With the Oscars on Sunday, this weekend is your last chance to catch some of this year's nominees before winners are announced. If you've already seen them all and want something new to view, Up To Date's independent, foreign and documentary Film Critics have that covered, too, in this week's recommendations.
Steve Walker
"Nostalgia," R
- Intensely moving performances from Catherine Keener and Ellen Burstyn elevate Alex Ross Perry's screenplay about people's connections to their possessions, and the alternately wistful and painful memories embedded within them.
"The Insult," R
- In this invigorating Oscar-nominee from Lebanon, two residents of Beirut — a Lebanese Christian and a Palestinian Muslim — have a nasty verbal dispute over a broken drainpipe. The argument escalates into a divisive trial and media circus.
"Call Me by Your Name," R
- Timothée Chalamet gives a break-out performance as a gifted, multi-lingual, sexually-fluid teenager who, over six weeks of an Italian summer, falls in love with his father's graduate student, a charismatic American played by Armie Hammer.
Cynthia Haines
2018 Oscar-nominated short films: Animated
- This year, the Academy is recognizing animated shorts that include Kobe Bryant's paean to basketball, a film based on at 150-word poem, and delightfully-realistic jaunt with the amphibious denizens of an absent owner's garden.
"The Insult," R
- In modern-day Beirut, a minor insult blown out of proportion becomes a major lightning rod for a court case that grips the attention of, and bitterly divides, a nation.
"Nostalgia," R
- A mosaic of stories about love and loss, this film starring Jon Hamm and Catherine Keener explores our relationships to the objects, artifacts and memories that shape our lives.