Innholdsfortegnelse for Awards Special 32C - November 20, 2023 i The Hollywood Reporter

One may think filmmaker Sam Green’s 32 Sounds is aimed at the sound community, but with his immersive exploration of the noises we hear, Green says he hopes to reach general audiences and inspire them to “hear the world in a different way.” Sound designer Mark Mangini feels the same way, pointing to the narrative power of sound — for instance, the voice of Green’s late brother, preserved on an old answering machine. “That’s a very powerful moment in the movie for us,” says Mangini of the emotional segment during which Green listens to this recording. “We think that helps audiences connect with a vital aspect of their lives that they aren’t really aware of.” 32 Sounds begins with Green and composer JD Samson speaking directly to viewers before proceeding…

THE AMERICAN FRIEND (1977) Dennis Hopper stars as Tim Ripley in this Patricia Highsmith adaptation, in which the career criminal convinces a picture framer (Bruno Ganz) to become an assassin. It won the top foreign film award at the 1977 National Board of Review Awards. PARIS, TEXAS (1984) Harry Dean Stanton, Nastassja Kinski and Dean Stockwell star in Wenders’ neo-Western, co-written by Sam Shepard, that won the Palme d’Or at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival and scored Wenders the best direction award at the BAFTAs. WINGS OF DESIRE (1987) Wenders won best director awards at Cannes and the European Film Awards for this romantic drama, co-written with Peter Handke and Richard Reitinger, about angels who watch over the inhabitants of divided Berlin. BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB (1999) This documentary about…

LEONIE BENESCH GERMANY The Teachers’ Lounge The German actress, who has appeared in The Crown and Around the World in 80 Days, stars as an idealistic teacher trying to solve a series of thefts at her school in the film that was selected as Germany’s entry for the 2024 Academy Awards. Her performance has been lauded by critics; The Hollywood Reporter’s Sheri Linden described Benesch’s portrayal as “veering masterfully between openhearted hope and tense physicality.” The film itself holds a score of 100 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and even beat out four-time Oscar-winning All Quiet on the Western Front at this year’s German film awards, known as the Lolas. JULIETTE BINOCHE FRANCE The Taste of Things The French actress delivers yet another exceptional performance in The Taste of Things, with Vanity…

Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer was the first movie in the director’s career that told the story of the main character in the first person. It’s an intimate portrayal of J. Robert Oppenheimer, a physicist credited as the “father of the atomic bomb,” during World War II. And the intimacy is not only reflected in the camerawork, with shots very close to the actors’ faces — it is also expressed in Ludwig Göransson’s score. “I never read anything like it, and I never worked on something where you’re completely experiencing everything from one character’s eyes and mind,” Göransson tells THR. “I thought that was going to be extremely interesting, but also important and difficult, to see how much the music needed to play the part of his emotions. It needed to make…

Italy has been a regular contender for the international feature Oscar since the 1940s, having won the award 14 times — the most of any country. Four of those winners were directed by Vittorio De Sica, whose 1946 film, Shoeshine, was the first foreign film to be recognized by the Academy with an honorary Oscar. Four years later, his Bicycle Thieves earned the honor. And in 1963, he collaborated with Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni on what would become Italy’s third international feature Oscar winner: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. The film is a comedy anthology divided into three parts, following a triad of Italian couples across three regions of Italy: “Adelina” tells of a wife (Loren) who supports her unemployed husband (Mastroianni) and family by selling black market cigarettes in…

It’s hard to fathom, but there’s at least one more layer of meaningfulness to Barbie’s success worth noting as 2023 draws to a close. While it cemented the global economic influence of female consumers, Greta Gerwig’s juggernaut fantasy-adventure-satire (co-written with her real-life partner, Noah Baumbach) also served as a fever-pitch moment for female auteurship. What’s even cooler, Gerwig has a lot of impressive company: This year has seen the largest group of female writer-directors to see their work released, either theatrically or via streaming, and in many cases they also campaigned for their films during awards season. Among 2023’s standout titles made by women are Chloe Domont’s Fair Play (Netflix), Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn (Amazon/MGM), Kelly Reichardt’s Showing Up (A24), Nicole Holofcener’s You Hurt My Feelings (A24), Kelly Fremon Craig’s Are…

BEST ACTOR Nicolas Cage Dream Scenario Cage is at his Cage-iest in this dark comedy, playing a boring husband, father and academic who suddenly starts appearing in the dreams of strangers, making him world famous — for better and worse. The performance evokes memories of his Oscar-nominated turn in Adaptation. Leonardo DiCaprio Killers of the Flower Moon Leo is in the running for his sixth performance under the direction of Martin Scorsese, in which he plays a simpleton who becomes part of a scheme to kill and rob the Osage community. It could bring him his seventh acting nom; he won for The Revenant in 2016. Bradley Cooper Maestro Cooper’s portrayal of the sexually conflicted composer Leonard Bernstein is poised to bring him his fifth acting Oscar nom and first…

GERMANY The Teachers’ Lounge In Ilker Çatak’s classroom thriller, a minor crime — a series of thefts of classroom supplies and petty cash — sets off a spiral of mistrust, suspicion and denunciation. Leonie Benesch gives a star-making performance as an idealistic teacher who finds herself caught up in the school’s toxic politics — a stand-in for the media and culture wars raging in the world outside. POLAND The Peasants Hugh and D.K. Welchman’s sumptuous animated follow-up to their Oscarnominated Loving Vincent — crafted using 65,000 hand-painted frames by a team of 125 artists — is an even more ambitious creation. It uses the same techniques but with a far higher level of artistic difficultly — each oil-painted frame took an average of four hours to make (and some many…

AKA MR. CHOW (HBO DOCUMENTARY FILMS) This portrait directed by Nick Hooker follows the life and career of painter turned restaurateur Michael Chow, the owner of the Mr Chow restaurant chain, as he returns to the art world with his first solo show in nearly 60 years. AMERICAN SYMPHONY (NETFLIX) Matthew Heineman switches gears from following the front lines of the Mexican drug war (the Oscar-nominated Cartel Land) and the early days of the COVID crisis in New York City (The First Wave), this time helming an intimate profile of Late Night With Stephen Colbert bandleader Jon Batiste as he balances an incredible year of professional success while aiding his wife, writer Suleika Jaouad, through her battle with a rare form of cancer. ANONYMOUS SISTER (SEEKING U.S. DISTRIBUTION) Emmy Award-winning director…

Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt couldn’t have guessed their first time scoring a film together would be the biggest movie of the year. For the duo, working with A-list artists — such as Amy Winehouse, Lady Gaga, Dua Lipa, Adele, Lorde and Bruno Mars — is nothing new. And Ronson had even previously scored a film before: 2015’s Mortdecai. But taking on Greta Gerwig’s Barbie? That was a different feat. As Wyatt explains, they’re the type of people to “dive in the pool and learn how to swim later” — and they’re definitely taking laps now. Not only has the Margot Robbieled film broken box office records, but Barbie: The Album was a chart-topping and Grammy-nominated hit, which Ronson finds “amazing and totally baffling.” With a lineup of songs including…

Wim Wenders is one of the most significant filmmakers of the past 50 years. His credits include classic narrative films like 1984’s Paris, Texas, which won the Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or and brought him a best director BAFTA Award, and 1987’s Wings of Desire, for which he won Cannes’ best director prize; as well as documentary films such as 1999’s Buena Vista Social Club, 2011’s Pina and 2014’s The Salt of the Earth, each of which brought him best documentary feature Oscar nominations. Now, at age 78, Wenders is out with two new films: one a narrative, Perfect Days, the story of a Tokyo toilet cleaner, for which Kôji Yakusho won the best actor prize at Cannes, and which Japan has chosen as its Oscar submission for international feature;…

DENMARK The Promised Land Mads Mikkelsen stars in this Nordic Western as a low-born military man determined to tame the wild Jutland heath, whatever the costs. Touching on themes of class, racism and labor exploitation, it’s an old-fashioned period romp with stunning set pieces, plenty of romance and a satisfying villain in Simon Bennebjerg’s scene-chewing aristocrat Frederik De Schinkel. MONGOLIA City of Wind Tradition clashes with modernity in this coming-of-age drama set in Ulaanbaatar that follows the budding romance between a 17-year-old Mongolian shaman and one of his skeptical customers. Avoiding Western clichés of Eastern spirituality, the film evokes the tension between the old and new without coming down firmly on one side or the other. FINLAND Fallen Leaves In his first film in six years, Aki Kaurismäki serves up…

Abroad range of titles, animation styles and plenty of music define this season’s animated feature race, with some expected contenders still to debut. For instance, as the studio celebrates its centennial, Walt Disney Animation Studios hopes to grab one of the five nomination slots with its Nov. 22 musical Wish, which tells the story of how Disney’s wishing star came to be. Its voice cast is led by Ariana DeBose as young protagonist Asha and Chris Pine as villainous King Magnifico. The cast performs a collection of original songs from Julia Michaels and Benjamin Rice, including “This Wish,” “I’m a Star” and “This Is the Thanks I Get.” Oscar winner Chris Buck (Frozen) and Fawn Veerasunthorn direct, and Disney Animation chief creative officer and Oscar winner Jennifer Lee is a…

If you liked NAPOLEON Ridley Scott’s film, which stars Oscar winner Joaquin Phoenix as the French emperor, may not be as laser-focused on the horrors of war as Netflix’s German-language World War I drama directed by Edward Berger. But the war epic will certainly be a similar treat for historical film buffs. If you liked NYAD Sure, it may be lacking in giant blue-skinned alien creatures who communicate with whales, but Netflix’s biopic — which stars Annette Bening as competitive long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad — will be a thrill for audiences who can’t get enough of underwater camera action. If you liked POOR THINGS Last year’s multiverse-jumping comic drama took home seven Oscars, including the one for best picture, proving the Academy membership is willing to embrace forward-thinking, boundary-pushing fare.…