Underdog Melissa Leo received a much deserved Academy Award nomination for her tough performance in Courtney Hunt's drama Frozen River. The riveting film, the story of a single mother who transports immigrants across the border, is out now on DVD. Also available: Silvio Soldini's Days and Clouds and Luis Buñuel’s Exterminating Angel.
1. Frozen River (2008)
Sony Pictures
There wasn't much the Oscar nominations got right this year, but the Best Actress and Best Original Screenplay nods for Melissa Leo and writer/director Courtney Hunt were a happy exception. Frozen River was one of the best films of 2009, and the unexpected attention attention from the Academy is guaranteed to bring it a wider audience. Melissa Leo's portrayal of a single mom who is willing go to extremes to ensure a double-wide trailer for her kids is bound to enrage and win your sympathy.
2. Days and Clouds (2008)
Film Movement
The news brings new stories about layoff every day, and in this sobering time, Days and Clouds offers anything but cinematic escape. Instead, Silvio Soldini's superb film takes this unpleasant issue - unemployment - and makes a moving drama. The marriage of Elsa and Michele (Margherita Buy, Antonio Albanese) is shaken when Michele loses his job. The comfortable couple are forced to sell their apartment and move into less desirable digs, and give up on dinners at restaurants, vacations, and even Elsa's unpaid work as an art historian. Essentially, it's the end of life as they know it. But life goes on, day after day after day, as the couple cope -- sometimes with grace, sometimes without -- with their new circumstances.
3. The Exterminating Angel (1962)
Criterion Collection
A group of high-society friends are invited to a mansion for dinner and inexplicably find themselves unable to leave in Luis Buñuel’s daring masterpiece The Exterminating Angel (El ángel exterminador). Made just one year after his international sensation Viridiana, this film, full of eerie, comic absurdity, furthers Buñuel’s wicked takedown of the rituals and dependencies of the frivolous upper classes. Criterion's special edition, double disk set features a new, restored high-definition digital transfer, the 2008 documentary The Last Script: Remembering Luis Buñuel and more.
