A paean to French cuisine, featuring a cast straight out of 19th-century paintings by Fantin-Latour, Manet, Caillebotte, Cezanne, Monet, Toulouse-Lautrec (you get the picture). Unfortunately, it is as devoid of plot as any film I can remember. Identifying ingredients and cooking methods can only go so far, and when another meal starts it’s time to look at your watch.
A Danish version of Shane, without the subtlety. There wasn’t a character, plot development or scene that offered any surprise. Mads Mikkelsen is a pleasure to watch, but he joined the class of Joaquin Phoenix and Adam Driver for fewest facial expressions in a role. I couldn’t count the number of movie cliches that piled atop each other, although it was nice to get a glimpse of 18th-century Denmark.
I couldn’t get past the horrible dubbing of the Netflix version to give this a serious viewing. The subject did not appeal to me, hence I avoided it in the theater, and the hokey, inauthentic English-language dialogue left me, so to speak, cold.
A sweetly intense performance by Leonie Benesch as a new sixth-grade teacher having a bad week at school. I couldn’t figure out how the various conflicts would get resolved, and felt better when the director couldn’t either. In the meantime, though, there were memorable characters and dilemmas that made you think in this worthy Oscar submission from Germany.
With so many presumptive winners already in place, thanks to industry scuttlebutt and numerous awards from critics and industry groups, it is the nomination announcements that offer modest surprises and merit discussion. And with one movie, Oppenheimer, so clearly superior to the rest of the field, the Oscar ceremony itself will tend to boring; so best take my whacks at the field now.
Best Picture: As mentioned, Oppenheimer is a thoroughly deserving winner, and it should take home awards for its director Christopher Nolan, original score, supporting actor (Robert Downey Jr.) and a number of the technical awards I’m not competent to judge (editing, etc.) Anatomy of A Fall is probably my second favorite movie, so I’m delighted, and surprised, to see it here. I also applaud Barbie, American Fiction and The Holdovers, although it’s hard to think of them as Best Picture material. I didn’t even like Maestro, Killers of the Flower Moon and Poor Things. I was one of the few not entranced by Past Lives, and Zone of Interest has made it neither to a streaming service nor Santa Barbara. I would replace Past Lives with the similar but superior Fallen Leaves, and the three big budget bombs with, say, May December, Air and Priscilla. Not that they should win, but I would at least enjoy seeing clips from them again.
Best Actress: All acknowledge that this is the loaded category, or in World Cup terms the Group of Death, where some worthy contender(s) will lose out. Already losing out in the nominations was Natalie Portman, who gave a subtle and convincing performance in May December, a film that was surprisingly snubbed all around. Sandra Huller was great, but so was her lookalike Alma Poysti in Fallen Leaves. And Margot Robbie certainly deserves something for conceiving, producing and embodying Barbie, the movie sensation of the year. As for the actual nominees, I couldn’t stand Emma Stone; Carey Mulligan was delightful but has had more difficult roles; Annette Bening was excellent, but her movie won’t carry her. Lily Gladstone was far and away the best thing in Killers of the Flower Moon and a vote for her would be historic and will allow Academy members to bypass Martin Scorsese and Robert DeNiro, as they should.
Best Actor: Colman Domingo’s Rustin hasn’t shown here, or if it did I missed it. I disliked Bradley Cooper in Maestro as much as Emma Stone in Poor Things, so that leaves me with Paul Giamatti, Jeffrey Wright and Cillian Murphy, all of whom performed admirably, if not exceptionally. I favor Giamatti, only because he so exceeded my low expectations, but I would be happy with any of the three. With so many of the good movies starring women there weren’t a surfeit of flashy male leads and I’m thrilled that Leonardo DiCaprio was omitted. I did like the always reliable Matt Damon in Air, but comedies get no respect.
Supporting Actor: What qualifies as “supporting” always troubles me. There should be a limit on screen time or lines if you want to be in this category. Comparing Ryan Gosling’s role in Barbie to Sterling K. Brown’s in American Fiction is like comparing a watermelon to a grape. Yes, the movie wasn’t named after him, but Ken was nothing if not a co-lead. I didn’t fancy him in the movie, but he seemed like a good guy when receiving the Kirk Douglas Award at the SBIFF Gala, so I won’t begrudge him the Oscar if he somehow upsets Robert Downey Jr. I couldn’t stand DeNiro or Mark Ruffalo, so this seems a weak field. How about Tobias Menzies in You Hurt My Feelings? Or Ben Affleck in Air? Both comedies, although Ruffalo’s and Brown’s weren’t exactly serious roles. Dominic Sessa held his own with nominees Giamatti and Randolph in The Holdovers. And Jacob Elordi was a remarkable Elvis in Priscilla, especially compared to last year’s Austin Butler.
Supporting Actress: May December and Nyad were very similar in having female co-leads. Why the producers determined that Julianne Moore should be entered in the Supporting field with Natalie Portman as the Lead I have no idea, although since neither was nominated it’s not an issue. Jodie Foster’s character “supported” Bening’s, but her role in the film was just as crucial. I thought she was the weak link, though. America Ferrara is a really nice nomination (in a truly “supporting” role), but Da’Vine Joy Randolph checks all the boxes.
Best Director: This should be a slam-dunk for Christopher Nolan. My only comment is astonishment at the exclusion of Greta Gerwig, who performed the seemingly impossible task of creating an intelligent sophisticated movie about a doll that was both artistic and commercial. And as much as I admired Anatomy of a Fall, why is its director here? Original Screenplay, where it has a better chance, would have been enough.
Everything Else: Once again I’m dumbfounded that so many technical awards go to Best Picture nominees. Oppenheimer is truly great, but does it really qualify as one of the year’s best, out of all movies made, in all the categories in which it received nominations: Production Design; Costume Design; Cinematography; Editing; Makeup and Hair Styling; Sound; Original Score? As I mentioned, we’ll be hearing that name a lot, come March 10.
Recommended mainly for the performance by Annette Bening (so much better than Emma Stone’s), who created a character that neatly meshed with the archival footage of the eponymous marathon swimmer. The story of inhuman endurance was catnip for directors Chin/Vasarhelyi, after Meru, Free Solo and Rescue. Their problem here is that swimming from Cuba to Key West is neither as photogenic or dramatic as mountain climbing, and when the story requires them to show the same thing four times it verges on boring. The moments of drama (e.g., shark attack) were trite and predictable, but through it all Bening was a force and a character to cheer for.
A sick movie. The fantasy sets of 19th century European cities were fun, especially Dickens’s London, but there was nothing to enjoy in the rest of the two hours and twenty minutes of ugliness. The story was beyond absurd and if that was to make a point, I surely missed it. Emma Stone’s Golden Globe performance struck me more as a party trick than acting; and as much as I like sex, the film’s obsession with it was numbing. Willem Dafoe was good, as always. Friends counseled, if you can get past the first thirty minutes you’ll like it. I couldn’t find anything that changed.
An artwork by master director Wim Wenders about the unique and overwhelming art of Anselm Kiefer, for my money the greatest living artist. The 3-D projection floats us into the world of Kiefer’s sculpture, architecture and deeply perspective paintings. We see hints of his artmaking technique: slabbing on paint (or tar?), pouring lead, blowtorching vegetal matter. There is little information about how he can produce so much large art: a library of lead books, an acre of leaning towers, enormous paintings that fill the walls of the Doge’s Palace, etc., etc. Through recreations and archival footage we see the younger Kiefer challenging Germany’s WWII amnesia. Best of all, we see Kiefer in the long halls, the stubbled fields and the sunflower patches that become subjects of his art. The camera never moves outside his art. It rests when Kiefer does. This is a definitive, even essential, document.
This hand-drawn animated feature by the 83-year-old Hayao Miyazaki, purportedly the “most expensive film” ever made in Japan, is visually breathtaking. The movie’s first half, when young Mahito is taken to the country estate of his new mother, captures everything I saw and felt in my high-school summer in Japan, with a landscape from Yoshida or Hasui. The second half, a fantastical journey through an underworld that is less Japanese and more Wizard of Oz, grew repetitive and tiresome and would have improved by being cut a half-hour. There are messages about peace, love and understanding stitched in near the end, but they don’t feel deserved. Again, the “real world” is compelling; the land of pelicans and parakeets not so much. The music–a series of songs more than a score–is equally enchanting.
An engaging cast of caricatures tickles some serious subjects in the first (or at least best) Black-Lives-Matters-Culture-Page-backlash film of the year. I’m generally uneasy watching someone pretending to be someone he isn’t and experienced that discomfort here, but it all worked out in the clever end, which added an additional meta layer on Cord Jefferson’s rumination on race, literature, family and relationships. Jeffrey Wright is excellent as, among other attributes, a proud Black man who won’t be defined by race.
[I promised to stop this obsession, but I can’t help but note how gratuitous the one cigarette-smoking scene was: the sister, a minor character who leaves the film early, lights up while driving home. “I didn’t know you started smoking again,” our hero comments. That’s it. What is the Hollywood rule, written or merely observed, that requires a cigarette to appear in every film?]
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