TL;DR – Today we run through the 2019 Oscars Nominees to predict who we think will win
Article –
Today is Oscars day and in a couple of hours,
we will know all the winners in what has been one of the more fraught Oscar
campaigns that I have personally seen. But as we prepare for the night of
glitz, glamour, and maybe not having an
awkward opening monologue that still has to live in Hugh Jackman’s shadow, I
thought I would take a moment to look at the nominees to give our views as to
who we think will win.
TL;DR
– When it is a Road Trip film it works
really well, with two charismatic leads, as a social commentary film which it
is desperately trying to be, well it fails dismally.
Score – 3.5 out of 5 stars
Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene
Review –
As it gets close to February, I continue my yearly tradition of trying to see all of the Best Picture nominees before the Oscars ceremony. While this is the plan, it is rarely successful, however, I thought it best to at least see all the films with a strong chance of winning on the night. Well, this leads us to Green Book which is actually a very interesting film. For it is a film of two halves, one that works and one that doesn’t, and both of these halves are in direct competition with each other.
So to set the scene, it is in the early 1960s and Frank “Tony Lip’ Vallelonga (Viggo Mortensen) works for the Copacabana at night as a combination bouncer/maître d/driver. As well as this, Tony always finds an opportunity to make a quick buck “bullshitting” people. When the Copacabana closes for a couple of months for renovations Tony is left with very little money to keep his family going when he gets a call about a driving opportunity at Carnegie Hall for a Dr Shirley (Mahershala Ali), only to find that he is not a medical doctor but a musician, he is black, and that he is about to embark on a tour of the deep south. Tony needs the money, but he also has problems with African-Americans to the point that he threw out two glasses that African-American plumbers used when fixing the pips in his house. Well eventually Tony agrees to take ‘Doc’ Don Shirley on his tour, well only after Don called his wife Dolores (Linda Cardellini) to check if it was all right.
TL;DR – This is a film with two halves, the beautiful story of a family coming together in the face of a crisis with the help of Mary Poppins, but also a story about how it is individuals and not big corporations that are bad … from Disney … umm
Score – 4 out of 5 stars
Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene
Review –
Mary Poppins is a movie that is quite
dear to me. When I was a child it was one of those films that we would watch as
a family on a Saturday night. I honestly I was not really all that on board
with the remake/sequel hybrid film all the trailers seemed to imply that we
were about to get. As well as this, I am starting to get a little tired of
Disney’s ‘Weaponised Nostalgia Era’. Well, that is what I thought walking in, but
then a wave of joy enveloped my life leaving a smile on my face and tears
rolling down my face.
So to set the scene, it has been a number of years since the first film and the
Banks’ children have grown up. Michael (Ben Whishaw) is, well was, a painter,
who married and had three lovely children Annabel (Pixie Davies), John (Nathanael
Saleh) and Georgie (Joel Dawson) before his wife tragically died. This has understandably
sent ripples through the family, made all the worse when there is a knock on
the door and we discover that the bank is foreclosing on the house because
Michael has fallen behind paying back a loan, the same bank his father helped
run, and the same bank he currently works for. Well,
the whole family, including his sister Jane (Emily Mortimer) helps to look for their father’s shares in the bank in the last ditch effort in saving the house, when
who should appear at the end of a kite, none other than Mary Poppins (Emily
Blunt) herself.
TL;DR – At times funny, at times perplexing, and at times very dark, it explores the world of immense power and those who want to obtain it, and the damage that can do.
Score – 4 out of 5 stars
Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene
Review –
We live in a world where thanks to technology we can explore galaxies far away,
to fantasies imagined in every which way, but sometimes reality can be stranger
than anything we can muster. Today we are exploring a film that is set around
the power politics of last years of the House of Stuart as different people
position themselves in an ever-shifting
world. This would be interesting enough in itself, but in both a less and in
some cases more dramatic way this is what really happened (or at least what was
alleged to have happened) in real life. It is a snapshot of absolute power, but also of sadness, and
regret.
TL;DR – Delightful, heart-breaking, alienating, immersive, full of complicated people in complicated relationships, a film that I would recommend everyone to see.
Score – 5 out of 5 stars
Post-Credit Scene – There is no post-credit scene
Review –
There is always an interesting feeling when the credits start to roll and the world comes back into focus, and the wave of emotions that have built up over the last few hours comes crashing down. Do you realise that you just wasted the time on something with no substance, or did your whole world change whilst time stood still? Well, today we look at a film that falls more on the later side of that divide. A world where everything is right and normal, and it all can be pulled out from underneath you in a moment. A film that will stay with me for the weeks and months to come.
So
to set the scene, we open in on 1970 Mexico City as Cleo (Yalitza Aparicio)
washes the tiles of the driveway of the house she works at. We watch as she
gets the house ready for the day for her employers Sofía (Marina de Tavira),
Antonio (Fernando Grediaga), and their children Paco (Carlos Peralta), Pepe (Marco
Graf), Sofi (Daniela Demesa) and Adela (Nancy García García). Cleo is an indispensable
part of the family, but then she is also not part of the family because she is
a maid and this disconnect filters
throughout the film. Things in the household shift when Antonio leaves for a
conference in Canada and stays longer than planned, and when Cleo meets a man Fermín
(Jorge Antonio Guerrero) and the tension
under the surface of Mexico starts to rupture.
TL;DR – At the heart is the powerful story of Freddie Mercury, but you can see the difficulties of adapting a life as grand as his into a standard film runtime.
Score – 3.5 out of 5 stars
Post-Credit Scene – There footage during the credits that you want to stay back for.
Review –
There have been a lot of productions that have been stuck in ‘production hell’
for years before they get made (and some never exit it) and one of the big
casualties of this was the Queen/Freddie Mercury biopic. It had gone through
multiple directors and leading cast before finally going into production, only
to find out that the difficulties were not done there. With clashes on set and
the inevitable replacement of the director befalling production. When this has
happened in the past, it has led to at best an uneven film, but often times the
final product is a complete mess. Thankfully, Bohemian Rhapsody avoids the latter but you can still see the
problems under the hood.
TL;DR – A solid family film,with some great moments, but I am not sure it will have the same impact as the first film.
Score – 4 out of 5 stars
Post-Credit Scene – There is a mid and post-credit scene
Review –
Creating films about the internet is something we are seeing more of as filmmakers try to incorporate this major part of our lives into the cinematic landscape. However, because the Internet is something that is both instantly familiar but also completely abstract, it actually is a difficult task to pull off as long as you don’t mind adding a crane shot into a cable. In the last year or so we have had the bad with The Emoji Film, and the amazing with Searching (see review), and today we have another entry into the genre with Ralph Breaks the Internet, which while not amazing, is still a fun ride.
film masters student, aspiring film journalist, trying her hand at film reviews and criticism. interested in multilingual cinema, feminism and diversity in film.
