Three more nominees from 2015 - Joy, A War, Embrace of the Serpent

Has anyone seen my motivation? Not to see movies, I've seen plenty, but I have been having a tough time writing about them. I have spent the past week looking for pianos all over downtown Minneapolis and writing about that. You can check out how busy I have been here, on my newest blog: http://travelingfoolmn.blogspot.com/2016/06/mission-accomplished-rest-of-pianos.html. 
But, I have watched some movies from 2015 that were also nominated, so, finally a 'timely' entry.


6/18/16 Joy, nominated Best Actress, 2015

This was a weird movie for me. At first I wanted to see it, I love Jennifer Lawrence and Robert DeNiro, and I thought the story could be interesting. Then, as time wore on and my list of must-see movies got bigger and time got shorter, I lost the desire. I don't know how people who watch movies every day do this job, by the end of February, I was done. So, here we are, around four months after the Oscars and I finally watched Joy on a DVD rental form the library. I'm okay with spending a dollar to watch it in the comfort of my own home. If you don't know, Joy is based on the real life of Joy Mangano, a housewife turned inventor from New Jersey, and obviously Lawrence plays Joy. The invention that is focused on is the Miracle Mop and the fights that Joy had with suppliers, distributors, and her own family. I tried to care, and I did occasionally, especially when Joy had enough with her family or another person, it was very cathartic, but her family was unbelievably despicable that I was annoyed a lot of the time. It was definitely a strong performance by Lawrence, but not her best in my opinion, and it was definitely Cate Blanchett's year for her role in Carol. Robert DeNiro is Joy's father, Rudy, who is self-centered and hopelessly needy, so he marries his third wife, Trudy (Isabella Rossellini), who has money and she helps to fund Joy's venture, but not without strings. Bradley Cooper is in sales at QVC who helps Joy with selling the mop on television; it's not a particularly great role, but it reunites Cooper, DeNiro and Lawrence for at least the third, maybe the fourth time in a David O. Russell production. I don't think this is a must see movie unless you have it on a list.


6/24/16 A War, nominated Best Foreign Film, 2015

There were really good films in this category, and as I have mentioned in my previous posts, I would have been hard-pressed to make a decision. A War, the Danish entry for Best Foreign Film, shows us the war in Afghanistan from the perspective of Danish soldiers in the Helmand province, and also the impact on the company commander's family back in Denmark. In one way, you could have put American, British or Canadian soldiers in the film, but I think from an American perspective, it is good and important to show that there are other countries sending soldiers to these war zones and they also suffer from the same stresses and injuries. It also shows company commander Claus Pedersen's wife and three young children coping with his absence. There isn't a lot of melodrama or angst, just his wife, Maria, trying to get through each day with their middle son, Julius, showing the most outward signs of missing his father and resenting his absence. Things seem be going along 'normally' in Helmand until Pedersen's company is under fire and Pedersen makes a decision that might have saved his company, but has a deadly impact on some of the local residents. It's a situation that probably happens more than anyone would want to admit; it's like choosing between the devil and the deep blue sea, and one can only hope for the best outcome. The movie was good and certainly topical, but after it was over, I felt a little let down. I was hoping for a little more drama and suspense, something was missing.

6/25/16 Embrace of the Serpent, nominated Best Foreign Film, 2015 

Colombia's Oscar entry, Embrace of the Serpent, is another film that I liked, but I didn't love. I found it difficult to really get involved and interested in the whole story. It follows Karamakate, a shaman who lives on his own in the Amazon, but two Westerners come upon his 'doorstep' and he sets off on adventures with them. The meetings take place in 1909 and 1940. Karamakate tries to defend the culture of his people who have been wiped out by colonizing forces in their quest for rubber and other botanical gifts of the Amazon. The two men he meets are on their own quests to learn more about the interior of the Amazonian jungle, including plant life, but also about the people who remain. The story presents the clash of cultures from a couple of different angles, and to me, in the current geopolitical climate, they are eye-opening reminders that different areas of the world have been colonized, settled, pillaged at the expense of the indigenous people and resources, and the colonizers stay to enforce their will and their religion. These people never asked to be colonized. Karamakate is bitter about the whites and their conquest of his land. Karamakate is used to connect the stories of the two white explorers, Theodor Koch-Grunberg and Richard Evans Schultes, who were real people. There are a lot of things that happen in the movie and if you are not familiar with some of the history of that area, you may not pick up on them or understand the relevance; I'm no expert, but thank goodness for that liberal arts education at a Jesuit college. This may or may not make it harder to get into the film. I think it's worth seeing because it takes most of us into unfamiliar territory, but I think it would have been difficult for it to win the Oscar given the other films.