March 7, 2010: Which Way Home Another Oscar nominee for the Best Documentary Feature, Which Way Home follows a number of Central American and Mexican children who ride trains north to sneak into the USA. Some are doing so with the blessing of their parents who want them to have a chance at a dream […]
March 7, 2010: In the Loop A bit of a surprise Oscar nominee for its adapted screenplay, In the Loop is a feature-length follow-on from the acclaimed British TV series The Thick of It, a comedic look at the back-office realities behind international political intrigue. In the film and presumably in the series I haven’t […]
March 6, 2010: La Teta Asustada (The Milk of Sorrow) I don’t even know where to start with this one. A slow and deliberate slice of life in a strange little village in Peru, La Teta Asustada was fascinating but at the same time baffling. I need to be careful in explaining the plot, such […]
March 4, 2010: The White Ribbon I totally need a free pass on The White Ribbon. This is another review which I know will cause me great delays in my writing if I don’t just tackle it once and for all and get it over with. The White Ribbon is a black-and-white German film, which […]
March 4, 2010: Logorama Wow. Just wow. Logorama, the final entry I saw in the list of Oscar-nominated animated short films for 2009, won the award and absolutely deserved it, although I’m surprised that it won, considering the sensitive subject matter. A 16-minute film from France, it is densely-packed every second of the way with […]
March 4, 2010: The Kinematograph The Kinematograph was the second time-filler film I saw in a packaging of Oscar-nominated animated short films for 2009. A thoughtful fictional account of a man trying to perfect the presentation of colour- and sound-equipped motion pictures before the advent of motion pictures at all, this is a worthy film […]
March 4, 2010: Runaway Watching the packaged up Oscar-nominated animated short films for 2009 in the theatre, I had wondered whether they would stretch to feature length. Well, it turns out that they don’t, so some filler was added. I was confused at the point when this film started, because I knew I had seen […]
March 4, 2010: Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty A 6-minute Irish animated short film should be reviewable in the space of a couple of paragraphs, right? I think so. Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty makes its point and then ends. The timing is right, and it makes the experience sweeter as a result. A woman, of course […]
March 4, 2010: Wallace and Gromit in “A Matter of Loaf and Death” This 30-minute UK short film, the latest in the ongoing saga of the claymation duo Wallace and Gromit which includes a feature film and several short films dating back over 20 years, seemed to be presented as the centrepiece of the package […]
March 4, 2010: La Dama Y La Muerte (The Lady and the Reaper) The Lady and the Reaper was buried in the middle of the block of animated Oscar-nominated short films which I saw in the theatre in the week leading up to the awards telecast. I don’t seem to have found it particularly memorable, […]