More Powerhouse Acting in New Trailer for 'Fences'

This movie got quite a reception at the recent SAG screening, and from the looks of it, acting nominations abound for Denzel Washington and Viola Davis, who's probably guaranteed the win in supporting actress for this already. But it is based on a play, so the danger of staginess is always a risk with these filmed adaptations. There's only so much a director can do, and Washington, as actor turned director, probably focused in on the performances alone. Still, I'm sure this will be a major Oscar player.

Martin Scorsese's 'Silence' Gets a Trailer

One of the last anticipated films to come out this year is Martin Scorsese's long-awaited Silence, a film he's been trying to get made for over twenty-five years, believe it or not. The cinematography in this looks stunning, but the first reaction I had was to giggle at whatever accents Adam Driver and Andrew Garfield are attempting to pull off here. Sometimes that can really be distracting- why can't Scorsese just do these movies the way he did Last Temptation of Christ, where everyone just spoke as is and we simply have to accept the setting regardless? Anyway, apart from that this looks good (maybe a bit punishing, ala The Revenant), and I hear that Liam Neeson may be the big Oscar play for acting in the movie- he's probably overdue for some serious awards attention, don't you think? Silence is coming out in limited release in late December.

'Manchester By the Sea' and 'Moonlight' Lead the Independent Spirit Award Nominations

The Indie Spirit awards honored expected Oscar nominees Manchester By the Sea and Moonlight, but also threw their weight behind films that aren't expected to get a lot of attention anywhere else, like American Honey, the Sundance indie that not a lot of people will hear of, even after its success with this awards group. Other films to get attention here were Molly Shannon's Other People, Jackie (this one is expected to go further, at least for Natalie Portman) and Chronic, with Tim Roth. I particularly liked seeing OJ: Made in America, nominated in documentary- I'm hoping it will make it at the Oscars too, but I'm still not sure if they will consider it more of a television event, given that it aired and was seemingly edited, in parts. As always, the Indie Spirits air the night before the Oscars in February.

2016 INDEPENDENT SPIRIT AWARDS NOMINATIONS

Best Feature

“American Honey”
“Chronic”
“Jackie”
“Manchester by the Sea”
“Moonlight”


Best Director

Andrea Arnold (“American Honey”)
Barry Jenkins (“Moonlight”)
Pablo Larrain (“Jackie”)
Jeff Nichols (“Loving”)
Kelly Reichardt (“Certain Women”)


Best First Feature

“The Childhood of a Leader”
“The Fits”
“Other People”
“Swiss Army Man”
“The Witch”


Best Male Lead

Casey Affleck (“Manchester by the Sea”)
David Harewood (“Free in Deed”)
Viggo Mortensen (“Captain Fantastic”)
Jesse Plemons (“Other People”)
Tim Roth (“Chronic”)


Best Female Lead

Annette Bening (“20th Century Women”)
Isabelle Huppert (“Elle”)
Sasha Lane (“American Honey”)
Ruth Negga (“Loving”)
Natalie Portman (“Jackie”)


Best Supporting Male

Ralph Fiennes (“A Bigger Splash”)
Ben Foster (“Hell or High Water”)
Lucas Hedges (“Manchester by the Sea”)
Shia LaBeouf (“American Honey”)
Craig Robinson (“Morris from America”)


Best Supporting Female

Edwina Findley (“Free in Deed”)
Paulina Garcia (“Little Men”)
Lily Gladstone (“Certain Women”)
Riley Keough (“American Honey”)
Molly Shannon (“Other People”)


Best Screenplay

“Hell or High Water”
“Little Men”
“Manchester by the Sea”
“Moonlight”
“20th Century Women”


Best First Screenplay

“Barry”
“Christine”
“Jean of the Joneses”
“Other People”
“The Witch”


Best International Film

“Aquarius”
“Chevalier”
“My Golden Days”
“Toni Erdmann”
“Under the Shadow”


Best Documentary Feature

“13th”
“Cameraperson”
“I Am Not Your Negro”
“O.J.: Made in America”
“Sonita”
“Under the Sun”


Best Cinematography

“American Honey”
“Childhood”
“Free in Deed”
“Eyes of My Mother”
“Moonlight”


Best Editing

“Hell or High Water”
“Jackie”
“Manchester by the Sea”
“Moonlight”
“Swiss Army Man”


John Cassavetes Award

“Free in Deed”
“Hunter Gatherer”
“Lovesong”
“Nakom”
“Spa Night”


Robert Altman Award

“Moonlight”


Piaget Producers Award

Lisa Kjerulff
Jordana Mollick
Melody C. Roscher
Craig Shilowich


Truer Than Fiction Award

Kristi Jacobson (“Solitary”)
Sara Jordeno (“Kiki”)
Nanfu Wang (“Holligan Sparrow”)


Someone to Watch Award

Andrew Ahn (“Spa Night”)
Claire Carre (“Embers”)
Anna Rose Holmer (“The Fits”)
Ingrid Jungermann (“Women Who Kill”)

'Jackie' gets nods for Feature, Director and Actress

College Age Barack Obama in the Trailer for 'Barry'

This movie will be on Netflix in December and it's supposed to be another really good biopic (the second this year) about the early life of our president. I will definitely be watching it but everything related to politics in any way makes me sad and despair these days. Still, I can already tell that this actor captured his essence in a very real, naturalistic way.

REVIEW: "Arrival" (2016) Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner. Dir. Denis Villeneuve

Arrival is a new sci-fi movie that takes a serious science fiction approach to the topic of visitors from another world. We're all used to seeing these beings come down ready for a fight and it being up to the military and a rag-tag band of heroes to come together and defeat them for the good of the world. Well, this is different. Arrival's angle is to go far more wondrous and even celebratory in the discovery of advanced beings, with characters wanting to understand and communicate with these creatures, who may very well have a positive end goal in mind for the human race.

It takes elements from some of the non-battle sci-fi films of the past, movies like Contact or Close Encounters of the Third Kind. This is an adult drama with intelligent characters played sensitively and sympathetically by Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner. Adams is the star of the film, a linguistics expert named Louise Banks, who's done translation work for the military before and is called on to help the government when twelve UFO's land in geographically different sites around the globe. Louise teams up with Ian Donnelly (Renner), a theoretical physicist, and the two work around the clock for months to figure out a system of communication with the creatures in their pod, who resemble massive, gray, scaly claws that write and think in images. 

The wonder of language is detailed expertly in this film, an aspect of science that is rarely featured in the movies, while Louise is haunted by memories of her late daughter, a subplot that will inform the film in emotional and unexpected ways. The emotional depths this movie plunders are breathtaking, precisely because you're not expecting it to hit so hard. The pain of memory, life, death, and love are wrought out of every inch of the story, along with sequences that don't bother to bowl you over with extravagant special effects, but instead focus on the realism and shock that would come from genuine otherworldly contact with humanity. The screenplay makes use of every plot point involving the world powers' competition to make contact with their arriving visitors, and ties all threads together for a finish that gives us a conclusion that's both simpler and more satisfying than anything we saw in puzzle box movies like Interstellar or Inception. It's also a celebration of science and international cooperation in a similar fashion to last year's The Martian, but takes its subject seriously and with enough self-assured realism from director Denis Villeneuve to not have to rely on 70's pop hits or manufactured jokes aimed at attracting a mass audience.

Amy Adams turns in yet another steady, affecting performance that's trickier than it looks to pull off, given the nature and timing of certain revelations in the script. As one of our most reliable and underrated actresses, she brings us along for this character's emotional journey and inner conflict more convincingly than anyone else could have. She is the heartbeat of this film, and without her presence the gutpunching nature of the movie's climactic resolution would not exist. An adult, intelligent drama that manages to convey scientific resolve, hope, wonder and emotion is a rare cinematic feat.

* * * *

Luc Besson Takes Us to Another World in 'Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets'

Luc Besson is nothing if not an interesting director. His movies range from Nikita to The Professional, The Fifth Element and Lucy, so him taking on this epic sic-fi story based on the graphic novel is reason enough for me to look forward to it. I guarantee you that even if it doesn't work completely, there will be things in this to like, and the last thing you will be able to say about it is that it's formulaic or studio driven. It's not even a Hollywood movie, since no studio would green light this- it's actually a French film. I'm in.

King Kong is Back in New Look at 'Kong: Skull Island'

Okay, so this looks pretty stupid but the first appearance of what looks to be a thousand foot Kong made me chuckle, and it's the first thing that has in days, so thanks for that. But yeah, this looks dumb. On the other hand, it seems to also kinda know it's dumb, maybe in a Jurassic World kind of way? The presence of John C. Reilly and Samuel L. Jackson seem to hint at that. And recent Oscar winner Brie Larson gets not one word in this trailer! Guess we'll have to wait for Captain Marvel for her to shine as an action heroine.

Asghar Farhadi's New Film 'The Salesman' Gets a Trailer

This dour tale looks a little more like something I'm in the mood for these days. Farhadi, who directed A Separation and The Past, is now out with another film, the Iranian submission for foreign language film at this years Oscars. Looks intense, twisted, dark and not exactly life-affirming. Perfect.

Oscar Buzz Builds for 'Hidden Figures' as Final Trailer Drops

I'm looking forward to this, but this is another one where I see that it's obviously such an inspirational true life story that I've always wondered about, and then it just makes me depressed about the present day. Who wants to look back at a time when people had hope for the future and progress and then know what happened? It all feels so pointless and fills you with despair. You think things are always going to move forward and then something like this happens, dragging everything decades back. Anyway, I digress. The movie looks great, and apparently it does give you a good couple hours of escapism and false hope. The real life people would also be vomiting right now as well, but let's not think about that.

Scarlett Johansson Steps Back into Robot Mode for 'Ghost in the Shell'

This movie has already been receiving controversy for months due to the total whitewashing of the story, which comes from a classic animated Japanese film. Many believe the story itself is so inherently Japanese that it could never translate properly into an Americanized, English language version. Yet they're going for it anyway. And of course, if you need a half naked robot running around kicking ass, who else is going to step in but Scarlett Johansson, right? Her typecasting at this point is almost ridiculous. I haven't seen the original film, but I probably should before this comes out, so I know what I'm getting into. This comes out in March of next year.

New 'Beauty and the Beast' Trailer Shows Off a Lot of CGI

I don't know why I was expecting anything different, but this new, full look at Disney's live action version of one of their greatest ever animated features looks to me like a big, garish mess, similar to Maleficent and most of their other stuff. Why does everything have to have so much CGI? Is there anything wrong with using sets and maybe a guy in a costume? The household objects look weird too- in a live action version of this, their scale seems totally off somehow. Emma Watson of course, might be the sweetest person ever but cannot act to save her life, as usual. And not too impressed by the beast's look either. I don't why everyone has to be British. And this is a full on musical, so why are they hiding the singing? Basically I'm not into this, but I know that everyone else will be. Give me the '91 original any day.

Natalie Portman Vies for Best Actress in 'Jackie'

As difficult as it is to watch anything involving politics or history at the moment, given the epic tragedy our nation has just befallen, I hear that Natalie Portman does turn in a fantastic performance as Jackie Kennedy in Pablo Larrain's biopic, which we finally have a full trailer for. It's apparently much more of an art film than a straightforward biography, which explains the raves from critics. She's for sure headed for at least another nomination, if not an outright win. But for me it's hard not to look at the people the actors are portraying in this reimagining of the days after JFK's death, and picture all of them dry heaving if they were forced to witness what just happened to the country they once served as presumably professional, adult human beings. Caroline Kennedy is probably the one doing so at the moment.