The Holdovers

 Paul Giamatti, Da'Vine Joy Randolph
Dominic Sessa, Carrie Preston

"Discomfort and Joy"

2024 Oscar Awards
Da'Vine Joy Randolph: Best Supporting Actress Winner
Paul Giamatti: Best Actor Nominee
Best Picture Nominee
Best Original Screenplay Nominee

Last March 18, I caught the first part of this movie on our flight to Singapore yet fell asleep mid way as it was an early morning flight. So I decided to re-watch it from the beginning during our return flight back home on March 24. Even though I was exhausted from the Singapore vacation, I managed to stay awake to finish the entire movie, after eating a really delicious dinner on Singapore Airlines.

Set in the 1970s in an all boys New England prep school called Barton, you can't help but compare "The Holdovers" with "Dead Poets Society. It is also a tale of a teacher who makes a huge impact on the lives of his students. 

While Robin Williams was an inspirational presence to an entire class, here Paul Giamatti as Paul Hunham is not a well loved teacher. He is a grumpy, no fuss teacher with no bedside manners yet he is also a brilliant intellect. When he is assigned to 'babysit' a bunch of 'holdovers' or students with nowhere to go during Christmas break, he forms an improbable bond with Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa), a troubled student with dysfunctional family issues. To 'defrost' the icy, sardonic Mr Hunham, there is the kind hearted cook of the school, Mary (Da'Vine Joy Randolph) who is mourning the lost of her son in the Vietnam War. 

The film picks up when Mr Hunham, together with Angus and Mary go on a road trip to visit Angus's father who happens to be in a mental institution. Guards are down as three distinctly different characters bond over a simple meal. Their interaction is where the film shines. Relying purely on the credible acting skills of its stars, bouyed by a dialogue driven script unfolding in rural America in the early 1970s, "The Holdovers" succeeds on its own merit. 

It manages to warm our hearts with a good inspirational story of compassion and friendship with the right blend of light comedy and heavy drama  dealing with sensitive issues like grief and mental illness. Without any fancy special effects to distract us from the true essence of a feel good movie.

Killers of the Flower Moon

 Leo Di Caprio, Robert de Niro, Lily Gladstone
Jesse Plemons, Brendan Fraser, John Lithgow

2024 Oscar Awards
Best Picture Nominee
Lily Gladstone: Best Actress Nominee
Robert de Niro: Best Supporting Actor Nominee
Martin Scorsese: Best Director Nominee

Leo di Caprio and Robert de Niro are enough reason to watch any movie. Cue in the Martin Scorsese as its director and the refreshing presence of Lily Gladstone as Mollie the central character who holds everything and everyone together in this intriguing tale, one is guaranteed to be entertained.

Based on the non fiction novel (I haven't read because who has time to read, these days?) of the same title by David Grann, it took Scorsese several years to film due to the disruptive pandemic and he also had to convince the Osage nation to help him in the filming of this grand saga. Naturally, it is a delicate issue when it comes to dealing with the struggles that Native Americans endured in the glorious past.

Set in Oklahoma in the 1920s, the story revolves around the Osage Indian tribe's rise to success after discovering oil in their ancestral lands. Any success, be it earned or achieved is always riddled with long tedious murky struggles. In other words, everything comes at a price. 

Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo di Caprio) is a second World War veteran who returns home in Oklahoma to stay with his uncle Bill (Robert de Niro) and his brother Byron (Scott Shepard). Eager to make his mark after the gruelling war, he hits the jackpot when he meets Mollie (Lily Gladstone). She is a wealthy Osage lady with rights to oil profits from her land. Soon enough, Ernest and Mollie marry and start a family. Yet the question lingers, did he marry her for love or for her oil rights?

Volatile times abound as some Osage tribe members are murdered under mysterious circumstances and Mollie is determined to get to the bottom of these unsolved cases. Voilence, mayhem, power grabbing, and intrigues are the norm in Osage nation as affluence can corrupt the hearts of greedy, unscrupulous even God fearing men (and women).

Running at 3 hours and 26 minutes with several characters thrown into the mix, dialogue in English, some French and the Osage dialect and a vivid cinematography of the Oklahome landscape, in essence the film efficiently chronicled the trials and tribulations of the Osage nation. From a state of hopelessness to sudden boom with the discovery of oil. From being respected members of society to being taken advantage of and even murdered by selfish, greedy 'white people'. This film had all the tell-tale signs for a good caliber movie, too bad it took over 3 long hours to make its point.

The Zone of Interest

 2024 Oscar Awards

Best International Film Feature (UK) Winner
Best Sound Winner

This movie is loosely based on the late British author Martin Amis's book that focuses on Rudolf Hoss, the extremely driven commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp in Austria. "The Zone of Interest" refers to the area surrounding the death camp. 

English Director Jonathan Glazer filmed near the actual camp in Auschwitz  which is now a memorial museum. He also built a replica of the Hoss's residence. Dialogue is in German, with certain compelling and powerful scenes shot in night vision juxtaposed within the movie that was presented in vivid shots against a drab, gloomy background. Glazer did an excellent job by seamlessly blending scenes of a happy family with sounds of destruction and mayhem from the camp. No wonder, it won the Oscar award for Best in Sound. 

The film centers on the family life of the Nazi commander in a modest house with lush gardens and swimming pool just a few meters away from the site where millions of Jews were killed in gas chambers. We see him, his wife Hedwig and their 5 children living in pure oblivion of the horrors behind the perimeter fence. A normal, almost clinical existence with full household help at their beck and call yet we don't get any sense of extravagance. They were quite ordinary during an extraordinary period in history.

We are not shown any gruesome scenes of the atrocities committed against the Jewish people but long angle shots will reveal the smoke billowing from the chimneys in the camp. At some point, it seemed like it was snowing but actually it was from the ashes of the prisoners. Eerie sounds of gunfires, of people screaming, dogs barking echoes in the background during a family dinner. We have the ladies of the household trying on clothes which were evidently taken from the female prisoners. Mrs Hoss (Sandra Huller) even boasted that she found a diamond hidden in a toothpaste so she instructed the help to buy all the toothpaste they could find. 

Beyond all that, we can be forgiven to think of them as any ordinary German family living in a small town with their own dreams and aspirations, just like the rest of us. But we must never ever forget what the Nazis did to the Jewish people. Because to deny, or even forget it ever happened would be a greater crime to human kind. 

Kudos for winning two Oscar awards, Best Sound and Best International Film Feature (UK).

Past Lives

 2024 Oscar Awards

Best Picture Nominee
Celine Song: Best Original Screenplay Nominee

In this semi autobiographical film, written and directed by Celine Song, a Korean Canadian film maker, Nora (Greta Lee) or Na Young as she was known in South Korea and Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) are classmates in a school in Seoul. They were pretty close and would probably have ended up married to each other but destiny had other plans. At age 12, Nora's entire family migrate to Canada. When her mother was asked why they were leaving Seoul despite having good jobs. She tells Hae Sung's mother "If you leave something, you gain something too".

12 years past by, Nora is studying to be a playwright. She sees a comment on her father's FB page from Hae Sung who was wondering where he could contact his former classmate. They begin communicating through video calls. Despite the time difference, their line of communication is constant. She lives in New York now while he is still in Seoul. Sort of a LDR, (long distance relationship) but not really romantic, there is no label for their situationship (is that what they call it now?) given that they are continents apart. 

You see Nora is a very driven young woman. When she was young in Seoul, she said she was leaving because no one in Korea wins the Nobel Peace Prize. She is focused on getting things done. She decided to end the line of communication with Hae Sung because obviously life takes precedence over anything else. She is going on a writer's retreat while he is busy with his engineering studies. They don't have the luxury of just hopping on a plane to see each other either in Seoul or New York.

12 more years pass by, Nora is now married to Arthur, a Jewish novelist. Hae Sung emails her to say he is finally visiting New York for a short vacation. This stirs up a lot of mixed emotions for Nora but keeps a calm and collected exterior. While Hae Sung is clearly still in love with Nora, he is mature enough to know his limitations, somehow needs closure, a proper good bye, so to speak.

When they finally meet up, it is a bit awkward for the both of them. The pivotal scene at the bar (with her husband Arthur as the third wheel), Hae Sung asks a lot of "what if" questions. He ponders out loud to Nora all the different scenarios that could or could not have happened. Her simple answer is "I don't know". By the way, Nora and Hae Sung speak in Korean to each other while she would sometimes translate it into English for Arthur.

Nora is not a slave to her past, her frame of mind is now focused on the present. She tell Hae Sung that his memory of her as a 12 year old girl is someone she left in Seoul. He concedes and accepts by telling her that she was too big for Seoul. She had lofty ideas, far reaching goals. I totally agree with Nora because who we were when we were 12 years old with pigtails is a totally different person from who we become at 24, 36 or even 48 years of age. 

In the same aspect, "Past Lives" will hit differently for the viewers. It depends on how old you are, on your level of maturity, on your concept of fate and destiny, on your past, present and future journey in life. That is the beauty of this film, it will definitely make an impact whether you are a fresh graduate, a new mom or an empty nester. It will simply linger on, linger more and keep lingering.

Anatomy of a Fall

 2024 Oscar Awards

Best Picture Nominee
Sandra Hüller: Best Actress Nominee

Sandra, a German writer lives in a wooden chalet in the French Alps with Samuel, her French husband and their visually impaired 11 year old son Daniel. After an interview in their home is cut short because of Samuel's ruckus band practice, Sandra retreats to her room. Daniel comes back from his daily walk with his service dog, Snoop to discover the lifeless body of Samuel in the snow near the facade of their chalet. 

Did Samuel fall, commit suicide or was he pushed from the attic of the chalet?

As it is the norm in questionable deaths, the wife is always the prime suspect. Sandra claims she is innocent, and hires a lawyer to defend her as a murder trial begins to determine the exact cause of Samuel's fatal fall.

During the trial, the frosty cracks in their marriage are brought to the surface. Issues of sacrifices, infidelity, isolation, insecurities in their career and personal life, guilt feelings, regrets - all crop up like mushrooms. Their constant bickering, sometimes even violent arguments are presented during the trial through flash backs and taped audio recordings played in the court room. No stones are left unturned by the prosecution who are out to prove that Sandra did 'kill' her insecure husband. Innocent pawn in the whole mess is their only son, Daniel who just might provide the missing link in the murder case. 

Dialogue is mostly in French and some are in English. Sandra speaks in English as a compromise because she feels like a fish out of water in that secluded chalet in some remote town. Filmed in a drab court room, deviod of any fanfare, interspersed with scenic images of the vast snowy terrain, Anatomy of a Fall manages to capture our attention because we are intrigued by Sandra's fate. 

Even though, the verdict is not really a big surprise. We can't help but wonder: Did she or did she not murder her husband? As expected from a European movie, the conclusion is open ended. We are not fed with the truth and we are left to form our own opinions.

Sandra Hüller's portrayal of the novelist's stoic and calm demeanor is engaging. Good performance too from the young actor who plays Daniel. Even though the plot moves at a snail pace, and the setting is limited within the confines of the small court house, this film serves as a good analysis on the complexities of a marriage and its implications on the family.