This year's controversial awards season is drawing to an end. With the BAFTAs and the Oscars still to come, Saigon's February program includes two long-awaited biopics, one of the most revolutionary animation films of the year and two of the Academy's contenders for Best Film.
February 3 @ 8pm – deciBel Lounge
The Big Short (USA, 2015)
Who wants to relive the 2008 financial crisis all over again? Apparently, everyone. The Big Shortis one of two films this year centered on the crash of the American housing market. The film has been showered with award nominations and critical acclaim, but unlike its predecessors – Margin Call, Inside Joband 99 Homes – The Big Shortis not a soppy drama, a documentary or a human story. Writer-director Adam McKay (Anchorman, Ant-Man) has decided that an over-the-top, bombastic and satirical comedy was the only way to engage and make the public understand the intentionally convoluted fraud pulled off by financial organizations and the American government, leaving 6 million people without a home and making more than US$5 trillion disappear. Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling, Steve Carell and Brad Pitt each pull their respective weight in telling how four groups of people envisioned, before everyone else, what was going to happen. But make no mistake: there are no heroes in this story, and you will definitely still hate the banks after watching this.
February 4 @ 8pm – Saigon Outcast
Amy (UK, 2015)
Upon hearing of another documentary about the life of the late Amy Winehouse, many feared that it would be an exploitative film focusing on yet another musician fallen into the 27 Club, but this did not happen under the command of filmmaker Asif Kapadia. Never-before-seen archival footage, family videos and recorded interviews are accompanied by the British jazz musician's songs which, perhaps more than any other testimony, document her life. Amystarts with friends’ videos of a young, enthusiastic and wild teenage Winehouse at the beginning of her singing career; the film then goes back and forth in time, juxtaposing her private life with her music until the person and the public persona become fatally indistinguishable. Kapadia clearly reflects and often condemns the paparazzi and the world of stardom, but when it comes to assessing the causes of Winehouse's premature demise, Kapadia steps back, presents the facts and lets the audience make up their own mind about one of the most unique jazz voices of our era.
February 17 @ 8pm – deciBel Lounge
Anomalisa (USA, 2015)
This kickstarter-funded, R-rated stop-motion animation is the second directorial work by Charlie Kaufman (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Being John Malkovich). Anomalisafollows a successful motivational speaker, Michael Stone (voiced by David Thewlis), during a trip to Cincinnati for a convention. Michael’s apathy and detachment from the people around him is clear from the first frame, as well as his disgust for a society in which everyone is the same: perfect, proper and never original (all the other characters are, in fact, voiced by Tom Noonan). A renewed joy for life and hope surges when he meets a timid and “imperfect” younger woman called Lisa (voiced by Jennifer Jason Leigh) – or so he thinks. An uncomfortably honest depiction of humans' unrealistic expectations of love, this animation achieves what many other live-action films have failed to do, showing our imperfections – both physically and psychologically – and our inability to truly accept our fellow humans in their totality.
February 18 @ 8pm – Saigon Outcast
Steve Jobs (USA, 2015)
Apparently it is not only North Korea (allegedly) that dictates what Hollywood studios can release. After The Interview, it is fair to say that Steve Jobshas been one of the films most bullied by social media, the press and various family and friends, even before it was out. However, unlike the 2014 film by Seth Rogan (here in the role of Steve Wozniak) and James Franco, Danny Boyle’s newest biopic about the visionary man behind Apple is excellent in every sense. Michael Fassbender and Kate Winslet’s performances are powerful and nothing short of perfect, but Aaron Sorkin’s script is the true gem here. Long monologues and intimate dialogue effortlessly capture – through some artistic liberties, granted - the essence of Jobs, as a creative man, a friend, a collaborator and a father. Sorkin has previously proven his fascination and gift for stories about power and the ruling mechanisms of modern society – see Charlie Wilson’s War, The Social Network, Moneyball – and, while there are traces of them here, Steve Jobsis his most intimate and human of all.
February 24 @ 8pm – deciBel Lounge
Force Majeure (Sweden/France/Denmark/Norway, 2014)
The expression “the calm before the storm” fits perfectly with the chilling and, at times, humorous drama by Swedish director Ruben Östlund. A beautiful married couple, Ebba and Tomas, (Lisa Loven Kongsli and Johannes Kuhnke) and their beautiful children are on a well-deserved ski holiday in the Alps to enjoy some quality time together. The family dynamic as well as the internal patriarchal structure are drastically and irrevocably altered when an avalanche hits the terrace where the four are having lunch, forcing them never to look at each other the same way again. For Force Majeure, Östlund interviewed disaster survivors and used real events for inspiration to tell a story about how we behave in drastic situations, as well as how the roles that we assign to our life partners, mothers and fathers are more the result of unnatural social constrictions than natural instincts.
February 25 @ 8pm – Saigon Outcast
Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens (USA, 2015)
Forget George Lucas’s sequels (or prequels, depending how you look at it): The Force Awakensis the legitimate descendant of The Return of the Jedi. Director JJ Abrams captures the spirit of the original Star Wars trilogy by balancing nostalgia with new plot points in the world-famous galactic saga. For those who grew up with Star Wars, it will be hard not to cling to your inner child when Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, Chewbacca and Princess Leia (now General Leia) appear on screen, but the film also introduces worthy new characters – Finn, a converted storm trooper, and the hardy scavenger Ray – in the battle between good and evil, which is now embodied by the First Order.
