Movies |
Weekend Butler: The Academy Awards, 2021 films to stream, films to avoid
By
Published: Mar 24, 2022
Category:
Drama
Below, the kind of service you’d expect from a butler: Amazon Prime links to nominated movies.
First, though, some indiscreet opinions that this butler would like to share when the publicists and producers have gone to bed and it’s time to break out drinks-and-smokes and shoot the shit.
Like this: I only saw a few of the nominated films. I liked fewer.
I have a bias: I like films about people. Real people. In stories that are drenched in conflict and emotion. Stories that reveal character. Complex stories. Years ago, After the Wedding was the gold standard, soon followed by the same director’s In a Better World. This year it’s Asghar Farhadi’s A Hero. Just the mention of Local Hero warms my heart. Oddly, these are all foreign films [All these films are available for streaming on Amazon Prime; click on my reviews to start.]
But… okay… this year’s movies. The films I liked best in 2021 are The Tender Bar (which wasn’t nominated) and “Belfast.” In “The Tender Bar,” a fatherless boy is raised by his uncle and his uncle’s friends at a bar. In “Belfast,” a boy in Northern Ireland has to face the possibility his family will leave to escape “The Troubles.” [To stream “Belfast” on Amazon Prime, click here.] I haven’t seen “Coda,” about a hearing child who has deaf parents, but the Times review says it’s “warmhearted,” and I’m a sucker for that. See my bias? Intimate stories, with children at or near the center.
And yet I’m no fan of “Licorice Pizza,” in which a brash 15-year-old kid and a 25-year-old woman forge an unlikely alliance in Encino in 1973. Yes, the film evokes Los Angeles and Alana Haim is a charmer, but the plot makes no sense. Out of thin air, the boy opens a waterbed store. Out of thinner air, the kids are summoned to the home of Jon Peters, the brash hairdresser who was Barbra Streisand’s lover. I lived in LA in the mid-‘70s, I was in a room or two with Peters, and I can assure you: If Peters wanted a waterbed, he would have had one of his people buy it, and his people would never have bought it from amateurs in Encino. So why is this scene there? Because Peters is played by an over-the-top Bradley Cooper. Just like another irrelevant scene, with a drunk Sean Penn making a motorcycle jump. Smart thinking by the director — when the leading actors are unknowns, sprinkle the movie and the trailer with stars in action mode. But it leaves an aftertaste. [To stream “Licorice Pizza” on Amazon Prime, click here.]
I didn’t see “Power of the Dog,” but accounts of its subtlety have reached me, and it seemed too-too-too for me.
I also avoided “Being the Ricardos,” because life’s too short to care about Lucy and Desi. [To stream it on Amazon Prime, click here.]
“Don’t Look Up” was one joke, repeated, in order to hammer it home that the climate crisis isn’t funny at all. The Times: “In the end, McKay isn’t doing much more in this movie than yelling at us.”
I’m sure “Drive My Car” deserves the rave reviews, but it’s three hours, and I fear it would engage me, and there goes three hours. [To stream it from Amazon Prime, click here.]
“The Worst Person in the World” was consistently surprising, often delightful, and heavy when it had to be. I urge you to watch it. Of course: it’s a foreign film. [To watch the trailer, click here. To stream it on Amazon Prime, click here.]
