{"id":7778,"date":"2019-02-14T07:20:12","date_gmt":"2019-02-14T12:20:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7778"},"modified":"2019-03-14T08:48:55","modified_gmt":"2019-03-14T12:48:55","slug":"oscars-foreign-language-contenders-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7778","title":{"rendered":"Oscar’s Foreign Language Contenders 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Only three of this year\u2019s Oscar longlist for best foreign language film have made it to Princeton so far, at least that I\u2019ve seen: The Guilty, Cold War, and Roma<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My favorite so far is the riveting Danish thriller, The Guilty<\/em>. Alas, it didn\u2019t make the final list of nominees, so it may be hard to catch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless, don\u2019t miss a chance to see Gustav M\u00f6ller\u2019s The Guilty<\/em>, which took home the Sundance World Cinema Audience Award (trailer<\/a>). Danish policeman Asger Holm is assigned to answering emergency calls until he goes to court on some unspecified matter. He deals rather cavalierly with a man who calls complaining that a woman stole his laptop and wallet, once Asger figures out the man is calling from the red-light district and the woman was an Eastern European prostitute. But then the calls turn serious and he works desperately to rescue a kidnapped woman. You can\u2019t take your eyes off him, and the camera almost never does. You hear what he hears and know what he knows. As he frantically tries to figure out how to rescue her, the suspense is almost unbearable. Jacob Cedergren as Asger is brilliant.
Rotten Tomatoes<\/a> critics\u2019 rating: 99%; audiences: 90%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Polish nominee is Cannes Best Director Pawel Pawlikowski\u2019s romance Cold War <\/em>(trailer<\/a>), which begins in the 1950s. The romance is doomed, though, because Zula, played by Joanna Kulig in a breakout role, can\u2019t decide what she wants. Scenes of the communist-sponsored cultural performance troop, in which the peasant Zula\u2019s lovely singing voice is discovered, are energetic and entertaining. She begins an on-again, off-again affair with the troop\u2019s sophisticated conductor, Wiktor (played by Tomasz Kot), that over the next few decades is mostly off, to the regret of them both. Full of great music of many types and shot in lovely, deep black and white.
Rotten Tomatoes<\/a> critics\u2019 rating: 92%; audiences 84%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The other nominees are two films of a type Indie-Wire calls \u201cpoverty-row\nmelodramas,\u201d Hirozaku Kore-eda\u2019s Shoplifters<\/em>\n(Japan), winner of Cannes\u2019 Palme d\u2019Or, and Nadine Labaki\u2019s Capernaum<\/em> (Lebanon) which won the Cannes Jury Prize. In addition,\nthere\u2019s Roma<\/em> (Mexico), sweet, but not great, <\/a>in my opinion,\nand Never Look Away<\/em> (Germany) from\nprevious Oscar-winner Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, in which the Nazis take\non \u201cdegenerate art.\u201d You know, Picasso, Mondrian, Kandinsky, Paul Klee and their\nilk. That one\u2019s on the \u201ccoming soon\u201d board.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Only three of this year\u2019s Oscar longlist for best foreign language film have made it to Princeton so far, at least that I\u2019ve seen: The Guilty, Cold War, and Roma. My favorite so far is the riveting Danish thriller, The … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7779,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Oscar's Foreign Language Contenders 2019 - The Guilty (didn't make the final cut, but it's incredibly suspenseful) and Cold War reviewed","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[59,366,57,394,66,104,32],"tags":[900,508],"class_list":["post-7778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academy-awards","category-drama","category-movies","category-romance","category-suspense","category-the-morgue","category-thriller","tag-foreign-film","tag-soundtrack"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/The-Guilty.jpg?fit=407%2C378&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-21s","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7778"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7778\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7780,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7778\/revisions\/7780"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}