Beyond "Oppenheimer": An Alternative Watchlist

by Cláudio Alves

HANAGATAMI (2017) Nobuhiko Obayashi

On August 6th, 1945, the atomic bomb, nicknamed Little Boy, hit the Japanese city of Hiroshima. On August 9th, a second device, Fat Man, was dropped on Nagasaki. Between those immediately killed in the American attack and the thousands who would perish in the subsequent months, 129,000-226,000 lives were lost, most civilian. Japan had been effectively defeated before the nuclear assault, but the nation's surrender to Allied Forces came on August 15th. According to historians over the decades and high-ranking military of the time, the US needn't have perpetrated such horrors.

And yet, for some, the idea of the bombings as a necessary evil persists. Considering this, one shouldn't be shocked that some viewers came out of Christopher Nolan's latest, grumbling it hadn't done enough to question the narrative. A common complaint is that Oppenheimer doesn't show the effects of the bombings, looking away like its titular character when confronted by such images. But would those images have fit the picture's intentions? Isn't the inability to consider consequences beyond abstraction one of the narrative's central tenets? 

As one marks these days of remembrance, it may be more productive to look beyond Oppenheimer and consider Japan's perspective. Perhaps, it's not that Nolan pulled his punches, but that they weren't his to throw…

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Ranking the International Feature Film Winners

by Juan Carlos Ojano

From De Sica to Hamaguchi, the past two years of hosting the podcast The One-Inch Barrier has allowed me to watch all that films that were selected by the Academy for its International Feature Film category - 74 winners and 337 nominees (all but one title). While this category has had its issues over the years, it has also put an international spotlight on non-English language cinema on Hollywood’s biggest night. While the category has  always been far from a perfect encapsulation of world cinema, it's a great jumping off point as noted in the series finale.  (Cláudio Alves did a beautiful summary of our discussion - video included!). 

Here is my personal not-that-definitive ranking of the winners of the category. Things are very fluid especially in the midsection... 

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Streaming Roulette, May 2022

Okay, time for this month's streaming roulette. You know the rules. We highlight new-to-streaming movies and an occasional TV series by freezing them on the scroll bar at entirely random places and just sharing what pops up. No cheating*!

So when you stopped going to Church is that about the time you stopped seeing your family and your brothers?

Under the Banner of Heaven (2022) on Hulu
A very discomfiting watch just two episodes in, being an Ex-Mormon. Can't imagine how still practicing Mormons are feeling. Always happy to see Andrew Garfield and Gil Birmingham who are paired here as detectives on a double-homicide case that is rapidly growing in danger and disorienting implications...

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Sundance: Bill Nighy finds purpose in 'Living'

by Cláudio Alves

To remake a masterpiece is to invite comparison and risk redundancy. Still, filmmakers regularly throw themselves into the pit, asking for trouble. Oliver Hermanus is the latest maverick to tempt fate, joining the ranks of directors who have remade the work of Akira Kurosawa. This time around, the subject is one of the director's most beloved classics, Ikiru. It's the story of a stalwart bureaucrat who finds meaning in the last months of his life, discovering purpose in the shape of a playground when faced with the inevitability of death. The original flick is a sentimental jewel and a showcase for one of Kurosawa's favorite actors, Takashi Shimura. In 2022, the Japanese thespian shoes are filled by Bill Nighy, taking on a new version of the role that reimagines him as a British civil servant in 1952 London. 

While I can't speak for worldwide critics and cinephiles, I confess myself happily surprised by Living. No matter how distasteful the prospect of a Kurosawa remake feels, these modern artists have devised a worthy reinterpretation…

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Macbeth beyond "The Tragedy of Macbeth"

by Cláudio Alves

Joel Coen's The Tragedy of Macbeth is a beautiful experiment in bringing German Expressionism to 21st-century digital cinema. I could wax rhapsodic about its minimalist set designs and symbolic costumes, the crystalline black-and-white cinematography and ominous soundscape. Hell, there's a book's worth of material to be written about Kathryn Hunter's merge of avant-garde physical theater and Elizabethan dramaturgy. All that being said, and that Scripter nomination aside, the movie's a rather lousy Shakespeare adaptation. Despite pronouncements about trying to reinvent the Macbeths as a middle-aged couple, going deep into the psychology of two creatures whose youth is long gone, Coen doesn't go deeper than the surface. 

In the end, it's a standard reading of the play that serves as a foundation for all that style. The cinephile in me loved it, while the Shakespeare geek felt dispirited. However, there are enough Macbeth movies out there to please just about everyone. It all depends on what you're looking for… 

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