The Peanut Butter Falcon, Wild Rose, and Luce are three under-the-radar films that have factored into year-end 2019 awards but are not considered major players in this year’s Oscar race.

The Peanut Butter Falcon was among the Top Ten Independent Films of the Year singled out by the National Board of Review. Documentary filmmakers Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz, who co-wrote and co-directed the film, have received numerous First Film nominations and wins for this, their first narrative film. Star Zack Gottsagen has likewise been singled out for several awards for his breakthrough performance including the Newcomer Award from the Hollywood Critics Association.

Nilson and Schwartz met Zack, who has Down Syndrome, at a camp for disabled and non-disabled people several years before making the film where he expressed his desire to become a movie star. They wrote the screenplay built around his dreams and desires. The title of the film, which is told in a sweet, folksy Mark Twain manner, is the name Zack gives himself when he runs away from his care home in his quest to become a wrestler. Aiding him on his journey are small-time outlaw on-the-run Shia LaBeouf (Honey Boy) and kindly nursing home employee Dakota Johnson (Bad Times at the El Royale).

The supporting cast includes John Hawkes (The Sessions), Thomas Haden Church (Sideways), and Bruce Dern (Nebraska). Dern, who has several scenes with Johnson, appeared with her father Don Johnson in Django Unchained), her mother Melanie Griffith in Mulholland Falls, and her grandmother Tippi Hedren in Marnie.

The Peanut Butter Falcon is available on Blu-ray and standard DVD.

Wild Rose has won numerous awards for its breakthrough direction by Tom Harper (TV’s War & Peace), screenplay by Nicole Taylor (TV’s Indian Summers), and performance by Jessie Buckley, who was also memorable two other 2019 roles in Judy and TV’s Chernobyl.

The Irish-born Buckley plays a young Scottish woman who dreams of going to Nashville to become a country music star. Having just been released from prison after serving her one-year sentence for narcotics possession, Buckley’s Rose-Lynn is fired from her job as a singer at Glasgow’s Grand Ole Opry country bar when they learn of her conviction. Through her mother (Julie Walters Brooklyn), who is the caretaker of Rose’s two young children, Rose gets a job as a cleaner for wealthy Sophie Okonedo (Hotel Rwanda) who discovers her talent and offers to help her toward her dream. Rose must now choose between that career and her children, who she has all but abandoned, or find a way to do both.

The powerful ballad that ends the film is on Oscar’s short-list for Best Song. If the song, called “Glasgow (No Place Like Home),” which was co-written by Oscar winner Mary Steenburgen (Melvin and Howard), wins the Oscar, Steenburgen will break Helen Hayes’ record of the actress with the longest wait between Oscars – 38 years. Hayes won the 1931/32 award for Best Actress for The Sin of Madelon Claudet and the 1970 award for Best Supporting Actress for Airport. Steenburgen’s wait between wins will have been 39 years.

Wild Rose is at present a DVD-only release.

Luce has received three prestigious Film Independent Spirit Awards nominations for Best Actor (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), Supporting Actress (Octavia Spencer), and Director (Julius Onah) along with numerous other nominations and wins.

Harrison, who made his film debut in the 2012 Oscar winner 12 Years a Slave, also made a big impression in 2019’s Waves. In Luce, he plays the title character, an exceptional 17-year-old high school student and athlete who was adopted from war-torn Eretria ten years earlier by well-to-do Naomi Watts (The Impossible) and Tim Roth (Rob Roy). Spencer (Hidden Figures) is the dedicated teacher who begins to suspect that his wholesome eager-to-please image may be a facade. She shares her concerns with his parents who begin to suspect she may be on to something but become relieved when he assures them that it’s the teacher who is not what she seems. Ambiguity abounds as the audience’s sympathy is twisted this way and that between the student, the teacher, and the parents. The confrontation scene in the principal’s office is a knockout.

Luce is at present a DVD-only release.

Film Movement has released the classic British Ealing Studio comedies Passport to Pimlico and The Titfield Thunderbolt on Blu-ray.

1949’s Passport to Pimlico, a 1950 release in the U.S., is the better known of the two. Directed by Henry Cornelius (I Am a Camera) from an Oscar-nominated screenplay by T.E.B. Clark (Sons and Lovers), this amusing critique of bureaucracy, nationalism, and isolationism in the aftermath of World War II is about the residents of a section of London who declare their independence when they find an old treaty that declares their part of the city as belonging to Burgundy, France.

The delightfully dotty cast is led by Stanley Holloway (My Fair Lady) as the stalwart Burgundian prime minister, John Slater as the fish-loving fishmonger, Margaret Rutherford (Murder, She Said) as the daffy historian, and The Lady Vanishes duo of Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne as concerned government officials.

Bonus features include a tour of the locations used in the filming.

The lesser known Titfield Thunderbolt from 1953 is about the residents of the village of Titfield who set out to prove that their single-track railway is the only way to travel within the village. The villains of the piece are the owners of the bus company who are determined to cease the running of the train. Directed by Charles Crichton (The Lavender Hill Mob), George Relph, Naunton Wayne, Stanley Hollowa,y and Hugh Griffith are among the players. A making-of documentary is among the bonus features.

This week’s new releases include Joker and The Lighthouse.