My Award Nominations: Best Foreign Film

Oscar voting closes today, and believe it or not, there are still some nominees that haven't even been made available for public consumption. One of them is Argentinian foreign language film hopeful Wild Tales, which you won't find on my own Best Foreign Film ballot for the obvious reason that I haven't seen it yet.

On that note, I'll remind you of the three-word caveat that always accompanies my own choices for this category every single year: "Subject to change". I am often forced to amend and improve my five nominees up to several months (sometimes years) after the fact because there's so much good world cinema out there and so little of it gets released in North America in a timely fashion. Among the buzziest international titles from 2014 that I still have to see are the aforementioned Wild Tales (which I may be able to catch just before the Oscars), Godard's Farewell to Language, and Hungarian festival sensation White God.

That being said, even if those or any other subtitled latecomers never make it to my screen, I'd still feel adequately satisfied with these five terrific films.

My Award Nominations: Best Acting Ensemble

The nominations keep chugging, and today's category is for Best Acting Ensemble. A couple of these films have already had plenty of recognition on the circuit for the group acting, a couple others deserved much more, and the fifth never stood much a chance of getting any sort of awards outside of foreign language prizes.

Boyhood Expectedly Wins Big at Critics Choice Awards

Boyhood took home lots of hardware yet again at the BFCA Critics Choice Movie Awards. This group tends to reflect the consensus opinions as to how the Academy will vote at this point in the season, plus they're a large group, so their winner selections aren't without some significance. That said, there's still plenty of wiggle room for some underdog contender to make a move between now and February 22nd.

The Grand Budapest Hotel, for instance, won the Best Comedy prizes both at the Globes and last night, despite being beaten out again in the screenplay and actor categories by Birdman. Does this suggest that Anderson's film is more loved overall than Inarritu's?

And then there are the specialty film categories. The BFCA honoured The LEGO Movie, Force Majeure, and Life Itself in the Best Animated, Foreign, and Documentary categories respectively, probably because all of them were the presumed frontrunners (or at least co-frontrunners) for the Oscar win... until all three of them got snubbed by the Academy! At least these races are still somewhat interesting at a stage of the season when most races start ossifying.

You can read some of my passing thoughts after the cut.

Foreign shortlist arrives; 'Shocking' omissions as always (but is it really shocking at this point?)

Nine films have been chosen to move on in the race for Best Foreign Language Film, and will be screened for nominating committee members over the coming weeks.

Every year, there are critically praised titles that miss this cut and have their awards hopes dashed early. For many, it even dictates whether or not they'll get a North American release. Suffering the cruel sting of omission this year is the Belgium's Two Days, One Night, centred around an acclaimed performance from Marion Cotillard (although many believe she still has an angle on a Best Actress nomination).

Review - Force Majeure

If you and your family were faced with a life-threatening situation, how would you react? Would you put yourself in harm's way to protect your loved ones, or would your self-preservation reflexes compel you to flee?

Obviously, the more valorous answer is the one you would give to anyone who asks, but the truth is we never really know which instinct will rule our actions until we're actually faced with a real force majeure. That legalese term for an extraordinary or dangerous circumstance is also the title of Swedish provocateur Ruben Östlund's new dramedy, which probes this hypothetical for some revelations as slippery as a double black diamond ski run.

Östlund sets the scene at a luxury resort in the French Alps, where we meet a seemingly idyllic family: Tomas, Ebba, and their kids Harry & Vera. And yet Östlund suggests that they're not nearly as solid as they let on.