A donkey is born, named Balthazar, and cared for by four small children. The film follows this donkey’s life as he’s passed from owner to owner, accepting the changes and doing his work with little protest. His life is very often heartbreaking but he also experiences love. It’s a simple story, but it’s also very real, sad, and universal. 
The life of Johann Strauss II is told through a generic love triangle between him, his wife Luise Rainer, and opera singer Milizas Korjus. The music is beautiful though Korjus’s singing is overwhelming and featured too frequently. Outside the musical scenes, the rest of the film is rather bland and unmemorable. 
Oscar Win: Best Cinematography
Oscar Nomination: Best Actress in a Supporting Role; Best Film Editing
Ballet dancer Fred Astaire falls for Ginger Rogers, but she doesn’t want anything to do with him. When a ruse goes awry, they must pretend to be married for the sake of their careers. This is my last Astaire-Rogers pairing and while it’s not my favorite, there are a couple of moments that shine. While they are on a ship travelling back to the United States, they spend a lot of time bonding on the dog walking deck, which the deck is very cute with all the puppies walking and in special ship kennels. The highlight remains the tape dancing routine between the two of them on roller skates. I watched it multiple times just to watch the intricate overlap between their tap skills and skating while dancing together.
Oscar Nomination: Best Music, Original Song
In this third sequel to The Matrix, Keanu Reeves has been returned to the Matrix as the creator of a video game called The Matrix and struggling to reconcile his current ‘reality’ with his dreams. I’m not sure the series needed another film, but in actuality it probably didn’t need the other sequels as well. I was pleasantly surprised that it functions as well as the previous two in maintaining the tone while also bringing in new characters and ideas. I’m sure there are bits that went over my head that could be clearer on rewatches, especially if paired with a marathon of the rest of the series. I liked the new editions here and the meta references, but did miss Laurence Fishburne and Hugo Weaving. Their rebooted versions are perfectly fine, but I’m not sure the film was better for changing it up. 
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