Tag: Incendies

The Anti-Oscars

In “The Anti-Oscars,” I make a list of the Best Movies and Performances of the Year that don’t stand a chance at getting nominated.

This article will not help you win your Oscar pool.

On this Oscar Nomination ballot, you will not find any Streeps, Clooneys, Plummers or Spielbergs.

No, this is the Anti-Oscars! This is the opposite of what will happen when nominations are announced on Tuesday, January 24.

I’ve made picks in five of the six major categories, but while these certainly don’t reflect what will happen, they aren’t even necessarily what I think should happen. The Academy gets some things right some of the time.

Rather this list is my personal ballot dedicated to the not-even-out-of-the-gate contenders that were marvelous in 2011 but for whatever reason will not receive the attention they deserve at the biggest award ceremony of the year.

I’ll also use this space to discuss why they are not in the race and what that means for the actual contenders. So if any of these names are in your predictions, rethink your decisions now, and watch me eat my words when I predict the real ballot next week.

 

Best Picture

  • Drive
  • Beginners
  • Super 8
  • Incendies
  • The Skin I Live In
  • Certified Copy
  • Weekend
  • Melancholia

If there’s one thing the Best Picture hopeful lineup is missing, it’s a good dose of darkness. Is “Moneyball” really the darkest movie this year’s Oscars have to offer? My list, which conveniently resembles all eight films in my Top 10 list not solid contenders for nomination (the other two being “Midnight in Paris” and “Hugo”), shows a much more even split of heavy and lighter entertainment. Continue reading “The Anti-Oscars”

The Best Movies of 2011

“Drive” tops the list of my best movies of 2011.

I had to be convinced in just the last few weeks 2011 was a decent year for movies.

Catching up on some high profile winter titles made list making extra difficult this year.

Perhaps because of style over substance in some cases, no one movie jumped out as the year defining movie that no other could touch.

And although critics uniformly rallied behind “The Tree of Life” as the consensus favorite of the year, this year found critics getting behind just about anything as their number one choice, and they could often find at least someone to back them up.

It’s even made for an interesting Oscar race with no clear frontrunners.

But 2011 was a year for looking back. Veteran directors trumped newbies with nostalgia projects (“Hugo,” “Midnight in Paris,” “War Horse”) and grandiose epics (“Melancholia,” “The Tree of Life”). A few indies and up-and-comers stepped forward, but they made timeless statements (“Weekend,” “Beginners,” “Super 8,” “The Descendants”) rather than 21st Century relics, with a few exceptions (“Margin Call,” “Moneyball,” “50/50”).

Last year I assigned titles to each movie for what they stood for in the year, and there was one clear winner. This year no such labels exist, and just about any could be my favorite.

I’ve done my best to mention films that need mentioning and forgotten the rest. (Most titles are linked to subsequent reviews on my website.)

1. Drive

The Driver is in a plain silver sedan parked underneath a bridge as a helicopter passes overhead. He sits silently and does not make a bold getaway, and yet this is one of the more exciting scenes in the most invigorating and intense motion picture of the year. Continue reading “The Best Movies of 2011”

Incendies

Denis Villeneuve’s powerhouse Greek tragedy drama was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars.

“Incendies” is an emotional powerhouse of a drama drawing from real world headlines, Hollywood epics and Greek tragedy. This French Canadian soul-wrencher is a deep, far reaching film of many characters and complexities. But for all its ability to shock and floor you with painful realizations, it is never anything but engaging and riveting to watch.

It begins with the twins. Jeanne (Melissa Desormeaux-Poulin) and Simon (Maxim Gaudette) Marwan have just been read their mother Nawal’s (Lubna Azabel) will. “Bury me naked, face down, away from the world with no stone. No epitaph for broken promises.” Her broken promise was not revealing her full past to either of her kids, one who loved but never fully understood her and the other who gave up on her odd behavior long ago.

In death, she gives them two envelopes, one to be delivered to the father they never met and the other to the brother they didn’t know existed. Jeanne travels to Nawal’s homeland in the Middle East to track both down, and as she does, the movie intercuts her journey with Nawal’s own journey and torturous history. Continue reading “Incendies”