Pulling on the whiskers of a man who insists he is the real Santa Claus can go a long way in convincing a dubious youngster that he's telling the truth. So marks one of the most famous scenes in Christmas movies, one that almost always ends up in montages of holiday films. Who could blame them for putting it in? It's a touching scene in Miracle on 34th Street, a Christmas movie that might not be the best ever, but one that has earned its appreciable reputation.
Miracle on 34th Street begins on Thanksgiving when a smartly dressed older man with a great, white beard walks down the street in New York City right before the start of the annual Macy's Day Parade. Soon, though, he starts scolding an intoxicated Santa for drinking on the job, thus rendering the latter incapable of performing his duties for the parade. The organizer of the parade, Doris Walker (Maureen O'Hara), frantically tries to solve the problem, but the only real solution is to ask the first man (the one with the real beard who was so disappointed in the drunk Santa Claus) to temporarily take over. While initially refusing, this man (who happens to be named Kris Kringle and is played by Edmund Gwenn in an Oscar-winning performance) can't refuse the chance to ensure the children are happy.
One child who finds him appealing but is also quite skeptical of his claims of being the real Santa is Doris' daughter, Susan, played by the adorable Natalie Wood in one of her most famous roles. Susan, the Lisa Simpson of her day, does not believe in fairytales and therefore does not believe in Santa Claus. This disbelief is largely attributed to her mother, who doesn't feel it's a good idea to be telling children such stories. Despite their differences of opinion, Santa and Susan strike up a friendship. They see a lot of each other because due to his success at the parade, Kris is hired by Macy's to be their Mall Santa, a job he takes very seriously.
It's not exactly smooth sailing, however, as Kris clashes with the company's psychologist (Porter Hall), and Doris and the others soon learn that Kris actually believes he is the real Santa Claus. In his company profile, in fact, he lists his age as "as old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth," while his next of kin is listed as Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, et al. He also does not hesitate to recommend other stores to families so that they might find what they're looking for. It's unlikely that the business leaders of New York would respond so positively to such a scheme (and the film's screenplay by George Seaton is markedly aware of this, as Harry Antrim as Mr. Macy remarks that while the store will put public service ahead of profit, "Consequently, we'll make more profits than ever before").
The Oscar-winning screenplay by Seaton and the story by Valentine Davies easily switches to a courtroom flick, as the lawyer Doris is dating (played by John Payne) defends Kringle in court to prove his sanity. The trial scenes elevate Miracle on 34th Street and make it more fun and even a tad more realistic, as the judge presiding over the case (Gene Lockhart) nervously watches as the prosecution of Santa Claus damages his reputation with children, whose parents may vote to throw him out of his position. The judge's political consultant (William Frawley) is played as a brash politico enthusiastically chomping on cigars, yet he is the one urging the judge to be lenient towards Kris Kringle.
Miracle on 34th Street has long been cherished as a holiday classic, and it is currently the second-highest ranked Christmas film on Rotten Tomatoes, right behind It's a Wonderful Life. The image everyone remembers, as already pointed out, is when Susan first sits on Santa's lap and is stunned to realize his beard is real. However, the film's most heartwarming moment is easily when a young Dutch orphan who cannot speak English is delighted to realize that Santa can in fact speak her mother tongue; the scene is reminiscent of modern-day Santas signing to deaf children and the delight it brings them.
Aside from that sentimental moment, it's the actors who bring the film home. Gwenn's performance is perfectly natural, like he isn't even trying. True, he's full of energy and passion when he needs to, but it's the simple moments that have stuck with audiences throughout the decades. The ease at which he delivers the lines helps the audience believe the character's antagonism to the many less desirable qualities of adults, such as embracing the commercialism of Christmas. Kris firmly believes that "Christmas isn't just a day; it's a frame of mind." This attitude of the character and film makes Miracle on 34th Street an unforgettably swell movie.
Wolves are the largest members of the dog family. Adult wolves have 42 teeth. They prefer to eat large mammals like deer and moose. They can weigh up to 175 pounds.
All of these trivial facts are more interesting than most of what we get in the 1994 romantic horror flick Wolf, the Mike Nichols-directed take on werewolf films from a screenplay by Jim Harrison and Wesley Strick. Wolf is a film in which I had mostly low expectations that were by the end met. The first half of the film is wherein the potential for something greater lies. This is a werewolf movie, but our wolfman here is a sophisticated yet banal editor-in-chief, making this story ripe to do whatever it wants to do, and yet it doesn't take the bait. Early test reactions to the ending were negative, so a new, action-packed one was shot. By that point, though, I couldn't wait for it to be over.
Jack Nicholson (in his second-last of seven horror movies in his career) plays Will Randall, a successful editor-in-chief at a large publishing house in New York. Trouble is brewing for Randall, however, as the tycoon Raymond Alden (Christopher Plummer) has recently purchased the publishing house and plans on replacing Randall with his protégé, Stewart Swinton (James Spader). To make matters much worse for Randall, while driving home in snowy weather after negotiating a deal in Vermont, he accidentally hits a black wolf. While attempting to move the seemingly dead animal off the road, the wolf suddenly reanimates and bites him in the hand before darting back into the woods, where it's protected by its pack. (Another fun fact from wolvesmatter.org that's more interesting than Wolf: "Wolf packs work together to hunt for food. The loss of one wolf from a pack can damage cohesion of the group and can cause packs to break up.") Randall escapes and hurries home.
Unfortunately (or fortunately) for Randall, things start to drastically change for him. His senses are heightened, so much so that he can tell what kind of liquor someone has recently drunk and can edit manuscripts without his reading glasses. His hair starts to grow back and become youthful-looking again. He can hear virtually anything, including every conversation in the building. His sex drive rapidly increases. These newfound heightened senses give him a new purpose, mainly for revenge against the back-stabbing sycophant Stewart. "Ruthless" is the word that's used to describe him, and the scenes of him being so are the most captivating to watch.
But Wolf is a werewolf movie, and it's the "man-wolf" scenes that are the most ridiculous, expectedly. Going into a movie like this understandably requires a certain level of tolerance toward the silliness and definitely loads of suspension of disbelief, but Wolf takes that agreement for granted. The film made a profit, though, earning $131 million worldwide from a large $70 million budget, so despite the subpar appearance of the horror effects and sets, audiences at least somewhat embraced the...I don't know what to call it—camp, I guess, as Randall increasingly metamorphoses into a wolf and howls at the moon. You've heard of An American Werewolf in London; this is "A Callous Werewolf in New York Not Afraid to Take On Armed Men About to Mug Him."
Nichols certainly pulled out the big guns for this film, his only horror movie. In addition to uncredited screenwriting work from his longtime collaborator Elaine May, the score is by Ennio Morricone, the makeup effects are by Rick Baker, and the production design is by Bo Welch. All of them, however, put in much better work before and since, especially Baker, whose makeup effects make Spader basically look like a thin version of Fat Bastard and Nicholson look like an older Wolverine. There's nothing particularly noteworthy about Morricone, Welch, or Baker's contributions to the film; the same could largely be said about the acting, and certainly the characters. Other than Nicholson's Will Randall, every other character is about as two-dimensional as possible. The other huge star here is Michelle Pfeiffer, who worked with Nicholson on The Witches of Eastwick. Pfeiffer plays Alden's daughter, often in trouble with the law and not a big fan of her father. Pfeiffer does a fine job, no doubt, but her character only serves as a sex object for Randall and to a lesser extent another element of animosity between the protagonist and his jerk boss, Alden.
Both Nicholson and Spader overdo it from time to time, but it's less bearable watching the latter do it. Nichols at least got Nicholson to tone down the obnoxiousness that was present in Carnal Knowledge, the first film the two worked on together. (They also collaborated together on Heartburn.) That being said, it's impossible to take your eyes off Nicholson. For one, he's in basically every scene, usually at the center. Even watching him eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and drink a glass of milk can be fascinating. It may not be his most challenging work ever, but he and some of the others make it look like a piece of cake. There are also a variety of pre-stardom cast member appearances here in almost blink-and-you'll-miss-them moments, such as Allison Janney, David Schwimmer, and Peter Gerety.
Wolf is usually rather predictable; the only thing anticipated about it that follows through is its absurdity. The simplest way of describing Wolf is that at times, it's more or less watchable. But it certainly becomes less so during its second half. One of the fundamental problems with Wolf is that it's not sure what it wants to do. Is it a conventional horror feature? Does it want to satirize the dog-eat-dog world of editing? Is it trying to do something different? All of the above? Who knows, and who cares?
Fourteen years after the iconic HBO show The Sopranos ended its seven-year run as a critical and audience hit, fans' patience has been rewarded with a prequel titled The Many Saints of Newark. It may not exactly be what fans would wish for in a perfect world, but it is likely to suffice anyway. Directed by Alan Taylor and written by Lawrence Konner and show creator Dominic Chase, familiar characters quickly show up. They are obviously played by younger actors, but fans of the show will recognize them immediately. Younger versions of Junior Soprano (Corey Stoll), Livia Soprano (Vera Farmiga), Paulie Walnuts (Billy Magnussen), and a pre-toupée Silvo Dante (John Magaro) all show up. The gang's all here.
Much of the hype around the film when it was in production centered on the fact that it was an origin story of Tony Soprano, the central, groundbreaking anti-hero of the famous show who was played by the late, great James Gandolfini, and that the character would be played as a teenager by Gandolfini's son, Michael. But Tony is surprisingly not the main character here. That part goes to Alessandro Nivola in a rare starring role as Dickie Moltisanti, Tony's uncle, who basically is the only authority figure Tony will listen to. Nivola does a fine job here, although, because Uncle Dickie (a character whose presence looms largely over The Sopranos) is not as eccentric as some of the other characters mentioned, it's difficult to imagine his mileage lasting as long as other figures have. As a character, Dickie may seem initially to possess at least some decency, or at least he might not be as monstrous as the others; we get sporadic reminders that this is not true.
Ray Liotta makes a triumphant return to the cinematic gangster world more than three decades after Goodfellas helped turn him into a star. Here, he plays two characters: Dickie's father ("Hollywood Dick") and his uncle he never really knew (Sally), locked away in prison for murder. The two older Moltisanti twins are very much a yin-and-yang duo: Hollywood Dick is bombastic and charismatic, with a frightening and violent temper (and it's often his new, young wife from Italy played by Michela De Rossi who is at the receiving end of it), while Sally is sullen and remorseful, rotting away but enjoying the small things, like jazz music. Sally is like a priest or counselor to Dickie (it's the closest we get to a recreation of the therapy scenes in the original show); it's clear Dickie is going to see him because of his guilt, but he won't reveal much to his uncle, only lies. Uncle Sally can see right through him, though. It's a better acting challenge than Liotta has had in the past few years.
The Sopranos was one of the whitest shows around, but it's at least a little more diverse this time around, largely because of a major part of its setting: the 1967 Newark riots. Chase originally had an idea for this project—that of four white guys being sent to Vietnam during the riots—in the beginning part of his career, but the idea didn't go anywhere. This central element to the story (the way Black people have been treated in this country, especially by the police and the military industrial complex) adds an element of politics the show only occasionally dabbled in (often through Tony inching his way into modernity, often because of the lectures from his social-justice-warrior daughter). This angle makes its way to the Moltisanti/Soprano family by way of a rising criminal named Harold McBrayer, who's played by Leslie Odom Jr. Harold and Dickie are associates, but between little insults and a host of other tensions, their relationship sours, and they soon become enemies.
Despite the commendable acting from Odom, Nivola, and Liotta, there is an enormous emotional weight to the project due to Gandolfini's presence. Tony is still the most interesting character here. The most compelling tragedy to witness in The Many Saints of Newark isn't the rise and fall of Dickie Moltisanti or the rivalry between gangsters, but instead the inability of Tony's mother to be a good parent. It's not as if Livia is the sole reason Tony turned out to be a ruthless, murderous mob boss, but her ineffectiveness as a mother is a large part of what made the show so iconic because that's one of the major reasons Tony ends up in therapy.
For the record, I liked The Sopranos (a lot, I think). Maybe not as much as The Wire, but I still liked it. I do, however, still hold reservations about the show, namely its depictions of violence against women. In The Sopranos, that violence is often inexcusably gratuitous, like in the controversial episode "University," in which a twenty-year-old woman played by Ariel Kiley is beaten to death in a parking lot by the gangster Ralphie Ciffaretto (Joe Pantoliano). The people behind the scenes would try to explain the necessity of depicting these gangsters as monsters. (This wasn't necessary, though. We understood they're terrible people going into the show way back in 1999; we've all seen Goodfellas.) Yet depicting such a scene and then trying to mansplain it away reveals issues with the series: Like basically all of the gangster flicks Martin Scorsese has directed, The Sopranos is a show (as Anne Cohen reminded us a few years ago) by, of, and for men. The show was a rarity in pop culture: it had numerous great, interesting, terrifically written and acted roles played by women, and yet it also possessed a male-only perspective on their depiction. The issue again roars its ugly head in The Many Saints of Newark.
As a film itself, it's essentially fine, partly due to it having impossibly high expectations. But what works, works. It features a great soundtrack, and its actors, as mentioned, do a commendable job. It might not be as awesome as some kind of Sopranos Part II might have been, but it's recommendable nevertheless.
It may come as a surprise to many U.S. viewers of the new film titled I Carry You With Me (Te Llevo Conmigo), but Mexico has a longer history of LGBT rights than the U.S. does, according to research by Caroline Beer and Victor Cruz Aceves.
Despite the U.S. having a more powerful LGBT rights movement, a less religious population, and a center-left political party ruling the country for the majority of the past few decades, it is Mexico that decriminalized sodomy one hundred years before the U.S. did. Mexico also unanimously passed an anti-discrimination law in 2003, yet there still is no such law on U.S. books (though the U.S. Supreme Court did outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation last year). The Mexican Constitution prohibits discrimination based on sexual preferences; the U.S. Constitution does not. Part of this (again, according to Beer and Acevez) is due to secularism playing a bigger role in national politics in Mexico, despite the higher popularity of religion (especially the Catholic Church).
That being said, the story of I Carry You With Me primarily takes place in 1994, a very different time than 2021 or even 2003. Many queer Mexicans had rights, but things could still be difficult. 1994 was before Patria Jiménez became the first openly gay member of the Mexican parliament in 1997, and it was more than a decade before Mexico City legalized same-sex civil unions. Despite how things have generally been better for a longer period of time for queer people in Mexico than in the U.S., this is also not to suggest that Iván and Gerardo's stories (the two main narratives we witness in this film) are not without trials. Some anecdotal accounts offer powerful reminders of real-life homophobia, like a blog from teenager Paulina Aldaba, who wrote about being told that homosexuality was how "Satan separated people from God," or how "homophobic slurs became a staple of everyone's vocabulary."
I Carry You With Me is one of two Mexican dramas that have made its way to the United States this year dealing with border crossings (the other being the significantly darker and more depressing Identifying Features). It starts in modern-day New York City. Iván (played here in as a middle-aged man by Gerardo Zabaleta) carries a lifetime of memories, achievements, and heartache. There has simultaneously been for him an enormous amount of guilt and alienation as a gay man who crossed over from Mexico into the United States, leaving behind his son to live with a mother who was repulsed by Iván's sexual orientation. Iván dreams of his younger self. Most of the film's scenes show younger Iván in Mexico, struggling to make money as a dishwasher while he's a qualified and talented chef, but also hiding his orientation in order to keep seeing his young son.
In these scenes (in which the character is played by Armando Espitia), he meets a teacher named Gerardo (Christian Vázquez), and there is immediate attraction. The two start flirting (telling stories like how Iván spent his younger years in the 80s masturbating to posters of Tom Cruise) and dating. Gerardo is more comfortable in his skin, while Iván is a "complicated boyfriend." How could Gerardo not be less closeted? His mother has been quite supportive of him, despite the undeniable cruelty of his brutal father, who left him alone in the remote part of their village at night as punishment for "acting like a girl." In this scene, the young actor Nery Arredondo provides a scene-stealing moment as a scared Gerardo non-verbally begging for mercy from his father. This is one aspect of their stories that are similar; when Iván was a boy (played by Yael Tadeo), he was discovered by his father in a dress and with makeup on, and his father, too, was disgusted, though he didn't resort to measures as extreme as Gerardo's did.
For the scenes in which Iván and Gerardo become intimately involved, there is a romantic and subtle yet dreamlike quality to the filmmaking. (Compare this to scenes in Identifying Features, which very much are nightmarish.) But for much of the film, the scenes delve into the tragic aspects of queer stories; this may make the film come across as a bit old-fashioned to many post-Call Me By Your Name audience members, as I Carry You With Me contains many expected tragic elements of queer storytelling: acts of random violence, cultural conservatism, closetedness, toxic masculinity, and familial rejection. I wouldn't blame some people for not wanting to watch the film due to the depressing nature of it.
I Carry You With Me juxtaposes this tragedy with tales of border crossings and other experiences of undocumented workers, adding on top of that moments of betrayal, desperate measures to survive, loneliness, lies, and questions about how authentic the American Dream actually is (and who gets a shot at it). Like Moonlight before it, I Carry You With Me contains the stories of two gay men in love told through three different periods of their lives. By the end of the film, one will clearly recognize the major elements of the film's success in terms of storytelling: the direction of Heidi Ewing (the documentarian who makes her narrative feature film debut here), the superb screenplay by Ewing and Alan Page Arriaga, and especially the acting. There is not a single flawed performance in this movie, especially those of Espitia and Vázquez.
The somber tone and heart-rendering moments may understandably not be for everyone, but for a chance to witness such exceptional acting, as well as a reminder of just how much progress has been made in such a relatively short amount of time, this film is one many should seek out.
In the beginning of Drunk Bus, a film "inspired by real shit," the audience is notified that the story takes place in 2006 (winter, based on the omnipresent snow and winter coats), which was noteworthy for me because I would have been a university freshman or sophomore in the winter of 2006. I also routinely took the campus buses, which were free for students. The driver of the bus in this film is named Michael, a young man played by Charlie Tahan, sporting a winter beanie lots of university students wore then (and now, I assume). Michael, one can tell immediately, hates his job. How could he not? University students are constantly drunk on his bus, after all.
I had a variety of jobs as a student at Kent State University. Some of them I loved (writing movie reviews for the Daily Kent Stater), some of them I liked (being a waiter or a Resident Assistant), and some of them I hated (being a telemarketer for the university). I never drove a bus, but Michael says out loud that other than nude modeling (another job I didn't do), it's the highest-paying job on campus (a fact confirmed by co-director Brandon LaGanke, another KSU alumnus).
While I wasn't a bus driver like Michael is, I was thrilled to see the film take place in Kent (though the college is called Kent Institute of Technology), bringing about a rush of memories immediately spinning in my head. As Michael's bus pulled up to a curmudgeonly man with a long white beard, I wondered to myself if this character (whom Michael pleads with to get on the bus) was based on local Kent legend Fuck You Bob. Indeed, it was. He's even called that in the film. For the record, the "hippie-looking" Fuck You Bob was a local artist named Robert Wood, who died in 2012. He was "flippant," to put it mildly, even being told by police in 1992 that he could not enter KSU's campus anymore. Now the world of indie-loving cinephiles can know that such a man truly existed.
However, my initial delight and all the wonderful nostalgia soon evaporated. Nobody likes obnoxious drunk students, but no one does (or should) like movies that glamorize them in the name of empathy. But obnoxiousness is only one edge of this sword. The other in Drunk Bus is a smorgasbord of toilet humor; the movie is completely saturated in it. When the bathroom humor does't work, then we get a lot of screaming and yelling in attempted shots for laughs, whether it's from drunk students being drunk students or someone having an orgasm. It's not funny, either. And when that doesn't work, then we get morbid humor, which is only a step above toilet humor if there were some kind of Bloom-inspired hierarchy of producing comedy. It's frustrating that a film so painfully unfunny has received such acclaimed, and yet it has. As of this writing, it is number twenty-six on Rotten Tomatoes' list of the one-hundred best films of 2021. Yet it's undoubtedly one of the least funny films I've seen in a long, long time.
Most of the reasons why the film doesn't work as a comedy (beyond its fetish for toilet humor) is that so many of its characters are not interesting or redeemable in the slightest. University-level students aren't always the most likable people in the world, but few of them are as unpleasant as the majority of these characters. Within twenty minutes of Drunk Bus, I found myself caring less and less about any of them or any situation they found themselves in. Halfway through the film, I just wanted the whole thing to be over. It's a particular pity that Will Forte, who plays the sophomoric middle-aged boss who peaked a little too early and now manages Michael and the other bus drivers, tormenting them with flatulence, is spending a lot of his career making overrated garbage like this and the overrated Netflix series Sweet Tooth.
One character and actor who at least is compelling enough is Pineapple Tangaroa, playing a fictional version of himself. (Tangaroa, a bald Samoan man with tattoos all over his face, was a university friend of LaGanke's.) In the film, Pineapple is hired by the bus company to be security to assist Michael with the unruly drunkards each night. Pineapple's intimidating presence and almost mystic wisdom immediately have effects, with Michael being guided along the way as he learns to stand up to jerks and maybe even lose his virginity. Michael is under a lot of pressure, though, and soon there are fissures in their friendship. They even get into a shouting match, and terrible words are exchanged between them. That's basically the stakes in the film: characters lie to each other, characters hurt each other, and it goes round and round, just like Michael on his constant bus loops. It may work for some, but it didn't for me.
A big problem I have with Drunk Bus is its hubris. If you were to sit down LaGanke, co-director John Carlucci, and screenwriter Chris Molinaro, and then accuse their Drunk Bus of simply being a movie of the likes of Road Trip, the 2000 road trip sex comedy starring Breckin Meyer and Tom Green, or National Lampoon's Van Wilder, the 2002 college comedy with Ryan Reynolds, they might be offended. Those films, which LaGanke, Carlucci, and Molinaro surely saw when they were younger, clearly influenced Drunk Bus, whether they want to admit it or not. But Drunk Bus isn't Road Trip or Van Wilder, we would be told. It's about...I don't know. Life or youth or friendship or something artsy that the three would clumsily spit out. It wouldn't be a convincing argument. Drunk Bus thinks it's like The Perks of Being a Wall Flower, a coming-of-age tale of young people, but it's definitely more of a Road Trip, a dumb comedy. This one just happens to take place in a bus on the same route, night after night, with copious amounts of sound, fury, and weak attempts at humor all being flushed down a toilet.
"All I want for Christmas is to make another movie with Audrey Hepburn." So said Cary Grant, Hollywood's amiable king of charisma. Alas, he never got his wish, but one can certainly imagine that a second pairing would have been just as rewarding as the first. The two stars were paired as the leads in Charade, the 1963 film directed by Stanley Donen, that remains possibly the finest film in the public domain. (It ended up there due to a copyright notice error.) Often described as "the best Hitchcock film Hitchcock never directed," Charade is one of the most alluring films in cinematic history. Much of it is due to the wonderful pairing of these two. It would be unfair to say they carry the film. Many others involved deserve acclaim for how Charade turned out. But their pairing remains one of Hollywood's most brilliant castings.
Hepburn plays Reggie Lambert, an interpreter working in Paris taking a skiing trip in the Alps. Her vacation doesn't seem to be bringing her much comfort, though, as her upcoming divorce to her husband, Charles, weighs on her mind, providing her a presumably equal sense of liberation and anxiety. While on vacation, she meets a man identifying himself as Peter Joshua, played by the incomparable Grant. He may be quite older than she (something that made Grant uncomfortable during the filming), but she appears quite smitten with him. (Needless to say, as much as romance works, the way Peter sometimes lectures Reggie comes across as very condescending.) Perhaps the two will meet again after Reggie's divorce goes through, but soon the problems commence.
Things aren't quite what they seem regarding Charles. To start, he's thrown off a train (in his pajamas, a reoccurring theme that is pointed out to us). The police detective (Jacques Marin) points out to her that Charles went by a variety of aliases and possessed a variety of passports from a variety of countries, which comes as a shock to Reggie.
At Charles' wake, attendance is low. Aside from Reggie, her friend Sylvie (Dominique Minot), and the detective, a trio of antagonists storm in one by one. Gideon (Ned Glass) takes a good look at Charlie, then promptly sneezes. Tex (James Coburn) enters next; he seems to be an equally suspicious figure, and Reggie doesn't recognize either of them. The third "mourner" is Herman (George Kennedy), a towering figure with a claw hand who bulldozes his way into the church, takes a quick look at Charlie, then violently thrusts a needle into his flesh to determine if he truly is dead. (He is.) Herman leaves immediately. Reggie has no idea what's going on. "Don't ask me," she tells Sylvie. "I'm only the widow."
At the wake, she receives a note from a CIA official named Hamilton Bartholomew, played by Walter Matthau, summoning her to the U.S. Embassy in Paris. There, looking like Dan Aykroyd imitating Walt Disney, he chews on his sandwich rather ostentatiously as he tells her that her husband was involved with the three men at the wake in an OSS operation to deliver $250,000 to the French Resistance during the war; the money never reached the Resistance. Charles was likely killed by someone after the money, and that same person may be after Reggie, believing that she now possesses it. But who is the culprit? Herman? Tex? Gideon? All three? Someone else? In this cat-and mouse thriller/comedy/romance/mystery, Reggie may have three or more murderers after her and this money she supposedly has. Making matters worse for her is the fact that there is increasing evidence that Peter may not be who he says he is. The film is a fantasy, but perhaps the most fantastical element is Reggie constantly believing Peter after every edit to his story.
From her first moments, Hepburn demonstrates her mastery at delivering dialogue, particularly the one-liners aplenty provided by writers Peter Stone and Marc Behm, such as when she asks why Jean-Louis (Sylvie's son) can't do "something constructive like start an avalanche or something." This is a remarkably witty film, and if you like escapism from the way real people talk in the real world, Charade might be just the fit for you.
It's not just the rich screenplay that helps Charade succeed so well. Charles Lang's camera is an active one, whether it's from the perspective of the dead Charles in the morgue or frantically following Reggie as she finds her apartment shockingly empty. The fight on the roof between Grant and Kennedy is effectively shot, and is assisted by Henry Mancini's score, which also adds to the delight of Charade. Incidentally, Mancini's famous score remains the only aspect of Charade that is not in the public domain.
The acting in Charade is, for the most part, top-notch. Hepburn and Grant hit all the right notes, as does Matthau, a performance dripping with bureaucratic aridity. Despite Glass' sneezing in a gratuitous manner that comes across as very unfunny, Kennedy going full boogeyman, and Coburn really reaching for all those Southernisms, they all do a fine job as a trio of menacing villains. Even the boy playing Jean-Louis (Thomas Chelimsky) is fine, or as fine as a French-speaking child actor in a 1960s English-language film could be. Hepburn, it must be said, gives the best performance. But it is Grant who has the funniest bits. In a scene that bathes itself in 60s quirkiness and perhaps even sexual liberation, the two participate in a game at a club involving passing fruit to other people without using their hands. Grant relishes every moment, regardless of how uncomfortable it makes everyone else (characters and audience). These days, just about any character showering in his clothes to flirt with someone would be seen as peculiar at best and desperate and misguided at worst. With Grant, it's effortlessly charming.
I really adored this film the first time I saw it in high school. I've seen it at least two other times since. I cannot say it never gets old. It does, but only because the constant twists and turns are no longer novel. But other elements never diminish. The charm of the two leads is a constant joy. It's a pity they didn't have a cinematic reunion, one as fun as Charade.
In My Heart Can't Beat Unless You Tell It To, directed by Jonathan Cuartas, two siblings (Patrick Fugit as Dwight and Ingrid Sophie Schram as Jessie) struggle to make ends meet while caring for their ill brother, Thomas (Owen Campbell). Jessie works as a waitress in town, while Dwight doesn't seem to have a job other than to try and fetch the only ailment that helps the sickly Thomas: human blood. Given that Thomas needs to drink blood, it should be quite clear what actually is going on, and I don't think that's a spoiler because we see Dwight and Jessie collecting blood (in a manner you can probably guess) before giving it to their brother, who drinks it in bed. Oh, and he can't go outside during the day.
These acts of murder and bleeding have become ordinary to the siblings, especially Jessie, who seems the least fazed (at least on the surface). Despite occasionally showing signs of cracking, her steely resolve allows her to sing along to songs on TV even though she stays up late into the night to take care of Thomas before going into work again the next day. Dwight, however, is a wreck, losing more and more of his humanity with each kill. Things start to get complicated for the three: Jessie might target someone Dwight cares about in order to feed Thomas, Dwight soon starts to feel that he cannot keep doing these horrendous acts, and Thomas just wants a friend. One of the interesting things about Cuartas's screenplay is that Thomas' "illness" is never named. Dwight and Jessie only talk about how he's not getting any better. The audience, though, obviously knows what's really going on, yet in the film's mythology and universe, it seems that no one has ever heard of vampires, similar to how the word "zombie" is never used in The Walking Dead. To Dwight and Jessie, there are no vampires, just a sick brother, and they don't know how else to help him. The things we do for family.
A typical rule of thumb in viewing movies is that if nothing happens in the first twenty minutes or so, nothing will happen for the rest of it. With this one, things certainly happen, but they happen at such a slow pace that some audience members, even horror fans (who often are among the most loyal to their beloved genre) may be turned off. While it is slow moving, this unhurriedness is punctuated with moments of intense violence. Because of this, the strongest element of this film is its tension. It's worth mentioning, though, that while it is a violent horror flick, it employs violence in the classical sense; that is, you don't see much of it. However, even if you can't see it, you can hear it, and you most certainly can imagine it, so there's a strong chance the hand will go up to cover the images on the screen.
While I liked the My Heart Can't Beat Unless You Tell It To, the biggest problem I had with it is that the whole thing doesn't feel very original. It reminded me too much of the Swedish film Let the Right One In, which had a Hollywood remake a few years later. There's also the 1997 novel Thirsty about a teenage vampire, as well as the film Only Lovers Left Alive about modern-day vampires contemplating their existence. But one interesting bit of novelty with the movie is its decision to focus on poor and working-poor characters (protagonists and victims). Typically, the horror movies that come to mind center on middle-class folks and above (think the suburban teenagers in Halloween and Screamor the rich families in The Exorcist and Hereditary), but this film's setting and characters almost make it feel like it's hinting at being allegorical.
At any rate, Fugit, Schram, and Campbell all do a fantastic job in these sympathetic portrayals of three family members trying to survive, especially Thomas, who just wants to be a normal boy. In fact, I thought it probably would have been more interesting if the filmmakers had cast a younger actor in the role (perhaps someone around Jacob Tremblay's age or younger), which would have made his mannerisms and the way the three of them act around each other much more believable. Campbell was about twenty-four years old during film, and his age seems to make the situations awkward at times.
If you can tolerate the deliberate pace of the film, My Heart Can't Beat Unless You Tell It To is a recommendable film. It's scary and unsettling, sure, but not gratuitously so. So if you prefer your horror films to have lots of gore, rest assured that there is plenty of blood in this movie.
"The end justifies the means. But what if there never is an end? All we have is means." -Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven
"Denmark is a pretty good place to live but it is by no stretch of the imagination the utopia many in politics and the media in the U.S. claim to be." That's how British author and journalist Michael Booth put it in an interview with The Washington Post a few years ago to promote his book The Almost Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavia Utopia. The gist of the book, from what I could gather in the interview, is that yes, Denmark and other Scandinavian countries do well and offer a lot that other countries could learn from, but they're not perfect. There is petty theft, for example, and there also is violence.
In fact, nine thousand Danes filed a criminal complaint with the police last year. In a country of almost six million people, that comes out to about 0.0018 percent. But it still happens. We see it in the opening moments of Riders of Justice, the Danish film directed by Anders Thomas Jensen, when an uncle wants to buy a bike for his niece. The problem is that it's red, and she wants a blue one. Perhaps she will one day get it, her uncle assures her, and then the seller places a call for the order. The order, however, is not a legitimate one. Two common thieves break off the chains of a blue bicycle, and now they have it to sell to the uncle.
This action leads to a tragic chain of events. The blue bike belonged to a teenage girl named Mathilde (Andrea Heick Gadeberg), and now she can't get to school. The family car won't start, so her mother (Anne Birgitte Lind) decides to take her via train. They're already having a bad day because on top of those two inconveniences, they've learned that Mathilde's father, Marcus (Mads Mikkelsen), will continue to be deployed in Afghanistan for another three months.
Also having a bad day are Otto (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) and Lennart (Lars Brygmann), two probability scientists who are fired from their jobs when the algorithm they've come up with proves useless to the company they work for. Having packed up his things, Otto gets on the same train as Mathilde and her mother. Being the gentleman he is, he stands up and gives his seat to Mathilde's mother, but there's a terrible accident that kills eleven people, including the mother who sat down in his seat only a few moments earlier. Naturally, Mathilde is in a state of shock and falls into a depression, and Marcus returns home. Angry at what has happened, he doesn't know how to connect with his daughter and console her. He even punches her boyfriend (Albert Rudbeck Lindhardt).
Otto likely also goes through shock and grief (especially as he realizes that it should have been him to die), but his mind knows this could not have been a mere accident. One of the victims of the crash was an informant who was to testify in the trial against the violent leader of the notorious Riders of Justice gang, Kurt (Roland Møller). With the witness now dead, Kurt will likely be acquitted. But Otto and Lennart, once the police aren't interested in helping, take a chance and confront Marcus with their slightly far-fetched theory. So consumed with anger, Marcus makes a likely candidate to join them in their ragtag quest for justice. Now, instead of just petty theft, there will be blood, and lots of it.
Riders of Justice, the fifth film Mikkelsen and Jensen have collaborated on, is a film that changes tones with remarkable ease while effortlessly blending a variety of genres—from action to drama to comedy—while keeping one's attention and investment throughout. There is emotional weight here, especially regarding the father-daughter dynamics, yet there are also lots of laughs, particularly from Brygmann and frequent-Jensen collaborator Nicolas Bro as Emmenthaler, the third part of the mad geniuses who work out together that something is amiss with the train crash and that something must be done. Yet the drama and comedy are really buoyed by the universal desire for revenge. Marcus has been pricked, he bleeds, and he desperately wants revenge.
In addition to the perfect acting from the film's cast, much acclaim should be given to Jensen for his smart script. You may struggle to keep up with all the mathematical jargon, and it may be especially challenging if you're reading the subtitles, but it's worth the effort. Just about every other moment in this flick is unpredictable, making the whole thing seem like a smarter version of Taken. Indeed, it might be the smartest action movie you've seen in a while.
While some of the gratuitous violence grows stale as the film reaches its denouement, most of the rest of the film is a blast, and a thought-provoking one at that. I kept thinking about consequentialism while watching it, the idea that a moral act is one that produces something good. The choices our protagonists make against the Riders of Justice may challenge this. Do the ends justify the means? What happens if mistakes are made? What happens if the ones you love get hurt along the way? These are all worthy questions, but even if they're not your cup of tea, there's still a lot of shoot-outs and laughter along the way to keep you entertained.
"Don't you people know how to park?" This racist attack towards an Asian-American man named Danny, played in The Paper Tigers by Alain Uy, represents a painfully common act of racism against Asians and Asian-Americans, especially since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Audience members, when seeing something like that in a film, might be primed to anticipate Danny fighting back (especially since he used to be a very talented martial artist) or at least say something aggressive back. This is, after all, a movie about kung fu.
Danny doesn't fight back. He has his kid (played by Joziah Lagonoy) with him. Not fighting back is a teachable moment for his son. It's better to walk away than fight, he tells him. But Danny's messaging is inconsistent. Later in the film, he'll tell his son Ed that he should fight to defend his friends. His ex-wife disagrees. It's difficult to put much stock into anything Danny tells Ed because in addition to his inconsistency, he's often not there for him. He's late picking him up, and he has to cancel trips to amusement parks due to emergency deadlines, all the while Ed's mother inevitably comes across looking like the mean parent.
The failed-father dynamic in The Paper Tigers isn't particularly interesting, but it's not like the film, written and directed by Tran Quoc Bao, is trying very hard to make it work. Instead, the film puts most of its efforts into two elements: comedy and action. The Paper Tigers is a martial arts comedy; its martial arts scenes are the film's finest moments, but its comedy is flat. Nothing is funny in this movie, not the jokes about "breakfast pasta," not the flatulence, not the funeral selfies, not even the awkward white guy in the movie. The white guy (a very muscular Matthew Page as Carter) is a former high school rival of the Three Tigers (more on them in a moment), constantly losing to them and feeling bitter about it as an adult yet emboldened, for he clearly kept in shape over the years and now is a kung fu teacher, while the others (or at least two-thirds of them) got a little flabbier.
Carter, though, takes things a little too seriously, learning to speak Chinese while passionately delivering honorable kung fu beliefs (which are dismissed as fortune cookie sayings by Danny). Carter blurts out his trust of the "old ways" and says other things that certainly come across as appropriation, and yet the film can't even get that right. The character of Carter should be low-hanging fruit for the film, but even though middle-aged white guys can say some pretty cringe-worthy things, none of them (we should hope) would never go so far as to say something like "we Chinese have a saying."
The Paper Tigers centers on three middle-aged men who excelled at martial arts under the tutelage of Sifu Cheung (Roger Yuan) when they were teenagers but who've grown apart in their older years. Aside from Danny, Hing (Ron Yuan, Roger Yuan's real-life brother) has suffered from a leg injury and has gained weight, while Jim (Mykel Shannon Jenkins) has continued to keep his body in pristine order as a boxing coach but has forgotten kung fu. The three of them, formerly known as the Three Tigers, reunite when their sifu has mysteriously died from a heart attack. Suspecting foul play, they try to discover the true cause of his death and who might have had a hand in it.
Some of the actors (like Page and Ron Yuan) certainly try to make this bizarre humor work (to no avail), but most of this silliness isn't their fault, but that of Bao's script. The script sometimes tries to instill some weight and emotion (like Danny's problems being a reliable father and his past issues living up to Sifu Cheung's expectations), often with some kind of "but the truth is" sappy speech, but it doesn't succeed, instead trying too hard to go for laughs. True, kids might laugh at it, but they'll likely be the only ones chuckling at these antics.
If there is anything to be praised in the film, however, it's the unpredictable fight choreography of Ken Quitugua, who also appears as Zhen Fan, the film's villain. Adding to the delight of watching this masterful choreography is Daniel L.K. Caldwell's score; the two fit perfectly together. Music and fighting, though, can't save a movie like this, making this a very disappointing film. Unfortunately, it might pain you to try and remember whether or not you saw The Paper Tigers one week after viewing it.
The films Alfred Hitchcock directed can probably be split up into five (more or less) distinct stages: The first is his films that only the most die-hard Hitchcock enthusiasts and film historians are aware of. The period is from 1923 (with the first film he directed, the silent short Always Tell Your Wife) until 1934; it includes all of the silent films he directed and Blackmail, the first talkie film he directed.
Later stages of Hitchcock's illustrious career include a third stage (his longest, the time when he reigned as a king in Hollywood, starting with the Best Picture-winning gothic drama Rebecca in 1940 until some of his best films, such as Vertigo, North by Northwest, and Psycho) and the final stage: the last thirteen years of his career that include some memorable films (like Marnie) and some that few have seen (like the critically reviled Torn Curtain).
The 39 Steps from 1935 exists in a second stage of Hitchcock's filmography. It's during this period that amateur film historians (including me) start to recognize some of the titles he's been associated with: The Man Who Knew Too Much from 1934 (which he remade in 1956), Sabotage from 1936, and The Lady Vanishes from 1937. While I'm not an authority on Hitchcock by any stretch of the imagination, it seems that during this period, he really started to establish himself as a master of the cinema, and many elements he would be forever known for (trains, blonds, a wronged man, and that sort of thing) start to become common fixtures in his thrillers.
In the film, Richard Hannay (played by Robert Donat, whose sophisticated demeanor and elocution make him seem like the lovechild of David Tomlinson and Colin Firth) is an Englishman who's returned from Canada. Hannay goes to a music hall for some fun, and the main attraction of the night is a man dubbed Mr. Memory (Wylie Watson), whose cool trick is that he can call out the answer to any question any audience member has, regardless of how trivial it is. The audience is enjoying it all until shots are fired, causing obvious panic.
Hannay discovers that the person who fired the shots is a woman named Annabelle Smith (Lucie Mannheim, the Jewish actor who fled Germany and started participating in anti-Hitler propaganda broadcasts). Flirting with Smith, the two go back to his place where they start to have a late-night snack, and at this point she explains to him that she was the one who fired the shots in order to help her escape from spies who were pursuing her belonging to an organization called the 39 Steps. This may sound preposterous to a guy like Hannay, but he will soon discover how such a story isn't always easy for the listener to accept, and he soon finds himself (like many characters in Hitchcock movies) in way over his head. Why? Soon the agents who are after Smith start to go after Hannay. He escapes on a train to Scotland, heading there because there is a small town circled on Smith's map. However, Hannay finds himself framed for murder, so he must avoid both the law and these foreign agents chasing after him.
Why is the sinister organization named the 39 Steps? We're never told, but it doesn't matter. The twist—in which Hannay and the audience learn exactly what they are and exactly what they want (and exactly how they plan on getting it)—these days must seem a bit hard to buy, but it's clever nevertheless. The film's pacing sometimes feels dated, but for the most part it breezily moves about its eighty-six minutes in ways that are totally agreeable, even to modern-day audiences. The actors all look like they must have been having a good time as well, particularly Donat, Madeleine Carroll (who plays a woman caught up in Hannay's mess), and Godfrey Tearle, who despite only appearing in a few scenes as the film's main antagonist, seems to have relished every moment of it.
The film is a thriller, but it's a humorous one, as well. The banter between Donat and Carroll's characters, despite being a bit creepy at times, is mostly spot-on and charming. Donat's ability to convincingly portray Hannay as a man who can so confidently and quickly speak out of his rear end effortlessly despite all these problems he steps in shows just how much of a natural he was. A few years after The 39 Steps was released, Donat won Best Actor for Goodbye, Mr. Chips, beating Mickey Rooney for Babes in Arms, James Stewart for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Clark Gable for Gone With the Wind, and Laurence Olivier for Wuthering Heights.
Critics praised The 39 Steps when it was released. Proving a box office hit and a critical success, The 39 Steps certainly has maintained enthusiasts over the years, like Orson Welles, who called the film a masterpiece, and Robert Townsend, who once said that "contemporary escapist entertainment begins with The 39 Steps." That's not hyperbole. The cleverness has remained, as have the effectiveness of smaller things (like the way tension can be sustained with each ring of the phone), even if nearly a hundred years have passed.
Those who love Hitchcock-directed films surely should seek this one out if they haven't already. You'll get a Hitchcock cameo (towards the beginning) and other neat tricks that seem quite ahead of its time, like a woman's scream being replaced by a train whistle as it races by. Whether it's on a train or in a kitchen, Hitchcock knew how to do suspense, even back in the mid-30s when he directed The 39 Steps, his twenty-first film. True, at times it seems quite similar to later films (especially North by Northwest), but that shouldn't count too much against it. In essence, The 39 Steps is just as suspenseful and unpredictable as many of the later films he directed.
If I am about thirty-four and a half years old, that means that I have roughly been on this Earth for 413 months. Of those 413 months, twelve of them have been spent visiting and even at times living in The Villages. The Villages is the largest retirement community in the country, with well over a hundred thousand retirees living in this retirement fairyland in the middle of Florida. A person in his thirties certainly stands out, especially if he's driving a golf cart. But drive one I did during periods of house sitting, visiting, and even staying for several months in between contracts. As a U.S. citizen living abroad, I still use my parents' address in The Villages as my permanent residence, and I often catch myself whispering to whoever needs my address (the bank teller or the pharmacist, for example) that "I really don't live here."
You also might have heard of The Villages. Perhaps you've heard the dirty rumor that The Villages has the highest STD rate in the country, which was basically debunked a few years ago by villages-news.com but might forever be in the public's imagination thanks to a 2009 article in the New York Post that included gossip about a couple getting caught having sex in their golf cart, rumors of a black market for Viagra, and cops talking about breaking up men jousting with their canes to fight over women. You most certainly heard of The Villages if you were following last year's presidential election, thanks to constant media coverage of the community's supposed disappointment in Donald Trump's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, with articles from Business Insider, New York magazine, the Associated Press, NBC, USA Today, and many others. (At any rate, Trump won Florida 51 to 48, winning almost seventy percent—practically identical to his 2016 result—of Sumpter County, where most of The Villages is.) Or maybe you just have an older relative who escaped the cold of northern states and has found their own slice of heaven in Florida. With all this awareness of The Villages, it was inevitable that some kind of film would be made about it. It's very fortunate for moviegoers that the unavoidable film was in capable hands.
With all that you have likely heard of this unique part of the country, there is almost nothing I can tell you about The Villages that you won't learn in the new documentary titled Some Kind of Heaven. Directed by Lance Oppenheim (a Floridian making his directorial debut here) and produced by Darren Aronofsky, this film will show you all the good, bad, and ugly of a community self-described as "Florida's friendliest hometown." "You come here to live," one resident says. "You don't come here to pass away." Within the first sequences of the documentary, you'll see how The Villages offers something for everyone—synchronized swimming, rowing, pickleball, and golf courses aplenty are just some of the activities available for residents. There's even a club for people named Elaine. The documentary, however, is not as concerned with the almost idiosyncratic vibe there but instead four residents: a married couple named Anne and Reggie, a widow named Barbara, and a bachelor named Dennis.
Barbara is the most normal of the four. She's from Boston, a place she desperately wants to return to. Her husband passed away, and she's working full time at a job she doesn't particularly like. She tells the interviewer that her time in The Villages "hasn't been the fantasyland" she hoped it would be, right before she bursts into face-saving laughter as her dog starts humping the cat. Audience members will certainly feel for a person like Barbara and others who have not found the happiness they thought they would find there, like Dennis, who lives in a van and illegally parks for the night on Villages property. He fully states that his intention is to find a wealthy woman whom he can move in with. Much of Anne's story focuses on her crumbling marriage to Reggie, a very peculiar individual struggling with addiction to THC. Some of these characters' paths take some unexpected turns, especially when the law gets involved.
During the times I housesat for my parents in The Villages, I usually would go outside only for things like going to see a movie or getting groceries. I avoided everything else at all cost, and other than doctor appointments, there was little else I found in common with the permanent residents (or semi-permanent ones coined "snow birds," those who retreat to northern states during the miserably hot and humid summers). I've seen enough of The Villages—with its humidity, omnipresent golf courses, and deep-red conservatism—to know that it's not for me, and it never will be (even forty years from now). Knowing The Villages so well might have impacted how I responded to Some Kind of Heaven, and I'm not sure if it helped or hurt my enjoyment of the film. The target audience therefore is people who have never been there or even heard of it. Actual Villagers will probably be wondering why they've bothered to watch a movie that shows them their daily experiences, although the film's occasional melancholy likely preaches to the choir that is those who have moved there and haven't found the paradise they were hoping for.
Other residents of The Villages—the people who've truly fallen in love with this wonderland in a country they don't recognize anymore—might be insulted. True, some of the film's perspective is predictably smug, with an attitude that shouts "look at all these old geezers running around here!" Yet much of Some Kind of Heaven is equal parts inquisitive and informative, as many great documentaries are. And viewers will likely find themselves rooting for the four Villagers we follow (especially Barbara), even when they do foolish things. Much acclaim should be given to Oppenheim for channeling a style that embraces surrealism while being humanist at the same time. There isn't much of a thesis in this documentary, but it really shines when focusing on the four characters. Perhaps it was easy for Oppenheim to get these folks to spill the beans so easily; older people, after all, are more trusting than younger people. Hopefully their children and grandchildren won't be too upset at him.
I admit to having no idea what the word "slalom" meant before a simple online search took me to a basic definition: to zigzag between obstacles. It is a fitting title for the debut feature film of writer and director Charlène Favier, a drama about a 15-year-old ski prodigy and her strict, predatory instructor. The girl, named Lyz and played by Noée Abita, has a variety of expected obstacles: navigating obnoxious boys and jealous friends on top of schoolwork that bores her, separated parents, and the enormous pressures of her competitive sport. Her wolfish coach, played by Jérémie Renier, makes things considerably worse.
Not long after the Me Too movement started in the United States, toppling about 200 men in various different fields, it found its way to France with #BalanceTonPorc (OutYourPig). However, in France, few men were held accountable initially. What made things worse was the infamous letter signed by 100 women calling the movement "puritanism." "To these women and the many who agreed with them," Monique El-Faizy wrote earlier this year, "#MeToo was a puritanical overreaction and an affront to French values and the country's cherished culture of seduction."
Things started to change last year with the publication of Vanessa Springora's memoir titled Consent, which detailed her relationship that started when she was fourteen with writer Gabriel Matzneff (who for a long time has openly written about his child rape activities but never faced prosecution). Then, Camille Kouchner published La Familia Grande, in which she accused her stepfather, the political scientist Olivier Duhamel, of sexually abusing her brother when he was fourteen. Adèle Haenel walked out of the César Awards after Roman Polanski won Best Director. More allegations came, and #BalanceTonPorc spawned #MeTooIncest and #MeTooGay to more broadly tackle the problem. France was catching up and changing.
As France and the world continue to challenge sexual abuse and the protection of the abusers, films like Slalom are vital. Several U.S. films have been themed around Me Too (like The Assistant and Athlete A, both from last year), but to my knowledge Slalom is the first OutYourPig movie from France. Given what we know about Matzneff, Duhamel, and others, it is fitting that the protagonist in this drama is underage, and even though Abita was in her early twenties during filming, she convincingly looks and can act like a teenager. (It's the same reason why Léa Mysius cast her in Ava as a teenager.) The coach character Renier plays (named Fred) is overly cruel to Lyz in front of the others on the team, but at least some of them feel there is a method to his madness. "He crushes, you listen," one of the other teenage girls tells her, "and you get better." There is a cycle to Fred's behavior—he's harsh, then soft, then "cool," then loving.
Lyz undoubtedly is passionate about skiing, so she doesn't let his authoritarian methods hinder her ambition, instead excelling at skiing and becoming Fred's favorite. But in addition to the favoritism, there is lots of inappropriate touching from Fred. Lyz possibly has a crush on him, and her lack of a father figure and largely absent mother probably make her especially vulnerable to Fred's attention and seduction, but even when his touching becomes explicitly sexual, she tells Fred of her love for him. He might have fallen in love with her, too, if he didn't soon realize the suspicions of those around him, including his wife (played by Marie Denarnaud).
Favier and Marie Talon's script is a potent one, and it's important to remember that decades ago, the angle of the (likely male) filmmakers would have been to make this story as an innocent coming-of-age tale of innocent yet deep romance. Yet here, Favier and Talon are on the side of Me Too, not Catherine Devenue (one of the co-signers of the anti-#MeToo letter). In addition to the sharp script and the phenomenal acting (especially from the film's two leads), cinematographer Yann Maritaud's camera actively pursues the skiers as they race downhill in a way that is thrilling.
At times, Slalom is predictably not an easy film to watch, especially when Lyz and Fred are alone together. That's the point, though. Nothing about the Me Too movement has been easy. It has required a great deal of bravery from victims, and it has required that society change its behavior and hold perpetrators accountable. This has not always happened, as we have seen. In addition to the initial pushback in France, there are signs that things may be heading in the wrong direction, especially this past week, which saw the release of Bill Cosby after only three years behind bars after being found guilty of three counts of aggravated indecent assault; sixty women have accused Cosby of rape and other sexual misconduct. This fight to change society is far from over, and many more movies like Slalom are needed.
Biggie: I Got a Story to Tell is a new documentary on Netflix about Christopher Wallace (better known to all as Biggie, Biggie Smalls, and the Notorious B.I.G.) that in roughly ninety minutes will tell us "what rap planet this guy came from." That's fundamentally sort of the problem with the film. It's a fine documentary (or at least fine enough), especially for music fans and in particular rap and Biggie fans. But it's a documentary that wants to tell you everything. Biggie's music won world-wide acclaim; simply letting us hear more of it would have better accomplished the film's objective, and yet we hear surprisingly little of it.
Most of what we get instead are talking heads. Many of these are necessary, though, like when jazz musician Donald Harrison talks to us about how he recognized Wallace's talent for music early on. Faith Evans (Wallace's widow and collaborator) and Sean Combs also provide essential narratives of what the actual Christopher Wallace was like, not simply as an artist but as a person.
But the most compelling scenes feature Biggie's mother, Voletta Wallace. An immigrant from Jamaica and a fan more of country and western music than gangsta rap, she has been protective of her son's legacy since his death, and her voice can be heard on several Biggie tracks and the final album he appeared in: The King and I, by Evans. Voletta's candor is almost slightly ironic because any criticism that has ever been issued towards Christopher Wallace (aside, I suppose, criticism of his lyrics) has been from his mother. Yet her discussion of her son further humanizes him in a way much of the rest of this documentary fails to do so. They are candid moments that help enlighten viewers on the narrative behind some of his lyrics.
Voletta's immigrant identity clearly had an impact on her son's music. One of his best songs ("Respect" from the album Ready to Die) takes heavy inspiration from Jamaican music. Being the child of an immigrant, we are told, also helped Biggie be established as an "outsider," and one wonders if this added to his natural shyness. However, one will likely be disappointed if they wanted more of a character study of Christopher Wallace, though the documentary certainly is a film for musicologists with its discussion of the musical inspiration for Wallace and his impact on the music world.
But that can only take a film so far, and the essential problem with Biggie: I Got a Story to Tell is that most audience members (including critics) get bored easily by biographical films, as they can be quite dull and fall heavy on the telling side instead of showing us something new. Biographical documentaries are not much better. The usual elements are all there: a rags-to-riches story of a musical genius who also had a lot of tragedy and drugs in his life. Essentially, you've seen this before.
What fans of Biggie already knew—that his rap was a different kind of rap, that his music was loved around the world, that his collaborations with Puffy made them comparable to other brilliant artistic pairings (like Coppola and Pacino or De Niro and Scorsese, we're told)—they will be reminded of in this documentary. But if fans were hoping for something more, they are likely to be disappointed. It often simply feels like talking heads reminding us that he was a genius. Simply listening to his songs is a much more potent lesson than most of what is found here.
There have been more than enough articles by now about what an unusual year 2020 was. The pandemic, the injustice, the chaos, the fires, the violence. It was a year to remember, one in which society will hopefully learn from as we move forward. (I think we're all still not sure if 2021 is that much better.) The motion pictures arts industry, though, persevered and continued doing what it does. Remarkably, the 56 films nominated for Oscars at the 93rd Academy Awards more or less feel like films nominated in any other year. That's either a plus or a minus, depending on your perspective.
One noteworthy aspect of these nominees is that, slowly but surely, attempts to increase the diversity of the nominees seems to be working. There is an international feeling to these films, for example, and it's possible that all four winners in the acting categories could be non-white, which would be a first. It's also worth remembering that films like Judas and the Black Messiah would have hardly stood a chance at being nominated for Best Picture even ten years ago. The Academy still has a long way to go, though they've done so much better than the Golden Globes, which notoriously has not.
What's my overall take on these nominated films? Like most years, there are good, bad, and ugly movies on this list. I am disappointed that some of my favorite films from the previous year, like Miss Juneteenth, His House, Never Rarely Sometimes Always, Saint Frances, Boys State, Host, The Invisible Man, On the Record, and Disclosure were not nominated, but this always happens. Most of the films that have been nominated by the Academy, however, are certainly worth a watch.
Without further ado, here is my ranking of all 56 films nominated for Oscars this year:
56. A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon Animated Feature Film (Richard Phelan, Will Becher, Paul Kewley)
I can't even remember if I finished Shaun the Sheep: Farmageddon; that's how much I did not enjoy it.
55. The One and Only Ivan
Visual Effects (Nick Davis, Greg Fisher, Ben Jones, Santiago Colomo Martinez)
The One and Only Ivan feels like a collection of outtakes from the recent Dumbo remake, and it's completely devoid of energy and full of bad Bryan Cranston acting. The effects are great, but the movie is far from it.
54. Hillbilly Elegy
Actress in a Supporting Role (Glenn Close), Makeup and Hairstyling (Eryn Krueger Mekash, Matthew Mungle, Patricia Dehaney)
It's fair to say that expectations were a little higher for Hillbilly Elegy, a movie many hoped would finally get Glenn Close an Oscar. Instead, it's a dreadfully boring two-hour film in which people repeatedly scream at each other. Even the Onion poked fun at it.
53. Yes-People Short Film (Animated) (Gísli Darri Halldórsson, Arnar Gunnarsson)
This short from Iceland features interesting animation, but there isn't much of a plot (or point) to it.
52. Emma. Costume Design (Alexandra Byrne), Makeup and Hairstyling (Marese Langan, Laura Allen, Claudia Stolze)
I wish I could say I liked Anya Taylor-Joy's recent work, but I don't. They're either slightly overrated, like The Queen's Gambit, or terribly overrated, like Emma. There is nothing in this newest Jane Austen adaption that's worth remembering.
51. Pieces of a Woman
Actress in a Leading Role (Vanessa Kirby)
What Pieces of a Woman has going for it mainly is its women actors, especially Venessa Kirby's nominated performance as a woman struggling through the aftermath of a miscarriage. Ellen Burstyn is also fantastic as her overbearing mother. However, Shia LeBeouf is also in it, and he's very...Shia LeBeoufy. Sexual assault allegations against him last year only make some of these moments even more difficult to watch. The film is also challenging to watch past an hour, as it drags on and on.
50. Better Days
International Feature Film (Hong Kong)
Hong Kong's entry in this competition this year is Better Days, a melodrama starring Zhou Dongyu and Jackson Yee that tries to tackle two societal issues: bullying and the immense pressure students (particularly in Asia) are under. (The enormous pressure from school entrance exams in China is unlike that of any other nation.) Better Days is a film I wish I had liked as much as everyone else (it currently has a 96% rating on Rotten Tomatoes), but the film is considerably over the top in a way that almost fetishizes bullying, and it unfortunately just feels like a one-note film.
49. Pinocchio
Costume Design (Massimo Cantini Parrini), Makeup and Hairstyling (Mark Coulier, Dalia Colli, Francesco Pegoretti)
This newest adaption of Pinocchio has a captivating performance by young Federico Ielapi in the title role and marvelous costumes and make-up effects. Also starring in the film is Roberto Benigni as Geppetto, who took a big risk here, given that the last time he appeared in an adaption of this famous story, he was universally trashed for it. This time, though, he does a good job. That being said, it's impossible to watch Pinocchio and not compare it the 1940 animated Disney classic; even if the Disney version didn't exist, this newer film would still suffer because it lacks any kind of emotional punch.
48. The Midnight Sky Visual Effects (Matthew Kasmir, Christopher Lawrence, Max Solomon, David Watkins)
George Clooney gets to show off his directing and acting abilities in this sci-fi flick about a dying man racing to get a message to a spaceship not to return to Earth because the world has ended. However, Clooney doesn't really offer the others in this impressive cast (which includes Felicity Jones, David Oyelowo, Demián Bachir, and Kyle Chandler) much to do. The end result is a film that may look fascinating at times but ultimately is rather dull.
47. Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga
Original Song (Savan Kotecha, Fat Max Gsus, Rickard Göransson)
While there are some moments that genuinely work, namely the earnestness and silliness of it (as well as the sweet—yet morbid—humor) and its fantastic songs (especially the Oscar-nominated song "Husavik", which, frankly, is the best of the nominated songs), Eurovision Song Contest is often a rather lazy comedy from people who have made much better and funnier work in the past.
46. The United States vs. Billie Holiday
Actress in a Leading Role (Andra Day)
Inevitably, there was a major movie about a drug-addicted famous singer. Last year, it was Judy, and this year, it's Billie Holiday, who is depicted being mercilessly harassed by the U.S. government because of she frequently sings the civil rights-themed song "Strange Fruit." Any one of the women nominated for Best Actress would be a fine choice, but perhaps because Andra Day makes her acting debut here, she does her own singing, and there are so many intimate scenes that she pulls of bravely, I'm rooting for her. It's just a pity that her performance is in yet another hackneyed biographical film.
45. Tenet Production Design (Nathan Crowley, Kathy Lucas), Visual Effects (Andrew Jackson, David Lee, Andrew Lockley, Scott Fisher)
This Bond-like action flick revolving around time travel seems (on paper) like it utilizes much of the winning formula that writer/director Christopher Nolan used for films like Inception and Dunkirk. Audiences, though, may have reached the limit of their patience, with the consensus among many being that this is a loud and emotionless dud that is insufferable as it is incomprehensible.
44. Genius Ioci Short Film (Animated) (Andrien Mérigeau, Amaury Gover)
Genius Ioci, the French animated film directed by Adrien Merigeau, is about a character who sees chaos everywhere. "I find chaos," she says. So, too, will the audience, as this film is a little impenetrable and very French, but the abstract animation is spectacular to look at.
43. Mulan Costume Design (Bina Daigeler), Visual Effects (Sean Faden, Anders Langlands, Seth Maury, Steve Ingram)
Mulan was a movie that seemed to consistently drip with more and more controversy each month, whether it was the abhorrent views of its stars, its orientalism, or Disney's bone-headed decision to film it in Xinjiang (where Uighurs and other groups are held in concentration camps). Perhaps because of this, Mulan was not exactly a box office success, and while it wasn't awful, it wasn't particularly good, either.
42. Opera
Short Film (Animated) (Erick Oh)
Opera, directed by Korean animator Erick Oh, may be a bit deep, philosophical, and allegorical (which might mean it's not for everyone), but its elaborate, Renaissance-inspired animation contains what must be over a hundred things going on simultaneously in one long shot lasting about nine minutes. You won't be able to take your eyes off any of it.
41. Over the Moon
Animated Feature Film (Glen Keane, Gennie Rim, Peilin Chou)
You ought to check out Over the Moon for its breathtaking animation alone; there is no other film on this list with such omnipresence of colors. It is also worth noting, especially during a painful and unjust period for Asians and Asian-Americans, that there are more stories like this, although there are still not enough. While Over the Moon is a pleasant watch, especially for children, and its animation is exceptional, the story is a bit peculiar: a young girl whose widower father is starting to date again wants to prevent their union by going to the moon to find the moon goddess Chang'e...or something. It's a bit non-sensical, but if one can get over that and the film's pretty forgettable songs, one should more or less like it.
40. The Man Who Sold His Skin International Feature Film (Tunisia)
The Man Who Sold His Skin, written and directed by Kaouther Ben Hania, aims to offer biting simultaneous critiques of the art world and the exploitation of refugees. In this case, the story, an increasingly allegorical one, focuses on a Syrian refugee in Belgium named Sam (played Yahya Mahayni) whose back is elaborately tattooed for it to be shown off and sold as art. Some of the decisions Hania makes in this story regarding the message and Sam's actions might perplex some, particularly with who the film decides is a hero and who is a villain, but it is a compelling story nevertheless.
39. Another Round Directing (Thomas Vinterberg), International Feature Film (Denmark)
Another Round, Denmark's nominee for Best International Feature which scored an upset nomination for Best Director when Thomas Vinterberg was nominated over Regina King and Aaron Sorkin, is about four teachers experiencing a bit of a midlife crisis who decide to experiment with Finn Skårderud's idea that humans are born with a blood-alcohol-level deficit of 0.05. While experiencing an initial improvement in their teaching practices, things predictably start to unravel. Though the film's unintended message being that alcohol equals better classroom lessons is a peculiar one, Another Round does well thanks to Mads Mikkelsen's leading performance.
Best Picture (Ceán Chaffin, Eric Roth, Douglas Urbanski), Actor in a Leading Role (Gary Oldman), Actress in a Supporting Role (Amanda Seyfried), Cinematography (Erik Messerschmidt), Costume Design (Trish Summerville), Makeup and Hairstyling (Gigi Williams, Kimberley Spiteri, Colleen LaBaff), Production Design (Donald Graham Burt, Jan Pascale), Sound (Ren Klyce, Jeremy Molod, David Parker, Nathan Nance, Drew Kunin
Mank swept the Oscar announcements with ten nominations, and yet it's difficult to see how it will go home with more than a few, if any. It faces stiff competition in its likeliest winning category (Cinematography), and it surprisingly was not nominated for its screenplay by Jack Fincher, the late father of the film's director, David Fincher. The latter Fincher has waited patiently for the top prize (many believe he was robbed a decade ago when The King's Speech defeated The Social Network), but this year, that award is Chloé Zhao's to lose. Mank itself is more or less decent but a little full of itself, and I'm not sure how Gary Oldman was nominated for his clunky performance as the famous screenwriter.
37. If Anything Happens I Love You Short Film (Animated) (Will McCormack, Michael Govier)
Halfway through its short runtime, If Anything Happens I Love You takes an unexpected turn. Perhaps, given its title, it won't be unexpected. At any rate, most of the previous moments (detailing a husband and wife falling out of love and their arguments visualized through 2D animation of fighting shadows) struggle to provoke much emotion. One could argue that when the film takes its sudden turn, it is being manipulative, for who wouldn't be moved by such an event? Nevertheless, it's what will help the short stay with you.
36. The Life Ahead Original Song (Diane Warren, Laura Pausini)
Nominated for Best Song but perhaps surprisingly not for Best International Feature, this Italian film, the third adaptation of the 1975 novel about a young Muslim boy under the care of an older Jewish woman, features the legendary Sophia Loren in her first role in six years. She's supported by fantastic performances by Ibrahima Gueye as Momo, the young boy, and Abril Zamora. The Life Ahead, directed by Edoardo Ponti (Lauren's son)is a bit on the forgettable side, but it's not a bad film. Incidentally, this is Diane Warren's twelfth Oscar nomination, but unfortunately, she hasn't won yet.
35. Burrow Short Film (Animated) (Madeline Sharafian, Michael Capbarat)
The appropriately named Pixar film Burrow is a breath of 2D-animation fresh air. At only six minutes, the film, written and directed by Madeline Sharafian, is the eighth part of Pixar's SparkShorts series, the group of films Pixar employees made for a limited budget with just six months. Featuring Mozart music and a cast of furry animals with limited space underground who nevertheless team together to overcome difficult odds, Burrow is a quite pleasant, agreeable film for all ages.
34. Collective Documentary (Alexander Nanau, Bianca Oana), International Feature Film (Romania)
Similar to the Macedonian film Honeyland last year, Collective is nominated for both Best International Feature and Best Documentary. The film, which focuses on a group of journalists from the Romanian sports newspaper Gazette investigating the government's handing of the aftermath of the 2015 fire tragedy at the Colectiv club and the controversy regarding Hexi Pharma diluting disinfectants, certainly has a variety of admirers, with NPR's Linda Holmes and even Barack Obama being fans. It goes without saying that due to the subject matter of Collective, it may be a difficult watch for some viewers, but it is definitely worth a watch.
33. A Love Song for Latasha Documentary (Short Subject) (Sophia Nahil Allison, Janice Duncan)
Directed by Sophia Nahil Allison, this documentary details the painful episode in 1991 in which Latasha Harlins was murdered in a convenience store by Soon Ja Du. (Despite Du being tried and convicted of voluntary manslaughter, Judge Joyce Karlin gave Du a light sentence that included probation and community service. Harlins' murder and the light sentence Du received are credited with contributing to the 1992 Los Angeles riots.) Most of the film contains interviews with Shinese Harlins (Latasha's cousin) and innovative animation and reverse effects. Given that this country is in the midst of more gun violence and racial injustice, this humanizing portrait is necessary viewing.
32. Colette Documentary Short (Anthony Giacchino, Alice Doyard)
Colette is a documentary short about a 90-year-old French Resistance fighter named Colette Marin-Catherine who journeys to the German concentration camp where her brother was killed. Accompanying her is an aspiring historian named Lucie Fouble. Both, expectedly, find the experience to be a life-changing and immensely difficult one, with scenes of Colette reacting to the mayor of Nordhausen and both Lucie and Colette moving about the camp being the most memorable. Filmmakers Anthony Giacchino and Alice Doyard capture, as they say, the authentic experience of someone like Colette.
31. Greyhound Sound (Warren Shaw, Michael Minkler, Beau Borders, David Wyman)
The World War II thriller Greyhound, directed by Aaron Schneider and written by the film's star, Tom Hanks, certainly possesses flaws: its formula is predictable, making the film at times stale, and its score by Blake Neely too obviously channels the works of Hans Zimmer. Of the two Tom Hanks movies last year, this is the less interesting one. However, its visual effects and sound effects are more or less convincing, and while, with one battle sequence after the other, there is not much room for character development, it still makes for an engaging experience, especially as the Greyhound desperately tries to outmaneuver the U-boats. Schneider and Hanks also deserve credit for packing such a punch in under 90 minutes.
30. My Octopus Teacher Documentary (Pippa Ehrlich, James Reed, Craig Foster)
My Octopus Teacher was the last movie I saw in 2020, putting it on Netflix at the end of a restless night. It was a miracle I was able to stay awake, as narrator Craig Foster's soothing voice is a sedative. Still, this documentary, about Foster's year building up trust and perhaps even rapport with an octopus off the coast of South Africa, proves to be a moving and engaging one, especially as we witness all the perils this creature deals with to survive on a daily basis. It definitely seemed like a fitting film to conclude 2020.
29. Love and Monsters Visual Effects (Matt Sloan, Genevieve Camilleri, Matt Everitt, Brian Cox)
Love and Monsters is a post-apocalyptic tale about a young man played by Dylan O'Brien and his dog on their way to a colony to find a girl he dated before the world ended. The film's action and horror sequences work better than its comedic moments, and because most of the characters are not particularly interesting, much of the tension will stem from whether or not the dog survives in their battles with giant mutant insects. That being said, if you're into post-apocalyptic films, this one will certainly suffice, and it has earned its nomination for Best Visual Effects.
Time mostly focuses on Sibil Fox, an entrepreneur and activist who served time for an armed robbery she committed with her husband, Rob, who received a significantly harsher punishment of 60 years. The documentary, directed by Garrett Bradley, takes its 80 minutes to depict Sibil's long fight to free her husband. Time is shot in black and white, a rare thing for documentaries, and its music by Jamieson Shaw and Edwin Montgomery is fantastic. However, its argument that slavery evolved into mass incarceration of people of color was more effectively made in the Ava DuVernay-directed documentary 13th a few years ago.
27. Hunger Ward
Documentary (Short Subject) (Skye Fitzgerald, Michael Scheuerman)
Of all the films on this list, Hunger Ward is the most difficult to watch. The documentary depicts child malnutrition in Yemen due to the Saudi-led and U.S.-supported war crimes in the Yemeni Civil War. (More than 85,000 children have died of malnutrition in Yemen since 2018.) It goes without saying that one will be witness to some of the children struggling through this terrible conflict, and the film bravely depicts their horrifying conditions. Whether you can make it through the film or not, please consider donating to support Yemeni healthcare workers in hunger wards depicted in this documentary.
26. White Eye
Short Film (Live Action) (Tomer Shushan, Shira Hochman)
White Eye is a short film from Israel in which a man named Omer (played by Daniel Gad) one night discovers his stolen bicycle outside a meat-packaging plant. Through the course of the film's realistically tense twenty minutes, Omer tries to track down the thief and retrieve his bike. Things, though, are more complicated than they seem. The film, directed by Tomer Shushan, offers subtle yet powerful moments that can feel like gut punches, with many viewers around the world (due to the themes involving refugees, race relations, and immigration) likely responding to it.
25. Wolfwalkers Animated Feature Film (Tomm Moore, Ross Stewart, Paul Young, Stéphan Roelants)
Wolfwalkers, from Ireland, certainly features some of the most gorgeous animation of any of the animated films on this list. Its traditional 2D animation is very much welcomed in this age of omnipresent 3D animation. Taking, it seems, heavy thematic inspiration from the animated films directed by Hayao Miyazaki, Wolfwalkers also conveys an important reminder about humans' destruction of the environment and other species, as well as gently reminding its audience that for the most part, they have nothing to fear from wolves. Additionally, the voice cast is great, particularly Eva Whittaker, Honor Kneafsey, Simon McBurney, and Sean Bean.
24. One Night in Miami Actor in a Supporting Role (Leslie Odom, Jr.), Original Song (Odom, Sam Ashworth), Adapted Screenplay (Kemp Powers)
One Night in Miami, based on the play by Kemp Powers (who adapted it for the screen and who co-directed Soul), features some of the finest acting of last year. Thus, while I found the film a bit more boring than most others did, it was surprising when the Academy didn't nominate Regina King, the Oscar-winning actor who made her feature film directorial debut and was widely expected to be nominated. (It wasn't that surprising, though. The Academy doesn't appear to be the biggest fan of Black women—or any women, for that matter—directing films.) That being said, the performances by its four leads are quite good, with the best being Leslie Odom Jr.'s role as Sam Cooke. Odom, in either the acting or song category, is the film's best chance at an Oscar win.
23. Onward Animated Feature (Dan Scanlon, Kori Rae)
Onward, the considerably less memorable Pixar film from last year, is nevertheless a fun, heartfelt one, focusing on the relationship of two elf brothers voiced by Tom Holland and Chris Pratt. Onward is fortunate to feature such moments because its humor is lacking (in a way that Soul, for the most part, is not), and its climactic scene is very Marvel-y, which probably was inevitable given that it stars Spider-Man and Star-Lord. Still, Onward is worth the watch, and kids will likely be enthralled by it; the movie may be more forgettable than Soul, but that doesn't mean it's not good.
22. Feeling Through Short Film (Live Action) (Doug Roland, Susan Ruzenski)
Making history as the first film to star a Deaf/Blind actor (Robert Tarango) in a lead role, Feeling Through is a humanist piece of art about an unlikely friendship between a Deaf/Blind man named Artie trying to get home late at night and a young man named Tareek (played by Steven Prescod) who helps him along the way. Directed by Doug Roland and executive produced by Oscar-winner Marlene Matlin (who is also deaf), the film has been gaining lots of discussion heading into the contest. It's worth reminding people of the importance of representation in film; even just a decade ago, Artie very likely would have been played by someone who wasn't Deaf/Blind.
21. Nomadland Best Picture (Frances McDormand, Peter Spears, Mollye Asher, Dan Janvey, Chloé Zhao), Actress in a Leading Role (McDormand), Director (Zhao), Cinematography (Joshua James Richards), Film Editing (Zhao), Adapted Screenplay (Zhao)
Nomadland will likely win Best Picture this year, although that would make it one of the most mediocre movies to have won in recent memory. This is not to suggest it's bad. Chloé Zhao, who seems on track to make history as the first woman of color and only the second woman ever to win Best Director, is about as deserving of the word auteur as anyone, given that she could win a whopping four Oscars for her work here. Her ability to take a somewhat different source material and turn it into compelling cinematic narrative is remarkable, and it's always a joy to watch non-actors in films like this (a film in which they constitute the majority of the roles) because it makes everything seem much more authentic.
20. The Present Short Film (Live Action) (Farah Nabulsi, Ossama Bawardi)
The Present, directed by Farah Nabulsi, is the kind of film that very likely will make your blood boil. Depicting the terrible apartheid conditions Palestinians face, Nabulsi and her co-writer Hind Shoufani accomplish such a task in a simplistic, succinct way, showing us a man (played by Saleh Bakri) trying to get through an Israeli checkpoint and back to get to his wife to give her a present. Much of the film's success lies not just in Bakri's performance but also in the guerrilla filmmaking of Nabulsi, as much of the checkpoint footage was shot without official permission.
19. Quo Vadis, Aida?
Best International Feature (Bosnia and Herzegovina)
Written, directed, and produced by Jasmila Žbanić, Quo Vadis, Aida? centers on an English-teacher-turned-UN-translator named Aida (played by Jasna Duričić) desperately trying to save her family from the chaos and violence in the lead-up to the Srebrenica massacre during the Bosnian War in 1995, in which more than 8,000 people were slaughtered. The film contains one tense moment after another, especially as as the Dutch UN forces, Bosnian military officials, and everyday Bosniak citizens are caught up in moments in which the audience essentially knows what's coming, even if one is unfamiliar with the Srebrenica massacre. These tense moments, however, are not gratuitous, as they may have been in the hands of weaker filmmakers.
18. The Mole Agent Documentary (Maite Alberdi, Marcela Santibáñez)
The Mole Agent is the third film to make the shortlist for Chile's Best International Feature (after No and A Fantastic Women), but it suffered a similar fate and was not nominated for that category. However, it has richly earned a nomination for Best Documentary. The film is about an older man named Sergio who is hired by a private investigator to go undercover for a few months at a retirement home where a client believes her mother is being abused. The resulting content is not what I expected; instead of being similar to Collective (a hard-hitting tale of investigative journalism), The Mole Agent is a delightful, tender film that simultaneously submits to its viewers reminders of society's cruelty to older people.
Da 5 Bloods, one of two Spike Lee movies of last year (the other being the David Byrne concert movie American Utopia) starts better than it finishes, but it is a movie that impressively changes gears frequently and features amazing performances by its main actors (Delroy Lindo, Clarke Peters, Norm Lewis, and Isiah Whitlock Jr.) as four Vietnam War veterans returning to Vietnam to retrieve gold they had buried during the war. It also features one of the final performances of Chadwick Boseman as the group's squad leader. How Lindo was robbed of a nomination is something I will never understand, but apparently Oscars are still so white, even in this year of slightly more diversity.
16. News of the World Original Score (James Newton Howard), Cinematography (Dariusz Wolski), Production Design (David Crank, Elizabeth Keenan), Sound (Oliver Tarney, Mike Prestwood Smith, William Miller, John Pritchett)
News of the World is a Western (Tom Hanks' first, actually) that shines the most when it engages in moments of thrills, especially as the character Hanks plays (a Civil War veteran who makes a living telling people the news and who tries to reunite a young German girl with her family) engages in tense gun fights with some very bad guys. Other moments, though, certainly have the potential to roll one's eyes, but the film deserves its nominations, especially its gorgeous cinematography.
The White Tiger probably likes to think of itself as a more woke version of the Best Picture-winning Slumdog Millionaire, but it doesn't seem to have succeeded. At its core, it's still a Western-gazing film focusing purely on the struggles of Indians. That being said, what worked in Slumdog Millionaire also works in The White Tiger, with the latter feeling more rightfully combative and shunning Hollywood's liberal do-gooder attitudes about rags-to-riches stories, and it doesn't feel quite as cringy as Slumdog Millionaire. The White Tiger, in addition to its rich screenplay adaption by its director, Ramin Bahrani, features stellar acting from its cast.
14. A Concerto Is a Conversation Documentary (Short Subject) (Ben Proudfoot, Kris Bowers)
A Concerto Is a Conversation is an intimate, sweet documentary depicting a conversation between composer Kris Bowers (who co-directed the film with Ben Proudfoot) and his grandfather, who doesn't have much time left as he's struggling with cancer. The two discuss their history, particularly the grandfather's struggles growing up in the Jim Crow era. The film, crisply edited and finely accompanied by Powers' music, accomplishes so much with so little time. It's one of the most charming of the films on this list.
13. Do Not Split Documentary (Short Subject) (Andres Hammer, Charlotte Cook)
The Field of Vision documentary Do Not Split,directed by Anders Hammer, bravely depicts the 2019-2020 protests in Hong Kong with fierce and unhindered determination. Much of the shocking footage in this short documentary contains the brutal tactics by the Chinese Communist Party and the police against the pro-democracy protests in the city, day and night. (The CCP has, shockingly, not been thrilled with the nomination.) Audiences outside of Hong Kong are likely to get their most intimate look at the chaos there they've ever seen, which serves as a potent reminder during these days in which the world is forgetting what happened and what continues to happen there. China is certain to be a topic of Oscar night, as Better Days will represent Hong Kong at the ceremony, Mulan features a Chinese cast, Over the Moon is a China-U.S. production, and Chloé Zhao, who is from China, is nominated for Nomadland.
12. The Letter Room
Short Film (Live Action) (Elvira Lind, Sofia Sondervan)
This Oscar-nominated short has star power: Oscar Isaac plays a letter inspector at a prison who becomes very interested and invested in correspondence between a woman and a man on death row. The Letter Room has a few humorous moments throughout, but it's a simple tale and very watchable. Isaac, who also is an executive producer of the film, gives yet another commendable performance, making everything he does on screen look so easy.
11. Two Distant Strangers Short Film (Live Action) (Travon Free, Martin Desmond Roe)
Two Distant Strangers is a film in which it is better if you know as little as possible about it going in. If you do require at least some information, know that it utilizes a popular formula while engaging in serious societal issues; the reasons for the juxtaposition of the two should be obvious to most viewers. One can debate whether or not marrying the two for a film like this is appropriate or not, but in the end, it's an engaging yet deeply painful story, all the while offering a forceful repudiation of Green Book-mentality that the Academy awarded just a few years ago.
10. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom Actor in a Leading Role (Chadwick Boseman), Actress in a Leading Role (Viola Davis), Costume Design (Ann Roth), Makeup and Hairstyling (Sergio Lopez-Rivera, Mia Neal, Jamika Wilson)
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, the adaption of August Wilson's play directed by George C. Wolfe, while arguably coming across as too theatrical, is worthy of much praise for is its fine performances. Should Chadwick Boseman win, he would be the third actor to have won posthumously, after Peter Finch for Network and Heath Ledger for The Dark Knight. But like Finch and Ledger, Boseman (while he does have stiff competition from Steven Yeun and Riz Ahmed) likely gives the best performance of the bunch. You can't take your eyes off him. Boseman and his fellow-nominated performer, the incomparable Viola Davis, are supported by a great cast that includes Michael Potts, Colman Domingo, and Glynn Turman, all of whom could have been nominated, as well.
9. The Father Best Picture (David Parfitt, Jean-Louis Livi, Philippe Carcassonne), Actor in a Leading Role (Anthony Hopkins), Actress in a Supporting Role (Olivia Colman), Film Editing (Yorgos Lamprinos), Production Design (Peter Francis, Cathy Featherstone), Adapted Screenplay (Christopher Hampton, Florian Zeller)
The Father, co-written by director Florian Zeller and adapted from his 2012 play, is the most heartbreaking cinematic undertaking of the pain of dementia yet. The last big Oscar movie to tackle the subject was Still Alice in 2014, but there are notable differences between the two, namely in how theatrical and unpredictable everything is in The Father, with two actors playing each role (except for Anthony Hopkins playing the main character, the one thing that remains constant throughout the film) to help audiences understand what the protagonist is going through. Indeed, it's difficult to tell what is real and what isn't. Like Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, The Father sometimes is too theatrical, but Hopkins' performance as Anthony, an older man suffering from dementia, is able to secure complete empathy from the audience, even as they may cringe at his behavior. Hopkins has been on a roll as of late; this is the Oscar-winner's second consecutive nomination.
8. Judas and the Black Messiah Best Picture (Shaka King, Charles D. King, Ryan Coogler), Actor in the Supporting Role (Daniel Kaluuya), Actor in a Supporting Role (Lakeith Stanfield), Original Screenplay (Will Berson, Shaka King, Kenny Lucas, Keitha Lucas), Cinematography (Sean Bobbitt), Original Song (H.E.R, Dernst Emile II, Tiara Thomas)
Judas and the Black Messiah, much like several other films on this list, is certainly a film for our times. This will become more than evident when viewing this given all the turmoil currently in the United States. And while its story is quite an important reminder of the government's history of oppressing its own people (and its storytelling methods will likely engage most viewers), its strongest qualities are its acting performances. Despite the oddity in having both Daniel Kaluuya and Lakeith Stanfield nominated in the Supporting Actor category despite being in lead roles, they are among the most memorable performances of the year. Also great are others in the cast, namely Dominique Fishback, Jesse Plemmons, and Martin Sheen (though his J. Edgar Hoover makeup is distracting).
One could argue that Cohen and team are nominated for this award because the first Borat didn't win the Oscar in the same category fourteen years ago. (It lost to The Departed.) Borat Subsequent Moviefilm is noticeably weaker than the first movie, partly because our tastes have changed and partly because Borat doesn't seem as fresh as he did all those years ago. Still, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm is undoubtedly the funniest film on this list, and comedies should be rewarded more. In a year of such deep and painful films, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm offers the right balance of escapism and justifiable alarmism. Furthermore, any movie that takes aim at anti-maskers and Rudy Giuliani is commendable in my book.
6. Soul Animated Feature Film (Peter Docter, Dana Murray), Original Score (Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, Jon Batiste), Sound (Ren Klyce, Coya Elliot, David Parker)
It's difficult not to compare Soul to Inside Out, but given their similarities (and the fact that they were both directed by Peter Docter), it's impossible not to. Unfortunately, Soul falls short compared to Inside Out. Still, Soul contains the usual Pixar magic: stupendous, imaginative animation mixed with complex ideas and emotional moments. How could it not be about such things? There are certainly laughs, too, with moments involving a cat being the funniest. But the thought of the film is what audiences likely will remember the most; a lot of this movie spoke to me, for example. I just wish the filmmakers had gone further with the sentimentality.
5. Sound of Metal Best Picture (Bert Hamelinck, Sacha Ben Harroche), Actor in a Lead Role (Riz Ahmed), Actor in a Supporting Role (Riz Ahmed), Film Editing (Mikkel E.G. Nielsen), Sound (Nicolas Becker, Jamie Baksht, Michelle Couttolenc, Carlos Cortés, Phillip Bladh, Original Screenplay (Darius Marder, Abraham Marder, Derek Cianfrance)
Sound of Metal is able to be didactic without coming across as too offensive, although the film's depiction of deafness and from whose perspective the film should have been has caused some understandable debate. The debate aside, the two performances that will stay with you the longest are Riz Ahmed as the main character, a heavy metal drummer who loses his hearing, and Paul Raci as Joe, the man running the center that helps deaf people. Both acting jobs are earnest and about as naturalistic as any acting from the previous year. If Chadwick Boseman were not the frontrunner this year, this award would very likely go to Ahmed.
4. Promising Young Woman Best Picture (Ben Browning, Ashley Fox, Emerald Fennell, Josey McNamara), Actress in a Leading Role (Carey Mulligan), Directing (Fennell), Film Editing (Frédéric Thoraval)
Promising Young Woman, the revenge thriller written and directed by Oscar-nominated Emerald Fennell in her feature film debut as a director,features a performance by Carey Mulligan that is quite likely her finest so far. With all due respect to Vanessa Kirby and Frances McDormand, this year is a really tough year to pick a winner between Mulligan, Davis, and Day. (With Day's win at the Golden Globes, Davis' SAG win, McDormand winning the BAFTA, and Mulligan being the victor at the Critics Choice Awards, this category is the most challenging to predict this year.) While the film, particularly its climatic moments and resolution, have been a bit divisive, Promising Young Woman is perhaps the most thought-provoking of the films on the list, tackling the most obvious MeToo scenarios and the less discussed versions.
3. The Trial of the Chicago 7
Best Picture (Marc Platt, Stuart Besser), Actor in a Supporting Role (Sacha Baron Cohen), Cinematography (Phedon Papamichael), Film Editing (Alan Baumgarten), Original Song (Daniel Pemberton, Celeste Waite), Original Screenplay (Aaron Sorkin)
The Trial of the Chicago 7 features one of the best ensemble casts of the year (and possibly ever), with stellar performances by Eddie Redmayne, John Carrol Lynch, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Mark Rylance, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Frank Langella, who, in my humble opinion, should have been nominated instead of Sacha Baron Cohen, who got the nomination for his shaky performance as Abby Hoffman. Aaron Sorkin's script is among his best ever, and his direction is quite good, as well. That intro is exhilarating, perfectly edited by Alan Baumgarten, yet it's just so disappointing that Sorkin ends the film in such an unbelievably cheesy and old-fashioned way.
2. Crip Camp
Best Documentary (Nichole Newham, Jim LeBrecht, and Sara Bolder)
Higher Ground Productions is on a roll. The company, founded by the Obamas, also won last year in this category for American Factory, which detailed the cultural complexities when a Chinese company took over a former U.S. car factory. In similar fashion, Crip Camp educates audiences about a tale they ought to be more familiar with: campers with disabilities from a summer camp in the 1970s who later became activists in the disability rights and independent living movements. The film does so in a way that comes across feeling less gazing than Sound of Metal does. Crip Camp is even better than American Factory, featuring a rich amount of power, charm, and exceptional filmmaking.
1. Minari
Best Picture (Christina Oh), Actor in a Leading Role (Steven Yeun), Actress in a Supporting Role (Yuh-jung Youn), Directing (Lee Isaac Chung), Original Score (Emile Mosseri), Original Screenplay (Chung)
Lee Isaac Chung's humanist tale is the film on this list that has stayed with me the longest. His semi-autobiographical story is of a Korean-American family in 1980s Arkansas trying to make it as independent farmers. Steven Yeun plays Jacob, the father of the family, who is bitter about Korean city folks and incredibly eager to achieve the American Dream. Yeun, the first Asian-American to be nominated for Best Actor, faces stiff competition from the other nominees, but it is his finest performance in his fantastic career. He's not alone; the entire cast—Han Yen-ri as the mother, Alan S. Kim and Noel Cho as the two children, the legendary Youn Yuh-jung as the grandmother, and Will Patton as a local farmer employed by Jacob—are phenomenal. Like Crip Camp, it was one of the best films of 2020, and I hope it scores an upset and wins the top prize.
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