Nominees
Devil’s Knot (US 13)
Diana (UK 13)
El agua del fin del mundo (Argentina 11)
La Estrella (Spain 13)
Song for Marion (UK 12)
Winner: Diana
A close run with the mawkish Song for Marion but this film gets more bad taste and awkwardness into it. If you can’t make a film about famous people seem realistic, better not try.
A slightly richer selection of films this year with some new gems and quite a number of disappointments from more established filmmakers.
The year featured films from: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Britain, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, India, Iran, Israel, Italy, Mexico, Nigeria, Norway, Palestine, Poland, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UAE, USA, Venezuela. US dominates yet again in terms of production with France and Britain well behind.
Award nominations are lead by: 12 Years a Slave with 9 nominations, American Hustle with 8, 7 for A Prophet, 6 for Blue is the Warmest Colour and for Ida, 5 apiece for Boyhood, The Hunt and Elena. Gravity, Captain Phillips and Nebraska get 4.
Comments on films that didn’t make the cut yet deserve a mention:
La mujer sin piano – talented Spanish director Javier Rebollo and excellent actress Carmen Machi in this slightly offbeat number.
Paradise: Love – one of two Ulrich Seidl films about social issues – this about the sex trade at African beach resorts and the lonely European matrons looking for a toyboy.
Headhunters – a pacy Norwegian thriller
The Snows of Kilimanjaro – is another sensitive social tract from Robert Guediguian with Ariane Ascaride and Jean-Pierre Daroussin in full flow. Good but not great.
The Butler – had stars and good scenes but was just too forced.
Import/Export – the second Seidl film – bleak Eastern European scenes.
Saving Mr Banks – all present and correct with Emma Thompson, Hanks and Giamatti but it wasn’t enough
La Proie – effective French thriller
Mandela – Long Walk to Freedom. Suffers the usual fate of biopic, sinking under details and good intentions
Barbara – very engaging German thriller from the late Communist days. Captured a mood perfectly.
El muerto y ser feliz – Rebollo again with a good performance by José Sacristan.
Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu – finally got to see this documentary. Quite a long but compelling repiecing of the story that so many bought from both East and West. Scary.
Le Fils de l’Autre – the Israeli/Palestine issue this time seen through the eyes of two boys swapped at birth by mistake. Makes you think.
Museum Hours – one of the most unusual films – a sort of wander through a Vienna museum and a slice from the life of one of the museum guards. Educational too!
Half of A Yellow Sun – wanted to like this version of a prize-winning novel set against the backdrop of the Biafran war and despite good acting and an authentic recreation it just didn’t quite make it.
Tatuagem – flashback to a period of social rebellion under the military government in Brazil. Interesting.
Post Mortem – another gruesome film by Pablo Larrain from Chile but he does tease out the shadow of Chilean society and history.
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty – wanted to like it more. Visually impactful but empty.
Open up to me – Nice Finnish film on a transgender woman and her attempts to rebuild her life.
There were also loads of well-intentioned films that just didn’t impact despite some very positive qualities.
There’s nothing much either positive or negative to say about this Argentine/Brazilian co-production. It starts intriguingly enough as a young girl from the provinces goes to Buenos Aires and becomes fascinated with the Arab culture to the point of attending classes in an Arab cultural centre, working in a Lebanese grocery and changing her name to Habiba. 
We suppose that this calling is something deep inside but inexplicable to her – like a peep into a former life. The rest of the film putters along in the same vein between her initiatives in the Islamic line and little steps back into the rest of the world largely via a Brazilian friend at the boarding house with whom she goes out to dance.
And inevitably things start to unravel. It could have been so much more – deeper into this girl’s character, deeper into the comparison between Islam and Catholicism and the bridge between these two worlds here. But it is not. Martina Juncadella sleep walks her way through much of the film and while Martin Slipak is his usual good self he has little to do.
First film from Maria Florencia Alvarez, technically correct but lacking in soul and oomph.
★★
I watched this because it was directed by Atom Egoyan and starred Colin Firth and Reese Witherspoon. Based on a true story of the killing of three boys in Arkansas and the subsequent trial which sent three teens to prison basically because they liked heavy metal and were said to worship the devil, the case has lingered on until today.
18 years later the boys convicted have been released but they still don’t have the real murderer. The take on this film is that of investigator Ron Lax who starts to find all the holes in the police case as he wishes to avoid any death sentences. Firth has a terrible accent in this role and just looks worried. 
Witherspoon has a little more luck in her part as the heartbroken mother but not much and Alessandro Nivola as her shady husband is one of the best
but overall this film is boring and fails to add to extensive documentary material. A disappointment.
★ +
A refreshingly honest little number from Finland about Maarit, who used to be a man and is now a cleaner while waiting to get back into the counselling field! She also wishes to patch things up with her shy daughter 
and find a man. A couple of lies later and she has him – Sami, football coach and local high school teacher whose marital relationship is decidedly wonky. An affair starts, people get cold feet and Maarit continues to suffer the suspicions of the locals. 
This film is about people learning to stand up for themselves and accept who they are which is not so easy even in a supposedly liberal country like Finland. Well-acted, beautifully film, it is a small film but a good one adding its drop in the bucket of social change. Although a real transgender actor would have been good, Leea Klemola does a good job in the lead with Peter Franzen,
a top local star being a perfect foil for her.
★★★
Sort of comedy, sort of drama about 4 children of a dead man who are obliged by their mother to respect Shiva after their father dies. It is of course, a dramatic device to get the 4 to fight and make up, to remember and open up. And this sums up the whole film – all rather artificial in story and plot and sometimes flat as regards to character development.
Notwithstanding all that, it is entertaining enough for a wet afternoon and a chance to see some good actors at play. Jane Fonda has a better role than many she has had lately here but it is still a little far-fetched.
Jason Bateman and Tina Fey hold the centre quite effectively but neither character is that compelling. 
That prize is left to the baby brother Philip played by Adam Driver.
So, you will have a laugh or two and a pleasant ninety minutes but this latest from Shawn Levy is no classic.
★★
It took me all year to get this film. I thought it would be heavy and slow as many said it was. Instead, I found it to be an engrossing and moving film, which confronts the United States with the barbarity of its slave past in no uncertain terms. It is also a call to be alert to modern forms of slavery. The film is shot in a generally peaceful rhythm with ample scenes of beautiful cotton fields in Louisiana which contrast with the hideous whipping and denigration of the black slaves. The story is relatively simple but the great merit of this film is that we get to feel we are really there sharing slave Solomon Northup’s hell with him. 
Chiwetel Ejiofor is masterful in the lead role but there are also many great performances around him: Lupita Nyong’o as Patsy, the slave girl repeatedly raped and abused by Epps (a convincingly psychotic Michael Fassbinder),
Sarah Paulson as his martinet of a wife and Paul Dano as a sadistic farmhand.
Some may say that it is not a great film given the lack of creative fireworks but for me a good film is when all the parts combine to produce a coherent whole. McQueen is also willing to take this subject matter further than other directors have unto now 
and give us an unrelenting view of what slavery was really like. Definitely one of the movies of the year!
★★★★★
Another Woody Allen which scrapes a three star rating but is far from his best. The plot about a magician who is trying to unmask a medium and falls in love with her against the background of the French Riviera in the 1920’s is predictable and screams theatrical play from the beginning. The music – Allen’s favourite jazz is tiring these days and it mostly seems that the film is a rehash of old ideas and clichéd characters. Fortunately Allen’s scripting is till tight and the academic debate between realism and fantasy is well laid out if a bit long. Colin Firth gets on top of a difficult role and has some excellent scenes,
Eileen Atkins and Simon McBurney give him most support 
and while Emma Stone as the medium love interest is able,
she isn’t quite strong enough as a character to lift this. Some interesting observations but nothing at all new here.
★★★
A loose expansion of the original concept from Thurber’s short story, this is a Ben Stiller directed and acted film.
On some levels it works, on others it doesn’t. The film has pace, some stunning scenery (Iceland) and a great cameo from Sean Penn.
But the main storyline starts to wear a little thin as it struggles to outdo other modern plots and the central romance with Kristin Wiig rather fails to convince. 
Overall, it is watchable but not compelling and the film comes across trying too hard to be a self-help message and overdoing the criticism of business sharks. Good photography and music.
★★★ +
Maybe not quite the masterpiece some have claimed but there is no doubt that this movie which took over 12 years to film is quite a feat. It gives us episodes from the life of Mason, 5 at the beginning of the film and 18 and a high school graduate at the end.
Ellar Coltrane does a marvellous job as the centre of this movie as he grows up enjoying both good times and fighting adversity in other moments. His mother, the excellent Patricia Arquette brings he and his sister up alone
but has a disastrous choice in men and two of Mason’s stepfathers are severe challenges for the boy. His real father played effectively by Ethan Hawke also grows and matures during the film.
One of the features here are that the yearly visits to Mason are not always for the big events but often capture the small moments before and after and show in a much more subtle way, the progress of growing up and the fabric of family, school and society as it contains and supports the boy. There are several gorgeous scenes, especially when Hawke thanks Arquette for her work, a cracking script as we would expect from Linklater and an almost dreamy pace which does not get in the way of our desire to see Mason grow and develop. 
Many moments will be familiar from our own lives and this makes it another very humane film from the hugely able Richard Linklater.
★★★★ ++
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