Don't Think Twice

Many writers have said that they like young characters because they're in their formative years.  They're still figuring out where they want to go, who they want to be with, what they want to do.

But in the 21st century, this process of figuring things out can last well beyond high school and college.  People in their 20s and 30s can now stay single and pursue dream careers that many would have bypassed for family and a "real job" in decades past.  Whether they achieve these dreams, though, is another matter.  "Don't Think Twice" is a movie that expertly explores this dynamic.

The film focuses on an improv comedy group called The Commune.  Its members dream of starring on "Weekend Live" (a very thinly veiled version of "Saturday Night Live").  One of them, Jack, actually does get hired.  The film nicely demonstrates the tension that arises between Jack and his friends in The Commune; they're happy for him, but not as disappointed as they are that they weren't the ones chosen.

Meanwhile, the other members are starting to realize they may never make it.  Miles may not have the talent.  Bill has the talent, but he may never catch his big break.  Allison may not have applied herself enough.  In 2016, you can pursue your dreams unencumbered by the obligation to start a family and settle down.  But success is no more likely than it ever was; it still takes lots of hard work, talent, and luck.

And how do we even define success?  Perhaps the most talented member of The Commune, Samantha, discovers that she loves improv so much that she may not want to give it up for stardom.  As ever, true success is about finding happiness where you are.

Southside With You

The opening credits of "Southside With You," writer-director Richard Tanne's film about the Obamas' first date, are set to Janet Jackson's bombastic "Miss You Much."  The credit font is very '80s, scribbles in hot pink.  The message is clear: this will be a different sort of story about the First Couple, one that brings them back down to earth from the rarefied heights they've reached.

Tanne has compared his film to Richard Linklater's "Before" trilogy.  It's an apt comparison in terms of structure; like those movies, this one follows a couple over the course of a few hours.  But the "Before" characters are fictional.  They can be used as constructs to discuss matters of youth, romance, parenting.  The Obamas are flesh and blood people, and on a first date they spend much of their time recounting biographical details that are already familiar to viewers--or could be easily learned about elsewhere.  Barack's tussling with the ghost of his father is much less resonant in a film when the real one already wrote an entire book on the subject.

Tanne does try to communicate the everyday struggles of a young Barack and Michelle, which mostly center around their challenges as young black lawyers at a prestigious firm dominated by whites.  But he can't resist throwing in a speech to a community group about the diversity of our nation that sounds an awful lot like a warm-up for Barack's 2004 speech to the Democratic National Convention.

Tanne's tin ear for dialogue doesn't help.  (After the speech, Michelle says, "Thank you for inviting me.  It's been a while since I've been in contact with real-life issues like that.")  But his bigger problem might be that a movie like this simply isn't worthwhile.  The Obamas aren't some distant figures from history; we already know them quite well.  They appear on late-night talk shows.  They do the Dougie.  They tweet.  They're not even out of the White House yet.  It will be some time before we can say that we miss them much.

Girls, "Love Stories" and "I Love You Baby"

Season finales on "Girls" tend to be happy affairs.  End of season one: Jessa's getting married!  End of season two: Adam saves Hannah!  End of season three: Hannah's going to Iowa!  End of season four: Hannah has a new boyfriend!

The subsequent seasons undermine these apparent happy endings.  Season two revealed Jessa's marriage to be a shitshow.  Season three saw Hannah and Adam drifting apart.  Season four proved that grad school is not a great place for Hannah.  Season five saw the unraveling of Hannah's new relationship.

But the end of season five may finally prove to be a turning point for these girls.  They're finally starting to try new behaviors, instead of just trying new things.

Hannah has a run-in with a friend from college named Tally, played by Jenny Slate.  Slate's appearance is Exhibit A for why I wish this show had more guest stars.  Her monologue on being a successful author is one of the standout moments of the series; in examining how she's become divorced from her own persona, Lena Dunham comes as close as she ever has to capturing the disorienting nature of fame.

Tally is invaluable for Hannah's character arc as well.  As Hannah catches Tally up on all the crazy stuff she's been up to over the course of the series, we start to realize that she's been through a lot in just a couple years.  And she's starting to wise up; she knows not to trust her instinct to try to make Adam and Jessa's lives hell.  Instead, she lets it go, and turns her inner turmoil into a terrific monologue for a podcast.  Maybe all those mistakes we've seen her make were just her way of learning how to be an adult.

Marnie has a breakthrough of her own in the wake of a truly weird sexual dream involving Ray.  Marnie's a strange character, a type-A personality who's been consistently flailing since graduation.  But she's now realizing her problem: she's been pursuing what she thinks will impress other people, rather than following her own muse.  No one's going to be impressed by Ray.  But he makes her happy.

Shoshanna's storyline may be my favorite.  She comes up with a novel strategy to compete with Helvetica, the new coffee shop across the street from Ray's: court the anti-hipster demographic.  "We need to sell coffee to people with jobs" is her hilarious pitch.  And she does it with flair, courting media attention by putting up signs that say things like "Trust the Government."  What I like most about this storyline is that it doesn't involve a boyfriend.  No doubt she'll get a new beau as part of her happy ending next season.  But it's nice to see the show remind us that these girls don't need men to be happy.

And, finally, we come to Jessa.  I may never be totally at peace with the Jessa-Adam relationship.  When it first developed, these were my objections:

1. Hannah was inevitably going to find out and throw yet another temper tantrum.
2. These characters never showed any chemistry before.
3. The whole premise that Jessa doesn't want to upset Hannah is undermined by the fact that Hannah and Jessa never seem to have any positive interactions.
4. Despite the fact that there are 8.4 million people in New York City, "Girls" sometimes seems determined to only pair off its main characters.  Adam has now dated Hannah and Jessa.  Ray has now dated Shoshanna and Marnie.  It's a bit tiring to see them stay within this circle of friends who are "poor and mean," as Elijah memorably put it.

To the writers' credit, they solved the first problem by using the relationship as a springboard to a more mature Hannah.  The other problems are probably unsolvable at this point.  There's a bit of a "wobbling Jenga tower" feel to this show by now.  But it can probably stay up for another season.

Girls, "Homeward Bound"

On one level, you could view "Girls" as an audacious experiment in seeing how unlikable it can make its protagonists.  This may seem like nothing new; we live in the age of TV antiheroes.  But most of those bad boys (and they're mostly boys) are also badasses.  Tony Soprano is charismatic as well as cunning.  Walter White is a monster, but a brilliant one.  Don Draper offers Madison Avenue cool to help disguise his misogyny.

Our four titular girls are not quite so impressive.  True, they may not be wholly off-putting.  Hannah can write and joke, Marnie can sing, Shoshanna is sweet and diligent, and Jessa is the ultimate Cool Girl.  But "Girls" spends far more time focusing on the "warts" part of the "warts and all" equation.  This approach reaches its apotheosis in "Homeward Bound."

Consider the awful behavior on display: Hannah dumps Fran at the outset of their vacation, then sexually assaults and ditches Ray.  Shoshanna does a poor little rich girl routine, whining that she's going to have to go on welfare as she eats sushi.  Jessa is preoccupied with her feud with Hannah as Adam struggles to care for his nephew, who's been abandoned.  Marnie appears reasonable in trying to deal with Desi at a recording session, but their problems are framed as a byproduct of her anger management issues.

What's really amazing about "Homeward Bound" is the gender divide on display.  While the girls are being terrible, the boys are struggling to be decent.  Fran practically begs Hannah to let him give her a ride back to the city.  When she refuses, Ray comes up to get her.  She eventually hitchhikes with still another man, who turns out to be a victim rather than a perpetrator of domestic violence.  Meanwhile, Adam and Laird step up to the plate in caring for poor little Sample while Jessa whines.  Marnie's storyline is the exception that proves the rule: Desi is as terrible as ever, but he's enabled by a new girlfriend whose idea of conflict resolution apparently involves blaming Marnie for everything.

Look, we all know where "Girls" is going.  Our heroines will plunge to new lows, then emerge with a newfound sense of maturity, only to see it tested in the final season and come out stronger than ever.  But do they all have to hit rock bottom at the same time?

Girls, "Hello Kitty"

In my review of the "Girls" season premiere, I discussed how the show can create great moments on the backs of somewhat shaky storylines.  Let's take a look at a few such moments from "Hello Kitty":

Hannah learns of Adam and Jessa's relationship: For me, the most tiresome aspect of the Adam-Jessa tryst is that we knew this moment was coming.  Hannah was going to find out and have yet another meltdown about how the universe was conspiring against her.

But give the show credit: I had expected this moment to come in the season finale.  Instead, it comes in the seventh episode of the season, moving things along more briskly.  Moreover, the moment when Hannah finds out what's been going on is absolutely masterful, a purely cinematic sequence.  There's no dialogue at all, just Hannah looking at a statue representing a rape and murder, then Jessa mooning at Adam, then Adam coolly smoking a cigarette.  The sudden realization that sweeps over Hannah's face is almost Hitchcockian.  (And Jessa's clumsy "Hello/goodbye" to Hannah at the end of the episode--while unusually awkward for the character--is a great example of how this sort of thing would go in real life.)

Elijah learns of Dill's dalliances: While in line for drinks at a swank party thrown by Dill, Elijah meets another of Dill's lovers.  The guest proceeds to inform Elijah of Dill's many boyfriends with such cold-bloodedness that I almost believed he didn't mean any harm, that he assumed Elijah knew the deal.  But given that this is the "Girls" universe, where, as Elijah says, most of the characters are "mean and poor," this has to go down as one of the most deliciously passive-aggressive moves on a show full of them.

Desi returns to Marnie: Just when she thought she was out...he pulled her back in.  Desi is an excellent example of the "Girls" conundrum.  As a reliably narcissistic idiot, he's comic gold:

"We have to get back together!"
"Yeah...wait, you mean the band, right?"
"...yeah, totally."

Hilarious.  But the two-dimensional nature of the character, which makes him so effective from a comic standpoint, also makes him much less interesting from a dramatic one.  We already know what he's going to do: try to get in Marnie's pants.  Perhaps that will involve a reprise of their relationship.  Perhaps that will involve something darker, possibly a sexual assault.  Either way, it's not a great sign when it's this easy to predict where the writing staff is going.

Girls, "The Panic in Central Park"

Standalone episodes for supporting characters seem to be having a moment on TV right now.  "Better Call Saul" and "The Leftovers" have recently used them.  They're following in the footsteps of "Orange is the New Black," which uses flashbacks focusing on characters who mostly stay in the background.  OITNB, in turn, has been building off the lesson of the capital-G Great shows, "The Wire," "The Sopranos," and "Mad Men," all of which featured sprawling casts with interesting players that the writers could drop in on from time to time.  Supporting characters may not be able to carry their own show, but they're often interesting enough to merit their own episode.

I was particularly excited to learn that this episode would focus on Marnie.  She's my favorite character on the "Girls," mostly for comedic reasons.  Marnface is simply hilarious; she lacks so much self awareness that she once sang "I'm not aware of too many things" for a music video which she then immortalized on YouTube.

However, "The Panic in Central Park" focuses on Marnie from a dramatic standpoint, which is probably a wise move.  She's interesting from this perspective as well: she probably got better grades than any of the other three titular characters--and she's certainly the prettiest--but she has made less progress than any of them toward where she wants to be in life.

After another absurd meltdown by Desi in their cramped apartment, Marnie goes for a walk and runs into her ex, Charlie.  This was quite a surprise: Christopher Abbott left the show shortly before the third season started shooting, leaving the producers scrambling.  When Marnie asks why the hell he left and he responds that he was going through some issues, it feels like the show is getting something off its chest.

Charlie has changed a lot.  Some of it is superficial--he's bearded, tanned, and tattooed--but he's also acting differently.  Eventually we learn that he's a heroin addict, which the show does a nice job of slowly teasing out.  He's impulsive.  He goes to the bathroom a lot.  He deals cocaine.  He lives in a crappy apartment in a bad neighborhood.  When the big reveal finally comes, the show does a nice job of underplaying it.  Marnie simply walks out, which feels more true to life than the kind of melodramatic confrontation that would typically come on a TV show.

Luckily for her, Marnie spends a night with Charlie before learning of his habit, because she gains some much-needed perspective from him.  He teaches her to go with the flow, to not try to change people.  Most importantly, he reminds her that she can change her life whenever she wants.  When he fantasizes about running a store with her, she seriously considers the idea.  And while she's too uptight to drop everything and move away, she does muster up the strength to ditch that awful husband of her's.

All in all, a terrific episode.  One quibble, though: since when does using heroin lead to weight gain?

Girls, "Queen for Two Days"

"Girls" typically has at least one episode per season where the humor runs a little broader.  With Shoshanna exploring the Hello Kitty playground that is Japan and Hannah and her mom going to a "Spring Queening" retreat, "Queen for Two Days" is absolutely that episode.  The tiresome Jessa-Adam storyline even has a nice comic moment as Adam, following Jessa's instructions, pretends he forgot to pull out.  ("Coach is gonna kill me!")

Unfortunately, for some reason these sillier episodes tend to be more on-the-nose in their messaging.  Do we really need Shoshanna's ex-boss to tell us that Japan offers valuable life lessons?  Or one of the older women at the retreat to lament that she'd love a gay husband?

Still, "Queen for Two Days" has some worthwhile moments.  We eventually learn that, despite putting on a brave face, Shoshanna is actually miserable in Japan.  It makes sense that she'd feel out of sorts.  While someone like Jessa would just accept the differences and roll with it, Shoshanna is too rigid for that.

Meanwhile, Hannah's mother faces an interesting choice.  With lengthening lifespans, divorce is becoming more common for people approaching retirement.  But with age comes the knowledge that it's unwise to expect too much from love.  Hannah's dad may be gay, but he's great at Scrabble and can do a mean Chris Rock impression.  Sometimes settling is the wisest path.

Girls, "Old Loves"

The fourth episode of a "Girls" season has typically been a significant one.  (This was most notable in season 2, when "It's a Shame About Ray" pulled things together after the show had been floundering.) Given that this is a half-hour show with a lot of dramatic elements, it makes sense that it would take time for it to build to a crescendo.

But the crescendo doesn't mean much if the tune is no good.  This fourth episode does build to a climactic montage, but the centerpiece of it is the consummation of the frustrating Adam-Jessa relationship.  Although their sex is endearingly awkward, having both characters say "I've wanted this for a long time" doesn't make it any more believable.

As the title "Old Loves" implies, most of the rest of the episode is concerned with showing cracks in the facades of more developed relationships.  Fresh off their battle over nude selfies, Hannah and Fran have a prickly argument over grading.  Fran rather presumptuously starts marking up the grammar on one of Hannah's student's papers, showing an irritating type-A side to his personality.  Hannah, of course, does not respond well.  Rather than make an excuse  ("I spilled coffee on it!") and ask the student for another copy, she drags the poor young pupil into her boyfriend drama.

Hannah is told that she just needs to work things out by Marnie, who's having her own problems in her new marriage.  (This is the one terrific moment of the episode: we're always projecting our own situations onto the issues of others.)  Marnie is deluding herself that her marriage will work if she tries to be the bigger person.  But she's already the bigger person.  The imbalance between her and Desi has never been more clear.  Marnie has the fundamental tools, the drive and intelligence, to succeed.  She's just making bad choices right now.  Desi, on the other hand, is simply a fuck up, as demonstrated by his meltdown over the $3,000 wall he attempted to put up in their tiny apartment.

Perhaps an even bigger imbalance exists between Elijah and his new celebrity beau Dill.  Dill makes a (rather too) unsubtle threat about crossing him, and then more or less uses him as a sex toy in bed.  As Elijah looks at the gorgeous view from Dill's apartment, it's already clear that he'll be facing a Faustian dilemma.  Should he give up on love and do it (literally) for the money?

That kind of problem highlights one of the disappointments of "Girls": it hasn't done much to tackle the financial struggles of millenials.  The major conflict of the pilot is Hannah's quest to get more money from her parents, yet the show has rarely been interested in the challenges of paying the rent.  The characters' jobs only come up when it becomes convenient from a plot standpoint.  (Shoshanna's recent firing, for example, is designed to set up a love triangle, not put her in dire financial straits, though that may be a side effect.)  The show has barely tried to explain how Elijah, Marnie, and Desi make it in what may be the most expensive city in human history.  Jessa's sudden allusion to her "studies"--without even spending 10 seconds of expository dialogue to explain just what those are--shows how blinkered this show can be.

Girls, "Japan"

"What a breath of fresh air!" thought Shoshanna, and probably all "Girls" viewers, as she steps out to her commute in the Land of the Rising Sun.  This show has explored a small slice of New York life for such a long time that any new settings and characters that mix things up are welcome.

And there's more than just the novelty of loudly colored apartments and sauna breaks at work here.  Shoshanna's time in Japan gives the show the opportunity to explore what can get lost in translation.  Both literally, as she and Yoshi struggle to communicate in broken English, and figuratively, as Shoshanna deals with Japanese assumptions about American girls.  (Just as Americans make assumptions about those abroad.)  But in spite of Yoshi's friends' best efforts to treat Shosh as a slut at a BDSM club, these two connect just as any two people might in any culture.  Some things, thankfully, are universal.

And some things are just universal on TV shows.  "I'm not doing the 'Will they or won't they?' thing," Jessa insists.  But referencing the trope you're using doesn't make it feel any less tired.  As Jessa and Adam review his performance on a show in the vein of "Law and Order" and make cute eyes at one another, it's depressing to see these prickly characters pushed into the same old familiar boxes.  Thankfully, they can't be totally contained.  Adam's performance on the show-within-the-show really is good.  (While at the same time slightly hilarious, as Lucy Liu tells him, "Brother, we're both from the streets.")  And his little awkward dance after Jessa leaves is a marvel.  The man continues to push the limits of what acting in a conventional TV show can be.

Meanwhile, you're not going to believe this, but we've got a storyline about how selfish and unreasonable Hannah is!  After she discovers pictures of naked women on Jake's phone, it seems for a thrilling moment that Jake is going to turn out to have a creepy dark side.  But it turns out he just needs masturbation material and is morally opposed to porn.  (Hannah has taken her own nude selfies, but she strikes an awkward pose, as she demonstrates in an amusing photo shoot with Ray and Elijah.)  This is a profoundly first-world problem.  But I suspect that there is more to Jake's collection than he's letting on.  Here's hoping that it leads to a discussion of monogamy as a construct, as Marnie puts it.

Girls, "Good Man"

Any show fortunate to live a long life is going to have some episodes that feel pretty inconsequential.  It's inevitable: more than 20 hours into a show, particularly a relatively light one like "Girls," not everything is going to feel like compelling drama.

Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner, the cowriters of "Good Man," come up with a pretty good solution to this problem: they throw a ton of stuff at the audience so that the energy never flags.  (Now we know why last week's episode felt like a cost-cutter, neglecting to show any of the non-principal wedding guests.  This week is bursting at the seams with characters.  All those actors didn't come cheap.)

Fran moves in with Hannah after his roommate experiences a psychotic break.  Hannah teaches Phillip Roth to eighth-graders, which is just a prelude to her helping her dad through the aftermath of an awkward sexual encounter.  Adam visits his niece, which is just a prelude to him continuing his courtship of Jessa.  Elijah gets a new suitor, who just happens to be a famous news anchor.

The strongest of these storylines is Hannah's time with her father.  Up until now, the "Hannah's dad is gay" subplot has mostly been used for jokes about how Hannah doesn't want to hear her parents talk about icky sex stuff.  But "Good Man" moves things into more dramatic territory.  Hannah meets her dad's new fling and learns that he's a pretty nice guy.  She takes a stormy phone call from her mother, who's demanding a divorce.  These developments are forcing Hannah to view her parents as the messy, flawed human beings they are.  It's a tough lesson that people tend to learn as they start treating their parents as peers rather than authority figures.

Unfortunately, the other material here just doesn't measure up.  Adam and Jessa's developing relationship continues to make no sense.  Wouldn't these two have hooked up already if they had such a strong connection?  Even leaving that aside, their day spent mooning over each other at a carnival didn't feel true to these characters.  Adam and Jessa are both impulsive people making a bad decision.  This feels like the kind of fling where two people suddenly collide and then instantly regret it, not something that would develop through puppy dog love.

Meanwhile, Ray faces stiff competition from a neighboring coffee shop.  This thread isn't completely devoid of worthwhile material.  Helvetica is a pretty great name for an annoying store.  And Ray's confrontation with a barista of ambiguous gender is a great illustration of a peril of living in New York.  But this feels like a rerun of Ray's storyline from last season, in which he got pissed off about something and found a way to take action.  Will Ray use his political muscle to force Helvetica to use lids?  I may need some coffee to stay awake for this storyline.

Girls, "Wedding Day"

There's a scene in the fifth season premiere of "Girls" which perfectly encapsulates the frustrations of this show.  Ray, who considers Hannah to be like a "little sister," is interrogating Fran on his intentions with her.  He soon begins a rant on how men mistreat women before landing on the real source of his discontentment: Marnie is about to marry the idiot Desi.  And Marnie is, according to Ray, "the love of my life."  Ray then learns from Desi's friend that Marnie is his eighth fiancee.

It's a nice little scene.  The camera placement is smart.  The acting is solid.  The writing is witty.  (Ray asks Fran if he just wants a "push in the bush.")  There's just one problem: the scene makes no sense.

Why does Ray care about Hannah?  We've never seen any reason for them to be particularly close.  (We haven't seen a reason for anyone to be close to Hannah, but that's another story.)  More importantly, how on earth is Marnie the love of Ray's life?  Ray's an angry wiseass.  Marnie's an empty-headed beauty queen stupid enough to marry Desi.  If Ray was 20, we'd forgive him for being fooled by Marnie's looks.  But Ray's pushing 40.  In any approximation of the real world, Ray would have realized that loving Marnie is a fool's errand.

This is par for the course on "Girls," a show that somehow manages to have good direction, writing, and acting while also being emotionally incoherent.  It's a gorgeous wedding cake with rotten eggs in the batter.

As always, the season premiere confounds in its characterization.  Why are Jessa and Adam hooking up, apart from the fact that the show needs more plot and it hasn't already happened?  Why is junkie Jessa suddenly the most responsible one of this group?  And the question hovering over this whole show: Why are these girls still together?  Someone like Marnie should have a flotilla of vapid but supportive girlfriends.  Instead, she's relying on Hannah, who she acknowledges hasn't connected with her in years, Shoshanna, who lives in Japan, and Jessa, who is her complete opposite.

Pondering these questions can lead to hyperventilation.  Better instead to focus on the great moments this show is somehow still capable of giving us.  Marnie, taking passive-aggressiveness to delicious new heights in ushering Fran out of the bridesmaids' area.  Ray, literally struggling to keep his head above water as he tries to impart life advice to Desi.  Hannah, in a pink parachute, awkwardly embracing Marnie, in horror movie makeup.  Marnie, putting her wedding dress on over her Spanx, using beauty on the outside to cover up the plain girl on the inside.

45 Years

It's a common assertion: there's no such thing as a soulmate.  How, in this world of billions of people, could there be only one for us?

And yet, even the most rational person wants to believe they're special.  That their partner chose them because they were unique in some way.  We don't want to think of love as some mechanical process, a chance meeting in which sparks fly because of aesthetic preferences shaped by nature and nurture, repeated copulation releasing hormones that engender goodwill, shared experiences building up fondness over the years.  You could do that with anyone.

Such is the disturbing realization hovering over "45 Years," a film about a couple celebrating their anniversary.  The body of an old lover of the husband's--she had died falling into a fissure in a glacier --is discovered, bringing back powerful memories.  Slowly the wife learns just how much the girl meant to him, culminating in a shocking revelation.  The film could be viewed as the most low-key horror movie ever made.  The sound editing mirrors the ominous buildup, as howling winds and tolling bells slowly invade the couple's previously idyllic life.

"45 Years" ends on a simple, heartbreaking moment that feels worthy of Old Hollywood.  The film doesn't offer much commentary on the situation, but I'll throw something out: the tragedy is, it's nobody's fault.

Hollywood's Real Race Problems

I'll be honest.  When I first heard the chorus of complaints over the lack of Oscar nominations for black actors this year, I thought it was a little overblown.  The Academy has awarded numerous black performances when it was less diverse than it is today.

But then I started thinking about those performances.  It's shockingly easy to put them into three categories:

• Saints: The Sidney Poitier model.  Reward a character who is basically perfect so you can pretend you're not holding black people to a higher standard.  More recent examples: Denzel in "Glory," Morgan Freeman in "Million Dollar Baby."
• Sinners: Do I even need to say why this is a category?  Denzel in "Training Day," Forest Whitaker in "The Last King of Scotland," Mo'Nique in "Precious."  Three of the most vile characters ever to net Oscars for their performers, all played by black actors.
• Sufferers: Nothing like a little suffering to invoke the white guilt!  Besides, it's a position we're used to seeing them in.  See Halle Berry in "Monster's Ball" and Lupita Nyong'o in "12 Years."  Hattie McDaniel and Octavia Spencer played maids to white people, which is its own form of suffering.

There's only five winning performances I haven't mentioned.  Two fit comfortably in the categories above.  The three exceptions:

• Whoopi Goldberg played a psychic, which opens up its own can of racial worms.
• Jamie Foxx won for playing beloved musical icon Ray Charles.
• Cuba Gooding Jr. won for yelling "Show me the money!"

In this environment, it's tough for many black performers to even be considered.  The studios for "Creed" and "Straight Outta Compton" didn't bother to mount serious Oscar campaigns for their black actors.  It didn't occur to them that they could win.

Michael B. Jordan's performance in "Creed" is exactly the kind of performance that needs to get more attention: one that could easily have been played by a white actor.  In fact, Jordan has publicly said that studios won't consider him for many roles.  They automatically assume they're going to cast a white guy.

And that's the bigger issue here: there aren't enough roles for black actors in the first place.  Only a handful of black performances could even have been in the Oscar conversation this year.  Black actors need jobs, roles, opportunities to share their gifts with the world.

One last note: let's not forget that this conversation needs to be extended beyond black actors.  Where's the love for Benicio Del Toro in "Sicario"?  Not to mention...actually...I can't think of any others...

The Big Short

One of the pleasures of "The Wolf of Wall Street" was its devil-may-care attitude towards the details of financial fraud.  Several times in the film, Leonardo DiCaprio turns to the camera and begins explaining some nefarious scheme of his character, stockbroker Jordan Belfort.  He quickly abandons his tutorials, though, and says something like "Who cares?  The point is it was illegal and it made me lots of money."  "Wolf" isn't concerned with the minutiae.  It's more interested in laughing at the sheer ridiculousness of it all.  We let crooks like Belfort get away with it because we want to believe we really can get rich quick.

On the other hand, Adam McKay, writer-director of "The Big Short," believes that the devil is in the details.  He was furious enough to actually learn about what Wall Street was doing.  Not many have done so; after all, who wants to learn what a collateralized debt obligation is?  Let the bankers do the banking.  But it's this technical jargon, McKay believes, that allows the financial sector to get away with robbery in plain sight.

And so "The Big Short" is here to explain to us what a synthetic credit default swap is.  It sounds more like an NPR segment than a Hollywood film.  Not to worry, though; McKay has plenty of sugar to help the medicine go down.  He enlists celebrities such as Margot Robbie, floating in a bubble bath, to help explain these terms.  ("Wolf," of course, gave us Robbie in...nothing.)

Oh, and there's a story too, with a colorful cast of characters:

• Steve Carell plays an irate hedge fund manager betting against the market.  Michael Scott was excellent preparation for the role; Carell is just as boorish here, but you forgive him because he happens to be right.
• Christian Bale does his typical Method-y thing as Dr. Michael Burry, the savant who foresaw the mortgage market's collapse.  It isn't too gimmicky.
• Ryan Gosling plays a Deustche Bank trader who doesn't care that the market will tank, so long as he can make money off it.  Gosling barely tries, but he's so charismatic that it doesn't matter.  He can sleepwalk through the role and get away with it.
• Brad Pitt plays a mentor to two young investors who get wind of the coming storm.  As with "12 Years a Slave," Pitt has taken a small part in this film to help secure financing.  It's great that he helps get good movies made.  But is it too much to ask for him to put in a little effort for his 10 minutes of screen time?

The film threads a nice needle, showing how the crisis was both foreseeable and largely unanticipated.  The truth was out there.  But finding it took both hard work and a willingness to face the reality that every party has an end.  Most would prefer to keep dancing.

In the movie's most effective sequence, Carell and his staff travel to Florida to get the facts on the ground.  They talk to mortgage brokers who brag about seeking out the largest possible credit risks--bigger commissions, after all!  To Wall Street, mortgages had become nothing more than numbers concerning faraway people in flyover country.  McKay puts a human face on the crisis.

So what's the proper response to our immoral financial sector?  The amusement of "Wolf" or the indignation of "The Big Short"?  They say that comedy equals tragedy plus time.  I don't think it's a coincidence that the events depicted in "Wolf" occurred a decade earlier, or that Scorcese has a couple extra decades of perspective compared to McKay.  Perhaps one day we'll look back on all this and laugh.  It's about the only solace we can take from the rapaciousness of Wall Street.