"Incitement" will represent Israel at the Oscars while Thailand sends a horror film.

IncitementWe are now up to 73 films competing for those coveted 5 nominations in Best International Feature Film at the Oscars. Submissions are due to the Academy at the end of the month.  Israel's Ophir Awards were held over the weekend with Incitement taking Best Picture, making it their submission. The film tracks the year leading up to the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin from the point of the view of the assassin. Curiously the film only one two Ophir Awards, the other being Best Casting. The acting prizes largely went to Peaches and Cream and the craft prizes largely went to The Unorthodox but neither could muster up the support to take the top prize. The two Israeli pictures of 2019 with the arguably highest US profiles, festival hit Synonyms (at NYFF next) and currently in release Tel Aviv on Fire (nearing half a million at US arthouses) took Cinematography and Screenplay respectively. You can see all the winners here on the updated nominations post.

Other updates? Argentina is sending the pleasant heist comedy Heroic Losers starring their ubiquitous top film actor Ricardo Darín (The Secret in Their Eyes, Wild Tales) and his son Chino Darín (El Angel, A Twelve-Year Night), neither a stranger to headlining Oscar submissions. We saw that one at TIFF and it could make the finalist list if Oscar voters are in the mood for charming 'light' entertainment.

But the real curveball, and there's always one or two true oddities in the submission list, is Thailand's choice of the horror film Inhuman Kiss (starring Oabnithi Wiwattanawrang and Phantira Pipityakorn) which is about a girl whose head detaches from her body to hunt human flesh. Has there ever been a purer form of Oscar bait? Kidding but... wow. Want to see. 

TIFF Midnight Madness: "The Vigil", "Saint Maud", and "The Vast of Night"

Chris Feil takes a look at a few of the genre offering of TIFF's Midnight Madness section...

Safely the most terrifying Midnight Madness I’ve seen in my years at TIFF, Keith Thomas’ The Vigil is a visceral dive into Jewish tradition and the effects of antisemitic trauma. Dave Davis stars as Yakov, a man struggling with his mental and financial health after leaving his Hasidic community. For a little quick cash, he accepts an overnight position as a shomer (an Orthodox traditional role for watching over the recently deceased) to a former Holocaust survivor. With the widow (Lynn Cohen) asleep upstairs, Yakov is visited by a demonic force that antagonizes Yakov’s already broken spirit...

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Get Yourself Chained For Life

by Jason Adams

There is a fascinating film opening in New York today and in L.A. on Friday which I feel the need to give y'all some heads-up on if you're unawares -- Chained For Life stars Teeth (and It: Chapter 2!) actress Jess Weixler and Under the Skin actor Adam Pearson as a pair of actors who meet each other on the strange set of a surreal sorta horror film. She's the lovely leading lady, while he's the disfigured man in the shadows that's there to add that distinct touch of surreality that film-makers have been othering others with as long as there's been film.

From there in the grand tradition of movies-set-within-movies -- you could very much call this film Day For Night meets Freaks -- writer-director Aaron Schimberg dissolves the barriers between the two, tackling the heady subject of what we as an audience want to look at, why we're conditioned in that way, and ways around to something better.

If that sounds didactic it's not -- it's also a hypnotic mystery full of spell-binding imagery and suprising sweetness. I reviewed the film in more depth last year when it screened at the Fantasia Fest last July, you can read it here, but here's a choice bit:

"This is one-of-a-kind mad scientist movie-making stuff, riveting in ways I hardly expected going in - it unfolds itself, paper cranes and finger puppets, nesting dolls dissolving from one to the under to the under. It is, quite frankly, a lovely thing to behold."

If you're in New York Schimberg will be doing Q&As at screenings of the film tonight and tomorrow at the IFC Center -- then it hits the Nuart in L.A. Friday and they're promising a national roll-out after that, so stay tuned. I very much recommend checking this one out.

TIFF: "Atlantics" haunts and hypnotizes

by Nathaniel R

Atlantics made history earlier this summer when it became the first film directed by a black woman ever to compete for the Palme d'Or at Cannes. Though it lost the top prize Atlantics was a winner generating a lot of "must-see" buzz and eventually taking the Grand Jury Prize. Given that reception Netflix swept in to snatch it up for future streaming. Now that it has a home we wonder if it can continue to make waves, if you'll pardon the oceanic pun.

On the one hand it'd surely be tough to convince people to see a Senagalese movie without any easy summary or hook from a debut director. In that regard we're thankful Atlantics has a future firmly in place. On the other that futures is a double edged sword. As with Roma before it, which was also light on dialogue and rested on great cinematography and a brand new actress playing a quiet passive protagonist, its considerable strengths are entirely cinematic. Memorable images abound with clever lighting choices and a robust but never gaudy color palette. Atlantics bold and unsubtle sound will transfer with greater ease to in-home viewing with the constant roar of the ocean competing with an intrusive but sometimes inspired 80s influenced electronic score...

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Review: Jennifer Kent's "The Nightingale"

by Ben Miller 

In the world of Jennifer Kent’s The Nightingale, no one is safe unless they've won the lottery.  If you lucked into being born as a white English male in 19th century Tasmania, you can rest easy in the knowledge you are powerful.  If you are a woman, of another race, or from another country, that same luxury is not afforded to you.  Death and misery looms around every corner.

The titular Nightingale comes in the form of Clare (Game of Thrones Aisling Franciosi) as she serves as a maid and singer for a group of British officers.  She is held there as penance for her crimes of thievery, being Irish and being a woman. She is overseen by Lieutenant Hawkins (Sam Claflin), who is procrastinating processing her release, due to his infatuation with her.  Clare’s husband Aidan (a wonderfully warm Michael Sheasby) tries to persuade Hawkins to release her, but to no avail.  Things spiral violently out of control.  When Clare survives the unthinkable, she seeks revenge on those who have wronged her.

This might read like a simple rape and revenge film on paper, but it is much more nuanced and realistic than that in execution...

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