Our Cube Film Series moves up a week this month to the first Friday, Feb. 6. Doors open at 6:30pm, and the film begins at 7pm. Please bring non-perishable food donations for the MSU Denver Food Pantry if you can. Our film this month is Past Lives (2023). I hope to see you there. Tickets and info: mca80238.com/mca-calendar/cube-cinema-series-february.

Awards season is in full swing, and this month I review a film that dominated the Golden Globes and may do the same at the Oscars. In addition, I review a film you can see in theaters now, and I give a short blurb about another Oscar contender.

One Battle After Another

(Now streaming)

This is the behemoth of this year’s award season, taking home most of the top prizes so far. The reasons are deserved: a top-flight director in Paul Thomas Anderson (Boogie Nights, There Will Be Blood, Licorice Pizza), an A-list cast, an excellent script, beautiful cinematography, frenetic editing, and a blistering score by Johnny Greenwood (Radiohead). This all adds up to a winning formula for the Oscars, and this is the frontrunner for the big prize.

One Battle After Another

The story is loosely based on Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel “Vineland,” a polemical story about the 1960s counterculture’s influence on the 1980s. Anderson changes the story to the present day, focusing on a group of revolutionaries freeing detained immigrants from detention centers. The two main characters, Perfidia Beverly Hills (a fiery Teyana Taylor) and partner Pat Calhoun (Leonardo DiCaprio), have a baby just before Perfidia is caught, imprisoned, and forced to turn on her mates; Pat and daughter escape and change their identities. We then jump forward 16 years, and the remainder of the film focuses on Pat and daughter Charlene (the excellent Chase Infiniti), now called Bob and Willa, as they attempt to stay off the grid and away from their nemesis, General Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn). It’s a mouthful of a plot, but it moves clearly and efficiently.

The main reason it works so smoothly is Anderson, one of the best American directors working today. His films always twist and wind with complicated plots and even more complicated characters, but we never lose our place. The excellent secondary cast includes Benicio del Toro as a community leader who helps Pat stay ahead of the relentless Lockjaw. Del Toro seemingly creates an entire world out of one character, with helpers appearing out of nowhere, silhouettes seemingly dancing on rooftops as they evade officers, and hairbrained plans that somehow work. All the while, Anderson keeps it focused and moving briskly.

The Voice of Hind Rajab

This is an intriguing film that you won’t want to watch but can’t turn away. The production itself is fascinating: It is a dramatized version of actual events, using real voices and recordings. The set-up is horrific—a young girl in Gaza calls for help after a bomb hits her family’s car. We hear the actual phone call, listen to her desperate pleas for help, and follow along as the aid agency attempts to help her amid impossible obstacles. It is powerful, difficult, and rewarding. Playing at select theaters.

The Voice of Hind Rajab

Train Dreams

(Netflix)

This is a beautifully shot and crisply told story of a quiet man living in the American northwest circa 1900. Joel Edgerton gives an understated and brilliant performance, and the secondary cast is littered with superb A-list actors. See my review at Train Dreams review.

Vincent Piturro, PhD, is a professor of film and media studies at MSU Denver. Email him directly at vpiturro@msudenver.edu. For more reviews, search The Indie Prof at FrontPorchNE.com.