HFCS Nominations

Best (and worst) movies of the year: Houston film critics' top nominees have strong Texas ties

Two films with close Houston ties trailed behind a big bird(man) in the Houston Film Critics Society nominations for the year's best — and worst — motion pictures in the organization's 8th annual awards.

Birdman — written, produced and directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu — leads the way with 10 nominations, including Best Picture, Director, Actor (Michael Keaton), Supporting Actor (Edward Norton), Supporting Actress (Emma Stone), Screenplay, Cinematography, Original Score, Technical Achievement and Poster.

“Interestingly, both Boyhood and Budapest have Texas connections,” HFCS president Joshua Starnes said.

Austin native Richard Linklater's Boyhood — a coming-of-age drama shot intermittently over 12 years — followed with seven nominations, including Best Picture, Director, Supporting Actor (Ethan Hawke), Supporting Actress (Patricia Arquette) and Screenplay, as well as for HFCS' Texas Independent Film Award. Key scenes in the film were shot in Houston.

A close third is Houston-born Wes Anderson's film, The Grand Budapest Hotel, receiving six nominations, including Best Picture, Director, Screenplay, Cinematography, Original Score and Poster.

“Interestingly, both Boyhood and Budapest have Texas connections,” HFCS president Joshua Starnes said in a statement. “Linklater shot his film and makes Austin his home while Anderson is originally from Houston and a graduate of UT Austin.”

Other nominees for Best Picture include A Most Violent Year, Guardians of the Galaxy, The Imitation Game, Inherent Vice, Nightcrawler, Selma and Whiplash.

HFCS members, who are working film journalists on television, radio, online and in traditional print in the Houston area, also recognized five independent films made in the Lone Star State: Above All Else, Boyhood, Hellion, Joe, No No: A Dockumentary, and Stop The Pounding Heart.

To poke fun at some of the year's least appealing movies, the organization has also named the Worst Films of the Year. This year’s nominees are Blended, Dumb and Dumber To, Left Behind, The Identical and Transformers: Age of Extinction.

And they singled out five great film posters. The nominees in that category include Birdman; Godzilla (IMAX); The Grand Budapest Hotel; Guardians of the Galaxy (primary theatrical); and Inherent Vice.

HFCS' award winners will be announced on Jan. 10 at a ceremony at Sundance Cinemas.

2014 Houston Film Critics Society Nominations:

Best Picture
A Most Violent Year; Birdman; Boyhood; The Grand Budapest Hotel; Guardians of the Galaxy; The Imitation Game; Inherent Vice; Nightcrawler; Selma; Whiplash

Best Director
Paul Thomas Anderson, Inherent Vice; Wes Anderson, The Grand Budapest Hotel; Damien Chazelle, Whiplash; Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Birdman; Richard Linklater, Boyhood

Best Actor
Benedict Cumberbatch, The Imitation Game; Jake Gyllenhaal, Nightcrawler; Tom Hardy, Locke; Michael Keaton, Birdman; Eddie Redmayne, The Theory of Everything

Best Actress
Marion Cotillard, Two Days, One Night; Essie Davis, The Babadook; Felicity Jones, The Theory of Everything; Julianne Moore, Still Alice; Reese Witherspoon, Wild

Best Supporting Actor
Josh Brolin, Inherent Vice; Ethan Hawke, Boyhood; Edward Norton, Birdman; Mark Ruffalo, Foxcatcher; Andy Serkis, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes; J.K. Simmons, Whiplash

Best Supporting Actress
Patricia Arquette, Boyhood; Jessica Chastain, A Most Violent Year; Keira Knightly, The Imitation Game; Emma Stone, Birdman; Tilda Swinton, Snowpiercer

Best Screenplay
Wes Anderson and Hugo Guinness, The Grand Budapest Hotel; Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Nicolás Giacobone, Alexander Dinelaris, Jr., Armando Bo, Birdman; Damien Chazelle, Whiplash; Dan Gilroy, Nightcrawler; Richard Linklater, Boyhood

Best Animated Film
Big Hero 6; The Book of Life; The Boxtrolls; How to Train Your Dragon 2; The Lego Movie

Best Cinematography
Roger Deakins, Unbroken; Robert Elswit, Inherent Vice; Hoyte van Hoytema, Interstellar; Emmanuel Lubezki, Birdman; Robert Yeoman, The Grand Budapest Hotel

Best Original Score
Alexander Desplat, The Grand Budapest Hotel; Alexander Desplat, The Imitation Game; Johann Johannson, The Theory of Everything; Antonio Sanchez, Birdman; Hans Zimmer, Interstellar

Best Original Song
Big Eyes, Big Eyes; Everything is Awesome, The Lego Movie; Glory, Selma; I’m Not Going to Miss You, Glen Campbell: I’ll Be Me; Lost Stars, Begin Again

Best Foreign Language Film
Force Majeure; Ida; Levitathan; The Raid 2; Two Days, One Night

Best Documentary Feature
Citizenfour; Glen Campbell: I’ll Be Me; Jodorowsky’s Dune; Life Itself; The Overnighters

Texas Independent Film Award
Above All Else; Boyhood; Hellion; Joe; No No: A Dockumentary; Stop the Pounding Heart

Technical Achievement
Birdman; Boyhood; Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Best Poster
Birdman; Godzilla (IMAX); The Grand Budapest Hotel; Guardians of the Galaxy (primary theatrical); Inherent Vice

Worst Film of the Year
Blended; Dumb and Dumber To; Left Behind; The Identical; Transformers: Age of Extinction

The Grand Budapest Hotel, from Houston-born director Wes Anderson, garnered six nominations, including Best Picture.

Photo courtesy of Fox Searchlight Pictures

The Grand Budapest Hotel, from Houston-born director Wes Anderson, garnered six nominations, including Best Picture.

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Movie Review

Meta-comedy remake Anaconda coils itself into an unfunny mess

Photo by Matt Grace

Jack Black and Paul Rudd in Anaconda.

In Hollywood’s never-ending quest to take advantage of existing intellectual property, seemingly no older movie is off limits, even if the original was not well-regarded. That’s certainly the case with 1997’s Anaconda, which is best known for being a lesser entry on the filmography of Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez, as well as some horrendous accent work by Jon Voight.

The idea behind the new meta-sequel Anaconda is arguably a good one. Four friends — Doug (Jack Black), Griff (Paul Rudd), Claire (Thandiwe Newton), and Kenny (Steve Zahn) — who made homemade movies when they were teenagers decide to remake Anaconda on a shoestring budget. Egged on by Griff, an actor who can’t catch a break, the four of them pull together enough money to fly down to Brazil, hire a boat, and film a script written by Doug.

Naturally, almost nothing goes as planned in the Amazon, including losing their trained snake and running headlong into a criminal enterprise. Soon enough, everything else takes second place to the presence of a giant anaconda that is stalking them and anyone else who crosses its path.

Written and directed by Tom Gormican, with help from co-writer Kevin Etten, the film is designed to be an outrageous comedy peppered with laugh-out-loud moments that cover up the fact that there’s really no story. That would be all well and good … if anything the film had to offer was truly funny. Only a few scenes elicit any honest laughter, and so instead the audience is fed half-baked jokes, a story with no focus, and actors who ham it up to get any kind of reaction.

The biggest problem is that the meta-ness of the film goes too far. None of the core four characters possess any interesting traits, and their blandness is transferred over to the actors playing them. And so even as they face some harrowing situations or ones that could be funny, it’s difficult to care about anything they do since the filmmakers never make the basic effort of making the audience care about them.

It’s weird to say in a movie called Anaconda, but it becomes much too focused on the snake in the second half of the film. If the goal is to be a straight-up comedy, then everything up to and including the snake attacks should be serving that objective. But most of the time the attacks are either random or moments when the characters are already scared, and so any humor that could be mined all but disappears.

Black and Rudd are comedy all-stars who can typically be counted on to elevate even subpar material. That’s not the case here, as each only scores on a few occasions, with Black’s physicality being the funniest thing in the movie. Newton is not a good fit with this type of movie, and she isn’t done any favors by some seriously bad wigs. Zahn used to be the go-to guy for funny sidekicks, but he brings little to the table in this role.

Any attempt at rebooting/remaking an old piece of IP should make a concerted effort to differentiate itself from the original, and in that way, the new Anaconda succeeds. Unfortunately, that’s its only success, as the filmmakers can never find the right balance to turn it into the bawdy comedy they seemed to want.

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Anaconda is now playing in theaters.

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