Another long-anticipated possible Oscar contender, Spike Jonze’s “Her,” had its world premiere as the closing night film at the New York Film Festival on Saturday.
Jonze’s first film since his famously troubled “Where the Wild Things Are” is a comedy-drama about romantic alienation set in a Los Angeles of the not-too-distant future, where elevated subways have finally supplanted cars.
In another remarkable performance, Joaquin Phoenix is alone on screen for much of the film as a former “LA Weekly” writer who’s paid to compose “handwritten letters” (whose handwriting is generated by computers). He’s lonely and adrift after the breakup of his marriage to Rooney Mara (who has only one dialogue scene; Amy Adams and Olivia Wilde have somewhat larger, but not huge, roles).
Phoenix rebounds with…his new computer operating system Samantha, engineered to evolve into a device who takes care of everything from his sexual needs to getting his best sellers published as a book.
Samantha is voiced by Scarlett Johansson, who — divorced from her often self-conscious screen presence — does her best screen work as this surprisingly complicated character, who yearns to be a human. It’s probably no coincidence that Johansson (a post-production replacement for Samantha Morton) also starred in another movie about alienation in contemporary life, “Lost in Translation,” directed as it happens by Jonze’s ex-wife Sofia Coppola.
“Her” — which works its way toward an ending that seems less quirky than where it’s been heading but still effectively taps into the zeitgeist — received a warm reception at the public screening I attended in Alice Tully Hall, though not quite as enthusiastic as for last week’s premiere of “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” which also mourns the passing of print media. It will begin rolling out on Dec. 18 from Warner Bros.
I’m guessing Phoenix, who got a nod last year for “The Master,” will probably get shut out of a nomination in this year’s ultra-competitive Best Actor race despite his tour de force performance. More likely are nods for Jonze’s first solo screenplay and KK Bartlett’s beguiling production design. Warner Bros. will begin rolling this out on December 18.
The New York Film Festival also offered the New York debuts of a trio of much-lauded films from this year’s Cannes Film Festival.
I’d give the strongest Oscar chances to “All is Lost,” J.C. Chandor’s followup to his impressive debut “Margin Call,” featuring 77-year-old Robert Redford, a sure Best Actor nominee, in the performance of his career.
Redford is on screen alone — and has maybe three lines of dialogue — in this remarkable adventure about an old man struggling to survive when his yacht is struck by a cargo container in the Indian Ocean.
My colleague Kyle Smith will have a review when “All is Lost” opens in limited theatrical release in New York on Friday. I think “All is Lost” has a shot at Best Picture, as well as Oscar nominations for direction, screenwriting and cinematography.
I am not as bullish as some of my colleagues about the awards prospects of the other two.
Though it gains momentum after a rather slow start and has some great scenes, I didn’t find Alexander Payne’s bittersweet dramedy “Nebraska” anywhere near as satisfying as his previous two films, “The Descendants” and “Sideways.”
Like “Sideways,” this newcomer is basically a road movie — though in this case the participants are father and son. Will Forte is very good as the resentful son, who sees his demented old man’s obsession with redeeming a worthless $1 million sweepstakes letter as an opportunity to bond with his alcoholic dad.
The father is magnificently played by another 77-year-old actor — Bruce Dern, a character actor except for a brief period in some key films of Hollywood’s New Wave era of the 70s.
There are a lot of laughs as father and son stop off in dad’s home town on the way — where lazy and greedy relatives (and Dern’s former business partner, pungently enacted by Stacy Keach) are eager to share in pop’s nonexistent windfall. But some of the humor struck me as cheaply condescending to Middle America, much like Payne’s “About Schmidt.”
There have been predictions of a Best Actor nomination for Dern, but I just don’t think it’s going to happen in a year with this many great performances. I’d give a better shot to June Squibb, a TV actress who’s absolutely hilarious as Dern’s tart-tongued wife. The black-and-white location cinematography of this small black-and-white movie, which Paramount will begin rolling out on Nov. 15, is also outstanding.
Another much-hyped film, the Coen Brothers’ “Inside Llewyn Davis,” arrived from Cannes on another wave of hype and was warmly embraced by the NYFF press corps. But it left me just as cold as last year’s NYFF premiere about a mopey failed young musician from the 1960s, “Not Fade Away.”
I thought Adam Driver’s five-minute performance as a faux midwestern folk singer was more compelling than 105 minutes of the uncharismatic Isaac Oscar as the throughly unlikeable and self-absorbed title character, who alienates anyone in a position to help him.
That includes his best friend’s girlfriend (the ever-depressed Carey Mulligan), who he gets pregnant, a drug-addicted music promoter (an underwhelming John Goodman) and a Chicago club owner (F. Murray Abraham in an expert cameo). For a movie set in the Greenwich Village folk scene of the early 1960s, there’s surprisingly little music (supervised by T. Bone Burnett).
“Inside Llewyn Davis” succeeds best at evoking New York City in the bleak winter of 1961, and the cinematography and production design might get nods, along with the Coens’ screenplay. But it’s an emotionally frigid experience, the kind of movie that appeals a lot more to critics than to audiences. CBS Films will open this in limited release on Dec. 6.