If I Had Legs, I'd Kick You - 1 nomination

 

• Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role: Rose Byrne

Doing it all gets a whole new meaning in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. Rose Byrne plays a therapist whose child is dealing with an eating disorder and being nourished by a feeding tube, whose family has been displaced from their home due to a flood, whose husband is away on military duty, and whose patients need her in some healthy and sometimes toxic ways. Each one of these stressors would be more than enough, but they also come with a dose of guilt, shame, and plenty of judgement from others about how she “should” be managing them. If you’re anything like me, just reading that paragraph gave you a pang or two (or more) of discomfort, and boy does Rose Byrne play the life as most of us experience it - desperately wanting to do a good job, every success in one area is also a failure in others, and more than a modicum of sincere frustration and genuine anger.

The film has the chaos of Marty Supreme without all the funny parts, and certainly without any big wins. Nobody wants to live like that, and yet most who do have no choice and very little way out. How much can one person take without cracking up completely? That’s the question this movie grapples with, ironically with a therapist who can’t simply change her circumstances by simply changing her attitude. This film is both hauntingly familiar and disturbing enough to avoid if you can’t hack it. But if you do, you might just learn something important. (or you’ll have a movie to tell your friends/family, “JUST WATCH THIS, it will explain everything for me!”)

Sirat - 2 nomination

 

• Best International Feature Film: Spain

• Best Sound: Amanda Villavieja, Laia Casanovas, Yasmina Praderas

A man and his young son are searching raves taking place in the desert looking for their daughter/sister who they haven’t seen in many months. She is an adult but still, they haven’t even heard from here and they are worried, walking around asking everyone they can if they remember seeing her. When the rave is raided by soldiers, they follow some “professional ravers” to another potential venue. The ravers warn them that they don’t have the right kind of vehicle to transverse the treacherous terrain, but they go nonetheless, determined to find their family member. There is something very suspicious about these ravers though, and we are always just a bit on edge while the three vehicles do what they can to stay together.

And then there is THAT moment. The moment when the movie you think you have been watching becomes a different movie entirely. A moment so dramatic and unexpected that the gasp I let out took a few minutes to subside. Those moments continue all the way to the very end of the picture, and it is for these twists and turns that I award Sirat my “hidden gem award.” Longtime readers of the blog know that the award is given every year to a film that I hadn’t even heard of before it was nominated for an Oscar, and then once seen it became one of my favorite and unforgettable movies of the year. For the reason, I highly suggest seeing Sirat. While it is not an easy film, it will not easily be forgotten.

KPOP Demon Hunters - 2 nominations

 

• Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures (Original Song): EJAE (music and lyric), Mark Sonnenblick, Joong Gyu-kwak, Lee Yu-han, Nam Hee-dong, Teddy Park, 24, For “Golden”

• Best Animated Feature Film: Maggie Kang, Chris Appelhans, Michelle Wong

KPop Demon Hunters follows a globally famous K-pop girl group who secretly live double lives as elite demon hunters. By day, they perform sold-out arena concerts and maintain flawless public personas; by night, they battle supernatural forces feeding off human emotion and fame. When a rival boy band comes around and begins stealing audience attention, they also and begins exhibiting suspicious, otherworldly abilities, the group discovers that the demons they fight are evolving—and infiltrating the entertainment industry itself.

This film has a tremendous shot at winning both of its categories (sadly, I’d like the Diane Warren song to win) and the animation is magnificent. It takes the best of South Korean razzle dazzle and combines it with a beautiful soundtrack and leverages that into a pretty delightful and impressive film.

It Was Just an Accident - 2 Nominations

 

Best International Feature Film: France

Best Original Screenplay: Jafar Panahi (writer), Shadmehr Rastin (script collaborator), Nader Saeivar (script collaborator), Mehdi Mahmoudian (script collaborator)

France’s submission for International Feature takes place in Iran, where a car pulls into a mechanic’s shop containing a man, his pregnant wife, and his daughter. The lovely mechanic, Vahid, hears the squeaking of the man’s prosthetic, and he is certain that he recognizes the man as his sadistic jailhouse captor. Vahid finds a way to knock out and kidnap the man and digs a grave to bury him alive, but Vahid isn’t certain that the man he suspects is the man he remembers. He rounds up a mismatched little crew of fellow former prisoners to help him confirm the identity, but his kind nature continues to impede his plans for revenge.

Somehow this film finds a way to be funny, profound, and ask important questions about ethics, regret, and forgiveness. It was the most unexpected of the Oscars films for me both for the quality of the story but also, for the surprise of a challenging movie that still made me laugh time and again while dealing with truly difficult stories. Iran is hardly the expected setting of a comedic drama, but It Was Just an Accident executes brilliantly.

I’ve now seen 4 of 5 International Features (and frankly, the one I’m delaying until the very end is one I’m dreading) and I would rank this one in 4th place of the 4 I’ve seen so far. Having said that, if you have the time and you’re looking for a good foreign language movie to see on some night at home, this one is certainly worth it.

Avatar: Fire and Ash - 2 Nominations

 

Best Achievement in Visual Effects: Joe Letteri, Richard Baneham, Eric Saindon, Daniel Barrett

Best Achievement in Costume Design: Deborah L. Scott

In the 3rd installment of the Avatar story, Jake and his Navi family are still being hunted by the military and now they have discovered a new enemy, the Ash tribe who are hungry for power and will do anything to obtain it. James Cameron again takes us to a magnificent place where the spiritual and the ecological meet. The film does its best to teach simple values and while the tropes of good and evil may be overly binary in the Avatar universe, I still find the movies both exciting and entertaining. Visually, they are incomparably stunning - that goes for all of the technical categories, the costumes, the makeup and hairstyling, the visual effects, the production design, the sound design; there isn’t a detail in this world that isn’t both bespoke and utterly detailed.

This isn’t a film that you mustn’t miss. It’s not likely to win either one of the awards for which it is nominated. But I enjoyed it and if you’re a fan of this genre, you will too.

Blue Moon - 2 Nominations

 

• Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role: Ethan Hawke

• Best Original Screenplay: Robert Kaplow (writer)

It is opening night of Oklahoma!, and Richard Rogers’ big night without his longtime collaborator, Lorenz Hart. Hart has arrived early to the bar where the show’s after party at Sardis is set to take place, and at first, he resists the temptation to drink, but not to rant. Rogers has taken a hiatus from working with Hart both to give Hart time to deal with his alcoholism, and also because when he was drinking, he was an unreliable partner. Hart has a lot of opinions about Oklahoma, but primarily that it was too silly and happy and upbeat (minus the rape, of course), and wants Rogers to get back to working with him on more serious pursuits.

The film is very close to a monologue, and Ethan Hawke is in every single scene. I imagine pages and pages of lines without a single interruption. It’s Olympic level acting, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen him better. His longtime partnership with Director Richard Linklater takes a whole new path with this movie where little happens but you simply can’t look away. I’m pretty sure that I had my mouth agape for a good portion of the film, just dazzled by this performance that was nothing like I’ve seen before.

It doesn’t matter if you know who Rogers and Hart are, if you’ve ever seen Oklahoma!, or if you know anything about New York theater. I hope you’ll see the film just to see Hawke’s work in this role, a truly unexpected but brilliant execution. It’s not a showy movie, but it’s fantastic.

Train Dreams - 4 Nominations

• Best Achievement in Cinematography: Adolpho Veloso

• Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures (Original Song): Nick Cave (music and lyric), Bryce Dessner (music), For “Train Dreams”

• Best Motion Picture of the Year: Marissa McMahon, Teddy Schwarzman, Will Janowitz, Ashley Schlaifer, Michael Heimler

• Best Adapted Screenplay: Clint Bentley, Greg Kwedar

Train Dreams is a quiet, sad, beautiful film with powerful performances - it’s a totally different speed than the entire crop of other movies in the Best Picture category. Joel Edgerton plays a railway construction worker who meets and marries Gladys. As the country’s need for logging increases, he transitions to this seasonal work, coming home each year to be with his wife and eventually daughter. When a tragic fire burns down his home, he is haunted by the idea that perhaps his daughter is alive and looking for a way home.

This is not an upbeat movie, but I found it to be wonderful. In the hullabaloo of loud and frenetic stories, Train Dreams changes the pace and makes an impact. If you’re not fond of the slower paced, or of the performances that are as much internal as expressed, then perhaps this wouldn’t be for you. But the scenery alone (and therefore, the Cinematography nom) is worth the price of admission.