Partly because I hope to post my top 10 list (or do I reveal all 60 or so?) before New Years Day, and partly because I have been involuntarily snowed-in for much of the past week, I have recently pounded through several of my last remaining screeners from the 2007 awards season. Here are some general thoughts/reactions:

• Maldeamores (Maya Films) This comedy, which alternates between light and dark humor, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival this past April, and is Puerto Rico's 2007 submission for consideration in the Best Foreign Film category. Maldeamores, which was co-directed by Carlos Ruiz Ruiz and Mariem Perez Rivera and executive produced by island hero Benicio Del Toro, translates to mean 'lovesickness,' and addresses that condition in all of its forms and in people of all ages: two young cousins fumble towards their first kiss (or lick), a middle-aged couple is broken up by adultery, an elderly couple's lives are interrupted by the return of her ex-husband, a troubled young man insists that a woman marry him even though she doesn't know him, etc. At the end of the day, it is essentially Love Actually for realists—some storylines end happily, but some don't. It features excellent music, surprisingly funny dialog and situations, and first-rate acting from its entire ensemble, but especially from elderly woman-in-the-middle Silvia Brito and cheating husband Luis Guzman, one of our finest character actors. Incidentally, I ran into Guzman last week at the There Will Be Blood premiere in New York—he is a regular in Paul Thomas Anderson's movies, but was not in this one for obvious reasons—and he and his friends got so excited when I mentioned that I had seen and enjoyed Maldeamores, of which he is very proud.
  
• Things We Lost in the Fire (Paramount, trailer) After high pre-release expectations, the early word on this Suzanne Bier (After the Wedding) film was that it was a downer with no awards prospects. With so many other buzzed-about contenders to see, I put off seeing this until recently, when I could no longer ignore Jeff Wells' constant drum-beating about the film's performance by none other than Benicio Del Toro. True enough, Del Toro is extraordinary as a heroin addict, albeit one whose hair always seems perfectly mussed. Halle Berry generated a little buzz herself as the widow of Del Toro's childhood best friend who, like her deceased husband, tries her best to help him through his rough patches, but she is left with little to do but look alternatively pretty and sad. Essentially, the scenes with Del Toro play like gangbusters, while the scenes without him feature characters and dialog that are just too predictable and cliched. Del Toro is very good, but not as great as Wells has indicated, and the film is quite weak, but not as bad as some have made it out to be.
  
• 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days (IFC Films, trailer) This Romanian film written and directed by Cristian Mungiu won the Palm d'Or at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, became a critics' darling, and is in all likelihood on its way to earning a well-deserved Best Foreign Film nomination from the Academy. That said, it is quite possibly the most disturbing film of the year: where Knocked Up, Juno, and Waitress effectively went one way and told stories of undesired pregnancies carried out to term, it goes the other and shows the brutal psychological and physical risks and consequences of abortion, especially in Communist-era Romania. It is not shy when it comes to being graphic, either. (Spoilers: we are shown the entire process of the abortion taking place, as well as a long-holding shot of the resulting dead fetus.) It is ironic, to say the least, that a movie about such an ugly situation is filmed so beautifully. Much like the other major example of a new Romanian cinema, the heavily-praised The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (2005), there are either lengthy tracking shots or claustrophobic static shots. Remarkably, the film's 29 year old lead actress, native-Romanian Anamaria Marinca (also now starring in Coppola's Youth Without Youth), playing the roommate of the pregnant mother who assists in her efforts to procure an underground abortion, is in nearly every shot of the nearly two hour movie, and you wouldn't want it any other way. The bewildered pregnant woman is also believably portrayed by Laura Vasiliu, a relative newcomer, and the seedy abortionist is played by Vlad Ivanov, who last week was named the year's Best Supporting Actor by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.
  
• Man in the Chair (Outsider, trailer) A fairly predictable film about cross-generational friendship (like Harold and Maude and Venus) is elevated exponentially by an awards-worthy performance from Christopher Plummer (The Sound of Music), who has inexplicably never received so much as an Oscar nomination, let alone a statuette, over the course of his illustrious career. Plummer would help his distributors and his own cause if he would get out and do some press for the film, which with some exposure would undoubtedly appeal to an older crowd nostalgic for classic movies like Citizen Kane, on which Plummer's character 'Flash' once worked as a gaffer. Flash, like most of his surviving contemporaries, has faded into obscurity, and is now a miserable, grumpy old drunk. He only leaves the Motion Picture Retirement Home to check out screenings of old movies and berate the screener. He usually bothers the other patrons, but on one occasion catches the eye of a troubled high school student (Michael Angarano) whose obsession for old movies and desire to win a filmmaking contest might be the only thing keeping him out of jail. Can the kid convince the old timer that he still has something to offer?

I also want to thank Gerald Granozio, who was kind enough to send me a copy of his new book So You Think You Know Oscar?, which is a compilation of Academy Awards-related crossword puzzles, fill-in-the-blanks, and the like that would be a neat holiday gift for any movie trivia buff.