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 19
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T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
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The Contenders

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M A R C H 2021 AWA R D S 2
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18
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19
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38 Soul
27 Mank

40 Tenet
Emma

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First Cow

37 The Prom

Chicago 7
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History of

37 Promising
22 Judas and
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The Father

20 Greyhound
20 French Exit

31 Nomadland
Da 5 Bloods

24 Ma Rainey’s

30 Never Rarely

35 The Personal
35 Palm Springs
32 On the Rocks
Black Bottom
21 Hillbilly Elegy

Young Woman
Ending Things
22 I’m Thinking of

38 Sound of Metal

40 The Trial of the

23 The Life Ahead

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27 Malcolm & Marie
24 The Little Things
23 Let Them All Talk

28 The Midnight Sky

41 The United States

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36 Pieces of a Woman
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32 One Night in Miami

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 March 2021 Awards 2

8 A Breakout Year
for Documentaries
Doc features are experiencing an
awards boom, spilling out beyond
their nonfiction boxes into categories
such as original score, song and
VFX. Could top prizes like director
and picture be next?

10 Some Fortunes Are Up,

Others Look Iffy
As more guilds weigh in with their
noms — including art directors,
sound editors and sound mix-
ers — the ground may be shifting.

12 An Animated Short
Pays Loving Tribute
to the Magic of Mentors
To: Gerard was inspired by director
Taylor Meacham’s father and
created through the DreamWorks
Animated Shorts Program.

42 Our Complex World,

Captured on Film
These 15 contenders for best
documentary feature examine our
relationship to democracy,
health care, justice and nature on
a global scale.

46 Glimpses Into 15 Global Stories

THR critics review the shortlisted
features from around the world,
ranging from a tale about a Syrian
man who sells his skin for art
to the reinvention of a classic
Guatemalan folktale.

48 91 Years of THR
The Grapes of Wrath, a story about
nomads on the move during the
Great Depression, won two Academy
Awards in 1941.

MOLE: ALVARO REYES/SUNDANCE INSTITUTE. COLLECTIVE: ALEXANDER NANAU PRODUCTION/SAMSA FILM/MAGNOLIA PICTURES.

Top: The Mole Agent,

directed by Maite Alberdi, is
set in a Chilean nursing home
that’s suspected of elder
neglect. Bottom: Alexander
Nanau’s Collective exposes
heartless corruption in
the wake of a fatal nightclub
fire. Both were shortlisted
for the documentary and
international feature Oscars.

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 4 M A R C H 2021 AWA R D S 2

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 Behind every
icon is a story.
Candid conversations with this
award season’s leading contenders.

LISTEN WHEREVER PODCASTS ARE HEARD

 202 1 AWA R D S S E A S O N
A Breakout Year for
Documentaries
Doc features are experiencing an awards boom, spilling out
beyond their nonfiction boxes into categories such as original score,
song and VFX. Could top prizes like director and picture be next?
BY A DA M B E N Z I N E
ome awards season, documen-
C tarians usually find themselves
outside the rope line, on the
periphery of the red carpet
and tucked away in a neat little box marked
“below the line.” This is, after all, a moment
for designer dresses and million-dollar
smiles, with only a token acknowledgment for
foreign-language and nonfiction features.
Not this year. Beyond the Oscar shortlist
and the BAFTA longlist for best documentary,
where one would expect to find them, nonfic-
tion films have broken out into a variety of
additional categories.
With the Academy Awards, this year’s best
original song shortlist — which occasionally
features the closing theme from the odd docu-
mentary — boasts songs from four nonfiction
features: John Legend’s “Never Break” from
Giving Voice, Mary J. Blige’s “See What You’ve
Done” from Belly of the Beast, Robert Glasper’s
“Show Me Your Soul” from Mr. Soul! and
Janelle Monáe’s “Turntables” from All In: The
Fight for Democracy.
Meanwhile, the best international
film category, which last year honored
Macedonian doc Honeyland with a nomi-
nation, this year features two strong
contenders, courtesy of Alexander Nanau’s
Romanian docu-thriller Collective (a front-
runner for a nomination) and Maite Alberdi’s
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
The Race
charming spy docudrama The Mole Agent.
And, for the first time, a documentary
has broken into the best visual effects cat-
egory, courtesy of David France’s Welcome
to Chechnya. The film ingeniously employs
a form of deep-fake technology to mask the
identities of persecuted LGBTQ Chechens, who
are attempting to flee government-sanctioned
violence in the Russian state.
On the other side of the pond, the BAFTA
longlists demonstrate an even greater
embrace of nonfiction film. Four documenta-
ries made the cut for the British organization’s
best film not in the English language cat-
egory: Collective, The Mole Agent, Benjamin
Ree’s The Painter and the Thief, and Gregory
Kershaw and Michael Dweck’s The Truffle
Hunters. Jerry Rothwell’s The Reason I Jump was
recognized in the outstanding debut category,
and Laurence Topham’s My Brother’s Keeper
became the only doc on the drama-filled best
short film longlist.
Meanwhile, Netflix’s David Attenborough:
A Life on Our Planet, focusing on the life and
times of the famed nonagenarian broadcaster,
broke out beyond the documentary category
to earn spots on both the outstanding British
film and outstanding score longlists.
And perhaps most remarkably, Pippa
Ehrlich and James Reed’s My Octopus Teacher
landed a spot on BAFTA’s best director
Illustration by Josie Portillo
8 M A R C H 2021 AWA R D S 2
longlist. The touching and immersive nature
doc, which might not have even had a the-
atrical release pre-COVID, became a sleeper
hit after hitting Netflix in September. The
accolade sees first-time South African direc-
tor Ehrlich rubbing shoulders with the likes
of David Fincher, Regina King, Christopher
Nolan and Chloé Zhao.
A number of factors led to this explosion in
nonfiction recognition. First, the closing of
theaters throughout the year, which negatively
impacted dramas but boosted docs. With
James Bond flick No Time to Die postponed
until fall 2021, a slot opened up on the short-
list where Billie Eilish’s theme song may have
landed. The cancellation of Dune’s December
release created a space in the VFX category.
This, coupled with the lukewarm reaction to
the few tentpoles that did make it to cinemas
(Tenet, Wonder Woman 1984), allowed space for
alternative fare.
At the same time, a relaxing of rules to
allow VOD releases to qualify for awards
consideration proved a massive boon for
documentaries. A costly theatrical run is
undoubtedly the biggest barrier to Oscar
qualification for most docs. With that require-
ment gone, the floodgates opened: A record
238 feature docs qualified for Oscar consid-
eration, smashing the previous record of 170
submissions. Clearly, a year of staying home
and watching TV on the couch worked in docs’
favor. But beyond the impact of COVID-19, one
must look to the tremendous increase in FYC
spend that streamers have allocated to nonfic-
tion campaigning.
The biggest spender by far has been Netflix,
which has ploughed money into pushing
more than a dozen documentaries across the
board. Its spread-betting approach has clearly
paid off: In addition to wide recognition for
frontrunners Crip Camp, Dick Johnson Is Dead
and the aforementioned Attenborough and My
Octopus Teacher, a slew of mid-length titles,
— including What Would Sophia Loren Do?,
The Speed Cubers and A Love Song for Latasha
— made the shortlist for best documentary
short subject.
Of course, a documentary has yet to crack
cinema’s grandest prize: an Oscar nomina-
tion for best picture. It’s a topic that’s oft
ruminated on, but it will take a breakout on
the scale of An Inconvenient Truth or Fahrenheit
9/11 for it to happen.
For now, the key question is whether docu-
mentaries’ breakout moment can last. With an
end to COVID in sight — and with it a return
to the theatrical experience — will this just
prove to be the byproduct of an off year? We’ll
see. But the momentum is clearly with the
doc makers.
 OLIVIA COOKE WITH COLM MEANEY AND ALEC BALDWIN

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 202 1 AWA R D S S E A S O N Feinberg Forecast

PROMOTION

Some Fortunes Are Up,

Others Look Iffy
As more guilds weigh in with their noms — including art directors, sound
editors and sound mixers — the ground may be shifting BY S C OT T F E I N B E R G

Supporting Actress

Maria Bakalova Jodie Foster

Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
The breakout star was elevated from
supporting to lead in a comedy/musical at
the Globes, which should have made a win
easier — the HFPA loved her film (it won
best pic and actor) and she was up against
a thin field — but it was not her night.
The Mauritanian
Forty-four years after her first Globe
nomination for Freaky Friday, the HFPA
is still enchanted with her, giving her a
third competitive award (she also received
2013’s Cecil B. DeMille Award) for her
portrayal of attorney Nancy Hollander.

Documentary Feature Production Design

All In: The Fight for
Democracy
The Producers Guild has given its PGA
mark to Stacey Abrams, recognizing
her work as a producer on this doc. If it
progresses from the Oscar shortlist
to a nom, the Georgia politician will be
eligible to take home a gold statuette.
MAURITANIAN: GRAHAM BARTHOLOMEW/STX FILMS. BORAT, SOUND, ALL: COURTESY OF AMAZON STUDIOS. MIAMI: PATTI PERRET/AMAZON STUDIOS. TENET: MELINDA SUE GORDAN/WARNER BROS.
One Night in Miami
The Art Directors Guild’s ADG Award
noms, unlike the Oscars, have a category
specifically devoted to period films, but
this 1964-set drama was surprisingly
boxed out of the category by Mank, Ma
Rainey’s Black Bottom, Mulan, News of
the World and The Trial of the Chicago 7.

Sound

Tenet Sound of Metal

Ahead of the first Oscars in years in
which sound editing and mixing work will
be recognized within a single category,
it received two noms from the Motion
Picture Sound Editors but none from the
Cinema Audio Society. Apparently the mix-
ers couldn’t make out its dialogue either!
Does it help to have the word “sound” in
the title of a film that is vying for recogni-
tion for its sound editing and mixing?
It certainly can’t hurt. This drama, which
centers on hearing loss, picked up top
noms from both the Motion Picture Sound
Editors and Cinema Audio Society.

10
 PROMOTION

ORIGINAL VIDEO SERIES

THE DAILY PULSE IN ENTERTAINMENT,

FROM THE INDUSTRY’S MOST TRUSTED SOURCE

available on .com
 202 1 AWA R D S S E A S O N
An
Animated
Short Pays
Loving
Tribute to
the Magic
of Mentors
The Oscar-shortlisted To: Gerard
was inspired by director
Taylor Meacham’s father and
created through DreamWorks
Animation’s Shorts Program
BY CA R O LY N G I A R D I N A
t’s fitting that a film that pays
I tribute to those who inspire and
mentor was created through a
program that aims to do just that
for undiscovered talent.
Taylor Meacham’s animated short To: Gerard
— which made the Academy’s shortlist for
this season’s animated short Oscar — was
created through DreamWorks Animation’s
Shorts Program, which was conceived to iden-
tify and develop emerging animation talent
at the studio, and its score was composed by
Layla Minoui, who came to the DWA program
through Universal Music’s similar initiative
for composers.
But this story really starts with a father-
and-son relationship, explains Meacham, a
2014 Emerson College grad who was working
at DWA as a production coordinator on 2016’s
Trolls when he began creating the moving
story of Gerard, a mailman who once dreamed
of becoming a magician. Even though Gerard
doesn’t meet his goal, he finds joy in having
inspired a young girl to follow that path.
“The greatest magic in life is being able to
inspire somebody else to follow their dreams,
even if you haven’t accomplished your own,”
Meacham says of the film’s universal theme,
relating that his own father wanted to be a
CAROLY N GIARDINA is THR’s tech editor.
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
Behind the Screen
photographer, but shifted gears when he had
kids. “I think that’s something that a lot of
parents do,” he adds, recalling that when he
called his father to tell him To:
Gerard had been greenlit, “we had
tears of joy.”
The goal of his film, Meacham
Meacham says, is to “inspire hope, and to
inspire others to do what Gerard
did in this film. I think it’s important to pay it
forward, but also to pay it back and remember
those people who mentored you and inspired
you and let them know what that meant to
you, and thank them as well.”
In bringing the character of Gerard to life,
Meacham says he gave him a “sprightly energy
in the way he moved, especially when he was
doing magic. We exaggerated a lot more of his
3 story and with the characters. It fit so beauti-
12 M A R C H 2021 AWA R D S 2
1
2
1 Mailman Gerard delights Jules with an impromptu magic
show. 2 Years later, she let’s him know the impact that he
had on her life in a similar shot, with Jules in silhouette.
3 Inspired by Gerard, Jules grows up to become a magician.
animation in those moments. And then in
more intimate, personal, emotional moments,
we kind of dialed that back.”
In making the short through the DWA
program, Meacham and others had the oppor-
tunity to work with experienced DWA talent
such as producer Jeff Hermann, whose credits
include the shorts Bird Karma and Bilby as
well as the studio’s upcoming feature The Boss
Baby: Family Business, and seasoned character
designer Nicolas “Nico” Marlet, whose credits
include How to Train Your Dragon and Kung Fu
Panda. Since beginning To: Gerard, Meacham
has had the opportunity to be a storyboard
artist on DWA’s Oscar contender The Croods:
A New Age and is currently working on the
studio’s Puss in Boots sequel.
Meacham met Iranian American com-
poser Minoui (Vampirina) through the
aforementioned Universal program, and she
was brought on to the project after provid-
ing a demo of her ideas for To: Gerard. Says
COURTESY OF DREAMWORKS ANIMATION (4)
Meacham, “She gave us the emotion and
heart that I was trying to convey with the
fully together.”
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 C O
As we approach the end of
the most unpredictable (and
longest) awards season ever,
35 feature films race
toward Oscar gold. These
are tales of political struggle,
emotional journeys and
global conflicts — all of
which illuminate the
THE

N complex world that we share

T
AMMONITE
BORAT SUBSEQUENT MOVIEFILM
DA 5 BLOODS
EMMA
THE FATHER
E
N
FIRST COW
THE FORTY-YEAR-OLD VERSION
FRENCH EXIT
GREYHOUND 2021
HILLBILLY ELEGY

D
I’M THINKING OF ENDING THINGS
JUDAS AND THE BLACK MESSIAH
LET THEM ALL TALK
THE LIFE AHEAD
THE LITTLE THINGS
MA RAINEY’S BLACK BOTTOM
MALCOLM & MARIE
MANK

E
THE MIDNIGHT SKY
MINARI
NEVER RARELY SOMETIMES ALWAYS
NEWS OF THE WORLD
NOMADLAND
ON THE ROCKS

R
ONE NIGHT IN MIAMI
PALM SPRINGS
THE PERSONAL HISTORY OF DAVID COPPERFIELD
PIECES OF A WOMAN
THE PROM
PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN
SOUL

S
SOUND OF METAL
TENET
THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7
THE UNITED STATES VS. BILLIE HOLIDAY
#
AA
BB
D
D
E
F the COVID-19 pandemic
STUDIO Neon • RELEASE DATE Nov. 13, 2020
I
CAST Kate Winslet, Saoirse Ronan, Fiona Shaw
TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Two British Independent Film Award noms
J for costume design and hair and makeup
L
Ammonite
Kate Winslet and Saoirse Ronan play emotionally
isolated mid-19th century women of different classes
opening themselves up to passion
M REVIEWED BY DAVID ROONEY ON SEPT. 11, 2020
N
Francis Lee, writer-director of God’s Own Country,
returns with Ammonite, an exquisite female com-
O panion piece whose transfixing quietness never conceals
the roiling undercurrents of feeling beneath its surface.
This is the work of a mature filmmaker in full command
P of his voice, yielding remarkable performances, chief
among them a complex character study of stoicism and
desire from Kate Winslet that might be the best work of
Q her career.
Both Winslet and Saoirse Ronan are fully vested in their
characters, neither of them holding anything back in a
R depiction of physical love that’s both transporting and
restorative. So much is conveyed in brief glances or quick
touches that the movie’s romantic ignition makes your
S
heart race. The softness that transforms Winslet’s face
in particular is ineffably moving, especially given that so
much of her characterization is so contained, hinting at
T
years of self-denial and frustration.
The swell of deep feeling in the film is enhanced
U by sparing use of a somber string and piano score by
Dustin O’Halloran and Volker Bertelmann and by spe-
cial attention to the elemental sounds of wind and waves
V and occasional birdsong. But the most powerful tool in
this lovingly told story is the unimpeachably naturalistic
ensemble work of a cast that simply couldn’t be bettered,
W led with startling emotional transparency by Winslet
and Ronan. I can’t think of a single aspect that could be
improved upon.
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STUDIO Amazon • RELEASE DATE Oct. 23, 2020
CAST Sacha Baron Cohen, Maria Bakalova
TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Golden Globe wins for best picture, musical/
comedy, and best actor; SAG Award and Globe noms for Bakalova
Borat Subsequent
Moviefilm
Sacha Baron Cohen’s alter ego returns for another
manic and chaotic tour of America — this time amid
REVIEWED BY JOHN DEFORE ON OCT. 21, 2020
The film — whose full title is Borat Subsequent
Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American
Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
— falls short of its imperfect but zeitgeist-grabbing 2006
predecessor in several ways. Few if any of them can be
blamed on director Jason Woliner, who has done excellent
work with comic performers like Brett Gelman, Patton
Oswalt and Aziz Ansari. The easiest (but incomplete)
answer is that the George W. Bush era needed a Borat, and
the Trump years make him painfully redundant.
Amid the assorted tasteless gags, an extended and hard-
to-believe sequence finds Borat in Washington state as
lockdown hits, convincing a stranger to share his quar-
antine cabin. The stranger and his housemate are QAnon
zombies who happily repeat idiocy about Hillary Clinton
AMMONITE: COURTESY OF NEON. BORAT: COURTESY OF AMAZON STUDIOS. BLOODS: COURTESY OF NETFLIX.
drinking the blood of children but are quick to identify
Borat’s own cultural text (a misogynist handbook for rais-
ing daughters) as “a lie — a conspiracy theory.”
Some people may find that moment revelatory. They’ll
likely be the same Democrats who spent October 2016 calm
in the certainty that one of the most polarizing people in
American politics was going to triumph over one of the
worst people currently breathing. America is sick, hurting,
angry and misinformed. If Sacha Baron Cohen were to put
away the latex prosthetics, dumb accents and hairpieces,
he might find a new, better way to show us our reflection
— and to make us look, instead of just laughing at our
neighbors’ most awkward moments.
16 M A R C H 2021 AWA R D S 2
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AA
BB
C

DD
E

“We were shooting in the H

jungle. It was 100 degrees

I
every single day.”
SPIKE LEE

STUDIO Netflix • RELEASE DATE June 12, 2020 K

CAST Chadwick Boseman, Delroy Lindo, Jonathan Majors, Clarke Peters, Isiah Whitlock Jr.

TOP AWARDS AND NOMS AFI Awards movie of the year; three National Board of Review awards; three SAG Award noms; five NAACP Image Award noms L

Da 5 Bloods
A band of Black veterans return to Vietnam to settle unfinished business
N
in Spike Lee’s politically charged adventure about the war that never ends
REVIEWED BY DAVID ROONEY ON JUNE 10, 2020
O

Spike Lee, in addition to
being among our most
impassioned political film-
makers, is also a storyteller of
uncommon vitality, fluent in
the shorthand of forging con-
nections between his audience
and his characters. Even when
this inventive Netflix feature
gets messy and convoluted in
the second half, with the direc-
tor’s tonal control sometimes
faltering, we are wholeheart-
edly invested in these men for
the duration.
In a theme broached by
Malcolm X and contin-
ued by Bobby Seale, before
being echoed later by the
movie’s fictional characters,
we’re reminded that Black
Americans have fought
for their country in armed
conflicts for a promise of
freedom that was never fully
honored. If the sense of his-
tory repeating itself bristled
through BlacKkKlansman, it
shouts in heartfelt anguish
through Da 5 Bloods.
Spike Lee photographed by Jai Lennard
Politics is always near the
surface, often with a defi-
ant wink, as in the recurring
appearance of a faded, soiled
MAGA hat, or in more pointed
digs at a country that elected
“a reality TV clown for a
president” or “put a Klansman P
in the Oval Office.” The
strategic choice to conclude
with Martin Luther King Jr.’s Q
speech in which he quotes
Langston Hughes’ “Let America
Be America Again” reads as a R
knowing subversion of Trump’s
curdled 2016 campaign slogan.
Lee deftly steers it all full S
circle in a series of brief
wrap-up scenes that are both
T
fancifully tidy and deadly
serious, acknowledging the
Black Lives Matter move- U
ment in a way that allows this
sprawling, unwieldy, fre-
quently brilliant film to close V
on a profoundly affecting note
of hope and catharsis. This
movie is a gift right now, and W
there’s no other director that
could have made it.
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A STUDIO Focus Features • RELEASE DATE Feb. 21, 2020 STUDIO Sony Pictures Classics • RELEASE DATE Feb. 26, 2021

CAST Anya Taylor-Joy, Johnny Flynn, Mia Goth, Bill Nighy CAST Anthony Hopkins, Olivia Colman, Imogen Poots

TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Golden Globe nom for Taylor-Joy; TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Three British Independent Film Awards;
B
three Critics Choice noms four Golden Globe noms; two SAG Award noms

D
Emma
Anya Taylor-Joy stars as Jane Austen’s sharp-witted
heroine in this candy-colored feature debut from director
EE Autumn de Wilde
REVIEWED BY CARYN JAMES ON FEB. 3, 2020

FF
Emma, the story of an indulged but good-hearted
G young woman who relentlessly and wronghead-
edly plays matchmaker, is a stalwart for the screen,
from Gwyneth Paltrow on film and Kate Beckinsale on
H television in 1996 to a series starring Romola Garai in
2009 — and, of course, the classic contemporary spin
on the character in Clueless (1995). It turns out there is
I room for another version, as long as you don’t expect
anything radical.
This latest rendition is the first feature for both direc-
J tor Autumn de Wilde, who has spent her career doing still
photography and music videos, and screenwriter Eleanor
Catton, known for the prize-winning novel The Luminaries.
The Father
Anthony Hopkins and Olivia Colman play a
K
The film plays as if they have studied every sturdy PBS
dementia-afflicted man and his daughter in
Masterpiece literary adaptation and used that as a model.
Florian Zeller’s screen adaptation of his own play
(That is not a bad thing, just a descriptive reality check.)
L REVIEWED BY TODD MCCARTHY ON JAN. 27, 2020
De Wilde and Catton deliver a largely faithful and unchal-
lenging adaptation, beautifully staged and sharply acted
M by a cast adept at balancing wit and romance.
The best film about the wages of aging since Amour
Anya Taylor-Joy succeeds in the trickiest aspect of play-
eight years ago, The Father takes a bracingly insight-
ing Emma, which is to hint at the warm heart beneath her
ful, subtle and nuanced look at encroaching dementia
N vain self-assurance. “It is the greatest amusement in the
and the toll it takes on those in proximity to the afflicted.
world,” she says offhandedly about meddling in others’
Fronted by a stupendous performance from Anthony
romantic lives. Emma is like the 19th century equivalent
O Hopkins as a proud Englishman in denial of his condition,
of an algorithm matching people based on what should
this penetrating work marks an outstanding directorial
work, while anyone with wide-open eyes would see that her
debut by the play’s French author, Florian Zeller.
choices are abysmal. Taylor-Joy gives the character a win-
P Zeller has embellished his work with some keen visual
ning innocence at the start and a wrenching dismay after
elements that expand upon what was possible onstage and

EMMA: COURTESY OF FOCUS FEATURES. FATHER: SEAN GLEASON/SONY PICTURES CLASSICS. COW: ALLYSON RIGGS/A24 FILMS. VERSION: COURTESY OF NETFLIX.
she realizes how selfish she has been.
prove both disquieting and meaningful in conveying the
Q experience of dementia. The film thereby deserves to be
analyzed as a freshly conceived work in its own right, not
just a transfer from one medium to another.
R “I don’t need you. I don’t need anyone,” barks Anthony
(Hopkins, his name being the same as his character’s) as
his daughter Anne (Olivia Colman) tries to give him some
S
simple assistance. Anthony lives in a handsome London
flat, but she has some disruptive news to announce: She’s
about to leave to live in Paris, a prospect that launches the
T
old man into a disbelieving tirade until he switches gears
and asks, “What’s going to become of me?”
U Significantly elevating the film’s insight into the old
man’s impaired lucidity is some very understated visual
manipulation of the physical surroundings he inhabits.
V Viewers who have been watching carefully might notice
very slight differences in the decor and layout, suggesting
that perhaps Anthony may not be where he thinks he is.
W Many films have attempted to convey alternative states of
mind through many different means, but likely never has
the invasion of memory loss been conveyed as profoundly.
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STUDIO A24 • RELEASE DATE March 6, 2020 STUDIO Netflix • RELEASE DATE Oct. 9, 2020 A
CAST John Magaro, Orion Lee, René Auberjonois CAST Radha Blank, Peter Kim, Oswin Benjamin, Reed Birney

TOP AWARDS AND NOMS National Board of Review top film; TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Gotham Award for best screenplay;
B
five Gotham Award noms; three Independent Spirit Award noms Sundance directing award; National Board of Review top film

First Cow The Forty-Year- D

Kelly Reichardt again goes off the grid in the
Pacific Northwest, this time in early 19th century Oregon,
with a delicate depiction of male friendship
Old Version EE
REVIEWED BY DAVID ROONEY ON AUG. 30, 2019
A burnt-out playwright chasing her dream
turns to rap to get inspired again in this feature
debut from writer-director Radha Blank
REVIEWED BY BEANDREA JULY ON JAN. 26, 2020
FF
In a series of gorgeous scenes that punctuate
Kelly Reichardt’s quietly penetrating account of life on G
the Oregon Trail in the pioneer fur-trading days, a diffi-
dent baker played by John Magaro speaks in soothing tones
to the placid heifer that gives First Cow its title, establish- H
ing mutual trust as he extracts a pail of milk from her
each night. Those clandestine encounters feed the gentle
rhythms of this miniaturist Western, the latest entry in I
the narratively spare but volubly expressive filmography
of a director who has often observed the unique connec-
tion between people and animals with a gaze of singular J
tenderness — not to be confused with cute sentimentality.
Human connection is the principal driver in this evocative
K
portrait of male friendship and loyalty flowering in the
rugged wilderness.
Magaro and Orion Lee are the beating heart of the
L
film, the rapport between their polar-opposite charac-
ters so believable that our anxiety mounts when they’re
separated and our spirits are lifted when their bond is M
reaffirmed. The terrific Magaro’s characterization is so
shy and humble it might be called self-effacing, though he
fully communicates both the history and the emotional N
Radha Blank’s coming-of-age-in-your-40s tale is a
depths of this quiet man. Lee, who has a background on
love letter full of more love letters. It’s a love letter
prestigious English and Irish stages, gives his charac-
to the people of pre-gentrified Harlem (she’s a New York O
ter, King-Lu, a shrewd touch of inscrutability, but his
native), to old-school hip-hop, to struggling artists, to
warmth, pragmatism and mercurial mind make him an
young people with big dreams and to Black women who
engaging character.
dare to live life out of the box. With a carefully crafted P
While not a lot happens in First Cow by the standards of
visual language, an inventive Greek chorus composed of
most two-hour narrative films, the drama’s rough-edged
characters who reflect New York’s diversity and a funny yet
lyricism kept me rapt the entire time.
thought-provoking script, the film creates a world that you Q
want to soak up frame by frame.
Shot on black-and-white 35mm with brief interludes of
color, the movie pays serious homage to Spike Lee’s She’s R
Gotta Have It. Yet while so clearly referencing Lee, The
Forty-Year-Old Version still asserts itself in a way that feels
S
wholly original and lands like a cinematic response more
than an imitation.
One gets the sense that Blank is hyper-aware of the “one-
T
and-done” phenomenon that has often plagued female
directors, especially Black women and other women of
color, and she’s not going to waste her chance. The black- U
and-white cinematography serves as a kind of liberating
restraint, as if preserving the pic within cinematic amber
so that viewers can see the characters with new eyes. It’s a V
marvel, too, that there are several supporting characters
that make an impact in their single scenes: a bus driver, a
battle rapper, a sharp-tongued Black lady using a walker. W
It’s Blank’s story, but it’s also the story of her family and
her community, and everyone has a valuable role to play.
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A STUDIO Apple TV+ • RELEASE DATE July 10, 2020

CAST Tom Hanks, Stephen Graham, Rob Morgan, Elisabeth Shue

TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Two People’s Choice Award noms

B

C
Greyhound
Tom Hanks wrote and stars in this World War II
D
nautical action drama about an Allied convoy crossing
the North Atlantic under attack from Nazi U-boats
REVIEWED BY DAVID ROONEY ON JULY 6, 2020
E

FF The theme of American valor and heroism has been

a thread through many of Tom Hanks’ roles. So it’s
no surprise that Hanks was drawn to adapt and star in a
GG screen version of C.S. Forester’s 1955 historical maritime
novel, The Good Shepherd. Roll your eyes about the return
to familiar territory if you must, but Greyhound is a taut
HH action thriller that exerts a sustained grip.
STUDIO Sony Pictures Classics • RELEASE DATE Feb. 12, 2021 Unimpeachable sincerity has long been a signature of
CAST Michelle Pfeiffer, Lucas Hedges, Valerie Mahaffey, Tracy Letts the actor’s career, and that quality prevents Greyhound
I
TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Golden Globe nom for best actress,
from ever slipping into the vanity-project trap. This is one
musical/comedy; Independent Spirit Award nom for best of Hanks’ more subdued recent performances. But playing
J supporting actress (Mahaffey) Capt. Ernest Krause, he embodies the selfless, clenched-
jaw purposefulness of the greatest generation with
persuasive conviction and moving humility.
As screenwriter, Hanks strips down the story to its
K

L
French Exit
Michelle Pfeiffer and Lucas Hedges play a mother and
essence, largely dispensing with both preamble and
post-ordeal exhalation, focusing almost entirely on the
nail-biting experience of the hellish voyage. The movie
son who move to Paris when they run out of money fully immerses the audience in battle, owing something to
in Azazel Jacobs’ adaptation of the Patrick deWitt novel the intensity of both the D-Day landing in Saving Private
M REVIEWED BY JON FROSCH ON OCT. 10, 2020 Ryan and the combat sequences in Dunkirk.
To Hanks’ credit, his screenplay mostly downplays the
heroics while fully acknowledging the bravery and sac-
N
Playing a 65-year-old New York high-society widow rifice of the men who fought in the Battle of the Atlantic,
who burns through her savings and moves to Paris a World War II campaign relatively underrepresented in
O with her son, Michelle Pfeiffer sucks the juice from each movies. With thorough verisimilitude, Greyhound depicts
line like a Louisianan devouring a crawfish. It’s a full-on just one crossing among countless during a six-year period
diva turn — a smorgasbord of side-eye and shade, of lac- in which 3,500 ships carrying millions of tons of cargo
P erating one-liners dispatched between drags on cigarettes were sunk and 72,200 souls lost.
and slurps of martinis. Fans of French cinema may feel
they’re beholding an American grand dame worthy of
Q comparisons to Isabelle Huppert or Nathalie Baye, while
Sex and the City buffs will detect a bit of Kim Cattrall’s
indelible vamp Samantha Jones in Pfeiffer’s patrician purr.
R But the sense of tremulous vulnerability beneath the

EXIT: COURTESY OF SONY PICTURES CLASSICS. GREYHOUD: COURTESY OF APPLETV+. HILLBILLY: LACEY TERRELL/NETFLIX.
campy hauteur — the mix of warmth and cold, softness
and steel — is very much the actress’ own. Pfeiffer’s per-
S
formance certainly isn’t her subtlest, but it ranks among
her most captivatingly Pfeiffer-ian.
As he proved in two other sensitive studies of oddballs,
T
director Azazel Jacobs is a deft commingler of tones
and registers; he makes space for both grotesquerie and
U pathos, and knows how to locate the latter in the former.
Here, the director and cast build a mood of disarming
madcap silliness, then pierce it with moments of mel-
V ancholy that temper the quirkitude. This is certainly
the biggest canvas Jacobs has worked on yet, and the
director succeeds in filling it with his trademark brush
W strokes of authentic sweetness and generosity. Frances
is larger-than-life, but it’s her all-too-human foibles and
idiosyncrasies that make the filmmaker, and us, love her.
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Glenn Close photographed by Sami Drasin

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STUDIO Netflix • RELEASE DATE Nov. 11, 2020 • CAST Amy Adams, Glenn Close A
TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Golden Globe nom for best supporting actress; SAG Award noms for best actress and best supporting actress

FF
GG
HH
I

Hillbilly Elegy
Ron Howard directs Glenn Close and Amy Adams, as a mother and daughter
K

with a tumultuous relationship, in the film adaptation of J.D. Vance’s memoir

REVIEWED BY SHERI LINDEN ON NOV. 10, 2020 L

Arriving during an with full-throttled cursing M

expectation-shattering and maternal freak-outs by
electoral season, J.D. Vance’s the bushel.
N
2016 book, Hillbilly Elegy:
A Memoir of a Family and
“She was very much a Director Ron Howard
and screenwriter Vanessa
Culture in Crisis, hit a zeit- larger-than-life character.” Taylor generally avoid O
geist nerve. Against the GLENN CLOSE Vance’s more sweeping, and
backdrop of Donald Trump’s controversial, cultural judg-
ascendancy, Vance’s story ments about poor whites P
of his against-the-odds rise of Appalachian lineage and
from Rust Belt poverty to the zero in on the family aspect
Ivy League was oft-cited in of the story. Nuance is not Q
a hand-wringing national Howard’s strong suit, and
conversation (or shouting the time-hopping narra-
match) about the politi- tive’s pileup of crises grows R
cal establishment vis-a-vis repetitive. But there are
the white working class. some well-observed details
in Taylor’s distillation of the S
It offered a window into a
world that most pundits source material.
knew nothing about. Whatever lessons it might
T
In many ways, the want to impart, Hillbilly
Netflix film adaptation is Elegy doesn’t romanticize
an American Dream saga its subjects or package their U
we’ve seen countless times struggles in neat bromides
before, for good and for or cornpone redemp-
bad: a paean to personal tion. There are moments V
grit and stick-to-itiveness. that clang off-key or land
What sets it apart are the with the flatness of cliche,
take-no-prisoners perfor- but there are also sharp W
mances of Amy Adams and observations across the
Glenn Close, tearing it up urban-rural divide.
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A STUDIO Warner Bros. • RELEASE DATE Feb 12, 2021
B
D Judas and the
E Black Messiah
F as Black Panther chairman Fred Hampton in the
G
H
STUDIO Netflix • RELEASE DATE Sept. 4, 2020
CAST Jessie Buckley, Jesse Plemons, Toni Collette, David Thewlis
II TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Two Gotham Award noms
JJ
K I’m Thinking
LL of Ending Things
Writer-director Charlie Kaufman’s latest sees a
couple venture on a time-jumping metaphysical
M road trip exploring memory, yearning and despair
REVIEWED BY DAVID ROONEY ON AUG. 27, 2020
N
Even when dealing with depression, despair and
O mortality, Charlie Kaufman’s more playful instincts
have tended to ameliorate his obsessively cerebral side. But
his third feature as writer-director is by far his bleakest,
P so steeped in suffocating anxiety it should come with a
mental health advisory.
Tackling Canadian author Iain Reid’s 2016 debut novel,
Q Kaufman set himself another challenge that would defeat
most screenwriters. Its baseline narrative is straightfor-
ward enough — a young man (Jesse Plemons) takes his
R new girlfriend (Jessie Buckley) to meet his parents at the
remote farmhouse where he grew up. But its long stretches
of nonlinear philosophical rumination, its enigmatic
S
allusions to a unspecified tragedy and the contextual void
in which the action takes place make it largely resistant to
the standard structural dynamics of cinematic narrative.
T
Digging into his trademark toolbox with more concern
for honoring the material than making life easy for his
U audience, Kaufman has probably made as complex and
audaciously loopy a film as admirers of Reid’s novel could
have desired. It’s a tough watch, broken down into four acts
V punctuated by long static stretches of dialogue exchanged
in the claustrophobic setting of a car traveling lonely roads
under heavy snowfall.
W On many levels it’s a bold, brilliant work, uncompro-
mising in its darkness and distinguished by rigorously
committed performances from a superb principal cast.
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CAST Daniel Kaluuya, LaKeith Stanfield, Dominique Fishback
TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Golden Globe for best supporting
actor (Kaluuya); AFI Awards movie of the year; National Board
of Review top film
Shaka King’s political thriller stars Daniel Kaluuya
months before his assassination at the age of 21
REVIEWED BY DAVID ROONEY ON FEB. 1, 2021
The 1969 killing at age 21 of Illinois Black Panther
Party chairman Fred Hampton wields proportionately
explosive impact in Shaka King’s historical thriller with an
urgency that speaks even louder more than half a cen-
tury later. Led by sensational performances from Daniel
Kaluuya as Hampton and LaKeith Stanfield as William
O’Neal, the FBI informant who infiltrated his inner circle,
this is a scalding account of oppression and revolution,
THINKING: MARY CYBULSKI/NETFLIX. JUDAS: GLEN WILSON/WARNER BROS. TALK: COURTESY OF HBO MAX. AHEAD: REGINE DE LAZZARIS AKA GRETA/NETFLIX.
coercion and betrayal, rendered more shocking by the
undiminished currency of its themes.
The film represents an impressive step up to weightier
subject matter on an epic canvas for director King and co-
writer Will Berson. The biblical allusions of the title ripple
through a drama as attentive to its characters’ humanity
as to their political significance. That heightens the tragic
dimensions of this visceral account of a galvanizing Black
leader elevated by a movement for social change and unity,
and a white establishment intent on crushing him.
Ultimately, this is an electrifying ensemble piece, its
sorrow and outrage resonating over the postscripts detail-
ing the personal and legal outcomes. Cinematographer
Sean Bobbitt gives the film a textured neo-retro look
in which colors pop against the generally more muted
tones of Sam Lisenco’s production design and Charlese
Antoinette Jones’ period costumes, which add to the ambi-
ence without ever drawing attention to themselves. This is
boldly assured, issues-based filmmaking with real heart,
and above all, a saddened sense of how the past maintains
its hold on the present.
22 M A R C H 2021 AWA R D S 2

STUDIO HBO Max • RELEASE DATE Dec. 10, 2020
CAST Meryl Streep, Candice Bergen, Dianne Wiest, Lucas Hedges,
Gemma Chan
TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Two AARP Movies for Grownups
Award noms
Let Them
All Talk
Meryl Streep stars as a famed novelist who invites
her estranged college friends on a transatlantic
cruise in this comedy-drama from Steven Soderbergh
REVIEWED BY DAVID ROONEY ON DEC. 3, 2020
Steven Soderbergh proves an excellent match for
brilliant short fiction writer Deborah Eisenberg in
her first produced screenplay. Much like the author, the
main character here is a celebrated novelist who publishes
infrequently and pays punctilious attention to every
word, providing a succulent role for Meryl Streep. Her
interplay with Candice Bergen and Dianne Wiest as the
college friends she hasn’t seen in 35 years is enlivened by
extensive improvisation, which gives it the enthralling
spontaneity of vintage Robert Altman.
It’s perhaps more satisfying on a scene-by-scene basis
than it is as a conventional narrative, dropping refer-
ences to a comedy of errors while remaining more subtly
ambiguous about its form. It’s full of wry observations
about the confusion of relationships — female friendships
in particular — along with droll insights about a writer’s
inspiration and whether drawing from real life constitutes
a license or a betrayal.
Most of the action takes place on board the Queen Mary 2
during an actual crossing from New York to Southampton,
England. Shooting under his cinematography pseudonym
Peter Andrews, Soderbergh makes the vessel’s imposing
architectural and design features a buffet of quirky com-
positional beauty.
Eisenberg’s stories often leave the reader with multiple
impressions to be drawn concerning her meaning and her
characters’ intentions. The same applies to this flavorful,
fizzy cocktail of a movie.
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
#
STUDIO Netflix • RELEASE DATE Nov. 6, 2020 A
CAST Sophia Loren, Ibrahima Gueye, Abril Zamora, Babak Karimi
TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Golden Globe win for best original song and
B
nom for best foreign-language film
The Life Ahead
Sophia Loren stars as a Holocaust survivor and former
D
sex worker who bonds with a Senegalese orphan
in this Italian drama directed by her son, Edoardo Ponti E
REVIEWED BY DAVID ROONEY ON OCT. 29, 2020
G
H
II
JJ
K
LL
M
N
The Romain Gary novel that became the Oscar-
winning 1977 French drama Madame Rosa gets
relocated from Paris to a Southern Italian coastal town O
in The Life Ahead. Set in one of the hubs of the Euro-
Mediterranean migrant crisis, the film reshapes the work
as a vehicle for director Edoardo Ponti’s celebrated mother, P
Sophia Loren, back on the screen after a 10-year absence.
Audiences will warm to the handsomely crafted Italian-
language feature, a sentimental yet satisfying labor of love. Q
Madame Rosa makes a modest living running her apart-
ment as an informal refuge for the children of immigrant
sex workers. Having spent 40 years on the streets herself, R
she reasons that these underprivileged kids are better
off in her care than with social services. When her sym-
S
pathetic medic begs her to take in 12-year-old Senegalese
orphan Momo (Ibrahima Gueye), the same kid who
snatched her bag and shoved her to the ground at the mar-
T
ket, she is no keener on the idea than he is. But she can’t
afford to say no to the monthly stipend the doctor offers.
Ponti’s admiration for the neorealist masters of Italian U
cinema is evident, even if his storytelling leans toward
slicker, more predictable melodrama and his emotional
exploration is less subtle. V
An Oscar-bait original Diane Warren song performed
by Italian superstar Laura Pausini on the end credits is a
reminder that The Life Ahead is a middlebrow tearjerker W
in an old-fashioned mold. But there’s nothing wrong with
that, especially when it’s such a classy endeavor.
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#

A STUDIO Warner Bros. • RELEASE DATE Jan. 29, 2021 STUDIO Netflix • RELEASE DATE Nov. 25, 2020

CAST Denzel Washington, Rami Malek, Jared Leto CAST Viola Davis, Chadwick Boseman, Colman Domingo,
Glynn Turman
TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Golden Globe and SAG Award noms for
B TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Golden Globe for best actor, drama
best supporting actor (Leto)
(Boseman); AFI Awards movie of the year; three SAG Award noms;
five Independent Spirit Award noms; Gotham Award nom
C

D
Ma Rainey’s
E
Black Bottom
Chadwick Boseman makes his final screen appearance
F starring opposite Viola Davis in this adaptation of
August Wilson’s play about the ‘Mother of the Blues’
REVIEWED BY DAVID ROONEY ON NOV. 20, 2020
G

H Viola Davis burns a hole in the screen projecting the

indomitable pride and hard-won self-worth of the
legendary early 20th century blues singer named in the
I title. But it’s Chadwick Boseman as a cocky trumpeter
brutally demeaned by the white recording industry who
delivers the most explosive thunder and searing pain. The
J
The Little Things
Denzel Washington and Rami Malek star as
late actor pours every ounce of himself, emotionally and
physically, into his final performance, breathing tragic
grandeur into George C. Wolfe’s lovingly made, flawlessly
K
cast film of August Wilson’s music-infused drama.
different breeds of cop working the same serial-killer
Extensively trimmed in the screenplay by frequent
case in John Lee Hancock’s Los Angeles-set neo-noir
Wilson interpreter Ruben Santiago-Hudson, the adapta-
LL REVIEWED BY DAVID ROONEY ON JAN. 26, 2021
tion loses some of the roiling symphonic breadth of its
stage origins in this tight 90-minute distillation, without

M
M The psychological toll of investigative police work
entirely disguising those roots. The lyrical arias that are
a signature part of the playwright’s work still register
seeps into the bones of John Lee Hancock’s gritty
very much as heightened theatrical monologues. But it
neo-noir The Little Things, which captures Los Angeles
N remains a uniquely powerful reflection on the struggle for
County’s flat urban sprawl and snaking freeways to highly
dignity of Black Americans during the Great Northward
atmospheric effect. If the director’s generally taut origi-
Migration, hitting raw nerves of inequality that continue
O nal screenplay settles on an ending too cryptic to be fully
to resonate today.
satisfying, the performances of Denzel Washington and
Watching actors of this caliber lose themselves in
Rami Malek as cops from the old school and the new who
characters of such aching humanity is ample reward, with
P end up having more in common than they anticipated sup-
Boseman’s towering work standing as a testament to a
ply enough glue to hold everything together. Add in Jared
blazing talent lost too soon. It’s impossible to watch his
Leto as the taunting weirdo who becomes their prime
astonishingly gutsy performance without the sorrowful
Q suspect in a series of brutal murders, and you have a sus-
feeling that he’s acting like he’s running out of time.
penseful crime thriller with a dark allure.
In many ways it’s a brooding throwback to the neo-
R noirs of the ’90s, even if it lacks the originality of the
genre’s standouts. Hancock is decidedly more interested
in probing the cops’ minds than the killer’s, and his focus
S
is entirely male, with women relegated to the periphery,
including the victims.
The writer-director doesn’t match the surgical efficiency
T
of the best noir screenwriting, but he’s good with dialogue
and character. Ultimately, he’s less concerned with finding
LITTLE: COURTESY OF WARNER BROS. PICTURES. RAINEY: DAVID LEE/NETFLIX.

U an unambiguous solution to the crime than showing how

this line of work and its seedy milieu can get under the skin
of even the sharpest investigators. What keeps the film
V gripping is its textured scrutiny of the principal characters.
Hancock and frequent DP John Schwartzman create a
cinematic environment that’s unmistakable in its sense
W of place but avoids familiar L.A. landmarks. They use their
locations to create a soul-sucking crime canvas in which
it’s all too easy for men of the law to lose themselves.
X
George C. Wolfe photographed by Jai Lennard

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“Every single thing that
he was doing had this
incredibly intense level
of commitment to it. ”
DIRECTOR GEORGE C. WOLFE ON
CHADWICK BOSEMAN
 “Maybe I’ve arrived,
but I don’t feel that way.
I always have
something to prove.”
JOHN DAVID WASHINGTON
 #

STUDIO Netflix • RELEASE DATE Feb. 5, 2021 STUDIO Netflix • RELEASE DATE Nov. 13, 2020 A
CAST Zendaya, John David Washington CAST Gary Oldman, Amanda Seyfried, Charles Dance, Lily Collins

TOP AWARDS AND NOMS AFI movie of the year; six Golden Globe
B
noms; SAG Award nom for best actor

Mank
Gary Oldman plays Herman J. Mankiewicz, the alcoholic
D

writer sequestered in the Mojave Desert to

finish his screenplay for Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane E
REVIEWED BY DAVID ROONEY ON NOV. 6, 2020

F
When Gary Oldman staggers onto an MGM film set
as hungover screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz and G
Louis B. Mayer asks who he is, Irving Thalberg replies
dismissively, “Just a writer.” David Fincher’s forensic probe
into the turbulent weeks Mankiewicz spent finishing his H
Citizen Kane script for Orson Welles aims to correct that
slight and restore the reputation of an often overlooked
architect of that 1941 classic, casting a jaundiced eye over I
1930s Hollywood. Steeped in the inspirations behind
Welles’ debut film and the bold stylistic tropes that made it
such a landmark, the Netflix feature is a cinephile’s dream. J

Malcolm & Marie

Zendaya and John David Washington star in this volatile
Photographed digitally in what’s billed as “Hi-Dynamic
Range,” the sumptuous black-and-white visuals echo the
mesmerizing chiaroscuro lighting, the virtuoso continu-
K
ous shots, the thematically weighted compositions and
two-hander about the long night of emotional reckoning
penetrating deep-focus gaze that have made Citizen Kane
that follows a rising-star director’s splashy premiere L
an eternal staple of film studies classes.
REVIEWED BY DAVID ROONEY ON JAN. 22, 2021
Oldman creates a robustly inhabited character out of
the self-destructive, jaded Mankiewicz, the New York
playwright and drama critic turned screenwriter who was
M
M
After all the passion and grievances stirred up in
perhaps too smart for Hollywood.
Malcolm & Marie, it’s a tad on the nose to hear Cee-Lo
But for a big-canvas, large-ensemble picture that aims N
on the Outkast track “Liberation” sing about the “fine line
to break down the real-life figures depicted in Citizen
between love and hate.” But it’s glorious to watch Zendaya,
Kane while tracing the intersection of art, commerce and
in a commanding turn that cements her arrival as a O
politics in Depression-era Hollywood, there are more quick
grown-up movie star, skate along that line with both raw
sketches than full-blooded characters. Working from a
emotionality and the jaded remove of a perceptive woman
diligently researched screenplay by his late father, Jack
toughened by experience. Sam Levinson’s intense cham- P
Fincher, the director has made a high-style piece of cin-
ber drama explores the complex contracts of partnership
ematic nostalgia that’s a constant pleasure to look at but
while also examining life inside the bubble of the enter-
only intermittently finds a heartbeat.
tainment business, in particular the way artists can suck Q
up all the oxygen in a relationship.
The artist in question is filmmaker Malcolm, played by
John David Washington in a performance that’s forceful, R
charismatic and convincing. All that emphatic gesticula-
tion has a way of making some speeches play like audition
S
pieces in an insightful script peppered with monologues
that don’t always seem 100 percent organic.
Levinson makes no such declaration in the press notes,
T
but this seems an homage to the gnawing intimacy of John
Cassavetes, contoured around the personas of two beauti-
ful young exemplars of 21st century Hollywood. There are U
frequent echoes, too, of Mike Nichols’ evergreen screen
MARIE: DOMINIC MILLER/NETFLIX. MANK: COURTESY OF NETFLIX.

version of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? — not just in the

dynamic of the sparring couple but also in the high-con- V
trast black-and-white visuals of virtuoso cinematographer
Marcell Rév. The seductive fluidity of the camerawork, as
much as the punchy performances and muscular writ- W
ing, keep Malcolm & Marie compelling even when it risks
becoming an extended exercise in style.
X
John David Washington photographed by David Needleman

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#

A STUDIO Netflix • RELEASE DATE Dec. 11, 2020

CAST George Clooney, Kyle Chandler, David Oyelowo, Felicity Jones

TOP AWARDS AND NOMS National Board of Review top film;

B
Golden Globe nom for original score

D
The Midnight
E
Sky
George Clooney directs and stars in this postapocalyptic
sci-fi survival drama about the environmental collapse of
F Earth and new hope for humanity in space
REVIEWED BY DAVID ROONEY ON DEC. 9, 2020

H
STUDIO A24 • RELEASE DATE Feb. 12, 2021

CAST Steven Yeun, Yeri Han, Youn Yuh-jung, Alan Kim

I
TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Sundance audience award and grand jury
prize; Globe for best foreign-language film; three National Board of
Review awards; six Independent Spirit noms; three SAG Award noms
J

L
Minari
Lee Isaac Chung’s autobiographical film sees
a Korean immigrant family chasing the American
dream in 1980s Arkansas
M
M REVIEWED BY TODD MCCARTHY ON JAN. 27, 2020

Bringing Lily Brooks-Dalton’s 2016 debut novel, Good

N
Morning, Midnight, to the screen, George Clooney pulls
off a considerable leap in scope from his previous behind-
O the-camera projects while also transitioning in the lead
role from matinee-idol charmer to weathered veteran,
playing a visionary astronomer with a heavy heart.
P Shifting with grace and narrative equilibrium between
the Arctic and a mission returning from Jupiter, this is
a desolate elegy for a diseased planet and a prayer for the
Q creation of life elsewhere in the universe. Flanked by a
strong supporting cast, Clooney delivers a thoughtful
reflection on the toll of environmental devastation. This
R quiet, meditative new film is emotionally involving from
tense start to poignant finish.
Clooney, looking craggy and aged, is very much the soul
S
of the piece, playing a burdened man grieving over the
ravaged state of the world, his body and possibly his mind
failing him yet still battling to make a difference the only
T
way he can.
Sci-fi fanboys will no doubt find The Midnight Sky too
U solemn, and its echoes of movies like Interstellar, The
Martian and Ad Astra don’t always play in its favor. But
Most immigration stories are similar in a broad sense
but distinctive in the details, which is certainly the
case with Minari. A rare look at a Korean family trying to
adapt and make a go of it in, of all places, 1980s Arkansas,
Lee Isaac Chung’s autobiographical feature is warmly
observant, gently humorous in the vein of Japanese direc-
tor Yasujiro Ozu and not shy about the awful strain the
struggle places on the adults in the family.
After having left Korea and then failing to make it in
California, the family of four with mostly Americanized
names — father Jacob (rising star Steven Yeun), mother
Monica (Yeri Han), daughter Soonj (Noel Kate Cho) and
little son David (Alan S. Kim) — finds itself in an over-
sized prefab home in an otherwise seemingly uninhabited
rural area. Mom and, briefly, Dad get the most meager jobs
imaginable, separating male and female baby chicks in a
factory barn, but they’ve come all this way because Jacob
firmly believes he can grow lots of crops on his 50 acres
and find success as a farmer.
Chung has a light touch and a predilection for dry mirth,
both of which serve him well here. Some significant new
SKY: COURTESY OF NETFLIX. MINARI: JOSH ETHAN JOHNSON/A24.

others will respond to its contemplative maturity. Clooney adversity — the last thing this family needs — provides an
V tips his hat to a vintage inspiration by catching Kyle anchor for the third-act climax; given the severity of their
Chandler’s astronaut watching the closing scene of Stanley setbacks, the film is insufficiently clear about showing
Kramer’s On the Beach. The director and writers here how the family crisis is resolved.
W clearly are pondering the fate of a wounded planet in ways All the same, the charming low-key humor and the
that glance back to that 1959 atomic aftermath drama, actors are winning without being coy or cutesy. Minari is a
nurturing hope for humanity despite the grim outlook. modest pic but very human and accessible.
X
Steven Yeun photographed by David Needleman

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 “I love to say a lot of
dialogue. But there’s also
something beautiful
about the space between
words and the space
between moments.”
STEVEN YEUN
#

A STUDIO Focus Features • RELEASE DATE Mar. 13, 2020 STUDIO Universal • RELEASE DATE Dec. 25, 2020

CAST Sidney Flanigan, Talia Ryder, Théodore Pellerin CAST Tom Hanks, Helena Zengel

TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Sundance special jury award; two National TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Two National Board of Review awards; two
B
Board of Review awards; seven Independent Spirit Award noms; Golden Globe noms; two SAG Award noms; WGA Award nom
three Gotham Award noms

D
Never Rarely
E Sometimes
F Always
Newcomer Sidney Flanigan stars in writer-director
G Eliza Hittman’s drama about a small-town Pennsylvania
teenager dealing with an unplanned pregnancy
REVIEWED BY DAVID ROONEY ON JAN. 24, 2020
H

Never Rarely Sometimes Always should continue to

I
widen the admiration for Hittman’s signature blend
of unadorned realism with moody, melancholy dreami-
ness, while providing an impressive showcase for talented

News of the
J
young screen discoveries Sidney Flanigan and Talia Ryder.
The film also stands to earn attention for its candid and

K clear-eyed contemplation of abortion as a choice arrived at
not with hand-wringing but with sobering pragmatism.
Hittman’s script pares away all unnecessary detail,
L so we first learn of Autumn’s (Flanigan) pregnancy in a
simple shot of her slight belly bulge before she confirms
it at a local women’s clinic where she’s shown a graphic
M anti-abortion video. The awful solitude of her predicament
runs through the film like a sorrowful undertow, coun-
tered by the warmth of her closeness with Skylar (Ryder),
NN who’s more like a sister than a cousin, even if they tend to
talk around anything too sensitive.
O There’s never a showy moment in either of the lead
performances, and yet we come to know these two young
women intimately during a journey more often traveled in
P silence than conversation. The teen-abortion factor tags
the film as an issue drama, and in the most unconven-
tional way, it is — raw, haunting and painfully real. But
Q it’s perhaps better defined as a moving snapshot of female
World
Tom Hanks and German discovery Helena Zengel star
in this Western odyssey about two broken people finding
unity, set in Texas five years after the Civil War
REVIEWED BY DAVID ROONEY ON DEC. 11, 2020
The balm of the storyteller is central to the work of
Capt. Jefferson Kyle Kidd, an ex-infantryman who
travels from town to town in Texas five years after the Civil
War, for a modest fee reading lively accounts of events
from both nearby and far afield to people in need of heal-
ing. That same spirit informs Paul Greengrass’ News of the
World, an epic Western with an intimate gaze that recalls
The Searchers and True Grit, providing Tom Hanks with one
of his best roles since the same director’s Captain Phillips.

ALWAYS: COURTESY OF FOCUS FEATURES. WORLD: COURTESY OF UNIVERSAL STUDIOS. NOMADLAND: COURTESY OF FOX SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES.
friendship, solidarity and bravery. Adapted by Greengrass and Luke Davies (Lion) from
the 2016 novel by Paulette Jiles, the story is one of strang-
R ers finding communion and mutual comfort, two people
whose families have been torn apart by conflict, bound
together by circumstance and then by a growing trust as
S
their shared sense of loss becomes apparent. It benefits
immeasurably from the constantly shifting dynamic
between Hanks’ Captain Kidd and Helena Zengel, the
T
young discovery from last year’s System Crasher, as 10-year-
old Johanna, a German immigrant raised by the Kiowa
U people since her parents were killed six years earlier.
The touching story of these two refugees of a divided
country is entirely different in mood and tempo from
V anything Greengrass has done up to now. With its pains-
takingly detailed production and costume design and
stirring sense of time and place, this is a lovingly crafted
W drama that conveys a gentle message about examining
the pain of our past to find a place of peace, belonging and
even joy in our future.
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 #

STUDIO Searchlight • RELEASE DATE Feb. 19, 2021

F
CAST Frances McDormand, David Strathairn

TOP AWARDS AND NOMS TIFF audience award; two Golden Globes including best picture, drama; AFI movie of the year; two Gotham Awards;
five Independent Spirit Award noms; SAG Award nom for best actress G

Nomadland
Frances McDormand plays a disenfranchised widow from a collapsed Nevada
I

mining town who finds new life on the road in Chloé Zhao’s haunting drama
REVIEWED BY DAVID ROONEY ON SEPT. 11, 2020 J

In her two previous features, Chloé Zhao established a spiri- K

tual connection to the American West, with its immense
skies and wide-open landscapes that speak equally of desolate
solitude and of freedom. Her new film is based on Jessica Bruder’s L
2017 book, Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First
Century, which explores the reality of transient older Americans
living on the road in RVs and vans, picking up seasonal work M
where they can find it, much like the migrant laborers of genera-
tions past. Filmed over four months on locations in Nebraska,
South Dakota, Nevada, Arizona and California, its somber story NN
of the resilient discards of an unforgiving economy has a lived-in
authenticity that creeps up on you with stirring power and grace. O
McDormand plays Fern, a stoical, hardworking widow in her
early 60s who has lived her entire adult life in a company tract
house provided by the United States Gypsum Corp. in Empire, P
Nevada. A drop in demand for sheetrock led to the closing of the
mine there in 2011, and the place became a ghost town, its ZIP
code discontinued within months. The fond sadness with which Q
Fern nuzzles into her late husband’s overalls as she removes her
belongings from a storage locker at the start of the film speaks
volumes about their marriage and his death. R
She might fit the conventional picture of the American under-
class, but her dignity, her self-sufficiency and her romantic
S
kinship with the drifters of the Old West set her apart, without
obscuring her pain and vulnerability. Under Zhao’s alert, com-
passionate gaze, that portrait extends to the many people Fern
T
meets as she bumps along from one destination to the next.

U
“I always get this feeling I want
to challenge the status quo. V
Because when I feel comfortable,
I’m not quite sure what motivates W
me or gets me up in the morning.”
CHLOÉ ZHAO
X
Chloé Zhao photographed by Jai Lennard

Z
#
A STUDIO A24/Apple TV+ • RELEASE DATE Oct. 10, 2020
CAST Rashida Jones, Bill Murray, Marlon Wayans, Jenny Slate
TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Golden Globe nom for best supporting actor
B
D
On the Rocks
Rashida Jones stars as a New York author plagued
by writer’s block and marital concerns, with Bill Murray
as the playboy father who steps in to help
E REVIEWED BY DAVID ROONEY ON SEPT. 22, 2020
F
G
H
I
J
K Regina King’s feature directing debut is inspired
L REVIEWED BY DAVID ROONEY ON SEPT. 7, 2020
M After notching up several years’ worth of solid TV
It’s become unfashionable to express fondness for
N
vintage Woody Allen films, but think back to how
pleasurable they could be before all the off-camera bag-
gage muddied those memories and you have some idea
OO of the warmly satisfying experience of On the Rocks.
Distinguished from those predecessors by its wry female
P point of view, Sofia Coppola’s smart, breezy comedy about
a marriage that may be in trouble and a meddling father
who steps in to save or destroy it stars Bill Murray in peer-
Q less deadpan form, bouncing off a superb foil in Rashida
Jones. Oh, it’s also a sparkling ode to the Manhattan we
all miss.
R This marks Coppola’s third collaboration with Murray,
following Lost in Translation and the holiday special A
Very Murray Christmas. There are aspects of his work in
S
both those projects in his droll characterization here as
Felix, an irresistible operator who has made a fortune as
a high-end art dealer and also fancies himself a bit of a
T
lounge crooner.
There’s a lovely, unforced quality to the way Laura’s
(Jones) anxieties about her marriage intersect with unre-
U
solved feelings about her father’s long-ago infidelity, which
crushed her mother and shattered their family. This is
V played beautifully by the two actors.
On the Rocks is very much a father-daughter two-hander
— tender and personal, dryly funny and played to perfec-
W tion by Jones and Murray. Its effortless touch shows the
accomplished, genre-hopping Coppola continuing to
expand her range.
X
Regina King photographed by Matt Sayles
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STUDIO Amazon • RELEASE DATE Dec. 25, 2020
CAST Kingsley Ben-Adir, Eli Goree, Aldis Hodge, Leslie Odom Jr.
TOP AWARDS AND NOMS AFI movie of the year; Gotham Award for
breakthrough actor (Ben-Adir); Independent Spirit Robert Altman
Award; three Golden Globe noms; two SAG Award noms
One Night in
Miami
by the 1964 encounter of four icons with conflicting
perspectives on the Black struggle
directing credits, Regina King tackles her first feature
with confidence in One Night in Miami, unsurprisingly
coaxing full-blooded performances from her charismatic
leads. While the film doesn’t entirely mask the stage
origins of its single-setting core, this is a skillful adapta-
tion of playwright Kemp Powers’ 2013 drama about a hotel
room gathering of four famous friends on the night in
1964 when 22-year-old Cassius Clay took the world heavy-
weight title. Both entertaining and illuminating, the
Amazon production draws a tacit line between a pivotal
moment in the civil rights movement and America’s cur-
rent racial reckoning.
The bulk of the drama still unfolds, as it did in the play,
in a room at the Hampton House Motel & Villas occu-
pied by Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir), where he’s joined
post-fight by the triumphant Clay (Eli Goree), popular
musician Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.) and star NFL player
Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge). But King and the writer prevent
the stream of talk from becoming static by making smart
choices, which go beyond merely taking the action out onto
the motel roof, for instance. Powers’ script deftly opens
up the material, starting with one telling scene apiece
ROCKS: COURTESY OF APPLE TV+. MIAMI: PATTI PERRET/AMAZON STUDIOS.
suggesting where each of the men is at in his personal
experience of the Black struggle.
To some extent, One Night in Miami remains high-quality
filmed theater. But the conviction and stirring feeling
brought to it elevate the material, making this an auspi-
cious feature debut. Here’s hoping that King, one of our
most consistently excellent screen actors, continues to
spread her wings in this direction.
32 M A R C H 2021 AWA R D S 2
 “I was coming to it with
the intention of making
sure that the dialogue
remained the star, but also
trying to make sure that
there was always a feeling
of movement or energy.”
REGINA KING
 “There’s this wonderful underbelly to it, when
you peel back the facade, that is actually dealing
in more serious themes and questions.”
ANDY SAMBERG

STUDIO Neon/Hulu • RELEASE DATE July 10, 2020
CAST Andy Samberg, Cristin Milioti, J.K. Simmons
TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Two Golden Globe noms including best
picture, comedy; Independent Spirit Award nom for best first
screenplay; WGA Award nom
Palm Springs
Two unattached wedding guests are caught in
a Groundhog Day-style time loop while attending
their friends’ nuptials in the desert
REVIEWED BY JOHN DEFORE ON JAN. 26, 2020
Andy Samberg’s Nyles is stuck in a rut in Max
Barbakow’s thoroughly enjoyable rom-com. More sin-
cerely philosophical than most of its fellow Groundhog Day
descendants, the film doesn’t simply use its fantasy con-
ceit as a pathway to third-act redemption; instead, it gives
some serious consideration to the question of how one
could live with one’s own damaged self if stuck in eternal
stasis and denied the escape hatch of death. Pointlessness,
isolation and the guarantee that no one will ever under-
stand your plight may not sound like the makings of a
laugh-filled heartwarmer, but in the hands of Barbakow
and screenwriter Andy Siara, it is.
When we meet Nyles, he has already lived hundreds or
thousands of iterations of the day, which explains how
little he cares about impressing fellow guests at the tony,
desert-estate wedding. He dresses for the event in shorts
and Bermuda shirt, pops cans of beer during the ceremony
and casually steps up to toast the newlyweds when the
maid of honor, Sarah (Cristin Milioti), is too drunk to do
SPRINGS: CHRISTOPHER WILLARD/HULU. HISTORY: DEAN ROGERS/FOX SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES.
it. Then he makes some suave moves on the dance floor,
swoops over to Sarah and convinces her to sneak off into
the hills with him. Perhaps he’s had a lot of practice at this.
The next morning, when Nyles awakens to the same
sights he’s seen countless times, Sarah’s now trapped in
this day as well. A question burns in the minds of anyone
who’s seen more than a couple of these live-die-restart
films: Is the “let’s do every dumb, life-threatening thing
we can imagine!” montage any good? Answer: It’s among
the best. The script offers some truly novel hijinks even
before imagining the myriad ways one might wreck a
young couple’s perfect, special day.
Andy Samberg photographed by Austin Hargrave
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
#
STUDIO Searchlight • RELEASE DATE Aug. 26, 2020 A
CAST Dev Patel, Tilda Swinton, Hugh Laurie, Ben Whishaw,
Peter Capaldi
B
TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Five British Independent Film Awards;
Golden Globe nom for best actor, musical or comedy
D
E
F
The Personal I
History of David J
Copperfield K
Veep creator Armando Iannucci moves from
political satire to Charles Dickens’ beloved tale of a
writer’s origins in an adaptation starring Dev Patel L
REVIEWED BY JOHN DEFORE ON SEPT. 5, 2019
M
A film to make some hypothetical, not terribly
well-read movie critic wish he’d carved out time in
N
his teens for Charles Dickens, Armando Iannucci’s The
Personal History of David Copperfield turns the author’s
well-loved autobiographical epic about a writer’s ori- O
gins into a fast-moving yarn, sometimes hilarious and
always entertaining.
A break in more ways than one from his savage political
satires — can the man behind The Thick of It really coex-
PP
ist with this much optimism? — the result is less jarring
than Iannucci’s fans may expect. Certainly the most com- Q
mercial of his three theatrical features, it pleases without
pandering, and has found an ideal title character in the
form of the always winning Dev Patel. Graciously, the star R
almost lets himself disappear from time to time, stepping
out of the way of the famously colorful figures surround-
S
ing Copperfield.
For a character who is learning more and more to
observe those around him — he mimics their mannerisms
T
when alone, making sure he can describe them correctly
— it’s a natural approach to the part; but Patel’s oft-dis-
played charm prevents others (Tilda Swinton, Hugh Laurie U
and Ben Whishaw, to name a few) from upstaging him.
Meanwhile, Iannucci shows more visual invention than
in his earlier work, with dazzling transitions that help us V
not to be too grumpy about how little time we spend in
some sequences. (Some earlier Copperfield adaptations
have run to over a dozen television episodes; the filmmak- W
ers here do much close shaving to reach 120 minutes.) It’s
a crowd-pleaser.
X
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A STUDIO Netflix • RELEASE DATE Jan. 7, 2021

CAST Vanessa Kirby, Shia LaBeouf, Ellen Burstyn, Molly Parker

TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Venice Film Festival Volpi Cup for best actress;
B
Golden Globe and SAG Award noms for best actress

D Pieces of a Woman
Vanessa Kirby plays a woman shattered by
the loss of her newborn baby in Kornél Mundruczó’s
E intense English-language debut
REVIEWED BY DAVID ROONEY ON SEPT. 5, 2020

F
Hungarian director
G Kornél Mundruczó drills
deep into the heart of family
tragedy in his first English-
H language feature, about a
couple (Vanessa Kirby and
Shia LaBeouf) shattered by
I the loss of their newborn baby.
Puncturing a brittle European
veneer with spikes of more
J American emotional volatility,
the drama wears influences
from Ingmar Bergman to
K
John Cassavetes — not always
lightly. But despite some
contrived script passages and
unsubtle symbolism, the first-
rate cast keeps it gripping.
Written by Kata Wéber,
the director’s partner and
frequent collaborator as both
screenwriter and actress, the
new film is expanded from a
multimedia theater piece they
developed together. It opens
with a superbly controlled pre-
title sequence, running almost
a full half-hour, showing
a home birth gone terribly
wrong (Molly Parker plays
the overwhelmed midwife); it
will be harrowing for anyone
contemplating parenthood.
The rest of the film traces
how the central couple —
surrounded by family, most
notably a matriarch played
by Ellen Burstyn — copes,
or doesn’t.
The remarkable Kirby
gives a tough performance,
bleeding beneath her
armor-plated guard but
refusing to soften her
character’s abrasive sides as
she undertakes the isolating
work of learning to live
with her loss. Those with
the stomach for a forcefully
acted representation of the
gut-wrenching impact and
long-range after-effects of
an infant’s death during
childbirth will be rewarded
with moments both powerful
and affecting.

PP
Q

T “We have seen

so many deaths
PIECES, PROM: COURTESY OF NETFLIX. PROMISING: COURTESY OF FOCUS FEATURES.

U onscreen, we’ve
rarely seen birth.”
V VANESSA KIRBY

X
Vanessa Kirby photographed by Zoe McConnell

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STUDIO Netflix • RELEASE DATE Dec. 4, 2020
CAST Meryl Streep, James Corden, Nicole Kidman, Andrew Rannells
TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Two Golden Globe noms, for best musical or
comedy and best actor, musical or comedy (Corden)
The Prom
Meryl Streep leads this ensemble musical about
Broadway narcissists championing the right of an Indiana
lesbian to take her girlfriend to the school dance
REVIEWED BY DAVID ROONEY ON DEC. 1, 2020
Meryl Streep is in delectable form as Dee Dee Allen, a
Tony-winning stage diva who must unlearn years of
celebrity self-absorption and take the unfamiliar step of
putting other people’s needs first. Whenever she’s center-
screen, this Netflix adaptation of the disarming 2018
Broadway musical sparkles with campy humor. Elsewhere,
the starry casting and heavy hand of director Ryan Murphy
do the featherweight material few favors, with inert
dramatic scenes and overblown musical numbers contrib-
uting to the general bloat. The movie’s most undeniable
value is in the representation it provides to LGBTQ teens
via a high school dance that is every emotionally isolated
queer kid’s rainbow dream.
The Murphy touch is evident from the start, when West
45th Street in Manhattan’s theater district becomes a
glitzy riot of LED signage that puts Vegas in the shade.
Dee Dee and her co-star Barry Glickman (James Corden)
are celebrating opening night of their Eleanor Roosevelt
bio-musical Eleanor! when a withering pan in The New York
Times turns the Sardi’s afterparty into a wake.
Figuring they need to come up with a cause to help over-
haul their tarnished image, Dee Dee and Barry put their
heads together with Trent (Andrew Rannells), an out-of-
work actor, and Angie (Nicole Kidman), a perennial chorus
dancer. Watching these actors exercise their musical chops
brings sporadic enjoyment even if the cast never quite
coheres as an ensemble.
In any case, there’s something to be said for the wide
reach of a Netflix feature that champions the rights of
LGBTQ teens, sharing a message that’s easy to endorse
even if the delivery tends to grate.
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
#
STUDIO Focus Features • RELEASE DATE Dec. 25, 2020 A
CAST Carey Mulligan, Bo Burnham, Alison Brie, Laverne Cox
TOP AWARDS AND NOMS National Board of Review top film and best
B
actress; four Golden Globe noms; SAG Award nom for best actress;
three Independent Spirit Award noms; WGA Award nom
Promising Young D
Woman E
Carey Mulligan stars as a young woman confronting
the traumas of her past in Emerald Fennell’s directorial F
debut, a shocking and darkly comic revenge fantasy
REVIEWED BY TODD MCCARTHY ON JAN. 26, 2020
G
“Promising” is indeed the word for Emerald Fennell
in the wake of her startling debut feature as a H
writer-director. Starting with what initially looks like a
commonplace story of a 30-something woman who needs
I
to get her act together and then taking it to entirely unex-
pected extremes dramatically and thematically, the British
writer-director-actress shows real nerve and skill both as J
a storyteller and commentator on contemporary dynamics
between women and men.
First glimpsed in a dissolute state in a nightclub, Cassie K
(Carey Mulligan) cuts the pathetic figure of a hopeless
drunk. She looks a mess and seems not to care, barely
doing the minimum at her coffee-shop day job. She runs L
into a former classmate, Ryan (Bo Burnham), who’s now
a pediatric surgeon. This optimistically turns into an
all-day date, but another blast from the past in the form of M
another guy sets off some different memories.
Fennell goes to astonishing lengths both in detailing the
N
damage done to Cassie and the long reach of much-delayed
retribution. Fennell’s film could be called a polemic, but
dramatically it’s so sharply and boldly laid out that its O
narrative shocks rule the day. It’s jolting to witness how it
refuses to let anyone off the hook.
It’s been clear that Mulligan has no problem carrying a
film, and she certainly proves that again here with a role
PP
that demands considerable range and a great development
arc, from self-pitying empty shell to consummate avenger. Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
37 M A R C H 2021 AWA R D S 2
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A STUDIO Disney/Pixar • RELEASE DATE Dec. 25, 2020
CAST Jamie Foxx, Tina Fey, Daveed Diggs, Richard Ayoade, Questlove
TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Two Golden Globes, best animated film and
B
score; AFI movie of the year; National Board of Review top film and
best animated feature
D Soul
Jamie Foxx and Tina Fey voice characters in
E Pixar’s latest feature, a tribute to the vitality of jazz,
New York City and the immaterial world
REVIEWED BY LESLIE FELPERIN ON OCT. 11, 2020
F
H STUDIO Amazon • RELEASE DATE Nov. 20, 2020
I TOP AWARDS AND NOMS AFI movie of the year; National Board of
J
L
M REVIEWED BY JOHN DEFORE ON SEPT. 8, 2020
N
Directed by Pete Docter (Up, Inside Out) and co-
O directed by Kemp Powers (author of play-turned-film
One Night in Miami), this densely packed, exquisitely
executed and just a teensy bit batshit film is peak Pixar.
P It’s a vintage mix of the company’s intricate storytelling,
complex emotional intelligence, technical prowess and
cerebral whimsy on dexamethasone.
Q The fact that it is also embedded in African American
culture and features a diverse voice cast is another spar-
kling facet. But thankfully, Soul manages to avoid feeling
R tokenistic or patronizing. Indeed, identity in a very spe-
cific psychological sense is core to the metaphysics of Soul
— as were the anthropomorphized emotions of Joy and
SS Sorrow in Docter’s Inside Out — and cultural legacy is also
central here (the protagonist is a Black man living in outer-
borough New York City, as part of a Black community). But
T
racial identity isn’t really the point; in the end, it’s a movie
more about jazz and spiritual essence — soul, if you will, in
U every sense of the word.
Once again, in true Pixar style, the story is constructed
in such a way as to offer both a jaunty adventure in which
V the hero has a time-sensitive goal that must be met and a
parable about more intangible themes, like mortality, the
purpose of life, loss, skill and what makes us what we are.
W But Soul seems less about filling out details in a fictional
landscape than limning a kind of cartoon humanist non-
denominational cosmology.
X
Riz Ahmed photographed by David Needleman
Y
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
Z
CAST Riz Ahmed, Olivia Cooke, Paul Raci
Review top film, best actor and best supporting actor; Gotham
Award for best actor; Globe and SAG Award noms for best actor;
three Independent Spirit Award noms
Sound of Metal
Darius Marder’s debut fiction feature stars Riz Ahmed
as a heavy metal drummer dealing with the sudden loss
of his hearing and an ongoing struggle with sobriety
A film about the sudden onset of deafness that is too
attentive to specifics of character and setting to ever
feel like a rote disability drama, Darius Marder’s Sound
of Metal stars Riz Ahmed as a man whose life, up to now,
has revolved around music. Working through the stages of
grief, Ahmed’s drummer gets stuck at Bargaining: Is there
a way to undo the damage done to his ears, and return to
life as he knows it? The question, a much more complicated
one than he wants to believe, nudges Sound to pick sides
in a controversy unfamiliar to most moviegoers. But even
when the cultural politics are explicit, Ahmed’s perfor-
mance and a sure-footed script by Marder and his brother
Abraham ensure that this remains one man’s story.
Ahmed’s Ruben and girlfriend/bandmate Lou (Olivia
Cooke) are waiting to soundcheck at a club when Ruben
has an out-of-the-blue ear pop, as you would while diving
or descending on a flight, and is left barely hearing what’s
around him. Accomplished sound designer Nicolas Becker
shows us what he hears: voices and noises muffled as if
heard underwater, getting less and less distinct as Ruben
realizes this is not a momentary phenomenon.
Ruben finds a 12-step group operating at a remote com-
SOUL: DISNEY/PIXAR. METAL: COURTESY OF AMAZON STUDIOS.
munity for the deaf run by Joe (Paul Raci). The son of a deaf
parent, Raci offers immediately apparent expertise that
helps us accept the script’s failure to really explain some of
the cultural issues at play. Without romanticizing deaf-
ness, Sound of Metal makes a case for acceptance and for
embracing the inevitability of unpredictable change.
38 M A R C H 2021 AWA R D S 2
“It had a kind of rawness
to it, emotionally
speaking, and it was
really specific in terms of
the world it was setting.”
RIZ AHMED
#

A STUDIO Warner Bros. • RELEASE DATE Aug. 26, 2020 STUDIO Netflix • RELEASE DATE Sept. 25, 2020

CAST John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki
TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Golden Globe nom for original score;
B
two People’s Choice Award noms
CAST Sacha Baron Cohen, Frank Langella, Mark Rylance,
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Eddie Redmayne, Jeremy Strong
TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Golden Globe for best screenplay; AFI movie
of the year; four Globe noms; three SAG Award noms; WGA nom

D
Tenet
Writer-director Christopher Nolan sends star
John David Washington back and forth in time —
E sometimes both directions at once — in this sci-fi thriller
REVIEWED BY LESLIE FELPERIN ON AUG. 21, 2020

F
Like Xanax, the title of writer-director Christopher
G Nolan’s Tenet is a palindrome, spelled the same way
backward and forward. That’s fitting for a story about
technology that can “invert” people and things, mak-
H ing them capable of going back in time. And like Xanax,
Tenet makes you feel floaty, mesmerized and, to an extent,
soothed by its spectacle — but also so cloudy in the head
I that the only option is to relax and let it blow your mind
around like a balloon.
The idea is that this inversion tech was/will be invented

The Trial of the

J by people in the future, but the material — bolts, gears,
broken watches, assorted time-travel-controlling
MacGuffins — keeps washing up in the present, the
K

L
“detritus of a coming war.” The protagonist (John David
Washington), a CIA operative recruited to help the
shadowy Tenet organization that’s trying to stop the
Chicago 7
Aaron Sorkin directs a starry ensemble in his
aforementioned worse-than-Armageddon event, learns
account of the legal travesty sparked by the
that an inverted bullet isn’t fired, for example, it’s caught
1968 Democratic National Convention protest
M in the gun. Likewise, an inverted car seems to drive solely
REVIEWED BY DAVID ROONEY ON SEPT. 24, 2020
in reverse, and a person who has gone through one of the
“time stiles” that invert things appears to be moving, talk-
N ing, even breathing backwards.
Throughout his career writing for film, television
That makes the hand-to-hand fight sequences especially
and the stage, Aaron Sorkin has shown a consuming
snappy and unsettling to watch, filmed in claustrophobi-
O fascination with the trembling institutions of American
cally tight shots that look like a cross between capoeira,
politics and justice. His powerful and timely second
boxing and avant-garde modern dance. Altogether,
feature as writer-director shows Sorkin in his sweet spot,
it makes for a chilly, cerebral film — easy to admire,
P burrowing with needling curiosity, impassioned indig-
especially since it’s so rich in audacity and originality,
nation and juicy oratory into the infamous six-month
but almost impossible to love, lacking as it is in a cer-
courtroom circus stemming from charges of inciting a riot
tain humanity.
Q at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.
The film is as dense with witty dialogue, significant
characters, factoids, time shifts and multiperspectivity
R as anything Sorkin has written. Sorkin comes closer to
the approach of documentaries spawned by the case,

TENET: MELINDA SUE GORDAN/WARNER. BROS. CHICAGO: NIKO TAVERNISE/NETFLIX. HOLIDAY: TAKASHI SEIDA/HULU.
cogently dramatizing events in and around the trial in
S
a fluid back-and-forth structure that gradually pieces
together what went down in Chicago’s Grant Park on the
night of Aug. 28, 1968.
TT As has often proven the case with films grounded in
history during this turbulent year, events of a half-century

UU ago have an uncanny way of reflecting the bitterly polar-

ized America of today, as neoconservative power plays
grow ever more aggressive.
V Sorkin has made a movie that’s gripping, illuminat-
ing and trenchant, as erudite as his best work and always
grounded first and foremost in story and character. It’s as
W much about the constitutional American right to protest
as it is about justice, which makes it incredibly relevant to
where we are today.
X

Y
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 #

“I look at Billie Holiday’s G

voice as a scroll. And

on her voice is written H

her entire history.”

ANDRA DAY I

J
STUDIO Hulu • RELEASE DATE Feb. 26, 2021 • CAST Andra Day, Trevante Rhodes, Garrett Hedlund, Leslie Jordan

TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Golden Globe for best actress, drama K

The United States vs. Billie Holiday

L

Andra Day burns up the screen in her first leading role in Lee Daniels’ bio-drama chronicling the FBI’s unabated persecution M
of the immortal jazz singer
REVIEWED BY DAVID ROONEY ON FEB. 19, 2021
N

Andra Day gives a dazzling star the Bronx whose students had included make her seem an ideal fit for the sub- O
turn in her first leading role, which James Baldwin. ject. But the combination of the writer’s
establishes her as a screen natural with Parks is a brilliant writer known for theatricality with Daniels’ taste for woozy
effortless command. She captures the stage work (she won a Pulitzer for Topdog/ excess more often serves as a distraction P
bruising pain of the great jazz singer’s Underdog) that dips into the volatile from the blistering sorrow of Holiday’s
life onstage and off — not to mention the rhythms, repetitions and free-flowing story and the raw commitment Day brings
smoky vocals, the supple phrasing and riffs of jazz for inspiration, which would to the role. Q
intimate musical storytelling that made
Holiday such a legendary talent.
Daniels focuses more squarely on R
Holiday’s significance as a pivotal figure
in the racialization of the FBI’s war on
S
drugs. Screenwriter Suzan-Lori Parks’
principal source material was a section
of British journalist Johann Hari’s 2015
book, Chasing the Scream, a history of TT
the criminalization of narcotics and its
impact, which places Holiday at the birth
of the anti-drug crusade. As recounted
UU
here, this was largely a smoke-screen
to cover for repeated failed attempts to V
stop her performing one of her signature
songs, “Strange Fruit,” a haunting lament
for the Black Americans lynched in the W
South. The song was written by Abel
Meeropol, a Jewish schoolteacher from
X
Andra Day photographed by Sami Drasin

Y
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 202 1 AWA R D S S E A S O N Playbook

DOCU MEN TA RY FEAT U R E

Our Complex World,

Captured on Film
These 15 contenders for best documentary feature examine our relationship
to democracy, health care, justice and nature on a global scale

76 Days MT V DOCU MEN TA RY FILMS
Weixi Chen, Hao Wu, Anonymous
D I R E C TO R S
TO P AWA R D S AFI Fest audience award,
2 Gotham Awards noms
In nearly every frame of 76 Days, most of
the figures we see are covered head to toe in
personal protective equipment. The vérité
footage was shot, heroically, in four hospitals
in Wuhan, the Chinese city where the novel
coronavirus was first identified. 76 Days is
a work of true direct cinema, and its specif-
ics make it, to use an overused word du jour,
unprecedented: Its dispatches were captured
within a whirl of emotional uncertainty and
nonstop action at the epicenter of an escalat-
ing outbreak. — SHERI LINDEN
All In: The Fight for
Democracy A M A ZON ST U DIOS
Lisa Cortés, Liz Garbus
D I R E C TO R S
TO P AWA R D S National Board of Review top docs
All In offers compelling visual history
and civics lessons that will still serve an
educational purpose long after this year’s
presidential inauguration. Deploying
a deftly assembled mix of archive foot-
age and freshly shot interviews with such
experts as Carol Anderson (author of White
Rage) — with gaps filled in by somber,
stylized animation from Michal Czubak
and the Czwarta Rano Studios — the film
unspools a crisp history of voting and

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 42 M A R C H 2021 AWA R D S 2


discontentment with it in the USA since the
nation was founded. — LESLIE FELPERIN
Boys State A PPLE T V+
Amanda McBaine, Jesse Moss
D I R E C TO R S
TO P AWA R D S Sundance audience award,
SXSW special jury recognition,
National Board of Review top docs
Boys State is a decades-old program intend-
ing to give bright high school kids a crash
course in the American political system.
DEAD, CRIP: COURTESY OF NETFLIX. BOYS: THORSTEN THIELOW/SUNDANCE INSTITUTE. DAYS: COURTESY OF MTV
DOCUMENTARY FILMS. ALL: COURTESY OF AMAZON STUDIOS. COLLECTIVE: COURTESY OF MAGNOLIA PICTURES.
Hundreds of boys who don’t know one
another converge for a week at a college
campus, where they’re randomly assigned to
one of two parties; abiding by some preor-
dained procedural rules, they’re supposed to
invent these parties’ platforms from scratch,
select candidates for office and mount
campaigns that will culminate in elections
for governor. Observing the program in the
summer of 2017, documentarians McBaine
and Moss capture what feels more and
more like reality television programming,
which is both appropriate for our times and
depressing. — JOHN DEFORE
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
5 6
Collective M AGNOLI A PICT U R ES
A N D PA RTICIPA N T
Alexander Nanau
D I R E C TO R
TO P AWA R D S Independent Spirit Award nom,
National Board of Review top foreign film
In Collective, Romanian documaker Nanau’s
observational style of filmmaking reaches
new emotional depths. The story began with
a 2015 fire in the nightclub Collectiv that left
27 dead and more than 100 injured, shock-
ing the country. Even more unacceptable
and heartbreaking were the dozens of sur-
vivors who later died of bacterial infections
in inadequately equipped and dangerously
unsterile hospitals. Tense and tightly edited,
this exposé of heartless corruption will ring
bells and outrage audiences long after its fes-
tival run. — DEBORAH YOUNG
Crip Camp NETFLI X
James Lebrecht, Nicole Newnham
D I R E C TO R S
TO P AWA R D S Sundance doc grand jury prize,
IDA award for best feature
Newnham and LeBrecht’s Crip Camp elevates
43 M A R C H 2021 AWA R D S 2
1 Dick Johnson
Is Dead
2 Boys State
3 76 Days
4 All In: The Fight for
Democracy
5 Crip Camp
6 Collective
itself to the top of the birth-of-a-movement
genre heap through smart focus, remark-
able archival footage and inspiring subjects.
More than a simple chronicle of the origins
of the disability rights movement, the story
kicks off in 1971, with Lebrecht, born with
spina bifida, taking the three-hour bus trip
into the Catskills to attend Camp Jened, a
camp for children with disabilities and run
by hippies. Jened is only one chapter of Crip
Camp, but at every step, the documentary
points to how many Jened kids were present
and central in advocating for visibility and
equality. — DANIEL FIENBERG
Dick Johnson Is Dead NETFLI X
Kirsten Johnson
D I R E C TO R
TO P AWA R D S Sundance special jury award,
Independent Spirit Award nom
Dick Johnson Is Dead is one of the craftiest and
funniest love letters ever composed. Ace docu-
mentary filmmaker and cinematographer
Johnson has invented what might be called
a premature or anticipatory filmed obitu-
ary of her very lovable father, who more than

1 Pippa Ehrlich, James Reed
2 3
1 The Mole Agent 2 MLK/FBI 3 My Octopus Teacher
willingly goes along with the gag or memo-
rialization. Even though the subject here
is death, every one of the film’s 89 minutes
represents an impudent momentary defiance
of it. — TODD MCCARTHY
Gunda N EON
Victor Kossakovsky
D I R E C TO R
TO P AWA R D S 2 Berlin International Film
Festival noms
There’s a rich range of voices in Gunda, none
of them human. To anyone who cares to
listen, the grunts and snorts, the squeaks
and squeals, the crowing and lowing com-
municate plenty. Berlin-based, Russia-born
filmmaker Kossakovsky pulls in the viewer
with images of astounding beauty, focused
on a pig, a chicken and a couple of cows.
With its discreet yet intimate long takes, the
doc rewards patience and attentiveness in
every frame. — S.L.
MLK/FBI IFC FILMS
Sam Pollard
D I R E C TO R
TO P AWA R D S Critics’ Choice Documentary
Awards best archival footage winner
Pollard’s searing documentary MLK/FBI
retells the story of the civil rights movement
from the perspective of the government,
showing how FBI founder J. Edgar Hoover
and former director of domestic intelligence
William C. Sullivan targeted and harassed
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
Martin Luther King Jr. until his assassina-
tion in 1968. At a time when King’s legacy
seems irrevocably sanitized by the white
establishments that he died fighting against,
any work that digs deeper into his life is an
act of rebellion. This film implicates the
entire white political establishment for being
threatened by King as a political leader and a
man. — JOURDAIN SEARLES
The Mole Agent GR AV ITAS
V EN T U R ES
Maite Alberdi
D I R E C TO R
TO P AWA R D S National Board of Review top
foreign film, Independent Spirit Award nom
A refreshing, beautifully made documentary
set in a nursing home under suspicion of elder
neglect, Alberdi’s The Mole Agent begins with
its tongue in cheek but grows quite moving by
1 The Painter
and the Thief
2 Gunda 1
3 Notturno
44 M A R C H 2021 AWA R D S 2
its end. The film, which follows an 83-year-
old man hired to go undercover in a Chilean
nursing home, is structured with a brilliant
eye for narrative development and telling
character detail and is likely to inspire some
industry viewers to inquire about feature-
adaptation rights. — J.D.
My Octopus Teacher NETFLI X
D I R E C TO R S
TO P AWA R D S Critics Choice Documentary
Awards for best cinematography and nature
doc, IDA award for best score
Documentarian and diver Craig Foster’s inter-
est in an ordinary octopus grows into a healthy
obsession, and the resulting film, from direc-
tors Ehrlich and Reed, covers nearly her entire
life span, months in the watery wilds that can
be meditative as well as action-packed. It is not
the first documentary to plunge us into the
otherworldly flora and fauna of Earth’s oceans,
but it is the first to chronicle a single sea crea-
ture’s story from such a personal, openhearted
perspective, revealing not just emotional
connections but animal behaviors previously
unknown to scientists. — S.L.
Notturno N EON
Gianfranco Rosi
D I R E C TO R
TO P AWA R D S 3 Venice Film Festival awards,
British Independent Film Awards nom
For three years, Rosi traveled throughout
Libya, Iraq, Kurdistan and Syria talking to
people and accumulating striking images,
not of the fighting itself but of life behind the
front lines, where people are trying to glue
their shattered lives together. Like all the
director’s films, it’s a mood piece that still
retains a strong element of social and politi-
cal criticism. — D.Y.
The Painter and the Thief
N EON
Benjamin Ree
D I R E C TO R
TO P AWA R D S Sundance special jury award
 202 1 AWA R D S S E A S O N Playbook

A novel angle on achieving notoriety in the

art world is revealed in The Painter and the 1

Thief, an engrossing Norwegian documen-

tary born of the unlikely but resilient bond
between a young female artist and a career
criminal who stole two of her large canvases.
Ree’s second feature documentary thrives on
its odd-couple pairing of two societal misfits
in turmoil brought together by real circum-
stances most fiction writers would reject as
too contrived. It’s an unusual look at the slip-
periness of the human condition. — T.M.
2

Time A M A ZON ST U DIOS

Garrett Bradley
D I R E C TO R 3
TO P AWA R D S Gotham Award, National
Board of Review Award, New York Film
Critics Circle Award, Sundance Film Festival
Directing Award, Independent Spirit
Award nom

In Time, Bradley’s concise and impres-

sionistic account of love and waiting, of the
American justice system and the fight to
MOLE: ALVARO REYES/SUNDANCE INSTITUTE. MLK: COURTESY OF IFC FILMS. OCTOPUS: COURTESY OF NETFLIX. PAINTER, GUNDA: COURTESY OF NEON.

keep a family whole, the years flow back-

NOTTURNO: COURTESY OF CINE ART. TIME: COURTESY OF SUNDANCE. CHECHYNYA: COURTESY OF HBO. TRUFFLE: SONY PICTURES CLASSIC.

ward and forward, eddying and receding.

The repercussions of mass incarceration
are very much the subject of this bracing
time capsule, but Bradley’s film isn’t directly
concerned with legalities and policy details.
There is no comforting logic here, the film
asserts, no handy way to make sense of a
nation’s ingrained racism, the disproportion-
1 Time 2 Welcome to Chechnya 3 The Truffle Hunters
ate penalties for Black defendants and the
fallout on their communities. Time’s purpose-
ful lack of connect-the-dots narrative can Dweck and Kershaw (The Last Race) directed, — which grows only in the wild among the
at moments be frustrating or distracting. produced and shot this captivating vérité roots of tall trees and can’t be cultivated —
But from the lacunae and ellipses, the leaps documentary, which finds humor, charm and appears to be dying out. And they remain
across years, the filmmaker builds something poignancy in the crusty eccentrics and their reluctant to pass along their secrets in a sector
gripping. — S.L. adored canine companions who sniff out the increasingly ruled by greed. — DAVID ROONEY
aromatic tubers, usually under the secretive
The Truffle Hunters cloak of night. The Truffle Hunters also sug- Welcome to Chechnya HBO
SON Y PICT U R ES CL ASSICS gests a melancholy sense of a disappearing David France
D I R E C TO R
Michael Dweck, Gregory Kershaw
D I R E C TO R S way of life dating back to old world Europe. TO P AWA R D S Sundance Film Festival
TO P AWA R D S National Board of Review The small number of men from rural village Documentary Editing award, Sao Paolo
Award, Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury communities whose lifelong passion has International Film Festival Audience award,
Prize nom been their ability to find the elusive fungus 3 Berlin International Film Festival awards

2 3 Hard-hitting, emotionally charged and fre-

quently distressing in both its first-person
accounts of detention and torture and its
glimpses of vicious anti-gay violence caught
on video, the film should help draw attention
to atrocities denied by their perpetrators and
shrugged off by the Kremlin, which under
Vladimir Putin hasn’t exactly been shy about
its own LGBTQ intolerance. Whether or not
you identify as queer, Welcome to Chechnya
will leave you shaken by the evidence of an
amoral autocracy taking extreme action under
the hypocritical guise of religious purity. — D.R.

T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER 45 M A R C H 2021 AWA R D S 2

 202 1 AWA R D S S E A S O N
1
Glimpses Into
2
15 Global Stories
THR’s critics review the shortlisted features from around the world,
ranging from a tale about a Syrian man who sells his skin for art
to the reinvention of a classic Guatemalan folktale
3 Another Round
DEN M A R K
Thomas Vinterberg
D I R E C TO R
TO P AWA R D S Golden Globe nom,
Four wins at the European Film
Awards (including top film)
Eight years after making the
Oscar-nominated The Hunt
4 together, Mads Mikkelsen and
writer-director Vinterberg have
reunited for Another Round, a
tragicomic portrait of midlife cri-
sis and alcohol abuse. The film is
sweeter, lighter and more conven-
tional than most of Vinterberg’s
previous work, eschewing the
bleak social commentary that
5 underscored films like The
Celebration, Submarino and The
Hunt. It makes for an appealing
ensemble piece overall, as well
as a great vehicle for Mikkelsen’s
vulpine beauty and nimble
dance moves. — STEPHEN DALTON
Better Days
HONG KONG
6
Derek Tsang
D I R E C TO R
TO P AWA R D S Eight Hong Kong
Film Awards wins
Tsang’s hair-raising tract against
school gangs, whose vicious bul-
lying drives one girl to suicide
and another to murder, points an
accusing finger at the extraordi-
7
nary pressure that high school
students are under to score high
on the Chinese equivalent of
SAT tests and get into universi-
ties that count. Though not very
subtle in presenting its thesis,
the story is suspenseful and
well told. — DEBORAH YOUNG
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
Playbook
IN TER NATIONA L FEAT U R E FILMS
Charlatan
CZ ECH R EPU BLIC
Agnieszka Holland
D I R E C TO R
TO P AWA R D S European
Film Awards director nom,
Camerimage nom
Self-taught Czech healer Jan
Mikolásek springs ambiguously
to life in director Holland’s fasci-
nating period drama Charlatan,
in a dazzling performance by top
Czech actor Ivan Trojan. Though
shot in the most classic of idioms,
the film commands attention
with its mesmerizing perfor-
mances and lively crosscutting
between key moments in the
hero’s life. The film’s final scene
is a knockout, pulling together
all the clues to Mikolásek’s eerie
personality in one unbeliev-
able minute. — D.Y.
Collective ROM A N I A
Alexander Nanau
D I R E C TO R
(See page 43.)
Dear Comrades!
RUSSI A
Andrei Konchalovsky
D I R E C TO R
TO P AWA R D S National Board of
Review top foreign film, Venice
Film Festival special jury prize
Taking Soviet films from the past
as its model, Russian veteran
Konchalovsky’s Dear Comrades!
pinpoints a moment when
people’s unquestioning belief in
the high-minded principles of
the Communist Party wavered
as evidence to the contrary
mounted and impacted their
lives. Although at first sight this
46 M A R C H 2021 AWA R D S 2
dramatization of a 1962 strike at
a factory in the USSR may seem
a long way from the interests of
contemporary audiences, it is
surprising how much resonance
the film has with the political
struggles of our own time. — D.Y.
Hope NORWAY
Maria Sodahl
D I R E C TO R
TO P AWA R D S Two European
Film Awards noms
ANOTHER: HENRIK OHSTEN/SAMUEL GOLDWYN FILMS. BETTER: COURTESY OF WELL GO USA ENTERTAINMENT. CHARLATAN: COURTESY OF CINEMIEN. COMRADES: SASHA GUSOV/NEON. HERE, SUN: COURTESY OF NETFLIX. HOPE: MANUEL
CLARO. LLORONA: COURTESY OF FILM FACTORY. NIGHT: COURTESY OF NEON. QUO: COURTESY OF CINÉART. CHILDREN: COURTESY OF STRAND RELEASING. TWO: COURTESY OF MAGNOLIA PICTURES. SKIN: COURTESY OF TANIT FILMS.
The maturity of writer-director
Sodahl’s gaze and the highly per-
sonal nature of material drawn
from her own difficult experience
bring an affecting gravitas to that
most over-trafficked of sub-
genres, the cancer movie. Factor
in two layered performances of
penetrating emotional acuity
from Andrea Braein Hovig and
Stellan Skarsgard, as a couple
navigating a crisis, and you have a
melancholy but highly satisfying
adult drama. — DAVID ROONEY
I’m No Longer Here
MEX ICO
Fernando Frias
D I R E C TO R
TO P AWA R D S 10 wins at the
Ariel Awards
The Netflix drama, written and
directed by Frias, offers a glimpse
into a distinctive world — the
vibrant Cholombiano dance and
fashion subculture of Monterrey,
Mexico — and what happens
when Ulises, a young man who
thrives within it, is uprooted.
There’s a stronger film trapped
inside this rather lethargic
assembly, which could have used

cleaner narrative lines and a
sharper frame. But the film’s
frustrations melt away in a
transporting final image of Ulises
dancing, at least for a serene
moment or two shutting out the
chaos of the city below. — D.R.
La Llorona GUATEM A L A
Jayro Bustamante
D I R E C TO R
TO P AWA R D S Golden Globe nom
Bustamante brilliantly reinter-
prets a folktale in The Weeping
Woman (La Llorona). By shift-
ing the guilt from the innocent
mother at the folktale’s center to
the political powers who ordered
the extermination of Guatemala’s
Indigenous population, this
complex, genre-jumping film
gives new resonance to a very
disturbing story. Pascual Reyes’
music wafts through the scenes,
spreading a horror atmosphere,
and the cinematography by
Nicolás Wong Díaz is shadowy
and suggestive. When the camera
slyly approaches the charac-
ters unawares, it makes the
skin crawl. — D.Y.
The Man Who Sold
His Skin T U N ISI A
Kaouther Ben Hania
D I R E C TO R
TO P AWA R D S Two Venice
Film Festival awards
A Syrian man agrees to become
a human canvas for a controver-
sial contemporary artist in The
Man Who Sold His Skin. This is
the second fiction feature from
Tunisian director Ben Hania,
after 2017’s Beauty and the Dogs,
and as in that smaller-scale but
similarly ambitious project,
she combines a sociopolitical
hot potato — in this case the
refugee crisis — with a cer-
tain formalist verve. Though
the final product isn’t quite a
home run, it is nonetheless a
very intriguing work that again
suggests Ben Hania is a talent to
watch. — BOYD VAN HOEIJ
The Mole Agent
CHILE
Maite Alberdi
D I R E C TO R
(See page 44.)
T H E HOL LY WO OD R EP ORT ER
Night of the Kings
I VORY COAST
Philippe Lacôte
D I R E C TO R
TO P AWA R D S National Board
of Review top foreign film,
Independent Spirit nom
This captivating hybrid of a
movie — following a young man
in prison who is forced to invent
a story that lasts until sunrise
or face the consequences —
mixes fairy-tale and storytelling
elements with a vividly drawn
backdrop of heightened realism.
The main motor of the narrative
isn’t actually suspense at all, but
the sheer force of the various tales
themselves. The very specific
sense of place and rhythm that
Lacôte conjures also relies heavily
on a beautifully detailed sound-
scape, which often plays with
what’s happening offscreen as
much as what’s actually visible.
Good stories, as we all know,
extend far beyond what’s directly
in the tale. — B.V.H.
Quo Vadis, Aida?
BOSN I A A N D HER Z EGOV INA
Jasmila Zbanić
D I R E C TO R
TO P AWA R D S Independent Spirit
nom, Venice Film Festival Golden
Lion nom
Zbanić’s Quo Vadis, Aida? plunges
the viewer into the raw horror
of ethnic cleansing during the
war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Seen
through the eyes of a United
Nations interpreter, events unfold
on July 11, 1995, in the town of
Srebrenica, which entered his-
tory when units of the Bosnian
Serb army murdered more than
7,000 civilians, primarily men
and boys, and raped the town’s
women. Zbanić’s expert telling is
simple and to the point, relying
on the audience’s empathy with
the anguished interpreter to
reach the heart of darkness in this
tragic story. — D.Y.
A Sun TA I WA N
D I R E C TO R Chung Mong-hong
A family scrambling for eco-
nomic survival falls to pieces
when its two teenage sons make
47
8
devastating life decisions in A Sun
(Yang Guang Pu Zhao), a moving
drama from Taiwan. Directed
and co-written by Chung (Soul,
Godspeed), this thought-provok-
ing feature is long but well paced,
full of incident but at the same
time intimate — though shock-
ing violence occurs just offscreen.
Illuminated by deeply nuanced
performances and characters to
care about, it’s one of the memo-
rable Asian films this year, and
well worth the effort of tracking
9
down on Netflix. — D.Y.
Sun Children IR A N
Majid Majidi
D I R E C TO R
TO P AWA R D S Three Venice Film
Festival awards
Iranian director Majidi has made
some of the most visually stun-
10
ning, emotionally stirring films
in world cinema about the plight
of underprivileged, exploited and
abused young people, and Sun
Children (Khorshid) is one of his
very best. The story about street
boys commissioned by a local
boss to dig for a treasure unfolds
around a schoolyard and the
clever, freckled face of 12-year-old 11
Ali (Roohollah Zamani), a stereo-
type-buster of nonstop courage.
The film’s condemnation of child
labor and the inaccessibility of
basic education to the poor comes
across with great force. — D.Y.
Two of Us FR A NCE
Filippo Meneghetti
D I R E C TO R 12
TO P AWA R D S Golden Globe nom
13
Driven by a powerhouse, impas-
sioned performance from
acclaimed German actress
Barbara Sukowa and one of con-
trastingly delicate brush strokes
by Comédie-Française veteran
Martine Chevallier, Meneghetti’s
terrific debut feature, Two of Us,
begins as a gentle queer love story 1 Another Round 2 Better Days 3 Charlatan
and then takes a series of unpre- 4 Dear Comrades! 5 Hope 6 I’m No Longer Here
7 La Llorona 8 The Man Who Sold His Skin
dictable turns as the clandestine 9 Night of the Kings 10 Quo Vadis, Aida?
life partners become separated by 11 A Sun 12 Sun Children 13 Two of Us
unfortunate circumstance. This
is a smart movie that starts from
a relatively simple yet captivating
premise and then steadily gains
in complexity as it develops. — D.R.
M A R C H 2021 AWA R D S 2
 91 Years of THR

Memorable moments
from a storied history

19
931 19
9 322 19
933 1 933 4 1935 1 9 36 1933 7 1 9 38 19
939 1940 1941 19
9 42 1 94
43 1944
4 19
94 5 1 9 46
6 19
9 477 19
9 488 1 94
49 1955 0 1 951

Grapes of Wrath’s Depiction of Nomads Won Oscars

If Chloé Zhao manages to nab (Henry Fonda), who only recently attacks that might deem it pro- The Grapes of Wrath grossed
this year’s directing Oscar for got out of prison, accidentally Communist propaganda and gave $2.5 million ($47 million with
Nomadland, she won’t be the first kills a security guard, sending it a green light. Filming began on inflation). Besides Ford’s vic-
to win for a drama about down- the family fleeing the law. The Oct. 4, 1939, and wrapped Nov. 16, tory (his second of four), Jane
on-their-luck itinerant workers film was executive produced by with a combination of soundstage Darwell took home the best
making their way across the Darryl F. Zanuck for 20th Century production (on Stage 5 at Fox supporting actress award for her
American West. John Ford was Fox, where he was vp produc- Studios in Century City) and loca- work as Ma Joad. (Fonda, mean-
awarded the statuette in 1941 tion. Despite the 1939 novel’s tion work (in Oklahoma, Arizona, while, lost the best actor Oscar to
for his adaptation of the John blockbuster status — it was the Texas and New Mexico). Budgeted James Stewart of The Philadelphia
Steinbeck novel The Grapes of top-selling book of that year, hav- at $800,000 ($15 million today), Story.) — SETH ABRAMOVITCH
Wrath, which sees the Joad fam- ing moved 430,000 copies — the
ily abandon the Oklahoma farm executive was nervous about the
they lost to the Great Depression socialist leanings of the source
and Dust Bowl and head to material. So he sent a few private
California — a fabled promised investigators to Oklahoma to
land — in a broken-down 1926 see if the conditions in the state
Hudson Super Six sedan. Along were really as bad as Steinbeck
the way, they are beset by all sorts had described. Informed that
of tragedy: the grandparents die, the Okies were truly existing at
various relatives abandon them, a life-or-death level of poverty,
20TH CENTURY FOX/COURTESY EVERETT COLLECTION

they are stranded at a desti- Zanuck became convinced that

tute work camp, and son Tom his feature could withstand any

From left: Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell and Russell Simpson in 1940’s The Grapes of Wrath. Inset: THR reported on John Ford’s Oscar win on Feb. 28, 1941.

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