The Oscars are coming next Sunday and work pools will be striking up in the next week. Here are my informed picks. See how your picks match up with mine. I dare you.
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Nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Language film, Jacques Audiard’s prison drama is being compared to THE GODFATHER and the comparison is warranted. In taking a new perspective on the gangster genre, the gripping film deals with issues of being an Arab in France and the reality of rehabilitation. Prison rarely makes a person a better person only a better criminal.

Malik El Djebena (Tahar Rahim) is a 19-year-old delinquent who gets six years for fighting with cops. Whether he deserved it or was being targeted for being an Arab is left open ended. But it doesn’t really matter, because this scrawny kid is now in with the big boys. He’s petrified and it shows on his face. Before too long, he is mugged for his shoes. When he tries to fight back, he just gets beat more. However, his guts don’t go unnoticed… and that’s not a good thing for him. Corsican gang boss Cesar Luciani (Niels Arestrup, THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY) makes him an offer that he can’t refuse — he must kill the snitch Reyeb (Hichem Yacoubi, AZUR AND ASMAR) or be killed.
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Nut up or shut up is the catch phrase of this zombie satire and it also sums up its theme. What if you were the most scared person in the world and zombies took over? You’d think that he’d be the first person to have his guts pulled out and dined on. But fear might also keep you alert, especially if you know the rules.

Referred to by his hometown, Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg, ADVENTURELAND), is frightened of everything. Before the plague, he pretty much spent all his time in his apartment playing videogames. With zombies roaming, he is trying to make his way back to Ohio, following a strict set of survival rules. Cardio is his #1 rule. Zombies are slow, so being fat makes you the main course on the undead buffet. Other rules include watching out for bathrooms and making sure to put a second bullet into a zombie’s head just in case. Along the road, Columbus meets Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson, THE MESSENGER), who is his exact opposite. Tallahassee is a loose canon that loves slaughtering zombies in violent ways and will take great risks to comfort himself with Twinkies.
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Kirk Jones (NANNY MCPHEE) adapts the 1990 Italian feature STANNO TUTTI BENE into an English language drama, starring Robert DeNiro in a quiet role that he hasn’t done before. While the tone is completely different, a widower going on a road trip plot reminded me of Jack Nicholson’s ABOUT SCHMIDT. But comparing those two films is like comparing jalapenos to bell peppers.

Frank Goode (DeNiro, RAGING BULL) is preparing for a visit from his four kids. Then each one of them cancels. Despite a heart condition, he decides to take trains and buses to various part of the country to visit them. His son David (Austin Lysy, TV’s LAW & ORDER: SVU) is an artist living in a rundown neighborhood in NYC, but he doesn’t seem to be home. Amy (Kate Beckinsale, SNOW ANGELS) is a successful ad exec who, with her husband, has a luxurious house where her son Jack (Lucian Maisel) can play golf in the backyard. Robert (Sam Rockwell, MOON) conducts in an orchestra and Rosie (Drew Barrymore, GREY GARDENS) is a dancer in a Las Vegas show with a fancy apartment. That’s at least what Frank thinks.
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Matt Damon is the Informant!

This is a new weekly column to come to the Blu-ray Screening Room. It gives readers a quick resource for some new releases on Blu-ray or DVD. I’m giving out a pick of the week and the Queue Qualified flicks are a collection of recommended rentals. I’ll also include some releases that have received good word and are on my rental queue. I especially encourage readers to post their comments about flicks in the Buzzed About column, so I know which films I missed and need to check out quickly.
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Nominated for three Oscars, this character study looks at the music business and alcoholism. It doesn’t say anything unique about the latter, but it does about the former. However, both issues are intertwined in a way that they cannot be separated. It certainly shows why so many country songs are so sad.

Bad Blake (Jeff Bridges, THE BIG LEBOWSKI) is a legendary country musician who time has left behind. He has been relegated to driving himself to play bowling alleys. He drinks constantly, but tries to stay as professional as he possibly can. When he needs to throw up, he has the courtesy to leave the stage. At one show, he meets single mother and reporter Jean Craddock (Maggie Gyllenhaal, WORLD TRADE CENTER), who’s a fan and asks all the right questions. She discovers that Bad doesn’t like to talk about his successful former apprentice Tommy Sweet (Colin Farrell, IN BRUGE) or his family.
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No One is Better than Old Men

I debated for a long time whether or not to put together this list or not. It is so hard to do lists like this one. There’s also the pet peeve of mine that it’s actually not the end of the decade, but why should I nitpick over counting to ten when everyone else in the world isn’t? I’m a sheep I suppose. So this list is the best of the 2000s, which include 2000, which is actually part of the previous decade and in turn previous century and millennium, but I digress.

I looked over my Best of the Year lists from the past 10 years and tried my best to stay consistent and celebrate the films I felt were the must see films of the period. Because it’s my list I have also included a baker’s dozen honorable mentioned films that deserve a nod as well. In the end, I’m glad I did the list. I think it well represents the best of the 2000s and serves as a nice list of films that if you haven’t seen them, you really should. So without further ado here you go.
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It’s been five years since Roman Polanski directed his very good adaptation of OLIVER TWIST. Now he returns to the thriller genre he so commanded in classics like CHINATOWN and ROSEMARY’S BABY. Now mind you, this isn’t a new classic, but it is a return to form from his last thriller, THE NINTH GATE. This time he delves into the land of modern political mystery, keeping us wondering right up to the very end.

Ewan McGregor stars as simply The Ghost, a writer hired to ghost write the autobiography of Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan, THE MATADOR), the former prime minister of the U.K. The writer has a month to rewrite the draft of the previous writer who drowned. He flies from London to Massachusetts where the PM lives with his wife Ruth (Olivia Williams, RUSHMORE). His life is closely regimented by his assistant Amelia Bly (Kim Cattrall, SEX IN THE CITY), who refuses to let the writer leave the house with the manuscript. It seems there are people eager to steal it. While the Ghost delves into Lang’s past, the former world leader is whipped up in controversy over detainees and torture that has lead to war crimes charges at the Hague.
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For Martin Scorsese, this thriller is unlike anything he has done before. The closest project would be CAPE FEAR. The plot is more conventional than his usual work, but the way he handles the material is often haunting and darkly poetic. Working from Laeta Kalogridis’ adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s novel, he is able to twist mystery conventions to suit character motivations. This is key to the film’s success.

Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio, THE DEPARTED) is a federal marshal, who with his new partner Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo, THE BROTHERS BLOOM) goes to Shutter Island, a mental hospital for the criminally insane, to investigate the disappearance of Rachel Solando (Emily Mortimer, MATCH POINT), a mother who drowned her children and believes she’s still living in the Berkshires. Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley, GANDHI) runs the institution with the mind that treating the patients as humans is the best way to treat them. Teddy has different ideas about how to treat killers, which is influenced by his experiences in WWII and the death of his wife Dolores (Michelle Williams, BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN).
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Character. Character. Character. Every film needs engaging characters and the title character of this Oscar-nominated animated short is unforgettable. Granny O’Grimm comes to read her granddaughter a bedtime story. It’s “Sleeping Beauty.” But Granny knows a version of the tale that few others know. The beautiful fairies have left the elderly fairy off the guest list to Sleeping Beauty’s christening and the elder fairy is furious… much like Granny.

Granny’s overdramatic telling of the story had me laughing out loud on several viewings. With her Bride of Frankenstein hair and thick glasses, she appears all the more intimidating to her frightened grandchild, who cowers under the covers. The dark irony that boils under the surface of the entire film is wonderful. Director Nicky Phelan, working with writer Kathleen O’Rourke’s pitch perfect dialog, brings out so much character in Granny and the child. The real-life personal resentments that Granny infuses into the story are marvelously handled.

Stylistically, the film uses cartoonish CG for the “real world” and 2D animation for the fairy tale. I loved some of the visual gags thrown in from how the fairies look compared to the elderly fairy to what the fairies like to use their magic for. The exaggeration is exactly what animation can pull off so well and Phelan and company use it to great affect.

Of all the 2010 Oscar-nominated shorts, this one is my favorite. While I might not want Granny reading to my daughter, she can tell me a fairy tale anytime.