Movie Nation

For the 96th time, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences is about to announce the field for their upcoming Academy Awards. We’ll learn about them online, on Youtube, or via the old-fashioned ABC “Good Morning America” way (That’s still on?), and then the hand-wringing will begin.

Who’s in? Who’s out? What is the overall tone and “message” of the 2024 Academy Awards to be, thanks to the sorts of films and performances this elite group honors?

It’s not the old white boy’s club it used to be, and “sentimental favorites” don’t hold the weight that they did for much of the history of this honor.

The favorites have been established by some earlier awards — the Producers, Directors, Screen Writers, Actors and so on down the line Guilds. But the impact of the Golden Globes has been muted and the Critics Choice Awards may not have wholly supplanted that in terms of “predictors.” The real role of all these “earlier” awards handed-out is narrowing the field.

You figure “Oppenheimer” and “Poor Things,” “Maestro” and “Past Lives” and “Barbie” and “The Holdovers” are set up as favorites, with a lot of movies — from “Killers of the Flower Moon” to “American Fiction” and “Rustin” and “May December” and “The Color Purple” and “Anatomy of a Fall” and “Saltburn” (Seriously?) facing the possibility of delivering “snubs.”

We ponder the possible “sleepers” over morning cocoa — “Nyad” and “Origin” and “All of Us Strangers,” “The Book of Clarence,” “The Zone of Interest,” Nicolas Cage in “Dream Scenario,” Annette Bening in “Nyad,” Greta Lee in “Past Lives.”

Movies like “Anatomy of a Fall,” which wasn’t even France’s pick as Best International Feature” nominee, are harder to handicap because the cast is mostly unfamiliar to North Americans audiences.

Speaking of “Best International Feature,” I’d love to see Egypt FINALLY get a nomination (“Voy! Voy! Voy!”), but Germany’s “The Teachers Lounge” shouldn’t be left out, nor should Hungary’s “Four Souls of the Coyote.” Ukraine’s “Photophobia” and Greece’s “Behind the Haystacks” send Hollywood-endorsed messages. Denmark’s “The Promised Land” is more old-fashioned, but quite worthy, too.

That may be the one Oscar category that I pay the most attention to, because a lot of these worthies won’t even merit a North American release if they don’t score a nomination. Mads Mikkelen’s presence in “Promised Land” ensures that one will come out in February, regardless. But the rest?

Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Paul Giamatti (“The Holdovers”) and Robert Downey Jr. (“Oppenheimer”) and Emma Stone (“Poor Things”) appear to be locks for nominations. Was Emily Blunt’s part in “Oppenheimer” big enough?

Somebody in a list that includes Blunt, Sterling K. Brown (“American Fiction”), Claire Foy and Andrew Scott (“All of Us Strangers”), Willem Dafoe (“Poor Things”), Taraji P. Henson (“The Color Purple”), Margot Robbie (“Barbie”), Danielle Brooks (“The Color Purple”), Ryan Gosling (“Barbie”) or Colman Domingo (“The Color Purple,” “Rustin”) and Mark Ruffalo (“Poor Things” is going to be on the outside looking in.

Has Bradley Cooper talked or been elbowed out of one of his potential nominations for “Maestro?” A lot of the coverage of him has been pushback — starting with the controversy over him donning a fake nose to play Leonard Bernstein. Will that hurt Carey Mulligan’s chances?

Everybody has somebody they’ve “talked up” in an effort to will a personal favorite into the mix. I’d love to see Dafoe get recognized. Not nominating Domingo for his two dazzling end-of-years turns would be almost unforgivable. David Oyelowo has zero buzz for playing St. John the Baptist in “Book of Clarence,” even though he hilariously steals that movie, which has zero buzz in ANY category.

I love Martin Scorsese, but I don’t think “Killers of the Flower Moon” is one of his best. It’s high minded, but so are “Origin” and “The Book of Clarence” and “American Fiction.” Nominations for the venerated Scorsese, the much-honored DeNiro in his best role in years, and especially Oscar winner DiCaprio in a broad, antiheroic turn seem “wasted” and should go to somebody less famous but better in a better picture, and perhaps somebody who’s just “due.”

“Best directors direct best pictures,” the old adage goes. And a lot of directors will be left standing in the cold, their “best picture” contenders nominated as they are not. It won’t be Christopher Nolan or Greta Gerwig or probably Alexander Payne. Is anybody else that much of a sure thing? I found
Blitz Bazawule’s direction of “The Color Purple” musical dazzling.

Of course, one of the things online readers flock to by 9am today is a list of “Who got snubbed?” So that’s the purpose of laundry-listing everyone most everybody figures has at least a shot. Those who miss out at least have the consolation that “snubs” for nominations won’t be remembered forever, any more that Oscar “losers” will be so-labeled for more than a few days after the Jimmy Kimmel (ugh) hosted ceremony on the evening of March 10.

One of the most versatile filmmakers who ever lived, a director at home with hot-button subjects (“In the Heat of the Night,” “A Soldier’s Story”), musicals (“Fiddler on the Roof,” “Jesus Christ Superstar”), intimate dramas (“The Cincinnati Kid,” “Agnes of God”) and comedies big (“The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming”) and small (“Moonstruck,” “Send Me No Flowers”) has died.

Norman Jewison also made the cool Steven McQueen caper romance “The Thomas Crown Affair,” the scandalous “And Justice for All…” and the silly but biting “Other People’s Money.”

A Hollywood icon and “actor’s director” who brought Canadian wit, warmth and tolerance to many a movie, Jewison was 97.

Jewison’s film were famous for showcasing characters’ humanity — a Black Philly police detective stuck on a case in the segregated Deep South, Cold War Russian submariners accidentally aground off Massachusetts, a boxer framed by the cops for murder (“The Hurricane”), or a bunch of Italian Americans trying to make a love match marriage (“Moonstruck”) but running up against their fears and their families.

He turned many a hit play into a hit movie – “Agnes of God,” “Fiddler,” “Jesus Christ Superstar,” “A Soldier’s Story.” And he earned seven Oscar nominations — no wins — to show for it. But actors got nominations and Oscar wins acting for Jewison — Cher and Steiger and Dukakis.

This year’s Oscar telecast owes him a lot more than a mere “In Memorium” mention. He was honored with the Irving Thalberg Humanitarian Award by the Acat in 1998.

I remember chuckling when Spike Lee threw a fit that Jewison, one of the cinema’s great humanists, was prepping a Malcolm X screen biography. Lee nagged and shamed Jewison off the film that Lee eventually made, a near masterpiece. Judging from his stellar track record in films about race in America, Jewison wouldn’t have embarassed himself, either.

I think Jewison would appreciate the fact that his Associated press obit, linked above, was mostly written by the long gone entertainment reporter Bob Thomas. News organizations archive obituaries of the famous and infamous, and Jewison outlived pretty much anybody that wrote one, in advance, for him. That’s the best revenge. That, and his long, decorated resume.

Back when I collected film posters, a couple of Jewison ones were the first I got my hands on. The man made TV before he transitioned to movies and TV movies, and he only garnered 30 credits, coming along as he did after the studio “system” passed from the screen. But that resume stands up with anybody’s.

RIP, and well done.

Brazilian critic turned filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho made a smart, thoughtful documentary about films and criticism (“Critico”) some years back, and made a film festival darling that was Brazil’s submission as Best International Feature in 2014, “Neighboring Sounds,” a drama shot mostly in and around the apartment he grew up in and lived-in for some forty years.

His latest is a return to documentaries, a rambling dream of his youth, the life of his city — Recife, Brazil — and the great cinema palaces there that he worked for, filmed and saw close as downtown Recife went into a steep decline that many cities have seen and not all have recovered from.

Recife, he notes in his arid, somewhat monotonous narration, smells of “the tide, fruit (from fruitstands) and piss.”

“Pictures of Ghosts” is built on archival footage of Recife — from grainy silent street scenes and early motorsport race footage to a visit in the late ’50s by film stars Janet Leigh and Tony Curtis, with their two daughters (not indentified by the critic) Kelly Curtis and Jamie Lee Curtis.

There are clips from and return visits to Filho’s childhood flat as it was then and is now, allowing him to note how the neighborhood changed. And eventually he starts showing us clips of downtown life as it was, with several grand old movie palaces — mostly remembered by still shots and archival footage as many of the structures have gone.

Filho re-uses footage he shot of an old projectionist he worked with, Mister Alexendre (Moura) for a short film in 1992, “Homem De Projeção” to show nostalgic viewers and youngsters who never knew what a carbon arc celluloid film projector looked like, and the nature of the projectionist’s job — physically editing films, which might break, lining up the pencil sticks of carbon that lit up and burned to make a light intense enough to project an image on a far-off screen.

Mister Alexandre is the film’s most interesting subject and he points Filho towards other threads of narrative, the history of Brazil — “the dictatorship” — and how Mister Alexandre handled their police-enforced censorship. And the old man told Filho the story of how the city’s biggest and splashiest art deco film palaces was designed by a Jew and built for the German UFA film studio/distributor for use as a Nazi propaganda cinema in fascist-ruled Brazil just as World War II was about to begin.

But “Ghosts” is more of a musing, reflective movie, a bit self-absorbed in a personal essay (think “Roger & Me” with only a couple of “interviews”) way and very slow to get around to its real subject — old, lost cinemas and what was lost with them. And it’s tad hazy in its philosophical point, which it never quite gets around to.

As a college projectionist and longtime critic and film journalist, I found it fascinating, here and there, but something of a slog as Filho and the viewer struggle to find a focus other than “This is what I’ve done and this is where I was shaped as a movie lover and filmmaker.”

Rating: unrated

Credits: Scripted and directed by
Kleber Mendonça Filho. A Grasshopper Films release.

Running time: 1:33

Well, this looks to send up Britain’s mania for its pre Arthurian past, does it not?

Lots of lesser known outside the UK funny folk also in the cast, but that’s a good thing.

April 5 in Python Land.

This has “festival darling” written all over it. Little-known (nepo baby included) cast headed by Zosia Mamet and Aristotle Athari, celebrated for being candy-colored, cute sci-fi on a budget.

And chatty — “When Harry Met Sally” chatty. That’s the comparison they’re going for with this Feb. 9 (streaming in March) release.

Watching any mainstream Hollywood film of the mid-to-late ’60s is like wading into The Land of the Lost. A half century after the annointing of that corner of the Left Coast as the cinema’s capital and global arbiter of “cool,” and the old men in charge had utterly lost the plot.

Demographics, the “youth culture” that exploded in the ’50s with the rise of rock’n roll finished off the “star system” and broke filmdom’s ability to cater to an audience that expected their leading men and action icons to be in their 40s, their leading ladies to be in their 30s and their stories more adult.

Steve McQueen found TV stardom in his late ’20s, and became an enduring icon of cool in the movies for much of the decade. Sidney Poitier was also a new kind of cool — Black — and achieved the same icon status in his ’30s.

Tall James Garner and lanky James Coburn were only slightly older, but seemed to appeal to a more traditional audience — more Greatest Generation than Baby Boomer, more “square” than hip.

Garner made that pay off, on TV and on the big screen. Coburn? He didn’t take that “your parents’ generation” stuff lying down.

In ensemble films like “The Great Escape” and “The Magnificent Seven,” he couldn’t outshine, out “rebel” McQueen. Even in his own star vehicles, Coburn could seem to be trying too hard, dropping “groovy” and “hip” and “cool” entirely too often in “The President’s Analyst” or the Bond-lite “In Like Flynt” movies. Eastwood and everybody else in Hollywood might have spoken the same way. They just didn’t do it on the screen, where it sounded a tad desperate and instantly-dated the movie you heard it in.

“Duffy” (1968) is a European-shot caper comedy and star vehicle that passes Coburn off as a master criminal sort of “retired” (Coburn had just turned 40) in Tangier, Morocco. Here’s how he’s described by the rich Brit-bro played by James Fox.

“That old tangerine hipster.”

Yeah, Coburn worn brownish-reddish highlights before “highlights” were a thing.

The caper in this film from Oscar-winning editor turned director Robert Parrish is pretty clever, with some solid stunts and decent analog effects. The movie around it? Like Coburn, it tries entirely too hard to be “hip.”

But “Duffy” has JC and Susannah York and Fox and James Mason, lots of Technicolor footage of 1960s coastal Almeria, Spain, substituting for Tangier and coastal Morocco, a swinging jazz score (Lou Rawls sings the theme song, “I’m Satisfied”) and lots of baggy bikinis for the tourists and York’s character and billowing kaftans for the men, for when they “go native.” It’s light enough to get by up to the moment the caper is cued up and things don’t go exactly as planned.

Fox, who really found himself after coming back from a years-long sabbatical to star in “A Passage to India” over a decade later, and John Alderton (later of “Calendar Girls” and TV’s “Little Dorrit”) are Stefane and Antony, disaffected sons of a sketchy British millionaire (Mason) who holds both of his sons by different mothers in contempt.

Stefane is wily and cunning, but a slacker in a Mick Jagger mop of hair and all the latest Mod London fashions. Antony?

“You’re a moron, aren’t you?”

They get wind of a shady money-moving transaction from Tangier to Geneva via Marseilles, a debt the hated old (not that old) man isn’t in a hurry to pay, so he’s sending it via a small passenger vessel his shipping company owns.

A little “piracy” is in order. But it’s Stefane’s free-love “bird” Segolene (York) who suggests this character “Duffy” they once crossed paths with. There’s nothing for it but to fly to Tangier, lounge on the beach and let Segolene bait the “wilder, cooler, more mentholated” retiree with the big toothy grin into joining their scheme.

“Gonna be a groovy little happening, man,” Stefane promises.

Duffy warns them they “might have to shoot people,” but he’ll be the only one with a Luger. The ploy Stefane cooks up will entail a purpose-built Moroccan getaway boat, scouting trips, lots of disguises and a whole lot of Segolene bouncing from Stefane to Duffy and back again.

The older man doesn’t take this well, calling her every sex worker name in the book.

“I may be a hooker; I am absolutely not a slut.”

Coburn’s “trying too hard to be hip” runs through his ’60s action comedies, and this film has him in a khaftan, reflecting on the Muslim call to prayer, disguised as an Arab shiek, taking hits off a joint and saying “groovy” about seven times too many.

Parrish wrote a wonderful memoir about growing up in Hollywood, and got his start as a child actor in the ’30s, moved into editing and won the Oscar for the boxing classic “Body and Soul.” But he was never any great shakes as a director. He did a lesser Peter Sellers comedy, the bullfighter/lover farce “The Bobo,” and he a hand in the magnificent debacle “Casino Royale” (1967), sort of the ultimate “Hollywood trying too hard to be hip” comedy of the age.

Under Parrish, “Duffy” doesn’t really find its groove until we swing into the caper, which the under-whelming screenwriters deliver without a lot of detail in the “case the joint/plan-the-heist” scenes. That works to the film’s advantage, as that act of piracy has some amusing surprises.

Whatever their excesses and failings, the cinema of the ’60s produced lots of caper films — from “Ocean’s Eleven” to “Gambit” to “The Italian Job.” And while “Duffy” isn’t “Topkapi” or “How to Steal a Million,” it’s close enough to the latter to almost get by, held in higher regard than Coburn’s “Dead Heat on a Merry Go Round”

And Coburn? For all his character’s try-to-sound-young banter, he gets into a fine, toothy dudgeon over these rich dilettantes, sending coffin builders and “caucasian” corpses to his Tangier address, taking risks in their carefree way, grooving to whatever it is they’re grooving to as they use Duffy’s expertise to pull off a £million job on the Mediterranean in that more innocent but about to turn cynical time.

Rating: TV-PG

Cast: James Coburn, Susannah York, James Fox, John Alderton and James Mason.

Credits: Directed by Robert Parrish, scripted by Donald Cammell and Harry Joe Brown. A Columbia release on Tubi.

Running time: 1:40

The new German thriller “Sixty Minutes” lives or dies on the back of its brutal, sometimes bloody brawls, which push mixed martial arts mayhem in the movies to a new level.

The beatdowns, punchups and kickdowns are savagely-staged and breathlessly-photographed and edited. And while we’re allowed to weigh if any human being could survive this pummeling, much less get back up and run until he has to fight again, it isn’t realism that director and co-writer Oliver Kienle was going for.

The melodramatic set-up is loaded with eye-rollers. And the pace lags as our hero, with “Sixty Minutes” to parkour and punch his way across Berlin, sometimes loses that sense of urgency that’s attached to his mission.

But the fights? They’re something else.

It’s basically a “Run Lola Run” riff with MMA and parkour decor, rarely pulse-pounding but with every fight a visceral immersion in the moment for the viewer.

Actor/martial artist Emilio Sakraya is “Octa,” which could be short for “octagon” as that’s how he makes his living. Octavio is a bleached-blond MMA fighter facing a big test against the hulking Benko (Aristo Luis). He’s antsy, lashing-out during his warmups with his trainer, Cosima (Maire Mouroum), a Greek Fury in fighting tights who’s worried he’s going to punch himself out before the bell.

Benko is making everybody wait. And wait. Considering how much money is riding on the fight, manager Paul (Dennis Mojen) may be the most nervous of all. Everyone in this corner really needs the cash.

But the delays have Octa fuming. It’s his little girl’s birthday, and he’s promised A) that he’ll be there, B) that he’s bringing a cake and C) that he has a “present” which the child doesn’t realize is to be this animal shelter kitten named “Onion” (“Zwiebel” in German, as the film is in German or dubbed into English, etc.).

“I don’t want to take too many shots” in the fight is his big worry. He doesn’t want the seven-year-old to see Daddy all bruised and bloody.

When the fight’s finally on, they hey get to the venue. But nobody’s tough enough to take Octa’s phone from him. His perpetual absence has his little girl in tears. His ex and her lawyer-boyfriend tell him they’re suing for sole custody if he can’t get there by six, “Sixty Minutes” from now.

When Octa bolts, who’s going to stop the brute? It turns out, a whole LOT of people are interested in that bout he’s bailing on, a whole LOT of people with martial arts skills, Lincoln Navigators and Hummers and pistols have a whole LOT of “skin” in this “game.”

Octa must steal taxis from paying customers, hurdle car-hoods and clambor over walls, dash through subway stations and underground clubs, get grabbed by first one group and then another, and remember to…pick up that cake and get to the animal shelter to fetch little Zwiebel der kitten.

“Gott im himmel!”

The story’s a bit much. But what we’re here for are the fights — the choke-out that four guys have to administer to get Octa in that Lincoln, the mayhem that ensues when he wakes up, with throwdown after throwdown with mobster Chino (Paul Wollin), the beefy Winkel (Florian Schmidtke) and their minions keeping Octa from his date with little Leonie (Morik Maya Heydo).

The story keeps adding layers of unnecessary “complications” and motivations for these over-zealous mobsters, money borrowed from more mobsters on up and down the line. Octa isn’t hearing that, but the birthday party stakes seem awfully low to account for all this violence.

And such violence! My favorite bit might be how little zip-tying him to a chair slows Octa down, although that early fight in the Navigator seems hardest to top. The idea that “We don’t want him HURT” because they need this fight to come off is abandoned pretty quickly. But Octa (sort of) takes care not to use his lethal hands and feet in a lethal enough way for the useless cops he approaches for help to have an excuse to lock him up.

He checks his watch and sees the minutes ticking down. Can he catch a break?

At the end of that hour, we’ve seen a bit of Berlin on film, gasped at some of the action beats, tasted a lot of blood and wondered if the Germans call “German chocolate cake” just “cake” (“kuchen”)? Is that enough? To some fans, maybe.

Rating: TV-MA, incredibly violent, some profanity

Cast: Emilio Sakraya, Marie Mouroum, Paul Wollin, Aristo Luis, Florian Schmidtke and Dennis Mojen.

Credits: Directed by Oliver Kienle, scripted by Oliver Kienle and Philip Koch. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:29

A dead weekend for new releases, mostly gassed out existing titles and really cold weather in a lot of the country made this corner of January a non starter at the cinema.

“Mean Girls” is adding another $11 million and change to its running tally, and Deadline.com projects that the musical remake won’t pass the original Tina Fey film’s box office take from 20 years ago and thus will fall well short of $100 million, all in.

Jason Statham’s best-reviewed franchise starter in nearly 20 years and his first decent hit in ages, “The Beekeeper” is pounding away to another $8.4 million.

“Wonka” is a certified holidays-and-beyond blockbuster, rolling up another $6.4.

And the winter’s honest to Pete sleeper has to be the R-Rated. Sydney Sweeney rom-com “Anyone But You,” racking up (ahem) another $5.4 million almost a month into its run.

Bleecker Street had the weekend almost all to itself for its half-decent sci Fi space war parable “I S.S.” Lacking a big name in the cast — Oscar winner Ariana DeBose isn’t yet “box office” — it was never going to blow up. But $3 million and change is a disaster, no matter how “the witness protection program of film distribution” and Deadline.com spin it. Just a tiny bit more effort and this solid and impressive if not terribly surprising thriller could have maxed-out in the $10 million range.

Neon’s “Origins” isn’t an awards contender but in limited release Ava Duvernay’s smart sermon on race and “caste” is making noise on a per screen basis. It’s not entertaining or moving enough to play in the provinces, but those tolerant of her slack, meandering directing style will get what she intended out of it.

@boxofficepro gets the final word.

Ms. Ridley co-stars with Dave Merheje in this Rachel Lambert dramedy (?), whose biggest selling point is that Oscilloscope Labs has it. And we never go far wrong with their releases.

Jan. 26.