Here Are The Independent Spirt Nominations!

Posted on November 22, 2022 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The nomination for the Independent Spirit Awards were announced earlier today.

Making a very good showing were Tar, Women Talking, and Everything Everywhere All At Once. Not showing up at all was Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale, which failed to even pick up a lead performance nomination for Brendan Fraser. Seeing as how Fraser has been viewed as being the Oscar front runner for a few months now, his lack of a nomination definitely took observers by surprise.

Anyway, here are all the nominees!

FILM CATEGORIES

Best Feature
“Bones and All” (MGM/United Artists Releasing)
“Everything Everywhere All at Once” (A24)
“Our Father, the Devil” (Resolve Media)
“Tár” (Focus Features)
“Women Talking” (MGM/United Artists Releasing)

Best Director
Todd Field – “Tár” (Focus Features)
Kogonada – “After Yang” (A24)
Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert – “Everything Everywhere All at Once” (A24)
Sarah Polley – “Women Talking” (MGM/United Artists Releasing)
Halina Reijn – “Bodies Bodies Bodies” (A24)

Best Lead Performance

Cate Blanchett – “Tár” (Focus Features)
Dale Dickey – “A Love Song” (Bleecker Street)
Mia Goth – “Pearl” (A24)
Regina Hall – “Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.” (Focus Features)
Paul Mescal – “Aftersun” (A24)
Aubrey Plaza – “Emily the Criminal” (Roadside Attractions)
Jeremy Pope – “The Inspection” (A24)
Taylor Russell – “Bones and All” (MGM/United Artists Releasing)
Andrea Riseborough – “To Leslie” (Momentum Pictures)
Michelle Yeoh – “Everything Everywhere All at Once” (A24)

Best Supporting Performance

Jamie Lee Curtis – “Everything Everywhere All at Once” (A24)
Brian Tyree Henry – “Causeway” (A24/Apple Original Films)
Nina Hoss – “Tár” (Focus Features)
Brian D’Arcy James – “The Cathedral” (Mubi)
Ke Huy Quan – “Everything Everywhere All at Once” (A24)
Trevante Rhodes – “Bruiser” (Onyx Collective)
Theo Rossi – “Emily the Criminal” (Roadside Attractions)
Mark Rylance – “Bones and All” (MGM/United Artists Releasing)
Jonathan Tucker – “Palm Trees and Power Lines” (Momentum Pictures)
Gabrielle Union – “The Inspection” (A24)

Best Breakthrough Performance
Frankie Corio – “Aftersun” (A24)
Garcija Filipovic – “Murina” (Kino Lorber)
Stephanie Hsu – “Everything Everywhere All at Once” (A24)
Lily McInerny – “Palm Trees and Power Lines” (Momentum Pictures)
Daniel Zolghardi – “Funny Pages” (A24)

Best Screenplay
“After Yang” (A24) – Kogonada
“Catherine Called Birdy” (Amazon Studios) – Lena Dunham
“Everything Everywhere All at Once” (A24) – Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert
“Tár” (Focus Features) – Todd Field
“Women Talking” (MGM/United Artists Releasing) – Sarah Polley

Best First Screenplay
“Bodies Bodies Bodies” (A24) – Sarah DeLappe, Kristen Roupenian
“Emergency” (Amazon Studios) – K.D. Dávila
“Emily the Criminal” (Roadside Attractions) – John Patton Ford
“Fire Island” (Searchlight Pictures) – Joel Kim Booster
“Palm Trees and Power Lines” (Momentum Pictures) – Jamie Dack, Audrey Findlay

Best First Feature
“Aftersun” (A24) – Charlotte Wells (director), Mark Ceryak, Amy Jackson, Barry Jenkins, Adele Romanski (producers)
“Emily the Criminal” (Roadside Attractions) – John Patton Ford (director), Tyler Davidson, Aubrey Plaza, Drew Sykes (producers)
“The Inspection” (A24) – Elegance Bratton (director), Effie T. Brown, Chester Algernal Gordon (producers)
“Murina” (Kino Lorber) – Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović (director), Danijel Pek, Rodrigo Teixeira (producers)
“Palm Trees and Power Lines” (Momentum Pictures) – Jamie Dack (director), Leah Chen Baker (producer)

John Cassavetes Award (Given to the best feature made for under $1,000,000)
“The African Desperate” (Mubi) – Martine Syms (writer, director, producer), Rocket Caleshu (writer, producer), Vic Brooks (producer)
“A Love Song” (Bleecker Street) – Max Walker-Silverman (writer, director, producer), Jesse Hope, Dan Janvey (producers)
“The Cathedral” (Mubi) – Ricky D’Ambrose (writer, director), Graham Swon (producer)
“Holy Emy” (Utopie Films) – Araceli Lemos (writer, director), Giulia Caruso (writer, producer), Mathieu Bompoint, Ki Jin Kim, Konstantinos Vassilaros (producers)
“Something in the Dirt” (XYZ Films) – Justin Benson (writer, director, producer), Aaron Moorhead (director, producer), David Lawson Jr. (producer)

Best Cinematography
“Aftersun” (A24) – Gregory Oke
“Murina” (Kino Lorber) – Hélène Louvart
“Neptune Frost” (Kino Lorber) – Anisia Uzeyman
“Pearl” (A24) – Eliot Rockett
“Tár” (Focus Features) – Florian Hoffmeister

Best Documentary
“A House Made of Splinters” (Madman Entertainment) – Simon Lereng Wilmont (director), Monica Hellström (producer)
“All that Breathes” (HBO) – Shaunak Sen (director, producer), Teddy Leifer, Aman Mann (producers)
“All the Beauty and the Bloodshed” (Neon) – Laura Poitras (director, producer), Howard Gertler, Nan Goldin, Yoni Golijov, John Lyons (producers)
“Midwives” (POV) – Snow Hnin Ei Hlaing (director, producer), Mila Aung-Thwin, Ulla Lehmann, Bob Moore (producers)
“Riotsville, U.S.A.” (IFC Films) – Sierra Pettengill (director), Sara Archambault, Jamila Wignot (producer)

Best Editing
“Aftersun” (A24) – Blair McClendon
“The Cathedral” (Mubi) – Ricky D’Ambrose
“Everything Everywhere All at Once” (A24) – Paul Rogers
“Marcel the Shell with Shoes On” (A24) – Dean Fleischer Camp, Nick Paley
“Tár” (Focus Features) – Monika Willi

Robert Altman Award (Given to one film’s director, casting director and ensemble cast)

“Women Talking” (MGM/United Artists Releasing) – Sarah Polley (director), John Buchan, Jason Knight (casting directors), Shayla Brown, Jessie Buckley, Claire Foy, Kira Guloien, Kate Hallett, Judith Ivey, Rooney Mara, Sheila McCarthy, Frances McDormand, Michelle McLeod, Liv McNeil, Ben Whishaw, August Winter (ensemble cast)

Best International Film
“Corsage” (Austria/Luxembourg/France/Belgium/Italy/England) – dir. Marie Kreutzer
“Joyland” (Pakistan/USA) – dir. Saim Sadiq
“Leonor Will Never Die” (Philippines) – dir. Martika Ramirez Escobar
“Return to Seoul” (South Korea/France/Belgium/Romania) – dir. Davy Chou
“Saint Omer” (France) – dir. Alice Diop

Producers Award (presented by Bulleit Frontier Whiskey  – The Producers Award, now in its 26th year, honors emerging producers who, despite highly limited resources, demonstrate the creativity, tenacity and vision required to produce quality independent films.)
Liz Cardenas
Tory Lenosky
David Grove Churchill Viste

Someone to Watch Award (The Someone to Watch Award, now in its 29th year, recognizes a talented filmmaker of singular vision who has not yet received appropriate recognition)
Adamma Ebo – “Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul”
Nikyatu Jusu – “Nanny”
Araceli Lemos – “Holy Emy”

“The Truer Than Fiction Award” (The Truer Than Fiction Award, now in its 28th year, is presented to an emerging director of non-fiction features who has not yet received significant recognition)
Isabel Castro – “Mija”
Reid Davenport – “I Didn’t See You There”
Rebeca Huntt – “Beba”

Embracing the Melodrama Part II #126: Veronika Decides To Die (dir by Emily Young)

Posted on June 16, 2015 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Well, here we are!

It’s been 9 weeks since we originally embarked on this journey that I called Embracing The Melodrama Part II. At that time, my plan was to do 126 reviews in just three weeks. It didn’t quite work out that way, did it? But still, I had fun doing this series of reviews and I hope that you’ve had at least a little fun reading them. If I’ve inspired you take a chance on any of the films that I’ve reviewed — whether it be Sunrise or An American Hippie In Israel or Cocaine: One Man’s Seduction or Calvary — then this has all been worth it!

So, for my final review in this series, I want to take a quick look at one of the most melodramatic films to be released this year so far, Veronika Decides To Die.

Veronika Decides To Die finally got an American release in 2015, six years after it initially premiered on the festival circuit. Years before it was available here in the States, Veronika played in Europe. Not surprisingly, the American release felt much like an afterthought, one final attempt to make a little money off the film before moving on. It’s spent about a week in theaters and two months later, it is now showing up on cable and Netflix. And while Veronika didn’t get many reviews, the few that it did get were rather dismissive.

But you know what?

I like Veronika Decides To Die.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not a great film. In many ways, it’s a very silly film. The entire plot hinges on a character doing something that makes no sense. Frustrated with her life as an anonymous and lonely office worker, Veronika (Sarah Michelle Gellar) attempts to commit suicide. She survives the suicide attempt and, upon waking in a mental hospital, she’s told by a mysterious psychologist (David Thewlis) that, as a result of her attempt, she now has a heart condition that will kill her in a matter of weeks. And what does Veronika decide to do after learning that she’s going to die? She voluntarily remains in the mental hospital and goes to sessions of group therapy!

And you never really believe that Veronika would do that. But, if you can bring yourself to accept that one implausibility — well, you’ll soon be confronted by a lot of other implausibilities. You’ll meet Veronika’s glassy-eyed roommate (Erika Christensen) and a mysterious older patient (Melissa Leo). You’ll also meet Edward (Jonathan Tuker), who is mute but has such a sexy stare that he really doesn’t need to speak. And as Veronika gets to know her fellow patients, she starts to come to terms with her own issues of anger and regret and she realize that importance of embracing life and doing what you love.

Of course, that’s a little hard to do when you’re in a mental hospital. Luckily, there’s a piano that Veronika can play while Edward silently watches her. If you’re guessing that this eventually leads to Veronika sitting naked at the piano and masturbating in front of Edward, well, you’re right…

Listen, Veronika Decides To Die is one of those films that takes itself way too seriously and it ends with a plot twist that you’ll see coming from a thousand miles away. I can understand why the film’s release was delayed because the film’s tone is all over the place.

But, dammit, I liked Veronika Decides To Die!

When taken on its own defiantly melodramatic terms, it works. That’s largely because Sarah Michelle Gellar really commits herself to the role. You forget that you’re watching Buffy. Instead, Gellar truly becomes Veronika, this tragically sad and lonely young woman who finds inner peace by masturbating at a piano. Veronika Decides To Die is a movie that really shouldn’t work but Sarah Michelle Gellar saves it. When the film starts, she beautifully captures Veronika’s lonely desperation, her feelings of isolation and worthlessness. (I don’t care who you are, we’ve all felt like Veronika at some point in our life.) As the film progresses, she portrays both Veronika’s anger and her growing appreciation of life. She has a nice chemistry with Jonathan Tucker and, in the end, Sarah Michelle Gellar probably gives a better performance than the material really deserves.

Of course, another reason that Veronika Decides To Die works is because it is so silly and melodramatic. This is one of those films that goes so far over-the-top that it creates an almost heightened sense of reality. It becomes, almost despite itself, compulsively watchable.

It’s also the perfect film with which to complete Embracing the Melodrama Part II. I hope y’all have enjoyed reading these 126 reviews because I’ve certainly enjoyed writing them! To everyone who has read these reviews and clicked on the “like” button and occasionally left a comment or two, thank you so much! Love you! However much effort or work it may take, all of you make it worth it.

And now I’m going to go pass out for a little while…

Back to School #59: The Virgin Suicides (dir by Sofia Coppola)

Posted on September 17, 2014 by Lisa Marie Bowman

For the past three and a half weeks, I’ve been taking a chronological look at some of the best, worst, most memorable, and most forgettable teen and high school films ever made. We started with two films from 1946, I Accuse My Parents and Delinquent Daughters. Therefore, it seems somewhat appropriate that we close out both the 90s and the 20th Century by taking a look at a film about both delinquent daughters and accusatory parents. That film is Sofia Coppola’s 1999 directorial debut, The Virgin Suicides.

Much like Wes Anderson, Sofia Coppola seems to divide viewers and, in many ways, for the exact same reasons. You either get her films about upper class ennui or you don’t. Everyone seems to love Lost in Translation but viewers and critics seem to be far more polarized when it comes to rest of her films. It seems the people either love them or hate them. Well, you can count me among those who love her films. (Yes, even Somewhere.) To me, Sofia Coppola is one of the most consistently interesting filmmakers working today and the dismissive reaction that many (mostly male) critics have towards her films has little do with her talent and much more to do with her gender and her last name.

So there.

In The Virgin Suicides, Coppola tells the story of the five Lisbon sisters. They live in an upper middle class suburbs in the 1970s. Their parents — math teacher Ronald (James Woods) and his wife (Kathleen Turner) — are devoutly Catholic and very protective. The Lisbon sisters are rarely allowed to leave the house and, as a result, the neighborhood boys are obsessed with them. (Though the film centers on four unnamed boys, there’s only one narrator, voiced by Giovanni Ribisi, who continually refers to himself as being “we,” as if all four boys are telling the story in the same voice.) When the youngest Lisbon daughter commits suicide, Ronald and his wife become even more protective.

At the start of the school year, the oldest daughter, Lux (Kirsten Dunst), meets and starts to secretly date the wonderfully named Trip Fontaine (Josh Hartnett). Lux is even allowed to attend the homecoming dance with Trip but, after she breaks curfew, Mrs. Lisbon reacts by pulling Lux and her sisters out of school and basically making them prisoners in their own home.

(In one of the film’s best moments, we flash forward to see present day Trip talking about his date with Lux. Needless to say, Trip did not age well.)

With the Lisbon sisters even more isolated, the neighborhood boys become even more obsessed with them. One day, the boys get a note from the girls, asking for their help in escaping. The boys go to meet the girls, leading the film to its haunting conclusion…

Full of themes of sin, sexuality, repression guilt, redemption, and martyrdom, The Virgin Suicides is one of those films that you don’t have to be Catholic to appreciate but it probably helps. James Woods, Josh Hartnett, and Kirsten Dunst all give good performances while Sofia Coppola fills the movie with dream-like and sensual images, all designed to challenge the viewer’s perception of whether or not we’re watching reality or just the idealized memories of someone still struggling to comprehend a mystery from the past.

The Virgin Suicides is the perfect movie to end with the 90s on.