They may all be nominated for Oscars but according to one member of Hollywood’s directing elite Julia Roberts’ performance is horrendous, Meryl Streep’s is bottom drawer and Leonardo DiCaprio has certainly been better.
One of the academy members voting on the Oscars has delivered an anonymous assessment of this year’s award nominees – and he’s holding nothing back.
The Oscars, which are presented on March 2, are voted for in a secret ballot by more than 6000 members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
One voter, a longtime member of the academy’s 377-strong director’s branch, gave the brutally honest assessment of this year’s offerings to The Hollywood Reporter.
Out of the five nominees for best actress, the anonymous member said Gravity star Sandra Bullock was “the weak link”.
Even three-time Oscar-winner Streep, who has been nominated for an award 18 times, does not escape the member’s spleen.
The 64-year-old’s performance in star-studded August: Osage County is described as “bottom drawer”.
Cate Blanchett is tipped to take the Oscar by the anonymous voter who doesn’t miss the opportunity to slip in a backhanded compliment to the Blue Jasmine actress:
“But you have to vote for who’s truly the best, and to me, Blanchett, whom I’m normally not that wild about . . . is that.”
Christian Bale is apparently the obvious winner for the best actor award for his role as a down-on-his-luck conman in American Hustle, and the voter picks Jennifer Lawrence’s performance in the same movie to take out best supporting actress.
“She has that level of excitement in every scene she’s in,” the voter said.
“She just dazzles.”
Fellow supporting actress nominee Julia Roberts was decried as “horrendous” in August: Osage County, while Lupita Nyong’o’s performance in 12 Years A Slave was good, but “a lot of the commotion over her is attributable to people’s tremendous empathy with and sympathy for the role she’s playing”.
In another pick for American Hustle, Bradley Cooper is the member’s choice for best supporting actor, but he thinks Jared Leto, who played a transsexuual in Dallas Buyers Club, was good and will win.
“But he’s getting tremendous points because of the person he’s playing more than the way he played it, which is as close to pandering as you can get,” he said.
Even the best picture nominees weren’t safe from a caustic once-over, with 12 Years A Slave drawing the bizarre criticism that “you don’t even crack a smile, but it was interesting, admirable and well done”.
“I must say, though, that contrary to what some have asserted, it’s not as if it required great courage to make that movie – maybe if you made it in Mississippi in 1930 . . .” the voter said.
Captain Phillips is blasted for being “slightly hokey” and “overacted”, while The Wolf of Wall Street has “almost nothing to say.”
American Hustle is the voter’s pick for best picture – while “its ambition is not overwhelming … it takes an interesting subject and very interesting characters and delivers 100 per cent on what could be done with it in a very engaging, entertaining, interesting and truthful way”.
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“I would not put it in the legendary masterpiece category, but it doesn’t fail on any level,” he said.
American Hustle’s David O Russell would also win for best director, the voter predicted.
As for Gravity, the academy member had “seen things at the planetarium that were at least as impressive”.
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