HDNet Films, by navigating the divide between satellite television and traditional film distribution (its sister ventures being the HDNet channels as well as the Landmark cinema chain), is pioneering the unknown future of cinema. With films like Bubble and Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, there is reason to be hopeful about the future. If the company produces more films like The Architect, however, then the few curmudgeons exclaiming “cinema is dead” might be on to something.
The initial problem with The Architect, isn’t just that it looks like television, but that it feels like television. And that’s just for starters. Viola Davis is a fantastic actress, and she is wasted here. [Ed. Note: she was just nominated for an Oscar in Doubt.] Isabella Rossellini is captivating when used well, and here she is awful. Anthony LaPaglia does good work, and here he might as well be on, well, daytime television. It’s no use blaming Matt Tauber’s direction, because there is too much a director can do with a terrible script. And since Tauber co-wrote the script, he has enough to answer for. Maybe he and co-writer David Grieg were pitching a TV pilot, because all of the overpopulated plot threads are undercooked. The main story, that of Davis’ grieving mother seeking out the self-absorbed designer of the housing project where her son died, could actually have potential if it weren’t smothered in so much noise. The screenwriter is to a film what an architect is to a building, and as much as the building in this story deserves to meet with a wrecking ball, the script of The Architect had a destiny with a shredder. Alas, HDNet Films, learn when to employ the shredder.
Here are this morning’s Oscar-nominated films, alphabetically. The nominees for foreign language film and documentary feature are compiled at the end of the list. (Short format nominees are listed in a 
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