5. Les Miserables
In the most recent adaptation of the musical based on the 1862 novel by Victor Hugo, recent Oscar-award winning director Tom Hooper assembles an all-star cast to retell the story of a bread-thief and his relationship with a prostitute, her daughter, and young French revolutionaries. During the first hour of this film, I was on the verge of thinking it was one of the best musicals I've ever seen. Anne Hathaway puts on a beautiful and moving performance as the trouble Fantine, a woman who resorts to depraved depths in order to procure money for her ill child Cosette. But when Anne Hathaway is off screen, the movie sputters and at times drags to a halt. Though Anne Hathaway is clearly the standout star of the film, other performances are notable including lead man Hugh Jackman, and Isabelle Allen and Amanda Seyfried as the young and old Cosette respectively. Then, there are Sasha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter, who are not only remarkably unfunny, but manage to perform the same unfunny bits literally every time they're on screen. In his most recent film The King's Speech, the cinematography employed by Hooper was beautiful and panoramic, making use of an off-centered approach to help create a sense of a jarring unease and increasing the drama as we explore the King's speech impediment. In Les Mis, Hooper takes this approach to the extreme, with the majority of the shots in the film of off-centered close-up faces as the camera swings around wildly and erratically. Naturally, the most affecting scene in the movie is the performance "I Dreamed A Dream" in which the camera graciously sits still. While Hathaway is depicted like Joan of Arc in Carl Theodor Dreyer's classic silent film (with wide eyes full of tears and even a hair-cutting scene), by the end of the film the monotony of the cast's faces magnified to take up half of the screen becomes tiresome. Overall, Les Miserables is a solid work as a musical with some incredibly moving and memorable performances, but loses points as a film due to Hooper's obnoxious camerawork and some scattered subpar performances.
Why It Will Win: It's a beloved musical.
Why It Won't Win: It was only nominated because it's a beloved musical.