This was a delightful short film which with to start my morning. Jane Birkin is delightful as an older woman who spends her days stuck in unchanging monotony until one little change to her situation inspires changes in herself. The setting is beautiful, both the quaint small village and the nearby countryside.
Oscar Nomination: Best Live Action Short Film
Robert Redford really knows how to pull off newsperson roles. That said, this is a relatively boring take on A Star is Born. This was supposed to be based on the true life of Jessica Savitch and I’ve already taken note to check out John Gregory Dunne’s book on how that situation progressed. Redford and Michelle Pfeiffer don’t have a lot of romantic chemistry, making much of the film rather unbelievable. It would have been a lot more interesting if theirs had remained a platonic relationship. This movie, like many, could have been percentages better with more Stockard Channing.
Oscar Nomination: Best Music, Original Song
A bit of a rough indie from the mid-80s, Parting Glances is a relatively light-hearted glimpse into NYC’s gay community early into the AIDS crisis. Following a married couple as they spend their last day together before one leaves on an African work assignment, it touches on themes of love, friendship, and career, all while not shying away from the relatively-new disease rampaging through the community, particularly through one HIV-positive character (an early role for Steve Buscemi). Sadly, this is the director’s only major film as he succumbed to AIDS a few years later; it’s a special film that doesn’t get too pulled down by the sadness and horrors of the disease while not completely ignoring them either.
There is some real unevenness in this story about a newly sexually liberated mother who is at odds with her more conservative ex-husband. Director Leonard Nimoy takes these two disparate viewpoints to their extremes where the actions of these parents, particularly the mother, become nonsensical. Diane Keaton tries to make the mother’s progress believable, but it doesn’t quite get there. She is supported in a impressive cast with Liam Neeson as her new boyfriend and Jason Robards, Joe Morton, Katey Sagal, and Teresa Wright all coming in for small roles.
I watched this in hopes of seeing some beautiful dance sequences and Patrick Swayze and Lisa Niemi together in a film. At least one of those parts was successful. Sadly, the filming of the dance scenes are cold and framed in ways that don’t emphasize the dance nearly enough. Double sadly, the entire film lacks polish with uninteresting, miscast characters, jarring music, and cliché story-telling. The finished product wasn’t awful, just not interesting enough to recommend.
If I did drugs, this seems like it’d be high on the list of films to watch while stoned. Set on a planet where giant blue humanoid creatures treat human beings as animals, it’s got some fantastic (pun not really intended) world building and even though I watched with the English dub, it bled French film all over. Overall, it has a nice message to it and if you’re into that sort of thing, quite a bit of naked breasts for an animated film.
The last of the Ultimate Sci-Fi collection films, one thing that can be said for Tarantula! is that it is better than The Mole People. It’s actually a decent entry in the giant monster film genre. The quality of the tarantula special effects aren’t going to set the world on fire, but the visuals of a giant tarantula menacing the citizenry through the hills, valleys, and highways is lots of fun. Leo G. Carroll is particularly entertaining in his mad scientist role. One note from watching the entire series: I understand where the inspiration for MST3K and the like comes from. It is hard to watch these films without offering commentary on the ludicrousness. 
Occasionally, immediately after watching a film, I’ll go through again, trying to grasp quiet details I might have missed on the first pass. This was one of those films. I’m tempted to put all of John Sayles’s filmography on The List after this, granted many of them already are. On its surface, this is a murder mystery regarding who killed a corrupt Texas sheriff many years ago. That story is well done and compelling. But there’s also a lot more: reflections on Texas itself and its history, intersections of many cultures in a community, threads that run through familial lines, and secrets that people hold on to even when it causes harm to others. The cast is incredibly stacked (Chris Cooper, Elizabeth Pena, Kris Kristofferson, Joe Morton and smaller roles for Matthew McConaughey and Frances McDormand) and really do the job in pushing the story along, but it is the writing with its interwoven bits of past and present which is really striking.
Oscar Nomination: Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen
I have little patience or sympathy for father characters who are willing to lead their families on a path of destruction all because of their own hubris, leaving the mothers to sacrifice all they can just to keep the family together. Steven Yeun and Han Ye-ri play this tropes to perfection. Thankfully that’s not the entire story here and we have the wonderful Youn Yuh-jung as grandma, coming in to provide support and humor while also helping her grandson to find his strength. Middle America has never looked so good visually. I viscerally felt like as I was in the setting, one that is similar to others I have known intimately. Alan Kim is adorable as young David and manages the rarity of a cute child character who feels real instead of stilted. 
Oscar Win: Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role
Oscar Nominations: Best Motion Picture of the Year; Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role; Best Achievement in Directing; Best Original Screenplay; Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures (Original Score)
A Western that does not spend all its time in a ramshackle town or out in the open plains is the Western for me. Clark Gable is here in all his charismatic, womanizing glory here as the stranger looking to relieve four widows and their mother-in-law of ill-gotten fortunes. The double entrendres and manipulations of each individual woman is amusing to watch. All of the widows are great in their varied personalities and reflections on their marriages, as is their hard-as-nails mother-in-law. Eleanor Parker (whom I have to keep reminding myself was in more movies than The Sound of Music) is particularly wonderful as the widow who goes toe-to-toe with Clark. I had a lot of sympathy for Jo Ann Fleet’s mother-in-law, trying to hold together what little family she had left and holding out hope that one of her boys would return to her. 