Gotham Independent Film Awards & National Board of Review Awards

Well this throws a kink into things.  Both the Gotham Awards and the NBR Awards have been announced and it’s a split decision. More importantly these awards don’t match up wit the recent choices for Boyhood as best film either. I still think Boyhood will ultimately end up on top, though I was expecting Birdman to win some awards as well.  What I didn’t expect was for J.C. Chandor’s upcoming film, A Most Violent Year, to win at NBR. That film will only receive a limited release as of December 31st before getting a wider rollout later in 2015. Chandor has been on an upward swing with Margin Call  and All is Lost, but I have to admit that him winning is a big surprise. I hope the film is worthy of it and I’m confident it will be a very good film.

Anyway, here’s the list of the awards winners for Gotham.

BEST FILM: Birdman 

This beat out Boyhood, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Love is Strange, and Under the Skin.  Though Boyhood won the audience award. Foxcatcher also received a special award for ensemble performance for Steve Carell, Channing Tatum, and Mark Ruffalo.

BEST DOCUMENTARY: CITIZENFOUR

Hugely deserved. It should be noted that the Academy Awards put out the 15 film shortlist of those being considered for best doc.  They are: Art and Craft, The Case against 8, Citizen Koch, CitizenFour, Finding Vivian Maier, The Internet’s Own Boy, Jodorowsky’s Dune, Keep On Keepin’ On, The Kill Team, Last Days in Vietnam, Life Itself, The Overnighters, The Salt of the Earth, Tales of the Grim Sleeper, and Virunga. I’ve bolded those I think are worthy of seeing aside from the obvious CitizenFour.

BEST ACTORL Michael Keaton
in Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance).

He beat out Oscar Isaac, Ethan Hawke, Miles Teller, and Bill Hader.

Julianne Moore
in Still Alice .

Would’ve liked Patricia Arquette to take this but Moore is supposed to deliver a career performance in this. Seek it out when it comes in early 2015.

Breakthrough Director: Ana Lily Amirpour
for A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night .

Beats out the considerably older Dan Gilroy and Nightcrawler for this. Big win for the young Persian director.

And as for the NBR Awards they give out a much wider array of awards and spread them out considerably (a lot of the combinations just don’t make sense, perhaps they just want to acknowledge as much as they can), here they are:

Best Film:  A Most Violent Year
Best Director:  Clint Eastwood – American Sniper
Best Actor (TIE):  Oscar Isaac – A Most Violent Year; Michael Keaton – Birdman
Best Actress: Julianne Moore – Still Alice
Best Supporting Actor:  Edward Norton – Birdman
Best Supporting Actress:  Jessica Chastain – A Most Violent Year
Best Original Screenplay:  Phil Lord & Christopher Miller – The Lego Movie
Best Adapted Screenplay:  Paul Thomas Anderson – Inherent Vice
Best Animated Feature:  How to Train Your Dragon 2
Breakthrough Performance:  Jack O’Connell – Starred Up & Unbroken
Best Directorial Debut:  Gillian Robespierre – Obvious Child
Best Foreign Language Film:  Wild Tales
Best Documentary:  Life Itself
William K. Everson Film History Award:  Scott Eyman
Best Ensemble:  Fury
Spotlight Award:  Chris Rock for writing, directing, and starring in – Top Five
NBR Freedom of Expression Award:  Rosewater
NBR Freedom of Expression Award:  Selma

Top Films
American Sniper
Birdman
Boyhood
Fury
Gone Girl
The Imitation Game
Inherent Vice
The Lego Movie
Nightcrawler
Unbroken

Top 5 Foreign Language Films
Force Majeure
Gett: The Trial of Vivian Amsalem
Leviathan
Two Days, One Night
We Are the Best!

Top 5 Documentaries
Art and Craft
Jodorowsky’s Dune
Keep On Keepin’ On
The Kill Team
Last Days in Vietnam

Top 10 Independent Films
Blue Ruin
Locke
A Most Wanted Man
Mr. Turner
Obvious Child
The Skeleton Twins
Snowpiercer
Stand Clear of the Closing Doors
Starred Up
Still Alice

Rosewater – The Daily Show Movie

Rosewater is a very interesting film. When it was announced I wonder if it was timely anymore because the president in Iran had changed into more moderate hands and so many other world hot spots had popped up that people sort of forgot about the troubles there. But then just a couple Sundays ago on Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown the host visited Tehran and while Iran seemed like a better place than we all imagined one of the journalists he interviewed there had already been placed in prison by the time the show aired for reasons that have not been divulged. All of the sudden Rosewater became very relevant again. The film is about about an Iranian-Canadian journalist Maziar Bahari who was placed in prison in Iran after filming and reporting on the 2009 uprisings after a fraudulent and stolen presidential election that kept everyone’s favorite villain Ahmadinejad in power. He was in solitary confinement for six months. Gael Garcia Bernal plays his fear and his inner freedom extremely well against each other. Bernal is one of the better actors working today and one of my personal favorites as well. His turns in Amores Perros, Y tu mama tambien, Bad Education, The Motorcycle Diaries, Babel, The Science of Sleep, Rudo y Cursi, The Loneliest Planet and No are all amazing. As you notice from the title and subjects of some of these films Bernal is a Mexican actor. Some people could take issue with a Mexican actor playing an Iranian man. But if that’s something you choose to get hung up on then you’re really missing out. Don’t let that bother you, this is a movie after all. One of these days Bernal will be rewarded with Oscar gold for his work, just not this time. A terrific Iranian actress was in this film however, as Bahari’s mother, Shohreh Aghdashloo. She has lots of small roles in plenty of great films, but my favorite thing about her is her distinctive voice. The film opened with a voiceover and a quote in Persian, and while I obviously don’t speak Persian I could still recognize her voice. It’s low and smooth tone are instantly recognizable. I didn’t know she was in this movie going into watching it and as soon as I knew she was involved I got even more excited for the movie.

Of course the biggest story about this film is that it is directed by Jon Stewart. Yes the fourth male lead in Big Daddy and Half Baked and current host of The Daily Show directed this film. That’s mostly because they couldn’t find someone else to do it after searching for prestigious A-list directors and because Bahari’s capture came after an interview he did with the show while in Tehran that jokingly referred to him as a spy. This is Stewart’s first film and unfortunately in parts it shows. It could be that he is just too close to the subject. It could feel like a mea culpa as well. That’s not to take away from it’s obvious credits which is a relatively strong script and visuals. Stewart and Bahari admitted that there was actual footage shot in Tehran for this film, while most of it was filmed in Jordan. Ultimately what this film could be most remembered for is Stewart’s three month absence from his show to shoot this film, which led to John Oliver subbing in and now his own show on HBO is perhaps the most important thing on television. Stewart’s contract with Comedy Central ends soon, and while his debut directorial effort had flaws I would hope he hangs up the The Daily Show cleats and goes full steam ahead to directing films.

The biggest problem with Rosewater was focus and this can be a common rookie mistake. The film is a history lesson (both recent and distant) and a family drama and treatise on torture. And it does all of this through the use of flashbacks, and hallucinations and real life news coverage along with what is becoming a typical sequence regarding social media. There’s just too much going on. I enjoyed the lead up to his capture with the focus on Iranian politics on the ground, but wished some of the focus remained there with cuts away to what was still going on in the street during his detention. The isolation is also dealt with a deft yet disturbing touch. Stewart does not focus on the physical torture, which could easily turn audiences off, but instead with the mental torture. There are moments where Bernal captures the small joys a prisoner experiences, like the feeling of the sun or finally contacting a loved one that really shine. This film also has spots of humor that help to lighten the mood when the Iranian interrogators have no context for Western cultural items like films and music and misidentify them as something nefarious when they are so clearly not.

Even with the flaws considered I still think this is a film worth seeing, just not as much as the others I’ve reviewed recently. So I would try to see those others first and save this for later or perhaps rent it when it comes to Redbox. Stewart deserves to be rewarded for his first directing effort and given a second and third chance to iron out the kinks because I think he has stories that are worth telling. All in all a good film.