Movie Nation

Oscar winner, eight time Emmy queen, oh and Miss Chicago, 1946 — Cloris Leachman has passed from life into legend. She was 94, and worked and worked and worked (she was in “The Croods” cartoons) until the very end.

What a career, a so-so opening act, a stellar middle act career that included the Oscar for a sad, neglected housewife in “The Last Picture Show,” “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and its sequel, “Phyllis,” and then — damn, she kept going, like her MTM co-star Betty White.

I only interviewed her once. She had a picture out and I was scrambling to pull an Oscar story together and thought, “Cloris LEACHMAN has an Oscar story and Oscar advice. You bet she does.” Here she is, the big name in this story, headlined…

“OSCAR NIGHT: Don’t Blow ‘The Big Speech'” — from 2005

It’s a moment you’ve practiced since you were old enough to stand in
front of the bathroom mirror — or “thank the Academy” in the shower.

But as Diane Wiest famously observed, in front of an audience of
zillions, “Gee, this isn’t like I imagined it would be in my bathtub.”

The Oscar acceptance speech is what people dream of, an actor or
filmmaker’s moment in the spotlight, those 45 seconds when you have
the whole world’s attention.

And yet the best-trained, best-paid actors, writers, directors and
producers in history most often get up there, take possession of that
statuette, and blow it.

They choke. They babble. And, heaven help us, they take out index
cards and start thanking their lawyers, their accountants, their
lawyer’s accountant’s pet-sitter.

“The moment one of those index cards comes out, I just die,” says
Oscar-winner Cloris Leachman (The Last Picture Show).

“You can plan for everything under the sun, but at the same time
you’re at the mercy of the guy who is voted best actor, and whether he
pulls out a list and starts reading all these names, or if he’ll let
himself get emotional and give a great speech everybody remembers,”
says Steve Pond, author of The Big Show: High Times & Dirty Dealings
Backstage at the Academy Awards.

“Actors are used to having scripts,” says Oscar-nominated screenwriter
John Logan (The Aviator). “Maybe they just want something they can
read.”

PRACTICE AND IMPERFECTION

Oscar-winner Marcia Gay Harden (Pollock) says she understands the instinct.

“Actors believe in being prepared,” she says. “And to get where you
are, that night, there are people who go all the way back to college
who were encouraging you. There were these waiters I worked with in
New York who would cover my shift for me when I would have to dash out
to an audition. Every single person counts!”

And there’s that nagging feeling that “it’s your one shot up there,
and ‘So-and-so is going to be upset if I don’t mention him,’ ” says
Pond, who covers the Oscars from backstage for Premiere magazine. “But
for every person you mention because you’re afraid they’re going to be
upset that you don’t mention them, there’s five others you’re
forgetting.”

Jennifer Connelly may never get another shot. When she won her best
supporting actress Oscar for A Beautiful Mind, she looked as though
she’d just been dumped (she had). And then she pulled out the laundry
list.

Martin Landau spent the summer and fall of 1994 practicing his speech,
a tribute to Bela Lugosi and the award Bela — his character in Ed
Wood — never won.

It was great. It was poetic. And you didn’t get to hear it Oscar night.

Because Landau used his Oscar, basically a lifetime achievement award,
to thank everybody who ever crossed paths with him.

Pond was sitting behind Oscar producer Gil Cates that night. “You
could feel the tension just growing and growing and growing,” he says.
“You could never sense that this guy was about to get to something
emotional and moving. You just had the feeling that this guy was going
to keep on naming names until he named everyone he knew, or Cates cut
him off.

“So Cates played him off the stage.”

Big moment, blown. There’s no greater indignity than being “played
off,” especially when the orchestra is playing you off to the Mission:
Impossible theme as with Landau.

“It seems that no matter how many times at the nominees lunch you hear
the producer say, ‘Don’t pull out a list,’ people still do,” Pond
says.

BUT WHAT IF?

It is, Logan says, “bad luck” to prepare a speech you might never get
to deliver. But Leachman, a best supporting actress winner for 1971’s
The Last Picture Show, says you should have something in mind to say,
even though she didn’t.

“I worried about finding a dress that ‘walked,’ you know, open in
front and back so I could get up and walk to the podium,” she says.
“But I gave no thought at all to having something to say, because
Ellen Burstyn and Ann-Margret had won the big pre-Oscar awards.

“I turned to my date, who happened to be my estranged husband, and
said, ‘My God! What if I win? Should I thank my teachers?’ And I
mentioned a couple of them to him. He paused for a second and said,
‘Those are funny names.’ “

When “the winner is, Cloris Leachman” rang out, the actress was
flustered “beyond belief.” But she came up with something, a funny
little dig at “all those kids” who made fun of her in elementary
school.

In 2001, Harden was prepared to win, but expected to lose.

“That’s why I was wearing a bright red dress with lots of ‘Notice me!’
cleavage, that night,” she says with a laugh. She had a speech —
actually it sounds a lot like a laundry list — scribbled on a napkin.

“But I picked up the Oscar, and the note was in the same hand. And
they’re right when they say it’s heavy. I was embarrassed to take the
Oscar out of my hand and read something. So I just winged it, and
forgot to thank my teachers.”

Adrien Brody made a heartfelt appeal for peace, after laying an epic
smooch on Halle Berry. Michael Moore made it a political diatribe.
Sally Field went off into “You really like me” land. Randy Newman
joked about how many times he’d been nominated without winning.

“I don’t want your pity.”

But Jonathan Demme rambled incoherently. James Coburn sputtered and blew it.

In the Internet age, there’s no excuse for not having something to
say. There’s even an Oscar-speech generator
(chickenhead.com/stuff/oscar/index.asp) for those who can’t think of
anything themselves.

So don’t prepare if that’s bad luck. But if your moment comes, have
something to say.

“It’s a TV show. You should be willing to entertain,” says Leachman.

Mike Leigh, Oscar nominated for writing and directing Vera Drake, says
that not prepping should be no handicap, considering what everybody in
the Kodak Auditorium does for a living.

“If the time comes, and I don’t expect it will, I’ll get up and, if
necessary, give them a few lines from Macbeth, a joke and something
they’ll remember,” he says. “It’s not all that hard, is it? There’s
only a billion people watching.”

There’s something ever so disconcerting about the sight of Laura Carmichael, prim blonde Lady Edith of “Downton Abbey,” swearing, knocking back a few and having a quick shag in a night club’s restroom in “Burn Burn Burn.”

But, you know, ACTING and all that. You do what the part calls for, and letting her hair down and her near-hysterical freak flag fly is what this quite funny, surprisingly-touching dramedy requires. She’s great fun in the part.

Carmichael and another period piece princess, Chloe Pirrie of the recent Austen adaptation “Emma.” take a rowdy road trip across Britain in this film about two friends fulfilling their late pal Dan’s last wish — that his ashes be scattering in locations of his naming, places he longed to get back to but never did.

Dying at thirty tends to batter a bucket list.

Seph (Carmichael) is in a committed but clingy relationship with James (Joe Dempsie). Alex (Pirrie) has just walked in on her lover Pandora (Eleanor Masuura), who skipped Dan’s wake for her latest infidelity.

Dan (Jack Farthing, terrific) was always the life of the party, as an opening scene notes. He comes off as one of those truth-telling tipplers, and as he got the news that his last months of chemo would be “palliative,” he put some effort into “fixing” his two unhappy friends. He left videos on a flash drive, an offer of an old Volvo, and orders. Spread his ashes, wrestle with some issues, “sort things out” for yourselves and each other.

“Impossible,” they mutter. Dan being Dan and all that. Then Alex discovers Pandora cheating and somehow, advertising copywriting isn’t going to allow her to lose herself in her work to get over these twin blows.

Seph? She hits the wall on “nannying” for her boyfriend’s boss’s upper class twit wife (Sally Phillips) and maybe a little time away from James will clear her head.

“Let’s do it. Let’s scatter Dan!” Better title for the film, BTW. But never mind.

The duo will venture from Yorkshire to Wales, Glastonbury to Scotland, running into hippies, stern “no ashes allowed” tour guides, a confused older hitchhiker (Alison Steadman) and their true selves as Dan — with a different video (and getting progressively sicker) for each locale, forces them to deal with their issues, their secrets and the messy lives he can no longer be a sounding board for fixing.

The scenery’s soggy but grand, the comic bits comic and the touching ones quite affecting. The cast is across-the-board excellent, with the leads wonderfully contrasted — dizzy and lost, bitter and crushed. It’s all just sweet and lovely, not terribly deep, but charming.

I was late getting to Chanya Burton’s tiny jewel of a film. If you’ve missed it, you should too.

MPAA Rating: unrated, with some rowdy sex, drinking, smoking and swearing

Cast: Laura Carmichael, Chloe Pirrie, Jack Farthing, Joe Dempsie, Eleanor Matsuura, Julian Rhind-Tutt, Alison Steadman and Jane Asher

Credits: Directed by Chanya Button, script by Charlie Covell. A Film Movement Plus streaming release.

Running time: 1:46

⚡️ “First look at Kristen Stewart as Princess Diana in ‘Spencer’” by @ETCanada https://twitter.com/i/events/1354449566855286784

Suppose you’re a ghost, happily haunting this house, chasing away every potential tenant with a steadily escalating series of “unexplainable” events — empty rocking chair that starts rocking, a metronome that clicks on by itself, doorbell ringing on its own, doors opening, cabinets shutting.

And then this fellow shows up who gets mildly creeped out, realizes he’s on the clock and just barks “No, NO” at every new supernatural manifestation you summon on?

Do you check back with your “spectral agent” manager? Up the ante? Summon Beetlejuice?

Or maybe you negotiate, bargain and cajole in an effort to get the place all to yourself, return order to the whole ghosts vs. People Afraid of Ghosts universe.

That’s the adorable set-up to “A Ghost Waits,” a rarely spooky, sometimes funny, overreaching romance no-budget indie whose creators almost certainly would take it as a compliment if told “It looks like it was shot on a cell phone.”

It begins as a deadpan monochromatic comedy and grows rather less interesting as it drifts from that mission statement. But it’s still a novel approach to a ghost story and well worth watching if a lighter version of “A Ghost Story” interests you.

Co-writer MacLeod Andrews is Jack, a handyman who contracts out to a rental company to evaluate their homes, in between tenants, and either do repairs or arrange them. When we meet him, he’s trying to wrangle a place to stay for a few days while his place is fumigated, and nobody is returning his calls.

Thirtyish with no real friends you can lean on? It makes a guy wonder.

This house he’s supposed to inspect and prep for new renters presents a problem. It looks as if the previous tenants abandoned it, and all their stuff. He can’t do but so much “until all this stuff is gone.”

Neal, on the other end of the phone, isn’t having it. He needs this job rushed through, this house ready to rent. And he needs an answer.

“See why everyone breaks their lease and leaves it.”

We have more information than Neal or Jack. We’ve seen a montage of a previous family chased out by this Goth-girlish apparition (Natalie Walker).

As Jack sings along to his radio and leaves taped-reminders of all the power outlets, appliances, etc. that he’s checked and/or need further attention, he’s missing all this stuff going on behind him — rocking chair rocking, door closing, cabinet opening.

Jack’s dreams take on a “Shining” vibe — served drinks in the attack by a ghostly doppelganger.

We see him stalked from the ghost’s point of view, a camera just above and behind her capturing her walking up, invisible to him, singing along as he sings, starting a metronome, ringing the doorbell, throwing a crying baby’s wails into other rooms.

An actual appearance is what usually seals the deal. Muriel (Walker), all pale and veined, wild-haired and with an ungodly howl, presents herself to Jack and scares him.

Only it doesn’t take. He’s got work to finish, and Muriel, as he comes to know her? She’s more interesting than alarming, at least to him.

The earliest scenes sell the joke, and a cute soundtrack of bouncy, upbeat and off-color/mordant songs by Margaret Darling set the tone.

And then they go and suck all the wind out of the picture with dry arguments between Muriel and her third-wheel supervisor (Amanda Miller) who brings in a fourth wheel. Static, less funny and not-exactly-romantic exchanges with Jack ensue, who admits this “no real friends” life isn’t working out — “There’s no RECIPROCATION!” — and Muriel answering a lot of questions, profound and inane, about being a ghost.

“We prefer ‘spectral agent.'”

It’s a winning concept and not awfully executed, although the acting isn’t very good and the chemistry between the leads is thus pretty tepid. The ending stings, but the narrative’s taken a turn up a dead end before that, making this 80 minute movie feel longer.

Still, as indie “spectral agent” dramedies go, it’s worth a look and offers a few laughs if little else.

MPAA Rating: unrated, profanity

Cast: MacLeod Andrews, Natalie Walker, Sydney Vollmer and Amanda Miller

Credits: Directed by Adam Stovall, script by MacLeod Andrew and Adam Stovall. An Arrow Films release.

Running time: 1:19

In “Palmer,” Justin Timberlake plays an ex-con, a hard man who comes back to his hometown and the grandma who raised him, looking for a second chance.

But that second chance doesn’t really present itself until his granny (June Squibb) dies, and a little boy with a feminine air she’s been looking after requires Palmer to soften, develop tolerance and compassion and think of somebody else for a change.

It’s a role with a lot of silent, sullen brooding built in. And in the hands of actor turned director Fisher Stevens (“Stand Up Guys”), it’s never much more than a “star vehicle” in the classic sense — lots of close-ups of Palmer’s thousand-yard-stare, tank tops showing off the tattoos, a sex scene and out-of-his-league romance, and sympathetic moments of a fatherless ex-con easing into fatherhood.

Not terribly demanding, in other words. But Timberlake is intensely likeable in the part, and that makes it work.

Palmer used to be somebody in Sylvain, Louisiana, a star footballer who left to take a scholarship at L.S.U. But life went off the rails for “Eddie,” and now he’s back where they know him, and how he went wrong, to start over. He’s just Palmer now, and while Grandma Vivian makes him go to church with her to “get yourself back out there,” he’s inclined to make “out there” Benny’s Place, the local bar where his old cronies hang.

And that single-mom living in Granny’s rental trailer out back? She’s played by Juno Temple, who has made a career out of loose, “nothing but trouble” train wrecks who are DTF with the leading man — in the film’s first act.

But Shelly’s son is different. Sammy (Ryder Allen) is about 8, dotes on his mom and on those occasions when she skips town on a bender, Palmer can find him doing Grandma Vivian’s hair, losing himself in his favorite fairy princess TV show and getting bullied by the locals for it.

As the only place that’ll hire an ex-con is the elementary school that needs a janitor — and that takes an intervention from a sympathetic principal and compliant school board — the disinterested Palmer witnesses Sammy’s life up-close.

And when Grandma Vivian dies, Palmer faces what could be his first responsible adult decision — dump the kid at the police department (Mom’s been gone a month) and into “the system,” or look after him.

Timberlake’s look in this film does a lot of the heavy-lifting for him. Muscled-up, with a beard and Farm Supply cap pulled down over his eyes, he’s the spitting image of Ben Foster. Foster plays a lot of hardcases.

But he manages the transition well, and in a lot of crowd-pleasing ways. A fatherly bit of business — Palmer asks Sammy if he’s taken a bath, assured he has, he tugs him by the shirt, takes a sniff, and begs to disagree. The kid’s cute and sympathetic and Timberlake does a nice job of taking Palmer on the journey from “not my problem” to father-figure.

You can’t let yourself think too much about Sammy’s beautiful teacher (Alisha Wainwright of TV’s” Shadowhunters”) taking a shine to the rough-hewn ex-con janitor, or about the nature of the crime that sent Eddie to prison and brought him back as Palmer.

Cheryl Guerriero, who has a Paris Hilton movie among her screenwriting credits, hews to a formula and doesn’t sweat the implausibilities.

But if “Palmer” isn’t that demanding of star and audience, it’s a perfectly serviceable story for at least reminding the film world that you’re out there, available and perfectly capable of delivering the dramatic goods.

MPAA Rating: R for language, some sexual content/nudity and brief violence 

Cast: Justin Timberlake, Ryder Allen, Alisha Wainwright, Juno Temple and June Squibb

Credits: Directed by Fisher Stevens, script by Cheryl Guerriero. An Apple Original release.

Running time: 1:50

Jason Clarke, Alexandra Shipp and Nick Robinson star in this Lionsgate thriller about “the rise and fall of Silk Road, the infamous darknet site that sent a seismic shock through the World Wide Web.”

Internet cops and robbers

It’s the famous walk, a steady, cat-like lope that hasn’t changed with the decades, the way he turns on a half-menacing/wholly insincere smile when he needs it.

It’s the way he lowers his head and raises his eyes in glowering disdain, the patience he gets across with his pauses, the eye that wanders over a co-star playing a suspect, an apartment dressed as a crime scene.

With Denzel Washington, it wasn’t just one big thing, it was all “The Little Things” that he pieced together in performance after performance that ordained his stardom.

Pack him in an autumnal thriller with two other Oscar winners and some of the years melt away, even if no high-mileage Kern Co. California sheriff’s deputy could spend that much time and effort on Hollywood dentistry. Especially in 1990.

“The Little Things” is a solid, downbeat mystery thriller that uses three sharply-observed performances to surf past its shortcomings. Writer-director John Lee Hancock (“The Blind Side”) serves up an old fashioned star vehicle/police procedural that turns into a game of cats-vs.-mouse once our detectives have a suspect in mind. It’s a story whose implausibilities lessen in importance every time Washington shares a scene with either Rami Malek (“Bohemian Rhapsody”) or Jared Leto (“Dallas Buyers Club”), especially when all three are in the frame together.

Washington’s “Deke” Deacon is a “detective” in the past tense, only. These days he’s a sheriff’s deputy, low enough on the totem pole to be the guy the boss sends to LA to collect a piece of evidence for a case, old enough that we recognize, in an instant, that there are reasons this guy was never promoted.

The evidence, being used in another case the LAPD is helping prosecute, puts Deke into the same room with an old partner (Terry Kinney) now a captain, and in the field of view of the hot new “college” detective, Sgt. Jim Baxter (Malek).

Somebody is stalking young women. We’ve seen the duct tape in the trunk of the faceless driver pursuing somebody through a lonely corner of a SoCal night.

For Deke, stuck in LA an extra day waiting on his evidence to clear processing, the case brings flashbacks and curiosity. Baxter is a “good cop,” a “face of the department” type, idealistic and pious. He’s eager to size up the Old Guard.

“I hear you’re a good cop,” Deke offers.

“I hear things, too.”

At Mike’s invitation, Deke ends up at a crime scene, picks up a few loose ends Mike’s team has missed, and that invitation becomes an open one. Let’s track this serial killer together.

Hancock works entirely too hard to throw these two together and procedures and protocols out the window. He manages the suspense well enough and is expert at structuring a thriller that will attract stars and toss in a surprise or two, if no more than that.

His dialogue is packed with bromides and cop-picture cliches, the “something I gotta know” questions, the sharper-than-he-looks suspect who invokes famed crime photographer Weegie when dismissing crime scene photos.

But the characters are fleshed in nicely, with Malek’s Baxter lecturing his underlings with a line he must have heard on any number of “C.S.I.” TV shows.

“From now on,” he says, stopping any light talk of a dead woman, “we work for HER.”

Onetime Joker Leto, Manson-bearded and Manson-eyed, brings a lipsmacking villainy to Suspect One, a guy who may have access, means and mentality to do these awful things, or may just a working stiff with a psychotic passion for messing around with cops.

Washington gives a haunted touch to Deke, although there’s a lot of image polishing in both his “dark” past and demoted present. He hasn’t crawled into a bottle, and his sins seem pretty PG in light of policing problems in modern America. But this was pre-Rodney King, remember. Deke is allowed the luxury of seeing potential victims in every coed-packed convertible.

Deke’s promotion-free career gave him the chance to master his craft, which might have mastered him.

“It never goes away,” he confesses at one point. The flashbacks, the sincere conversation with and promise to a corpse once the coroner (Michael Hyatt) has shown him the road map of her demise, all show how this awful work weighs on him. The murdered, he tells Mike, “they’re your lifelong responsibility.”

But the old dog savvy and the instincts remain.

“It’s the little things,” a detail picked up at a crime scene, a tiny mistake the killer made, “that get you convictions.”

And its the pleasure of this cast’s company — grounded, detailed performances with a flourish here and there — that make this otherwise routine thriller pay off.

MPAA Rating: R for violent/disturbing images, language and full nudity 

Cast: Denzel Washington, Rami Malek, Jared Leto, Michael Hyatt, Terry Kinney and Natalie Morales.

Credits: Scripted and directed by John Lee Hancock. A Warner Bros./HBO Max release.

Running time: 2:07

As far as “fears” go, I typically prefer mysterious and unknown peril to frights shoved in my face, explained, back-storied and underlined.

But that’s not how the “Wrong Turn” movies work. For twenty years these films have gotten good looking actresses and actors lost in America and the world’s fast-disappearing wild places, menaced by whatever primitives live there and the “rules” of this perilous hidden world.

While there might be a half-decent thriller buried under the point-by-point details-and-endless explanations of this reboot of the franchise, it’s as lost as the “yuppies” who take a detour off the Appalachian Trail in “Bum-F-Virginia” in its story.

Matthew Modine plays a concerned father whose pretty, over-educated barista daughter has gone missing.

Visiting backwater Wrenwood, Va., “the last place she texted from,” gets a “probably sunning herself down in Key West” from the sheriff, a few words of caution from one local and the “We don’t like strangers asking questions” treatment from some others.

Rather than have this concerned, out-of-his-depth city Dad pick up hints, clues and injuries as he unravels, in growing panic, his way to learning The Awful Truth, screenwriter Alan P. McElroy does what he usually does. He shows us their fate in a long, detailed flashback.

Why build the movie around the best actor you cast when there are six hotties heading into the woods, joshing about “Bum-f— Virginia,” insulting the locals, drawing the wrong kind of “Deliverance” attention, starting their hike and taking that “quick side trip” to see something special, just off the trail?

Charlotte Vega plays Jen, the missing daughter with the degrees in art and dance and a life “serving coffee,” Adain Bradley plays her boyfriend, Emma Dumont the doctor in their group, Dylan McTee resident douche-bro and Vardaan Arora and Adrian Favela as the Gay Couple of Color holding hands as they trek through Appalachia.

What could go wrong? Aside from threats in the honky tonk, the stalker eyeballing their SUV, the woodland snares and traps, pitching their tents at night and waking up in a graveyard, losing all their phones and then getting picked off one by one?

These movies live or die by their creative killings, but most of the ones here are of the routine murderous booby-trap variety. Think “Vietnam” and “bear pits.”

There’s panic and torture, friends letting friends down and awful choices. And eventually, Dad shows up again and commences to hunt for answers.

As with far too many thrillers, the more explaining of every mysterious thing there is, the less interesting the story becomes. The actors are expected to freak out at their growing peril, and kind of manage that, although their characters are awfully quick to “forget” the fallen and focus on self-preservation and as they repeat their mantra — “We need to get the F off this mountain!”

The script’s sops to political correctness, to not stereotyping or judging strangers, makes for some maddening moments of the “We started this, but you hurt one of our’n, so it’s YOUR fault” reasoning. Mitch McConnell’s people?

I didn’t hate it, but didn’t get much out of it and found it boring. Still, fans of kidnapping, impaling, hot-poker-in-the-eye cinema may take to it as their cinematic happy place.

MPA Rating: R for strong bloody violence, grisly images and pervasive language 

Cast: Charlotte Vega, Adain Bradley, Emma Dumont, Dylan McTee, Vardaan Arora, Adrian Favela and Matthew Modine.

Credits: Directed by Mike P. Nelson, script by Alan P. McElroy, based on his seven-film franchise. Saban Films release.

Running time: 1:49

Not sure how Netflix productions qualify as “Independent,” but somehow, they’ve garnered 16 nominations (Universal offshoot Focus had 10), and “real” indie A24 got a bunch.

A wide range of films, streaming series and TV shows gained nominations, with films from “Saint Frances” to “Nomadland,” “Sound of Metal” and “The White Tiger” to “The Assistant” and “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” collecting kudos.

The 36th Indie Spirit Awards are handed out April 22 this year, just before the Oscars.

BEST FEATURE
(Award given to the producer)

FIRST COW
Producers: Neil Kopp, Vincent Savino, Anish Savjani

MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM
Producers: Todd Black, Denzel Washington, Dany Wolf

MINARI
Producers: Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Christina Oh

NEVER RARELY SOMETIMES ALWAYS
Producers: Sara Murphy, Adele Romanski

NOMADLAND
Producers: Mollye Asher, Dan Janvey, Frances McDormand, Peter Spears, Chloé Zhao

BEST FIRST FEATURE
(Award given to director and producer)

I CARRY YOU WITH ME
Director/Producer: Heidi Ewing
Producers: Edher Campos, Mynette Louie, Gabriela Maire

THE FORTY-YEAR-OLD VERSION
Director/Producer: Radha Blank
Producers: Inuka Bacote-Capiga, Jordan Fudge, Rishi Rajani, Jennifer Semler, Lena Waithe

MISS JUNETEENTH
Director: Channing Godfrey Peoples
Producers: Toby Halbrooks, Tim Headington, Jeanie Igoe, James M. Johnston, Theresa Steele Page, Neil Creque Williams

NINE DAYS
Director: Edson Oda
Producers: Jason Michael Berman, Mette-Marie Kongsved, Matthew Linder, Laura Tunstall, Datari Turner

SOUND OF METAL
Director: Darius Marder
Producers: Bill Benz, Kathy Benz, Bert Hamelinck, Sacha Ben Harroche

BEST DIRECTOR

Lee Isaac Chung, Minari

Emerald Fennell, Promising Young Woman

Eliza Hittman, Never Rarely Sometimes Always

Kelly Reichardt, First Cow

Chloé Zhao, Nomadland

BEST SCREENPLAY

Lee Isaac Chung, Minari

Emerald Fennell, Promising Young Woman

Eliza Hittman, Never Rarely Sometimes Always

Mike Makowsky, Bad Education

Alice Wu, The Half of It

BEST FIRST SCREENPLAY

Kitty Green, The Assistant

Noah Hutton, Lapsis

Channing Godfrey Peoples, Juneteenth

Andy Siara, Palm Springs

James Sweeney, Straight Up

JOHN CASSAVETES AWARD
(Given to the best feature made for under $500,000; Award given to the writer, director and producer)

THE KILLING OF TWO LOVERS
Writer/Director/Producer: Robert Machoian
Producers: Scott Christopherson, Clayne Crawford

LA LEYENDA NEGRA
Writer/Director: Patricia Vidal Delgado
Producers: Alicia Herder, Marcel Perez

LINGUA FRANCA
Writer/Director/Producer: Isabel Sandoval
Producers: Darlene Catly Malimas, Jhett Tolentino, Carlo Velayo

RESIDUE
Writer/Director: Merawi Gerima

SAINT FRANCES
Director/Producer: Alex Thompson
Writer: Kelly O’Sullivan
Producers: James Choi, Pierce Cravens, Ian Keiser, Eddie Linker, Raphael Nash, Roger Welp

BEST MALE LEAD

Riz Ahmed, Sound of Metal

Chadwick Boseman, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

Adarsh Gourav, The White Tiger

Rob Morgan, Bull

Steven Yeun, Minari

BEST FEMALE LEAD

Nicole Beharie, Miss Juneteenth

Viola Davis, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

Sidney Flanigan, Never Rarely Sometimes Always

Julia Garner, The Assistant

Frances McDormand, Nomadland

Carey Mulligan, Promising Young Woman

BEST SUPPORTING MALE

Colman Domingo, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

Orion Lee, First Cow

Paul Raci, Sound of Metal

Glynn Turman, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

Benedict Wong, Nine Days

BEST SUPPORTING FEMALE

Alexis Chikaeze, Miss Juneteenth

Yeri Han, Minari

Valerie Mahaffey, French Exit

Talia Ryder, Never Rarely Sometimes Always

Yu-jung Youn, Minari

BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY

Jay Keitel, She Dies Tomorrow

Shabier Kirchner, Bull

Michael Latham, The Assistant

Hélène Louvart, Never Rarely Sometimes Always

Joshua James Richards, Nomadland

BEST EDITING

Andy Canny, The Invisible Man

Scott Cummings, Never Rarely Sometimes Always

Merawi Gerima, Residue

Enat Sidi, I Carry You With Me

Chloé Zhao, Nomadland

BEST INTERNATIONAL FILM
(Award given to the director)

BACURAU (Brazil)
Director: Juliano Dornelles, Kleber Mendonça Filho

THE DISCIPLE (India)
Director: Chaitanya Tamahane

NIGHT OF THE KINGS (Ivory Coast)
Director: Philippe Lacôte

PREPARATIONS TO BE TOGETHER FOR AN UNKNOWN PERIOD OF TIME (Hungary)
Director: Lili Horvát

QUO VADIS, AIDA? (Bosnia and Herzegovina)
Director: Jasmila Žbanić

BEST DOCUMENTARY
(Award given to the director and producer)

COLLECTIVE
Director/Producer: Alexander Nanau
Producers: Hanka Kastelicová, Bernard Michaux, Bianca Oana

CRIP CAMP
Directors/Producers: Jim LeBrecht, Nicole Newnham
Producer: Sara Bolder

DICK JOHNSON IS DEAD
Director/Producer: Kirsten Johnson
Producers: Katy Chevigny, Marilyn Ness

THE MOLE AGENT
Director: Maite Alberdi
Producer: Marcela Santibáñez

TIME
Director/Producer: Garrett Bradley
Producers: Lauren Domino, Kellen Quinn

ROBERT ALTMAN AWARD
(Given to one film’s director, casting director and ensemble cast)

ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI
Director: Regina King
Casting Directors: Kimberly R. Hardin
Ensemble Cast: Kingsley Ben-Adir, Eli Goree, Aldis Hodge, Leslie Odom Jr.

PRODUCERS AWARD

(The Producers Award honors emerging producers who, despite highly limited resources, demonstrate the creativity, tenacity and vision required to produce quality independent films)

Lucas Joaquin

Gerry Kim

Kara Durrett

SOMEONE TO WATCH AWARD

(The Someone to Watch Award recognizes a talented filmmaker of singular vision who has not yet received appropriate recognition)

DAVID MIDELL
Director of The Killing of Kenneth Chamberlain

EKWA MSANGI
Director of Farewell Amor

ANNIE SILVERSTEIN
Director of Bull

TRUER THAN FICTION AWARD

(The 26th Truer Than Fiction Award is presented to an emerging director of non-fiction features who has not yet received significant recognition)

CECILIA ALDARONDO
Director of Landfall

ELEGANCE BRATTON
Director of Pier Kids

ELIZABETH LO
Director of Stray

BEST NEW NON-SCRIPTED OR DOCUMENTARY SERIES
(Award given to the Creator, Executive Producer, Co-Executive Producer)

ATLANTA’S MISSING AND MURDERED: THE LOST CHILDREN

Executive Producers: Jeff Dupre, Joshua Bennett, Sam Pollard, Maro Chermayeff, John Legend, Mike Jackson, Ty Stiklorius

CITY SO REAL
Produced by: Zak Piper, Steve James
Executive Producers: Jeff Skoll, Diane Weyermann, Alex Kotlowitz, Gordon Quinn, Betsy Steinberg, Jolene Pinder

IMMIGRATION NATION
Executive Producers: Christina Clusiau, Shaul Schwarz, Dan Cogan, Jenny Raskin, Brandon Hill, Christian Thompson
Co-Executive Producers: Andrey Alistratov, Jay Arthur Sterrenberg, Lauren Haber

LOVE FRAUD
Executive Producers: Rachel Grady, Heidi Ewing, Amy Goodman Kass, Vinnie Malhotra, Jihan Robinson, Michael Bloom, Maria Zuckerman

WE’RE HERE
Creators/Executive Producers: Stephen Warren, Johnnie Ingram
Executive Producers: Eli Holzman, Aaron Saidman, Peter LoGreco
Co-Executive Producers: Erin Haglund, Sabrina Mar

BEST NEW SCRIPTED SERIES
(Award given to the Creator, Executive Producer, Co-Executive Producer)

A TEACHER
Creator/Executive Producer: Hanna Fidell
Executive Producers: Michael Costigan, Kate Mara, Louise Shore, Jason Bateman, Danny Brocklehurst
Co-Executive Producer: Daniel Pipski

I MAY DESTROY YOU
Creator/Executive Producer: Michaela Coel
Executive Producers: Phil Clarke, Roberto Troni

LITTLE AMERICA
Executive Producers: Lee Eisenberg, Joshuah Bearman, Joshua Davis, Arthur Spector, Alan Yang, Siân Heder, Kumail Nanjiani, Emily V. Gordon

SMALL AXE
Executive Producers: Tracey Scoffield, David Tanner, Steve McQueen

UNORTHODOX
Creator/Executive Producer: Anna Winger
Creator: Alexa Karolinski
Executive Producer: Henning Kamm

BEST FEMALE PERFORMANCE IN A SCRIPTED SERIES

Elle Fanning, The Great

Shira Haas, Unorthodox

Abby McEnany, Work in Progress

Maitreyi Ramakrishnan, Never Have I Ever

Jordan Kristine Seamón, We Are Who We Are

BEST MALE PERFORMANCE IN A NEW SCRIPTED SERIES

Conphidance, Little America

Adam Ali, Little America

Nicco Annan, P-Valley

Amit Rahav, Unorthodox

Harold Torres, ZeroZeroZero

BEST ENSEMBLE CAST IN A NEW SCRIPTED SERIES

I MAY DESTROY YOU

Cast: Michaela Coel, Paapa Essiedu, Wruche Opia, Stephen Wight

What is it about black and white celluloid that makes its modern digital equivalent feel so flat and washed out?

Is it the texture, the nearly-invisible but implicit “grain” and sharpness? The contrast between light and shadow, the many shadings of grey, the far darker blacks, the physical/chemical limits of film’s depth-of-field that mimic the eye?

I fret over this every time I dive into a much-praised modern monochromatic movie or even Disney’s “WandaVision,” wondering what it is that makes “Roma” and “Mank” leave me cold visually.

There were hints of the disappearing art of lighting and shooting in black and white as early as the 35MM “Schindler’s List,” which still has scenes of stark monochromatic beauty that nothing produced in black and white today can match.

But to really see the difference, a vintage production by a master filmmaker working in the medium is what you look to for comparison.

John Frankenheimer’s 1964 thriller “The Train” is a flawed gem, basically a fictionalized, action-amped story from the pages of the “Nazis stealing art” saga that “The Monuments Men” documented.

It was filmed in glorious “European widescreen” in French-processed black and white. That makes every information-packed image of Frankenheimer’s exquisite mise en scene pop, sometime to a breathtaking degree.

Watching it again for the first time in many years, I was struck by how much better it still works than George Clooney’s more historically-accurate but still bowdlerized “Monuments Men” of 2014.

Both films are based on historical accounts of the risks of wartime destruction and the Nazi looting of the patrimony of Western Civilization, the Great Artworks of Europe. Both are fictionalized, especially when it comes to the heroine of that saga, the French art historian and curator Rose Valland, whose record-keeping was the German Philistines’ undoing at war’s end, tracking the artworks she was not able to hide from thieves to those who did the stealing.

Valland’s name was changed in both films, although “The Train” comes closer to the real Rose, even if the incident portrayed never happened.

Screenwriters Franklin Cohen and Frank Davis had the clever idea of putting this story on heist picture footing and setting it literally in motion. An urbane, amoral Nazi (Paul Scofield) spirits scores of paintings and artworks out of Paris as it is about to fall to the Allies in 1944. The Rose Valland figure (Suzanne Flon) sounds the alarm to the Resistance. And the job of stopping this train hauling the art falls on the railyard supervisor Labiche, played with brute panache by Burt Lancaster.

The artwork is a wide array of genres, from impressionist masterpieces to the “modern” works the Nazis banned as “degenerate art,” thus working in another of Germany’s crimes against civilization (art destruction and censorship) into the story.

Our villain is a classic “type,” polished, well-spoken — a sophisticate.

“Beauty belongs to the man who can appreciate it,” Col. von Waldheim (oopsie) purrs. Right.

This trope is like the serial killer as Man of Letters and Taste cliche that “Silence of the Lambs” helped perpetuate. No, serial killers are statistically most often truck drivers. And the Nazis were largely oompah-music loving thugs and goons — not unlike nationalist cretins the world over, mouth-breathing lovers of “country” music, whatever fits that definition in whatever country, the US to Brazil, Russia or the Philippines, in the present day.

What brings “The Train” to life are its action beats — chases and strafings and bombings and sabotage, which includes here renaming whistle stops to fool the Germans on board that the art-filled train is heading in a direction it isn’t.

Frankenheimer spent a lot of United Artists’ money and a lot of screen time on a movie that only has to hint at World War II in most cases. We see but a single (distant) British Spitfire, a couple of bombers, a railyard turned into devastation.

But every immaculately-framed shot packs in characters, background and information — anti-sabotage posters in a rail clerk’s office, sharply focused huge closeups of actors in the foreground, stars in the middle or background, and sometimes the exact opposite, built around the big, chiseled and soot-stained face of Lancaster, playing a character who can’t get over the fact that they’re being asked to die for art.

“You know what’s on that train? Paintings. That’s right, paintings. Art. The national heritage. The pride of France. Crazy, isn’t it?”

Lancaster is the linchpin who holds this long, smoky dash across France together. It’s a classic movie star turn, with gravitas and sparkling flashes of his acrobatic past. He manhandles heavy machine parts, casting brakelines to fix a sabotaged engine as if he’s done it all his life. He clambers through windows, over walls and up roofs, and in his most memorable bit of business, slides down a long switching station ladder to the tracks like a guy who’s worked the rails since childhood.

The picture has too much bloodshed to allow for the lighter moments a movie like “The Monuments Men” went for. The dialogue is melodramatic and arch, the characters archetypes. But in simplifying the stakes, narrowing the focus, giving us a fixed villain, and shooting in “WWII period piece” black and white, Frankenheimer gives us a riveting ride through a war fought over values and fundamental freedoms — among them, the freedom to create, value and appreciate whatever artistic expression you choose, and not just the oompah music, idealized landscapes and muscular propaganda of the tasteless goons in charge.

And he did it in the black and white tones that don’t just look but actually feel like the era they’re depicting, not a cheap, washed-out facsimile of that past.

MPAA Rating: unrated, violence

Cast: Burt Lancaster, Paul Scofield, Jeanne Moreau, Suzanne Flon, Michel Simon, Albert Rémy and Wolfgang Preiss.

Credits: Directed by John Frankenheimer, script by Franklin Cohen and Frank Davis. A United Artists/MGM release on Tubi, etc.

Running time: 2:13