THE SCREENERS - 6
GOLDEN GLOBE! INDEPENDENT FILM AWARD! SCREEN ACTOR’S GUILD AWARD! CRITIC’S CHOICE AWARD! NEW YORK FILM CRITICS CIRCLE! The trumpets are still blowing for the films that are considered contenders as the Acedemy makes its first vote. As a writer I voted for five best picture awards, five original screenplay awards and five adapted screenplay awards, and it wasn’t easy. There were six to eight films in each category that were vying in my brain.
Out of each member voting within his or her branch the choices are tallied and the nominations made. At the second vote, after the nominations, each Academy member will vote again, this time for the full range of all the branches that make up the world of film.
Our votes are secret, but in these blogs I have let you know some of the films that hit hard or delighted and why, and a few that missed the mark, and in my last-minute viewing before the vote, there were some that wowed me right at the finish line for the 2018 releases, like Roma that offered me acting, directing and cinematography I had never quite seen before. Black and white was the right choice, but it’s not just any black and white. It’s Cuaron’s black and white that somehow shines and creates its own reality. It’s another film, like Capernaum, that makes you feel you are not watching a movie at all, but moving along looking at life where ‘acting’ disappears into being and nothing is false and nothing is predictable.
If you’re liberal minded, On the Basis of Sex will have you cheering from the heart, not only for the movie, but for RBG.
And don’t let small films escape you — like What They Had with Hillary Swank, Michael Shannon, Robert Forster and a luminous Blythe Danner, and At Eternity’s Gate, with Willem Dafoe’s Vincent Van Gogh so heartfelt and riveting, plus the stunning German film Never Look Away, and Kenneth Branagh’s deep and moving All is True, and one more, the sweet, smart and endearing film, Puzzle.
Enjoy.
(While you’re here take a look at A Family of Writers and see what we’re up to. Thank you.)