At the end of last year's Avengers: Infinity War, Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) managed to send out a mysterious distress signal just before disappearing when Thanos wiped out half the life in the universe. The signal was to Carol Danvers (Brie Larson), who now has the distinction of becoming the first woman to headline a film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

It's an important milestone for sure, and Larson more than rises to the occasion. The film around her, on the other hand, is more or less standard Marvel fare - not bad by any means, but it doesn't really bring anything new to the table either. Unlike the other solo hero films in Marvel's "Phase 3," Doctor Strange, Thor: Ragnarok, and especially Black Panther, Captain Marvel mostly sticks to the established Marvel formula, resulting a middle-of-the-pack film that never really asserts a personality of its own.

That's not to say that Captain Marvel isn't a lot of fun - because it certainly is. Set in the 1990s, the film introduces Danvers as a Kree warrior who discovers that her roots actually lie on Earth, where she travels to help prevent an evil race of shapeshifters known as Skrulls from tracking down a light speed engine developed by her former mentor, Dr. Wendy Lawson (Annette Bening). Upon arrival, she meets Shield Agent Nick Fury, some 25 years younger than when we last saw him in Infinity War, young, fresh-faced, and totally oblivious to the extraterrestrial threats that will soon face the planet on a regular basis.

Captain Marvel is essentially a buddy cop film, with Larson and Jackson playing off each other to great effect. The de-aging special effects on Jackson are truly incredible, allowing Jackson to believably play a much younger version of his character, even younger than when we first met him more than a decade ago at the end of 2008's Iron Man. But the heart of the film are the more intimate character moments shared by the film's women. Larson's rapport with Lashana Lynch as her best friend, Maria, and with Bening's benevolent scientist, make for some moments of disarming beauty. It's rare to see a superhero film take the time to allow the characters (and the plot) to breathe, but it between its exposition-heavy dialogue scenes about intergalactic wars, Captain Marvel manages to take a moment to examine not just who its protagonist is, but who she is as a woman, and how she relates to the woman around her.

That's what makes Captain Marvel strong. Here is a character that has spent her entire life being trained to control her emotions, only to discover who true power when she unlearns society's mandates. It's inspiring to see a woman take center stage, giving young girls everywhere a chance to see themselves represented as a powerful heroine on screen. While the film itself may not be the best or most original film in the Marvel oeuvre, it will certainly be something quite special for many. Yet one can't quite help but feel that something this groundbreaking should have felt a bit more fresh and adventurous than it ultimately does, as it spends more time setting the stage for the next Avengers film and establishing its place in the MCU than it does asserting its own personality.

GRADE - ★★½ (out of four)

CAPTAIN MARVEL | Directed by Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck | Stars Brie Larson, Samuel L. Jackson, Jude Law, Ben Mendelsohn, Annette Bening, Lashana Lynch, Gemma Chan, Clark Gregg, Lee Pace, Djimon Hounsou | Rated PG-13 for sequences of sci-fi violence and action, and brief suggestive language | Now playing in theaters nationwide.

This 1929 German adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's oft-told Sherlock Holmes mystery was the last of the silent Sherlocks, completed just as sound was taking over cinema and silent projects were being shelved or forgotten, seemingly lost in the dustbin of history.

Richard Oswald's Der Hund von Baskerville did gangbuster business in its native Europe, but was never released in America, and thus was never able to really secure an American audience. The film was long thought lost, only for a near-complete 35mm nitrate print to be discovered in Poland in 2009. Missing footage was supplied by a 9.5mm print from a private collector that had been released for the home market in the 1930s (yes, those did exist back then), but the film remains incomplete - relying on publicity stills and intertitles derived from the original German censor records to present the most complete version possible in this new Blu-Ray release from Flicker Alley that at last presents the film to a worldwide audience for the first time.

And what a discovery it is. For a tale that has been told on film and television countless times, Der Hund von Baskerville feels startlingly fresh. Its style rooted is in German Expressionism, the film is a moody thriller filled with deep shadows, off-kilter camera angles, and imposing, gothic sets. Figures creep up eerie staircases, their shadows thrown up against the wall like Nosferatu, and the mist-shrouded moor where the titular hound claims its victims is appropriately chilling. In short, this is one of the finest adaptations of the story ever produced for film. Doyle purists may balk at some of the film's liberties with the original story, but Oswald's haunting take on the material gives it an appropriately mysterious sheen. Carlyle Blackwell's Holmes is dashing and mysterious, while George Seroff's Watson has a few amusing moments of comic relief as the old Baskerville mansion creaks in the night.


The 1914 version of Der Hund von Baskerville, also included on the new Blu-Ray as a special feature, is a different animal from the 1929 version altogether. Scripted by Oswald, but directed by Rudolf Meinert, the film uses Doyle's original story merely as a jumping off point for a tale all its own. Not as eerie or well designed as its 1929 remake, this film is nonetheless notable for the creativity of the liberties it takes with the source material.

There's no real mystery to be solved here; the villain is revealed before Sherlock Holmes even appears in the film. In fact, the villain actually disguises himself as Holmes, and attempts to blow up Baskerville Hall when the real Holmes finally arrives. This version of Holmes is something like a precursor to James Bond, cool under pressure with an affinity for gadgets and disguises (he even disguises himself as a suit of armor at one point to catch the villain). What it lacks in style it more than makes up for in sheer zaniness, throwing the text out the window in favor of a wildly inventive spy caper.

The disc also includes some fascinating behind-the-scenes materials, including a look at Doyle's sometimes strained relationship with the Holmes character, and an examination of the work that went into restoring the long lost 1929 film version. It's a discovery not only for fans of Sherlock Holmes, but for aficiandos of silent cinema as well.

GRADE - ★★★½ (out of four)

Now available on Blu-Ray and DVD from Flicker Alley.

Gaspar Noé is not exactly a filmmaker known for subtlety. His films are often as much assaults on the senses as they are on good taste. His latest cinematic provocation, Climax, arrived at last year's Cannes Film Festival with the requisite controversy - its posters goading Noé's detractors by exclaiming "you despised I Stand Alone, you hated Irreversible, you loathed Enter the Void, you cursed Love, now try Climax."

Yet despite Noé's gleeful trolling of his critics, Climax has become one of the most acclaimed films of his career, winning the Directors' Fortnight Prize at Cannes while enjoying generally favorable reviews across the board. And it's easy to see why - Climax is one of the most unique and exhilarating cinematic experiences to grace the screen in some time. The film opens on one of the most dizzying, rapturous dance sequences ever put on film (shot in one stunning take), and descends into utter madness as a group of French dancers gathers in a remote gym for a night of rehearsal and partying, only to discover that their sangria is laced with LSD.

The film is a triumph of directorial verve and vision, a raucous descent into Hell with Noé as our jubilantly mad Virgil, set to the pulsing beat of electronic club music. It's a truly sensory experience, but when the LSD starts kicking in, it's a ride like no other. Climax quickly becomes hazy and hallucinatory, even orgiastic in its depiction of human depravity laid bare. Here, the drugs reveal the truth, stripping its characters down to their primal essence. Is this who we really are, Noé wonders? Once the inhibitions are gone and the semblances of polite society ripped away, what is left? The film is at once horrific and beautiful, frightening and exuberant, a visceral landmine in which death is an almost orgasmic experience, achieving another plane of existence that skirts the boundaries between the sacred and the profane.

In that regard, Climax is the perfect movie for the world in which we live. Common morality and human decency take a backseat to something much more brutal and primal, a world run by pure id. Yet this is no empty provocation, it’s an exploration of the darkest recesses of the human mind, a window into what we're capable of at our very cores. There's a kind of trance-like quality to the film, and once we're under Noé's spell, there's no turning back. It's at once a slow-burn unravelling and a turbulent, unhinged party that goes quickly off the rails. That Noé manages to balance those two aesthetics is remarkable in and of itself, but to also create something that is as moving as it is horrifying. Climax is often shockingly brutal, but it manages to make us feel the pain of its characters, and to sympathize with their plight. They never asked for this, and the results are often terrifying.

Much of the film is shot in long, unblinking takes, the camera movements replacing editing by being untethered to one specific plane. Noé's camera moves throughout the party like an unseen observer, roving the halls, and even moving up to the ceiling for a bird's eye view so that the audience is at once a dispassionate voyeur and an active participant. There's simply no other film like it in recent memory. It's thrilling, ghastly, tragic, and beautiful, a riotous and sensual visual and aural assault that simply must be seen to be believed. One can't help but feel that this is Noé leaving it all on the dance floor, and the results are truly incredible.

GRADE - ★★★½ (out of four)

CLIMAX | Directed by Gaspar Noé | Stars Sofia Boutella, Kiddy Smile, Romain Guillermic, Souheila Yacoub, Claude Gajan, Maude Giselle, Palmer Taylor, Kastle Thea, Carla Schøtt, Sharleen Temple | Not Rated | In French w/English subtitles | Now playing in select theaters.

Outside of the Toy Story franchise, Disney's sequels to its own animated films have historically been something of a mixed bag. Often going direct-to-video, they tend to be designed to make a quick buck off licensing and merchandise rather than adding anything to the story the original set out to tell.

That is thankfully not the case with Ralph Breaks the Internet, the sequel to 2012's Wreck-It Ralph, in which the titular video game villain (John C. Reilly) finds redemption and friendship after becoming tired of his destructive programming. Now, he and his best friend, the glitchy racer Princess Vanellope (Sarah Silverman), spend their evenings goofing off in other video games until the sun comes up, before heading off to their own respective games. But Vanellope wants to break out of their monotonous routine, while Ralph only wants what's familiar and comfortable. When Ralph's efforts to shake things up for Vanellope ends up wrecking her game, the pair find themselves journeying to the internet in order to find a crucial part that could save Sugar Rush. Once inside the internet, Vanellope discovers the vast world outside her backyard, and begins to yearn for new surroundings, even if that means leaving Ralph behind.

We've all had friends we've outgrown to some degree, whether we moved away from them or their goals and dreams just didn't align with our own. It's a bittersweet part of life that Ralph Breaks the Internet embraces with disarming emotional acuity. Ralph and Vanellope are friends traveling in different directions - one wanting familiarity and routine, the other longing for adventure and the unknown. As a result, Ralph Breaks the Internet is a film about moving on and letting go, and reconciling and embracing our loved ones unique ambitions, even if they diverge wildly from our own.

Directors Rich Moore and Phil Johnston skillfully navigate these tricky emotional waters, acknowledging the wistful and sometimes painful beauty of friendship, and it does so with great humor and heart. The film is wonderfully self-referential, creating a dazzling and witty personification of the internet and internet culture that pokes gentle fun at Disney's brand synergy while satirizing everything from social media to online click-bait. The much ballyhooed cameos by the Disney princesses (many voiced by the original actors) offer several comedic highlights, and showcase an unusual willingness for Disney to make fun of itself.


Ralph Breaks the Internet marks a giant leap forward for Disney animation, stepping out of the shadow of Pixar and asserting that even without their partner studio Disney animation is perfectly capable of producing smart, original, and emotionally grounded films apart from their trademark fairy tale/princess musicals. It not only manages to expand the world of the original, but deepen its emotional resonance as well - the mark of a truly successful sequel.

The disc's bonus features include the requisite making-of docs, but these behind-the-scenes looks are anything but perfunctory. The interviews with directors Moore and Johnston and other animators at Disney Animation in "How We Broke the Internet" provides some fascinating insight into how the film came to be, not only exploring the film's myriad easter eggs, but also the origins of its thematic content. The amount of work that went into building the film's internet environments is impressive,  and the complexity behind the film's climactic showdown with "Ralph-zilla," a surprisingly metaphoric battle against Ralph's own inner demons, is jaw-dropping. These aren't the kind of special features that simply give lip-service to how great the film is, they actually bring a deeper appreciation of the film. While it would have been great to have seen more about the original princess voices getting back together, this Blu-Ray release's features manage to enhance the film rather than simply selling it. And the extended reel of BuzzzTube cat videos is almost worth the price of the disc alone.

GRADE - ★★★ (out of four)

RALPH BREAKS THE INTERNET | Directed by Rich Moore and Phil Johnston | Stars  John C. Reilly, Sarah Silverman, Gal Gadot, Taraji P. Henson, Alan Tudyk, Jack McBrayer, Jane Lynch, Phil Johnston, Paige O'Hara, Irene Bedard, Mandy Moore, Auli'i Cravalho, Kristen Bell, Idina Menzel, Kelly Macdonald, Anika Noni Rose, Linda Larkin, Jodi Benson, Ming-Na Wen, Alfred Molina | Rated PG for some action and rude humor | Now available on Blu-Ray, DVD, and digital.

Todd Haynes' Far From Heaven isn't just a remarkable film because of how convincingly it emulates the cinematic language of a filmmaker (the great Douglas Sirk) whose peak came nearly half a century before it was released, but because of how Haynes so accurately uses that language to tell a more modern story that Sirk himself could have never told.

As a result, Far From Heaven feels like the Sirk film that Sirk never made, a long lost work from a Hollywood master who not only elevated the art form, but utilized the platform to advocate for social justice through the guise of overwrought soap operas. One does not have to look far to see the influence of Sirk's particular brand of melodrama in modern film, from Rainer Werner Fassbinder's German classic, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul to Guillermo Del Toro's recent Best Picture winner, The Shape of Water, the immaculate style and bold color palate that distinguished Sirk's films have inspired filmmakers for decades. Yet no one quite so brazenly attempted to pay homage to him as Haynes, who took the basic elements of Sirk's 1955 film, All that Heaven Allows  and reworked it into a searing, thoroughly modern treatise on race, sexuality, and the lies we tell ourselves in a society that only values conformity.

In All that Heaven Allows, Jane Wyman stars as a middle aged widow whose affair with her much younger gardener (Rock Hudson), creating a scandal amongst her children and the town as a whole. In Far From Heaven, Julianne Moore is Cathy Whitaker, a picture perfect 1950s housewife whose husband, Frank, is a successful business executive (together they make up "Mr. and Mrs. Magnatech" 1957). But underneath the seemingly perfect facade, trouble is brewing. Frank, it turns out, is gay, and despite his best efforts to "cure" himself, he can't overcome his own desires. Cathy turns her gardener, a black man named Raymond (Dennis Haysbert), for comfort, immediately scandalizing the town and turning Frank against her.

Hayes is clearly dealing with issues here that Sirk could have never directly addressed, but it's hard to escape the feeling that this is exactly how Sirk would have handled them. Far From Heaven is perhaps one of the most remarkable tributes by one filmmaker by another ever made. From the sumptuous costume design by Sandy Powell to Ed Lachmann's breathtaking Technicolor cinematography with its vibrant fall colors and striking blue tones (gorgeously rendered on the new Blu-Ray from Kino Lorber), to the luscious score by the legendary Elmer Bernstein (To Kill a Mockingbird), Far From Heaven is awash in stunning period detail in both style and substance. Its characters are all trapped, by their sexuality, their race, their gender, by the very artifice of the extravagant sets that surround them, unable to communicate with each other or express how they truly feel. As a result, the most profound moments are often found in what the characters can't bring themselves to actually say, the words left unspoken leaving the most lasting emotional impact.


That's what makes Julianne Moore's Oscar-nominated performance so incredible (although she ended up losing the award to her co-star from The Hours, Nicole Kidman), she walks a fine line between emulating the acting style of 1950s melodramas and allowing moments of real emotion to shine through the cracks in the facade. Those moments when the real Cathy is allowed to appear are utterly devastating, and they say a lot about not only the world in which the characters lived, but the world we live in today. The elements of acting are essentially on display, but the way in which Moore uses those obvious, more presentational modes of expression becomes a kind of performance with a performance. It's a truly impressive thing to watch - it's one of the great acting achievements of the 21st century.

It's easy to look at a film that deals with ideas of homophobia and racism in the 1950s and think of these things as issues of another time (hi, Green Book), and yet despite its period trappings, Far From Heaven never feels anything less that contemporary. This isn't just about characters from the 1950s, it's about characters trapped by circumstance, by an intolerant society, by keeping up with appearances, spending a lifetime performing for others rather than living for one's self. Those performances make up the core of Haynes' film, a work filled with self-conscious artifice that uses its own artificiality to explore some essential truths. Never has such fakery felt so painfully, or so beautifully, honest.

How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World is the culmination of a trilogy of films that began with 2010's How to Train Your Dragon and continued in 2014 with How to Train Your Dragon 2, a rare sequel that both depend and expanded upon the world established by the original. Collectively they make up some of the finest animated films of the last decade, not only providing great stories (based on the series of books by Cressida Cowell) but gorgeous animation and sweeping, Academy Award nominated music. Like most threequels, unfortunately, The Hidden World doesn't quite live up to the lofty promise of its predecessors, but that doesn't mean it’s completely without merit.

The film picks up a year after the last film, with Chief Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) and his trusty dragon, Toothless, leading the dragon riders of Berk to rescue dragons from captivity in order to create a utopia where humans and dragons co-exist side by side peacefully. But the arrival of an evil dragon hunter named Grimmel (F. Murray Abraham) soon forces the vikings to abandon Berk in search of the dragons' hidden home world, with a rare female night fury serving as bait for Toothless to lead them right into Grimmel's trap.

There's still plenty to admire here. The animation remains breathtaking, and John Powell's score rattles the theater walls with epic power. But the film just doesn't quite measure up to the previous entries in the series. It feels strangely rushed, as if the filmmakers are trying to hurry up and wrap things up The Hidden World lurches from one scene to another without taking the time to let the gravity of the previous scene settle in. It even combines and intercuts unrelated scenes that undercut the film's narrative drive. It's as if it doesn't want to grapple with the real thematic meat of the story.

These films have always succeeded most in mirroring Hiccup and Toothless' growth as leaders. The Hidden World finds them both grappling with their own abilities while also falling in love and discovering what it means to be a part of a family. Much of this is ultimately glossed over in the film's breakneck race to the finish line. The conclusion marks an emotionally tinged coda for the franchise that feels satisfying in context but doesn't quite seem to match the boldness that marked the previous films. Much like Dreamworks' Kung Fu Panda trilogy, the third part is a marked step down from a towering middle film, yet Kung Fu Panda 3 actually managed to one-up The Hidden World in its ability to guide the series to a natural conclusion. The How to Train Your Dragon series is stronger overall, and The Hidden World stands on its own just fine, but in the context of the high bar set by the other films in the franchise, it leaves something to be desired.

The adventures of Hiccup and Toothless have given us a decade of cinematic magic and wonder. Even if their final film isn't their strongest moment, they're still a charming pair, and The Hidden World manages to take their characters in interesting directions without sacrificing the core of who they are. It's a moderately engaging tale of adventure and friendship filled with dazzling visuals and a glorious score, but this rushed conclusion to such an incredible franchise can't help but feel just the slightest bit disappointing.

GRADE – ★★★ (out of four)

HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON: THE HIDDEN WORLD | Directed by Dean DeBlois | Voices of Jay Baruchel, America Ferrera, F. Murray Abraham, Cate Blanchett, Gerard Butler, Craig Ferguson, Jonah Hill, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Kristen Wiig, Kit Harington | Rated PG for adventure action and some mild rude humor | Now playing in theaters nationwide.

Jim McKay's En El Séptimo Día (On the Seventh Day) is a film so naturalistic that it almost feels like a documentary - a vérité-style examination of the lives of undocumented Mexican immigrants living in in Brooklyn that looks as though could have been shot on the fly as it occurred.

McKay never attempts to lay any kind of false drama or contrived plot on the proceedings, stringing it all together with the loosest of storylines centering around a bicycle deliveryman named José (Fernando Cardona) who moonlights as his local soccer team's captain on Sunday afternoons, his one day off.  One day his boss informs him that their restaurant will be catering a large party that Sunday and that he needs "all hands on deck." José's lone day off is cancelled. That also happens to be the day of the local championship, and as the team's best player, they're likely to lose without José there to lead them to victory.

It's a simple plot, centering around an issue that may not sound like that big a deal. It's just a soccer game, right? En El Séptimo Día is a deeply political film, but it isn't making any grand pronouncements here. Instead, McKay aims for something much more understated. José's boss had promised to help him get his green card, yet works him six days a week, and then takes his one day off, forcing him to work despite something very important to José happening that day. It's very much a form of exploitation. These micro-aggressions and abuses make up daily life for these immigrants - working from day to day in fear of their boss' whims without any protections to keep them from being exploited.

The film deservedly won the John Cassavetes Award at this past weekend's Independent Spirit Awards and is more than worth seeking out. It manages to take a complicated and contentious issue and distills it to its most essential human elements.  This is no angry political screed, it's a quietly revolutionary act of protest. The immigrants at the center of En El Séptimo Día aren't afforded the basic decency of a day off, the needs of their employers superseding the lives of the workers. What it lacks in dramatic power it makes up for in its deep sense of empathy. McKay's natural style recalls neorealist vision of DeSica and the scrappy, DIY aesthetic of Sean Baker. Like those two filmmakers, McKay arrives at a deep political truth about those who live on society's margins.  If your livelihood depends on your employer, and their reach extends into your personal life, what else can they control? Exploitation exists in myriad forms, and En El Séptimo Día explores them with a clear-eyed grace.

GRADE - ★★★ (out of four)

EN EL SÉPTIMO DÍA | Directed by Jim McKay | Stars, Fernando Cardona, Donal Brophy Gilberto Jimenez, Abel Perez, Genoel Ramírez | Not Rated | In Spanish & English w/English & Spanish subtitles | Now available on Blu-Ray and DVD from Cinema Guild.

The 2019 Academy Award nominees for Best Documentary Short not only comprise the strongest of the short film categories, but one of the strongest categories of the entire ceremony. Tackling subjects from racism to fascism to immigration to the patriarchy to death itself, these five nominees are a hard hitting bunch that offer a wide variety of perspectives into the world in which we live.

Black Sheep

There's an essential truth at the heart of Black Sheep about what it's like to live as a black man in a white world, but the re-enactments all but destroy the film's power. It's almost not even a documentary, but a narrative film narrated by its subject, a black teenager who, in the face of racism and prejudice, attempts to assimilate to his surroundings by bleaching his skin and wearing blue contacts.

It's a heartbreaking look at the deeply personal toll of racism, privilege, and a society designed by and for white people. But its impact is blunted by its unnecessary re-enactment structure, which distracts from the power of its subject's words.

End Game

Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman's End Game explores end-of-life care through the eyes of several subjects facing death due to terminal illness.

Reminiscent of the 2013 nominee, Joanna, End Game is a sensitive and yet surprisingly positive exploration of palliative care, following the doctors tasked with preparing the patient and the families, and the subjects who are facing the end of their lives. For such heavy subject matter, Epstein and Friedman display a light touch. Here, death is neither a tragedy nor a cause for celebration, it's merely a fact of life, and End Game treats its subjects with a clear-eyed dignity that is deeply powerful.

Lifeboat

Skye Fitzgerald's harrowing documentary short follows the efforts of a German non-profit dedicated to rescuing refugees in the Mediterranean as they struggle to make the perilous journey from Africa to Europe. More urgent and necessary than the similarly themed documentary feature, Fire at Sea, Lifeboat not only examines the rescue operations but the plight of those fleeing violence and persecution.

While there's no cure for xenophobia, Lifeboat expertly takes the right-wing talking points that refugees should stay behind and fix their own countries and chucks them right out the window. No one would brave conditions like this and risk their lives if it weren't the better alternative. It's a powerful examination of a growing humanitarian crisis that pulls no punches in depicting the human element that is so often lost in political rhetoric.

A Night at the Garden

This harrowing account of a Nazi rally disguised as a "pro-America rally" that took place at Madison Square Garden in 1939 reveals terrifying parallels between the Nazi ideology and the "America first" agenda of the Make America Great Again crowd. Standing in front of a fascistic painting of George Washington and flanked by swastikas, the speakers decry every form of diversity while extolling "white, Christian values" to a roaring crowd.

Then...the film just ends. It feels like a set up without a follow through, never really examining what brought the rally about nor its ramifications. A few brief clips, and it's all over. Those 7 minutes are truly frightening, but A Night at the Garden feels like a brief intro for a much longer and much more interesting film.

Period. End of Sentence.

Easily the most delightful of this year's crop of Oscar nominated documentary shorts, Period. End of Sentence. follows a group of young women in India working toward de-stigmatizing menstruation in a patriarchal society that refuses to even discuss it.

Seeing that many women go without pads, and the societal taboo surrounding tampons, these young women start a business to provide low cost pads to women, and open up a discussion around menstruation in an attempt to educate men for whom the subject remains both mysterious and embarrassing. A rousing piece of feminist activism, Period. End of Sentence. explores an oft-overlooked topic, still taboo even in the United States, in a way that is both educational and entertaining. A gem.

The Oscar nominees for Best Documentary Short are now playing in select theaters and On Demand.

With the influx of new Academy members and a preferential ballot system that asks voters to rank their choices rather than vote for their favorite outright, the Academy Awards have become increasingly difficult to predict in recent years. This makes the ceremony more exciting to watch, but something of a headache for Oscar prognosticators who pride themselves on “getting it right.”

Despite the fact that the Academy’s board and telecast producers have seemed hellbent on making every bad decision imaginable, before walking them back after immense public pressure (the Kevin Hart debacle, an Oscar for “best popular film,” only performing two of the five Best Original Song nominees, and presenting some awards during commercial breaks), this year’s Oscar ceremony is shaping up to be the most wide-open in recent memory.

Best Picture

Any one of these films could conceivably win, as there has been no clear frontrunner for this entire season. The Producers Guild went for Green Book, Screen Actors Guild for Black Panther, Directors Guild for Roma, Editors for The Favourite and Bohemian Rhapsody, and neither of the Writers Guild winners were nominated for Best Picture. So where does that leave us? BlacKkKlansman is the only film to have been nominated for all of the above, indicating wide industry support which could help it in a preferential ballot, and A Star is Born has likewise been present at nearly all of this year’s awards shows. This is truly anyone’s game for the first time in recent memory. My best guess? Roma takes home Best Picture, becoming the first foreign language film to ever win the award. It’s widely beloved within the industry and has the most nominations of any film this year (tied with “The Favourite”). But at this point, nothing would surprise me.

Prediction: Roma
Preference: The Favourite

Best Director

Alfonso Cuarón seems like a more solid winner here for “Roma” than he is for Best Picture, but his win at the DGA cemented him as the frontrunner. He’s won recently (for “Gravity”), but as a jack of all trades who also wrote, shot, edited, and produced his own film, his achievement perhaps has the highest degree of difficulty, which should help him win over voters. But don’t count out Spike Lee, at long last nominated after decades in the business (and having been famously overlooked in 1989 for “Do the Right Thing”). A win for him would be a historic moment, making him the first black Best Director winner. Can voters resist the chance to make history with a pointedly anti-Trump film?

Prediction: Alfonso Cuarón, Roma
Preference: Spike Lee, BlacKkKlansman

Best Actor

What once looked like a lock for Christian Bale has become Rami Malek’s award to lose. His performance as Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody has become one of the most lauded performances of the year. He’s easily the strongest aspect of his film (which is arguably the worst film to receive a Best Picture nomination in at least 20 years), so this could be the Academy’s chance to laud a film they clearly loved.

Prediction: Rami Malek, Bohemian Rhapsody

Preference: Willem Dafoe, At Eternity’s Gate

Best Actress

Glenn Close has been racking up awards all season for her performance in The Wife. She’s a beloved industry vet who is seen as “overdue,” so her victory here is likely, especially since A Star is Born hasn’t performed as well as expected. Lady Gaga could still pull off an upset, same for Olivia Colman in The Favourite, a film they clearly really like. But this is Close’s to lose.

Prediction: Glenn Close, The Wife

Preference: Lady Gaga, A Star is Born

Best Supporting Actor

Green Book’s Mahershala Ali is the only actor this season to have made a clean sweep of the precursors, which makes his victory here all by assured. But he just won this award two years ago for Moonlight, and he’s really a lead in Green Book, could Oscar voters be looking for some fresh blood? No one has campaigned harder this year than Richard E. Grant. His humble presence and clear sense of excitement and gratitude could lead him to an upset (plus it’s a true supporting performance), but the safe bet is on Ali.

Prediction: Mahershala Ali, Green Book

Preference: Richard E. Grant, Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Best Supporting Actress

The winner of the SAG award, Emily Blunt in A Quiet Place, isn’t nominated for an Oscar, leaving this category wide-open. The likely winner is Regina King from If Beale Street Could Talk, but the film didn’t get as much support across other categories as expected, making her a vulnerable frontrunner. The ladies of The Favourite likely cancel each other out, leaving Amy Adams as a potential spoiler. Still, King’s performance is undeniably great. If the Academy didn’t even nominate Adams for her stunning work in Arrival, awarding her for playing Lynne Cheney in Vice seems like an insult.

Prediction/Preference: Regina King, If Beale Street Could Talk

Best Original Screenplay

At last shaking off the burden of his infamous affair with actress Kim Min-hee, whose repercussions haunted his last three films - On the Beach at Night Alone (2017), Claire's Camera (2018), and The Day After (2018), Korean filmmaker Hong Sangsoo has returned to some of the pre-occupations that often informed his earlier work in his latest film, Hotel by the River.

Filled with longing and regret, Hotel by the River is the story of a group of quintessential Hong protagonists, separated by emotional distance they are unable to bridge despite their best efforts. It recalls the snowy wistfulness of The Day He Arrives (2012), centering around five lonely people who converge on the eponymous hotel to find their own definition of peace and healing.

On one side we have an aging poet (Joo-Bong Ki) who has summed his two sons (Hae-hyo Kwon and Joon-Sang Yoo) to inform them that he believes he is dying. On the other side, a young woman (Kim Min-hee) who has been betrayed by the man she loves, and has retreated to the hotel with her friend (Seon-mi Song) to recover. Their stories are separate, yet inexorably intertwined, bound by their mutual quest for closure and redemption. And yet, like many Hong protagonists, they remain steadfastly apart, so close to a real connection and yet unable to reach out and make it.

That's the beauty and the inherent tragedy of Hotel by the River a film that is easily Hong's most overtly emotional in years. His characters are broken, lost in their own private reveries of art, loneliness, and fantasy. Hong often explores the inner lives of artists. The denizens of the hotel by the river are poets and filmmakers, those who express their feelings in tangible ways yet are unable to articulate them outside of those bounds. That's what makes them so fascinating - they're walking contradictions, bound by one mode of expression that they can never translate into real life. The poet has no evidence that he is dying, yet he feels it. His sons want closure after a lifetime with an emotionally distant father. The young woman searches for reasons for the betrayal of her former lover. The answers they seek never arrive, yet they all come tantalizingly close to a kind of peace.

On the surface, Hong's films often seem aimless and meandering. And while Hotel by the River is perhaps his most accessible film in recent memory, it still retains his trademark unassuming self-reflexivity, the characters seemingly trapped in a self-imposed purgatory for which they hold the keys to escape, yet never quite figure out how to use them. They may seem talky and disengaged, but that's how Hong gets at the basic truth of their experiences, eschewing the trappings of melodrama for a kind of languid naturalism. One always feels that Hong's films are an attempt by the filmmaker to exorcise his own demons, to explore his own feelings and shortcomings both as an artist and a human being, using his characters as avatars for his own insecurities.

There is a poignant sense of remorse that permeates the film that is both tangible and intoxicating, and one comes away with the feeling that we're all just snowflakes in a snowstorm, colliding with each other briefly as we're tossed in the wind, searching for somewhere to land. In Hong's haunted meditation, there is no pretense of having all the answers, and that's what makes it so special. He's out here trying to figure himself out just like everyone else. Like his very best films, Hotel by the River seems like a circuitous trifle on the surface, but within its modestly composed black and white frames lies a profoundly open-ended exploration of the very faults, foibles, dreams, and contradictions that make us human.

GRADE - ★★★½ (out of four)

HOTEL BY THE RIVER | Directed by Hong Sangsoo | Stars Ki Joo-bong, Kim Min-hee, Song Seon-mi, Kwon Hae-hyo, Yu Jun-sang | In Korean w/English subtitles | Now playing at the Film Society of Lincoln Center in NYC.

Usually one of the most consistently strong categories at the Oscars, this year's crop of animated shorts is a decidedly mixed bag - the only real stand-out being Pixar's Bao. Still, there's enough here to be of interest, with an eclectic lineup that finds both joy and sadness in the experiences of childhood and in the act of growing up.

Animal Behaviour

A support group for animals quickly devolves into chaos as the anthropomorphized creatures share their own unique relationship problems. Each problem stems from the animal's own background (the leech is co-dependent, the praying mantis murders her mates), but Animal Behavior is an oddly joyless and ultimately aimless experience.

It's a mostly unpleasant film that never seems to come to a point, shaking things up with the arrival of a moody gorilla, but it's never particularly funny or especially insightful. Easily the weakest of the 2019 Oscar nominees for Best Animated Short Film.

Bao

An absolute delight. Domee Shi's simple, affecting metaphor for motherhood in which a Chinese mother fears an empty nest after raising an anthropomorphic dumpling is as beautiful and touching as anything Pixar has ever produced. All children grow up eventually, and Bao poignantly chronicles a mother's desire to shield her child from a world that comes crashing unceremoniously through their door anyway. No other film in this category displays such insightful depth or a navigate a metaphor this tricky with such grace.

Late Afternoon

An old woman looks back on a full life, lost in a foggy reverie that blurs fantasy and reality. Would make a charming double feature with the Best Live Action Short nominee, MARGUIRITE, both depicting elderly protagonists reflecting on the past, but the conclusion of LATE AFTERNOON isn't as satisfying.

The way it handles the idea of memory, and the way it crosses over into the woman's present-day life, is lovely and poignant. It's slight, but beautifully animated and realized.

One Small Step

A young girl dreams of becoming an astronaut in this lovely Chinese animated short that explores the wondrous world of a child's imagination before connecting it to real world achievement to make those dreams a reality.

Supported by her father who is with her every step of the way (even after passing away), the young girl shoots for the moon in the most moving way possible. It falters a bit in the middle, throwing off its own pacing by shifting its structure, a move that undercuts its emotional momentum, but it still lands with a satisfying and heart-wrenching confidence. ONE SMALL STEP has heart to spare, but it never feels cloying or saccharine. Instead, it explores childhood dreams and familial love in a powerfully understated way, and ends with a lovely grace note connecting the girl's childhood play with her father that is sure to tug on the heartstrings.

Weekends

Perhaps the most abstract of this year's nominees for Best Animated Short, WEEKENDS follows the misadventures of a young boy being shuffled back and forth between his divorced parents, and the rich fantasy life he creates for himself in order to cope.

Great concept, but the execution is hit-or-miss, seemingly meandering in its attempt to illustrate the crushing sameness of the young boy's routines. But it gets at some essential truths of his experience, lost in a world without something to hold on to, all he has that's a constant is his beloved rocking horse. But some haunting imagery and an intriguing idea don't necessarily add up to a satisfying whole.

The 2019 Oscar nominees for Best Live Action Short are now playing in select theaters nationwide. On Demand today, Feb. 15.

In the 1950s nudity was still banned in American films by the Production Code. Exploitation filmmakers, however, discovered a loophole - nudity was permissible if it was a non-sexual depiction of a nudist lifestyle. 

Nudist camp films had been around since the 1930s, when documentaries about nudists drew audiences of curiosity seekers, but in the late 50s these evolved into "nudie cuties," as Russ Meyer debuted The Immoral Mr. Teas in 1959, taking these films toward something akin to softcore pornography.

Enter Doris Wishman, a New York City filmmaker who took up directing after the death of her husband. After a 1957 New York court ruling allowed for the depiction of nudity on screen as long as it was in a nudist context, Wishman made Hideout in the Sun (1958). This was followed quickly by 1961's Nude on the Moon, a bizarre low-budget sci-fi film in which a crew of astronauts land on the moon only to discover a matriarchal race of nudists populating its sun-dappled landscape. Nude on the Moon was recently the subject of a Wishman retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, featuring filmmaker Peggy Ahwesh, author of the 1995 zine, The Films of Doris Wishman. Now reprinted by the Light Industry for the first time in nearly 25 years, Ahwesh's loving tribute to Wishman's scrappy, do-it-yourself spirit.

In fact, there's something charmingly rough around the edges about Ahwesh's zine. Clearly a product of 1990s underground fan culture, it's a collection photocopied posters, typed out transcripts of interviews, and cut out images pasted into collages. The Films of Doris Wishman is a clear labor of love, beginning with a transcript of an extended video interview with Wishman in the Florida sex shop where she worked in Florida at the time. Wishman is a real character, gleefully selling dildos at 70 years old while reminiscing about the days making exploitation films and dealing with unscrupulous distributors. She makes no bones about the fact that she was in it for the money, but she was good at what she did, and she knows it.

A still from NUDE ON THE MOON.

There's an almost dreamlike quality to Nude on the Moon. Shot on a shoestring budget in Florida, the film imagines a tropical paradise on the moon populated by topless telepaths lead by a queen who is curious about the strange newcomers. Actress Marietta stars in a dual role as the Moon Queen and a mousy secretary who pines for brilliant scientist Jeff Huntley (Lester Brown), who it turn falls in love with the Moon Queen, only to realize he's been in love with his secretary all along.

What makes Wishman's films so fascinating is that on the surface they appear to be all about male wish fulfillment; two men make a spaceship, fly to the moon, and discover a bunch of naked women. But there's something else going on here, perhaps due to Wishman's female perspective in a genre usually dominated by the male gaze. The topless women in Nude on the Moon aren't ogled the way one might expect in a film of this nature. They simply...are. Their nudity is just a fact of life, neither sexualized now commented upon. In some ways, Wishman was to nudity in film what Herschell Gordon Lewis was to gore, an exploitation pioneer who knew how to turn a quick buck. One would be hard-pressed to call the films "good" - Wishman was clearly working quickly and on a limited budget with the goal of titillating audiences. But like the Agnés Varda of softcore porn, Doris Wishman is a charming and fascinating figure whose eccentric talent has been lovingly remembered in Ahwesh's engaging fan zine. Anyone even remotely interested in the history of exploitation cinema would do well to pick it up.

The Films of Doris Wishman is now available from Light Industry. Check out Light Industry at Metrograph: Peggy Ahwesh and Keith Sanborn's The Deadman + Doris Wishman's Bad Girls Go to Hell on March 16.

Disney's The Nutcracker and the Four Realms is a film so bizarrely conceived and rendered that it almost takes on a kind of unintentional avant-garde quality, completely disregarding any sense of narrative cohesion or recognizable form. This would almost be admirable if it weren't so aggressively dull - another overproduced CGI behemoth in Disney's modern live action catalogue that is gorgeously designed but devoid of any real heart.

One must give credit to directors Lasse Hallström and Joe Johnston for going for broke here, because unlike the mostly wooden Beauty and the Beast live action remake, The Nutcracker and the Four Realms is genuinely trying to create something fantastic and new. The world it conjures resembles Narnia on hallucinogenic mushrooms, taking its protagonist through a closet and into a world dividing into four kingdoms; three living in harmony while the fourth stands in rebellion under the rule of the evil Mother Ginger (Helen Mirren).

Using Tchaikovsky's immortal ballet as a starting point, The Nutcracker and the Four Realms goes off the rails pretty quickly, delving into some overly complicated mythology in which our heroine, Clara (Mackenzie Foy), discovers a world created by her late mother as a child in her godfather's attic. Left by the wayside as her mother grew up, the world has fallen into neglect while awaiting her return. With the help of a stalwart nutcracker soldier (Jayden Fowora-Knight), Clara sets out to restore order to the realm.

At its core, The Nutcracker is a pretty standard issue fantasy epic in which a "chosen one" appears to save the fantasy world from some sort of catastrophe. It is anchored by two of the most lifeless lead performances to ever headline such a big budget film, with Mackenzie Foy and Jayden Fowora-Knight unable to conjure any charisma or chemistry that could possibly make us care about their characters. The MVP here is Keira Knightley, whose bubbly and unhinged take on the Sugarplum Fairy is the kind of "shoot for the moon" performance that is nearly worth the price of admission on its own. Knightley, with her squeaky voice and cotton candy hair, makes the film her own, completely giving herself over to the ridiculousness surrounding her and fully embodying its off-kilter weirdness. The always reliable composer, James Newton Howard, also comes through with a lovely score that makes great use of Tchaikovsky's iconic music.

The rest of the film, however, is a mess. It's certainly unlike any major blockbuster in recent memory, with its Rat King made up of teeming throngs of swarming rats, to poor Richard E. Grant's icicle hair, to the underused Helen Mirren's exiled villain who lives in a world of cracked dolls and creepy clowns, The Nutcracker and the Four Realms almost seems to be channeling Disney's darker days of the 1980s, when oddball films like Return to Oz were the order of the day. Unfortunately, it's a sumptuously designed visual feast that has no real personality or soul of its own. It looks gorgeous on Blu-Ray, and the ballet sequence is appropriately stunning. If only the rest of the film had put forth as much effort as Knightley at the team of designers.

GRADE - ★★½ (out of four)

THE NUTCRACKER AND THE FOUR REALMS | Directed by Lasse Hallström, Joe Johnston | Stars Keira Knightley, Mackenzie Foy, Eugenio Derbez, Matthew Macfadyen, Richard E. Grant, Misty Copeland, Helen Mirren, Morgan Freeman, Jayden Fowora-Knight | Rated PG for some mild peril | Now available on Blu-Ray and DVD from Walt Disney Studios.