Drumline (2002)

  Odds are looking pretty grim for me getting to see Whiplash before the Oscar ceremony.  Netflix doesn't have it getting released until Feb 24, two days too late.  But this is almost the same thing, right?  Young drum prodigy is pushed to achieve his fullest potential by an obsessively demanding mentor?  Totally the same movie.

It would have to be an alternate fucking universe for this movie to be nominated for five Academy awards, though.  The plot is a juvenile retread of an already worn-out tale that does nothing to elevate itself.  Nick Cannon contorts his face into various caricatures of expressions and calls it acting while Leonard Roberts glowers non-stop.  This was still very early in Zoe Saldana's career, so she can be forgiven and Orlando Jones is solid, as usual.

Devon Miles (Nick Cannon) is offered a scholarship to a prestigious Atlanta college based on his drumming ability.  Once there, however, the cocky young upstart soon finds himself at odds with his section leader (Leonard Roberts) for his inability to work within a team.  The college president (Afemo Omilami) likes Devon's flair for the dramatic, seeing it as a way to raise flagging alumni interest despite the objections of the band director (Orlando Jones), who wants to focus on musicianship instead of pandering to popular opinion.

Let's face it, nobody is watching this film for its riveting portrayal of college marching band dynamics.  They're watching for the jaw-dropping precision of the final product:  the performances.  And there are some fantastic ones in here.  Unfortunately, they are buried beneath a lead weight of bad acting, bad dialogue, and extraneous scenes that do nothing to further the plot.  Throw this title right on top of the "Avoid At All Costs" pile.

The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014)

Nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Film Editing, Best Original Score, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Hair and Makeup, and Best Production Design    I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this film, considering how indifferent I was to Wes Anderson's last offering, Moonrise Kingdom.  I am generally not a fan of quirk for quirk's sake, but it seemed to work here, conveying the zany low-brow hijinks of high-brow people.  Like an episode of Frasier shot in pastels.

A writer (Tom Wilkinson) is reflecting on having stayed at a once grand resort as a young man (Jude Law) and interviewing the mysterious owner, Mr. Zero Moustafa (F. Murray Abraham) about his life.   Zero started out as a lobby boy (Tony Revolori) at The Grand Budapest in the intermediary period between the World Wars.  His boss and mentor was the legendary M. Gustave (Ralph Fiennes), a highly cultured concierge who had a thing for wealthy ancient widows.  One such venerable lady (Tilda Swinton) wills him a very valuable painting, pissing off her son, Dmitri (Adrian Brody), who hates M. Gustave.  Dmitri sends his goon, Jopling (Willem Dafoe) to recover the painting by any means necessary.

There is a lot more running around than that but you get the gist.  In fact, there's so much going on in this movie that I'll probably have to watch it several more times in order to get all the jokes.

This is the second score Alexandre Desplat is nominated for (the other is The Imitation Game) and I think this might be the better one.  Production Design and Cinematography are both excellent.  The whole movie feels like a frosted cake.  Compared to its other nominees for Costume and Makeup, I don't feel like it's a winner, but both aspects are well done.  The only way this movie is winning Best Picture or Best Director is if the other ballots are equally divided between Boyhood and Birdman.

Selma (2014)

Nominated for Best Picture and Best Original Song    More than any other film nominated this year, Selma has sparked controversy.  Coming on the heels of riots in Ferguson, Missouri, as well as media focus and backlash on the treatment of black suspects by white police officers, there was no denying that this movie was a timely reflection of our past and present. 

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (David Oyelowo) is getting no real traction with the Equal Rights movement, despite the historic march on Washington, D.C.  His meetings with President Lyndon B. Johnson (Tom Wilkinson) aren't providing any progress and, unbeknownst to him, the FBI is tracking his every move, even going so far as to harass his family with vaguely threatening phone calls.  Dr. King decides to have a march from Selma, AL to the state's capital in Montgomery in order to raise awareness of the lack of voting rights and Jim Crow laws preventing African Americans from participating in their legal voting process.  Standing in his way is Alabama governor George Wallace (Tim Roth) and a century of oppression.

I wish I could say this was the Best Picture of the year.  Unfortunately, I think the hype surrounding its snub from the Best Actor and Best Director categories can only hurt its chances.  It is a good movie, but it is just a little too close in casting to Lee Daniels' The Butler from last year.  David Oyelowo does a phenomenal job in looking and sounding like Martin Luther King, but that's not enough to make up for the fact that the plot is trying to pull together too many elements instead of focusing on just one or two.

Drowning Mona (2000)

  Mona Dearly (Bette Midler) was not well-loved.  So when her Yugo plunges off a cliff into the river, the entire town is ready to pop the champagne.  But Sheriff Rash (Danny DeVito) doesn't believe that Mona's death was an accident.  He starts investigating and discovers numerous people wanted the caustic matriarch dead, including her husband (William Fichtner) who is having an affair with a local waitress (Jamie Lee Curtis), her son (Marcus Thomas) who is business partnered with Rash's soon to be son-in-law, Bobby (Casey Affleck).  As suspicion and fear worm their ways through the town, old secrets of all kinds begin to emerge.

This is almost exactly like the 2011 critical favorite Bernie, except that its not based on a true story.  Drowning Mona is also presented much more as a mystery comedy, even though the culprit is telegraphed almost immediately.  I generally find that boring, but it had enough comedy between the characters that I didn't want to just hit fast forward to the credits.  The weakest link is probably Neve Campbell, whose effervescent schoolgirl routine fell flat for me.

This is definitely a mid-range comedy, the kind that comes on late at night on family cable networks like USA.  I can't imagine buying it but it didn't make me want to throw myself off a cliff, so there's that.

Ida (2013)

Nominated for Best Foreign Film and Best Cinematography

"Ida (2013 film)" by Source (WP:NFCC#4). Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia.

That might be the first (and possibly only) time I've ever actually sourced a poster.  Usually, I just drag and drop but I'm on a different computer right now so I had to use HTML.  

Anyway, this is my first foray into the Oscar's foreign film selections this year.  This is probably my second favorite category, behind Best Animated Film.  I always find it interesting which films are submitted by their respective countries.  For some reason, I find foreign dramas more palatable than American ones.  Maybe because so many American films fall into melodramatic tropes rather than just telling a story.  

Anna (Agata Trzebuchowska) is a novitiate, or nun-in-training, at a convent in Poland where she has lived since being placed there as an orphaned baby.  She is due to take her final vows in a week, when the Mother Superior (Halina Skoczynska) delicately informs her that she has a living relative, an aunt, and that Anna should probably go visit her before making a life-altering decision.  Anna agrees, despite her reservations against seeing a woman who refused to claim her.  Her aunt, Wanda (Agata Kulesza), is a judge under the socialist government in place after WWII.  She is also a bitter, chain-smoking alcoholic who is not terribly thrilled to see that her niece is a staunch Catholic.  See, Anna's birth name is Ida Lebenstein and she's Jewish.  That would be enough of a bombshell for anyone, but Wanda goes on to tell her that her parents were murdered by Nazis and no one knows where they are buried.  Ida née Anna must then decide who she is and who she wants to be.

Netflix referred to this movie as "understated," which translates to boring for the vast majority of people.  It is subtitled, filmed entirely in black and white, and concerns themes of grief, identity, and self-determination.  I don't want to scare anyone off the film, because I found it very accessible, but I think you should know all of this before going in.  

On a side note, it's nice to see the Academy finally moving beyond their obsession with WWII.  Yes, this does still tangentially reference the Nazi occupation, but it is set twenty years later and doesn't feature so much as a flashback.  This allows so much more freedom to deal with the long-term psychological effects of war, not just the immediate trauma.  Wanda is scarred by her experiences, burdened by grief and anger.  Ida is aware of this but cannot intuit enough to be sympathetic simply because she lacks commiserate experience.  How can she mourn people she never met?  She knows that what happened to her parents was tragic but she cannot feel their loss the way Wanda can.  But, the more she is around her aunt, the more she can imagine what her family would have been like, forging a connection to a past she never knew she had.  

Typically, I concern myself with stories and characters and not the technical aspects of film-making.  I just don't know enough about it to feel comfortable passing more than the most general of judgments.  I will say that the cinematography did jump out at me due to the fixation of the action towards the bottom of the screen.  There were vast amounts of white space arching over the heads of the characters, especially Ida, and it kept making me wonder why.  Was it conveying saintliness?  An openness of spirit?  Emotional blankness?  I couldn't decide.  But I did notice and it did make me think, so maybe that's the point.  Again, I'm not technical so I can't say with any certainty.

Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999)

  This is one of those comedies that just gets better with age.  For instance, when I first saw this back in 2005 or 2006, I had no idea who Amy Adams was, so I never noticed her in this movie.  Seeing it again, I am pleasantly surprised to find her there, like she just snuck in at some point in the last decade.

A documentary crew travels to a small Minnesota town to do a piece on the levels within a national beauty pageant by filming local candidates.  Among these hopefuls is unassuming sweetheart Amber Adkins (Kirsten Dunst).  Amber wants to be a newscaster like her idol, Diane Sawyer, and hopes to win a scholarship.  But she faces stiff competition from the town's reigning princess, Rebecca Leeman (Denise Richards), whose mother (Kirstie Allie) is running the pageant and whose father (Sam McMurray) practically runs the town.  The documentary crew also catches footage of strange accidents that seem to befall some of the contestants, and begin to think that a more sinister conspiracy is afoot.

This is one of those movies that I never think about buying when I'm out, but that I kind of wish I owned.  If only because it is so hard to find a good mockumentary.  Everything in this film is pitch perfect, from the main performances down to the smallest part.  Allison Janney is amazing and if you only know Mindy Sterling as Frau Farbissina from the Austin Powers movies, you really need to check her out here.

Virunga (2014)

Nominated for Best Documentary Feature    I know that the documentaries are going to either make me really sad or really angry.  This was a little of both.  Parts of this film are so breathtakingly lovely they could have been lifted from National Geographic.  Then there are shots of utter brutality against animals and innocent civilians just trying to make a living.  This dichotomy seems symbolic of the region as a whole.

Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo is the last known habitat for mountain gorillas in the world.  The park has been doing well since a peace agreement halted the on-going civil war, opening up for tourism and raising awareness of the natural beauty that is at risk.  The park's rangers risk life and limb fighting against poachers of elephant ivory, lion skins, and baby gorillas being sold on the black market.  There is a refuge/rehabilitation area for orphaned gorillas, staffed by volunteers who care for these animals as if they were family.  In 2013, a British oil company called SOCO began sending representatives (read:  mercenaries) into the park as a precursor to assay for oil.  While they have publicly stated that their aim is not to destabilize the region, this documentary uses hidden cameras to meet with several SOCO representatives to learn that they are obliquely funding rebel groups and leveraging corrupt officials to revoke the park's protected status.

I tend to not make calls to action but I really do believe in the conservation of endangered species.    The documentary is streaming on Netflix, so you can check it out for yourself.  If, after that, you'd like to donate to the park, please go to www.virunga.org/donate.  One day, after we've reached the Dawn of the Planet of the Apes stage, maybe this kindness will be repaid.