Never Look Away (2018)

Never Look Away is a fine melodrama.

But, I dunno... it's just not that interesting. It feels like it's already been done. The script is at times stellar, and Tom Schilling and Paula Beer are both great.

Sebastian Koch – who is a brilliant actor and first billed here – really doesn't have enough to do. And this is in a three-hour movie!

The real takeaway from Never Look Away, though is Caleb Deschanel's photography, which is truly extraordinary. The film deserves a view if only for that.

Oscar Nominations 2019: Part 5 of 11

Part 1: Roma, The Favourite, Vice, A Star Is Born.
Part 2: Black Panther, BlacKkKlansman, Green Book, Bohemian Rhapsody.
Part 3: Mary Poppins Returns, First Man, Cold War.
Part 4: Can You Ever Forgive Me?, If Beale Street Could Talk, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.
Part 5:

Werke ohne Autor (Never Look Away)

2 Nominations

• Cinematography: Caleb Deschanel (The Passion of the Christ, The Patriot, Fly Away Home, The Natural, The Right Stuff)
• Foreign Language Film: Germany (Toni Erdmann, The White Ribbon, The Baader Meinhof Complex, The Lives of Others, Sophie Scholl: the Final Days, Downfall, Nowhere in Africa, Beyond Silence, Schtonk, The Nasty Girl)

Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

Cast: Tom Schilling, Sebastian Koch, Paula Beer, Saskia Rosendahl, Oliver Masucci, Cai Cohrs, Ina Weisse, Evgeniy Sidikhin, Mark Zak, Ulrike C. Tscharre, David Schütter

This is one of two films that I'm not going to be able to see this year. I'm very sad about it because, in the first place, I loved Donnersmarck's The Lives of Others and in the second place I love Max Richter's beautiful score for Never Look Away. And then there's the brilliant Sebastian Koch, who gives excellent performances every time he is onscreen! I truly do not understand why this film isn't playing everywhere right now. Sony Pictures Classics scored two Oscar nominations with this movie, and yet no one has seen it and no one can see it because it is only playing in a few theatres in the country. This makes no sense to me, honestly. In any case, I don't think Never Look Away will be winning any little gold men, but it sure would have been nice to be able to see this movie before Oscar Sunday.
Will Win: N/A
Could Win: N/A
My Rating: TBA

Mary Queen of Scots

2 Nominations

• Costume Design: Alexandra Byrne (Elizabeth: the Golden Age, Finding Neverland, Elizabeth, Hamlet)
• Makeup & Hairstyling

Director: Josie Rourke

Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Margot Robbie, Jack Lowden, Joe Alwyn, Guy Pearce, Martin Compston, David Tennant, Adrian Lester, James McArdle, Ismael Cruz Cordova, Brendan Coyle, Gemma Chan, Georgia Burnell

I believe I've already said my piece about this movie and its absurdities. It was pointed out to me since I wrote my review that the movie operates with a certain theatricality, that it is operating using many conventions of the theatre – the cross-racial casting, the lack of attention to accuracy with regard to accents, the self-conscious artistic quality of some of the sequences – and I truly do buy this as one of the film's goals. The problem here is that Mary Queen of Scots does not actually lean into these devices. Why is this film theatrical? might be my question here. What is this film trying to say about theatrical pageantry or English history or the lives of kings and queens? And if this film is about theatricality, and I am beginning to think it was trying to be just that, why not really take that idea to its maximum? Why not show us the sets as sets? Why not let us see the process of makeup or costuming? Why not show us behind the theatricality rather than simply showing us the face of it? In any case, I am glad that Alexandra Byrne got this nomination. She definitely deserved this.
Will Win: N/A
Could Win: Costume Design
My Rating: #61 out of 67

Isle of Dogs (犬の島)

2 Nominations

• Score: Alexandre Desplat (The Shape of Water, The Imitation Game, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Philomena, Argo, The King's Speech, Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Queen)
• Animated Feature

Director: Wes Anderson

Cast: Bryan Cranston, Rankin Koyu, Edward Norton, Bob Balaban, Jeff Goldblum, Bill Murray, Nomura Kunichi, Takayama Akira, Greta Gerwig, Frances McDormand, Ito Akira, Scarlett Johansson, Harvey Keitel, F. Murray Abraham, Yoko Ono

This is cute and I really liked it. I am, however, annoyed with Alexandre Desplat's current domination of the best original score category at the Oscars. It's started to really bug me. He has two statues already and Isle of Dogs marks his tenth nomination. The score to this movie is fine, and Desplat has been good at doing scores with drums in them since Birth all those years ago, but I am impatient with his work at the moment. As I said when I first saw this movie, I am also getting impatient with Wes Anderson's twee brand. I am looking for something a little more serious from him. The insistent irony of his movies is wearing thin with me. Still, Isle of Dogs is better than four of last year's best animated feature nominees, and although it is my third choice for this year, it definitely deserves its nomination. This is a very good, if minor, film.

Will Win: N/A
Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #25 out of 67

The Wife

1 Nomination

• Actress: Glenn Close (Albert Nobbs, Dangerous Liaisons, Fatal Attraction, The Natural, The Big Chill, The World According to Garp)

Director: Björn Runge

Cast: Close, Jonathan Pryce, Max Irons, Christian Slater, Annie Starke, Harry Lloyd, Elizabeth McGovern, Johan Widerberg, Karin Franz Körlof

It's the Glennaissance (as one of my graduate students keeps calling it)! It is looking like Glenn Close is finally going to win an Oscar, and we should all be delighted that this is happening. The movie that she is starring in does not deserve any awards at all, but Close is fabulous in the movie, and everyone loves her, and I am excited to see her win. This is Close's seventh nomination since The World According to Garp in 1982, and she has never won, despite turning in extraordinary performances for decades. It's worth saying that these seven nominations don't even count the ones she just barely missed, like say, Jagged Edge in 1985 or Reversal of Fortune or Hamlet in 1990 or her brilliant comedic turn in 101 Dalmations in 1996. It's her time, and I can't wait for her speech.
Will Win: Actress
Could Win: N/A
My Rating: #48 out of 67

Sus Ojos

Yesterday I continued my streak of screening movies by myself in empty theatres when my friend Sean ditched me and I ended up seeing Juan José Campanella's The Secret in Their Eyes by myself.

I had assumed that the title meant that the movie was going to be a story about lost childhood. I think I was imagining Secretos del Corazón or La Bestia nel Cuore or something like that. But no. The Secret in Their Eyes is not even really that similar to Campanella's other big film, Son of the Bride (which I also liked). If The Secret in Their Eyes is like any recent film, it is comparable to Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's The Lives of Others.

The Secret in Their Eyes is a mystery, a kind of memory-drama where the protagonist tries to piece together the events that happened to him many years previous. The whole thing is a fascinating puzzle and while I couldn't always decide if I thought I had figured something out, the narrative is told in such a way that it never feels manipulative, as if the filmmaker is deliberately keeping things from the audience. Instead, we remember as the protagonist remembers. We learn as he pieces things together; we solve puzzles as he solves them. The end of this film is so surprising, so well done, and so earned, that right before the big reveal I was positive the reveal was going to be something else altogether.

Argentinian superstar Ricardo Darín (Nine Queens, The Aura, Son of the Bride) plays the lead. Darín is like the Argentinian George Clooney, so I can't really comment on his acting. He is very good, but it's a movie-star part, you know? My favorite performances in the film are Pablo Rago, who plays the husband of the murdered woman, and Guillermo Francella, who is outstanding as Darín's alcoholic investigative partner. Soledad Villamil is also excellent as Darín's love interest. There is a fantastic interrogation scene with Darín and Villamil where she just stuns you.

You will not want to miss this picture. It won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Picture this year (2010), so it won't be eligible for any other awards next year, but it won the award for a reason. This is a great movie.

The Lives of Others & L'Eclisse

I don't really re-watch movies. It's sort of an unwritten rule for me. Every year I watch maybe one or two movies (I re-watched both All About Eve and Network a couple months ago) but I generally don't do it. There are just too many movies I haven't seen to spend time watching something I've seen already. That said, the free movie theatre on campus decided to show Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others) last week and I decided to go see it again.
If you haven't seen The Lives of Others you should, of course, go see it. It's a drama about a Stasi interrogator/spy in 1980s East Germany who starts to develop affection for the man and woman that he's spying on, which leads him to quietly change his whole life around.
One of the things about not ever watching movies for a second time is that because I hardly ever revisit films I hardly ever think about them apart from their plots. So a tightly woven film that is all about plot, like The Lives of Others can have a huge impact on me using only its plot devices.
The Lives of Others is ("nothing more than" doesn't seem appropriate for a film this good) more than anything else, a really well-told melodrama. It's a personal story of betrayal and information and private meanings. Everything hinges on the plot and all of the emotional impact (the film packs a wallop) depends on the way that the plot hangs together. I didn't really recognize this the first time I saw it, but this time I noticed just how brilliantly crafted the script is. It's a small marvel of intrigue and cleverness. As I said, it's also a very moving film and works on all levels with characters that cannot help but make you love them. Don't skip this movie.

I also finally watched Antonioni's L'Eclisse this weekend. It's easily my new favorite of Antonioni's films. If you don't know this director, than you don't know quite how much this means. Antonioni's movies are always near-brilliant, and L'Eclisse completely knocks it out of the park. It's almost a silent film, filled with interior explorations and urban disaffection. The plot is really easy to describe: the main characters (Monica Vitti and Alain Delon) love one another, he chases her, she chases him, and then they kind of get bored with one another. The plot synopsis on IMDb says something about their relationship not working out because he is focused on material gain or somesuch nonsense, but that explanation misses the point of the film completely. L'Eclisse is a movie about wanting to find love and finding out that love isn't what you wanted, or that love doesn't really satisfy. The characters are dominated by their surroundings, their relationship mediated by the spaces they inhabit. It's a fascinating, gorgeous film with what has to be one of the best endings ever put on film.

The Nominees: Part VI of VIII

DAS LEBEN DER ANDEREN (THE LIVES OF OTHERS)

1 Nomination:

Best Foreign Language Film: Germany (Sophie Scholl: the Final Days, Downfall and a win for Nowhere in Africa in 2003)

Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Cast: Ulrich Mühe, Sebastian Koch, Martina Gedeck, Ulrich Tukur

This movie is getting stellar reviews and is considered the one that can beat Pan's Labyrinth for the Foreign Language Oscar. The Del Toro film, of course, has six Oscar nominations and should be pretty much unbeatable, but everyone thought that about Amélie in 2002 and it didn't go home with a trophy (it lost to the far superior No Man's Land). I have yet to see this picture. It's out in Los Angeles, but has not ambled its way to Tallahassee, so though I can barely wait, I guess I will have to.
Will Win: N/A
Might Also Win: Best Foreign Language Film
My Rating: Unranked: Released in 2007.

WATER

1 Nomination:

Best Foreign Language Film: Canada (recent winner for Denys Arcand's The Barbarian Invasions. Canada's other two nominations are also Arcand films: Jesus of Montreal and The Decline of the American Empire)

Director: Deepa Mehta (Earth, Fire, Bollywood/Hollywood, The Republic of Love)
Cast: Sarala, Lisa Ray, Seema Biswas, John Abraham, Waheeda Rehman

This movie is very moving and beautifully shot. It also has a good back-story. The film is part of a series of films by Mehta concerning the four elements. The Academy changed its rules this year for the language of the films in this category. Last year, Italy submitted a film entirely in Aramaic, but it was asked to resubmit because according to the old rules the foreign language had to be one that was actually spoken by a large number of the population of the film's home country. This happened a couple years earlier with the UK as well (they had submitted a British film shot entirely in an Indian language (Urdu? I can't remember.)) At any rate, this year they changed the rules, allowing Canada to submit Water, a film made by Canadian filmmaker Deepa Mehta and shot almost entirely in Hindi.
Will Win: N/A
Might Also Win: N/A
My Rating: #7 of 71

EFTER BRYLLUPPET (AFTER THE WEDDING)

1 Nomination:

Best Foreign Language Film: Denmark (two wins in the 1980s—Babette's Feast and Pelle the Conqueror, but nothing in the last fifteen years)

Director: Susanne Bier (Brothers)
Cast: Mads Mikkelsen, Rolf Lassgård, Sidse Babett Knudsen

Bier's previous movie was a moody war drama of which a lot of people were fond. I wasn't particularly enamored, but it did star the lovely Connie Nielsen. This film is supposedly excellent (it ought to be, since it beat out Volver for a nomination in this category). It probably doesn't have much of a chance of winning, but this nomination ensures a pretty kind reception by movie-goers when it is eventually released in theatres in this country.
Will Win: N/A
Might Also Win: N/A
My Rating: Unranked: Released in 2007.

INDIGÈNES (DAYS OF GLORY)

1 Nomination:

Best Foreign Language Film: Algeria (Dust of Life ['96], Le Bal ['84], and a win in 1970 for Costa-Gavras's Z)

Director: Rachid Bouchareb (Little Senegal, Dust of Life)
Cast: Jamel Debbouze, Samy Naceri, Roschdy Zem, Sami Bouajila

I know next to nothing about this film except that it's a WWII movie. You know how the Academy loves its WWII dramas. This probably won't translate to a win for Algeria, but it's nice to see Bouchareb get another nomination. Again, I hope this movie is really good, because it beat out the magnificent Volver for a nomination.
Will Win: N/A
Might Also Win: N/A
My Rating: Unranked: Released in 2007.

THE BLACK DAHLIA

1 Nomination:

Best Cinematography: Vilmos Zsigmond (The River, The Deer Hunter, and a trophy for Close Encounters of the Third Kind)

Director: Brian De Palma (Mission to Mars, Snake Eyes, Mission: Impossible, The Bonfire of the Vanities, The Untouchables, Scarface, Carrie)
Cast: Josh Hartnett, Aaron Eckhart, Scarlett Johanssen, Hilary Swank, Mia Kirshner, Fiona Shaw

This movie, I think, expected a lot more. This film was supposed to be the second coming of the brilliance that was L.A. Confidential. It wasn't. Everyone I know hated this movie, and when I was in Los Angeles last I was listening to a radio program on NPR, where people were calling in trashing this film. The guest on the show was—of all people—head Los Angeles Times critic Kenneth Turan, who had a new book out and was spending a lot of his time trashing on The Black Dahlia. When I finally saw the film, I understood why everyone was so down on the movie, but despite the general hatred for the film. There are very few people who dislike Vilmos Zsigmond. He's a widely respected guy who deserves his nomination, despite the film's many failings.
Will Win: N/A
Might Also Win: N/A
My Rating: #66 of 71