Movie Nation

A big Oscar announcement day for “Joker,” “Jo Jo Rabbit,” Netflix, “1917” and “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood.”

Nine best picture nominees meant that at least four best pictures apparently directed themselves.

No nom for Greta Gerwig, in other words. Or James Mangold. Or Noah Baumbach.

A better day for “Joker” than for “Rocketman.” No room for Taron Egerton in that best actor field, or for Christian Bale from “Ford v. Ferrari.”  Jonathan Pryce for “The Two Popes” is not out of left field, Antonio Banderas was terrific in a lesser Almodovar effort. He won’t win Best Actor, but he’s due — decades of sensual and sensational work. That growl!

Almodovar’s “Pain & Glory” is up against “Parasite,” “Corpus Christi,” “Les Miserables” and “Honeyland” in the renamed “Best International (foreign language) Feature” category. “Parasite” is easily the favorite there, as it is also nominated for Best Picture.

Two actresses earned what I call “Cotillard/La Vie en Rose” nominations — performers better than the middling movies they starred in. Renee Zellweger is quite good (somewhat less than great, I thought) in the drab “Judy,” and Cynthia Erivo dazzled, at times, in the desultory and malnourished “Harriet.” Both films earned two nominations, best actress nominations, and one other.

Zellweger might be the favorite, but this strikes me as a category where something more interesting could happen.

Awkwafina’s acting peers didn’t think she was all that in “The Farewell,” which was shut out all up and down the line. I can see it. Lightweight picture, not a “great” performance. But the optics on leaving her out aren’t great.

Leaving out Jennifer Lopez  seems like a bigger deal, to me. Bates over J Lo in the best supporting actress field? Come on, now. Love KBates, but Lopez in “Hustlers” would have done wonders for ratings, for starters.

Adam Sandler’s peers weren’t as impressed with him in “Uncut Gems” as a few critics were. Perhaps the Screen Actor’s Guild’s members remember all the roles he filled with cronies-not-actors in his “comedies” during his heyday, and they harbor a grudge. Or maybe they know a dead-eyed and over-hyped performance when they see one.

I’m disappointed that Eddie Murphy’s “Dolemite is My Name” turn didn’t earn a nomination, but it’s easy to justify. Unless you consider the fact that “The Two Popes” was a lesser movie.

People griping about “Us” being shut out should have been raising hell a month ago. It hasn’t figured in the Oscar discussion all awards season.

Same with “Just Mercy” and Jamie Foxx. I’d thrown in Mark Ruffalo and “Dark Water,” too. But that’s just me.

“The Irishman” pulled in nine nominations, with is about five too many, by my count. But OK.

“Joker” also pulled in 11. But “1917” managed 10. As did “Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood.” As did “The Irishman.”

So who exactly is the Best Picture favorite, now?

“Jo Jo Rabbit” made quite the show of it — six nominations, including Scarlett’s supporting actress turn.

“Knives Out” got a screenplay nomination, “The Lighthouse” was recognized with a best cinematography one.

I’d say “The Lighthouse” and “Honey Boy,” “The Farewell” and maybe “Peanut Butter Falcon” look like promising Indie Spirit Award competitors. Except that not all of them are.  When you put your Independent Spirit Nominationsup months before the Oscar nominations, you rule out the chance for “make good” awards, which is what they should be.

Alma Harel (“Honey Boy”) should be competing with Lulu Wang for best director. Somewhere. Harel and Lorene Scafaria (“Hustlers”) have Indie Spirit directing nominations.

The usual suspects dominate the supporting actress/ actor Oscar categories.

Front runners Laura Dern and Brad Pitt tucked in with Anthony Hopkins (“The Two Popes”) too many “Irishmen” for that picture to stand a chance (and no Matt Damon for “Ford v Ferrari”), and Kathy Bates and Florence Pugh and ScarJo and Margot Robbie are all chasing Dern.

Was Bates any better than usual in a middling movie, “Richard Jewell?” No? Why burn a nomination on a previous winner, then? Then again, Nicole Kidman (“Bombshell”) is a previous winner, as well. She’s the big name missing from consideration there, along with with Jennifer Lopez.

Netflix had a great day by parking “American Factory” among the best doc nominees The Obamas produced it, so it’s the favorite), and taking two spots in a down year in the best animated feature category “I Lost My Body” and the holiday comedy “Klaus.”

I’d give the Oscar to “I Lost My Body,” seeing as how two of the nominees are sequels. “Missing Link,” the Golden Globe winner, is in the mix. Variety is griping that “Frozen 2” was “snubbed.” No. It sucked. That’s how this is supposed to work.

Scarlett Johansson is up for actress and supporting actress, “Parasite” for best international feature and best picture. If you didn’t see “Honeyland,” the Macedonian beekeeper docu-drama, it’s up for best doc and best international feature. Track it down.

Writer-directors Gerwig and Baumbach will have to be content to compete in the screenplay categories. “Little Women” has six Oscar nominations, “Marriage Story” has six as well. Just to keep the peace in the Gerwig/Baumbach household, I wonder?

No huge surprises, all in all. “Rocketman” peaked with its Golden Globes glory, no Adam Sandler/”Uncut Gems” love outside of New York, and limiting acting and directing to just five nominees meant worthies were going to be left out.

Unless the divisive “Joker” blows up Oscar night, I don’t think we’ll see a “Green Book/Bohemian/Shape of Water/Crash” Oscars that SOME people disavow the morning after.

The motivation for “hate watching the Oscars” this year won’t be as strong.

And Spike Lee isn’t nominated this year, so there aren’t likely to be any tantrums. Even from Tarantino.

Who will be nominated, who peaked with The Golden Globes or Critics Choice Awards?

Who will be content to pull an Indie Spirit Award nomination?

And will this be the only time The Academy jams up the schedule like this in an effort to stop all the other awards shows from stealing their thunder?

Brad Pitt is charming his way toward a best supporting actor lock with his acceptance speeches. Joaquin Phoenix doing a “60 Minutes” sit-down may be how he locks up best actor.

Zellweger and Dern, nothing but front runners and foregone conclusions?

Did the Globes get it right, all up and down the line?

A totally different electorate, a much more diverse one, should say “No.”

But this shorter calendar certainly leaves the favorites anchored in place.

Oscars.org this AM and assorted other websites are the best way to avoid the “Good Morning America” teasing.

Remember the word of the day is always “snubbed” on Oscar nominations Monday.

Another top ten finish in the US puts “Little Women” at $74.5 million in North America. Tally that with $17 million+ in Britain, $15 million elsewhere and Greta Gerwig has turned Louisa May Alcott’s warhorse novel into a $107 million hit.

Big women.

If Monday AM produces any Oscar notice, this one will clear $100 million in North America.

https://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekend/2020W01/

In America and much of the Western world, film schools are an indulgence of the children of privilege. Talent from other classes occasionally makes its way in, but by large, that’s who you see there.

In South Africa, in the townships formed by the nation’s long history of Apartheid, most kids have never seen a camera, much less dreamed of telling their stories with one.

Katie Taylor, an American woman working her way up the ladder in the casting side of the movie business (rounding up supporting players, bit players and locals for films like “Babel,” discovered that on a visit there in 2008. She decided that this was a problem she could do something about, and that it almost certainly was going to be more rewarding than a lifetime looking at headshots and rounding up actors for other people’s movies.

“I figured, I could get a couple of cameras and a couple of laptops” and show the young people of Kayamandi Township that they, too, could get their stories on the screen.

“Film School Africa” is an upbeat documentary about that school, its students, the stories they tell from the tough lives they’ve lived. It’s about the methods Taylor and fellow teacher Marie Midcalf use in the classroom, and about how the students use what they’ve learned to make short dramas torn from their lives, or documentaries about the world they live in.

Gasthon Lewis talks about how “God told me to make a movie,” and bubbly Tk Shikwambana describes falling for film school after taking up the study of performing arts. Odwa Nomavuka is described as having an artist’s eye for telling stories with moving pictures.

And we sit in the classroom, watching how the democratization of cinema brought on by cheap video cameras and computer software impacts a tiny film school in a country more known for providing cut-rate, colorful locations for Hollywood studios wanting to make “Bulletproof 2” on the cheap.

Midcalf critiques work with “We need to do an exercise on why NOT to film in front of a really bright window.” Sound design is taught, just a teacher with her laptop showing kids how they can edit in layers of natural sound and effects underneath their footage.

The obstacles here are only the most obvious. The kids zero in on “mob justice” as an issue, because of the violent world where they live. A white South African kid adjusts to being “challenged” by the environment. And the teachers are celebrated for doing not just good work in their chosen field, but righteous work.

“If I’m able to enrich somebody else’s life, I feel enriched,” the white South African Midcalf says.

While there is a touch of tragedy to the story, “Film School Africa” lacks the fireworks and hyped drama of a “SEE what these kids OVERCOME” documentary. As such, it’s a trifle bland in that “Shiny Happy People” way. It’s still smart, thoughtful and hopeful, a film school start-up tale with a lot of South Africa about it.

And perhaps one day we’ll see the products of their labors the way we can see Nigerian or Kenyan films today, all over Netflix.

MPAA Rating: unrated, recreations of violence

Cast: Katie Taylor, Tk Shikwambana, Odwa Nomavuka, Gasthon Lewis, Marie Midcalf, Juan van der Walt.

Credits: Directed by Nathan Pfaff. A Global Digital release.

Running time: 1:30

Remember Paris Hilton? Because you have to in order to “get” the um, “jokes” in the “comic” spoof “Reality Queen!”

It’s about an about-to-fade reality TV star trying to recapture her status in the Age of Memes. And it’s about 80 minutes too long.

“Queen” is a junk-comedy pieced together with a couple of “names” (Denise Richards, John Witherspoon, Mike Tyson), comic and cartoon voice-actor Charles Fleischer impersonating Larry King and not one damned joke that lands.

London Logo, played by busty freak of nature Julia Faye West, is the subject of a British TV documentary in which we catch up with her life today even as we remember her sex tape (“A Night in London,” with Mike Tyson), her reality show co-starring BBFF (Rochelle (Shelli Boone) and her many, many nip-slips, crotch-shots (getting out of cars) and other boo-boos that were a consequence of her very public life.

“I’m a model, NOT a role model!”

“Nobody TOLD me PETA doesn’t like fur!”

“I’m so waaaasted.”

“Where am I? And how many new Twitter followers do I have?”

“Jesus? He’s way too serious. He needs a makeover, maybe a man-bun like the hipster DJs wear…”

And so on.

It’s a deathly unfunny comedy, and staggeringly incompetent to boot. Hunt through the credits and figure out who did the graphic mock-ups of things like “Player” magazine covers, where “Real Man (sic) Have Curves” is a headline, “embarrassing” is misspelled, etc. And never ever hire this dunce again.

Considering another gag was a “Chocolate Mousse” that didn’t go over with her “fat” fans because the packaging says “Mouse.”

“Didn’t somebody proofread it?”

London paid $50,000 for a “micro-Chihuahua.” She doesn’t know it’s a gerbil. Richard Gere offering to pet-sit wasn’t a clue.

I chuckled at the “Helen Mirren Child Trafficking Scandal” bit (just a shot of Dame Helen with a bunch of schoolkids), the “reunion” tour with her former co-star, Rochelle, involving a private jet to hit the most popular bar in Watford, North Dakota. Maybe there’s a laugh in “I tried to cook for myself once. It tasted like syphilis!”

Not that I could tell.

Cast: Julia Faye West, Kate Orsini, Denise Richards, Shelli Boone, John Witherspoon and Mike Tyson

Credits: Directed by Steven Jay Bernheim, script by Steven Jay Bernheim, Schuyler Brumley, Chris Cobb, John-Paul Panelli, Allan Murray, Gabby Gruen, Greg Lindsay, Chandler Patton  A High Octane release.

Running time: 1:24

Wise are the filmmakers who look to Alfred Hitchcock, “the master of suspense,” for inspiration, twists and story structure in creating their screen thriller. But foolish are they who bollix things as thoroughly as the hapless folks who made “The Host.”

It’s “Psycho,” very roughly speaking, a “Psycho” had Hitchcock been into torture porn.

“The Host” hooks you in just long enough to make you wonder, “What the Hell is going on here?” But no sooner have you thought, “Ah, I get it,” when it proceeds to let you down in several annoying ways.

First off, get it out of your head that the great Derek Jacobi has anything to do with the story. He’s a whisky-swilling shrink in an opening and closing scene, “explaining,” setting up a framing device for the tale that follows. Jeroen Crabbé? Even less to do with it.

Explicit sex introduces our hero, young Robert (Mike Beckingham). He’s a bank clerk with little ambition to get ahead in the company, and lacking the common sense to be carrying on hotel assignations with a higher-up, who also happens to be his boss’s American-born wife (Margot Stilley).

She won’t be leaving her husband, but she lets him down with “I think you could be brilliant, if you put your mind to it,” followed by the kicker — “If your situation was different…”

He’s not rich enough to keep the likes of her. Funny that they’d make this mercenary woman American.

Robert later endures a “one bad decision after another” chewing out from his brother (Dougie Poynter) on the walk home. If only Dougie knew that Robert was toting a backpack full of a client’s safe deposit box cash.

He’s only borrowing it, to make a big score at the Chinese casino down the street. What this dope (“You could be brilliant,” right.) doesn’t see it all the side-eyes assorted Chinese gamblers, card dealers and mobsters give each other. He’s getting taken. But that’s how he makes “a friend.”

Lao Hoi Ho (Togo Igawa) will cover the kid’s losses IF he takes this briefcase to Amsterdam for a swap. No, the kid doesn’t have a choice. He is dying of curiosity to see what’s in the case.

But it turns out the chatty dude in the seat next to him (Nigel Barber) ISN’T with the Air Marshals service (Who would admit that to a fellow passenger?), but is with the DEA. And has he got a stay-out-of-prison deal for Robert.

Robert has just arrived in Amsterdam and he’s already in the hole to the Chinese Triads and the DEA. Topping it all, his hotel reservation is botched. He’s stuck staying in this AirBnB set-up, a swank townhouse where the sultry Vera (Maryam Hassouni, mysterious and beguiling) presides.

And Vera, too, has a lot of questions and unknown motives. This big house, with a wine cellar and ancient antiques, is quite the bargain. Or so it seems.

I like the way the film flirts with racism in its depiction of the “shifty” Chinese diaspora — all in league to trap and destroy the trusting Englishman. But the Dutch are no treat, either.

What follows is ineptly-plotted, hilariously illogical and often badly-acted. “The Host” grabs a couple of the dumber “explain it” elements from Hitchcock, as well as story structure.

The first half of the story is far more intriguing than the second, and “The Host” goes almost wholly wrong from that magic moment AFTER we wonder, “Just what the Hell is going on here?”

MPAA Rating:  R for some bloody violence, sexuality and language

Cast:  Maryam Hassouni, Mike Beckingham, Dougie Poynter Togo Igawa, Jeroen Krabbé and Derek Jacobi

Credits: Directed by Andy Newberry, script by Finola Geraghty, Brendan Bishop and Laurence Lamers. A Vertical Entertainment release.

Running time: 1:43

A VERY impressive Golden Globes bounce for Sam Mendes WWI epic, which may clear the $37 million mark after all the weekend’s receipts are finally tallied Monday. $36.5 is the official estimate Sunday.

“Rise of Skywalker” and “Jumanji” both finally fell off fairly steeply, to $15 and $13.

“Like a Boss” did about as well as a hacked up comedy with weak reviews could expect — a little over $11.

“Just Mercy” just trailer that in its first weekend of wide release, reaching the $10.8 mark.

As feared, the pricey sci-fi/horror/action pic “Underwater” sank without a trace –$7 million.

https://variety.com/2020/film/news/1917-box-office-star-wars-golden-globes-1203463908/

It’s nigh on impossible to tell a gay coming-out/coming-of-age story on the screen these days without occasionally lapsing into melodrama. The decades of such films that precede every new entry can’t seem to find new characters or new waypoints to mark the path from “confused” or “closeted” to “out.”

Telling such a story in the world of dance has a hint of “Haven’t we seen this, many times?” about it. But there are always exceptions.

“And Then We Danced” embraces the archetypal characters and hits every waypoint anyone who’s been watching queer cinema might expect. But set such a story in the macho former former Soviet state of Georgia, in the testosterone-soaked folk dancing of a Georgian National Ensemble, and you have our attention.

The homophobia of Vladimir Putin’s reassembling Russian empire was long state policy in the former communist utopia. And in Georgia, birthplace of butch butcher Josef Stalin, it never went out of style.

“What is Georgian dance?” an old master hectors young Merab (Levan Gelbakhiani), interrupting rehearsals. “It is the Spirit of our Nation!”

It is “based on masculinity,” the company director (Kakha Gogidze) reminds him (in Georgian, with English subtitles).

The Western viewer may look the kid over — his delicate Chalamet features, and think “dancer” and leap to conclusions. But Merab has been in the company’s youth group since childhood. He has a duet-partner and girlfriend (Ana Javakishvili).

And his brawling, hard-drinking older brother David (Giorgi Tsereteli) is also in the company, just another one of the boys who brag about booze and brothels. So watch it with the insinuations, unless you want a fat lip!

It’s just that there’s a new dancer in the corps, Irakli (Bachi Valishvili). And even though they’re about to compete for an opening in the main company, they’re thrown together for the male duets that are a feature of Georgian dancing. Rehearsals, nights out drinking, a couples weekend out in the country where there’s more drinking and dancing to ABBA, and the next thing you know — WRESTLING.

This is no doubt a novelty in Georgia, or maybe even in gay cinema in Sweden (homeland of writer-director Levan Akin). In North America, it’s a gay romance cliche since the ’80s, a trope of such films since 1969’s “Women in Love.”

Fortunately, there’s more to “And Then We Danced” than the bare, over-used basics.

The impoverished home-life scenes have a cranky single-mom and grandmom, an estranged father and the timeworn “good brother/bad brother” dynamic. But Akin paints a vivid portrait of life in Georgia — gay life in particular — as Merab and Irakli keep their secret, but aren’t paranoid about their sexuality. They know that in the wider world, who they are is not stigmatized the way it still is in Georgia.

The reason there’s an opening in the main company? A dancer was caught, on tour, making out with a guy and beaten, only to come home and have his parents send him to a monastery “to make him normal.”

Irakli shows up for rehearsals with an earring.

“Where do you think you are! Take it out!”

But as Merab floats on the wings of new love, his gaydar kicks in and he sees his people all around him. Sure, some are funny, foul-mouthed transgender street hustlers. But if Georgia is 30 years behind Western Europe, their “acceptance” is a sign of progress, right?

The dance scenes don’t dominate the picture, but there’s enough here to show the performers have some chops. Gelbakhiani makes a compelling and sympathetic lead, Javakishvili a compassionate counterpoint even if Tsereteli, as brother David, is a more believable thug than dancer.

They and their movie may not serve up many surprises. But “And Then We Danced” still manages to tell an over-familiar coming out story with sensitivity, and a Georgian accent.

MPAA rating: unrated, sexuality, prostitution, alcohol abuse

Cast: Levan Gelbakhiani, Bachi Valishvili, Ana Javakishvili, Giorgi Tsereteli

Credits: Written and directed by Levan Akin. A Music Box release.

Running time: 1:48

The faintest hint of “The Notebook” pops up in “Live Twice, Love Once (Vivir dos veces),” a wistful if somewhat strained Alzheimer’s romance from Spain.

Emilio (Oscar Martínez) is an elderly mathematics professor who isn’t quite ready to accept that he’s losing the mind that discovered a new prime number, back in the day. He grouses at the quizzing his Valencia doctor pushes on him, gets shorter and shorter with his answers until he’s asked about his family.

“I have no one,” (in Spanish with English subtitles) he fumes.

And then his daughter Julia (Inma Cuesta) shows up. She’s a pharmaceutical rep. And it takes a lot of prodding from her to get him to admit he just forgot he has a daughter.

Emilio spends his days struggling to do Sudoku puzzles that used to give him so much pleasure, and reminiscing about the girl he met on the beach in the distant past. Margarita loved literature. He loved math. It was never going to work out.

Or was it?

Now, as his mind fades, he’s desperate to make that connection. And in comedies of this sort, he’s going to need a co-conspirator. That would be his foul-mouth, cell-phone obsessed granddaughter, Blanca (Mafalda Carbonell). She’s a tween with a pronounced limp, and isn’t above making the odd “lame” joke to make others uncomfortable or get her out of a jam. She knows what’s up with grandpa, but isn’t cutting him any slack over it.

“I’m surprised you don’t know you’re as smart as you are.”

And she might have the means of finding Margarita, either via the new Facebook profile she’s setting up for the old man, or Google search. It’s in her hand.

“A cell phone is God!”

Director Maria Ripol (“Tortilla Soup”) and screenwriter María Mínguez set us up for a standard issue road picture, a quixotic quest in Grandpa’s ancient Citroen in search of the missing “love of my life.”

Then they set out to upend those expectations and replace them with less predictable situations, peppered with the usual obstacles and under-developed supporting characters.

The Mexican love song “Perfidia” wafts through “Live Twice, Love Once,” a tune about faithless love — a bit of ironic commentary about the woman grandpa married instead, and buried. That would be Julia’s mother, Blanca’s grandmother.

It’s a rather harmless confection, hanging on a likable turn by Martínez and a few amusing moments from young Miss Carbonell.

But the comic and romantic payoffs are limp, and the picture wanders on past its climax. And for all the efforts at tripping up expectations, it takes you precisely where you expect it to. Eventually.

MPAA Rating: unrated, some profanity

Cast: Oscar Martínez, Inma Cuesta, Mafalda Carbonell, Nacho López

Credits: Directed by Maria Ripoll, script by María Mínguez. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:41

Sam Mendes’ single-take, melodramatic stunt of a Great War movie is blowing up on its first weekend of wide release. It is on track after Friday, and with weekend presales, to clear $32 million, with $35 million a distinct possibility.

Not bad for a movie with “name” supporting players and no-name leads. Canny marketing held it back until after the Golden Globes. Monday, it could get more of a boost when the Oscar nominations come out.

“Rise of Skywalker” is in second with $17 million still projected, “Jumanji” is fading as well — maybe $13 million for that blockbuster.

But third place may go to the recut comedy “Like a Boss.” Tiffany Haddish vs. Salma Hayek is bringing in $14 million, based on a big Friday. That may fall off Sat. and Sunday, but we will see.

“Just Mercy” is opening at a healthy $10 million+, which is surprising for a serious picture that hasn’t figured I awards season. Perhaps that will change Monday when the Academy weighs in.

I was sure “Underwater” would bring in the popcorn pic fans forba little dumb action fun. Either Disney turned its nose up at properly marketing a Fox holdover title, or Kristen Stewart is no draw at all any more. $6 million plus.

https://deadline.com/2020/01/box-office-1917-star-wars-rise-of-skywalker-like-a-boss-1202826743/