Tag: movies

An off-year for the Oscars and me

see The Queen Of Basketball and The Long Goodbye

Historically, 1) I would see lots of movies in the theater throughout the year, and 2) I’d try to see whatever movies I’d missed after the Oscars were announced. This year, though, is an off-year for the Oscars and me.

For one thing, I saw far fewer movies in an actual cinema, always my preferred venue. For another, I’d make dates with my wife to watch some films on a streaming service, but the plans would fall through. I DID see a few online by myself, but I just didn’t have the mojo for doing that too often.

What DID I see that were nominated? I linked to my reviews in the BEST PICTURE category, or elsewhere if not nominated there.

ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE
JAVIER BARDEM in Being the Ricardos, which I watched a day ago and requires a full review
ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
CIARÁN HINDS in Belfast
TROY KOTSUR in CODA. Based on all of the other awards, I’d think Kotsur is a near lock, which is fine by me.
J.K. SIMMONS in Being the Ricardos

ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE
PENÉLOPE CRUZ in Parallel Mothers
ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
ARIANA DEBOSE in West Side Story                                                                            JUDI DENCH in Belfast. I was pulling for Caitríona Balfe, who played the mom in Belfast, but she wasn’t nominated

ANIMATED FEATURE FILM
FLEE – Jonas Poher Rasmussen, Monica Hellström, Signe Byrge Sørensen and Charlotte De La Gournerie

CINEMATOGRAPHY
WEST SIDE STORY – Janusz Kaminski
COSTUME DESIGN
WEST SIDE STORY – Paul Tazewell

Auteur

DIRECTING
BELFAST – Kenneth Branagh
DRIVE MY CAR – Ryusuke Hamaguchi
LICORICE PIZZA -Paul Thomas Anderson
WEST SIDE STORY – Steven Spielberg
I saw all except Jane Campion for THE POWER OF THE DOG. Of the four, I’d pick Branagh.

DOCUMENTARY (FEATURE)
ATTICA – Stanley Nelson and Traci A. Curry. Just saw this. Very thorough but greatly unsettling.
FLEE – Jonas Poher Rasmussen, Monica Hellström, Signe Byrge Sørensen and Charlotte De La Gournerie. Has there been an animated film nominated as a doc feature? Powerful. More soon.
SUMMER OF SOUL (…OR, WHEN THE REVOLUTION COULD NOT BE TELEVISED) – Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, Joseph Patel, Robert Fyvolent, and David Dinerstein, which was splendid

DOCUMENTARY (SHORT SUBJECT)
THE QUEEN OF BASKETBALL – Ben Proudfoot. You can watch it at this link. I didn’t write about this because I expected to see the others in this category. The IMDB description: “an electrifying portrait of Lucy Harris, who scored the first basket in women’s Olympic history and was the first and only woman officially drafted into the N.B.A. Harris has remained largely unknown – until now.” I found it quite informative and touching. Also sad, since Lucy recently died.

FILM EDITING – NONE

INTERNATIONAL FEATURE FILM
DRIVE MY CAR (Japan)
THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD (Norway) – just saw this; worthwhile. More in days to come.

MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING – NONE

MUSIC (ORIGINAL SCORE)
PARALLEL MOTHERS -Alberto Iglesias
MUSIC (ORIGINAL SONG)
DOWN TO JOY from Belfast; Music and Lyric by Van Morrison.
I’m rooting for DOS ORUGUITAS from Encanto; Music and Lyric by Lin-Manuel Miranda

The big category

BEST PICTURE
BELFAST – Laura Berwick, Kenneth Branagh, Becca Kovacik and Tamar Thomas, Producers
CODA – Philippe Rousselet, Fabrice Gianfermi, and Patrick Wachsberger, Producers
DRIVE MY CAR – Teruhisa Yamamoto, Producer
LICORICE PIZZA – Sara Murphy, Adam Somner and Paul Thomas Anderson, Producers
WEST SIDE STORY – Steven Spielberg and Kristie Macosko Krieger, Producers
Not having seen DON’T LOOK UP, DUNE, KING RICHARD, NIGHTMARE ALLEY, or THE POWER OF THE DOG, I’d pick CODA, though BELFAST would be a fine choice.

PRODUCTION DESIGN
WEST SIDE STORY – Production Design: Adam Stockhausen; Set Decoration: Rena DeAngelo

SHORT FILM (ANIMATED) – NONE
SHORT FILM (LIVE ACTION)
THE LONG GOODBYE – Aneil Karia and Riz Ahmed A powerful film that you can watch here or here

SOUND
BELFAST -Denise Yarde, Simon Chase, James Mather, and Niv Adiri
WEST SIDE STORY – Tod A. Maitland, Gary Rydstrom, Brian Chumney, Andy Nelson, and Shawn Murphy

VISUAL EFFECTS
SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME – Kelly Port, Chris Waegner, Scott Edelstein and Dan Sudick

WRITING (ADAPTED SCREENPLAY)
CODA -Screenplay by Siân Heder
DRIVE MY CAR – Screenplay by Ryusuke Hamaguchi, Takamasa Oe
WRITING (ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY)
BELFAST -Written by Kenneth Branagh
LICORICE PIZZA – Written by Paul Thomas Anderson
THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD – Written by Eskil Vogt, Joachim Trier. My favorite of the three.

It’s likely that I’ll get a short-term subscription to Netflix and see tick, tick…BOOM!, THE POWER OF THE DOG, and THE LOST DAUGHTER. Maybe catch some other films somehow.

The Hollywood Reporter: Who Will Win, Who Should Win

Movie review: CODA [child of deaf adults]

translated

CodaMy wife and I watched the movie CODA on Apple+ late last month, just before it won the Screen Actors Guild award for outstanding cast in a motion picture. We enjoyed it a lot.

It occurred to me that the framework of the story was fairly conventional, but that it worked exceedingly well. Part of it is the specificity of these particular characters. Another is the strong performances by the actors. But a big chunk of it is that we really hadn’t seen this narrative shown.

Ruby (Emilia Jones) is the only hearing member of a deaf family. CODA means child of deaf adults. She’s trying to fit in at school, though she’s taken some grief because of the idiosyncrasies of her family. In particular, her father Frank (SAG award winner Troy Kotsur) “speaks” his mind, as it were. Among other things, he adores his wife Jackie (Marlee Matlin).

Frank, and Ruby’s older brother Leo (Daniel Durant), work on the family’s struggling fishing boat, and Ruby helps out before school. But when she joins her high school choir, she finds her time conflicted. This is especially the case as her exacting choirmaster Bernardo Villalobos (Eugenio Derbez) is trying to mentor her so that she can ao apply to a prestigious music school. And she likes hanging out with her duet partner Miles (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo).

But how can she even about going when her family needs her? I “believed” this collective. The parents who want to hold onto their daughter but the brother may have a different need in the family dynamic. Miles doesn’t always do the right thing.

Not unlike the immigrant story

My wife noted that it is often the case that some of her English as a New Language students serve as interpreters for their immigrant parents. It turns the usual family dynamics on its head. So too with the story in CODA.

And one interesting element of the film is the David v. Goliath economic story, which all of the fishermen were subject to.

At the end of the credits were the names of the actors voicing the dubbed versions of the film into French, German, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish, Castilian, Chinese (I think), and some Cyrillic language.

The reviews were largely positive (95% by the critics, 93% by the audiences).

Movie review: Drive My Car

Uncle Vanya

My wife and I saw the Oscar-nominated movie Drive My Car recently at the Spectrum Theatre, the Landmark venue in Albany. There were only a few things about the film I knew. It was three hours long. The movie was nominated for four Academy Awards including Best Picture and International Feature Film, what they used to call Best Foreign Film. And it was three hours long?

And here’s a spoiler that’s right in the trailer. Oto Kafuku (Reika Kirishima), the wife of Yûsuke, dies unexpectedly. They love each other dearly, though it’s… complicated. She’s a teller of tales. He listens to Uncle Vanya by Chekhov repeatedly in the car. The first forty minutes I found a tad tedious.

THEN the opening credits run. What? And the rest of the story is far more compelling. Yûsuke, “a renowned stage actor and director, receives an offer to direct a production of Uncle Vanya in Hiroshima.” The catch, which he doesn’t realize until he gets there, is that the stage company requires that the director use a driver.

Not related to the Beatles song

Misaki Watari (Tôko Miura) is a very good chauffeur of his beloved red Saab. But she’s not particularly communicative, at least at first. Meanwhile, Yûsuke is busy selecting the cast, which is a diverse group that communicates in Japanese, English, Korean Sign Language, and others.

One cast member is an impetuous and hot-headed television actor Koshi Takatsuki (Toshiaki Inomata), who is trying to befriend the director for some reason. There is a couple in the production that my wife and I truly enjoyed.

As the rehearsals unfold, involving a lot of driving from the hotel to the rehearsal hall, Yûsuke and Misaki each start to address the pain and complexities of their pasts.

My verdict: I wish the first 40 minutes of Drive My Car were edited down to maybe 30. Yet the remaining 2:15 seemed to fly by. If you should see it, be patient with the first section because I think the payoff is worth it. The Rotten Tomatoes score was 98% positive from the critics, and 80% positive from the audiences.

Movie review: Parallel Mothers

two Oscar nominationsm

Parallel MothersParallel Mothers is the new movie by director/writer Pedro Almodóvar. Janis (Penélope Cruz) and Ana (Milena Smit) are two single women sharing a hospital room where they are each going to give birth. Though both pregnancies were unintended, the 40ish Janis is excited. Ana, a teenager, conversely, is terrified and feels uncertain.

They bond, and, after a time, end up keeping in touch. Each has a complicating person in her life. For Ana, it’s her actress-mother Teresa (Aitana Sánchez-Gijón). She is torn between her daughter and her irregular career.

Janis is negotiating with Arturo (Israel Elejalde), who is helping her with historical family trauma, unearthing the remains of her great-grandfather, who was “disappeared” by rebels affiliated with Franco. Oh, and he’s the father of her child.

Janis is a successful photographer for a magazine. But as a new mom, she has to juggle work and motherhood. At one point, a certain important plot point became obvious to me. I guessed how the storyline would then play out, but I was very wrong.

The reign in Spain

How does Almodóvar deal with the complications in both women’s lives? Deftly, in an almost Solomonic manner, I think. More than one reviewer has pointed to the director’s “delirious use of color, his ecstatic aesthetic and a sense of the theatrical.” Parallel Mothers is all about truth (and the suppression of same) and passion and what family means and dealing with history v. living in the present.

Cruz and Almodóvar have collaborated in seven films. I know I’ve seen at least two others, All About My Mother and Volver. This one is the most fully realized, IMO.

Penélope Cruz is, as most critics  noted, luminescent. One of them coveted Janis’ red sweater. Ms. Cruz has rightly been nominated for an Oscar in the category Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role. Milena Smit, a movie newcomer, performs amazingly well.

The movie is also nominated for an Academy Award for Alberto Iglesias in the category Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures (Original Score). Recommended. Oh, yeah, the film is subtitled. Here is the trailer.

My wife and I saw this on a date night at Landmark’s Spectrum Theatre in Albany, alas, in its final week.

Documentary review: Ascension

Jessica Kingdon

I recently watched, on Paramount Plus, the documentary Ascension. The film shows that the people of China are also seeking their version of the American Dream.

Some of the workforce is enticed by factory jobs that may involve no standing, though other jobs require being upright. Lots of propaganda about being team players are sometimes administered harshly. The factory workers include women working on the exacting standards for sex dolls; make sure the color of the areola is right.

We see people training to serve the wealthy in their increasingly capitalistic country. Perhaps they would be servants in fancy homes that require fine dining; Downton Abbey was specifically namechecked. Or maybe they’ll become bodyguards, protecting their would-be employers from assassins.

There are lessons on how to smile, how to be positive that you’ll make lots of money. They too can become influencers. For good and for ill, today’s China is looking a lot like the United States.

Before I saw the film, I watched director Jessica Kingdon interviewed on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah. He noted that there was no narration by someone trying to steer a particular point of view, which allowed the viewer to see the larger cultural shift.

Ascension is Oscar-nominated as one of the best documentary films of the past year. It’s a little slow in the beginning, but it proves to be a fascinating take on the economic rise of China.

Lynching Postcards

After I watched Ascension, Paramount Plus directed me to a short documentary Lynching Postcards: ‘Token of A Great Day’. Perhaps more unsettling than the lynchings of over 4,000 African Americans by white mobs were the public, festive occasions these murders became. Men, women, and children out having a picnic while watching a hanging and/or burning. The burnings were particularly popular in Texas.

These lynchings were commemorated through souvenir postcards. And people would send messages pointing themselves out in the crowd. ‘Hey, that’s me, third from the right” with the corpse hanging in the background.

One of the images from the film that caught my attention was The Dogwood Tree, a poem that begins
This is only the branch of a Dogwood tree;
An emblem of WHITE SUPREMACY.

The film is only about 15 minutes. Worthwhile.

Ramblin' with Roger
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