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Tag Archives: Best Foreign Film

Three New Films. One Is A Must See.

05 Monday Feb 2018

Posted by Richard in Escapes and Pleasures

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Tags

" Daniel Day-Lewis, "A Fantastic Woman", "Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool", "Lady Macbeth", "Phantom Thread", "The Shape of Water", Academy Award Nominations, Best Foreign Film, Best Movies, Daniela Vega, DC Cinema Club, Doug Jones, Films, Franciso Reyes, Guillermo del Toro, Michael Shannon, Movies, Octavia Spence, Sally Hawkins, Vicky Krieps

Film reviews by Ellen Miller.

The Shape of Water – Ellen ***** (Richard Didn’t See it)

Wonderful. Engrossing. Clever. Satisfying.

Take a deep sigh, hold your breath, and submerge yourself into a theater playing this film. Just sink into the world created by the Mexican director Guillermo del Toro. This fantasy — which I had been putting off seeing because those sorts of movies are just not my thing — is thoroughly moving and enjoyable. It’s also very creative and clever with superb acting. It well-deserves its Best Picture (and 12 other Oscar nominations) for which it is nominated.

When summarized, the story seems odd and off-putting, but as it unfolds on the screen, it’s not: a young, mute lonely woman, Elisa (Sally Hawkins), is a building cleaner at a super secretive government laboratory when she discovers a captive Amazonian human-like sea creature that is being held for unknown, but presumably experimental purposes. She extends herself to it, and it responds to her. The time is 1962 and the Russians want to steal it from the US who has it locked in a top secret laboratory. She needs to save the creature from both of them. She has two friends who will help. One small warning: there are a few gruesome scenes, but they only add to the surrealism of the film. Don’t be turned off by the plot.

The film is filled with fascinating characters and wonderful acting, from Hawkins herself to Octavia Spence, Doug Jones, and Michael Shannon. The staging is so richly detailed you want to disappear into it. My advice is just to given into it and cheer for our heroine. Let the film wash over you. You won’t regret it.

(Sorry about the play on words but I couldn’t resist…)

A Fantastic Woman – Ellen **** Richard ****

What I love about the DC Cinema Club is that we see films we might not otherwise left to our own choosing. That’s definitely the case with A Fantastic Woman. What you see is not what you get in this film.

It is a very sympathetic and sometimes heart-wrenching portrayal of a trans woman and the struggles she faces to become the woman she is as well as how she moves forward after losing her lover. There are wonderful cinematic moments to illustrate her struggles and terrific acting throughout. Daniela Vega (Marina) has been nominated for an academy award for her performance and the film has been nominated in the Best Foreign Film Category.

Marina is a singer and a waitress in a coffee shop and she is in a relationship with Orlando (Francisco Reyes), a man two decades her senior. One evening he falls ill and dies and the drama begins, unfolding slowly with considerable melodrama. His family forbids her from attending his funeral. But she insists on paying tribute to her lover.

The film is a tender love story and a story about the struggle to be true to who you are. It is a tense, well-filmed and emotional drama. It’s worth a see.

Phantom Thread – Ellen **** Richard ****

Another non-mainstream film and even though nominated for a Best Picture Award, I recommend it somewhat cautiously.

But….

If you like/love looking at Daniel Day Lewis (count me in) it’s a must-see. If you like a story where two unlikable characters clash and the woman “wins” (my view), then this is the picture for you. If you love a film where the actions of the women characters are more manipulative than those of the men, go see this movie. (In this latter style, it reminded me of the 2017 film Lady Macbeth. See my review of that film).

But not a lot happens in this taut psychological drama. Lewis plays a perfection-obsessed famous London-based courtier — Reynolds Woodcock — in the 1950’s. His latest muse is Alma (well-played by Vicky Krieps), a former waitress in a country inn where he had dinner one evening. He dresses her gloriously (though the costuming was less inspiring than I expected). They marry, and his self-centered life is disrupted. When he appears to begin to tire of her, she sets about to prove just how much he needs her.

The film is lit throughout in undertones of beige, rose, and violet, which is very appealing and adds to the overall somber tone of the film and to the relationship between the two protagonists.

Although this film received six various Academy Award Nominations, I’d see this film for Daniel Day Lewis’ performance alone.

**          **          **          **          **          **          **

Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool was rated Excellent or Good by 90+ per cent of our Sunday Cinema Club. We both saw it, but didn’t have time to review it. We both would have rated it four stars.

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Three Foreign Films Worth Your Time

29 Monday Feb 2016

Posted by Richard in Escapes and Pleasures

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Tags

"45 Years", "A War", "Anomalisa", "Brooklyn", "Carol", "Embrace of the Serpent", "Mustang", "Only Yesterday", "RAMS", "Room", "Son of Saul", "Spotight", "The Big Short", "The Bridge of Spies", "The Club", "Trumbo", "Where to Invade Next", Best Foreign Film, Films, Movies, Oscars

So it’s the morning after the Oscars, and most of the expected results indeed occurred. I see no need to add my two cents, particularly as I have already had my say about many of these films.

However, I was pleased to note that we had seen four of the five Best Foreign Film nominees (Son of Saul, the winner, A War, Embrace of the Serpent, and Mustang), only missing Theeb, which I had tried to see but somehow missed. I’ve found that over the years we tend to see more foreign, documentary  and small budget films than mainstream, big studio films, and thus I’ve focused, so to speak, MillersTime film reviews on these.

Anyway, I’ve had this post in the works for a number of days but was delightfully delayed in completing it by the early arrival of a lovely granddaughter (postings on that, no doubt, will be coming).

I thoroughly enjoyed all three of these very different films .

Embrace of the Serpent****1/2

Embrace2

A wonderful and unusual film about the Colombian Amazon, inspired by the journals of two early 20th century explorers. The story focuses on an Amazonian shaman, who may be the last survivor of his people.

The first part is the story of the young shaman (Karakate) and a very sick German scientist who needs a particular healing plant to stay alive. The second half of the film takes place 40 years later when Karakate (then an old man who is losing his memory) meets a second scientist who is looking for the same plant.

In what almost seems like a documentary (it is not), we see the Amazon largely through the eyes, mind, and life of Karakate. One of the beauties of this film is that it is colonialism as seen through the eyes of the indigenous population.

But it is the filming of Embrace of the Serpent, done largely in black and white, that leads to my high rating above. It felt as if we were in the Amazon a hundred years ago.

(About three-quarters of our film club thought the film was good or excellent and 80% would recommend it to a friend.)

Son of Saul****1/2

son

Another Holocaust film?

Yes.

Someone said there are at least six million Holocaust stories.

What makes this one different from many of the others is that it is told through the perspective of one concentration camp prisoner. The camera rarely leaves the face or presence of this man Saul, a Sonderkommando, a Hungarian Jewish prisoner whose job it is to assist in the herding of prisoners into the gas chambers and disposing of their remains.

Saul seeks to find a rabbi to give a young boy, who may or may not be his son, a proper burial. This is an almost impossible task but one that Saul undertakes with a fierceness that is unrelenting. At the same time, other prisoners are trying to convince him to join a fruitless rebellion against their captors. He largely ignores their efforts to engage him in actions.

The usual scenes of the horrors of camps such as Auschwitz-Birkenau (where this film takes place) are only barely visible in the background. But that somehow only seems to increase the horror. The film is shot in a square picture format and not in the usual wide screen format, and that too adds to the uniqueness of this film.

Directed by Laszlo Nemes, his first film, co-written with Clara Royes, and starring Geza Rohrig, the film is different from most other Holocaust films, and it is riveting.

Last night, it won the the Oscar for Best Foreign Film.

A War****

awar

The particular war in this film is one that takes place in Afghanistan, tho the title A War suggests a universal theme.

The particular story focuses on a Danish company commander, Claus Pederson, and his struggles to lead his men on a particularly difficult peace keeping mission. Meanwhile, his wife struggles to keep their family together at home as their three kids miss their father. The film flips back and forth between these two struggles.

When Claus makes a decision in the midst of battle that leads to the death of 11 civilians (eight of whom are children), their stories come together as Claus is sent home to face a courtroom trial.

Enough said.

This film is one that begs for discussion. And I’d love to talk about it with any of you who may have seen it or do see it.

(Our Sunday cinema club gave A War an excellent/good rating of 89.41% and the recommend rate was above 90%.)

**          **          **          **          **          **          **          **

In addition to the three films above, I’ve noticed that many of the films we saw in our movie club, in the Philly Film Festival, and a few others we saw and rated last year are now out and in the theaters. (Those below in red italics are linked to mini-reviews I wrote in earlier posts.)

Anomalisa ***

The Big Short ****

Bridge of Spies ****1/2 

Brooklyn ****1/2

Carol ***1/2

The Club****

45 Years***1/2

Mustang****

RAMS ****1/2

Room****

Spotlight*****

Trumbo***1/2

Where to Invade Next***

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