The Academy did a nice job this year in honoring foreign language films. Each candidate was wonderful, and we were especially pleased to see The Hunt and The Broken Circle Breakdown get attention. But the fact is, there were so many exceptional foreign language titles released this year, a lot of really wonderful movies didn’t get the nod. And that’s too bad, because without the Academy stamp, they went largely unnoticed in theaters. So, we decided to honor them ourselves. Please enjoy our list of the best foreign language films that did not get an Oscar nomination this year.
1. Gloria
If there’s one thing the films on our list have in common, it’s the strength of their female leads. Nowhere is this more the case than with the Chilean import Gloria. Paulina Garcia owns the title role with a performance that is raw emotion in action. With nary a false note, Garcia takes us on whirlwind coming-of-middle-age tale that never ceases to surprise.
2. Blue is the Warmest Color
Moving at its own pace, the French film packs an emotional wallop as it follows young Adele (Adele Exarchopoulos) through her first affair of the heart. Anchored by Exarchopoulos’s powerhouse performance, and her touching chemistry with co-star Lea Seydoux, Blue is a beautifully human, wildly compelling love story.
3. The Past
Available today on DVD is a poignantly complicated, beautifully told tale of family dysfunction and the constant presence of our past. Blessed with unflinching performances – particularly from a magnificent Berenice Bejo – the wonderfully textured The Past keeps your attention as its mystery slowly unravels before your eyes.
4. Beyond the Hills
A Romanian story of forbidden love, progress and superstition, Beyond the Hills offers an understated and unhurried picture that leaves you shaken. A tale of survival and a displaced generation’s quest for security, the film makes for a beautiful examination of the weird, counter-productive, even dangerous relationship between primitive and modern Romania.
5. A Touch of Sin
That same tug of progress against a backdrop of old world creates the dehumanizing and corrupt environment for Zhangke Jia’s A Touch of Sin. The film dips a toe in four interweaving stories of individuals torn by the too-rapid cultural shift in China. Amid bullet and arterial spray, four beautifully developed characters struggle against their own bleak futures.
We owe a lot to alcohol. Just one example of the gifts booze gives graces our multiplexes and independent cinemas weekly, because nearly every movie theater now contains a bar. This means that audiences who would not spend money on traditional concessions – that is, an older crowd – are more apt to spend their leisure time at the movies. This, in turn, creates more demand for grown up fare onscreen. Not just more character driven or dramatic storytelling, either. Older crowds want to see stories that relate to them, performed by grown-ups, and the financial success of films like The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel only guarantees the trend will continue.
This isn’t always a good thing. For every Amourthere’s a Grudge Match, but at least we get to see an extension on the careers of really talented actors, like Annette Bening and Ed Harris, portraying star-crossed lovers in The Face of Love.
Bening plays Nikki, five years widowed from her beloved husband Garrett (Harris). Her needy, also-widowed neighbor Roger (Robin Williams) hopes to woo her, but she only has eyes for Garrett. Luckily enough, she runs into his doppelganger at an art gallery.
Yes, Garrett’s exact duplicate also lives in LA, visits the same museum, is single and lonely, and falls for Nikki.
The love of your life dies and you meet an exact replica. What do you do?
Is it a universal question or a ridiculous contrivance?
The latter, it turns out, but thanks to the sheer force of talent both Harris and Bening bring to the project, it is hard to turn away.
Harris breaks your heart as the good guy who falls for this mysterious new lady in his life. He’s lucky, though, because his character – a nice guy in for a heartache – is a little easier to play.
Bening’s drawn the shorter straw, but she handles the entire task quite well regardless of the lacking character development on the page. Her uneasy joy, repressed emotion, and fragile calm all help to make the character and her actions feel almost real.
What’s utterly and irredeemably unreal is the plot, co-written by director Arie Posin, along with Matthew McDuffie. But if you drink enough while you’re at the theater, you’ll hardly notice.
High school sucks, but like all harrowing experiences and universal truths, it can lead to valid and valued artistic expression – nearly all modern adolescent literature, for instance.
Whether it’s The Hunger Games, Ender’s Game or the more clearly allegorical Divergent, the story is basically the same: a powerful system requires helpless parents to submit their precious children to bloodsport (high school); cliques are mindless and dangerous; the kid with the most power is a manipulative asshole; only the outcast can ultimately thrive. (Hell, even the magnificent Harry Potter series plays off the same riff.)
While it doesn’t make prom seem very appealing, in the hands of professionals, it can make for a compelling tale.
Director Neil Burger does a lot right with this film. Not everything, but a lot. He’s blessed with a straightforward script that won’t confuse the uninitiated. A hundred years after a great war, the world is broken into factions, each of which match individual personality types (and, to a certain degree, high school cliques): the smart kids (Erudite), the nice kids (Abnegation), the pot heads – I mean, happy, peaceful types (Amity), the honest (Candor), and the brave/fun/bully/popular kids (Dauntless). And then there are the dreaded factionless – a fate worse than death, like unpopularity.
People stay with their faction, and all is peaceful. But unique souls who don’t really fit – divergents – threaten the system.
Divergent also boasts two profound talents: Kate Winslet and Shailene Woodley. Winslet commands respect and awe as leader of the Erudites and general evildoer. Woodley plays our hero, the divergent Tris.
Both performers deserve stronger material, to be honest. While the screenplay, adapted from Veronica Roth’s novel by Evan Daugherty and Vanessa Taylor, offers a fairly smooth streamlining of the story, it too often proves a bit toothless. The strength of the performers helps to compel attention. Woodley’s onscreen chemistry with Theo James as love interest Four gives the film a pulse, and her big-eyed vulnerability makes the sense of loss and longing palpable.
Too bad Berger felt it necessary to include so much exposition. An unfortunate symptom lately of Episodes 1 of a trilogy, Divergent simply takes so long to get to the action that you get bored.
Roth’s source material offers several clever conceits to play with, and both Woodley and Winslet seem game, but Berger can’t quite settle on a tone or a pace. It’s too bad, because comparisons to The Hunger Games are inevitable, and Divergent could easily have become a worthwhile companion to JLaw’s Kickass Quadrilogy. Instead it’s a fun but forgettable way to waste time before the real blockbusters release this summer.
Let’s be honest, film critics love Wes Anderson. How can we help ourselves? An auteur if ever there was one, he owns a style unlike any other, marries whimsy with melancholy, gathers impeccable casts, draws beautifully unexpected performances – basically, he invites us into an imagination so wonderful and unusual that we are left breathless and giddy. We are not made of stone.
So, yes, to quote a recent (and brilliant) SNL sketch, with The Grand Budapest Hotel, you had me at Wes Anderson.
To be fair, with Anderson’s previous and most masterful effort, Moonrise Kingdom, he set a pretty high bar for himself. And while GBH doesn’t offer quite the heart of that picture, there’s a real darkness to this brightly colored outing that gives it a haunting quality quite unlike any of his previous films.
It’s a story told in flashback by one time lobby boy Zero Moustafa (F. Murray Abraham) of the last great hotel concierge, M. Gustave (Ralph Feinnes), and a conspiracy, an art theft, a jailbreak, excellent manners, and finely crafted pastries.
The filmmaker’s inimitable framing and visual panache is unmatched, but he’s taken it to new highs with this effort. A frothy combination of artifice and reality, GBH amounts to a wickedly clever dark comedy despite its cheery palette. Anderson’s eccentric artistry belies a mournful theme.
Feinnes is magnificent in the central role, and the cast Anderson puts in orbit around him are equally wonderful. Adrien Brody, conjuring Snidley Whiplash, makes for an exceptional nemesis, while Anderson regular Willem Dafoe cuts an impressive figure as his thug sidekick.
The only filmmaker who can out-cameo a Muppet movie includes brief but memorable, brilliantly deadpan scenes with all the old gang: Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, Bob Balaban, Harvey Keitel. But the real scene stealer is Europe itself.
Set between the two great wars, the film is a smoky ode to bygone glamour, a precisely drawn if slightly faded love letter to an image of the past.
Of course it is.
Says Zero of his mentor Gustav, “His world had vanished long before he ever entered it, but he certainly sustained the illusion with a marvelous grace.” He could obviously have been speaking of the director as well.
Opening March 22 at the Cleveland International Film Festival is an unusual, family-oriented film set in Mongolia. Writer/director Babar Ahmed’s allegorical Amka and the Three Golden Rules follows an orphaned boy devoted to his little sister and to earning enough money collecting bottles to keep his small family afloat – until materialism rears its ugly head.
According to Ahmed, the effort is the result of a years-long interest in producing a film about Mongolia. Though he’d originally considered producing a documentary on the nation, he says, “A documentary was a great idea and could be very impactful. But I felt that with my background as a feature filmmaker, I could bring more value to a fictional story.”
It was Mongolia’s unique culture and the recent pull of more capitalistic, global cultures that piqued Ahmed’s creative interest.
“Mongolia has recently discovered a lot of natural resources like coal, gold, copper and uranium,” he says. “This means that Mongolia has the potential to become very rich. So now everyone wants a piece of Mongolia. Everyone wants a piece of the “gold”. A relatively isolated country is becoming a destination for many international companies. You can visibly see how a traditional and unique culture is at times resisting, at times accepting, and at times being engulfed by the norms and traditions of the rest of the world.”
The conflict inspired Ahmed to write the story of a child pulled by commercial desires.
“I came up with the idea of a young boy discovering a gold coin, and this plotline was intended to be an allegory to the country discovering natural resources.”
Ahmed, who handled his own cinematography, lenses a stunning location shoot that captures a weather-beaten beauty that suits the outing. His young cast charms with thoroughly naturalistic performances, and though the story’s moral is treated with a heavy hand, Amka is the kind of poetic family adventure rarely seen in the US.
Says the director, the core storyline – a boy whose greatest desire is a new soccer ball, and an uncle whose wish is for a return of “olden times” – is emblematic.
“I feel that this struggle of Amka is precisely the challenge that the new generation of Mongolians are facing today. And in some ways maybe it is also a universal challenge for children growing up in today’s world.”
To do the struggle justice, Ahmed has crafted a wholesome film that, like his protagonists, seems of another era entirely.
For ticket information: http://www.clevelandfilm.org/films/2014/amka-and-the-three-golden-rules
Between small roles in giant films (Iron Man 2, The Green Mile, Charlie’s Angels) and leading roles in quirky indies that disappear instantaneously, Sam Rockwell has produced some of the best overlooked performances in modern film. Charismatic and versatile, as comfortable in the skin of the sweetheart, weasel, villain or nutjob, Rockwell has a unique presence that adds flavor to every project. But too few people are familiar with him and his work. Here’s your chance to get to know Sam Rockwell.
The Way Way Back (2013)
Rockwell commands attention in a Bill Murray-esque role as the off-kilter mentor to a struggling adolescent working at a waterpark for the summer. Though the entire ensemble impresses, Rockwell steals the film with a charming characterization that’s as worldly wise as it is juvenile.
Seven Psychopaths (2012)
Offering a brilliantly unhinged performance that anchors an equally unhinged film, Rockwell’s peculiar talents are on full display in Martin McDonagh’s good hearted bloodbath. With a supporting cast that includes Christopher Walken, Woody Harrelson and Tom Waits, the film should sell itself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bX8AKFY_-I
Moon (2009)
This near-one-man-show offers Rockwell the room to prove himself, and he does so with aplomb. Duncan Jones’s SciFi feature manages to openly homage many of the greats while still offering a singular, unique vision. But it’s Rockwell who astonishes with a turn that dives deep and leaves an impression.
Choke (2008)
Based on a Chuck Palahniuk novel, Choke follows Victor – a sex-addicted con artist with mommy issues – through some unexpected life turns. Both concept and character are unusual –just the kind of project where Rockwell shines. Hip, damaged, funny, desperate, incredibly flawed yet redeemable, Victor would prove a tough nut to crack for many actors. Not Rockwell.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WbbzE2qc9k
Snow Angels (2007)
David Gordon Green’s family drama offers one of Rockwell’s most nuanced and heartbreaking dramatic turns. So often the glib cat or loose cannon, Rockwell proves here that an intensely personal role is just as comfortable a fit. As the wounded, estranged father involved in a small town tragedy, he hits all the right notes and leaves you breathless.
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2007)
George Clooney had the good sense to offer Rockwell his first major lead, and he absolutely nails this fictionalized (or is it?!) biopic of Chuck Barris, part time Gong Show host, part time assassin. Working with a gift of a screenplay by Charlie Kaufman, Rockwell easily inhabits both the peculiarity of the TV personality and the insanity of the government agent fantasy. Whatever the film’s flaws, Rockwell keeps you glued to the craziness.
Donovan Riley turns 21 today. Well, that can’t even be correct. Wait…March 12…it is! Against all logic, it is actually our boy’s 21st birthday. Holy cow! Well, while we sob quietly, enjoy a list of our fictitious DRW Turns 21 Movie Marathon, where we offer a quick glimpse at how those 21 years were spent.
The Lion King (1994)
Not even two years old, Riley would see the trailer on TV and shout “Rawr!” at the screen, so we figured The Lion King would be a fine choice for his first big screen adventure. Is 18 months too young for a theatrical experience? Maybe for the rest of the audience, but we were ready to challenge them. That’s the kind of parents we are. Turns out, he was all about it, and it set the stage for the game-changer to come next.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHDRl1eBD-M
Toy Story (1995)
It’s hard to put into words how much the original Toy Story changed our world. Beyond the multiple viewings, toys, bedsheets, posters, etc., Buzz, Woody and company were ever-present in our young boy’s mind. It was a great movie, so we really didn’t mind the infatuation. He was moved, and he wanted to preach the gospel…which he frequently did by approaching random strangers in Kroger or Target with a simple query, “Have you seen THE SHOW?”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KYz2wyBy3kc
Pokemon: The Movie (1999)
We went from a classic to an…ugh. Our parental love was tested by these films, which we were lucky to escape without suffering a seizure. But how the boy loved them! Tears in his eyes when Charizard’s head got caught in that log. Not only did we sit through these god-awful films, we braved the warring hordes on Tuesday nights at Burger King, when new movie tie-in toys were released. No offense, Pikachu, but we’d like to strangle you with our bare hands. Pika! Pika!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrYGPtEhkVQ
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001)
Always an advanced reader, Riley devoured the Harry Potter books, and was once interviewed on TV at a midnight release party for a new installment. Indeed, his life had a weird parallel to Harry’s, what with that lightning bolt scar he got when he defeated an evil warlock….wait. That’s not right. No, it’s because Riley began kindergarten the year the first HP book was published, and graduated from high school the same year the final l(and best) film was released. It was like he followed Harry through Hogwarts. He liked to think so, anyway, and to honor his hero, he would re-read every installment just before the next was released, and then stay awake until he finished whichever new adventure had just come out. (More fine parenting.) To say the least, the debut of the first film in the series was a pretty big deal. Not a great movie, but a big deal.
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
The boy was 9. We took him to an afternoon screening. He’s been buckling swash ever since.
That Thing You Do! (1996)
Listed out of sequence because he didn’t discover it until years after its release, this film is one that found regular rotation on HBO one summer, and it had a devoted audience of at least two for each screening. George and Riley can quote every line from the film, and will forever refer to character actor Bill Cobbs as “Del Paxton” no matter what beer ad or TV movie he stars in.
Ocean’s 11 (2001)
The boy loves a good con movie, and that may have started here. Danny Ocean and his smooth criminals charmed and delighted the would-be con man who, luckily, decided to pursue other career avenues. (We were pretty relieved when he gave up that short-lived dream to be a magician and a card shark as well.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7lrZK21AX4
Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003)
Riley did not stumble upon this Robert Rodrigues gem until it was available on cable, and then he had to beg to see it because of its R rating. Our rule was that he had to watch any R-rated film alongside his mom, which will seriously squelch a young boy’s interest. But together we watched Johnny Depp chew scenery, lose eyeballs, and look awesome. Families bond in different ways. Besides, it’s too late not to notify children’s services.
Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005)
Discovered one night in a Florida Keys hotel room, this Brangelina Spy v Spy action flick became a constant companion during that particular vacation. You know a kid likes a movie when he’ll choose it over Shark Week and the Little League World Series.
There Will Be Blood (2007)
Proof positive that the boy grew up OK, shortly after leaving home and moving to LA to become an actor himself, he changed his FB background to reflect his newest favorite film, the flawless Paul Thomas Anderson epic There Will Be Blood. Say what you will about our sketchy parenting, this suggests that he turned out A-OK.
We can’t wait to be watching him on the big screen. Riley, we love you and we are so proud of you! Happy, happy, happy birthday!!!
Back in 2006, director Zach Snyder paired a Frank Miller graphic novel with a mostly naked, very beefy Gerard Butler, and ancient Greek history was born. The visually arresting 300 was a stylistic breakthrough, if nothing else. Eight years later, though, it’s tough to understand the point of a sequel.
And yet, 300: Rise of an Empire picks up where 300 left off. It’s less a sequel or a prequel and more of a …meanwhile. That is to say that, while Leonidas (Butler) and his 300 Spartans battle Persian god-king Xerxes on the ground (the previous film’s climax), Themistokles (Sullivan Stapleton) and the rest of Greece takes on Xerxes’s navy, led by the angry Grecian ex-pat Artemisia (Eva Green).
Gone is the painterly quality of the original, an artistic choice that often pays off as it gives the sea battles a little more life. Don’t look for authenticity or gritty realism here, though; the sequel is very definitely cut from the same CGI-laden cloth as Snyder’s epic, but director Noam Murro (Smart People) makes some stylistic alterations here and there.
The sequel is bloodier and rape-ier than its original, all the lurid detail captured in vivid splatter-cam glory. There’s far less exposition and nearly no character development this time around. Murro’s plan of attack seemed to be action sequence followed by rousing speech followed by action sequence overdubbed with rousing speech, and so on.
Given the sheer volume of action (and speechifying), it’s surprising the film becomes so tedious so quickly. To enjoy the full 102 minutes, you might need to have a real itch to see beefcake in battle. (No to shirts, yes to capes in the military uniform? Really?). That is, except for the ferocious presence of Eva Green.
Playing the bloodthirsty naval commander with a grudge against Greece, Green steals every scene and commands rapt attention. She delivers more badass per square inch than the entire Greek and Persian navy combined in a performance that entertains, but also exposes the blandness of the balance of the cast. Even without their shirts.
It’s not the worst waste of time onscreen right now, thanks to Green, but it’s nothing you’ll remember tomorrow, either.
“Fame is your generation’s Black Plague.” So says Rat Billings (John Cusack), world-wearied poet and reluctant mentor to naïve college grad and would-be poet, Amy (Emma Roberts).
Rat has lots of good lines – he is a poet, after all – about the strange era of newly formed adults who grew up working toward fame for fame’s sake. “Generation Mundane” he calls them.
Unbeknownst to Amy, she herself fits that description, and that irony is at the heart of the bright indie comedy Adult World. The chemistry at the heart of the film belongs to Roberts and Cusack.
When Roberts’s Amy leaves the nest 90K in college debt with no marketable skill (her degree is in poetry, after all), she takes a job at an old style porn shop. There, a unique and fascinating world revolves around her, but she’s too busy “feeling, deeply feeling” to notice. Which is, of course, the problem with her artistry – she’s trying to write when she has refused to live, so what could she have to write about?
We watch as Amy refuses to participate in life, insulated from the world by her misguided, socially-instilled belief in her own specialness. Thankfully, director Scott Coffey’s film – scripted with refreshing self-deprecation by Andy Cochran – is rarely too overt with its theme. Sometimes, sure, and you would never call the film exactly subtle. But it has some real freshness to offer instead.
While the cast on the whole is quite solid, Roberts really hits high gear in scenes with Cusack. When these characters are together we get to see each at his or her most potent. Films rarely offer such undiluted presences. Neither actor is afraid to embrace what is unlikeable about their own character, and their scenes together are a kind of joyous celebration of flaws. A giddy artistic energy flows between the two performers that is a blast to watch.
Not every pairing goes as well. Amy’s onscreen love interest is played by Roberts’s offscreen love (and American Horror Story co-star) Evan Peters. Though their romance is sweet, its course is also predictable.
Worse still, the great Cloris Leachman is underused, and Armando Riesco’s drag queen is tacked onto the story sloppily and without real meaning.
Still, much of this story rings true, and the approach taken to poke fun at Generation Mundane is clever and well-intentioned. More than anything, though, it’s great to see Cusack running on all cylinders and matched so well.
The Wind Rises – the Oscar nominated, animated, fantastical biopic of Japanese aeronautical engineer Jiro Horikoshi – may be genius filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki’s final film.
A body of work like his – Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, Ponyo, Princess Mononoke and so many more – deserves a unique capstone, and The Wind Rises is certainly unique. This film is not only unlike anything else Miyazaki has crafted, but unlike anything else period.
Set in Japan in the early 1920s, the film offers a fictionalized account of a nearsighted boy who dreams – literally – of aircraft. In Jiro’s dreams, Italian aeronautical pioneer Gianni Caproni enlightens the boy to the elegant, creative possibilities of airplanes. Unable to become a pilot because of his eyesight, Jiro determines to design planes.
Like everything Miyazaki does, Wind is a visual glory. Whether crowded city streets, mountainside locales, or cloud-speckled heavens, the scenery in this film is breathtaking. Touching, intimate moments and catastrophic acts of God or of war, Miyazaki treats them with the same poetic brushstroke.
The subject matter here proves more adult than his previous efforts, though, and he limits the fantastical elements because of it. Though the dream sequences are a joy, don’t expect to find unusual creatures or outright feats of magic in this one.
Rather, Miyazaki attends to some of Japan’s most epic historic moments, contextualized behind the journey of one quiet, delicate young man’s voyage through life. The result is less giddily entertaining than what you might expect from the filmmaker, but no less captivating.
