Tagged: Alfonso Cuaron

Review – Roma (2018)

Director: Alfonso Cuarón

Starring: Yalitza Aparicio, Marina de Tavira, Diego Cortina Autrey, Carlos Peralta, Marco Graf, Daniela Demesa, Nancy Garcia Garcia, Veronica Garcia, Andy Cortes, Fernando Grediaga

Roma

The idea that filmmaking, despite being an inherently collaborative pursuit, could be considered an outlet for the personal artistic expression of the filmmaker has been fundamental to its acceptance as a legitimate art form. Those directors whose work shows a personal stylistic signature or set of themes are revered as auteurs and those works that are strongly autobiographical are given a privileged place in their oeuvres. Usually, though, these autobiographical films come toward the start of a filmmaker’s career. In the case of Roma, however, Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron returns to a more personal, intimate place, having already established himself as a filmmaker, combining popular and critical success with the likes of Gravity, Children of Men and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Continue reading →

Golden Globe Nominations Announced

Golden GlobesWe have arrived at the most wonderful time of the year to be a movie buff (unless you are a more high falutin cinephile who likes to think of lists and awards as being trivial and beneath them). December brings with it a flurry of top ten lists and the first round of nominations for the award season. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association has announced its nominees for the 2014 Golden Globe awards. As always the Golden Globes only give a slight indication of how things will pan out come Oscar time, particularly as the Globes divide categories between Drama and Musical or Comedy. However, we can none the less start in earnest to speculate as to who will be in the mix when Oscar nominations are announced on 16th January 2014.

Best Motion Picture – Drama

  • 12 Years a Slave
  • Captain Phillips
  • Gravity
  • Rush
  • Philomena

If this award were to go to anything other than 12 Years a Slave or Gravity it can be considered quite an upset. It will be interesting to see which way this goes. There was no other film that got quite the overwhelming response that Gravity did, but 12 Years a Slave is also a brilliant and important film which is a much more traditional ‘Best Picture’ type.

My tip: 12 Years a Slave

Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy

  • Nebraska
  • American Hustle
  • The Wolf of Wall Street
  • Inside Llewyn Davis
  • Her

Again, this would appear to be a two horse race between American Hustle and Inside Llewyn Davis, with these two films plus the two favourites from the other best picture category likely to be the four main contenders for the Oscar. The fact that Joel Coen didn’t get a directing nomination might swing things in the favour of David O. Russell’s film.

My tip: American Hustle

Best Director

  • Alfonso Cuaron (Gravity)
  • Steve McQueen (12 Years a Slave)
  • David O. Russell (American Hustle)
  • Paul Greengrass (Captain Phillips)
  • Alexander Payne (Nebraska)

Where this category is usually dominated by the directors from the best drama field there is a bit more of a mix this year with David O. Russell and Alexander Payne representing the musical or comedy category. While it is yet to be seen if voters consider Gravity to be Best Picture material, there is no doubt that it is a directorial achievement and it is not without precedent to see directors rewarded for amazing technical achievements (see Ang Lee’s Oscar win last year). In all, this is probably the strongest contested field at this year’s Golden Globes.

My tip: Alfonso Cuaron (Gravity)

Best Actor – Drama

  • Chiwetel Ejiofor (12 Years a Slave)
  • Matthew McConaughey (Dallas Buyers Club)
  • Tom Hanks (Captain Phillips)
  • Robert Redford (All is Lost)
  • Idris Elba (Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom)

An interesting field featuring veterans (Hanks and Redford), breakout performances (Ejiofor and Elba) and someone who is slowly but surely becoming quite an impressive actor (McConaughey). For mine, Redford’s work in All is Lost is the most impressive acting I’ve seen this year, but it also feels like the kind of film that will get overlooked. Don’t be surprised if momentum builds behind Tom Hanks and he’s an unbackable favourite by the time the Oscars come around.

My tip: Tom Hanks (Captain Phillips)

Best Actor – Musical or Comedy

  • Bruce Dern (Nebraska)
  • Leonardo DiCaprio (The Wolf of Wall Street)
  • Christian Bale (American Hustle)
  • Oscar Isaac (Inside Llewyn Davis)
  • Joaquin Phoenix (Her)

It’s great to see an old dog in Bruce Dern back in the mix and Christian Bale’s amazing fluctuating weight gets him in the frame again, but Joaquin Phoenix was so impressive in Her, performing the majority of the film only with a disembodied voice to play off, so I’d be inclined to go that way.

My tip: Joaquin Phoenix (Her)

Best Actress – Drama

  • Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine)
  • Sandra Bullock (Gravity)
  • Emma Thompson (Saving Mr. Banks)
  • Judi Dench (Philomena)
  • Kate Winslet (Labor Day)

There is a bit of a usual suspects feel to this category with every nominee being a previous Golden Globe and Oscar winner. Cate Blanchett would seem hard to beat in this category unless the voters go left field for something out of left field and opt for Dench.

My tip: Cate Blanchett (Blue Jasmine)

Best Actress – Musical or Comedy

  • Meryl Streep (August: Osage County)
  • Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Enough Said)
  • Amy Adams (American Hustle)
  • Julie Delpy (Before Midnight)
  • Greta Gerwig (Frances Ha)

The amazing Meryl Streep gets her obligatory nomination here, but this one will likely come down to Amy Adams and Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

My tip: Amy Adams (American Hustle)

Best Supporting Actor

  • Michael Fassbender (12 Years a Slave)
  • Jared Leto (Dallas Buyers Club)
  • Bradley Cooper (American Hustle)
  • Daniel Brühl (Rush)
  • Barkhad Abdi (Captain Phillips)

Michael Fassbender has done the best work of his career when under the direction of Steve McQueen and his performance as the violent Epps in 12 Years a Slave will likely see him edge out Brühl and Abdi for the honours.

My tip: Michael Fassbender (12 Years a Slave)

Best Supporting Actress

  • Lupita Nyong’o (12 Years a Slave)
  • Jennifer Lawrence (American Hustle)
  • Julia Roberts (August: Osage County)
  • June Squibb (Nebraska)
  • Sally Hawkins (Blue Jasmine)

Lupita Nyong’o was very impressive in 12 Years a Slave, her first feature film role, and Sally Hawkins earned praise for her work opposite Cate Blanchett in Blue Jasmine, but 2013 has been Jennifer Lawrence’s year and her combination with David O. Russell should see her strike gold again.

My tip: Jennifer Lawrence (American Hustle)

Best Screenplay

  • John Ridley (12 Years a Slave)
  • Bob Nelson (Nebraska)
  • Eric Warren and David O. Russell (American Hustle)
  • Jeff Pope (Philomena)
  • Spike Jonze (Her)

There are five very good screenplays nominated in this category but none is as bold as Spike Jonze’s for Her. His screenplay takes a scenario which could easily have been silly and makes it incredibly sincere and heartfelt and, as such, despite being an outsider I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he won.

My tip: Spike Jonze (Her)

Best Animated Feature

  • Frozen
  • The Croods
  • Dispicable Me 2

This has to be the least inspiring collection of animated films in recent memory. It doesn’t help that there is no contribution from Pixar or Studio Ghibli, the two most consistently excellent producers of animation in recent years. As such, Disney’s Frozen, an old-fashioned feeling Disney movie, is probably favourite be default.

My tip: Frozen

Best Foreign Language Film

  • Blue is the Warmest Color
  • The Past
  • The Hunt
  • The Wind Rises
  • The Great Beauty

This category lacks the out and out favourite it had last year in Amour, but there are a number of strong contenders. Blue is the Warmest Color, The Hunt and The Great Beauty have all made a bit of noise, winning numerous awards. It could go to any of those three, though Blue is the Warmest Color is probably the favourite at this stage.

My tip: The Hunt

The Golden Globes will be held on 12th January 2014

 

Aningaaq (2013)

In this year’s most immersive cinenamtic experience, Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity, Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) is in a space station fast running out of oxygen trying to establish radio contact with ground control. Instead of ground control her distress message is picked up by a lone man, speaking an unknown language. Despite not being able to understand one another, the two share a touching moment as Stone comes to accept the fact that she is about to die. In the film, we only privy to Stone’s side of this conversation, but the director’s son Jonás Cuarón has made a short, seven-minute film in which we see the other side of that interaction. Originally intended to be a DVD extra for the film, Aningaaq has garnered strong critical attention and is now considered a possible Oscar contender in the Best Live Action Short category. If you have not yet seen it, it is a lovely and touching little film…

Review – Gravity (2013)

Director: Alfonso Cuarón

Starring: Sandra Bullock, George Clooney

GravityMexican director Alfonso Cuarón’s 2006 film Children of Men stands alongside Neill Blomkamp’s District 9 and Duncan Jones’s Moon as one of the most interesting science fiction offerings since the turn of the century. Soon after the release of that film he went into pre-production on an even more ambitious science fiction project, Gravity. After a long wait, and going through a couple of studios and numerous casting changes, that film has finally hit the screen and with it Cuarón has stepped into the realm of the truly visionary. Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey has been thrown around by a number of critics as a point of comparison and rightly so. As was the case with Kubrick’s film in the late 1960s, Gravity a massive step forward in terms of creating an experience for the viewer and giving us some idea of what it must be like to be in space.

The simple narrative follows two astronauts, the rookie Ryan Stone (Bullock) and the experienced Matt Kowalski (Clooney), who are doing maintenance work on the Hubble Telescope when a field of debris from an exploded Russian satellite comes their way. Travelling so fast that it orbits the world every ninety minutes, the debris tears through everything in its path, destroying the Hubble, their shuttle and killing their crew. Stone and Kowalski are left floating in orbit, without radio contact with Earth, to try and get themselves back home. A classic survival tale, peculiarly the film is as much about being willing to let go as it is about fighting to hold on.

While the screenplay and the performances from Bullock and Clooney are solid, it is the visuals; the cinematography and digital effects, that make Gravity something special. Together with cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, Cuarón manages to make space simultaneously terrifying and mesmerizingly beautiful. Lubezki, who was also responsible for the stunning photography of Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life, gives Gravity a number of moments where the power of the image alone will make you say “Wow.” The film starts with one continuous, 13 minute shot in which the scenario for the film is set up, and this sets the stylistic tone. Gravity employs a number of long shots to great effect, drifting with the characters, giving the camera the same sense of weightless movement as the protagonists. The film also seamlessly moves between points-of-view. A shot may start from within the helmet of one of our characters, looking out, but then move out, turning to catch their reaction to what we’ve just seen.

To get the full experience, Gravity is a film you need to see at the cinema and you need to see it in 3D. I’m not generally a huge fan of the 3D medium. Nine times out of ten it is an unnecessary gimmick used as an excuse to add a couple of dollars to ticket prices and inflate box office revenue. But there are some films, that remaining one out of ten, for which the 3D medium really works and Gravity is such a film. Cuarón’s film is experiential, it is about feeling the experience of being adrift in space, and the 3D helps to immerse you in that.

Gravity is a glorious, profound piece of cinema, and while it is not perfect – there are one or two points at which the spell is momentarily broken – it is unlike any experience you will have at the movies this year.

Rating – ★★★★★

Review by Duncan McLean