New Oscar nominees I saw 1917, Parasite, Little Women plus Judy (and JoJo Rabbit)

I watched "1917" "Parasite" and "Little Woman" and felt they were excellent choices for the Oscar. Although it's not in the video, "JoJo Rabbit" also blew me away.

With "Little Woman", I admit I had a bit of bias against both period pieces of this era and
films that seemed to be targeted to females. I had to push through those biases in the first half hour to keep my mind on the movie but once the love triangles and tuberculosis and family problems mounted, I am glad I stuck it through. The film is emotionally there but has its own sense of joy about those lucky
enough to be born to a family of sisters. The film celebrates an earlier era of courtship where people didn’t meet grinding on the dance floor or on dating apps while also commenting on the distances it might create. On the whole, it's a very emotionally satisfying movie.


"1917", "Parasite", and "Jojo Rabbit" all blew me away.


"1917" is a technical marvel that makes you aware of the additive value of good cinematography in the best possible way. Roger Deakins is perhaps the only household name among cinematographers and he will be even more famed after this. Like "Little Woman" the film starts off slow and it builds and someone on home viewing might give up on it but that would be a massive shame because the film is an emotional ride. It's almost existential as a man has to find his purpose and then his purpose overtakes him to the point of exhaustion and everything else.


"JoJo Rabbit" I was concerned about because I'd just seen "Death of Stalin" and "Life is Beautiful" so I thought this has been done before but I don't know why I made this foolish mistake in retrospect: How many films have there really been in this genre?  The film makes the right movie at every juncture of the story and is supremely clever in its view of the war from a child's point of view. Sam Rockwell, once again, is great (he's on quite a roll), and Scarlet Johansson steals the show. She handles the arduous task of raising a difficult child as a single mother with such joy and resolve that I have no problem with her winning an Oscar this year. It handles World War II with a mix British absurdist humor (not unlike Monty Python which tackled the same subject matter), poetry and sentiment.


"Parasite" is the kind of deep dive into class that you don't see too often. It's extraordinarily layered in symbolism and visually dense. The film's biggest trick is introducing us to a tragedy (the class divide), but showing a larger tragedy lurking underneath the surface and building up the tension until these two tragedies collide. It plays with time and dramatic irony (what some characters know while others don't) perfectly well.

"Judy" is basically a TV movie with a good performance but what's the point of a movie if only to show off a good performance?





And here's my JoJo Rabbit review (with two strangers)