It’s Oscar Contender Time… - theHumm December 2016

By Matt Roche

The snow has hit. Love it or hate it, this is the time of year to escape that frigid air and see some movies. December is the month for movie watching. Production companies always keep their best for last, keeping the movies fresh and hot for the Oscar nominations the following month. Some will be hits and some will be misses, but the anticipation for each never ceases.

On that note, the absolute best film I have seen this year so far is Arrival. The film, from Quebec filmmaker Denis Villeneuve, is unlike anything you’ve seen in recent years. It harkens back to the days when 2001: A Space Odyssey and Soylent Green and The Day of the Triffids were expanding our concepts of science fiction. Villeneuve is new to the film scene but already has an unblemished oeuvre. His films are all contemplative slow burns that throw you for a loop (in the best of ways) in the final acts. He wants to keep you guessing. His previous films Prisoners, Enemy and Sicario all provided such effects and are brilliant expositions of control and style, masterfully orchestrated. With Arrival, Villeneuve has perfected his craft and brings us his most mesmerizing film to date.

Arrival stars Amy Adams as Louise, a professor of linguistics who is brought in to learn and hopefully communicate with aliens who have unexpectedly landed on Earth. She and a scientist named Ian (Jeremy Renner, giving an altogether understated performance) are led up into these hovering alien spacecrafts by stressed-out Army Colonel Weber (Forest Whitaker) to try and make contact with these strange beings. The team calls these aliens “heptapods” due to their seven legs. Communication goes better than expected. Once Louise figures out what it all means, it threatens her mind, and ours as well, forcing us to think abstractly and subsequently about our whole lives, our faith, the choices we make and what the future holds for us. These “heptapods” do not think of time in linear, sequential ways like we do. And that is a key to the film. I dare not say anymore for fear of spoiling the film, but what you will embark on when seeing this film is a cerebral, eye-opening journey of… well, I’m not sure. And that is the genius of the film; it is left to interpretation. Everyone will get something different from the film.

Based on Ted Chaing’s short story Story of Your Life, Arrival brings us slow, skillfully paced suspense until we finally get to engage the aliens. The scene where the humans enter the alien craft is spellbinding. They enter the craft through a hallway of sorts where the gravity changes and the team are suddenly shifted 90 degrees. It’s filmed like a sci-fi ballet. Indeed, I was reminded of the Fred Astaire film Royal Wedding (1951) with the magnificent scene where Astaire dances up the wall and onto the ceiling. But in Arrival, the scene is unbelievable. When the gravity shifts and Ian lets out an awe-struck “holy f**k”, I couldn’t have put it better myself. Those words fit perfectly to every aspect of the film. I’m not going to say any more, but go out and see this movie. Immediately.

Another great film is playing in theatres right now — Mel Gibson returns to the director’s chair after a decade (and it was worth the wait) with Hacksaw Ridge. The film centres on Desmond Doss (Andrew Garfield, an overused actor in my opinion, but one who delivers his best performance to date here), the first and only conscientious objector to win the Medal of Honor for single-handedly saving over 70 wounded soldiers while facing almost certain death at the Battle of Okinawa during WWII.

The film showcases two of Gibson’s favorite subjects: religion and violence. And both are in excess here. Private Doss takes the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” literally. While he finds the war somewhat justifiable, he does not find killing justifiable, no matter what, and volunteers to help his country — on the front lines, no less — by saving men, not killing them. He is at first berated and ostracized by his sergeant (Vince Vaughn) and his fellow soldiers for not even wanting to touch a gun, but once his courage and grit are on full display in battle, everyone realizes how wrong they were.

The battle scenes are some of the most gruesome and realistic put on film since Saving Private Ryan, and Gibson puts you right into the middle of the horror of war and never lets you go. It is the kind of Hollywood fare that the Oscars love, so keep an eye on this one. And I’m thrilled Gibson is directing again.

Surreal sci-fi thinkers and war movies aside, we have one of the most touching and honest films I have seen in a long time, Jeff Nichols’ superb Loving. Nichols’ films are contemplative and are purposefully paced and framed to tell his story his way. No scene or dialogue in the final cut is gratuitous or ill-advised. Everything that is needed is there. No more, no less. Nothing feels strained or unnatural in his films. Nichols has quickly become one of the finest filmmakers working today, and Loving is by far his most tender film to date.

It tells the true story of Mildred and Richard Loving (Ruth Negga and Joel Edgerton), a married interracial couple in the early 1960s, right around the time of the civil rights movement, who are banished from their friends and family in Virginia because the state feels strongly that interracial marriage is wrong and that bringing mixed race children into the world is an even greater sin. What the state and the courts failed to see is that love transcends race. These two people love each other and will do anything to be together. That’s true love. They just want to be left alone and raise their family like everyone else. While the outcome is a positive one (they took their case to the Supreme Court and changed the laws on interracial marriage), the journey is hard on the family, and on the audience too.

Speaking of civil rights, we have yet another astonishing film about racial equality in the U.S., Ava DuVernay’s brilliant documentary 13th, about the 13th Amendment of the United States Constitution, where it states that “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States.” The fact that this amendment has been essentially ignored and/or abused is absurd. Director DuVernay (Selma) has outdone herself here. She has pieced together interviews and archival footage to make her point on the matter crystal clear, and the result is unnerving and startling and very educational. What African-Americans have been through over all these years has never been displayed or explained more vividly or more passionately than it is in 13th. It has been produced by and can be seen on Netflix, which is a smart move in getting it circulated more widely. It needs to be seen. It will be one of those rare films that will be mandatory viewing in high schools. Or should be, at least. I will also say, with absolute assurance, that 13th will take home the Oscar for Best Documentary.

These are just a few of the wonderful films available for viewing this holiday season, and carving out some time to see them will be more than worth your while. I cannot recommend either of them highly enough. Oscar season is upon us and it’s looking good.

Happy Local Holidays! - theHumm December 2016

By Kris and Rob Riendeau

Here at theHumm we’re big on local economies. The retail and service businesses in the small towns that we cover play a huge role in the cultural life of those towns. Each store, restaurant, or sma......

It’s Oscar Contender Time… - theHumm December 2016