Movie Nation

I had to return to Daniel Day Lewis‘ Oscar acceptance speech from the spring of 1990 — God Bless Youtube — to make sure I was remembering it right, that he saluted the Academy for “providing me with the makings of one helluva weekend in Dublin” followed by a tribute to the young actor who played the even-younger Christy Brown in the early scenes of “My Left Foot.”

That Day Lewis, the oft-nominated, three-time Oscar winner who is basically the Brando, DeNiro and Streep of his generation of actors, could transform himself into the memoirist, poet, painter and novelist Christy Brown — born with cerebral palsy — seems like a given today. He’s simply the very best at what he did before he retired and gave the rest of the Screen Actor’s Guild a chance.

But watching the film anew, I was stunned at how good young Hugh O’Conor, a mere boy of 13 charged with managing the same transformation as Day Lewis, was and is in the film. He’d played a troubled epileptic child whom a young priest (Liam Neeson) takes an encouraging interest in for 1985’s “Lamb.” So he had to be the most qualified actor in Dublin for those early scenes. Still, he’s astonishing in a physically demanding role, managing the spasms, the “I have no mouth and I must scream” despair of an unspeaking, unable-to-write child whom everybody in 1930s and early ’40s Dublin assumed was “an idiot,” thanks to his birth defect.

Day Lewis is amazing in the film. Hugh O’Conor breaks your heart.

What drew me back to this Oscar-winner was this awards’ season, and the presence of yet another performance that might get dismissed, as some wags are wont to do, as a “stunt.”

Think of Ray Milland’s convincing drunk in “The Lost Weekend,” Joanne Woodward’s multiple personality disorder turn in “The Three Faces of Eve,” Jon Voight’s paraplegic performance in “Coming Home” or Dustin Hoffman’s autistic savant “Rain Man” and you see evidence of actors in the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences recognizing excellence, degree of difficulty and showmanship in a performance.

Day Lewis edged out fellow nominee Tom Cruise’s best shot at an Oscar for his paralyzed Vietnam vet turned anti-war protester in “Born on the Fourth of July” back in 1990.

So Brendan Fraser, putting on pounds, donning a fat suit and and assuming the role of “The Whale” is part of a long Hollywood tradition, with an Oscar nomination instantly part of the conversation.

But what Day Lewis and the other examples cited above managed to do, something Fraser pulled off as well, I think, is transcending the “disabled struggle” story trope to create a fully-formed, emotionally-flawed and complicated character.

With Christy Brown having passed just a few years before this film, based on his memoir, and some of the people involved in his life still around, “My Left Foot” still paints a complex and sometimes unflattering portrait of a man whose every day was an epic struggle, and who did not suffer this misery in silence.

We see a Brown who self-medicates and is an abusive drunk, a needy and demanding man who did not suffer anyone — fools, the well-to-do, fellow artists or the women who came into his life — easily or gladly.

Whatever “weekend” Day Lewis experienced in the pubs of Dublin, it’s hard to imagine having much fun with a brilliant, cutting and never-quite-self-pitying Brown, should you find him your drinking mate for the evening.

The movie tracks Brown from childhood, recreating that “Eureka” moment when his large, distracted and working poor family realized that his one controllable foot and its dexterous toes could write (seen above), and into adolescence and his celebrated adulthood as a man or art and letters.

Brenda Fricker collected an Oscar playing Brown’s sainted mother. Ray McAnally is his loving but dismissive-at-first hard-drinking Da’ and Fiona Shaw deftly plays a composite character, a doctor who recognizes Christy’s “poet’s soul” and the artist trapped in that barely-functioning body, and becomes Brown’s first serious romantic interest.

If anything, “My Left Foot” went a little light on the miseries of Brown’s 49 years on Earth, which is to be expected.

But Daniel Day Lewis, Hugh O’Conor and director Jim Sheridan made damned sure that whatever Hollywood thought, whatever “rewarding a stunt performance ” rationale might enter in filmdom’s collective mind about this bit of work, their combined efforts would be never less than a wholly realized human being.

This Christy would have good days and bad days, show off his love, devotion and charm, and his prickly side when he was in his cups.

It’s a performance and a film that I have to say still holds up. That makes “My Left Foot” well worth tracking down this Oscar season, and any Oscar season where you hear a whiff of “stunt” blowback against a demanding, wholly-committed performance like this one and every single other one I’ve mentioned in this appreciation, including Brendan Fraser’s.

Rating: R, violence, nudity, alcohol abuse, profanity

Cast: Daniel Day Lewis, Brenda Fricker, Ray McAnally, Fiona Shaw, Adrian Dunbar, Cyril Cusack and Hugh O’Conor.

Credits: Directed by Jim Sheridan, scripted by Shane Connaughton and Jim Sheridan, based on the memoir by Christy Brown. A Miramax release on Amazon, Tubi, PosiTV, etc.

Running time: 1:43

The grey-haired woman whose daughter disappeared is as startled to run into the third prosecutor/investigator assigned to her daughter’s case while out hunting for her child herself.

What’s he doing here?

“Fixing other people’s mistakes,” he buck-passes. And her?

“Doing other peoples JOBS.”

The best Netflix movie with “Noise” in the title is Natalia Beristáin’s film about Mexico’s “desaparecida,” another Latin American country — like Argentina and Chile under military junta rule — that is seeing tens of thousands of its young people disappear.

Beristáin, a feminist filmmaker known for “The Eternal Feminine” and directing several episodes of TV’s “Mosquito Coast” adaptation, takes us inside the end game cost of a country not just losing its drug war, but one that has all but capitulated to the cartels on the other side.

A solitary mother (Julieta Egurrola), an artist who works in textiles, begs, rages and hires outside help when the indifferent, corrupt and cowardly police refuse to help her locate her missing 20something daughter.

Her estranged husband (Arturo Beristáin) and agent is just as upset, but putting on a brave face that is little comfort. At least her first visit to a support group gives her some relief, the realization that she is not alone, an outlet to tell her story.

Some 90,000 Mexicans — young people, women mostly, and journalists, perhaps even a cop or two who isn’t on the take — have vanished in the country’s war on the people who feed America’s appetite for illegal drugs.

“Noise,” like the Argentine classics “The Official Story” and “The Disappeared,” will follow Julia as she retains a lawyer/researcher (Teresa Ruiz) to carry out her own search. They visit morgues, wary, lazy and cover-up prone local police. And they join scores of other mothers who have learned to carry out their own “killing fields” searches for evidence of mass graves and something that might identify their missing loved ones.

“We had to teach ourselves how to do such missions,” a veteran of this particular hunt confesses.How long has she been searching? “Nine years.”

The “Mexican Femicide” graffiti covers the cities, and Julia even meets the youngest and the angriest, girls and young women taking to the streets in ever-growing, ever-rowdier protests.

None of which matter to the “Men With Guns,” criminals and the uniformed state-payroll goons who are more interested in silencing “trouble-makers” than stopping a nationwide crime wave and giving these families some peace.

As a movie, “Noise” is a slow starter. The picture comes to a complete halt for the necessary but overlong opening act “support group” scene, and has pacing problems into the nerve-wracking, infuriating and disheartening third act.

But it quietly takes hold of the viewer with patience, a gripping story that has plenty to say to audiences all over the world, especially those with under-policed police, accepted corruption at the highest levels, where a “War on Women” is a political policy, even if it’s never been declared.

Rating: TV-MA, violence, smoking, profanity

Cast: Julieta Egurrola, Teresa Ruiz, Adrian Vazquez and Arturo Beristáin

Credits: Directed by Natalia Beristáin,  scripted by Natalia Beristáin and Diego Enrique Osorno. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:45

What the Screen Actors Guild Award nominations are to the Acting Oscars, a good indicator of what the Oscar nomination field will look like, the Producers Guild Awards are to Best Picture, Best Documentary and Best Animated Film.

Looks like “Glass Onion” and other titles ignored by SAG, get added on here.

“She Said” is apparently not Oscar worthy, nor is “Women Talking” or “The Woman King,” or “Till” but the super popular junk “Avatar: The Way of Water,” “Top Gun: Maverick” and “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” are.

Producers are big on movies that draw a crowd. The exceptions, this year, are “Tar” and “The Fabelmans,” which by the way, wouldn’t make any sentient person’s Top Five Steven Spielberg movies.

Mutter.

“Tar” and “Whale” made the cut, and the slightly more popular “Banshees of Inisherin” is included, but several fine films missed that cut.

“Babylon” was depending on an awards season and Oscar bounce it almost certainly will not get.

Happy to see “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” made the Best Animated Feature contenders list, and the box office underwhelmer “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On” crashed that party.

Below the page break, find the full list of feature film, documentary and TV and streaming nominees.

Dave Franco directed, and he and Brie co-wrote this oddball rom-dramedy.

Coming soon, Feb. 10. Looks cute.

Here’s a slice of vampire-vamping Spanish Manchego that may be a little late to the whole “Vampire movies are silly” parade. But give the cast and crew of “Hollyblood” props for taking their best shots, which land almost often enough to make this quick and sometimes funny farce worth recommending.

Javi, played by Óscar Casas, is the prototypical “new kid in school” who crushes on Sara (Isa Montalbán), so much so that he stalks her online where her obsession with vampires finds an outlet. Javi catfishes her as “Lidia,” “just to get to know her.” Sure.

His Dad (Jordi Sánchez) misunderstands his boy’s shyness and online alter ego enough to think “You play for the other team,” in Spanish or dubbed into English. He’s a Eugene Levy in “American Pie” dad — over-sharing, over-compensating but tolerant, if not exactly tactful.

“Next year, we’ll sign on a float for the gay pride parade!”

At school, the possessive bully Manu (Mateo Medina) is determined to scare Javi off “my girl” with threats. Sara’s bestie, wheelchair-bound Carmen (Lara Boedo) is something of a badass, out to “protect” her friend from Manu and any other guy who might “hurt” her.

When Javi stalks Sara to the premiere of the new “Hollyblood” movie, an amusing and over-the-top shirtless “Twilight” knockoff , and then “saves” her from scaffolding about to fall on her, she is convinced HE is a vampire. Perhaps now she’ll remember his name, something she gets wrong every time they strike up a conversation.

As Sara was expecting to meet another online catfisher, the legendary teen vampire Azrael (Piero Mendez), Mr. Chalamet-Cheekbones, you can see how she’d confuse Javi for a real bloodsucker.

There’s nothing for it but for Javi to don contacts and lots of RPatts makeup and make the illusion real for her. Wonder how long it’ll take Carmen or supposedly-smart and hip yet still-gullible-enough-to believe in vampires Sara to find him out?

Meanwhile, oafish Diego (Carlos Suárez), their classmate with a youtube channel where he can pose as an aspiring vampire hunter, one whose mother keeps misplacing his holly stakes sharpener — “Remember, if I’m murdered, it’ll be my MOM’s fault!” — is on the case, looking for the “real” Azrael, willing to test his stakes out on Javi.

It’s all a lark, and large stretches of this goof of a movie play, even if not everything is all that funny. The father-son shtick is cute but dated, the Diego stumbling towards the truth segments are a bit of a laugh.

The script’s set-ups and punchlines and too much of the problem solving — how Javi “sells” this illusion — feels like clumsy afterthoughts.

But several characters harbor “secrets” that are funny revelations. Diego’s way of clearing out the theater at the Madrid premiere of “Hollyblood” is clever. And everybody on board keeps with the spirit of the thing, taking it no more seriously than is absolutely necessary.

Brief, brisk comedies like this are often filmed at a sprint, and if you’re lucky, that shows up on screen. One way that reveals itself here is a hilariously obvious mid-chest crescent moon tattoo our “gullible” but worldly Sara has, and then doesn’t have. It disappears for one scene, and comes back between her cleavage the next, over and over, one of the funniest continuity errors I’ve seen in years.

“Hollyblood” doesn’t hold a lot that’s novel or new for adults, but it’s Netflix edgy enough for the teen audience, a demographic Netflix spends a lot of money on entertaining.

Rating: TV-MA, violence, sex and sexual orientation jokes, mild profanity

Cast: Óscar Casas, Isa Montalbán, Jordi Sánchez, Carlos Suárez, Lara Boedo, Piero Mendez, Mateo Medina and Amparo Fernández.

Credits: Directed by Jesús Font, scripted José Pérez Quintero. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:29

A Feb 10 Netflix Valentine’s Day rom-com about “old friends” swapping coasts and apartments and maybe finding love…with someone. Each other? Taking bets on that.

Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher and a rom-com about finding love in your…40s?

Rhea Seehorn, Tony Shalhoub and Michael Ian Black also star in this odd, dreamy comedy.

Feb. 24 this one comes to theaters.

This paranoid thriller with a supernatural twist has a shot at showing us WWI on a budget.

Feb. 24, we find out if it works. As if there wasn’t enough to be terrified of in the trenches.

“World weariness” is a given in any film noir about a mystery somebody’s trying to solve.

It’s in the sleepy eyes of the mystery-solver, be he or she a gumshoe, a relative or just “a friend” of the missing person. That’s underscored by voice-over narration, the tried-and-true way a detective or whoever lets us know how wearing this all is to him, how jaded this world has made her, how resignation’s the only appropriate response when “No one gets out alive” is the only hard and fast truth in life.

It doesn’t just hang over actor turned actor-writer-director Avan Jogia‘s debut feature, “Door Mouse.” It’s ladled on and laid-on thick. The whole tale doesn’t take place after dark, but it could have, and the smokier and foggier the better. The action is confined to short bursts, and damned few of those.

Nobody speaks in anything but a monotone, as if they’re imitating our heroine and narrator, the spanker/stripper by night– “horror porn” comic author by day nicknamed for her distinct Minnie Mouse hairstyle.

“It was a full packa cigarettes sorta night,” she narrates.

“You’re lookin’ down deep wells, little Door Mouse,” she’s warned.

“You can only crawl on the ground so long before the dirt starts stickin’ to ya.”

Jogia, who’s turned up in supporting roles in lots of film and TV series since graduating from the teen hit “Victorious,” has crafted a consistently-moody noir parked firmly in the underbelly of Toronto, and a film that taps into comic book imagery to create transitions between scenes, illustrate the artist-heroine’s frame of mind and jazz up the action.

Because that’s necessary. Because even the action beats are muted. Nobody raises her or his voice. And that flat, just-above-a-whisper monotone that was star Hayley Law’s choice of “How to Noir” just smothers the movie.

The “Riverdale” star sets the tone and the volume, and “Door Mouse” kind of dozes off because of it.

“Mouse” narrates her life, “Every morning I wake up in the afternoon,” takes a hit of coffee, sucks down a cigarette and draws away at her “bi-monthly horror porn” comic “Whoreific,” which nobody buys.

By night she burlesques at Mama’s, a club where bustiers and paddles for spanking are all part of the show, which “Mouse” and Doe Eyes and Irish “Riv” deliver and regulars like Eddie (Donal Logue) lap up. “There are worse ways to make a living,” Mouse admits. But it keeps the owner, Mama (Famke Janssen, on the money) in fishnets.

One night Doe Eyes doesn’t show up, and Mouse resolves to go figure out what’s happened to her. Her dutiful “silver spoon” lapdog Ugly (Keith Powers) tags along. And that’s the “deep well” our heroine slow-walks into, a sordid world where fetching young women disappear and nobody seems to give a damn.

I like the plot here, a mystery that Mouse doesn’t want help solving, but that forces her to hit up her dealer ex-boyfriend (writer-director Jogia) and figure out ways to infiltrate whatever world made Doe Eyes disappear.

But there’s no urgency to any of this, not the Doe hunt, not the scheming up ways to get into this high-tone hotel which may have some answers, not the mysterious stranger who may or may not know what happened to Doe Eyes, and thus must be chased.

The comic book connecting scenes work, and the violence, when it comes, is a shocking contrast to the low-energy/low-heat movie surrounding those moments.

Whoever advised Law to play the part this quiet and “cool” to the point of chilly should sit down and watch a few Bogart noirs. Characters may narrate or converse in even tones, but every now and then somebody gets worked up — a cornered suspect, a mark, a desperate victim and/or the hero/heroine who has just about had enough.

It’s human nature. And it’s a must in a movie that otherwise is in danger of turning into a nap before we figure out what Door Mouse figures out and decides what needs to be done.

Rating: Unrated, violence, sexual situations, partial nudity

Cast: Hayley Law, Keith Powers, Avan Jogia, Michela Cannon, Nhi Do, Donal Logue and Famke Janssen

Credits: Scripted and directed by Avan Jogia. A Gravitas Ventures release.

Running time: 1:41

Yes, there’s officially now a subgenre of horror tales built on Jewish traditions, religious practices and demonology.

Throw in a little same sex romance, and...”That’s CO-pen-HA-gen!”

This Danish production in (mostly) English comes to Shudder Feb. 9.