Category Archives: 2018

2019 Oscar Nominated Animated Short Films

2019 Oscar Nominated Animated Short Films

The animated shorts showed a wide variety of styles and dealt with some serious matters, but included some healthy comedy as well.  The subjects included separation of parents and children, issues of aging, the challenges of divorced parents and connections of parents to children even after the parent’s passing.  My own favorite was the pure comedy in the bunch.  This was called Animal Behavior.  The premise involved a therapy session for a variety of animals all with personal problems being led by a pit bull therapist.  The cast includes a leach with needy tendencies, a bird who ate his own brother out of selfishness, a praying mantis who can’t get dates because she has a thousand offspring, a pig who can’t stop eating and an ape with anger management problems.  There is also a cat who is obsessed with keeping clean and constantly licks herself.  This was easily the funniest of the bunch.  Another very notable film was One Small Step about a young girl who dreams of being an astronaut and is encouraged to follow her dream by her father even after he has passed away.  I am hoping that Animal Behavior ends up as the winner.

2019 Oscar Nominated Live Action Short Films

2019 Oscar Nominated Live Action Short Films

There was a wide variety of subjects addressed in this year’s short films, but all were very serious.  Not one of the shorts could be called a comedy which is unusual.  Perhaps that is a sign of the times we live in.  Four out of the five actually involved children being placed in danger strangely enough so several of them should be considered disturbing.  The one I liked the best was called Mother is from Spain.  The short largely consists of one single continuous scene where the only people on screen are a young woman who is a mother and her mother.  The two go about their business in the apartment as normal until the mother receives a phone call from her six year old son who is calling from an unknown beach.  It seems he was with his father, but now the father is missing and the boy is left all alone on a barren beach with no one in sight.  The mother is forced to deal with this terrifying situation, trying to figure out where he is and notifying the police of the terrible predicament.  It is a harrowing, well-acted scene.  My guess is that the eventual winner will be Skin which deals with the matter of hate and violence between the white and black characters.

Blindspotting

Blindspotting                     4 ½ stars

Blindspotting deals with some very familiar issues to the movies but does things differently from what we are used to.  Two friends, Collin and Miles are childhood friends, one white and one black.  They work together at a moving company and Collin has three days left on probation stemming from an assault charge because of a bar fight.  Then he witnesses a police shooting of an unarmed black man which has a profound effect on his life.  Both characters go through some challenging situations where they realize that all individuals have many aspects to their lives, but others tend to limit their view of them, thus creating the term Blindspotting, invented by the filmmakers.  The film was co-written by the two main actors (Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal) who have been friends for many years.  The film is set against the backdrop of Oakland, California as it undergoes a transformation brought about by rapid gentrification.  Also, many scenes in the movie are done in spoken verse, also known as hip-hop.  The movie was one of the main features at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival and received some rave reviews.  There are some very violent scenes to be aware of as expected for this kind of movie.

Roma

Roma                    5 stars

Last year’s Roma, by master filmmaker, Alfonso Cuaron brings us an expertly told story of a house maid in 1970’s Mexico City working for a well off middle class family.  Filmed in black and white and spoken in Spanish and an indigenous language with subtitles, seems simple in outlook, but looks at many broad issues with its choice of scenes and character interactions.  The whole movie is told from the point of view of young Cleo (Yalitza Apaticio) the dark skinned poor maid and nanny of the white family consisting of a father, mother, four children and a grandma and dog.  She is not closely involved with the family but is just close enough for us to get the sense that something is wrong in their world.  The movie takes place in the early seventies and has sets that look exactly like you would think they would.  The turbulent times are reflected in scenes of civil unrest and there are even references to the pop culture of the times like a recording of Jesus Christ Superstar.  The most obvious theme of the movie is the disparity between the wealthy employers and the poverty of the world around them characterized by Cleo’s situation.  Another theme relevant for our times is the role of the women in maintaining order while the men are the one’s responsible for most of the suffering going on.  Alfonso Cuaron previously gave us Gravity, Children of Men and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.  Roma is possibly his best work so far and may be the best film of the year in spite of the choice made this week by the Academy of Motion Pictures.  However, Cuaron was appropriately rewarded with three Oscars including Best Director.  A special warning should be made that there are a couple of scenes in the movie that may be hard to watch.

Greta

Greta                                    2 ½ stars

Greta by writer/director Neil Jordan brings a different twist to the stalker movie genre.  It stars Chloe Grace Moretz as young naïve Frances who having recently moved to New York City finds herself making friends with a French widow named Greta (Isabelle Hubbert) whom she has recently met.  The two met after Frances returned a lost handbag to the woman after finding it left on the subway.  The two seem like a good match since Frances has recently lost her mother.  Of course this is all too good to be true as we find out that Greta has some rather sinister motives that put poor Frances in peril.  Fortunately for her (and the movie) she has a very concerned roommate with good advice and a beautiful apartment in Manhattan who is played by Maika Monroe (from that great horror film It Follows).  The film follows much of the formula that goes along with your standard stalker movies including misfortunes befalling a pet (a dog in this case).  There was nothing especially noteworthy about this film other than the performance by Hubbert who is especially well-suited to the role of Greta.  Also present in the film is Zawe Ashton of Velvet Buzzsaw fame.

First Man

First Man                             4 stars

First Man from director Damien Chazelle gives us a spectacular look of what it must be like to be on board those early space missions of the sixties.  It follows the career of astronaut Neil Armstrong from 1961 until the Apollo 11 moon mission with all the perils involved in space travel.  I found the moments about the time during the missions to be mesmerizing, but the parts of his personal life to be less so.  Maybe Ryan Gosling was not best suited for the role.  That cannot be said about Claire Foy who played his wife who brought some very painful emotion to her role.  Chazelle is best known for previous works La La Land and Whiplash both of which I found to be superior films.  First Man comes close but just misses that level.  The visual effects were first rate and the movie received a well-deserved Oscar in that category.

BlackkKlansman

BlackkKlansman                 5 stars

I finally watched the Spike Lee movie BlackkKlansman from last year and have to say the wait was worth it.  This film about a black cop in Colorado Springs in the seventies who infiltrates the local Ku Klux Klan chapter in every bit as relevant today as it is for the times that it portrays.  The movie is quite graphic with the colorful language that the white racists to describe the blacks that live in their city.  There is little left to the imagination here.  And the cops who are working undercover to infiltrate “The Organization” have to appear to be every bit as racist as those they are investigating.  I understand that when Lee was introduced to the book it is based on, he took an immediate interest in it and wanted to include some comedic elements that he is known for and he wanted to relate it to events today.  To that end he shows us the confrontation that happened in Charlottesville in 2017 so that we are reminded that this hateful element of American society is still here and shows no signs of lightening.  Both John David Washington and Adam Driver were excellent in their roles.  And Topher Grace does a creditable job of portraying David Duke, the leader of the Klan.  The film well deserved its Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay and will provide plenty of opportunity for discussion and analysis.

Gloria Bell

Gloria Bell            4 stars

Gloria Bell, starring Julianne Moore as Gloria, a middle aged divorced woman who loves to go to clubs and dance to seventies music is one of the most fun movies I have seen so far this year.  It is directed by Sebastian Lelio, who also directed the previous version, Gloria made in Chile, a few years earlier.  In the movie, Gloria seems happy, but she is dealing with her two adult children, who don’t seem to have time for her and have their own problems.  She also is trying to start a relationship with a newly divorced man, who she likes, but soon finds out that he is certainly not right for her.  Through it all, Moore puts on a convincing performance as a woman who is resilient and won’t allow others in her life stand in the way of her own happiness.  I encourage everyone to see this one while it is still in theaters.

Hotel Mumbai

Hotel Mumbai   4 stars

Hotel Mumbai tells the true story of the Islamic terrorist attack on the Taj Hotel in Mumbai, India in 2008.  It’s a well done presentation of the absolute terror that the victims of the attack went through facing young men with automatic weapons and hand grenades while having no defense other than running and hiding.  It also depicts the acts of heroism that the staff of the hotel displayed in protecting the guests of the hotel, many of whom are quite wealthy.  The movie doesn’t hold anything back as it shows just how horrifying it must be to be to be experiencing such a terrible event.  I remember well the news of the attack back around Thanksgiving in 2008.  The attack seemed to go on forever before the Indian Special Forces finally killed all the terrorists involved.  At the end of the movie we are shown much about the outcome of the story.  In all well over 100 people were killed across the city.  Of the victims in the hotel, half were the hotel staff.  Also, it took 21 months to restore the damage left behind and reopen the hotel.  If you see Hotel Mumbai be ready to feel more tension and dread than you do from any horror movie.

Shoplifters

Shoplifters          5 stars

I had not heard much about Shoplifters before, last year’s Best Foreign Language film from Japan.  It’s about a very poor family living in a shack in Japan and what they have to do to survive including shoplifting from local stores.  It appears that there is a father, Osamu, a mother, Nobuyo, a grandmother and a teenage daughter and young son.  The couple find a little girl of about five freezing in the cold one night and take her in.  Rather than take her to the police they keep her and care for her as they surmise she was not treated well by her own family.  This movie develops very slowly and I thought that it was a movie mainly about the characters and how they relate to each other without much of a plot, something that shows how the less fortunate live.  However, there are signs along the way that suggest there is more going on here at first glance, so later in the film we learn that there are some hidden secrets that when revealed will test the strength of the ties holding this group together.  I was very presently surprised and impressed with how the film ended.  Rotten Tomatoes rated Shoplifters the second best foreign film of the year after Roma.