Oscar Nominees 2014: Part 10 of 14

La Grande Bellezza (The Great Beauty)

1 Nomination

• Foreign Language Film: Italy (Don't Tell, Life Is Beautiful, The Starmaker, Mediteranneo, Open Doors, Cinema Paradiso, The Family, Three Brothers, To Forget Venice, Viva Italia!, A Special Day, Seven Beauties, Scent of a Woman, Amarcord, Investigation of a Citizen above Suspicion, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, Girl with a Pistol, The Battle of Algiers, Marriage Italian Style, Yesterday Today and Tomorrow, 8 1/2, The Four Days of Naples, The Great War, Kapò, Big Deal on Madonna Street, Nights of Cabiria, La Strada, The Bicycle Thief, The Walls of Malapaga, Shoeshine)

Director: Paolo Sorrentino

Cast: Toni Servillo, Sabrina Ferilli, Carlo Verdone, Galatea Ranzi, Pamela Villoresi, Carlo Buccirosso, Iaia Forte, Giovanna Vignola, Giusi Merli, Sonia Gessner, Luca Marinelli

I have written about this enough times, I suppose. It is the best movie of the year, and there is simply nothing like it. I have even seen it a second time. I had a chance to see the film in the local IMAX theatre and I jumped at the chance. It hit me just as hard the second time, and my friends and I talked about it for days afterward. You will notice that Italy's previous nominations include films by Fellini, Tornatore, De Sica, Pontecorvo, Risi, Monicelli, and Scola (but strangely not Antonioni, Bertolucci, or Bellocchio): Sorrentino is in good company. And if some of the Italian masters have been left off of this list, the film to which La Grande Bellezza has most often been compared is La Dolce Vita, which also missed out on a Best Foreign Language Oscar nomination. In who's-going-to-win news, they just recently changed the rules for voting for the winner of this Oscar. Formerly, an Academy member had to see all five of the nominees in order to vote for the winner. This is no longer the case, which means that voting for the winner of Best Foreign Language film will follow the same type of group-think as the rest of the winners. This year, however, that means that the best film of the year in any language will win Best Foreign Language picture.

Will Win: Foreign Language Film

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #1 out of 81

The Broken Circle Breakdown

1 Nomination

• Foreign Language Film: Belgium (Bullhead, Everybody's Famous, Farinelli: il Castrato, Daens, The Music Teacher, Peace in the Fields)

Director: Felix Van Groeningen

Cast: Johan Heldenbergh, Veerle Baetens, Nell Cattrysse

This is Belgium's second recent nomination (their most recent was the totally awesome Bullhead – check it out). I haven't seen this picture yet, but Netflix assures me it will be out on DVD on the eleventh of March, a good nine days late for the Oscars. So I will see it then, I suppose. I can tell you that this is a melodrama about a relationship between a bluegrass musician – the film is filled with Bluegrass music, in English no less – and a tattoo artist. It is based on a play by Heldenbergh and Mieke Dobbels, and Van Groeningen's film was nominated for six European film awards where Veerle Baetens won Best Actress. The film was also nominated for Best Foreign Language film at the Césars. You can watch the trailer here.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: Foreign Language Film

My Rating: Not ranked

Omar (عمر)

1 Nomination

• Foreign Language Film: Palestine (Paradise Now)

Director: Hany Abu-Assad

Cast: Adam Bakri, Waleed Zuaiter, Leem Lubany, Baher Agbariya, Majd Bitar, Walid Abed Elsalam, David Gerson

Here's another one I haven't seen. This is Hany Abu-Assad's second nomination in this category, but the film looks, well to be honest, it doesn't look all that great. You can watch the trailer here. Omar played at Cannes in 2013 and will be released in the U.S. on the 21st. The poster features the back of Omar's head as he kisses his love-interest in the film, and above their heads are the words "An incredible love story". Apparently, they are assuming we won't watch the trailer so that we can know what the film is actually about. Actually, if you're feeling like you probably will see this film, take my advice and don't watch the trailer. It gives way too much away.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: Not ranked

L'Image Manquante (The Missing Picture)

1 Nomination

• Foreign Language Film: Cambodia

Director: Rithy Panh

Cast: Randal Douc

This is Cambodia's first nomination ever, and it is very exciting for another reason, too. L'Image Manquante is a documentary about atrocities perpetuated by the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s, and this is the first time in a very long time that a documentary has been nominated for Best Foreign Language film. This is a huge deal all around. I don't think the film can win, but this nomination does demonstrate the Academy's interest in cinema from all parts of the globe. This was never in doubt, really, but there has not been a film from the Asian mainland nominated in this category for over five years. The Academy has for the last twenty years consistently ignored submissions by India, South Korea, Vietnam, China, even Hong Kong. I am not saying this is instantly going to change, but this nomination is a step in the right direction. The film is slated for release stateside on March nineteenth. You can see the trailer here.
Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: Not ranked

Jagten (The Hunt)

1 Nomination

• Foreign Language Film: Denmark (A Royal Affair, In a Better World, After the Wedding, Waltzing Regitze, Pelle the Conqueror, Babette's Feast, Harry and the Butler, Paw, Qivitoq)

Director: Thomas Vinterberg

Cast: Mads Mikkelsen, Annika Wedderkopp, Thomas Bo Larsen, Susse Wold, Anne Louise Hassing, Alexandra Rapaport, Lasse Fogelstrøm

Mads Mikkelsen has starred in three of the last four nominees for Denmark in this category. Apparently it is a winning combination. Obviously, Mikkelsen is a big star, and this goes a long way to making this film as good as it is and in it getting this nomination. In fact, though, the high quality of Jagten has as much to do with the legendary director of the first Dogme 95 film, Thomas Vinterberg, as it does with Mikkelsen. Jagten is a kind of Arthur Miller's The Crucible for the twenty-first century. It is a terrifying, nail-biting witchhunt, that drove me and my roommate absolutely nuts watching it. One wants to scream at the movie screen. This film gets its hooks into you and then drags you around for a little bit. This is excellent, unsparing filmmaking, and it is totally in line with Vinterberg's other work. Denmark has won this award recently, though – for Susanne Bier's 2010 In a Better World (a much-deserved win) – and it won't be taking home the trophy this year unless there is an enormous upset.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: Foreign Language Film

My Rating: #19 out of 81

Telluride at Dartmouth #2

Last night's film was Nikolaj Arcel's A Royal Affair (in Danish – En Kongelig Affære) which stars Mads Mikkelsen (who you might recognize as the villain Le Chiffre from the Bond-movie Casino Royale, but who is much more important as the brother Jacob in Susanne Bier's After the Wedding).

A Royal Affair also stars Alicia Vikander and (in an amazing performance) Mikkel Boe Følsgaard as Denmark's King Christian VII. Arcel's film is a beautiful costume-piece, a historical epic about 18th-century Denmark and the country's movement towards the Enlightenment, greater freedoms for its citizenry, and the end of serfdom.

The film's main character is the Christian's queen Caroline, who was an English royal, sent to Denmark as the King's bride. The King, as it turns out, is either insane or incredibly moody, and the Queen's life is decidedly unhappy.

Mikkelsen plays an avid reader of Voltaire and Rousseau who is also a surgeon. He becomes, through a series of intrigues, Christian's personal physician, and comes to the palace in Copenhagen to live. Drama ensues as the Queen and the doctor begin to fall in love and the King becomes more and more ill. The Enlightenment, of course, also has its enemies, and even if the two were not in love, they would have been targeted by other forces among the nobility and the church. The stakes are quite high, indeed.

Arcel films this story like one of the French historical epics from the 1980s – something like Bruno Nuytten's Camille Claudel or Patrice Chéreau's La Reine Margot or one of the Jean-Paul Rappeneau historical epics (films like The Horseman on the Roof or Cyrano de Bergerac). A Royal Affair is much better made than a film like Jean-Marc Vallée's The Young Victoria.

Denmark has not, of late, selected films like this as its submission for the Foreign Language Film Oscar, but this may be the year, depending on how good this year's Susanne Bier movie is. (We find out tomorrow, September 18th, in any case.)

I found A Royal Affair quite moving. Its subjects are fascinating, its costumes are gorgeous (I cannot imagine it not getting an Oscar nomination for this. I mean, if Anonymous can get one...), and the acting is wonderful. I was a fan.

So Foreign

Last year I didn't manage to see all five films that were nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. This happens not infrequently, obviously, as many films don't find a release in the United States even if they do manage to snag an Academy Award nomination. So, last night I finally saw the last of the five and I thought I would cover these films briefly.

I rated Biuitiful my favorite film of 2010. I found it deeply moving, with a central performance by Javier Bardem that is simply incredible. This is another of 2010's films about parenting, and like the others (The Kids Are All Right, The Illusionist, Mother and Child) I felt like Biuitiful really connected to me in terms of where  I see myself right now. Biutiful is very similar in tone and style to Alejandro González Iñárritu's other films, but where those films don't quite work all the way, Biutiful works in every way. It has a sense of the mystical about it, the interconnectedness of things on a spiritual plane, but even more importantly – though both part of Iñárritu's project – a sense of the global, that the small choices we make can affect profoundly the lives of others. Biutiful manages to be about Chinese migrant workers and Senegalese migrant workers at the same time as it is about dying of cancer, discovering one's relationship to one's father. It does all of this extremely well. I have heard that this film is hard to sit through for some. I had precisely the opposite experience. I found the entire thing exhilarating.

I am not sure what Dogtooth is about any more than you will be if you get to watch it. It's incredibly violent, but it's also, well, frankly, bizarre. I found it very, very interesting. And if it didn't quite make sense to me in terms of plot or theme or whatever other so-called Aristotelian aspects a narrative is supposed to have, Dogtooth made for compelling viewing and I would definitely watch this again before watching, say, The King's Speech again. I've written more about this movie here, so I'll shut up about it now.

Hors la Loi is a movie by Rachid Bouchareb starring his usual trio of Sami Bouajila, Roschdy Zem, and Jamel Debbouze. I don't think I'm ever going to be very interested in Jamel Debbouze (I guess I'll never get his performance in Amélie out of my head), but Roschdy Zem is great in this and I am a little obsessed with Sami Bouajila. I think he is just brilliant. Hors la Loi is about the fight for Algerian independence on French soil. I didn't know this before the film, but during the Algerian struggle for independence from France, an Algerian party also planned and executed many terrorist attacks on French soil itself. This is what Hors la Loi covers. The trouble is... Bouchareb can't help but make everything sentimental. The movie spends long periods of time attempting to pluck at the heartstrings instead of simply trying to tell the story. The movie wants to be a kind of neo-noir gangster film at many points, and it is here where Hors la Loi works best. But Bouchareb is constantly distracted by a desire to also make an inspiring historical epic that has a giant emotional impact. So he romanticizes and sentimentalizes and by the end of the film I was mostly just frustrated at all of the emotional manipulation the film manages to do. The men creating the revolution aren't sentimental, so why must Bouchareb continually look at them with a sentimental eye?

I thought Incendies was a bit of a fail, as well. It is well acted, and I was with the film for about its first hour. The movie jumps back and forth between Lebanon in the 1970s and Canada in 2009, when a pair of twins is trying to figure out what happened to their mother a quarter of a century earlier. Incendies is based on a novel that I haven't read, but my main thought about this film is that it misses the story of the mother because of its need to include the story of the children. Every bit of the mother's story in Lebanon in the 1970s is utterly fascinating. Every bit of it. And every time the film jumped back to the twenty-first century I felt myself fidget in my seat. Villeneuve also makes the film into a mystery. We do not know what happened, so we must figure it out. But mysteries only work if you hide what happened well enough. Because the film jumps back and forth, we frequently know what happened before the onscreen detectives figure it out. This simply does not work, and I couldn't help but think that there was a really interesting story in here somewhere if only the novel had been adapted differently.

I loved this movie. In Another World is a Danish film by Susanne Bier (she has made at least one English-language movie now), and, like her other films, this film packs a huge emotional wallop. The movie is about violence in Africa and in Denmark both. In Denmark, the film follows the violence of adolescents as they try to figure out how to seek revenge or end a chain of violence. The film asks all kinds of interesting ethical questions about how we train our children, how important it is to be "strong" in front of them, and how best to respond to violence committed against us. This is a film about parenting, too, of course (there I go again), but even more importantly it is a movie about being a responsible citizen of the world - in the same way that Biutiful is, really. In Another World is a real achievement; it's compelling from start to finish; and it manages to unpack all sorts of questions about domestic terrorism, violent impulses, and revenge. Definitely worth seeing.

2011's Nominees: Part 7 of 12

ANIMAL KINGDOM

1 Nomination:

  · Best Supporting Actress: Jacki Weaver

Director: David Michôd
Cast: James Frecheville, Jacki Weaver, Ben Mendelsohn, Guy Pearce, Joel Edgerton, Luke Ford, Sullivan Stapleton

 
I have written about this film here. I have felt compelled to write about it mostly because I didn't particularly care for it, though it was reviewed very well by critics here and in Australia. As for Weaver's nomination, I am delighted for her. This is her big break in the States, and it is nice to see a working actress – someone who has made a career playing character parts – get bigtime recognition like this. I hope she is having a great time.


Will Win: N/A
Might Win: N/A
My Rating: #40 out of 45

INCENDIES

1 Nomination:

  · Best Foreign Language Film: Canada (The Barbarian Invasions, Water)

Director: Denis Villeneuve
Cast: Lubna Azabal, Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin, Rémy Girard, Maxim Gaudette

 
I haven't seen this picture and it won't be released until April, but you can watch the trailer here. I don't expect this to win the Oscar, either.


Will Win: N/A
Might Win: N/A
My Rating: Released in 2011

IN A BETTER WORLD

1 Nomination:

  · Best Foreign Language Film: Denmark (After the Wedding)

Director: Susanne Bier
Cast: Ulrich Thomsen, Mikael Persbrandt, Trine Dyrholm, William Jøhnk Juels Nielsen, Wil Johnson

 
I love Susanne Bier's movies, and I was surprised to see this here because I thought she was exclusively making movies in the U.S. these days (Things We Lost in the Fire was her debut here, and it is excellent.) Her After the Wedding was nominated in this category before and her Brothers was remade into a movie with Jake Gyllenhaal and Tobey Maguire (I skipped the remake). Bier's films are explorations of deep trauma and the three I've seen depend heavily on powerfully emotional acting and honest writing. You can read my review of Things here. At any rate, this will not be released until later in 2011, but until then, we can all watch the trailer here. I expect lots of heavy emotionality and some really hard questions.
 
Will Win: N/A
Might Win: Foreign Language Film
My Rating: Released in 2011

Things We Lost in the Fire

I took some time out to watch a movie this afternoon. I am so behind on my 2008 movies! So I watched one of the Netflix DVDs that have been sitting on my TV table for the last three months:

Last year's Things We Lost in the Fire is the first English-language film by Danish director Susanne Bier. (If you look at my list for 2007, you will see her other 2007 feature After the Wedding hanging out at #11. Briefly, I found After the Wedding to be a powerfully moving meditation on death, doing the right thing and parental responsibility. Quite frankly, I loved it, and I feel that it fully deserved its Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language film.)

Things We Lost in the Fire retains all of what I love about Bier. The film stars Halle Berry and Benicio Del Toro as the wife and best friend of a man who has recently died. It's a very intelligent film about themes similar to After the Wedding. Fire centers around fascinating, quirky characters dealing with deep grief and attempting to cope with one another in addition to their loss.

The film is superbly acted, and Bier has a way with Realistic storytelling that gives us just enough to keep us riveted to the story without having to wallow in self-pity or sentimentality. The most moving scene in the film is actually one of the film's happiest. The family go around the table remembering things and quizzing one another on what they remember about their absent father/husband/friend. It's an incredible scene: totally simple and at the same time devastating.

I think what I like most about Bier's movies, though, is their intelligence. In its meditations on addiction and parenthood, Fire is a very smart film. Bier never takes the easy way out with her narratives. These lives have been disrupted by an act of violence and her film knows that things don't just go back to normal ever. But what Things We Lost in the Fire does give us—and what After the Wedding gives us, too—is the hope that human connection can help us cope with life's many tragedies. Things aren't going to be perfect, but they can be better.

After the Wedding

I saw Susanne Bier's film After the Wedding (Efter Brylluppet) two months ago and I loved it, but for some reason, I didn't post anything about this intriguing melodrama from Denmark. So since my friend Karen recently saw the picture, I figured we could have a discussion about the movie and then I would post our conversation as my review of the film:

Beware of Spoilers

Karen: Wow – not at all what I expected. We just finished this and here’s my immediate impression. This is a men’s story. It’s about the way they mess up even when they are trying to do right and love the people they’re hurting. Jacob – he thought Helene would come back and so he let her slip away. He hurts the Indian boy by not keeping his promise to be there for the birthday. Jørgen – what a control freak. It doesn’t occur to him that his wife and daughter might want to share in the decisions he’s making for them after he’s gone. He tears Jacob from the life he’s created – I raised your daughter, raise my sons. The women (and children) are there, and they are loved by these men, but it’s about the men. And they’re good men who are trying to do right. Except the asshole son-in-law. Who cheats during the first week of marriage? Please. What was that about? I felt this men theme right when the film first started and Jacob was in India. He was talking to that kid and hugged him and I started thinking about how it’s different for men being around kids than it is for women. Trippy camera close-ups of eyes. I gotta go sleep.

Me: Hm. This is a very Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick point of view. I wasn't thinking about maleness so much when I was watching it. It is a really smart movie, though, I think. Jacob has sort-of adopted this boy in India, and then he finds that his place is really in Denmark with his family, but he thinks the boy will want to leave India and go live with him. But no. And I feel like Susanne Bier is on top of that sentiment. Because the West (capital W) is not necessarily better than the "East" (whatever that means). Right?
Sure, Jørgen is making decisions behind his wife's back and that's wrong, of course. But I was so struck by Rolf Lassgård's performance. He's so scared and so human and so sure that what he's decided is right. He's wrong, maybe, but he's trying so hard and he's so fucking terrified. It's an amazing, honest performance and I was incredibly moved. The movie is really a long-form melodrama, something like a Lars von Trier film, I guess. But I found it difficult and interesting and the performances were wonderful.
So I understand your notions of males exchanging females as so much capital, but for me (call me a misogynist if you need to) the film is about male notions of legacy and caretaking and how they fail and work (sometimes) and are inadequate. The men in the film come up short.

Karen: I know I tend to see things through the feminist point of view, but… I thought the “there’s people to help right at home” theme was a unifying thread rather than the main message. The performances were all wonderful and I cried – a lot. And that is the men thing – they want to fix things. To take care of everyone and fix it and make everyone happy and provide for, etc., etc. And I’m not talking about misogyny. I’m talking about men who adore their women and children anddogs and whatever.
Also I think it was the totally right thing for Jacob to do, leaving the boy in his own environment and staying with his family in Denmark, however painful it was. The boy would have been an alien his entire life. And that comment about “I thought you hated those people”– cutting. From the mouths of babes. Jacob thinking that the boy will want to go with him is another unifying thread – he thought Helene would come back to India to be with him. Rolf Lassgård was fabulous, fabulous. Did you understand what I’m trying to say about male legacy and caretaking? I’m not saying it is misogynist. It’s done out of love in this situation. But it’s such a stereotypic male response to problem solving. And in my (feminist) opinion, done with blinders on, in total disregard to what the recipients may want or need. For example, the daughter telling her Dad she needed to know he was dying. He: I didn’t want you to look at me and see a dead man and be sad before you had to. She: How about letting me spend what precious little time we have left together. And his reaction to his wife’s grief when she confronted him after the fishing trip was totally self-centered. And I understand it was his fear. Again, men afraid of expressing their emotions.
Or maybe it’s just two different points of view and I’m imposing my value judgments on it! But I’m telling you, I started getting this message very early in this film. It was shouting to me, not something I mused about and came up with later.

Me: I am a feminist. I totally agree with you. And I think what you're describing as noticing in the film is what we should be terming "misogyny." Male notions of caretaking that disregard female knowledges and input are definitionally misogynistic. I'm not trying to make the film into a feminist film either. I think you were wise to the film more than I was, to be honest. I took the whole film from Jacob's point of view (of course) and so I didn't notice quite so much what you've pointed out. I read Jørgen's behavior as significant and interesting but not as a statement about men generally or a description of typically masculine behavior. I wonder if Bier is as good as you're giving her credit for being. (I hope so.) Have you seen her film Brothers? I think that had a similar exploration of homosocial bonds with the woman in an ancillary position to the male relationships.
I think I'm understanding what you're saying about maleness and notions of caretaking and legacy. For me, all of those things are misogynist ideals: the propagation of male (homosocial) culture, notions of family purity, paternal responsibility, etc.
That scene at the end with the boy is incredible, because of course, the boy is right. As though bringing the boy, whom Jacob obviously loves, to the West is going to solve everything. Of course Jacob wants the boy to come with him, but what makes the film so smart, I think, is that Bier knows that the West isn't the solution. It has its own brand of problems and the way of living in the supposedly advanced West isn't any better necessarily than the way the boy lives at home in India.

Karen: Exactly! We’re on the same page. I do want to see some more of her films. I remember looking them up at one point, but I don’t remember if I put any in my queue.
In Woman in the Dunes there is a feminist interpretation to the film that occurred to me as I was watching it, but I rejected it in favor of larger issues. Then I was watching the essay that comes on the disc and they mentioned it. So I figured I’m not the only rabid feminist out there!

**
Thanks, Karen! I had fun. If this is fun for readers, I will recruit you to do more of these when we both have time. Or if anyone out there wants to have discussions of movies we're both watching, I am game. Comment on this entry or send me an email.

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