During a heatwave in post-World War II Tokyo, homicide detective Toshiro Mifune has his pistol stolen while riding a crowded trolley. He spends the rest of the film roaming the city’s underbelly trying to locate it, distressed when he discovers it has been used in multiple murders. It’s an interesting film noir for its time and place. The dirt and stifling heat palpable as Mifune and his grizzled partner process the clues towards their unknown, desperate prey. 
During the 1991 Christmas holiday, Kristen Stewart’s embattled Princess Diana arrives at the Queen’s Sandringham Estate to be subjected to holiday festivities with the royal family. I sincerely want to like Stewart as an actress. I think she makes some interesting choices in her roles, but every single time her quirks come out (her constant head tilt, hunched shoulders, and way of spitting out her lines) that all I see is her instead of the character she’s playing. In stills of this film, she looks so much like Diana that I thought it wouldn’t be the case here, but once she started moving that changed. I eventually just started thinking of it as Princess Diana’s inner angst represented by Kristen Stewart, similar to Keegan Michael Key’s Luther for Barack Obama, and I was able to appreciate the film much more for it. Though I’ll never be able to really understand the difficulties in such a life for someone who was groomed for it, the film does capture her struggles even if sometimes through an indelicate hand.
Oscar Nomination: Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role
When their bandmate Thandiwe Newton almost dies of an overdose, Tupac Shakur and Tim Roth’s attempts to enroll in a government sponsored detox program are waylaid by bureaucracy. The buddy comedy aspects of this are great as are the shots of the duo navigating the streets of New York, trying to find the one office that’s actually willing to do something rather than shuffle them to a different department. In a rather small cast, there’s some nice supporting roles here Howard Hesseman and director Vondie Curtis-Hall that offer bits of flavor to the experience.
During the week of the national championship, Heisman winner Stephan James announces he is enacting a player strike against the NCAA. I have complicated, but mostly disinterested, feelings regarding compensation for student athletes and this film didn’t do anything to get me on their side. While there are some good ideas thrown out, like taking care of athletes who experience career ending injuries, it comes across that James might not be acting of his own volition but instead is just a pawn in a pissing contest between his coach J.K. Simmons and labor dispute education professor (Do universities really have such classes and is it smart to send a motivated football player to it?) Timothy Olyphant who is shtupping Simmons’s trophy wife, Kristen Chenowith. It’s details like that that overwhelm the movie. There are multiple bedroom scenes between Olyphant and Chenowith which do little to further the plot until it allows for dumb reveals toward the end. Even when relevant details like the disproportionate salaries of various NCAA officials are brought up, nothing is done to explain where the rest of the extraordinary football earnings go. There are so many similar subplots thrown out as if the writers were trying to just see what would stick, but offered no follow through. 
Princess Alicia Vikander of Great Britain moves to Denmark where she is betrothed to King Mikkel Følsgaard. When the King proves to be childish, a bit abusive, and possibly crazy and the country oppressive for the educated Queen, she begins an affair with the King’s physician Mads Mikkelsen which changes the course of Danish history. I sometimes have a hard time getting in to period films, especially like this one when they drag a bit and are overly long, but the leads have an appeal and it was interesting learning a bit of history that I had no inkling about. Unsurprisingly from its title, it leans heavily into the romance angle which at least prevents it from getting dragging too far into the intricacies of Danish politics.
Oscar Nomination: Best Foreign Language Film of the Year
With his best friend in jail and his girlfriend pregnant, educated drifter Jack Nicholson returns to his family home on a Washington island after learning from his sister that his estranged father has suffered a stroke. Unable to find himself despite all his drifting, the oppressive family atmosphere proves difficult for Jack. It’s a film very much of its era, which unsurprisingly features a strong performance by Nicholson. By setting the majority of the film around his extended family, there’s no reason given for why he became the man he is, but it is obvious he has no idea why as well. 
Oscar Nominations: Best Picture; Best Actor in a Leading Role; Best Actress in a Supporting Role; Best Writing, Story and Screenplay Based on Factual Material or Material Not Previously Published or Produced
This film follows the episodic journey of prostitute Cabiria from her almost drowning after being pushed in a river by her boyfriend to her later romance with a man who seems too good to be true. Through it all, she maintains an unmerited optimism against the cynicism of her peers and life itself. I didn’t love this as much as La Strada, the previous collaboration between Federico Fellini and Giulietta Masina, but Masina’s presence still shines. Her character is so incredibly tough and spunky with a fragile, hopeful light that refuses to be extinguished no matter the degradations she must endure.
Oscar Win: Best Foreign Language Film
When boxer and amateur pilot Robert Montgomery’s plane crashes, he’s prematurely pulled into the afterlife before his time by Edward Everett Horton. Horton’s boss Claude Rains finds Montgomery a new body to inhabit and he falls in love with Evelyn Keyes when he’s resurrected. I long ago saw Warren Beatty’s 1978 remake of the story, but this version is particularly adorable. Rains steals the show as the bemused and ever-patient Mr. Jordan. Honorable mention is given to James Gleason portraying Montgomery’s manager who is dragged in to the whole changed body scenario. 
Oscar Wins: Best Writing, Original Story; Best Writing, Original Screenplay
Oscar Nominations: Best Picture; Best Actor in a Leading Role; Best Actor in a Supporting Role; Best Director; Best Cinematography, Black-and-White
Despite her best intentions, journalist Chanté Adams falls in love with and begins a family with soldier Michael B. Jordan. Before he is deployed to Iraq, she implores him to write in a journal for their son to share whatever wisdom he feels he has to give. I had mostly watched this because I like the Black-centric stories director Denzel Washington chooses to deliver. Unfortunately the final product here fails. The only times this one pulls away from Lifetime film territory is when Jordan is on screen and that is only because of his natural charm. The characters across the board are extremely one-dimensional. The child actor and Adams’s friend group particularly are particularly cringey in their renditions. The story flip flops through time without any focus, eventually falling on a weird wishy-washy pro-military stance that the rest of the film seemed to be avoiding.
When her family is attacked by a rogue band of Apaches, Cate Blanchett teams up with her estranged father Tommy Lee Jones to rescue her eldest daughter Evan Rachel Wood from being sold in Mexico. The story is a bit of a long, slow burn that I experienced better when watching in two sessions. It has a rather stacked cast with the phenomenal performances by Jones and Blanchett bolstered by the likes of Ray McKinnon, Val Kilmer, and Elisabeth Moss. The craggy New Mexico landscape is well shot with the cold winter adding to the atmosphere of dread and desperation. 