Post-Oscar-Award Season Pix

For once I actually decided to continue trying to see as many Oscar nominated films after the ceremony, as well as films that received other accolades and nominations. 

Jennifer Lawrence and Brian Tyree Henry
in Causeway
Credit: Apple TV

Causeway was a intimate little indie (like To Leslie) with a familiar storyline--two damaged, disparate people form an unlikely friendship. Lynsey (Jennifer Lawrence), a young white lesbian woman, has returned home from Afghanistan after nearly getting blown up. She meets James (Oscar Supporting Actor Nominee Brian Tyree Henry), an African-American mechanic, dealing with his own post-traumatic stress following a car accident resulting in the loss of his leg and the death of his nephew. They meet when Lynsey's truck breaks down and reach out to each other. We've seen this scenario before, but it's handled with tenderness and subtlety. Director Lila Neugebauer has numerous Off-Broadway credits and the cast is stuffed with NYC theater actors including Tony winner Jayne Houdyshell (The Humans), Linda Emond (Enchanted April, Homebody: Kabul), Frederick Weller (Seascape, Some Men), and Stephen McKinley Henderson (Fences, Between Riverside and Crazy). Emond is particularly subtle as Lynsey's neglectful mother. She doesn't lay it on thick with a molasses accent or drunken slurring. She quietly displays the mother's selfishness in small details such as the way she casually tells her boyfriend on the phone she's not doing anything when her daughter is sitting right there. The screenplay has three authors, which is weird, but I was familiar with only one: Otessa Moshfegh from her novel My Year of Rest and Relaxation which I enjoyed.

Bill Nighy received a Best Actor nomination for Living, a British adaptation of Arika Kurosawa's Ikiru. He plays a veddy British repressed civil servant who develops a sense of purpose and community after receiving a terminal diagnosis. Elegant direction and cinematography and a nice supporting performance from Alex Sharp who won the Tony for The Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and 
The Horse
Credit: Apple

The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse completed my viewing of the Animated Short Film category. I suspect this one won the Oscar because it was 30 minutes while the others were all under about 10. A little boy finds himself stranded in a snowy forest and meets the three titular animals who deliver Hallmark homilies ("Just remember you are loved," "Asking for help isn't giving up, it's refusing to give up") as they search for a home for the boy. I preferred the satiric humor of An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake to the saccharine sweetness of The Boy.

Pinocchio won the Best Animated Feature Oscar

Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio (Winner for Best Animated Feature) is a brilliant stop-motion animation feature, much edgier and realistic than the Disney version. In this one, Pinocchio is recruited to serve Mussolini's fascist government after being branded as a dangerous nonconformist. 

I also watched Till featuring an intense and raw performance from Danielle Deadwyler as Emmett Till's mother who was not Oscar nominated, but did receive a SAG Award nod.

Oscar/Other Award Nominated Pictures Seen:
All Quiet on the Western Front (Netflix)
The Banshees of Inisherin (Amazon)
Elvis (HBO Max)
Everything Everywhere All at Once (Amazon)
The Fablemans (Amazon)
Tar (an actual movie theater--Kaufman Astoria Studios)
Women Talking (Amazon)

Till (Amazon)
To Leslie (Amazon)--surprisingly moving little indie film with a great lead performance by Andrea Riseborough as an alcoholic ex-Lottery winner (also loved Allison Janney as usual)

Living (Amazon)
The Whale (Amazon)

Causeway (Apple TV+)
Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery (Netflix)
All the Beauty and Bloodshed (Amazon)
Navalny (HBO Max)

Pinocchio (Netflix)

Nominated Short Films:
The Flying Sailor (YouTube)
The Ice Merchants (YouTube)
My Year of D**ks (Hulu)
An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake and I Think I Believe It (Vimeo)--I liked this one best. Very funny satire on stop-motion animation.
The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse (Apple TV+)
The Elephant Whisperers (Netflix)
Haulout (YouTube)
The Martha Mitchell Effect (Netflix)
Stranger at the Gate (YouTube)--Very moving story about a former Marine who plans to bomb a mosque, but ends up converting to Islam after meeting the people there.
Nightride (YouTube)