Capsule Critiques - Three Oscar Contenders, Plus One

In recent days, I have caught up with several Oscar contenders, and I now offer some Kwickie Kommentaries on each of them, in alphabetical order.

CODA

 

First off CODA is an acronym that stands for Children of Deaf Adults, and this is a movie about just such a family.  Mom, Dad, Older Brother are all deaf, and high school senior daughter Ruby is the only member of the family who can hear.  She serves as an interpreter an voice for all of her family as they struggle and scrape to make a living with their commercial fishing boat in a small New England fishing community.  It is a hard scrabble existence, and Ruby, who has never done well in school, decides that she wants to try out for the school choir.  Her teacher discovers that she is amazingly talented and encourages her to pursue this talent at a music college in Boston.  Her family, of course, has no idea of how talented she is and can't understand why she wants to do this.

CODA is everything that a movie should be.  It is funny, tender, sad, heartwarming, and ultimately uplifting.  Deaf actors Marlee Matlin and Troy Kotsur play Ruby's parents, and each are nominated for acting Oscars (Lead Actress and Supporting Actor).   Twenty year old Emilia Jones plays Ruby.  She wasn't Oscar nominated, but probably should have been.  She is amazing in this one.

Emilia Jones

Marlee Matlin

Four Stars from The Grandstander.  (Oscar nominated for Best Picture, Lead Actress, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay) 

The French Dispatch

This movie directed by Wes Anderson is not Oscar nominated, but is one that I have long wanted to see, but never got around to in its theatrical release.  It is the story of a fictional New Yorker-style magazine, that is published by a small town Kansas newspaper but written out of a small city in France.   It is about to cease publication when its editor of fifty years, played by Bill Murray, dies.  The movie consists of three separate vignettes of stories published by the magazine.  It has a huge and impressive cast, including Tilda Swinton, Adrian Brody, Frances McDormand, Benicio Del Toro, Owen Wilson, and many others.  I wanted to see it because Saoirse Ronan was in it, but her role was small and almost unnoticeable.  It was quirky in the way that many of Anderson's movies are.  It might get better upon subsequent viewings, but I'm not all that motivated to watch it again.  If you do watch, though, be sure to watch the closing credits.  They're terrific.  Seriously.

Two Stars from The Grandstander.  (No Oscar nominations)

Nightmare Alley

This a very stylishly done noir-ish movie from Oscar winning director Guillermo del Toro that tells the story of the shady and sleazy world of carnival acts that takes place in Depression riddled America.  Bradley Cooper plays a drifter who stumbles into employment among the carnies, hooks up with a mind reading act, and learns the tricks of the grift.  A time jump of two years finds Cooper now a successful act in posh nightclubs, still a con man, only now he wears a tuxedo.  

It is the story of his rise and fall, and it features two terrific performances from Cooper and Cate Blanchett.  The movie is also two and one-half hours long, which is too long by at least thirty minutes.  Doesn't anyone make hour and forty minute movies anymore?

Two and One-Half Stars from The Grandstander.  (Oscar nominated for Best Picture)

Summer of Soul...(Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)

Back in the summer of 1969, the New York City Parks Department sponsored a series of concerts featuring predominantly black singers and musicians.  The concerts took place over several weekends at a public park in Harlem. Tens of thousands of people flocked to each of the  concerts, and all of them were filmed, but he films were never shown, and most people outside of Harlem and New York City weren't even aware that they took place.  Why? One reason might be because at the time another  concert was being staged at a small upstate New York village named Woodstock.

Tonight Show bandleader Questlove has unearthed all of those films and put it together in tis terrific documentary.  Acts such as Steve Wonder, The Fifth Dimension, Gladys Knight, David Ruffin, Hugh Masakela, the Chambers Brothers, Mongo Santamaria, the Edwin Hawkins Singers and many others are seen performing early in their careers and, for many, at the very top of their games.  Questlove also brought back many of the performers to view themselves performing over fifty years later.  Watching Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr tear up as they watched their younger selves on stage was an incredible thing to see.

This movie is an incredible time capsule of a completely unique cultural time in our history

Three and One-half Stars from The Grandstander.  (Oscar nominated for Best Documentary Feature)

*****

I've now seen four of the ten Best picture nominees, and between now and Oscar time in two weeks, I plan on seeing the following nominated films: Belfast, Don't Look Up, and King Richard, and I suppose that I will try to take another crack at watching Power of the Dog, but I'm not all that enthusiastic about doing so.