Among the competitive clamoring for attention that dominates the cinema box office and video shelves, one is lucky to come across a film that is confident in its quiet and singular ambition to tell an authentic tale about that which is extraordinary and compelling in the lives of ordinary people. 
Remarkably, Goodbye Solo seems to have been given its cinematic life without falling victim to the marketing machinery which, in an attempt to make them more marketable or broadly attractive, often taints such pure and unadorned tales. The setting and story are simple: Solo (Souleymane Sy Savane) is man from Senegal who has somehow found his way to Winston-Salem, married a hispanic woman (who has a precocious daughter circa 10 years old and is also expecting Solo’s child), and works as a cab driver despite a strong desire to be a flight attendant. Despite difficulties, many of which are economic, Solo exudes that kind of resolved African cool that would have made him a good buddy for Paul Rudd in I Love You, Man.
Instead, the unlikely other half in this buddy movie is a washed-out, cranky old geezer named William (Red West), a frequent customer of Solo’s who tells him that on a specific date a few weeks away, he is going to pay Solo a hefty fare to be driven a couple of hours away into the mountains to a site called Blowing Rock. For William, the trip is going to be one way, and it is quickly understood that William is planning is own demise. Solo’s attempts to intervene, dissuade, distract, and otherwise discover William’s motives are all met with such fierce resistance that Solo risks alienating William and therefore having no avenue to be a friend to him. It is, in nearly equal measure, a compelling mystery and a respectful portrait of a small speck of our vast humanity. And it is in the latter aspect that I continuously find cinema to be a treasured art, one which uniquely enables us to obtain some facsimile of understanding and empathy for people whose lives are so far removed from our own. So seek out Goodbye Solo. You’ll be better for it, and by doing so, you’ll help ensure that not just the loudest and flashiest films find the resources to make it into our cinemas and Netflix queues.
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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