Category: Nominees – 2020s

2023 – The Zone of Interest

This movie was ok.  It kept my interest well enough while I was watching it.  But the more I think about it, the more I am of the opinion that it was way too slow, way too self-important, and was trying way too hard to be deep or emotionally impactful.  What it was, was an examination of yet another perspective on the absolute tragedy that was the Holocaust.  I think the reason it was able to keep my attention is that I have never seen a film about that terrible time in history, told from this particular perspective, that of the Auschwitz commandant, Rudolf Höss and his wife Hedwig, who live with their family in a home in the “Zone of Interest” next to the concentration camp.

The film seemed to be extremely minimalist.  The viewer sees it as a fly on the wall.  The actors almost never played to the camera, which was generally in a fixed position, while the characters came in and out of the frame, going about their daily lives.  There were three colors that were used in very specific ways in the film, white, red, and black.  There were three times in the movie in which the entire screen turned those colors for long stretches.  White: thirteen seconds, while we listened to the screaming and crying of people that we never see.  Red: twenty-one seconds, while we listen to a man screaming, as if being tortured, and is abruptly cut off into silence.  Black: at the end of the film, a full sixty seconds, right before the end credits, as we listen to incredibly dissonant music that sounded like orchestrated wailing and lamenting.

That was just one example of how the film was trying too hard to be deep.  Was it really effective story-telling, good filmmaking, or just pretentious and heavy handed?  I don’t know.  And there were other things that were, I think, supposed to be emotionally jarring, but for me, were only effective in slowing down the narrative, sparse as it was.  But it wasn’t all ineffective.  There were some things that were meant to be disturbing, and actually were, in a very meaningful way.

The story, what there was of it, can be summarized quickly.  Höss and Hedwig have a beautiful home and a beautiful family.  They are happy and healthy.  But they live next to Auschwitz.  Their home is beautiful as long as they can ignore what is going on over the wall, the frequent screaming and gunshots, the smell of the smoke coming out of the slaughter-houses.  Hedwig gets regular deliveries of beautiful things like a fur coat, or lipstick, or a diamond found hidden in a tube of tooth-paste, even though she knows perfectly well where they are coming from.  But she accepts the deliveries, because they only belonged to Jews.

One day, Rudolph gets transferred, and rather than move out of her dream-home, Hedwig chooses to stay.  Rudolph is promoted to deputy inspector of concentration camps, and the loving couple are parted.  At Auschwitz, the killing and the death gets ramped up, and the sounds of trains increases.  Höss, himself, was shown to be an integral part of the mass genocide.  The end of the film was pretty impactful.  To quote Wikipedia, “As Höss leaves his Berlin office and descends a stairway, he stops, retches repeatedly and stares into the darkness of the building corridors. In the present day, a group of janitors cleans the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. Back in 1944, Höss continues downstairs, descending into darkness.”

And that’s what this movie does so effectively.  It sheds light on the level of both denial and indifference that was perpetrated by the German Nazis and their families, and yet shows that they were humans, too.  They were normal people with hopes and aspirations, loves and cares, just like anyone.  Were they good people?  Were they evil?  At the very least, Rudolph was shown to have a conscience, at the end.  He was aware that he was a monster, and yet his awareness didn’t stop him from being that monster.  And did Hedwig’s heartless indifference to her husband’s work and the nearby suffering at the concentration camp make her just as bad?

This was a dark movie, and though it was based on real people and events, I don’t mean just the content.  I mean that the images on the screen were sometimes very dim and barely lit.  There were a few sequences showing a young Polish girl hiding food for forced laborers at night, that were shown in black and white negative, so that the girl was white, and everything around her was black.  It was done for effect, but it was just another way to force the emotional content.  It was interesting, but very dark on the screen.  Also, the movie was entirely in German.  I don’t mind reading subtitles, but sometimes they were too fast for me to read, and I had to rewind just a little bit to understand what was being said.

And finally, I have to quickly mention the acting of the two leads, Christian Freidel as Rudolph, and Sandra Hüller as Hedwig.  They were both good, but I particularly liked Hüller, and found it interesting that she was also in another Best Picture nominee for 2023, Anatomy of a Fall, for which she was nominated for Best Actress.  She apparently had a busy year, and I’m glad she was recognized for her work.  And though this didn’t win the Best Picture award, and I’m glad it didn’t, it did win the Best International Film Oscar, and that’s good.

2023 – Poor Things

This was a strange, strange movie.  I ultimately enjoyed it, but I had to do a bit of research to really understand its themes and messages, and what it was trying to explore.  It was a surrealistic fantasy, an examination of a certain kind of feminism, but told from a male perspective.  The reviews I read are conflicted.  Is the movie feminist, or is it really sexist?  Is it about female empowerment, or is it about that within the confines of a man’s world?  Any way you look at it, it is a unique movie.  The acting was incredibly good, the visuals were stunning, the costumes were phenomenal, the cinematography was outstanding, and the pseudo-steampunk aesthetic was captivating.  Even the music was strange and memorable, much of it sounding like a wonky, broken jack-in-the-box tune, with disturbing, sliding guitar sounds and chaotic orchestra hits.  There are so many things about this film that were just fascinating to see and hear. 

The plot was a bit of a Frankenstein story.  Dr. Godwin Baxter, a scientist, played by Willem Dafoe, hires a young colleague, Max McCandles, played by Ramy Youssef, to observe and document the development of a young woman who, as it is later revealed, has the body of an adult woman, but the transplanted brain of an unborn infant, and not just any infant, but her own.  Bella, brilliantly played by Emma Stone, has virtually no knowledge of the world outside of Godwin’s house.  She discovers sexual desire with the unscrupulous Duncan Wedderburn, played by Mark Ruffalo, who convinces her to run away with him for a sex-filled adventure around the world.  The film follows Bella as she goes on a journey of self-discovery and experience.  She rapidly grows from an infant to a questioning child, and by the film’s end, she becomes a confident and self-determined adult. 

This is what made Emma Stone’s performance so incredible.  She starts out experiencing the world like a newborn peeing on the floor, a toddler banging on a piano, a child smashing plates for fun, a teenager discovering sexuality, a young woman running off to explore the world, and finally, an adult, deciding the direction of her life.  She meets people who introduce her to sex, art, philosophy, human suffering, pain, and pleasure.  But she takes it all in with the curiosity of one who is hungry for knowledge and self-improvement.  Stone was simply brilliant in every aspect of that journey. She played each stage of that growth with such precision that you could follow the progression with ease, and it was fascinating to watch.

All the men in the film interact with Bella in terms of control, because apparently, that is what all men do with all women.  They all want her to be what they see as the perfect companion.  Dr. Baxter wants the control of a parent, Max, that of a sweetheart, Duncan, as a lover, the johns of the brothel as a whore (I’ll get to them in a moment), and the husband from her previous life before the brain transplant, Alfie Blessington, played by Christopher Abbott, as an actual possession. 

The visuals of the film were amazing.  The fantasy steampunk look of every scene was impressive.  The images on the screen were beautiful.  The use of color and light were captivating on the screen.  Much of the film was done in black and white, finally blooming to color as Bella’s understanding of the world blossomed.  And that leads us into the amazing costumes.  Bella was a girl who had no concept of social conventions, and was unashamed of her avaricious desires for experience and sex.  These things were reflected in the clothes she wore.  The colors matured from innocent whites and baby blues to more mature reds and blacks.  And boy, did they ever lean into the gigantic puffy shoulders of the Victorian era!  But I actually liked that.  It really lent itself to the fantasy of the film. 

And did I mention she loved sex?  Actually, this was one of the film’s… I won’t call it a flaw… but one of its more unsettling elements.  The explicit sex scenes were a little too frequent.  One of the major plot points in the narrative is where Bella is in need of money, and discovers that she can earn cash by doing something she loves doing: having sex.  She has a lot of it, and we see a lot of it.  We see full frontal nudity of not only Emma Stone, but also of a few them men who come to the brothel in which she becomes employed.  True, this movie doesn’t acknowledge the reality and emotional ramifications inherent in the life of a sex-worker, and some critics have remarked on this lack of sensitivity, but the movie is a fantasy, an allegory, a metaphor.  What do you want?

And finally, there were two last things I really liked about the film.  First, it was an epic.  It followed Bella around the world, growing and becoming, and taking us on that journey with her.  It transcended time and location, and I do so love a good epic narrative.  Second is that it is a great example of a black comedy.  It dealt with mature, adult themes, and the things that happened were not realistically funny.  But there was enough actual comedy that made me laugh internally, if not out loud, like the scene where Bella dares a drunk Duncan to throw a lady off the side of a ship, and he actually tries to do it.  And Martha, the lady in question, is actually amused that her life has come to end in such a murder.  Or the bizarre ending where Bella transplants the brain of a goat into Alfie’s head, and we see him bleating and eating leaves.  That was some funny stuff.

2023 – Killers of the Flower Moon

This was a very good movie, but it was way too long.  Those two things are not mutually exclusive.  The story could have been told in around two hours, but director Martin Scorsese drew it out to over three and a half hours.  But that’s really my only complaint about the film.  The casting and the acting were fantastic.  The story was engaging for a drama, and the pacing though slow at times, kept me interested.  And it had that big-blockbuster feel that Scorsese is known for.

The three leads were Robert DeNiro, playing the main bad-guy, Leonardo DiCaprio playing the man who he got to do a lot of his dirty work, and Lily Gladstone, playing the Osage Indian heiress to an oil fortune, who they were trying to swindle.  The plan was to kill off all her family until the entire inheritance belonged to her and her children.  But the trick was that after marrying her for her money, the nephew actually fell in love with her.  It made for a very compelling story of love, betrayal, and murder.

DeNiro played William King Hale, the Reservation cattle rancher and benevolent benefactor to the Osage people, clean on the outside and dirty on the inside.  This role was nothing new for the actor.  He’s played the part a thousand times, so he’s gotten very good at it.  He was a mobster, the only difference being that this film took place in 1919 on the Osage Indian Reservation. DiCaprio played Earnest Burkhart, his nephew.  He isn’t terribly bright, but he is loyal to his uncle, and he has a particular love for money.  Ernest meets and marries Molly Kyle, played by Gladstone, as she is part of the family that owns the Osage oil headrights.  But even while Ernest falls in love with Molly, who is a diabetic, he plots with his uncle to murder her family.  And since Hale is a sheriff’s deputy, and has influence on nearly everyone on the Reservation, white and Native American alike, the murders are not even investigated.  Nothing is done. 

And that’s the basics of the plot.  And the kicker of it is, this movie was based on a true story.  The non-fiction book on which the movie is based had the same name, and just a glance at the cover of the book caught my attention.  It says “The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI.”  I bet the formation of the FBI and Hoover’s involvement in it would probably make a pretty good movie in its own right, but Scorsese barely touches that story.  Instead, he focuses on the crime and corruption, and the despicable ways powerful white men devastated the Native American Indians… again.  It was enough. After all, we don’t want a five hour movie, do we?  I wouldn’t put it past Scorsese.

I particularly liked DiCaprio’s performance.  I remember back in 1997 when he starred in Titanic.  He was good, but not great.  How he has grown as an actor!  He has become incredible.  I think he has joined the ranks of the big-name superstars, that upper echelon of Hollywood royalty who can do no wrong on the screen.  Every movie he is in, every role he plays, is just phenomenal.  He commits to every moment in front of the camera and really inhabits the characters he plays.  His consistent mannerisms, his facial expressions, and the intensity in his eyes, all combine to give him a powerful and memorable screen presence.

But I also have to praise the work of Lily Gladstone, who, I’ll be honest, I have never heard of before.  Based on her filmography given in Wikipedia, this is only her eleventh film appearance, and I don’t recognize the titles of any of the previous ten.  She did such a great job!  The aesthetics of the movie clearly tried to be as authentic as possible, and Gladstone’s natural beauty and ethnic background were always captivating on the screen.  She was stoic, as one would be when surrounded by, and forced to be subservient to those by whom one is conquered.  But despite this particular indignity, she had a nobility about her and a strength, despite her physical frailty because of her diabetes.  And the amount of loss and injustice heaped upon her as her sisters are all murdered, one by one, was horrifyingly powerful.  Gladstone really delivered in this incredible performance.

Rounding out the cast were a few veteran actors like Jonathan Lithgow, Jesse Plemons, and Brendan Fraser, as well as other lesser known actors, like the one’s playing Molly’s mother and sisters, Tantoo Cardinal, Cara Jade Myers, JaNae Collins, and Jillian Dion.  There were several other actors whose faces I recognized, but I had to look up their names, like Jason Isabell, Scott Shepherd, and Katherine Willis.

The ending was actually a little strange, but clever at the same time.  There was an epilogue that told what happened to the characters after the story ended.  Most films would simply put up text on the screen to inform the audience.  But Scorsese chose an interesting way to tell us their fates.  The narrative ended and we skipped ahead to what appeared to be a 1940s radio program, back when radio programs were live events, with cleverly manufactured sound effects and a live orchestra.  And the last announcer on the screen, telling what eventually became of Molly Kyle, was none other than Martin Scorsese, himself.  It was a powerful story that was told in a way that only the legendary director could tell it.  It was beautifully filmed, and masterfully performed.  But please, Mr. Scorsese.  Stop making your movies so long.  They can sometimes be a little hard to sit through.

2023 – Past Lives

Sigh… Ok, I’ll just say it.  This was an interminably boring film.  I’m sorry, but I found it to be slow and pretentious, plodding and uninteresting.  Watching people stare at each other without saying anything is not deep.  It’s boring.  Long and meaningful looks just don’t translate well onto the big screen.  While I was watching this movie, I was reminded of those hyper-minimalist French films that are often made fun of.  I’m actually only guessing at this, as I’ve never actually seen one of those movies, though they are parodied all the time in pop culture.

And I think maybe there was supposed to be a romantic love triangle thing going on between the only three significant characters in the narrative.  There was supposed to be a “who will she end up with” vibe going on.  But it didn’t work at all for me.  It was just a dull film that, honestly, felt too self-important.  It was trying way too hard to be deep, and it just made the whole thing feel forced.  The theme was not supposed to be that of unrequited love or missed opportunities.  It was about pining for the unknown life that could have been, had fate turned you in a different direction.  But I think that even this mark was missed.

The narrative follows a Korean woman whose family immigrated to Canada when she was a small child, and she moved to America as an adult.  While going to school in Korea, a twelve-year-old Na Young had a childhood sweetheart named Hae Sung.  Her family moves, and we skip to Na Young, now called Nora, and played by actress Greta Lee, as a twenty-four-year-old woman in New York City.  .  Hae Sung, played by Teo Yoo, has never forgotten her.

Hae Sung looks her up and the two reconnect through video chatting.  But Nora wants to focus on her career as a writer, and ends the long distance friendship.  While on a writing retreat, she meets and falls in love with Arthur, a gentle, soft-spoken Jewish man, played by John Magaro.  The two marry, and it is another twelve years before Hae Song finds her again.  Arthur wonders if he is standing in the way of a life Nora could have had with Hae Song, and if she married him only to obtain a green-card.  She assures Arthur she loves him and is with him because she wants to be.  Hae Song comes to visit her in New York, and the two spend two days together reconnecting again.  But after a lot of slow conversation, the two come to realize that Hae Song was less in love with Nora, and more with the idea of her.  He missed the twelve-year old he knew, a girl who no longer existed.

This is where the movie tries too hard to be deep and philosophical.  Were we really meant for each other?  What if you had never left Korea?  Did we know each other in a past life?  Will we be together in our next life?  Unfortunately, as the viewer, I just didn’t care.  Because when it came down to it, Nora was happy in the marriage she had chosen, and had no desire to shift her affections to Hae Song.  I saw no conflict, and so no resolution was needed.  Was there even tension between Hae Song and Arthur?  No, there wasn’t.  They were both respectful and courteous to each other.  Virtually all the emotional content was centered around wistfully wondering what might have been, and I’m sorry, but it didn’t make for a very compelling narrative.  It was just uninteresting.

I think my favorite of the three characters was Arthur.  He so easily could have been written as a jealous man with feelings of inadequacy.  True, he had a little insecurity, but only a little, not enough to make him fearful of losing his wife.  He was kind and understanding, and he just seemed like a genuinely nice guy.  But that’s just it.  He seemed to epitomize the feel of the entire movie.  He was ordinary.  He was easy and non-threatening.  And I think that was supposed to be part of the movie’s charm, its ordinary and easy characters, settings, visuals, dramas, and tensions.  It was a slice of life-film that maybe tried a little too hard to be philosophical and emotional.

One of the things about the movie I did like was the music.  Written by Christopher Bear and Daniel Rossen, It did a great job of fostering a feeling and an aesthetic of profound melancholy.  It was sad and a little heavy handed, but it fit the story.  While Hae Song was visiting in New York, it was raining, with gray skies and heavy clouds, weather of which I happen to be very fond.  The atmosphere of vague uncertainty and wistful regret was achieved, and I liked it.

I guess what I’m saying, in conclusion, is that this wasn’t a bad movie.  But at the same time, I wouldn’t call it a great movie.  It was average.  It was just a little slow and bland for my tastes, and I wouldn’t have nominated it for Best Picture.  And I’m well aware that my opinion is not the popular one.  To quote Wikipedia, “On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 95% of 300 critics’ reviews are positive, with an average rating of 9.0/10. The website’s consensus reads: “A remarkable debut for writer-director Celine Song, Past Lives uses the bonds between its sensitively sketched central characters to support trenchant observations on the human condition.”  But if you ask me, that’s the movie’s downfall, not its power.  Too much philosophical thought and not enough engaging drama.  But oh well.  What do I know?

2023 – The Holdovers

Was this a good movie?  Yes.  Did it have some very good acting?  Again, yes.  Did it deserve to be nominated for Best Picture?  No.  I mean, the movie was fine.  The plot was fine.  The cast was fine, with the exception of Paul Giamatti, who was incredibly good, as usual.  The direction, the music, the cinematography, the costuming was all fine.  But we’ve all seen this movie before, over and over again.  It is an old movie that gets rehashed every few years, and there was nothing new here.  Nothing at all.  I’m sorry, but five minutes into the movie, I already knew the whole story.  I just needed to watch it to fill in the details, and I was not wrong.

Here’s how the story goes.  An unlikely group of people are forced to spend time together, in this case a high school teacher, a troubled student, and the woman who runs the cafeteria.  They have to spend the Christmas break at the school.  At first both the student and the teacher hate each other, but by the end, they learn to not only respect each other, they grow to become friends.  Then something bad happens to one of them and they have to part company, which they do with a bit of sadness.  They have both grown as individuals, and the future holds a modicum of hope and happiness for each of them.  The end.

How many times have we seen this exact story play itself out?  Scent of a Woman, Finding Forrester, Charlie Bartlett, St. Vincent, Even Dead Poet’s Society, in a roundabout way.  It is a story of unlikely mentorship.  The teacher, Paul Hunham, played by Paul Giamatti is an old curmudgeon who teaches ancient history.  The student, Angus Tully, played by Dominic Sessa, is the son of a wealthy family whose father is in a mental institution, and whose mother dismisses him.  The cafeteria lady, Mary Lamb, played by Da’Vine Joy Randolph, is a woman who is understandably depressed because of the deaths of both her husband, and more recently, her son.  Together, the three discover companionship over the depressing Christmas holiday, and learn something about themselves, things that make them better people.

There isn’t much else to say about the rather bland plot.  What made the movie good was the acting.  It was dramatic, and at times, mildly amusing.  But the movie had a generally depressing feeling.  The music was all very angsty and depressing, which was actually appropriate for the unhappy characters and the winter setting.  And yes, I liked the resolution at the end of the movie, despite its predictability.

There were only three other supporting cast members who were really noteworthy.  A fellow teacher at the school who shows a friendly interest in Mr. Hunham is Lydia Crane, played by Mary Preston.  Naheem Garcia played the school Janitor who shows a romantic interest in Mrs. Lamb.  And the young girl who Angus meets at a Christmas party is Miss Crane’s niece, Elise, played by Darby Lily Lee-Stack.  They all did a fine job, but were, honestly, nothing to write home about.

Now, I understand that there were more “holdovers” in the film.  There were four other students who had nowhere to go for the Christmas holiday, but they all left after a few scenes, and didn’t show up again until the last ten minutes or so of the film.  Technically, they were all the holdovers.  All I can say is that it would have been a different movie if they had stayed.

It is interesting to note that this was actually a period piece, taking place in 1970.  The clothing and hairstyles were very appropriate, though, if you didn’t know any better, it could have taken place today.  Kids still wear their hair long, school uniforms are still school uniforms, and sad old history professors still often wear bow-ties.  The only parts in the movie where the 70s is visually apparent is when they take a field trip to Boston.  But even then, you really have to look for it.

So what is it about Paul Giamatti that makes him such a good actor?  He is always so intentional when he is creating a character.  There is a realness to him that is unmistakable.  And he has such a wide range of on-screen emotions that he is able to use.  He can go from anger to embarrassment, from sympathetic to disdainful, sometimes within the same scene.  There is an honesty and earnestness to him that always translates very well on the big screen.  And he has very expressive eyes and eyebrows.  The scene at the Christmas party where he feels an emotional connection with Miss Crane, only to discover that she is married, is almost heartbreaking to watch.  He was that good.

But he wasn’t the only good actor in the film.  I also really enjoyed Da’Vine Joy Randolph.  There was also a great deal of truth in her performance.  I especially liked the scene at the Christmas party where she got drunk.  Her anger and loneliness over the loss of her husband and son were very raw and exposed, which she played to perfection.  You could see her eyelids get heavy and she had trouble keeping them open.  She was so good in that scene. There was a subtlety to the scene that she clearly understood, and she was wonderful.  As I said before, it was actually a good movie.  Just don’t expect anything new. 

2023 – Barbie

This movie was way better than I was expecting.  I mean, I wasn’t expecting it to be bad.  After all, I had heard about how much it was loved by people across the spectrum, from adults and children, from men and women, from fans to skeptics.  It was good on so many levels.  It was visually stunning, cleverly written, perfectly cast, didn’t take itself too seriously, was laugh-out-loud funny, and yet had some serious and relevant commentary on our modern society.  It had a lot to say, and said it in a way that was direct and to the point, only a little bit preachy, and yet palatable.  And when it comes down to it, it was just plain fun!

First, let me mention the set design, which ties into the intelligent script.  About two thirds of the movie takes place in the fictional Barbieland.  They filmmakers paid a lot of great attention to the history of the toy line.  They featured all the popular items like Barbie’s dream House, and Barbie’s pink Cadillac.  They also featured many versions of Barbie that have actually been produced, both the successful ones, and the bombs. 

Directed by Greta Gerwig, the film didn’t shy away from looking at both the positive and negative sides of the toy and its impact on the modern world.  It is part of what made the movie so controversial, and so good.  Wikipedia did a great job of summarizing some of these contradictions, and I’d like to share what I’ve found:

“Gerwig was influenced by her childhood experiences with Barbie. Her mother discouraged her from purchasing such dolls, but eventually allowed her to. Opting to acknowledge the controversial nature of the Barbie doll, Gerwig chose to create a film where she would be both “doing the thing and subverting the thing”, in the sense that she would be celebrating the feminism behind Barbie while also noting the controversial beauty standards associated with it. She was also fascinated by the idea that humans created dolls, which in turn imitate humans, feeling that “we’re in constant conversation with inanimate objects” while also conveying an affirmative message to the audience to “just be yourself and know that that’s enough.” The film deliberately juxtaposed contradictory messaging, such as critiquing consumerism yet glamorizing plastic products; and in the film’s ending, where Barbie desires to be more than just a plastic doll. Gerwig made the film as an “earnest attempt to make amends” between affirming womens’ worth and conveying the impossibility of perfection, which some perceived to be standards associated with Barbie.”

Margot Robbie played the title character of Stereotypical Barbie perfectly.  She, as always, was gorgeous, and has a thousand wat smile.  Playing opposite her was Ryan Gosling as Beach Ken.  They were both awesome!  Now, aside from them, Barbieland was populated with lots of other Barbies like President Barbie, Lawyer Barbie, Doctor Barbie, and so on.  The Kens had Tourist Ken, Basketball Ken, and Artist Ken.  The point was made that Barbieland was run by the Barbies, and that the Kens were only there as their accessories.  It flipped the gender stereotypes of the real world, which has historically been run by men, with women as being the ones who are marginalized.

But when Barbie’s perfect world is interrupted with thoughts of mortality, she begins having real-world problems like depression, bad breath, and flat feet.  So at the advice of Weird Barbie, played by Kate McKinnon, a Barbie who was played with too hard, and now has chopped up hair, marker lines all over her face, and legs that are generally in the splits, Barbie goes to the real world to find the girl playing with her, in order to clear up all her negative thoughts and heal her.  Ken, who can only be happy when he is with Barbie, goes with her.

In the real world, Barbie finds sexism and depression, while Ken finds acceptance and power, even though it is all imagined.  He returns to Barbieland and uses what he has learned to take over everything and brainwashing the Barbies into forgetting their empowering careers as Supreme Court Justices and Authors, and taking on submissive roles like casual girlfriends and maids.  And that’s the main conflict of the story.  Hijinks ensues.

But there was so much more that happened, more than I can fit into this review.  America Ferrera and Arianna Greenblatt played Gloria and Sasha, a mother and daughter who are Barbie’s real world owners. Will Farrell played the CEO of Mattel, and Rhea Perlman played the ghost of Mattel’s co-founder and first president, Ruth Handler.  And of course, the voice of Hellen Miren shows up periodically as a narrator, who often broke the fourth wall to speak directly to the audience.  And I have to make special mention of the music in the opening Barbieland sequences, both the first morning, and the existential morning of Barbie’s difficulties, which sang about what was happening on the screen, using lines like “Ooo, that‘s cold,” when Barbie’s shower put out cold water.  It was so funny and clever, and showed that the movie had a great sense of humor. But it was Gloria’s great speech that spelled out the real world problems that modern women have to deal with, which gave the film its appropriate bite.  Yeah, Barbie just got real.

2023 – Anatomy of a Fall

I thought this was a good enough movie, but my goodness!  It moved at a snail’s pace.  The acting was first-rate and the story was interesting, but it seemed to take forever to get through the two and a half hour run-time.  It was a long, deep look into its characters and their relationships.  Directed by Justine Triet, it was a French film that used both the English and French languages to move the story, create tension, and exaggerate the difficulties between a French man and his German-born wife.  And it also tries to answer the question of whether or not she murdered him by pushing him out of a second story window.  And that was where this slow film kept my attention.

What follows is a ‘did she, or didn’t she?’ trial, where Sandra Voyter must defend herself.  Sandra is expertly played by Sandra Hüller.  Her character is a German author who is put on trial in a French court, where the judge requires everyone to speak in French.  Sandra must try to make her case in a language that is not her own, making things more difficult for her.  Her visually impaired son, Daniel, wonderfully played by Milo Machado-Graner is a willing participant in the trial, in which he learns things about both his parents that maybe a child would be better off not knowing.

Sandra’s lawyer, Vincent Renzi, played by Swann Arlaud, helps her to prepare for the trial, and produces arguments that put her guilt in question.  Meanwhile, the prosecuting attorney, played by Antoine Reinartz, attempts to manipulate the facts of the case against Sandra.  And another important member of the cast was Jehnny Beth, playing Marge, Daniel’s state appointed guardian during the trial, who I thought did a fine job, helping to guide the boy through his emotional challenges. They all did a great job and brought a lot to the movie.  And, of course there was Daniel’s service dog, Snoop, played by canine actor, Messi.

All the actors in the movie really did a fantastic job, but a few of them really impressed me with their performances.  First was the lead actress, Hüller.  She was incredibly good.  Half her lines had to be delivered in French, the other half in English.  She did a great job, which isn’t a surprise, as the film was literally written for her.  You can not only hear her native German accent in her Englich dialogue, but you can also read her pragmatic and logical German attitude and mannerisms, even when she is not speaking.  Partly, it was the way her character was written, but more than that, it was the way Hüller played her.  She was very matter-of-fact about things which one might expect her to be more passionate.  For example, while she loved her husband and son very much, there was an emotional distance from both of them that was both undeniable and yet very appropriate for the roll..

But I also have to give a special shout-out to Graner, who played her son.  First, he did a great job portraying the visual impairment.  There were times when he’d had an unfocused look in his eyes, and sometimes he had to feel for things with his hands as a way of perceiving them.  And second, he had a couple of really powerful emotional scenes that was impressive for so young an actor.  There was a scene in which he poisons his assistance dog on purpose, as a way of verifying parts of his mother’s testimony, in order to convince himself of her innocence.  Once the animal is saved, he breaks down in tears, explaining what he has done, and why.

I also really liked two other actors in the courtroom scenes.  The first was Reinartz.  He was pitiless and relentless in his efforts to prove Sandra’s guilt, and though I ended up feeling anger towards his character, it was exactly how I think I was supposed to react to him.  That says something good about the actor.  The other was the judge or, the President, played by Anne Rotger.  She had a fairly small supporting roll, but she stood out to me as memorable, as she was always calm and clearly in control of her courtroom.

But as the movie was mostly about the examination of the death of Sandra’s husband, Samuel, played in flashbacks and visualized testimony by Samuel Theis, and the alleged murder trial, the nature of Sandra’s complicated marriage relationship was intensely explored.  It examined both the mental and emotional states of both husband and wife, their bonds and their differences.  It touched on their careers, and how their individual passions contributed to the marital tensions that preceded the death.  It went into Sandra’s success as an author and her husband’s lack of it.  It also shined a light on Sandra’s infidelities, and Samuel’s struggles with depression and suicidal episodes.    And the movie also explored Sandra’s difficult relationship with her son Daniel.

So yes, there was plenty of drama to keep my attention.  I really liked the scene with the recorded audio of a discussion that became an argument, that turned into a fight, which escalated into a physical altercation the day before Samuel’s death.  And the film did a very good job of keeping me unsure of Sandra’s innocence or guilt until the very end, so that was good.  It wasn’t a bad movie at all.  I ultimately enjoyed watching it.  It was just so incredibly slow-paced, which, at times, made it a bit of a chore to watch.

2023 – American Fiction

I’ve never seen Jeffrey Wright in a bad movie.  He is such a good actor, and I’m so glad to see him take the lead, at last.  Maybe he’s had plenty of leading roles before, but not in anything I’ve seen, though I’ve seen him in plenty of supporting roles.  There’s just something about him that screams intelligence and maturity, both qualities that the character of Dr. Thelonious “Monk” Ellison needed.  Wright fit the bill perfectly, as if the script was written with him in mind.

This was a movie that had an incredibly smart script, a great cast of actors, and a message that really spoke to me.  Monk Ellison is a black author.  He comes from a family of college graduates and respectable affluence.  It’s important to say it that way because the point of the movie had to do with race and the prevailing white perception of the black American experience.  The irony around which the plot revolves is that Monk is a highly educated man whose books do not sell because they aren’t black enough for white readers.

But when, as a joke, an accusation, he uses an assumed name to write a “black” book about thugs, drugs, and criminals, it becomes his only best-seller.  The publishing house, run by white people who love the story because they think it is raw and real, portraying what they think all black people are like, proving just how instinctively racist they actually are.  The trouble is, that though he hates the book and all it stands for, Monk can’t turn down all the money the book sales generate.

And the B plot is nearly as interesting.  It follows Monk as he navigates his complex relationships with his siblings, his aging mother, and a new love interest.  Joining Wright in this great cast are Tracee Ellis Ross as his sister Lisa, Sterling K Brown as his gay brother Cliff, Leslie Uggams as his mom Agnes, Myra Lucretia Taylor as his mother’s housekeeper who is as close as family, and John Ortiz as his agent.  Issa Rae was good as a contemporary author who unapologetically wrote her own “black” novel. And finally, Erika Alexander played his girlfriend Coraline, who I thought did a really good job, playing opposite Wright.  She was beautiful and easy, and I enjoyed watching her on the screen.

In the modern age of woke political correctness, it seems to be almost trendy for rich white people to champion anything that’s black, the blacker the better.  There is nothing worse for a wealthy white person than to be accused of being racist.  And so they give profuse attention to black people and black issues, as if doing so makes them look more enlightened and Non-racist.  The problem is that for years, the media, especially the white media, has told them that most black people are gang members, drug dealers, and criminals, and they believe it.

I don’t pretend to know the statistics, but I know that there are millions of black people that are just as ordinary and affluent as the Ellison family in American Fiction.  And I also know that there are a lot of educated black people who are way smarter and more well-spoken than me.  So why is it that so many movies, so much pop music, and so many news stories seem to focus on, or even glorify the negative stereotypes?  It makes no sense.  That is what this movie is trying to draw attention to, and it does so in a lightly comedic way.  I mean, the relationship story-lines weren’t funny at all, but the creation of the pseudonym, and the educated man trying to “black it up” were pretty amusing.

I also have to mention the cool jazzy soundtrack that was used.  It gave the whole movie an easy, lighthearted feel that I quite enjoyed.  Composer Laura Karpman wrote twenty-one tracks for around forty-seven minutes of music, and it was buoyant and delightful.  And it was nice to have a movie that specifically dealt with an aspect of racism, with decidedly black themes, that wasn’t hip-hop or rap.

And finally, I’d like to mention the interesting ending.  The movie was about Monk’s story, writing an intentionally pandering novel, and becoming a secret success for it.  But the end of the film began to blend his story with that of his novel, making the viewer question how much of the film was fiction, and how much of it was reality.  It was a fictional story about an author writing fiction, and even the title American Fiction had a double meaning, referring to Monk’s book, and the lie surrounding its creation.  It’s not the first time such a storytelling device was used, but it was done rather effectively here.

This movie just worked on so many levels, but mostly, I think it worked because of Jeffrey Wright.  He is simply a great actor and he seems like such a nice and likeable guy.  Even though his character had problems sharing his emotions with anyone, a welcome flaw in his character, he just seemed like a big friendly teddy bear, and a smart one, at that, which is always an attractive trait.  I’m so happy that he was nominated for Best Actor.  And he wasn’t the only one who was nominated for an acting award.  Sterling K. Brown was nominated for Best Supporting Actor, as well, though neither of them took home an Oscar.  In fact, they were both beat in their respective categories by someone from Oppenheimer, and it’s kind of hard to argue with that powerhouse.

2022 – Avatar: The Way of Water

This was an amazing movie, and I really enjoyed watching it.  It is a sequel to the 2009 film which was also nominated for Best Picture.  Not only did it have a great plot which furthered the story from the first installment of the franchise, it did so in a way that didn’t fall into the trap that many sequels do.  It didn’t simply rely on whatever it was that made the first movie popular, and repeated its bag of tricks.  It improved on them, made them better, made them different, made them fit the story.  It opened up new worlds and possibilities.  It does what a good sequel is supposed to do.

Here we see what happened to the characters after the first film.  Jake Sully, played by Sam Worthington, and his wife, Neytiri, played by Zoe Saldana, have had sixteen years of peace and prosperity.  Jake has become chief of the Omatikaya.  The couple have had three children, and have adopted one more, the child of Dr. Grace Augustine’s avatar.  She is Kiri, played by Sigourney Weaver.  Their other children, Neteyam, Lo’ak, and Tuk, played by young actors, Jamie Flatters, Britain Dalton, and Trinity Jo-Li Bliss.  Another adopted member of the family is a fully human boy named Spider, played by Jack Champion.  Something I really liked about the characters and the script was that each member of the family had an important part to play in the story.  They weren’t just there for no reason.  They each had distinct roles and fully realized personalities.

Other new members of the cast included Cliff Curtis and Kate Winslet, the chieftains of the water clan, the Metkayina, Tonowari and his wife Ronal.  Their children, Tsierya and Aonung, played by Bailey Bass and Filip Geljo.  And then there were the new bad guys, aka, the humans, Edie Falco, playing General Francis Ardmore, Brendan Cowell as Captain Mick Scoresby, and Jemaine Clement as Dr. Ian Garvin, a marine biologist.    And they found a plausible way to bring back the main villain from the first movie, played by Stephen Lang.  They took the digitally coded personality of Colonel Miles Quaritch into an avatar body.  Apparently the dead Colonel was the father of Spider.  Other cast members brought back to reprise their roles from the first film were Joel David Moore, Dileep Rao, Giovanni Ribisi, CCH Pounder, and Matt Gerald.

In other words, it was a fantastic and talented cast.  As you might expect, the entire non-human cast had to work with motion capture suits and facial recognition technology, all in the unique medium of being underwater, something that has never been done before.  Director James Cameron said that it took them a year and a half to crack the code, but they did it.  And I have to say, it looks fantastic.  We all know how water has the ability to bend light, making images distorted and constantly shifting.  It seems like it would be nearly impossible to do motion capture while submerged.  Those little dots on the actors’ bodies and faces would be impossible for a computer to read and map.  But somehow, they perfected it.  The underwater sequences were some of the most incredible images in the film.  It was simply stunning.

In the first film, Cameron treated us to a tribe of forest dwellers who lived in harmony with fantastical creatures and plant life.  Here, we are introduced to beautiful sea creatures that are clearly from the same planet, but evolved to an aquatic existence.  There were animals that resembled whales, jellyfish, flying fish, and dolphins, not to mention plants that were like kelp, pitcher plants, and coral.  And it all glowed with that same ethereal, unearthly bioluminescence.  Even the design of the water tribe of the Na’vi was both similar to the ones we know, but different, physically adapted to living near the water, and being in harmony with its inhabitants.  The design of everything in the film was just so detailed and perfectly planned out.  It was amazing!  It was just gorgeous.

But it didn’t stop there.  The live action elements, the humans and their technologies was developed so cleverly.  It all seemed like technology that clearly evolved from what was in the first film, even what we might have today.  The tech-suits, the ships, the boats, the guns, all of it was so meticulously thought out and designed.  You have to hand it to James Cameron.  He always has a clear vision and the ability to bring it to the screen.  He is an incredible filmmaker.  It’s no wonder that many of the biggest money-making movies of all time were his. 

Interesting note:  per Wikipedia “…in a November 2017 interview Cameron said : “Let’s face it, if Avatar 2 and 3 don’t make enough money, there’s not going to be a 4 and 5.”  Also, “According to producer Landau in February 2019… Avatar 4 and 5 “are not only greenlit, but also a third of Avatar 4 has already been filmed. So, given the returning characters, it is easy to see the inherent conflict in the plot, but there is more here.  There is a strong theme of family and loyalty.  There is a bit of teenage coming of age and a bit of romance.  There are several fantastic action sequences, beautiful alien environments, and even a taste of spiritualism.  The movie, which has a running time of three hours and twelve minutes, didn’t feel very long at all.  It was entertaining enough to prevent me from noticing the long run-time.  The movie was another giant feast for the senses, from the acting to the plot, from the images on the screen to the phenomenal score by Simon Franglen.  Everything blended together to create a thrilling experience, and I honestly can’t wait for the next three movies to be made.  If they are as good as the first two movies in the franchise, I bet we’re in for a wild and fantastic ride.

2022 – All Quiet on the Western Front

The first version of this film that was nominated for Best Picture was all the way back in 1930 at the third Academy Awards, the biggest difference being that in 1930, it won.  But I think this film is far superior to its predecessor, not because of its production values, but because it has a more cohesive script.  There was more of a linear story that was easier to follow.  It gave more attention to character motivations and examined the plot from more diverse angles.

In fact, this is the third film adaptation of the story, the other being a made for TV version that was aired in 1979, which I have not seen.  And granted, it has been a long while since I have seen the 1930 version, but I do remember the ending, which was very different than the one we got here in 2022.  But I’ll get to that in a moment, though I will mention that it was the 1930 ending that more closely resembled the book of the same name that was published in 1929.

The story is about Paul Baumer, a young ordinary German man who signs up to fight in World War One along with his schoolmates, their heads full of patriotism, and dreaming of honor and glory.  But it doesn’t take long for them to learn of the true horrors of trench warfare on the Western Front and death.  As Paul and his comrades are put through battle after pointless battle, some dying, and all of them becoming emotionally scarred, their dreams of a glorious victory die, and are replaced by severely damaged spirits.

In contrast to the earlier versions of the story, here, Paul’s friends are given personalities and personal motivations, which is a good thing.  It makes their deaths more impactful.  In a few cases, we don’t even see their deaths.  We are just shown things like a pair of special glasses or a bloody scarf, that indicate violent ends.  Another difference in this film adaptation is that we are given scenes with the diplomats and generals who are in peace talks to end the bloody conflicts.  When it is clear that Germany is losing the war, some of them sue for surrender and peace, while others, uncaring of the staggering number of deaths in the common soldiery, cannot accept defeat and surrender.

The actor playing Paul Baumer was Felix Kammerer, and boy was he put through the ringer.  Oddly enough, there weren’t many intense battle sequences, though there were a few.  But his most intense scenes were ones in which he learns of his friends dying, or when he kills a French soldier in terrible hand-to-hand combat.  He is often shown with so much mud caked on his face that he looks like a zombie in a horror film, which was most certainly intentional.  With his soul killed by his participation in the war, he becomes like a walking dead man.

Actors Aaron Hilmer, Moritz Klaus, Adrian Grünewald, and Edin Hasanovic, played his friends, Albert Kropp, Franz Müller, Ludwig Behm, and Tjaden Stackfleet, all of whom died in various ways, the most notable of which was Tjaden, who committed suicide rather that live the rest of his life as a cripple, by stabbing himself several times in the throat with a fork, a death which Paul witnesses.

But it was Paul’s best friend, Stanislaus “Kat” Katczinsky, played by Albrecht Schuch, who really stood out.  Kat was a more seasoned soldier who Paul meets before his first battle, who becomes somewhat of a mentor to the new recruits.  His acting stood out to me as incredible, especially during a scene where he tells Paul of his young son who had died of the pox.  It was a moment of vulnerability that was very touching, and really allowed us to get to know him.  And while his eventual death was different than in the 1929 novel and the 1930 movie, it was nonetheless just as poignant. 

But it was the final battle that was the most heartbreaking.  With only fifteen minutes to go before the end of the war, General Friedrichs, played by Devid Striesow, unwilling to accept a German surrender or defeat, orders his men to attack the French.  If only the peace could have been maintained for those last few minutes, Paul would have survived.  Instead, he is stabbed through the back by a bayonet seconds before the war ends, and a cease-fire is declared.  His face is caked with so much dirt and dust, he looks like a ghost.

But I think the biggest difference between this movie and the source material is that final scene.  In the novel, there is no last minute attack, no battle.  Paul is killed on a peaceful, ordinary day.  He has been so damaged by the war that he no longer feels like he has a place in the peaceful world, and his corpse is found with a calm expression on his face, as if he welcomed death.  Here the ending was altered to emphasize the devastating waste and pointlessness of war, and the pathetic, petty reasons for forcing young men to die in battles fought for uncaring leaders.  But one thing each adaptation of this story have in common, is that they are all strongly anti-war.  They all show scenes of graphic violence and the horrific physical and emotional consequences of taking part in such conflicts.