Month: January 2016

I concur with many of the eight films nominated for Oscar’s Best Film of the Year. In relative order of preference, Spotlight, Brooklyn, The Big Short, Mad Max: Fury Road, Bridge of Spies, and The Revenant are among my own selections of best films of the year. Since it was an especially good year for film, I thought it would be fun in lieu of a Year-End Best List to rank films and performances that were not nominated by The Academy Awards.

In the film category, I omitted three films that I highly admired–Amy, Son of Saul, and Amomalisa–since they were nominated, respectively, in the Best Documentary, Best Foreign Film, and Best Animated Film categories

In the acting categories my overall favorites for Best Actor (Michael Fassbender, Steve Jobs), Best Actress (Saoirse Ronan, Brooklyn), and Best Supporting Actress (Rooney Mara) were indeed nominated. Yet many performances went crying for recognition.

My Dozen Best Oscar Snubs:

Carol – https://cinedork.com/2015/12/31/review-carol/

Sicario – https:/cinedork.com/2015/10/02/review-sicario/

Ex-Machina – https://cinedork.com/2015/05/01/review-ex-machina/

Clouds of Sils Maria – https://cinedork.com /2015/04/17/review-clouds-of-sils-maria/

About Elly – https://cinedork.com/2015/05/11/review-about-elly/

Wild Tales – https://cinedork.com/2015/03/13/review-wild-tales/

Youth

Tangerine

The Hateful Eight – https://cinedork.com/2016/01/09/review-the- hateful-eight/

Phoenix – http://cinedork.com/2015/08/24/review-phoenix/

The Assassin – https//cinedork.com/2015/11/16/review-the-assassin/

Dope

Honorable Mention:

Timbuktu – https://cinedork.com/2015/02/23/review-timbuktu/

James White – https://cinedork.com/2016/12/04/review-james- white

Mommy – http://cinedork.com/2015/01/30/review-mommy/

Heaven Knows What

Love & Mercy – https://cinedork.com/2015/06/05/review-love-and-mercy/

The End of The Tour – https://cinedork.com/2015/08/17/review-the-end-of-tour/

Steve Jobs – http://cinedork.com/2015/10/16/review-steve-jobs

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Victoria

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl – https://cinedork.com/2015/06/19/review-me-and-earl-and-the-dying-girl

White God

45 Years

Favorite Actor Performances Snubbed:
Steve Carrell, The Big Short; Christopher Abbott, James White; Tom Hanks, Bridge of Spies; Michael Caine, Youth; Samuel L. Jackson, The Hateful Eight

Favorite Actress Performances Snubbed :
Juliette Binoche, Clouds of Sils Maria; Nina Hoss, Phoenix; Mya Taylor, Tangerine; Teyonah Parris, Chi-Raq; Emily Blunt, Sicario

Favorite Supporting Actor Performances Snubbed:
Michael Keaton, Spotlight; Michael Shannon, 99 Homes; Oscar Isaac, Ex-Machina; Paul Dano, Love & Mercy, Benicio Del Toro, Sicario

Favorite Supporting Actress Performances Snubbed:
Kristen Stewart, Clouds of Sils Maria; Cynthia Nixon, James White; Kitana Kiki Rodriguez, Tangerine; Alicia Vikander, Ex-Machina (although she was nominated for The Danish Girl); Jane Fonda, Youth

Most Underrated Films:
The Gift, Stations of the Cross, What We Do In The Shadows, Unfriended, Truth, Joy, Gabriel, 99 Homes, Human Capital; 10,000KM

Most Overrated Films:
The Martian, Experimenter, Duke of Burgundy, While We’re Young, Girlhood, Queen of Earth, The Mend

Best Documentaries:
Amy; Steve Jobs: Man in The Machine; Going Clear: Scientology and The Prison of Belief; Where To Invade Next; Best of Enemies; The Look of Silence; The Wolfpack

Best of 2016 Seen So Far:
Dheepan, Ixcanul Volcano, The Club, My Golden Days, Viaje

OK, you want something really different, here you go. You don’t need to know this to enjoy it, but Anomalisa, one of the year’s most creative efforts, throws around Fregoli syndrome like water. Main character Michael Stone (David Thewlis), who’s some kind of retail business guru/writer (“May I Help You Help Them?”) checks into a Cincinnati hotel where he’s apparently the star of the convention about to take place.

Stone seems miserable, a quality co-director Charlie Kaufman (director of the lackluster Synecdoche, New York, itself fixated on Capgras syndrome) is quite adept at conveying. Kaufman’s weapon? Stop-motion or rotoscope animation–the kind from Richard Linklater’s Waking Life (2001). Seems it’s a phenomenal medium when paired up with a vision this exaltingly fresh. Kaufman, veteran screenwriter of such gems as Eternal Sunshine of The Spotkess Mind, Being John Malkovich, and Adaptation, hits a home run here.

But back to Fregoli Syndrome. Everyone Stone will encounter on his movie looks the exactly the same–except a certain gal to whom he’s strangely attracted, Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a somewhat frumpy, unlikely heroine. It takes some getting used to, alright. Yet Anomalisa is hardly a gimmick or one-note movie. Co-directed with Duke Johnson of StarBurns Industries, Anomalisa does for sculpted clay maquettes with face-replacement animation what Ralph Bakshi did for X-rated cartoons (incidentally, there’s a great sex scene in Anomalisa–though it’s the harrowing flip side of any prurient interest factor in case you’re wondering).

Adapted from a Kaufman play performed (only twice!) at UCLA in 2005, Anomalisa uses the same three actors the play did: Thewlis (if you haven’t seen him in Mike Leigh’s 2005 Naked, get on it!), Leigh (as excellent here as in The Hateful Eight; her version of “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” is priceless) and actor/director Tom Noonan , who voices all of the “Fregoli people.”

By the way, this film captures the small moments of our existence with an uncanny brilliance and, in its conclusion, skillfully strives for an existential theme. Or, to be more exact, themes–since its “message” is hardly clear and unanimous. Kaufman’s ambiguity is far more refreshing than halting; it asks the viewer to lend a hand.

Suffice it to say that there are moments in Anomalisa when things happening on the screen get under the viewer’s skin in a manner that may be totally new to cinema. And these moments smack dab reach a primal level of our consciousness.

And you were thinking of skipping this film?

An Animated Film Like No Other….4.5 stars (out of 5)

Sadly, we cannot undo the unconscionable acts propelled by racism and sexism throughout our history. A large part of fixing these problems is coming to grips with what actually occurred. Viscerally experiencing the shameful humiliations is a good start. In The Hateful Eight, Quentin Tarantino, never one to shy away from harsh realities, holds a mirror to some of the crassest and most unmerciful forms of denial of human dignity.

Draping his hate-filled, postbellum tale around a classic Western genre, Tarantino intensifies the proceedings with glorious Super Panavision 70mm cinematography and a score from spaghetti western veteran Enrico Morricone. The Hateful Eight is meant to be seen on the widest screen possible. Ironically, much of the film takes place in one room, Minnie’s Haberdashery, a roadside rest stop set amidst a Wyoming blizzard.

Samuel L Jackson, in his strongest role in many years, stars as Major Marquis Warren, a former Union soldier and now bounty hunter. Kurt Russell also portrays a bounty hunter, John Ruth, who, at the film’s outset, is taking prisoner Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to Red Rock to be hanged. A stranded Warren wants a ride on Ruth’s stagecoach. Pretty soon Chris Mannix (an excellent Walter Goggins), who claims to be the incoming sheriff of Red Rock, also wants to hitch a lift.

Once inside Minnie’s they are joined by a grumpy Confederate general (an intense Bruce Dern), a prideful Mexican named Bob (Demian Bichir), a slick hangman named Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth), and a quiet cowpoke (Michael Madsden). Leigh, who is riveting, does more with a wince than other actors do with pages of dialogue. A woman of few words, she cackles and taunts with as much menace as the gun-toting alpha men who surround her.

While film portrayals often detoxify racism, wrapping it in cliches and rendering it sanitized and meaningless, Tarantino tells it like it is. The rampant racism (and sexism) of The Hateful Eight is so startling and immediate that it retains its potency. Naysayers make the claim Tarantino is actually glorifying treachery. My thinking is that such an important subject begs the viewer to get down and dirty with it in order to come out of the other side of the film with an understanding of the depth of the problem.

Tarantino’s Eighth Film Is His Most Severe….4.5 (out of 5) stars