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The Salt of the Earth (2014)

Co-directed by his son, this documentary chronicles the career of photographer Sebastião Salgado. Trained as an economist, Salgado almost accidentally stumbled into his chosen career after his wife bought him a camera in Paris. After that moment, his work took him across the globe, photographing native tribes in South America, famine in Africa, and wars in Yugoslavia and Rwanda. Filming the worst of humanity led him to begin work reforesting his native Brazil and a somewhat renewed career in wildlife photography. His photographs are beautiful, dramatic, stark, and real. I hadn’t been aware of the artist before and this documentary gives a close view into his life and work.

Oscar Nomination: Best Documentary, Feature

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Tomboy (2011)

When a French family moves to a new apartment, 10 year old Zoé Héran is immediately mistaken for a boy, spending the rest of the summer being Mickaël amongst their new friends. With this new identity, they are able to throw off many of the prescribed gender norms, continuing to wear the clothes they like, roughhousing with the boys, and playing with makeup with girls. There is a lot of sensitivity in this portrayal, not even committing to how the character really feels about their gender, just that for this moment in time, they are enjoying the change in how people view them. Unfortunately many people, adults and children alike, don’t have the language available to discuss gender exploration and the idyllic summer must come to an end with the harsh realities of fall.

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Babe: Pig in the City (1998)

A sequel to the delightful 1995 film about the pig who learns to do the work of a sheepdog, here the farm is threatened after the farmer is injured while repairing a well pump, so the titular pig and the farmer’s wife set off together to a herding contest. The pair’s trip is waylaid when they are detained at the airport and they are forced instead to make their way in Metropolis. The charm and coziness of the original film are a bit lost here. Metropolis is a bizarre amalgam of all cities where the only hotel that accepts animals is housed by an orangutan, chimpanzees and a bevy of cats. It’s also much darker for what is ostensibly a family film. There are hangings, almost drownings, and dogs getting very close to the Rainbow Bridge. It’s very weird.  Animals

Oscar Nomination: Best Music, Original Song

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The Last Duel (2021)

In this fictionalized account of events that occurred in medieval France, knight Matt Damon challenges his former friend Adam Driver to a judicial duel after his wife Jodie Comer accuses Driver of raping her. The film is unnecessarily told in 3 versions, giving very slight differences in the perspectives of the three main characters, a feat that could have been accomplished easily with a more linear translation. This overextends the runtime to the film’s detriment. It detracts from some rather fine acting and period costumes and set pieces. The only weakness in the acting is Ben Affleck as the count overseeing all the proceedings. While he provides some comic relief, his bleach blonde, dude-bro portrayal is a bit over the top and quite silly.

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Night and Fog (1956)

This French short documentary inordinately details the realities of the Nazi concentration camps, juxtaposing color footage taken at the time of the film with black and white stills and videos from the years of the Holocaust. Over the years I’ve read and seen much about the Holocaust, but never have I seen such a comprehensive recitation of what went on behind the walls of the camps. It includes everything from the most mundane details on architecture to the worst degradations that are beyond normal imagination. The horrors just continue to grow through the film and serve as a stark reminder that this could happen again. My only slight complaint about the film was the overuse of narration. It was often unnecessary, overly opinionated and almost detracted from the strength of the images themselves.

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Alien³ (1992)

There is a bit of this Alien sequel that is set up to be a rehash of the previous two movies. Sigourney Weaver’s escape pod, which of course contains at least one alien, crash-lands onto a new locale. The rest of the heroes from Aliens are dead on arrival, so it again resets so that Sigourney is the only one who has knowledge and experience with the aliens and the evil Company’s desires to weaponize them. What makes this different is that the ship had landed on an all-male maximum-security prison colony and foundry. No more mothering instincts coming out in this version, instead Weaver has to fight off gang rapes and work twice as hard to prove she knows what she’s doing.  Scifi  Horror

Oscar Nomination: Best Effects, Visual Effects

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The Seven Little Foys (1955)

After his young wife dies, vaudevillian Bob Hope decides to incorporate his seven children into his act. It’s a pretty standard film biopic with a standard loose adherence to the real-life story. While appealing as a lead, Hope seems a bit old for the role. The narration is grating at times, but it is clever that the second oldest in the real Foy family was cast as the narrator. The most memorable bit in the whole film is a scene with James Cagney reprising his role as George M. Cohan. The two banter and dance well together as two veteran performers.

Oscar Nomination: Best Writing, Story and Screenplay

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Woman in the Dunes (1964)

When amateur entomologist Eiji Okada misses the last bus home after a beetle expedition, local villagers offer him board at a young woman’s cabin which sits on the bottom of a large sand dune. Unfortunately their hospitality masks ulterior motives. Initially, there’s quite a bit of privilege that Okada’s character holds in his situation. He can’t imagine this other way of living nor that people won’t rationalize things the same way he does. There’s a great claustrophobic atmosphere to the locale. The cabin is small and tightly packed with the dunes towering above, sand constantly trickling in at varying intervals.

Oscar Nominations: Best Director; Best Foreign Language Film

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Little Women (1994)

Yet another retelling of the story, this version is completely adequate and standard in almost all ways. Even though I’ve never read the story, I do find I have a general idea of what I consider a good portrayal for each woman. Here we have Trini Alvarado, Winona Ryder, Claire Danes, and Kirsten Dunst as Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy respectively. A lot of these renditions make the birth order seem confusing as the Jo character overwhelms Meg as the oldest, and that is the case here. Beth is given short shrift and easy to forget she even exists, though Danes seems an odd choice of casting so that’s not the worst thing to have happened. It’s a bit interesting that Amy is a young girl at the beginning and later becomes an adult Samantha Mathis. I wouldn’t have thought that a transition between the two actresses would make sense, but it mostly works though Mathis isn’t quite as outgoing in her portrayal.

Oscar Nominations: Best Actress in a Leading Role; Best Costume Design; Best Music, Original Score

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The Damned (1969)

In the early days of the Nazi regime, the Essenbecks are a German family of rich and powerful industrialists whose members have differing loyalties to the new government. It is not long after the Reichstag fire before the conflicts within the family leads to intrigue and murder that happens in parallel to the violence happening in their own country. There’s a bit of a Shakespearean tragedy to the whole work, but told through a twistedly perverse lens. It’s an extremely excessive production from its lavish sets to its grotesque violence and even to its extra run time.

Oscar Nomination: Best Writing, Story and Screenplay Based on Material Not Previously Published or Produced

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