oscar nominee Tagged Articles at Cinematical

In an early scene in Iron Man, one of the evil terrorists makes a speech about Genghis Khan, explaining how impressive it was that he managed to take over so much of the world given the technological drawbacks of his time. That one moment says a lot more about the real Genghis Khan than the entire, bloated 126 minutes of Mongol. Directed by Sergei Bodrov (Prisoner of the Mountains), Mongol does a lot of "sweeping." It moves from sweeping vistas to sweeping battles and when it stops sweeping, it really has no idea what to do; it merely waits for the next opportunity to sweep. In one scene, our hero, Temudjin (Tadanobu Asano), returns to his family after some time in captivity, and he has brought his new bride with him. Bodrov films a quiet dinner scene inside a tent, but he's so impatient and restless over such an "ordinary" scene that the dialogue mainly consists of, "isn't it great to have Temudjin home again?" The film can't wait to get back outside and start sweeping again.

The fifth and final 2006 Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language Film finally arrives in American theaters, and it's a serious case of too little, too late. Susanne Bier's After the Wedding, from Denmark, is fairly middlebrow and melodramatic, not as bloody awful as Rachid Bouchareb's Days of Glory or Deepa Mehta's Water, but equally unmemorable. It's a testament to how badly the Academy needs to revamp this category: instead of taking a single submission from each of a list of countries, why not simply nominate the best foreign language films that played in American theaters during a calendar year? That way we could have enjoyed such nominees as Hou Hsiao-hsien's Three Times, Claude Chabrol's The Bridesmaid, Park Chan-wook's Lady Vengeance, Cristi Puiu's The Death of Mr. Lazarescu, Patrice Chéreau's Gabrielle, or perhaps even Jean-Pierre Melville's resurrected 1969 film Army of Shadows.

Fortunately, there's another reason for After the Wedding to exist, and that's the unique and charismatic star Mads Mikkelsen, with his impossibly pointy cheekbones, beady eyes and reptilian lips that look as if they're about to slide right off his face. In this country, he's best known as James Bond's nemesis in Casino Royale, or as Clive Owen's scrungy sidekick in King Arthur (2004), basically a sadistic badass. But in his native Denmark, he's capable of all kinds of things, from black comedies (Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself, The Green Butchers) to weepy melodrama (Open Hearts). After the Wedding definitely falls into the latter category (otherwise, it wouldn't have been an Oscar nominee).

Sophie Scholl (Julia Jentsch, who astonishes at every turn), along with her brother Hans (Fabian Hinrichs) and four friends, were the only members of an anti-Nazi organization called The White Rose. Over the few short months of the group's existence in 1941 and 1942, they printed and distributed six leaflets to German and Austrian citizens, decrying the Nazi regime and urging resistance. Caught and convicted of high treason, troop demoralization, and aiding the enemy, Sophie Scholl was executed in Munich on February 22, 1943. She was 21.

Though Scholl is is something of an icon in Germany, she's virtually unknown here in the US, which is why Marc Rothemund’s Oscar-nominated Sophie Scholl - The Final Days is such a revelation. Using sources including newly-available Nazi interrogation notes, Rothemund’s fictional film explores the last few days of Scholl’s life in searing detail, from the printing of the fateful pamphlet on the night of February 17 to her death only five days later. Aided by a pair of remarkable performances, he has created a film that does his central character the honor of not only living up to her legacy, but also making it relevant to modern audiences.