2019 Nominee Watch – September 27th

With only one major wide release coming this weekend, it may be up to the limited releases to find anything nominated for an Oscar.

There are a few foreign language films in the mix and at least once documentary that could find their names into the Oscar nominations this winter, but other than that, it will be slim pickings for at least another week.

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Abominable
From the creators of the How to Train Your Dragon series comes what could be the beginning of the next  big franchise for Dreamworks Animation.

​The film follows a Yi (Chloe Bennet), a young girl from Shanghai who runs into a young Yeti on the roof of her apartment building. After naming the lovable beast Everest, they dedicate themselves to finding a way to return him to the mountain after which he is named before being captured by a wealthy business man (Eddie Izzard) and zoologist (Sarah Paulson) with other plans.

​This film looks absolutely adorable and while the similarities to 2003's How to Train Your Dragon are striking, (even the poster here looks like it got inspiration from the previous series) I am hopeful that with a different setting and different cast of characters, this new film can find similar success.

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While there are not as many big name stars in the voice cast here, you may know Bennet from her work as Quake/Daisy Johnson in the ABC television series Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Yi's friends Peng and Jin are voiced by Albert Tsai and Tenzing Norgay Trainor respectively who have appeared on a number of televisions shows over the last 5 years or so. Trainor's participation in this film is also notable since he is the grandson of Tenzing Norgay, the first person to summit Mount Everest along with Sir Edmund Hillary in 1953.

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Ultimately, there isn't a lot of potential for a film like this to garner much Oscar attention. There is a decent chance that it will land in the Best Animated Feature category, but very little beyond that.

Your kids will love this one. They'll want a fuzzy Everest plush to sleep with at night, so beware of the marketing engine out there.

Limited Releases

• 10 Minutes Gone – Bruce Willis and Michael Chiklis star in a bank heist film where the perpetrators pass out for 10 minutes and can't remember what happened.
• Bliss – A down on her luck painter finds inspiration but can't remember completing the paintings.
• The Curse of Buckout Road – A pair of teens having dreams about Buckout Road work together ot investigate the horrors found there.
• The Day Shall Come – Anna Kendrick stars in a dark comedy about an FBI agent trying to deal with a madman preacher in Miami.
• The Death of Dick Long – Two friends try to cover up the death of their friend after a night of hard partying.
• Extra Ordinary – A woman with supernatural abilities is called in to get through life as a driving instructor.
• First Love – Japanese film about two lovers getting caught up in a drug-smuggling scheme in Tokyo.
• The Gliksmans – Elderly couple Barbara and Barry Gliksman go out driving for the day and Barbara loses Barry in the process.
• The Golden Glove – German film about a serial killer running rampant in Hamburg during the 1970s.
• Groupers – Two young men are kidnapped and used as subjects for experiments.
• Jim Allison: Breakthrough – Documentary look at the man who discovered a cure for cancer.
• Judy – Reneé Zellweger stars as the iconic performer Judy Garland when she arrives in London for a series of concerts in 1968.
• The Laundromat – Gary Oldman, Meryl Streep, and Sharon Stone star in this look into the secret world of lawyers and corporate shell companies based on the Panama Papers about the Mossack Fonseca corporation. (Netflix)
• Nothing to Lose 2 – Part two of a biopic about Edir Macedo.
• Prey – A young man is left on a deserted island that isn't so deserted after all.
• Serie noire – 1979 French film about a salesman who meets a girl and tries to save her from a life of prostitution.
• Sister Aimee –​ Biography about a woman named Aimee who stands as the most famous evangelist who is looking for a way out of that life.