Cinematically, Yours
This Week’s Movie Reviews
Women | Living

The 95th Academy Award nominations were announced this morning, and our current movies - as well as those opening Friday - fared very well: EO was nominated for Best International Feature; PUSS IN BOOTS, Best Animated Feature; THE FABELMANS received 6 nominations, including Best Picture, Director, Actress (Michelle Williams) and Original Screenplay. This Thursday is your last chance to catch all three films.

 LIVING, opening Friday in the Rose and Starlight, received nominations for Bill Nighy (Best Actor) and Best Adapted Screenplay. WOMEN TALKING, also opening in the Rose and Starlight, was nominated for Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay. Sixty-nine nominations were picked up by movies that have played at the Rose and Starlight through this weekend. Congratulations to all the nominees.
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     Bill Nighy fully inhabits his characters while remaining very much himself. LIVING, his new film, is a remake of Akira Kurosawa's IKIRU, about a paper-pushing bureaucrat in post-war Japan roused out of his paralyzing inertia in the final months of his life. 

     Novelist and Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro wrote the remake - now set in 1950s London - specifically with Nighy in mind. "It's quite easy for these actors to perform these stereotypes of the English gent," Ishiguro said in an interview. "But to play that English person and add to it something profoundly, hauntingly human that isn't just English but universal - that's something quite special. That's why it had to be Bill Nighy." "Nighy delivers a master class in acting...this deeply human drama has the power to sneak up and knock you sideways." -ABC News. 

     WOMEN TALKING is a radical film. The women don't want pity or revenge. They want a better world. We would be wise to listen to them.

     Based on the best-selling novel by Miriam Toews, WOMEN TALKING follows a group of women in an isolated religious colony as they struggle to reconcile their faith with a series of assaults committed by the colony's men. They have choices: they could do nothing; they could stay and fight; or they can leave. Lit up by radiant, fierce performances by Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley and Frances McDormand, Sarah Polley's film is a masterpiece. "Immaculately made, intellectually adventurous, and politically incisive." -The New York Times. "An ensemble acting triumph." - Toronto Star. "'Women Talking' is a powerful, moving tribute to quiet strength - and, unexpectedly, to hope." -Moira MacDonald, -Seattle Times

     A MAN CALLED OTTO is a certified hit at the Rose - Thank you, Mr. Hanks! - and is holding over for another week.

Cinematically Yours,
Rocky