Innholdsfortegnelse for Award Special 33A, November 14, 2022 i The Hollywood Reporter

Despite a predictably effusive standing ovation at the Venice International Film Festival, where it premiered in September, Andrew Dominik’s Blonde saw its awards potential quickly downgraded by Oscar handicappers once the reviews began posting. While critics had praise for Ana de Armas’ fiercely committed performance as a bruised and battered Marilyn Monroe, the consensus about the film itself — the Netflix release eventually scored a meager 42 percent on Rotten Tomatoes — was that it failed to recognize Monroe’s intelligence, determination and undeniable talent. Writing for Time.com, Stephanie Zacharek observed, “Blonde allows no room for the real-life Marilyn’s multidimen-sionality, her capacity for delight as well as her deep depressions. Actors are always more than the sum of their parts, and Marilyn Monroe especially, as both a performer and a persona,…

Argentina Argentina, 1985 There are echoes of the Jan. 6 hearings in Santiago Mitre’s contender, which uses the mode of the legal thriller to tell the true story of a team of heroic lawyers that took on the leaders of the country’s bloody military dictatorship in an effort to bring justice to the victims of the regime and to establish the principle of the rule of law. It features another stand-out performance from Argentine star Ricardo Darín (The Secrets in Their Eyes, Wild Tales). Mexico Bardo Netflix is clearly hoping Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s first Mexican feature since his 2000 breakout, Amores Perros (see page 48), can repeat the Oscar success of Roma (from Iñárritu’s directing amigo Alfonso Cuarón). Iñárritu’s technicolor, satirical epic — about a famous Mexican journalist living in…

Brazil Mars One In a country with one of the world’s biggest wealth gaps, it is unsurprising that most Brazilian films on the festival circuit depict stories of either the bitterly poor or the stupendously wealthy. But that makes Gabriel Martins’ drama, about the struggles of a lower-middle-class family living on a modest budget in a blue-collar suburb, all the more unique and appealing. Political upheaval in the form of the election of right-wing populist Jair Bolsonaro simmers in the background, but the film’s focus is squarely on the mostly ordinary hopes and dreams of the Martins family, only one of whom — son Deivinho — imagines a world beyond and is set on joining a manned mission to Mars. Iran World War III Houman Seyyedi’s absurdist drama follows a…

INTERNATIONAL FEATURE All Quiet on the Western Front (Germany) This adaptation of the 1929 classic anti-war novel counts Daniel Brühl among its producers and stars, and at one point was Netflix’s most watched film globally. Bardo (Mexico) Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s dark comedy was slammed at fests. But with a cut 22 minutes shorter and A-list fans, it could still become Mexico’s fourth short-listee in five years. Like the three prior, it’s a Netflix project. Corsage (Austria) Marie Kreutzer’s punk portrait of the 19th century Austrian Empress Elisabeth stars Vicky Krieps, who won Cannes’ Un Certain Regard best performance prize and could land a best actress Oscar nom. EO (Poland) Jerzy Skolimowski, 84, took this Bresson-esque chronicle of a donkey’s travails to Cannes 50 years after he first had a film there,…

The story of Opportunity, the Exploratory Rover that was sent to Mars in 2004 for a 90-day mission but ended up conducting work on the planet for 15 years, is told in an inspiring and emotional documentary that’s generating buzz this season. Amazon’s Good Night Oppy, directed by Ryan White and narrated by Angela Bassett, also is a unique example of how effective visual effects can be incorporated into documentary filmmaking. To tell the story of Opportunity’s journey to and on the surface of Mars, Lucasfilm’s Industrial Light & Magic created 34 minutes of photoreal, fully CG shots that were combined with new interviews and archival footage. The VFX task rivaled many live-action movies. In addition to creating a pair of six-wheeled, 5-foot-2 rovers that were designed to collect geological…

Ali Abbasi’s Holy Spider wasn’t meant to be prophetic. The director’s serial-killer drama from Utopia is inspired by the true story of Saeed Hanaei, who murdered prostitutes in the Iranian city Mashhad, claiming he was acting on behalf of God to “cleanse” the holy center of their corruption. Zar Amir-Ebrahimi stars as Rahimi, a fictional journalist who investigates the murders and comes to realize that the authorities have little interest in catching the suspect. At its premiere at Cannes, Holy Spider shocked and amazed in equal measure with its unflinching depiction of the violent misogyny Abbasi sees at the heart of modern Iran. It was already part of the awards conversation when Denmark — Abbasi is an Iranian exile based in Copenhagen — put the film forward as its official…

ART 1341 FRAMES OF LOVE AND WAR (YES DOCU) In celebrating the work of acclaimed Israeli war photographer Micha Bar-Am, director Ran Tal’s 1341 Frames of Love and War offers a meditation on photography, political violence and identity through an exclusive (and exhaustive) deep dive into Bar-Am’s expansive artistic archives over the past five decades. ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED (NEON) Laura Poitras (an Oscar winner for 2014’s Citizenfour) directs this portrait of renowned photographer Nan Goldin, one that offers intimate access to her suburban upbringing and experiences living among marginalized communities and artistic scenes in New York City. It also depicts the downfall of the Sackler family, a target of Goldin’s activism and whose company Purdue Pharma created and marketed OxyContin — the root cause of the American…

In Netflix’s Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths, Daniel Giménez Cacho stars as Silverio Gama, a renowned documentarian who is set to receive a prestigious award for his career as a journalist upon his return to his native Mexico after living with his family in Los Angeles for decades. The epic black comedy, which is Mexico’s official Oscar submission for best international feature, is an extremely personal project from four-time Oscar-winning writer-director Alejandro G. Iñárritu, who likens his latest film to the Mexican soup called pozole — “a mix of an enormous amount of things” — that speaks to the shared loneliness of the immigrant experience, particularly for those who feel without a homeland. The film sees Gama weaving throughout his own memories and the present day as…

When Guslagie Malanda landed the co-starring role in the acclaimed French courtroom drama Saint Omer — winner of the Venice Film Festival’s Silver Lion and France’s official submission for the best international film Oscar race — she had appeared in just one movie (French director Jean-Paul Civeyrac’s 2014 drama My Friend Victoria) and hadn’t acted in more than seven years. Although obsessed with cinema and the theater — she estimates she’s gone to plays or movies three times a week since she was 14 — Malanda, now 30, says acting was never something that was even remotely on her radar. “It’s a bit of an unrealistic dream, becoming an actress,” she says. “I grew up in France, where none of the big actresses are Black — none.” Malanda won the…

38 AT THE GARDEN (HBO) 38 at the Garden chronicles the meteoric rise of New York Knicks point guard Jeremy Lin during the 2012 basketball season of “Linsanity,” when he wowed audiences and teammates alike by scoring 38 points against the Los Angeles Lakers at Madison Square Garden. ANASTASIA (MTV DOCUMENTARY FILMS) Russian activist Anastasia Shevchenko grieves for her young adult daughter, from whom she was forcibly separated and who died while Shevchenko was under house arrest for speaking out against the government. ANGOLA DO YOU HEAR US? VOICES FROM A PLANTATION PRISON (MTV DOCUMENTARY FILMS) The short tells the story of playwright Liza Jessie Peterson, whose play The Peculiar Patriot was shut down mid-performance at the Louisiana State Penitentiary. AS FAR AS THEY CAN RUN (MTV DOCUMENTARY FILMS) The…