Friday, March 15, 2024

ONE LIFE: An Anthony Hopkins WWII Drama That Will Get You In The End

Opening wide today at a theater, multiplex, or likewise venue near you:

ONE LIFE (Dir. James Hawes, 2023)

The first half of this film, the feature film debut by television director James Hawes (Doctor Who, Inside Story), is well-made (and well-meaning), and very watchable, but a fairly standard World War II story about fleeing the Nazis, and escaping the holocaust.

 

But, via the strong performances of Anthony Hopkins as the elder version of the British banker, Nicholas Winton, a humanitarian stockbroker who helped hundreds of Czechoslovakian children to escape from Prague; and Johnny Flynn, who portrays the younger Winton, the film grows more and more compelling until its very satisfying ending.

 

Hawes’ film, based on the book, If It’s Not Impossible…The Life of Sir Nicholas Winton by Barbara Winton, and scripted by Lucinda Coxon, and Nick Drake (not the folk singer of “Pink Moon” fame), begins with Hopkins’ Winton cleaning his study in 1987, and reflecting on a scrapbook he kept with information about the many Jewish children that he took part in relocating in 1938.

 

This leads to heavy flashbacks in which we see Flynn’s noble, determined Winton work with his co-workers (including Romola Garai as Doreen Warriner, and Alex Sharp as Trevor Chadwickof) of the British Committee for Refugees from Czechoslovakia, and his posh mother, Babi (Helena Bonham Carter, who gets one sharp, effective speech) to help scores of scared kids to board trains to the safety of foster families in England. These scenes are the movie’s most tense moments, you know because of grim, paper-checking Nazis.

 

Hawes cuts back and forth from the two time periods, maybe a bit too hastily as some shots and scenes aren’t given much room to breathe, but it’s Hopkins’ narrative, which involves the retiree trying to figure out what to do with his documents (donate them to the Holocaust Museum? Try for a newspaper retrospective?) that shines the brightest as it finds our hero being celebrated on the BBC series, That’s Life (which Winton’s wife, played superbly by Lena Olin calls “a very silly show”), and meeting a number of the people, and their families, who owe their life to the humble humanitarian. 

 

ONE LIFE, which takes its title from the expression, “If you can save just one life, it's worth it,” would’ve probably been celebrated much more greatly itself in a different era, as there’s been so many WWII films (and so many Anthony Hopkins historical dramas), but it’s such an earnest, and straightforward tale of humanity at its best while the world is at its worst, that it shouldn’t be dismissed. 

 

Its conclusion is so emotionally well-executed that if you don’t well up at least a little while viewing it, you might not be hooked up right. But if it doesn’t get anywhere near pulling your heart-strings, maybe one can at least see that it brilliantly shows what benefits may come when you de-clutter your office.


More later... 

Monday, March 11, 2024

2024 Oscar® Recap: “I’d Like To Thank My Terrible Childhood And The Academy”

Last night’s 96th Academy Awards was one of the most well produced, entertaining, and incident-free (no violence!) Oscar ceremonies in recent memory. Jimmy Kimmel did a solid job as host, the past winners saluting the new nominees device was touching, and Ryan Gosling’s “I’m Just Ken” big number from BARBIE brought the house down with the feeling of everyone in the room being blown away being gloriously palpable.



I was happy to see the well predicted OPPENHEIMER sweep go down. Christopher Nolan’s epic is a movie’s movie that’s got old fashioned majesty with modern polish, and it well deserved to win the seven Oscars it did (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor (Yay to Robery Downey Jr., the first former SNL cast member to ever win an Oscar - the quote in this post’s headline comes from his speech), Best Film Editing, Best Cinematography, and Best Original Score).

 

My score of 18 out of the 23 categories was far from my best (22 out of 24, back when Sound was split into Sound Editing and Sound Mixing), but better than my worst, 13 out of 24.

 

Here’s what I got wrong:

 

BEST ACTRESS: Lily Gladstone, KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

 

I, like many, thought it was Gladstone’s Oscar year as she had won the Golden Gl0bes, the Screen Actors Guild, and many critic association awards, but noooooo as Belushi would say (dated reference lost on younger readers), Emma Stone is now a two-time Academy Award winner for POOR THINGS. 

 

But Stone’s emotional acceptance speech was wonderful, featuring this funny moment:



“My dress is broken! I’m pretty sure it happened during ‘I’m Just Ken.’”

MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING: Kazu Hiro, Kay Georgiou and Lori McCoy-Bell, MAESTRO

 

Another POOR THINGS miss. I should’ve known MAESTRO would go home empty handed.

 

DOCUMENTARY SHORT: THE ABCS OF BOOK BANNING (Dirs. Sheila Nevins and Trish Adlesic)

 

This was a stab in the dark, as I hadn’t seen any of the Documentary Shorts. Now I’ll definitely seek out THE LAST REPAIR SHOP, which was the winner of this oft overlooked category.

 

SOUND: Jonathan Glazer, OPPENHEIMER

 

This was one I was glad to get wrong, because the sound in Jonathan Glazer’s THE ZONE OF INTEREST is such a major element of that movie, which deservedly won Best International Picture (I got that one right). OPPENHEIMER won everything else anyway.


ANIMATED FEATURE FILM: SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDERVERSE

 

Simply, I thought the more commercial, and more massively popular film would nab this award like usual, but I’m satisfied that Hayao Miyazaki and Toshio Suzuki’s THE BOY AND THE HERON went home with the gold. 

 

Okay, so that’s my bout with Oscars 2024. You can now go about your day.

Saturday, March 09, 2024

Hey Kids! Funtime 2023 Oscar® Predictions!


I haven’t been Film Babbling lately because I’ve been deep into working on a big book project (more on that later), but I felt like I just had to weigh in on the 96th Academy Awards®, which is going down this Sunday night at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles with Jimmy Kimmel returning to host for his fourth time. 

As I said in my Favorite Films of 2023 post, this last year was a much better one for film than the last several so there are a number of nominations that I’m seriously rooting for, but as we know with these predictions, one shouldn’t play favorites.

So here are my highly anticipated, not-thrown-together-at-all predictions:

1. BEST PICTURE: OPPENHEIMER

2. BEST DIRECTOR: Christopher Nolan, OPPENHEIMER

3. BEST ACTOR: Cillian Murphy, OPPENHEIMER

Yeah, an OPPENHEIMER sweep seems to be incredibly imminent. It will be surprising (but maybe more fun) if there are some upsets. Still don’t think BARBIE will win anything but best song though.

4. BEST ACTRESS: Lily Gladstone, KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

5. BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Robert Downey Jr., OPPENHEIMER

6. BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Da’Vine Joy Randolph, THE HOLDOVERS

7. PRODUCTION DESIGN: James Price, Shona Heath, Zsuzsa Mihalek, 
POOR THINGS

The upset could be BARBIE, but this should really go to the vivid imagery in Yorgos Lanthimos’ weird ass erotic black comedy.


8. CINEMATOGRAPHY: Hoyte van Hoytema, OPPENHEIMER

9. COSTUME DESIGN: Holly Waddington, POOR THINGS Again, take that BARBIE! (Kidding, I might’ve actually enjoyed BARBIE more than POOR THINGS).

10. DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: 20 DAYS IN MARIUPOL (Dirs. Mstyslav Chernov, Michelle Mizner, and Raney Aronson-Rath)

11. DOCUMENTARY SHORT: THE ABCS OF BOOK BANNING (Dirs. Sheila Nevins and Trish Adlesic)

12. FILM EDITING: Jennifer Lame, OPPENHEIMER

13. MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING: Kazu Hiro, Kay Georgiou and Lori McCoy-Bell, MAESTRO

Yeah, I’m predicting that 5-time Oscar nominee Bradley Cooper won’t win, and his MAESTRO will only win this category. That’s right.


14. VISUAL EFFECTS: Takashi Yamazaki, Kiyoko Shibuya, Masaki Takahashi, and Tatsuji Nojima, GODZILLA MINUS ONE

15. ORIGINAL SCORE: Robbie Robertson, OPPENHEIMER

16. ORIGINAL SONG: “What Was I Made For?”, Billie Eilish (The one bone the Academy will throw to BARBIE)

17. ANIMATED SHORT: WAR IS OVER! INSPIRED BY THE MUSIC OF JOHN & YOKO

18. LIVE ACTION SHORT: THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF HENRY SUGAR (Dir. Wes Anderson)

19. SOUND: Jonathan Glazer, OPPENHEIMER

20. ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Justine Triet and Arthur Harari, ANATOMY OF A FALL

21. ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: Cord Jefferson, AMERICAN FICTION

22. ANIMATED FEATURE FILM: SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDERVERSE (Dir. 

23. BEST INTERNATIONAL FILM: THE ZONE OF INTEREST (Dir. Jonathan Glazer)

As I usually say, tune in Monday morning to see how many I got wrong.

More later...