Monday, March 06, 2023

Living For Living


I re-watched Oliver Hermanus' Living and Todd Field's Tár (both films on my favorite movies of 2022 list) this past weekend -- not strictly because the Oscars are happening this upcoming Sunday and the two lead performances from those films are both nominated. But that wasn't not the reason, either. I wanted to re-visit both Bill Nighy and Cate Blanchett's work just to make sure and yup-- it turns out they're still my favorite performances of the past year. Here is my review of Living and here is my review of Tár. Honestly I think they're both about as good as movies get -- my allergy to using the word "masterpiece" until a few years have passed keeps me from throwing that around but let's be real, we'll be using that word soon enough.

That said as I lamented on Twitter yesterday as I re-watched Living, that movie really got dicked over awards-wise this season, Nighy and screenwriter Kazuo Ishiguro aside. The tremendous score from Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch, the costumes from Sandy Powell, the cinematography and production design -- I would have nominated it all. Living is lush, gorgeous, sweeping, heartbreaking -- it's everything I go to the movies for. Which is all my way of seeing that you should go watch Living if you still haven't seen Living. It's still not streaming anywhere as far as I can tell, although you can rent it for twenty bucks from all of the streamers -- here it is on Amazon. And they just announced that it is hitting blu-ray on April 11th -- you can pre-order it right here. Now I just pray somebody drops that score on vinyl cuz I need it in my bones. All that said...

... What were your favorite performances of 2022?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Some off the top of my head:

Colin Farrell
Mia Goth
Hong Chau (The Menu, not The Whale)
Paul Mescal
The whole cast of EEAAO
the whole cast of Women talking
Cate Blanchett
Andrea Riseborough
Brian Tyree Henry
The cast of Bros
Letitia Wright

Clay Poupart said...

'Living' being a remake is probably a factor in the non-acting,non-technical categories. But I'm just speculating.

Unknown said...

Karl Glusman and Stefan Crepon - obviously! Yes, partially said for your benefit - but I mean it sincerely as well. Both were knockouts in their films (Isabelle Adjani was a hoot too).

Otherwise - Keoghan, Farrell, Rogowski, Riseborough, Chau, Condon, Lowden, Ed Norton, Lucas Bravo, Justin Min.

Shawny said...

Living was great, and clay poupart is right. It pales in comparison to Ikuru. It would be like remaking It's A Wonderful Life. The original is so iconic, so grand, yet strikingly personal. Filmmakers can't replicate what Kurosawa did.

mrripley said...

Mia Goth in Pearl,Gabrielle Union in The Inspection,Colin Farrell and Barry Keoghan for Banshees and of course Jamie Lee Curtis.