Hotel”
Dick Pope, “Mr. Turner”
Lukasz Zal and Ryszard Lynzewski, “Ida”
Music – Original Score
Hans Zimmer, “Interstellar”
Alexandre Desplat, “The Imitation Game”
Johann Johannsson, “The Theory of Everything”
Alexandre Desplat, “The Grand Budapest Hotel”
Gary Yershon, “Mr Turner”
Makeup and Hairstyling
“Foxcatcher”
“The Grand Budapest Hotel”
“Guardians of the Galaxy”
Costume Design
Colleen Atwood, “Into the Woods”
Anna B. Sheppard, “Maleficent”
Milena Canonero, “The Grand Budapest Hotel”
Jacqueline Durran, “Mr. Turner”
Mark Bridges, “Inherent Vice”
Music – Original Song
“Glory” by Common and John Legend, “Selma”
“Lost Stars” by Gregg Alexander, Danielle Brisebois, Nick Lashley and Nick Southwood, “Begin Again”
“Everything Is Awesome” by Shawn Patterson, “The LEGO Movie”
“I’m Not Gonna Miss You,” by Glen Campbell, “Glenn Campbell: I’ll Be Me”
“Grateful,” “Beyond the lights”
Visual Effects
“Interstellar”
“Dawn of the Planet of the Apes”
“Guardians of the Galaxy”
“Captain America: Winter Soldier”
“X-Men: Days of Future Past”
Documentary Short Subject
“Crisis Hotline: Veterans Press 1”
“Joanna”
“Our Curse”
“White Earth”
“The Reaper”
Documentary Feature
“Citizenfour”
“Last Days in Vietnam”
“Virunga”
“The Salt of the Earth”
“Finding Vivian Maier”
Film Editing
Sandra Adair, “Boyhood”
Tom Cross, “Whiplash”
William Goldenberg, “The Imitation Game”
Joel Cox and Gary Roach, “American Sniper”
Barney Pilling, “The Grand Budapest Hotel”
Sound Editing
“Interstellar”
“Unbroken”
“The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies”
“American Sniper”
“Birdman”
Sound Mixing
Mark Weingarten, “Interstellar”
Thomas Curley, ”Whiplash”
“Unbroken”
“American Sniper”
“Birdman”
Production Design
“Into the Woods”
“The Grand Budapest Hotel”
“Interstellar”
“The Imitation Game”
“Mr. Turner”
Short Film – Live Action
“Boogaloo and Graham”
“Aya”
“Butterlamp”
“Parvenah”
“The Phone Call”
Short Film – Animated
“Feast”
“The Bigger Picture”
“A Single Life”
“The Dam Keeper”
“Me and My Moulton”
Animated Feature Film
“Big Hero 6”
“How to Train Your Dragon 2”
“The Boxtrolls”
“The Tale of the Princess Kaguya”
“Song of the Sea”
Interviewers love talking with Robert Downey Jr., not just because he’s one of the biggest movie stars in the world, but also because he’s a one-man quote machine.
Walking into a room full of Canadian reporters to chat up his latest film, The Judge, he’s wearing a festooned shirt — and that is the only word that can be used to describe his flamboyant sartorial choice — with a pattern that resembled a bisected tree trunk. More intriguingly he carried a small green, nondescript box.
Asked what was inside he said, “I have distilled socialism in this box. It wasn’t easy. I’m bringing it back to America.”
And the quotes kept coming.
The Judge is a family drama about Hank, a hotshot, big-city lawyer who returns to his hometown for his mother’s funeral. He’s been estranged from his father, Judge Joseph Palmer (Robert Duvall), for years — “He’s dead to me” — but is forced to re-examine everything he knows about his dad when the judge is accused of murder.
Downey says, “I found myself crying all the time,” (great quote No. 2 for those keeping track) during filming, but not because he was reflecting back on his own life. “I got caught up in the reality the movie expresses,” he says. “Hank’s mom’s funeral is every funeral and Hank’s cut-off with his dad is every cut-off that anyone has ever had. It’s not even particularly a father-son story because the judge could have been the mom. I just think about these family dynamics and they light up constellations that are very emotional” (great quote No. 3!).
He describes shooting the movie as a “weird game of Sudoku” (great quote No. 4) in terms of making sure the emotional moments didn’t stack up against one another, blunting their impact.
“You can’t just play 120 catharses in a row,” he says. “I hate it when I see that in movies. It’s like, ‘All right, is everyone always crying in real life?’”
The first step in finding the character meant not allowing his Hollywood persona to bleed into Hank. “That was the first thing I had to smash,” he says.
“Hank is really observing this situation that’s happening around him and to him and he becomes this person who has to go through this terrible and wonderful crucible. It was really just about doing less and less and less and less and I like being busy. I like to talk and I like to be active and all that stuff, so sometimes I felt like I was literally just sitting on my hands.”
He leaves us with one last great quote that sums up his emotional response to the film. “It kicks me in the stomach in the nicest way.”
You get value for your money in Robert Downey’s Jr’s new film “The Judge.” Stepping away from the superhero movies that made him a household name, he stars in a film with so many story shards and plot derivations you need a scorecard to keep up.
It’s a legal drama. No, it’s a manboy coming-of-age story. Wait! It’s also romance, a dramedy, a father-and-son tale and a mystery. The only genres missing are horror and science fiction and I suspect they will be included on the director’s cut Blu Ray.
Downey Jr is Hank Palmer, a hotshot defense lawyer. He’ll do anything to win and is proud of it. “Everybody wants Atticus Finch,” he says, “until there’s a dead hooker in the hot tub.” In court he’s Iron Man, an unstoppable force with a thick skin and a quick line. He’s the same outside of court as well, except when it comes to his father.
He’s been estranged from Judge Joseph Palmer (Robert Duvall) for years—“He’s dead to me.”—but is forced to see him when his mother passes away. Returning to his hometown of Carlinville, Indiana for the funeral Hank must confront the life he left behind—ex-girlfriend Samantha (Vera Farmiga), brothers Glen (Vincent D’Onofrio) and Dale (Jeremy Strong) and his cold-fish father. The quick in-and-out trip is extended, however, when the Judge is accused of murder and Hank becomes his lawyer.
“The Judge” feels like Oscar bait. It’s a long movie with a wide story arc that gives its leads ample opportunity to strut their stuff. Downey hands in a solid, if somewhat familiar performance while Duvall plays elder statesman, resurrecting the alpha male feel of “The Great Santini.” Both are used to good effect and the supporting cast keeps things humming along despite a story that pushes credulity to the limit.
The devil is in the details and when the details, no matter how small they are, verge on silly, they become a distraction.
Most of the silly stuff comes in the form of the clues Hank pieces together while forming the Judge’s defense and the trial itself. There will be no spoilers here, but suffice to say the whole thing hinges on a bit of information so implausible that it gives new meaning to the term suspension of disbelief. Trouble is, it didn’t have to be that way. There were any number of ways to establish the point in question (OK, HERE’S AMILD SPOILER ALERT: It involves chemotherapy and a cottage) without trying so hard, but that’s not the kind of film this is.
“The Judge” is the hardest working movie in show business. It’s a film that wants to check all the boxes and tries just a little too hard. Downey and Co. float above it all, however, touching down every now and again to introduce a new plot twist and deliver the occasional touching moment.
“My father’s a lot of unpleasant things. A murderer’s not one of them.”
That’s how Robert Downey Jr. describes his father, the titular character in this weekend’s legal thriller The Judge. Robert Duvall plays the irascible old judge, who, when accused of vehicular manslaughter, must reluctantly rely on his estranged lawyer son for a defence in court. While he’s on the bench, he’s a no-nonsense justice who doles out old-fashioned common sense along with his judgments. In one case, he makes a deadbeat dad hand over his brand-new truck to his ex-wife, joining a long list of movie magistrates who have meted out law and order on the big screen.
Remember Fred Gwynne as My Cousin Vinny’s Judge Chamberlain Haller —his classic question, “What is a yoot?” may be one of the most famous movie lines delivered from the bench — but how about Judge Doom, the much feared judge of Toontown? As played by Christopher Lloyd in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, he presides over a town of cartoon characters, punishing lawbreakers with the dreaded Dip, a bubbling vat of turpentine, acetone and benzene that “erases” them. His mission is to pin the murder of Marvin Acme on Roger Rabbit. “I’ll catch the rabbit, I’ll try him, convict him and execute him!”
Everyone has heard the term “judge, jury and executioner,” but Judge Dredd adds one more title, police officer. Set in 2080, this Sylvester Stallone movie sees the justice system boiled down to Street Judges who enforce the laws and dole out instant justice. When Joseph Dredd is convicted for a crime he didn’t commit, he must prove his innocence. “The evidence has been falsified! It’s impossible! I never broke the law, I AM THE LAW!”
Finally, a more conventional judge is seen in Anatomy of a Murder, the 1959 Otto Preminger film about an army lieutenant accused of murdering a bartender who attacked his wife. The all-star cast — defence attorney James Stewart, George C. Scott as the prosecutor, Ben Gazzara and Lee Remick as the defendant and his wife — was presided over by real-life lawyer Joseph N. Welch as Judge Weaver. Welch made several pictures, but is best remembered as the attorney who represented the Army in the McCarthy hearings and scolded the Communist-hunting senator with the famous words, “Have you no sense of decency, sir?” when he verbally attacked a member of Welch’s law firm.
I’ve done this a long time, but on Friday as I sat next to Boo Radley, Lt. Col. William “Bill” Kilgore and Tom Hagan, all rolled up in the form of Robert Duvall, I don’t mind admitting I was star struck.
Even though he was one of the most quotable actors I had spoken to during the opening days of TIFF — for instance he said, “I call Billy Bob Thornton the hillbilly Orson Welles.” — while he was talking all I could hear were his lines from his famous movies rolling around in my head.
Getting an up close and personal look at the 83-year-old Oscar winner, brought back memories of him as Apocalypse Now’s warmongering Kilgore, shirtless kneeling down to tell his soldiers, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning,“ and Don Corleone’s loyal adopted son Tom in The Godfather. “He never asks a second favor when he’s been refused a first.”
The actor was at TIFF to discuss the opening night film The Judge. He stars opposite Robert Downey Jr. as an erasable old judge, who, when accused of vehicular manslaughter must reluctantly rely on his estranged lawyer son for a defense in court. Luckily I pulled myself together long enough to take some notes.
When he’s asked what it’s like to play a mean character, he says, “Who’s mean? What’s mean about him? He’s a human being.”
He adds, “I almost didn’t take this but once I took it I had to jump in. There are so many negative things about the guy.”
But when asked if he’s afraid to immerse himself in negative characters, his answer turns into a master class on acting. “Why would I be afraid? Once I commit to do it, I’ll do it. I just wonder about it sometimes. Is it worth it to show those negative aspects of somebody?
“But Shakespeare said you hold a mirror up to nature. You try and approximate life as much as possible. Brando used to watch Candid Camera. You try and watch things as closely as you can. You learn from life and you try and represent life as accurately as possible. There’s no right or wrong, there’s just truthful and untruthful.”
He’s a living legend, a star whose career spans six decades, but he’s not nostalgic for the past.
“I think movies are better than ever now. The actors are better. There’s room for everybody now. If you go world wide, I think the actors are better than ever.”
As for his own career, he has more movies on tap, including one he’s directing, starring his wife Luciana Pedraza as a “lady Texas Ranger.” “I got a few more left in me before they wipe the drool,” he says.
Oscar nods: 87th Academy Award nominations announced on “Canada AM” with Richard, Beverly Thomson, Marci Ien and Deadline’s Pete Hammond.
