January is an unusual month for movies; though it’s notorious for being the studio dumping grounds for Hollywood’s greatest duds, it’s also the last opportunity for some Oscar hopefuls to go into commercial theater release in order to be eligible at the awards.
This means that in between your offensively bad animated films and generic wooden action-fests, you get some hidden, sophisticated gems.
Here are five thought-provoking films to seek out when they expand into wider release this month:
‘The Unknown Known’
Watching a documentary of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld sitting and talking into a camera might not sound riveting, but then again, Errol Morris directed it. Morris won Best Documentary for his 2003 film “The Fog of War,” which focused on former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. Morris has been making devilishly provocative documentaries for thirty-five years. What he gets out of the perplexing Rumsfeld should make for a fascinating film, but it did not get an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary.
‘The Past’
Asghar Farhadi follows up his Oscar-winning Iranian film, “A Separation,” with a French drama about an Iranian man (Ali Mosaffa) who left his French wife (Bérénice Bejo, “The Artist”) and two children for four years and returns to finalize their divorce. She is dating an Arab man (Tahar Rahim) who has a son and a mother in a coma. His previous film, “A Separation,” was one of the very best reviewed films of 2011 and won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film. His new drama premiered at Cannes last year to strong reviews. The film received a nomination at the Golden Globes for Best Foreign Language Film.
‘The Invisible Woman”’
Ralph Fiennes directs his second film (his first being “Coriolanus” in 2011) and stars as Charles Dickens in this adaptation of Claire Tomalin’s 1990 novel of the same name The film is about the married author’s secret love affair with the much younger Nelly Ternan (Felicity Jones), which, in the manner of Victorian England, becomes defined by endless arrangements, many of which deal with his prickly wife Catherine (Joanna Scanlan). The film premiered at the Telluride Film Festival earlier this year and has received an Oscar nomination for Best Costume Design.
‘Labor Day”’
The newest film by Jason Reitman, who directed “Juno” and “Up in the Air,” is his first outright drama. Based on the novel by Joyce Maynard, the film stars Kate Winslet as a single mom who shelters a wounded, escaped convict played by Josh Brolin. The film premiered at the Telluride Film Festival earlier this year to mixed reviews.