From Oui (August 1974). — J.R.
La main à couper. It’s been suggested that one reason why movies are so popular in Paris is that French TV is so bad. In point of fact,a conventional Gallic thriller such as the current La main à couper is not very different from what an American spectator is likely to see in a weekly series like Alfred Hitchcock Presents. The central intrigue, of course, is classically Continental: bourgeois adultery, the same subject that Claude Chabrol staked out years ago, although it is as perpetually common to French melodrama as raincoats are to spy thrillers. A married woman (Lea Massari) is having an affair with a young sculptor who is roughly the same age as her son. One day she goes to meet him at his studio and finds him dead, murdered with a blunt instrument. From this point on, practically all of the suspense and tensions develop out of the hypocrisy that her position requires, She can’t go to the police or tell her husband (Michel Bouquet), her daughter, or her son. The task of behaving normally becomes even more of an ordeal when an odd little fellow with a Hitler mustache (Michel Serrault) turns up and starts blackmailing her.This, Read more
SPECIAL CITATION for a film awaiting American distribution: Sieranevada (Romania) Cristi Puiu
FILM HERITAGE AWARD: Kino Lorber’s 5-disc collection “Pioneers of African-American Cinema”
BEST ACTOR
*1. Casey Affleck (65) – Manchester by the Sea
2. Denzel Washington (21) – Fences
3. Adam Driver (20) – Paterson
BEST ACTRESS
*1. Isabelle Huppert (55) – Elle and Things to Come
2. Annette Bening (26) – 20th Century Women
2. Sandra Hüller (26) – Toni Erdmann [tied with Bening]
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
*1. Mahershala Ali (72) – Moonlight
2. Jeff Bridges (18) – Hell or High Water
3. Michael Shannon (14) – Nocturnal Animals
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
*1. Michelle Williams (58) – Manchester by the Sea
2. Lily Gladstone (45) – Certain Women
3. Naomie Harris (25) – Moonlight
BEST SCREENPLAY
*1. Manchester by the Sea (61) – Kenneth Lonergan
2. Moonlight (39) – Barry Jenkins
3. Hell or High Water (16) – Taylor Sheridan
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
*1. Moonlight (52) – James Laxton
2. La La Land (27) – Linus Sandgren
3. Silence (23) – Rodrigo Prieto
BEST PICTURE
*1. Moonlight (54)
2. Manchester by the Sea (39)
3. La La Land (31)
BEST DIRECTOR
*1. Barry Jenkins (53) – Moonlight
2. Read more
Note: I saw Samuel Maoz’s Foxtrot too late for inclusion, but would have placed it in or near the top ten if I had seen it earlier.
1. 24 Frames (Kiarostami)
2. Twin Peaks: The Return (Lynch)
3. Let the Sun Shine In (Denis)
4. Downsizing (Payne)
5. Barbs, Wastelands (Marta Mateus)
6. Mudbound (Rees)
7. Phantom Thread (Anderson)
8. Faces Places (Varda & JR)
9. Lady Bird (Gerwig)
10. Marjorie Prime (Almereyda)
11. Ava (Foroughi)
12. The Shape of Water (del Toro)
13. The Meyerowitz Brothers (New & Selected) (Baumbach)
14. Paradise (Konchalovsky)
15. The Lost City of Z (Gray)
16. The Motive (Cuena)
17. Ex Libris: The New York Public Library (Wiseman)
18. Boom for Real (Driver)
19. Golden Years (Téchiné)
20. Professor Marsten and the Wonder Women (Robinson) Read more
