This weekend is the 96th Oscars! This past year we published the most reviews ever, and to honour them, here is every review for a movie that got nominated for an Oscar this year. Thank you to everyone one the team that contributed this past year. Click on the titles to read the full reviews for each film!
The Zone of Interest – 5 Nominations
“But if you look just over the garden wall, you can see smokestacks and barracks of the concentration camp. You can see the orange glow of fire at night. Herr Höss has a daily commute of literally walking out his front door and around the corner into the camp. He even makes an announcement at one point to ask his soldiers to not pick flowers from lilac bushes haphazardly, and that he hopes they’ll continue to decorate the camp for years to come. It’s almost unnerving how the entire family, from the parents to the children to even the help around them, seem to not react to the sounds you hear – of yelling officers, crying prisoners, or the dull roar of furnaces overnight – as they go about their daily chores.”
Paulo Bautista
The Boy and the Heron – 1 Nomination
Beyond the surface level through lines that Ghibli fans will recognize though, Miyazaki leaves a message for his grandson about grief, death and moving on. After Mahito’s mother dies, his father remarries with his mother’s sister. Understandably, Mahito has trouble adjusting both to the new relationship and to life in the countryside. It is through his fantastical journey for the second and third acts of the film, prompted by the titular heron, that he finds the resolve to come to peace with his mother’s death and the malice he sees in the world around him. It is fitting that the original (and in my opinion superior) Japanese title is “How Do You Live” (a reference to a Japanese novel of the same name that appears within the film); after all Mahito finds his own way to keep on living, and Miyazaki asks us and his grandson, how we intend to go on living.
Paulo Bautista
Perfect Days – 1 Nomination
In text, that sounds more like a dystopian late-stage capitalist nightmare than a meditation of finding joy in your everyday life. But while our productivity focused minds may zone in on the schedule of events and appointments that would fill our mental Google Calendars, Wenders and Cinematographer Franz Lustig take care to focus on the small things you can’t schedule. How Hirayama opens his door each morning and breathes in the crisp morning air before selecting an audiocassette of 70’s and 80’s folk, rock and soul music for his drive into work. During his lunch break, he takes out a small film camera to try and photograph how the sunlight falls through the leaves of the park he frequents. How the bright colors of the clothes of children playing nearby reflect off the shiny facades of the public toilets he cleans. How he takes care to water his clippings of plants he keeps under a grow light in a room that takes up half his apartment, or how each week he picks a different novel to read before bed, ranging from William Faulkner to Patricia Highsmith.
Paulo Bautista
20 Days in Mariupol – 1 Nomination
Much like Beyond Utopia, it uses footage that couldn’t have been captured in any other way as it follows the lived experiences of its subjects. There is less framing of the context of the war, though given how the subject matter has been a part of our lives for the last few years it probably doesn’t need it. In fact, it probably elevates the film given that in the moment on the ground, the citizens of Mariupol also lacked context.
Paulo Bautista
Napoleon – 3 Nominations
As compelling as the chemistry between Phoenix and Kirby is, that’s also the only emotion you’ll get. Outside their stormy affair, there isn’t much in the way of sentiment on offer here. Napoleon’s career proceeds from point to point with sumptuous set design and wardrobes that are sure to garner Oscar nominations, but once Kirby makes her exit, the energy goes out of the film with her. There’s still a decent chunk of this epic left at that point, but the emotional highs and lows have mostly been had.
Jay Stryker
Godzilla Minus One – 1 Nomination
The visceral monster smash stuff aside, here Godzilla perhaps acts as an allegory for the most personal story yet in the franchise. Where before as we mentioned he is more a force of nature that feels as though he is against all of humanity, the way he is presented here is really that of grief and survivor’s guilt that Koichi feels – of being the only survivor of the island attack, of shirking his duty as a kamikaze pilot.
Paulo Bautista
The Teachers’ Lounge – 1 Nomination
One thing that comes across as a strong suit is the power of misinformation. Throughout, people cling to the little bits of information they have and speculate on what they think they know, given the nature of the situation. We see this in our own world when, whether it be an actor, athlete or political figure, is brought under scrutiny. If the facts are unavailable, we assume them. This is very evident in the way the parents discuss the situation in their group Whatsapp chat, or the story the students print in the paper after their interview with Ms. Nowak. It’s framed in such a way as to blame the school, and staff. As a result, her fellow teachers turn on her asking why she could allow for such a thing to happen without consulting them.
Brodie Cotnam
Robot Dreams – 1 Nomination
Based on the 2007 graphic novel Robot Dreams by Sara Varon and directed by Oscar nominated Spanish director Pablo Berger, the film tells the story of Dog who after facing his own loneliness orders a DIY companion in Robot. All is well in their lives until circumstances force them apart with only a vague hope that they will one day be reunited months in the future. In the meantime, both deal with the separation in their own way. Dog tries to build other relationships to fill the Robot shaped hole in his life – to varying degrees of success – while Robot dreams of the potential futures with Dog after their time apart. Without too many spoilers, the ending is somewhat bittersweet, but a poignant moral on loss, growth, companionship, and the impact others have on our lives.
Paulo Bautista
To Kill a Tiger – 1 Nomination
The family faces pressure from their neighbors in the village to settle this without the judicial system – to marry the daughter off to one of the rapists for the sake of communal harmony. From a Western and urban perspective where there is a clear demarcation between good and evil, such a compromise feels unconscionable. And yet we have it repeated at us time and again throughout the film, hinting at one of the root causes such systemic misogyny is present in the country.
Paulo Bautista
Keep on working, great job!