Don’t call his movie jazz. Hazily moving back and forth in time, Miles Ahead takes place during the legendary trumpet player’s self-imposed 5-year hiatus from making music during the 1970s, flashing back to memories of his tumultuous relationship with ex-wife Frances Taylor (Emayatzy Corinealdi). It’s a disjointed, bizarre, and oddly compelling structure that Miles himself may have admired. Don Cheadle—playing Miles, co-writing, and making his feature directorial debut—hones in non-musical moments from Davis’ life in creating this muddled biography, with at least one more gun-toting car chase than expected. As cool as Miles Ahead’s stylistic flairs are—bleeding Miles Davis performances into the middle of a boxing ring and elsewhere—Miles Ahead still falls victim to the stiffness of conventional biopics, hampered by its own ambition.

Cheadle has worked nearly a decade on Miles Ahead, co-writing the script with Steven Baigelman (story credit on last year’s James Brown flick Get On Up) and even turning to IndieGoGo for a final bit of fundraising. More than any other element, Cheadle the actor appears ready for the challenge of capturing the soul of Miles. He convincingly resembles Davis when tapping on his trumpet and donning the garish outfits Miles wore at the time. Sounding like a man in recovery from a weeklong binge, Cheadle’s Davis adopts a scratchy, apathetic tone somewhere between conversational dialog and a man mumbling under his breath. His performance brings the dynamic, unpredictable energy Miles Ahead needs, but the film surrounding him is too sparse to keep pace with his rhythm.

Miles Ahead’s frantic assembly loses sight of the characters in Davis’ radius. Though flashbacks (and flashforwards) transport the film back over a decade, the majority of the “present day” action occurs across two crazy days during Davis’ exile. He’s bothered by the unrelenting knocks at his door from fictional and inexplicably pursuant Rolling Stone writer Dave Brill, played by Ewan McGregor, who alternates between authentic and fake bafflement. Davis asks Brill if he can drive before using the writer as a chauffeur to Columbia Records, where he arrives gun-in-hand to demand a $20,000 payment. One of the executives (played by a mustache-twirling Michael Stuhlbarg) makes sleazy attempts to win over Miles before hatching a plan to steal Davis’ latest recordings—which he literally refers to as, “gold.” The subsequent chain of events involved in the losing, tracking, and re-acquiring of this unreleased recording borders on ridiculous, and would more appropriately belong to a Guy Ritchie heist plot than the Miles Davis story.

These distractions pull the film away from the music. Miles Ahead never plays like a greatest hits record, often turning away from the Kind Of Blue hits in favor of obscure cuts from Miles Davis’ career. Even when songs are heard, they are relegated to the background of scenes in which Davis fruitlessly searches for his new sound. In the beginning, pouring a session tape, Davis stares down his trumpet from across the room and mutters, “Fuck you lookin’ at?” Cheadle attempts to define the obstacles Davis had in returning to recording after taking time off, but in the context of his erratic vision, Davis’ inability to compose is reduced to a subplot.

Cheadle reaches for a lot of disparate concepts with his long-in-development Miles Davis biopic. He looks to articulate the impact of his music while focusing on the prolific musician’s least productive period. Cheadle tries to make a film about the essence of Miles’ work but offers an intentionally limited perspective on the man. Miles Ahead remains entirely watchable, yet the ways in which the film falls short of its target are frustratingly apparent throughout. When Cheadle trots out as Davis with #SocialMusic emblazoned on his vest during the film’s finale, it’s one final oblique maneuver that seems as confused as the rest of this incomplete portrait. Despite a tremendous performance at its center, Miles Ahead gets lost in its attempt to embody Davis’ artistic spirit.

Well we can thank the Best Supporting Actress category for giving us some sense of competition. Best Supporting Actor is one of the few categories in this race that’s set in stone. Jared Leto, who plays an AIDS-infected transgender woman in Dallas Buyers Club, goes through a physical transformation that’s just as dramatic as Matthew McConaughey’s in the film. Leto is excellent in Dallas Buyers Club, and by now the Oscar is his to lose.

Personally speaking, out of the five performances it was Jonah Hill’s in Wolf of Wall Street that surprised me the most. For a 3 hour film about pure excess, and the most over the top performance in Leonardo DiCaprio’s career, it was Hill who turned out to be the glue that held the film together. He repeatedly stole scenes from DiCaprio and plenty of other great actors, and provided the film’s biggest laughs throughout. It’s the kind of role that will establish Hill as a true talent, and help him step out of the shadow of his more famous friends in the Apatow clan.

As for the others…Michael Fassbender is great at playing the horrendously evil Epps in 12 Years A Slave, but it’s too one-note when he’s in a field of more multifaceted performances. Barkhad Abdi gets the “happy to be here” nomination slot for his debut role in Captain Phillips. Abdi’s rise from limo driver to Oscar nominated actor makes for a great story, but he doesn’t have a chance at getting near the stage on Oscar night. And in all honesty, I completely forgot about Bradley Cooper getting nominated for American Hustle. He’s not bad (I think he did a much better job in The Place Beyond The Pines, but that’s just me), it’s just a slight performance in a slight film.

It’s tough to pick one actor who should have been nominated. I think it was a great year for comedic performances, with James Franco in Spring Breakers and The Rock in Pain & Gain being highlights (also severely under-appreciated: Danny McBride in This is the End). Ultimately, I decided to go with Keith Stanfield in Short Term 12, who felt like a real discovery this year. His arc as troubled teen Marcus is the best thing about the film, and he brings such a quiet intensity to the role that a separate film could have easily been dedicated to his character.

Category Predictions

Best Supporting Actor Nominees

Barkhad Abdi – Captain Phillips (review)

Bradley Cooper – American Hustle (review)

Michael Fassbender – 12 Years a Slave (review)

Jonah Hill – The Wolf of Wall Street

Jared Leto – Dallas Buyers Club (review)

Previous Category Analysis

Best Shorts
Best Supporting Actress

It’s become fashionable over the past few months to shower Destin Cretton’s (I’m Not a Hipster) social worker drama, Short Term 12 (a veritable Sundance phenom), with buckets of adulation. It deserves every drop—this is a supreme effort for a young filmmaker, and one of the most emotionally impactful films of the year. Expanded from a short Cretton made in 2008, the most noticeable change from the original is the switch of the main protagonist from male to female, with Brie Larson (Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, The United States of Tara) helming the ship (she does a fine job as captain.)

The film opens with Grace (Larson, whose confidence feeds her beauty) and Mason (John Gallagher Jr., consummate bearded nice guy), two lead staff members at a foster care facility (and lovebirds, though they leave their relationship at home as they’re both seasoned professionals), welcoming new recruit Nate (Rami Malek) to the fray by sharing an amusing anecdote about Mason messing his pants following a hilarious sequence of events, all for the safety of one of the adolescents-at-risk they used to watch over. It’s a fun story that sets the tone for the film’s humor while also illustrating the counselors’ dedication to the kids. Grace in particular is passionately driven and undaunted in assuming the emotionally backbreaking role of lead caretaker.

As Mason is wrapping up his yarn, one of the young dorm-dwellers (Alex Calloway) bursts out of a door at hell-bat speed, American flag blowing behind him, inexplicably tied around his neck like a cape. This prompts our social-worker heroes to chase and subdue the redhead loose cannon with S.W.A.T. team efficiency (their relaxed countenances are evidence that the footrace is a common occurrence.) From there, we’re introduced—in a series of deftly written character moments, each more gripping than the last—to the angst-filled, invariably volatile facility innards.

Cretton—who wrote the unbelievable screenplay (I’ll get to that later)—drew inspiration from his own experiences working in foster-care, and the chaotic, yet cyclical dynamics of the on-screen facility feel resultantly authentic, organic, and full of life (real life; the dirty kind.) The troubled kids—whose view of trust is that it’ll inevitably betray them—give the staff members all the pushback (sometimes violent) they can handle, though Grace and Mason valiantly weather the thunderstorms of screams and freak-outs and are especially gifted at cultivating easy rapports with the bottled-up teens, as best they can.

When Grace and Mason get one-on-one time with the kids, we get to see them really work. After some gentle, genuine chit chat with Mason, Marcus (Keith Stanfield), the brooding, “don’t-give-a-fuck” bad boy of the bunch (he shows glimmers of a keen intellect), performs a private rap in his dorm room, revealing a harrowing history with his abusive mother. “Revealing” is the key word here—these kids suppress their emotions to the point of self-destruction, and the only way to identify their problems is for the staff members to peacefully persuade them to reveal the roots of their pain. Thankfully, the compassionate caretakers are gifted at just that.

When Jayden (Kaitlyn Dever), a morose (she makes Marcus look like the life of the party) Avril Lavigne-ish teen, arrives at the compound, Grace sees something in her (a bit of herself, perhaps?) and takes a personal stake in the girl’s future, which disrupts the crucial practice of her leaving work at work. Grace’s name turns out to not be as fitting as you might initially think, as her tether to Jayden’s dangerous home situation begins to destabilize her mentally, damaging her relationship with Mason in the process (the two are on the fence between marriage and lover’s limbo.) Larson is the heart and soul of the film, and her ability to embody both titan-like strength and damaged vulnerability is much of what makes Short Term 12 great.

Cretton’s script is, in a word, sleek—there are few wasted moments, no lulls in pace (though there are loads of slow, quiet, emotionally intense scenes), and no disposable components; characters, story beats, or otherwise. The plot is structurally sound, but always feels like it’s unfolding organically, which is even more impressive considering this could’ve easily turned out to be an unnecessarily elongated short in the hands of a lesser filmmaker. Cretton and DP Brett Pawlak’s camera makes us feel like we’re standing in and walking through—not simply inhabiting—the close-quarters halls of the facility (he uses shaky-cam well, which is always a tricky device to harness.)

There are a few quibbles and nit-picks I have with the film: a brief demented detour near the film’s conclusion (involving a bizarre home invasion) feels a little tonally dissonant, the character of Nate could do with more attention, and a romantic scene between Larson and Gallagher where they doodle portraits of each other on their living room couch feels like stock indie fare. But hell, life ain’t perfect, and at the end of the day, Short Term 12 lives and breathes true reality onto the movie screen better than most documentaries can.