Although Red Notice is the blockbuster film Netflix is bringing to the streamer on Friday, November 12th — starring a Hollywood A-list cast that includes Dwayne Johnson, Gal Gadot and Ryan Reynolds — it is the “smaller films” that will prove to be the celebrated Gotham, Indie Spirit, Oscar and critics’ awards fodder come December and into 2022, when early in the morning of Tuesday, February 8th, the 2022 Oscar nominations will be announced.
As we all return to some semblance of “normal” — whatever that means these days? — now that British Columbia’s Public Health Officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry, has lifted all indoor capacity limitations in movie theatres, arenas and elsewhere, in communities where full vaccination rates are on track to hit 90% or better at some point in November, and COVID infection rates are low, we can all look forward to a surfeit of serious-minded film fare to help us celebrate the coming holiday season.
On Friday, November 5th, VanRamblings will publish our full review of Passing — already nominated for a raft of east coast film critic, ‘indie’ Gotham Awards, including Best Director, her first-time in that role, and a simply outstanding outing for British actress, Rebecca Hall, garnering, as well, a Best Screenplay nomination for her adaptation of Nella Larsen’s 1920s novel; Tessa Thompson, for Outstanding Lead Performance (take our word for it, Ms. Thompson’s performance is more than well-deserving of all the accolades she will receive in the weeks and months to come); and the always luminous Ruth Negga (Loving), for Outstanding Supporting Performance, much-deserved recognition for her breathtakingly fine work here.
A complex examination of race and sexuality set against the backdrop of the same ’20s-era Harlem that Larsen was so keen to be part of, Passing will be available on the Netflix streaming service come Wednesday, November 10th.
A week Saturday marks the 20th anniversary of the tragedy that was 9/11.
Sara Colangelo, the award-winning writer and director of the 2018 film, The Kindergarten Teacher, brought her latest film, Worth, to the Sundance Film Festival in January 2020, Now, some 19 months later, Netflix makes Worth available on their service — the film starring Michael Keaton and Amy Ryan.
Following the horrific 2001 attacks on New York City’s World Trade Centre and the U.S. Pentagon, Congress appointed attorney and renowned mediator Kenneth Feinberg (Michael Keaton) to lead the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund.
Assigned to allocate financial resources to the victims of the tragedy, Feinberg and his firm’s head of operations, Camille Biros (Amy Ryan), faced the impossible task of determining the worth of a life to help the families who had suffered incalculable losses. When Feinberg locks horns with Charles Wolf (Stanley Tucci), a community organizer mourning the death of his wife, his initial cynicism turns to compassion as he begins to learn the true human costs of the tragedy.
In 2019, Netflix landed its first Oscar nomination for Best Picture with the release of Alfonso Cuarón’s critically acclaimed Roma. A year later, the streaming service was leading the field with 24 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture nods for both The Irishman and Marriage Story.
As Netflix’s impact on the world of cinema became increasingly undeniable, the younger and more diverse film academy was no longer prepared to shun the streaming service as the old Hollywood guard tried to do. Earlier this year, on April 28th, responding to the changes that COVID-19 had wrought, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences removed the stipulation that a movie must be shown in a theatre before it could become eligible for the coveted Best Picture Oscar nomination.
And thus the stage was set for an Oscar ceremony in 2021 the likes of which no one will have ever seen before, with at least seven Netflix releases eligible for a Best Picture nomination, with each of those films set for Oscar nominations, ranging from Best Actor and Actress, Supporting Actress and Actor, to Best Director, Music, Sound and technical awards.
Today on VanRamblings, the Netflix features set to dominate Oscars 2021.
For the upcoming Academy Awards — delayed due to the pandemic until Sunday, April 25th — Netflix has pulled out all the stops. Already streaming, there’s Spike Lee’s Best Picture contender Da 5 Bloods, Gina Prince-Bythewood’s well-mounted action thriller The Old Guard, and Charlie Kaufman’s screenplay contender, I’m Thinking of Ending Things.
And, available today on Netflix, there’s writer-director Aaron Sorkin’s The Trial of the Chicago 7 which is, as Variety lead critic Owen Gleiberman writes, “a knockout, and the rare drama about the 1960s that’s powerful, authentic and moving enough to feel as if it were taking place today, a briskly paced and immersive film bristling with Sorkin’s distinctive verbal fusillades, a cinematic powder keg of film with a serious message that seamlessly blends a conventional yet compelling courtroom procedural with protest reenactments and documentary footage, the film offering an absorbing primer of a ruefully meaningful period in American history.”
Due to arrive on Netflix on Tuesday, November 24th — on the eve of American Thanksgiving — director Ron Howard’s big budget film adaptation of J.D. Vance’s autobiographical best-seller, Hillbilly Elegy offers a powerful account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town, that also provides broader, probing insight into the struggles of America’s white working class.
A passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis, Glenn Close and Amy Adams are at the centre of Howard’s film, and solid prospects for Best Actress and Best Supporting Oscar nods. Howard will be in the mix, as well.
Netflix will release David Fincher’s Mank in select theatres in November before the black-and-white film begins streaming on December 4th.
The Hollywood-centric period piece follows alcoholic screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz (certain Best Actor nominee Gary Oldman) as he races to finish the screenplay for Orson Welles’ 1941 masterpiece Citizen Kane. That classic picture was fraught with behind the scenes drama, as Mankiewicz and Welles argued over credit and who wrote what, which became even more important once the film won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.
The original script for Mank was written by Fincher’s father, Jack Fincher, so this project certainly means a lot to the filmmaker. Mank boasts a running time of 2 hours and 11 minutes, so it won’t be quite as long as Zodiac or The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, not that Fincher ever wastes a single frame. The film is expected to be a major awards contender for Netflix.
Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. George C. Wolfe directs, Denzel Washington produces, and Oscar-winner Viola Davis (Fences) stars as Ma Rainey in Ruben Santiago-Hudson’s adaptation of the hit August Wilson Broadway play. The late Chadwick Boseman and If Beale Street Could Talk star Colman Domingo play members of Rainey’s ’20s jazz band.
Awards prospects: Ambitious trumpeter Levee was 43-year-old Boseman’s final role before succumbing to his private battle with colon cancer in August; he looks rail thin in film stills. Posthumous Oscars went to Heath Ledger (The Dark Knight) and Peter Finch (Network) among others. In this case, with the beloved Black Panther star also in the running for his supporting role as a U.S. Army soldier in Vietnam in the Spike Lee joint, Da 5 Bloods, many believe that it’s likely Boseman will wind up in the Best Actor category for Ma Rainey, with Davis as Best Actress. Like Mank, the elaborate period setting should be attractive to Academy craft branches.
Release date: In theatres early December, streams on Netflix December 18.
Oscar-winner and Hollywood icon George Clooney directs The Midnight Sky, a sci-fi thriller with a script by Mark L. Smith (The Revenant) based on the Lily Brooks-Dalton novel about an Arctic scientist (Clooney) attempting to warn a NASA spaceship astronaut (Felicity Jones) not to return to doomed planet Earth. Awards prospects: Netflix took advantage of the London Film Festival this month (October 2 – 18) with a tribute to Clooney, complete with clips. Critical reaction will determine whether The Midnight Sky will figure in the Oscar sweepstakes, but Clooney (Syriana) has delivered in the past, as has Oscar-nominated Jones (Theory of Everything).
Release date: In theatres early December, Netflix début to be announced.
In the coming weeks, VanRamblings will publish a list of our top 20 films of 2019, from Teen Spirit (now available on Amazon Prime) back in February through all the films yet to screen in Vancouver — from Clint Eastwood’s new film, Richard Jewell (December 13) to director Jay Roach’s story of the takedown of Fox News’ Roger Ailes, Bombshell (December 20), plus Greta Gerwig’s all-star cast adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, and Sam Mendes’ epic WW1 blockbuster, 1917, both set to open Christmas Day.
Now, two of VanRamblings’ top 20 films of 2019 that demand to be seen … Best Propulsive Good Time Hollywood Popcorn Flick of 2019
The first Hollywood film of 2019 that offers movie patrons a guaranteed good time inside a darkened movie theatre, a film for the whole family, the last film made by 20th Century Fox before they sold the company to Disney, a glorious barn burner of a film redolent with heart-in-mouth and tug-at-the-heart emotion, not only one of the greatest racing movies ever made, but an infectious, engrossing true life drama that features some of the finest onscreen performances of the year, Matt Damon as you’ve never seen him before and Christian Bale sympathetic and at top of form, with a supporting cast who will pull you into this audience-pleasing story like mad.
In other words, a must-see film at the multiplex. And it opens today! Ford v Ferrari is expected to win the weekend box office handily with as much as $31 million at 3,528 venues across the continent (and, likely, another $20+ million in foreign markets over the first weekend, with China and the rest of Asia set to screen Ford v Ferrari in the weeks to come — all of which oughta make the film a solid 2019 Oscar contender). The Disney-Fox film follows an eccentric team of American engineers and designers, led by automotive visionary Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) and his British driver, Ken Miles (Christian Bale), who are dispatched by Henry Ford II (Tracy Letts) and Lee Iacocca (Jon Bernthal) to build a new vehicle to defeat the dominant Ferrari at the 1966 Le Mans world championship in France.
Click on the graphic above to access reviews for Ford v Ferrari on Rotten Tomatoes
The Probable Best Picture Academy Award Winner for 2019
Opening today for two weeks only in exclusive engagement at the Vancouver International Film Festival’s Vancity Theatre on Seymour Street — where advance tickets for the three screenings each day this weekend are already sold old — Martin Scorsese’s gangster opus, the capper of a directorial career that spans fifty years, the film that opened the New York Film Festival to rave reviews, a film that clocks in at 209 minutes that will seem like half that time the film is so enthralling, one of the five films that will garner the most Oscar nominations — a probable Best Picture Academy Award winner come Sunday evening, February 9th — The Irishman is, as Boston Globe critic Ty Burr enthuses, “a masterpiece”, a film Richard Roeper in the Chicago Sun-Times says is “the best film of the year and one of the best films of the decade,” and as other critics have written …
… a genuinely new, deeply satisfying, serenely confident film presented with subtlety, wit and resonance, a sumptuous film that tells an epic, extraordinary tale of organized crime’s grip on American life as seen through the eyes of one outwardly ordinary man, a film that is a revelation throughout, intoxicating, history-making cinema, a melancholy eulogy for growing old and losing your humanity, a film to be savoured in every one of its 209 minutes, a knockout story that is surprisingly, surpassingly delicate, told by a master filmmaker with heart and sombre introspection, a film that takes a deep dive into the darkest of souls but manages to remain engaging, lively, funny, full of grace, tender, reflective, mournful, a film of grandeur and bloody memories, a heartbreaking film that presents Joe Pesci as you’ve never seen him before, with superb performances from Al Pacino and Robert De Niro — together for the first time in a Scorsese film — and an absolute must-see at the cinema.”
So, that’s it: two of the best films of 2019, both deserving of your time and scarce dollars, both films (in their own way) epic and unforgettable cinema.
