With Oscar season underway, the names of may have never heard of before are becoming very prominent.
The Oscars celebrate the best film of the year, but they often have a focus on some of the more independent films that not as many people see, or even hear about until they earn their nominations.
A lot of these movies are made by well-respected people in the film industry, but if you don’t know who they are, their names may mean nothing to you.
Below are some of the over-looked films from directors and writers who may be seeing Oscar gold this year, quality films you may want to seek out before the big night, so you can get a feel for who these unfamiliar faces are.
The Director: Alexander Payne
The Film: Election
Alexander Payne has made a bit of a niche for himself, as he often depicts depressing situations in an oddly humorous light.
His film Nebraska, which is nominated this year, is equally hilarious and heart-wrenching. It tells the story of a father and son truly getting to know each other in the midst of drama over a lottery ticket.
Payne has famously explored human pain in all of his films, such as Sideways and The Descendants. His best film, however, is arguably 1999’s Election, which stars a young Reese Witherspoon as Tracy Flick, an over-achieving student who gets caught up in drama with the teachers at her school in the midst of a class election.
Matthew Broderick plays the teacher whose life gets turned upside down by Tracy Flick, in what is probably Witherspoon’s best performance. The film is based on the novel by Tom Perrotta, who is known for his dark comedic tone.
The Director: Jean Marc-Vallée
The Film: C.R.A.Z.Y.
Canadian Jean-Marc Vallée’s film Dallas Buyers Club took the Academy by storm this year, earning a surprising six nominations. This is not to say the film isn’t worthy of those nominations, but the smaller, independent film’s presence in certain categories, like Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay, took many by surprise.
Prior to Dallas Buyer’s Club, Vallee worked in Québecois cinema, with his most notable film being C.R.A.Z.Y., a film about the trials of love for a young Québec boy, who is dealing with issues of his sexuality while growing up in a religious household.
The Writer: Spike Jonze
The Film: Being John Malkovich and Adaptation
Spike Jonze is rather well-known by now, but there are still many who have not seen some of the brilliant films he has made in the past.
Her is Jonze’s first screenplay, and he has been nominated for Best Original Screenplay.
He also directed the film, along with two other notable films in the past—Being John Malkovich and Adaptation.
It seems as though his work on these two high-concept, intellectual films, both written by genius screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (also known for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Synecdoche, New York) has helped him to craft his own high-concept comedy.
Her feels almost like a film that Charlie Kaufman would write. Putting Her aside for now, there are two films that Jonze has directed that would be silly to not seek out, as they are classics.
Being John Malkovich is the 1999 film which stars John Cusack, Cameron Diaz, Catherine Keener, and yes, John Malkovich.
The film follows Craig Shwartz, a puppeteer who stumbles upon a portal leading into actor John Malkovich’s consciousness (Malkovich plays himself).
This is a highly philosophical, existential, and quirky film that is 100 per cent clever and original. Adaptation is the 2002 film, which stars Nicolas Cage as screenwriter Charlie Kaufman. When Kaufman was asked to adapt Susan Orlean’s novel The Orchid Thief, instead of adapting the book, he wrote a movie about himself writing the adaptation of the novel.
This film reaches metaphysical levels that run so deep, that it becomes hilarious and profound at once.
The Writers: Julie Delpy, Ethan Hawke & Richard Linklater
The Film: Before Sunrise and Before Sunset
Nominated for the third installment of what is now known as the Before trilogy, actors Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, who reprise their roles as Jesse and Celine, alongside director Richard Linklater, make magic happen again in Before Midnight.
Regarded as part of the best trilogy of all time, Before Midnight follows Jesse and Celine nine years after the last film, Before Sunset, just as that film came nine years after the first, Before Sunrise.
The trilogy challenges the idea of what a romantic film is—they are equally as romantic as they are real, human explorations of two genders and two people who truly connect in this world. Before Sunrise finds two strangers meeting on a train, and their story unfolds into what is probably the most resounding exploration of a relationship ever depicted on screen.
The Director/Writer: David O. Russell
The Film: I ? Huckabees
David O. Russell has made waves recently as his last two films were both critically acclaimed: 2010’s The Fighter and last year’s Silver Linings Playbook.
This year, his film American Hustle has taken over the Oscars with an astonishing 10 nominations. One film of Russell’s that often gets overlooked is 2004’s I ? Huckabees, an ambitious story about a pair of detectives played by Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin who run a service, solving your existential problems.
The film received mixed reviews, but its ? was in the right place. It is a quirky, eccentric, and messy film, but it is filled with laughs and the traditional David O. Russell chaos that has garnered all of his films outrageous amounts of attention.
Now that you are more familiar with some of the filmmakers being honoured at this year’s Academy Awards, you may not be so tempted to take a bathroom break during the speeches.
This has been an incredible year for film, and what better way to celebrate it than to revisit some of the past accomplishments of the filmmakers who are still so relevant today.
Adriana Floridia
Staff Writer
