Best Foreign Picture Nominations

Melanie & I have seen three of the five nominees for this year’s Best Foreign Picture Oscar: “The Hunt (Denmark),” “The Broken Circle Breakdown (Belgium),” and “The Great Beauty (Italy).”

We both like “The Broken Circle Breakdown” (via Netflix streaming) most, though all three are so so good in different ways. “The Broken Circle Breakdown” is a foreign movie for people who think they don’t like foreign movies, and is just very good all around. And what music! It’s real and searing, like watching life instead of a movie. (Why are other countries so much better at depicting life in film than we are?)

Close behind that is “The Hunt,” another riveting movie which I would have given the lead to until I saw “The Broken Circle Breakdown.”

The other one, “The Great Beauty,” is the most “artsy” of the three and very Fellini-esque. Visually gorgeous, but also challenging. It’s not straight-forward, a little surreal; when people think of an “art” movie, they probably imagine something like this. But it’s good, and worth seeing if you have two and half hours to spare and can watch without expectations. (I admit to looking up reviews of the movie later to get a better handle on it.)

There are two other movies nominated for Best Foreign Picture which you and I can’t see: "Omar” from Palestine and “The Missing Picture” (no pun intended) from Cambodia. They aren’t playing anywhere in New York City, so I’m pretty sure they aren’t playing anywhere near you either.

Why?! How can movies be nominated for Oscars when no one can see them? Every year this happens, movies get nominated which have only been screened in festivals.

I did another search online before writing this and found out “Omar” is scheduled to play on 2/12; I hope that means it will be screening in NYC too. The other movie, “The Missing Picture,” is scheduled to premiere 3/19, 17 days AFTER the Academy Awards.

Yo Academy, get your foreign shit together, this is ridiculous. Make sure we can see every movie nominated before the ceremony! Is that too much to ask? Is that so wrong?