Ok, some more picks for the Oscars. Previous entry here.
Best Foreign Language Film
Will win – Leviathan
In recent weeks, I feel like there’s some momentum behind Leviathan, a movie I haven’t seen but which certainly seems like a downer.
As I catch up on movies from the last year that I missed in theaters, it’s increasingly clear that all the laments about 2014 being a bad one for film are total nonsense.
The list of excellent movies, or at least the one I’m working on, keeps growing: leaving aside the quiet awards juggernaut of Boyhood (all deserved), that list already includes the tense revelations of Blue Ruin and Calvary, James Gray’s monumental The Immigrant, Paul Thomas Anderson’s Pynchon-noir Inherent Vice … not to mention Ida, Under The Skin, Wetlands, Obvious Child, Noah, and We Are The Best!
It’s awards season, and there’s no shortage of commentary. I might chime in myself in a few weeks. (Spoilers: Boyhood, Ida, The Immigrant, Under The Skin, and Noah would win all the things if it were up to me, and Uma Thurman would get a best Supporting Actress nod for Nymphomaniac Vol 1 — it is not, it turns out, up to me.)
Ida, a haunting Polish film tracing a young woman’s journey into the past (both her own and her country’s), has to be one of the most gorgeous looking films of the year. Released in 2013 but in contention this awards season, it ought to be nominated for cinematography and editing, but will more likely fight it out with the Dardennes brothers’ 2 Days, 1 Night for Best Foreign Film, unless Boyhood somehow manages to win that one, too.