Soundtracking: Oscar's Original Song Shortlist

by Chris Feil

Monday's Oscar shortlists already have us handwringing. So naturally as an Original Song obsessive, I'm taking a look at each of the nominees and their chances to make the final five. I shed a tears for Hearts Beat Loud, "Capital Letters" from Fifty Shades Freed (yeah I said it!), and everything else in A Star is Born that isn't "Shallow". But there can be only five and I am happy for any competitive year that keeps quiet those calling for this category's death!

The fifteen finalists favor big music names like Oscar favorites like Diane Warren and Alan Menken, so there is a lot of competition between heavyweights...

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Doc Corner From the Short List - 'Won't You Be My Neighbor'

By Glenn Dunks

Now that the 15-wide documentary short list has been announced, we're going to be looking at some of the titles we've missed throughout the year (primarily due to access issues - this particular column is written from Australia) in the lead up to our top ten documentary list and more Oscar talk in the new year. Up first, the crowned champion of 2018's doc class: Won't You Be My Neighbor?.

Morgan Neville’s Won’t You Be My Neighbor? has proven to be one of the hardest films I’ve had to write about all year. It’s not a film that throws up thorny issues that demand one’s full attention or a documentary that challenges the mind. Instead, it’s the documentary that America has embraced to the tune of some $23-million box office and the title of the 12th most successful documentary ever made (!) It’s a film that people have taken to their heart and yet I sat here with my Word documentary open on a blank page for far too long...

What about this movie failed to inspire me in any way good or bad? Is Neville’s film my own personal answer to the long-quipped mystery of “can you ever just be whelmed?” (yes, but it turns out not just in Europe).

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Watch at Home: 1985, Roma, A Simple Favor

What's newly available for home viewing this week? Herewith a very quick survey of new releases and/or great deals

DVD/Blu-Ray
• All About Nina -Festival critics loved it (and Mary Elizabeth Winstead's performance) but it was lost in theaters. Can it find a second life now? 
• Fahrenheit 11/9 -Michael Moore didn't make the doc finalist list this year but his new doc is now on DVD
• A Simple Favor -Paul Feig and two terrific actresses, perfectly cast, delivered one of the year's best comic surprises
• Venom - The Spider-Man spinoff that was so successful we're sure to get loads of other villain spinoffs of superhero movies. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to threaten you.

New iTunes 99¢ Deals
I do not know what possessed them but they have a TON of great films for 99¢ this week (there's usually just a couple of must-sees). That's a price point we can get behind for streaming especially since otherwise you're at the whim of Netflix and Prime's extremely limited movie menus. You might want to check out 1985, Austin based filmmaker Yen Tan's latest LGBT drama. This one is in black and white and about a young man (Cory Michael Smith) who returns home to his parents in Texas (Michael Chiklis and an excellent Virginia Madsen) to say goodbye during the AIDS epidemic.

SO MANY FAMOUS FILMS FOR 99¢ THIS WEEK: Airplane, Annie Hall, Beetlejuice, Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, The Birdcage, Black Hawk Down, The Black Stallion, Blue Velvet, Boyhood, Capote, A Clockwork Orange, Eat Drink Man Woman, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Gravity, Gremlins, Hairspray, Hannah and Her Sisters, The Heat, Kung Fu Hustle, Inherent Vice, Leave No Trace, Leaving Las Vegas, Lenny, The Madness of King George, The Magnificent Seven, Manhattan, Marty, Memento, Midnight Cowboy, Moonstruck, Moulin Rouge!, My Cousin Vinny, Mystic Pizza, Point Break, Raging Bull, Rainman, Spy, Sweeney Todd, Terminator 2, and Under the Skin.

This feels like my village. It's drier there but it feels like it.

Brand New Streaming
• Roma - Netflix's Best Picture hopeful is now streaming. Turn off your phone and all the lights. Then turn the sound way up. In other words treat it like a true cinematic experience if you're watching it at home. After Children of Men, Y Tu Mama Tambien, and Gravity (among others) we think it's safe to say that Alfonso Cuarón has earned the world's full attention. 

100 Most Popular Foreign Films of 2018 + the Oscar Hopefuls!

Our year in review party begins TODAY. A different list each day! Here's Nathaniel R...

Time for an annual look back at subtitled fare in cinemas. As with 2017 and the year before India, China, Mexico, and South Korea dominate with a smattering of Oscar contenders and random other countries faring much less well in the American marketplace. Much of the imbalance is due to dedicated distributors who saw a underserved market and focus specifically on it. Here in Manhattan, it's interesting to watch how this plays out. Generally speaking some big multiplexes reserve one or two screens for super specific distributors (Bollywood and mainstream Asian features for example are often at the Empire in Times Square which has 25 screens). Meanwhile the traditional "arthouse theaters" continue to rely on the decades-long practice of programming festival hits, docs, and arthouse style cinema which leans heavily European with a few buzzy Asian titles thrown in; in other words they're Oscar-aligned in their tastes.

For the purposes of the following list we skipped documentaries and animated films to keep the list more focused (and avoid arguments about dubbed versions or whatnot). The numbers are pulled from Box Office Mojo.

TOP 100 FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILMS FOR 2018
Domestic Box Office Grosses Only - Figures as of March 2nd, 2019

The $1 Million Plus Club
(The Success Stories) 

01 Padmaavat $11.8 (India) Jan 25th
This lux nearly 3 hour medieval epic is about an ambitious Sultan who becomes obsessed with a beautiful Queen. Available to stream on Amazon Prime.

02 Sanju $7.9 (India) June 29th
Biopic of a famous controversial actor. Available to stream on Netflix.

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"What's Eating Gilbert Grape" - Still Wonderful!

Here's Eric Blume to celebrate the 25th anniversary of What's Eating Gilbert Grape, currently available for rental on most services...

It's now been a quarter century since the release of Lasse Hallstrom’s What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. That deeply felt family drama earns its tears not through sentimentality but through true sentiment.  It’s arguably Hallstrom’s best film, and likely the best performances Johnny Depp and Leonardo DiCaprio have ever given. I'm happy to report, after a recent revisit, that it only looks better with age.

Hallström lays out the canvas of these characters’ lives with none of the condescension or cliché that we often see in films about small-town America, and he keeps everything fizzy and surprising...

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