Month: August 2021

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The Mauritanian (2021)

As a window into the atrocities that have been occurring at Guantanamo, this movie does its job well and it’s an important job. Other than that, it’s a tad boring and takes too long getting through the details it wants to convey. Jodie Foster is as good as expected; I particularly enjoy watching her in her older roles. Sadly I have a hard time not seeing Shailene Woodley as a teenager and her role here just feels like a bit of filler. Tahar Rahim does an incredible job and is believable through all the emotions from being kidnapped and tortured to small moments of hope and understandable cynicism.

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Streetwise (1984)

I do enjoy watching films that show locations I’m familiar with, especially from times before they and I were acquainted. Particularly here, anyone who thinks the problems that Seattle currently is experiencing should watch this to see that while the problems may have gotten worse in recent years, none of them are new. Beyond locality, there are a lot of messages to take away here: how to deal with those who slip through the cracks (both voluntarily and involuntarily), the threads that continue to spin from generation to generation, the unequal treatment of girls and boys that leads to extreme differences in results for women and men. I still don’t know how to even process how young they all were.

Oscar Nomination: Best Documentary, Features

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Nomadland (2020)

I only have one Best Picture nominee left to watch from this year (Minari is sitting next to my TV, waiting to be watched) so I can’t give a definitive answer whether this deserves to be Best Picture. Thus far I’m not mad at the pick. It doesn’t scream that it is entirely a new story, but it does feel like a now story: people driven from their homes and finding an alternative way to being when capitalism fails them. It is also provides beautiful views of Middle America. I don’t know what kind of life Frances McDormand would have had if she weren’t an award winning actress, but she is truly believable as a rugged, hard-working woman able to do whatever she needs to to get by. On the other hand, as much as I love David Strathairn, in a ‘normal’ Hollywood movie he could pass off as a fade into the background everyman, but in this one, he looked too clean and pretty.   Best Picture Winner

Oscar Wins: Best Motion Picture of the Year; Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role; Best Achievement in Directing

Oscar Nominations: Best Adapted Screenplay; Best Achievement in Film Editing; Best Achievement in Cinematography

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Citizen Kane (1941) – Rewatch

After watching Mank, I decided I needed to revisit this. I honestly didn’t get a whole lot out of it the first time I had watched it many years ago. With more film knowledge under my belt, I sadly still don’t connect much with the story and really can’t find reason to care about a fictionalization of William Randolph Hearst and others like him. I appreciate that the story more or less circles back on itself in a creative, though not really surprising, way. Visually it is striking and this subsequent watch gave me an opportunity to appreciate the framing, which is innovative for its time even when it feels overused. I don’t know what the Best Movie Ever actually is, but this still wouldn’t get my vote.   Best Picture Nomination

Oscar Win: Best Writing, Original Screenplay

Oscar Nominations: Best Picture; Best Actor in a Leading Role; Best Cinematography, Black-and-White; Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Black-and-White; Best Sound, Recording; Best Film Editing; Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic Picture

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The Nest (2020)

Looking up the title of this movie, I’ve seen it categorized as romance and psychological thriller. Do not trust the categorizing of movies on popular websites: lesson learned. Jude Law is pretty much the same as he always is; Carrie Coons is unrecognizable at first, which means she is also pretty much the same as she always is. The acting is actually pretty good, but the movie takes an hour to even reach the point that the audience had seen coming from the beginning: a man determined that he deserves great things, lives beyond his means to the detriment of his family. A story that has been done many times before and here it isn’t done in any new ways.

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Morning Glory (1933)

For a movie that’s barely over an hour long, this took me a long time to get through. There’s not much there in a tale about a wannabe actress who is more certain of her skills than anyone around her. Katharine Hepburn had so many great roles in her career, it’s odd that this is the one that received her first Oscar win.

Oscar Win: Best Actress in a Leading Role

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A New Kind of Love (1963)

Paul Newman is a womanizing journalist; Joanne Woodward works in the fashion industry while sporting a masculine look (she repeatedly gets mistaken for a man). It’s probably not a spoiler to say that the story progresses pretty much how you’d expect from such a setup, including Joanne undergoing a makeover to be more feminine and ol’ Paul not even recognizing her as a woman he had met previously. Alas, the cuteness of Newman and Woodward together plus a semi-crush on Paul Newman means I couldn’t pass it up. Bonus points because for including Thelma Ritter who elevates movies even in the smallest of roles.

Oscar Nominations: Best Costume Design, Color; Best Music, Scoring of Music, Adaptation or Treatment

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Tom and Jerry (2021)

This is not a movie I would have chosen to watch on my own. Unfortunately I have been sharing the joys of classic Tom and Jerry cartoons with my housemate and thus we watched this together. It is…. not good. The human scenes, involving a wedding no one should care about, are all a waste of anyone’s time and they make up the vast majority of the movie’s runtime. The scenes with Tom and Jerry themselves are mostly fine though could have gone much farther in their Tom and Jerry zaniness. The animation of Butch, Topsy, and the other classic cats were off and the voicing of Spike was wrong. The one thing I did appreciate is that all animals were animated, which is a nice bit of commitment to world-building. I still could have done without singing pigeons.

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The Goldwyn Follies (1938)

This mess tries to be similar to any one of the Busby Berkeley choreographed musicals of the 30s such as 42nd Street or the Gold Diggers series. Those films try to string together weak stories with musical spectacles. This one tries to string together an even weaker story (including Adolphe Menjou as a movie producer creeping on a much younger Andrea Leeds whom he has hired to review all his film decisions) with random dancing or comedy acts in between. The stylings of the Ritz Brothers is baffling enough, but I can’t fathom the world that found Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy entertaining. This is also presented in glorious Technicolor which can only be imagined in the aforementioned Berkeley productions.  Musical

Oscar nominations: Best Art Direction, Best Scoring

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Harper (1966)

Paul Newman finds himself in a role that would have gone to Humphrey Bogart in an earlier age as a PI searching for a missing man whom everyone hates. It’s a bit meandering and predictable as the Harper character pieces together all the little clues, but Newman is convincing as the investigator who is smarter […]

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