They Shoot Oscar Prognosticators, Don’t They?

The New York Film Festival and the Waiting Game

By J. Don Birnam

October 16, 2014

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Two Days, One Night: Another Cotillard Gem

Although already seen at Telluride by others, I first had a chance to see Marion Cotillard’s latest human drama in New York, and thought it one of the best entries of the festival this year.

Two years ago in Rust and Bone, Cotillard proved once more that her seemingly early Oscar for La Vie En Rose was well-deserved. In Two Days, One Night, she has done it again. In this newest film, she plays a woman who has lost her job and whose only hopes of recovering it are to convince her coworkers, over the course of a weekend, to give up their bonuses so that she can be paid and regain her position. The game theory-esque narrative that follows is not necessarily what you’d expect from the gimmicky premise, and is instead a fair and sometimes surprising assessment of the human condition and what drives it. Shining above it all is Cotillard, who brings her usual sentimentality, passion, and honesty to the role.

Although it is unclear to me whether the movie will be seen by sufficient Academy members to land Cotillard a deserved Best Actress nomination (she missed out for the similarly small indie Rust and Bone), the movie has been selected as Belgium’s official entry to this year’s Best Foreign Language Film race. Although the Academy broke its own record by receiving over 80 submissions for that category this year, it is possible that the strength of the film and the allure of the name will land Belgium a coveted spot amongst the final five.

Inherent Vice: Inherent Bias Against

The NYFF also landed the world premiere of the latest Paul Thomas Anderson movie, Inherent Vice. Adapted from the Thomas Pynchon (The Crying of Lot 49) novel of the same name, Vice is another brilliant entry into the Paul Thomas Anderson vernacular. Equal parts L.A. Confidential and Boogie Nights (the former, of course, not an Anderson piece), the movie tells the story of an LA cop who helps his ex-girlfriend investigate the disappearance of her current boyfriend. The material he’s working with is imaginative as it is, but the director proves one more that he can extract brilliance from otherwise mundane actors (think Adam Sandler in Punch Drunk Love), as Jena Malone and Reese Witherspoon deliver performances noteworthy for being equally good on comedic timing as they are in dramatic undertones.




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Still, Paul Thomas Anderson movies tends to be critical darlings (and this one was most critics’ favorite from the NYFF), but don’t do well with broad audiences and never with the Academy. Boogie Nights got some traction, but that’s as far as he would get, as his following entries fell mostly flat with Oscar. I would not be surprised if this film got completely passed over, but an Adapted Screenplay nomination is not completely out of the question.

Birdman: Perhaps the Biggest Revelation of the Festival

Last year, Alfonso Cuaron made history as the first Hispanic to win the Best Director Oscar for Gravity. This year, another member of the so-called Mexican Gang of Three, Alejandro González Iñárritu seems a lock for a Best Director nomination and poses a dangerous threat for the win (the third member, by the way, is Pan’s Labyrinth’s Guillermo del Toro). I have been a big fan of Iñárritu since he led Mexico to its first Best Foreign Language Film nomination in years with the masterful Amores Perros. His other films, 21 Grams, Babel, and Biutiful, have also impressed me. Iñárritu’s work is somber but full of passion; mostly dark and full of death or impending death but somehow always hopeful, redeeming, and caring in the end.

With Birdman, he has ventured slightly outside his usual vernacular of doomed-to-die characters into the otherwise trite world of the story of the failed or fading star. As hard as it is to make a significant contribution to a genre that includes Sunset Boulevard and All About Eve, Iñárritu delivers an emotional, witty, and definitely memorable movie about a fading Broadway star and some of the unforgettable people who surround him. Undoubtedly he is helped by the amazing performance of Michael Keaton in the lead role, who is potentially destined for his career Best Actor Oscar win next February. Ed Norton is his reliable self, but the most salient aspect of Birdman is that the emotional twists are not what you would expect from the otherwise familiar plot line (much like what made Cotillard’s movie so good).


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