January starts the best time of year for lovers of serious—and seriously good—art and indie films with the arrival of leading candidates for Academy Awards. While some strong candidates have already arrived here (A Real Pain, Anora, Flow, Queer), lots more are enroute. And the reason we know that already, even though Oscar nominations aren’t announced until January 19 (delayed due to the L.A. fires), is because there’s a growing onslaught of Oscar prognosticators who come forward in December, including critics groups, the Golden Globes Awards, and all sorts of others who chose their “best of” cinema awards last month.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences itself has contributed to the “December primaries” season by instituting “shortlists” of nominees in several categories. One, Best International Feature Film, can be a tip-off to Best Picture nominations as well as those for acting and directing. Another, Best Documentary Feature Film, can make a non-fiction film an art-house hit.
The Golden Globes awards were announced January 5 in a televised ceremony with many, if not most, of the nominees present, an indication of how seriously they take the awards as a momentum-builder toward the March 2 Oscars. And the key winner of the most important film awards was The Brutalist, an epic story (three and a half hours, plus intermission) with ambition to be a classic writ large; it won for Best Drama Movie, Best Drama Director (Brady Corbet), and Actor (Adrien Brody).
The Brutalist had already won the Silver Lion award for best director at the 2024 Venice Film Festival and is scheduled to arrive at the Esquire Theatre on January 24. (Like all films in this story, check theater listing sites for other possible locations.) It’s also been picking up numerous other end-of-year awards and nominations since being named one of the 10 best movies by the American Film Institute. It’s scheduled to open January 24 at the Esquire Theatre and Mariemont Theatre.
I had a chance to attend a sold-out preview of The Brutalist recently at the cinematheque in Louisville’s Speed Art Museum, and, wow, is this film ever intense! Starring Brody as László Tóth, a Hungarian Jew who comes to the U.S. after World War II and the Holocaust and tries to establish an architectural career, its intense story arc reminds me of There Will Be Blood. Guy Pearce, in a memorable role, becomes his wealthy and arrogant patron; Felicity Jones excels as his wife, Erzsébet. (Brody and Jones are pictured above.)
The film’s title has layers of meaning, some quite disturbing. The severe, concrete-heavy post-WWII architectural style known as Brutalism reflects the world we inherited after the end of that calamitous war. It has truth, which makes it beautiful. This film is probably the leading Oscar candidate and has been long awaited, so expect crowds.
The Room Next Door
[Watch the trailer. Opens January 17 at the Mariemont Theatre.]
Also highly awaited is Oscar-winning Spanish director Pedro Almadóvar’s first English-language film, based on a 2020 novel by Sigrid Nunez, What Are You Going Through. It won the Golden Lion at Venice, the festival’s top prize. The film, in typical Almodóvar style, is about two women who renew a long-ago friendship when one, a war correspondent (Tilda Swinton), is facing cancer. The other, an author (Julianne Moore), is called upon to help her friend and be close when Swinton’s character goes for a euthanasia pill.
Both have been praised for their performances; Swinton got a Golden Globe nomination for Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Motion Picture-Drama. And the film has its pulse on the zeitgeist, as this is a time of growing support for legal euthanasia for medical reasons. In The New York Times’ Critic’s Choice review, Alissa Wilkinson discusses how the subject may have affected the director’s style. “The Room Next Door is remarkably straightforward for an Almodóvar film, without the signature theatrics or sexual pyrotechnics that tend to pop up in the Spanish auteur’s work. Every conversation is blunt, each character plain-spoken and uninterested in subtext. It takes a second to get used to—movies are full of people saying the opposite of what they mean—but it also feels refreshing and true to these women in particular. They are past the point in life where it’s expedient to dissemble or to pretend to be something they’re not.”
The Last Showgirl
[Watch the trailer. Opens January 10 at the Mariemont and at several area multiplexes.]
It might seem odd to include a film starring Pamela Anderson of Baywatch fame in this story touting Oscar-worthy movies, but she’s winning high praise for her acting in this drama about a showgirl of some 30 years suddenly out of work. Her acting netted Anderson, like Swinton, a nomination for Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Motion Picture-Drama from the Golden Globes, and the film is getting a big release. The Last Showgirl also stars Jamie Lee Curtis and was directed by Gia Coppola, granddaughter of Francis Ford Coppola.
Hard Truths
[Watch the trailer. Opens January 17 at the Mariemont.]
Also drawing keen Oscar interest is the latest from the superb, tough, and unsentimental British director Mike Leigh (Happy-Go-Lucky, Naked), which marks a return to prominence for Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Oscar-nominated for her acting in one Leigh’s best films, 1996’s Secrets and Lies. Here she plays middle-aged, depressed Pansy, who struggles with her relationships. Besides getting a Golden Globe nomination, she also was named Best Actress by the New York Film Critics Circle and Best Lead Performance by Los Angeles Film Critics Association.
Nickel Boys
[Watch the trailer. Opens January 17 at the Esquire.]
This adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s 2019 novel is the story of two African-American youths sent to an abusive reform school in the segregated Florida of the early 1960s. It’s received strong early praise, especially for director RaMell Ross’ innovative filming approach. New York Times film critic Wilkinson named it her favorite 2024 movie, strongly praising Ross’ directorial work: “His adaptation is boldly radical, transforming the text into a mostly first-person film that captures the spirit of the source material … by harnessing the visual and aural tools that cinema provides.”
Ross won the Best Director award from Los Angeles critics, and Nickel Boys was nominated by Golden Globe voters for Best Motion Picture. It’s also on the American Film Institute’s list of 2024’s 10 best movies.
All We Imagine As Light
[Watch the trailer. Currently showing at the Esquire.]
Turning to foreign movies, this is the time of year when we really start to see the best arrive. Already here since December 27 is India’s All We imagine As Light, winner of the New York Film Critics Circle’s award for best international film. It’s also New York Times critic Manohla Dargis’ favorite movie of 2024. Another top critic, The New Yorker’s Justin Chang, nicely described its alluring power: “It’s tedious to talk about the weather, but All We Imagine As Light compels me to at least attempt an exception. From the moment the movie begins, on a warm night during monsoon season in Mumbai, the writer and director, Payal Kapadia, evokes heat and moisture with extraordinary sensual power, and in a cascade of richly atmospheric details: a man’s sweat-stained shirt; outdoor fans whirring above a slow-moving throng; a welcome breeze pouring in through the windows of a rattling commuter train. Later, the rains will come: when Anu (Divya Prabha), a young hospital nurse, sits on a bench with her boyfriend, Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon), a sudden downpour drives them away—the latest indignity for two young city dwellers who haven’t had much luck finding privacy.”
Seed of the Sacred Fig
[Watch the trailer. Opening this month at the Mariemont.]
On the Oscars’ shortlist for Best International Feature Film, this is technically considered a German film—though it’s really Iranian, and therein lies a dramatic story. Director/writer Mohammad Rasoulof’s story is a thriller about a judge in Tehran’s Revolutionary Court who discovers sinister motives behind his hiring. His investigation of that occurs during a time of protest.
This is a fictional story, but the director filmed and incorporated into the story all-too-real scenes from 2022-23 protests that Iran brutally suppressed. The film debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in 2024, where it won a Special Jury Prize, but Rasoulof had to escape Iran to attend the screening. He had just been sentenced to eight years in prison for his previous film.
Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat
[Watch the trailer. Screens at 4 p.m. January 25-26 at the Garfield Theatre, downtown.]
Also getting involved in January screenings of highly regarded 2024 films is Cincinnati World Cinema, which brings the Belgian filmmaker Johan Grimonprez’s documentary to town. It’s on the Oscars shortlist for Best Documentary Feature and earlier won the best documentary award at 2024’s Sundance Film Festival.
World Cinema’s website describes the film as “a riveting exploration of the time when jazz, colonialism and espionage collide, impacting Africa, Europe and the USA.” I’ve seen it, and I agree it’s mesmerizing. The director revisits the 1961 killing of Patrice Lumumba, prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo following Belgium’s withdrawal from its colony. A nationalist who opposed colonialism in Africa, Lumumba had many enemies in important places who found him a threat to the existing order.
The film’s use of jazz music was inspired by the fact that two great American musicians of the time who also were civil rights activists—drummer Max Roach and vocalist Abbey Lincoln—staged a now-famous 1961 protest at the United Nations to protest Lumumba’s killing.
Woodward Theater Screenings
On January 29, Conveyor Belt Books offers a revival of Don’t Look Back, perhaps the greatest rock doc ever. Filmed by D.A. Pennebaker during Bob Dylan’s solo acoustic tour of Great Britain in 1965 (and released in 1967), it captures the great musician just before he goes electric. That latter momentous change in Dylan’s career is the climax of a new biopic, A Complete Unknown, that opened Christmas Day and stars Timothée Chalamet as Dylan.
A new music documentary, Born Innocent: The Redd Cross Story, plays on January 13, focusing on the career of the underappreciated rock band. The Woodward’s website nicely explains the band’s importance: “Born Innocent makes the case for Redd Kross as the seminal West Coast band of the last half century. Formed in 1978 by brothers Jeff and Steve McDonald and still actively playing and recording today, Redd Kross are the ultimate rock and roll lifers. They have influenced independent music in ways that beg to be acknowledged.”
On January 14, The Voice of Black Cincinnati presents a new documentary that sounds particularly timely in offering a compelling look at issues of cultural appropriation. Director Jazmin Jones’ Seeking Mavis Beacon looks at the “face” of the popular application software program that’s been teaching touch typing since 1987. There is no Mavis Beacon; the proprietors hired a Haitian-born model, Renee L’Esperance, to pose as her for advertising purposes. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2024.
All Woodward screenings are at 7:30 p.m. Get tickets and more info here.
Cincinnati World Cinema Screenings
As long as there will be two Dylan films in town this month, it’s only fitting that his closest rival as most artful and influential songwriter of modern times, the late Leonard Cohen, has a film here as well. Cincinnati World Cinema meets that need with a revival of the 2022 documentary Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen—A Journey, A Song, which chronicles the fascinating journey Cohen’s song from obscure album track to a worldwide classic. It screens at 7 p.m. January 17 and 4 p.m. January 18.
CWC is also bringing in the latest edition of the popular British Arrows Awards program this month. Its website describes the Arrows Awards as “UK adverts: comedy, drama, music and PSAs with social and political satire, celebrities and naughty inuendo.” Remaining screenings are at 7 p.m. January 7 and 10, 4 and 7 p.m. January 11, and 4 p.m. January 12.
Get CWC tickets and more info here.
Facebook Comments