It’s time for me to list my Oscar predictions. As far as wild speculation is concerned, the current Oscar race still feels like it’s off to a slow start. There seems to be a general assumption that The Odyssey is going to dominate both the nominations and the awards, and that there isn’t much point in considering what else could be nominated.
I do think The Odyssey is going to be a big contender. I also think Project Hail Mary will still be in the conversation at year’s end. Fjord won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, which has become a fairly good precursor for nominations, if not for the actual awards. As for the rest of the nominees, it’s still pretty much a guessing game at this point.
Here are a few of my guesses:
Digger will not be the powerhouse some people are predicting. Even when he was winning Oscars, Alejandro G. Iñárritu was still a dreadfully pretentious and self-important director. That tendency has only increased in the years since he won his second directing Oscar.
Michael will get a lot of hype, but it won’t be nominated for much because of the controversy around Michael Jackson’s later legal troubles. Colman Domingo might still get in, because the Academy always enjoys nominating someone for playing a bad father.
The Social Reckoning and Ink will both get middling reviews, but both will be nominated for reasons that have more to do with politics than quality.
Wild Horse Nine will be nominated but, like most of Martin McDonagh’s films, people will either love it or hate it. John Malkovich will be a strong contender for Best Actor, if only because he’s not getting any younger and this might be the Academy’s last chance to honor one of the best actors of his generation. Either Steve Buscemi or Sam Rockwell will be nominated for Supporting Actor. I went with Buscemi because he’s never been nominated before.
The Debut, I Play Rocky, and Mr. Irrelevant will benefit from being crowd-pleasers.
In the style of Siân Heder’s previous film, CODA, Being Heumann will be the nominee that nobody really thinks about until after it’s actually nominated.
You can check out my predictions from March, April, May, June, and July to see how my thinking has evolved over the year.
Best Picture Being Heumann The Debut Fjord I Play Rocky Ink Mr. Irrelevant The Odyssey Project Hail Mary The Social Reckoning Wild Horse Nine
Best Director
Danny Boyle, Ink
Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, Project Hail Mary
Martin McDonagh, Wild Horse Nine
Cristian Mungiu, Fjord
Christopher Nolan, The Odyssey
Best Actor
David Corenswet, Mr. Irrelevant
Matt Damon, The Odyssey
Ryan Gosling, Project Hail Mary
Anthony Ippolito, I Play Rocky
John Malkovich, Wild Horse Nine
Best Actress
Sandra Hüller, Fatherland
Ruth Madeley, Being Heumann
Julianne Moore, The Debut
Inde Navarrette, Obsession
Renate Reinsve, Fjord
Best Supporting Actor
Steve Buscemi, Wild Horse Nine
Matt Dillon, I Play Rocky
Colman Domingo, Michael
Paul Giamatti, The Debut
Jeremy Strong, The Social Reckoning
Best Supporting Actress
Colleen Camp, Club Kid
Anne Hathaway, The Odyssey
Sandra Hüller, Project Hail Mary
Scarlett Johansson, Paper Tiger
Samantha Morton, The Odyssey
As you look over my latest Oscar predictions, you may notice that I’ve dropped two films that I originally had listed as major contenders. Disclosure Day opened to mixed reviews and it really seems to have vanished from the cultural conversation in the wake of the release of The Odyssey. Digger has not opened yet but I just get the feeling that this is going to be another pretentious Alejandro Iñárritu film. Whenever anyone mentions the previous victory of Birdman, it always seems to be done with a slight bit of embarrassment. I think Iñárritu’s time as an Oscar favorite might be over.
These predictions below are based on what’s been released, what will be playing at the major festivals, which trailers generated excitement (hello I Play Rocky!), which films are most likely to appeal to the Academy’s political biases (hello Ink and The Social Reckoning) and, as always, a lot of wishful thinking on my part. (Hello I Play Rocky again!)
To see how my thinking has or has not evolved, check out my picks for March, April, May, and June!
Best Picture
The Adventures of Cliff Booth
Being Heumann
The Debut
Dune: Part Three
Fjord
Ink
The Odyssey
Project Hail Mary
The Social Reckoning
Wild Horse Nine
Best Director
David Fincher for The Adventures of Cliff Booth
Phil Lord and Christopher Miller for Project Hail Mary
These predictions are still too early to be taken seriously. The year is getting off to a slow start as far as the Oscars are concerned. That said, here are my predictions for June!
Check out my predictions for March and April and May!
Best Picture
The Adventures of Cliff Booth
Digger
Dune Part Three
Fatherland
Fjord
I Play Rocky
Primetime
Project Hail Mary
The Social Reckoning
Wild Horse Nine
Best Director
David Fincher for The Adventures of Cliff Booth
Phil Lord and Christopher Miller for Project Hail Mary
These predictions are still too early to really be taken seriously. The year is getting off to a slow start as far as the Oscars are concerned. That said, here are my predictions for May!
Asteroid City opens with black-and-white footage of Bryan Cranston, wearing a suit and speaking in the authoritative tones of someone who has made his living on television. Cranston informs us that we are about to see a televised production of a play by the famed but enigmatic playwright named Conrad Earp (Edward Norton).
The play, which is seen in stylized color, opens with Augie Steeback (Jason Schwartzman) driving his family through the desert. He is taking his son, Woodrow (Jake Ryan), to a Junior Stargazers convention that is being held at Asteroid City, a tiny town that is best-known for being the location of an impact crater. Along for the ride are Augie’s three daughters, who are all pretending to be witches. What Augie hasn’t told his children is that their mother has died, her cremated remains are in a Tupperware container, and that they will be moving in with their wealthy grandfather (Tom Hanks).
There’s not much to the town of Asteroid City. There’s a motel that’s managed by a man (Steve Carell) who sells land deeds out of a refurbished Coke machine. There’s a diner. There’s a group of helpful cowboys, led by the polite and helpful Montana (Rupert Friend). There’s a mechanic (Matt Dillon) who is called into duty when Augie’s car breaks down. The Junior Stargazer convention is the event of the year for Asteroid City. Young geniuses from all around the country have descended on the town and have brought their parents. One of them, Dinah (Grace Edwards), is the daughter of actress, Midge Campbell (Scarlett Johansson). When an alien (played, at one point in the film, by Jeff Goldblum) shows up and steals the town’s meteorite, General Gibson (Jeffrey Wright) declares a quarantine. Some people handle the lockdowns better than others. Augie takes pictures and thinks about his wife. Midge rehearses for her next role, one that is centered around her character dying. The genius children play a memory game that they realize will never end because they’re all geniuses. A teacher (Maya Hawke) tries to teach her students about the Milky Way, just to discover that the kids only want to talk about the alien. One of the fathers (Liev Schreiber) ends up with a useless plot of desert land and the death ray that his son recently invented.
Throughout it all, Bryan Cranston appears in black-and-white footage that gives us a look into what went on behind the scenes during the production of Asteroid City. The director (Adrien Brody) was a lech. The actor playing Augie struggled to understand what the play was about and who his character was meant to be while the actress (Margot Robie) hired to play his wife ended up in another play after her scenes were cut from Asteroid City. Only once does Bryan Cranston’s host appear in the color sections of Asteroid City, just to sheepishly admit that he’s not supposed to be there before ducking off camera.
Even if his name wasn’t in the opening credits, the viewer could probably easily guess that this is a Wes Anderson film. It features all of Anderson’s trademarks, all of the things that viewers will automatically love or hate depending on how they feel about Anderson’s quirky aesthetic. It’s a visually impressive, pop art-flavored, all-star comedy with an undercurrent of profound melancholy, one in which the fanciful strangeness of the alien’s “invasion” is compared and contrasted with the very real-life strangeness of how humans deal with life, loss, death, and uncertainty. Scenes of clever wordplay are mixed with scenes in which we see Augie still very much struggling to come to terms with the death of his wife and the actor Augie very much struggling to understand what is actually going on in his character’s head. As far as recent Anderson films go, Asteroid City is not quite as humanistic as Rushmore or Grand Budapest Hotel but, at the same time, it’s still more accessible than The French Dispatch.
If you’re not a fan of Anderson’s style, this film won’t convert you. That said, I am a fan of Anderson’s style and I absolutely loved Asteroid City. As with so many of Anderson’s films, the main focus is on how we try to deal with the uncertainties of life by trying to maintain an illusion of control over every aspect of our lives. Playwright Conrad Earp writes because that way he can have a world that follows his own rules. The actors follow a script that tells them how to react to everything that happens around them. In the play, the Junior Stargazers fall back on science while Augie’s father-in-law falls back on religion and Augie’s daughter convince themselves that spells will bring back or, at least, protect their mother. Even General Gibson falls back on his belief in the government and the military to deal with the sudden appearance by the alien. The alien is the unknowable and his arrival reminds everyone that life is unpredictable, regardless of how much you try to control your own story. Indeed, while the film takes place in the 50s and is full of comments about the Red Scare and atomic bomb testing, it’s hard not to see Asteroid City as being a commentary on the recent COVID lockdowns and the debate over whether people could ever go back to living the way that they did before the pandemic. Much as with the Coen Brothers’s similarly stylized A Serious Man, the ultimate message seems to be that the only way to deal with the unpredictability of life is to embrace it.
It’s also a very funny film, one that is full of small details that reward repeat viewing. If one focuses on the background characters, it quickly becomes apparent that there are actually several stories unfolding in the film and, much as with life, the viewer just has to be willing to look for them. (I particularly enjoyed the romance between The Teacher and Montana.) Jason Schwartzman is compelling as both Augie and the actor playing Augie and Scarlett Johansson plays both Midge and the actress playing Midge with the perfect amount of cool detachment. To the film’s credit, none of the character’s become caricatures. They remain individuals, regardless of how bizarre the film’s story may sometimes seem. Everyone gets a moment to reveal a little depth, from Jeffrey Wright’s sincere (if misplaced) faith in the lockdown policy to the moment when Tom Hanks’s previously unsympathetic father-in-law reveals that he’s as much in mourning as Augie. The all-star cast also includes Tilda Swinton, Liev Schrieber, Stephen Park, Willem DaFoe, Hong Chau, and Margot Robbie and all of them add to the film’s portrait of quirky but ultimately relatable humanity.
Again, with this film, it undoubtedly helps to already be familiar with and to like Wes Anderson’s way of doing things. If you’re not a fan of his film, this one probably won’t change your mind. That said, for those of us who do enjoy his style, this is Anderson at his best.
The other night, I watched 2018’s The House That Jack Built on Showtime and I have to say that, sitting here the morning afterwards, I kind of wish that I hadn’t. It’s a well-made film and there’s a bit more going on underneath the surface that some other reviews might lead you to suspect but, at the same time, it’s also deeply unsettling and, even by the standards of Lars von Trier, disturbing. It’s not a film to watch right before you go to bed, nor is it a film to watch at the beginning of a long week. I’m still feeling the after effects of having watched this movie and I imagine I’ll probably be jumpy for the next few days.
The title character, Jack (Matt Dillon), is someone who loves to talk about himself. He’s an engineer but he wishes he was an architect. He thinks of himself as being an artist and an intellectual and he has no hesitation about informing you that he’s smarter than just about everyone else on the planet. He’s annoyed that he’s not better-known. He feels that his work is underappreciated.
The House that Jack Built runs two and a half hours and, as a result, we spent a lot of time listening to Jack talk. One thing that quickly becomes apparent is that Jack knows a lot but he understand very little. He spends a lot of time talking about Glenn Gould, Goethe, and Nazi architecture but his thoughts on them are rather shallow and predictable. When we see flashbacks to Jack’s youth, we don’t see any signs of the intelligence that he claims to possess as an adult. Instead, we just see a scowling country boy who used to abuse animals. Jack may insist on calling himself “Mr. Sophistication” but there’s really nothing sophisticated about him and one gets the feeling that his faux intellectualism is something that he developed to justify the fact that he’s a sociopath and a serial killer. Jack claims to have murdered at least 60 people and he also says that each murder was a work of art. If art reflects the time and place in which it was made than how can we condemn Jack for reflecting the soullessness and cruelty of the real world in his own creations? The answer, of course, is that we can very easily condemn Jack. Jack uses the state of the world to justify his actions but that doesn’t mean we have to buy what he’s selling.
The House That Jack Built is built around a lengthy conversation between Jack and an enigmatic character named Verge (Bruno Ganz). Jack shows Verge the “five incidents” that, over the course of 12 years, have defined who Jack is as a person and a serial killer. The five incidents feature Jack killing everyone from a stranded motorist (Uma Thurman) and a grieving widow (Siobhan Fallon Hogan) to a terrified mother and her two sons. Jack has a brief and toxic relationship with one of his victims (heart-breakingly played by Riley Keough) and it leads to an act of violence that’s so disturbing that I don’t even want to relive it long enough to write about it. Throughout it all, Jack tries to justify himself while Verge continually calls him out on his bullshit. Watching the film, I found myself very thankful for Verge. The film would have been unbearable if it has just been Jack bragging on himself, unchallenged. Verge not only calls out Jack but also anyone who would idolize someone like Jack. At times, the film itself seems to be ridiculing the whole idea of the Hannibal Lecter-style serial killer. There’s nothing suave or witty about Jack. He’s just a loser with no soul.
Even though I was watching the R-rated version (as opposed to the unrated director’s cut), the murders were still disturbingly graphic. But what really made the film unsettling was its peek into Jack’s nihilistic worldview. As much as he may try to convince you otherwise, it soon becomes clear that there’s nothing going on inside of Jack’s head. When Jack isn’t suffering from delusions of grandeur, he’s mired in self-pity. (Listening to Jack, one is reminded of the infamous BTK Killer, who spent hours in court describing his murders without a hit of emotion but who later broke into tears when informed that he would be spending the rest of his life in prison.) Unlike most movie serial killers, Jack doesn’t have a flamboyant origin story or any sort of trauma-related motive for his crimes. He kills because he wants to. Jack is capable of being superficially charming. As a sociopath, he’s learned how to put people at ease. But there’s nothing behind that charm. When he performs some post-mortem surgery to give one of his victims a permanent smile, the results are grotesque because Jack has no idea what a real emotion looks like. (Jack weakly waves at the body, as if he’s trying to teach himself how to act like a normal person.)
Throughout the film, we get a lot of stock footage. (It’s justified by the fact that Jack is talking about art and history, two subjects about which he only has a surface knowledge.) Interestingly enough, we also get several clips that were lifted from Von Trier’s previous films. At one point, Jack passes a cabin that some viewers will recognize from Antichrist. While Jack tries to dispose of a body, David Bowie’s Fame plays on the soundtrack and it’s hard not to be reminded of how Bowie’s Young Americans played over the closing credits of both Dogville and Manderlay. We’re left to wonder if Jack is meant to be, in some way, a stand-in for Von Trier. Much like Jack, Von Trier is often accused of using his own artistic pretensions to justify a nihilistic and misogynistic worldview. It’s easy to imagine Verge as a stand-in for some of Von Trier’s fiercest critics. What then are we to make of the fact that the film also portrays Verge as being correct and Jack as being (literally) bound for Hell? Is Von Trier telling us that, as much as some people may dislike him and his work, at least he’s not a serial killer like Jack? Is Von Trier attacking himself? Or is Von Trier perhaps satirizing his own controversial persona? Perhaps all three are correct.
By the film’s end, Jack is in Hell. Interestingly enough, the portal to Hell is found in a house that’s made up of the bodies of Jack’s many victims. Verge — short for Virgil, of course — gives him a tour. When Jack sees a broken bridge, Virgil informs him that it once led to Heaven but it can’t be crossed now. However, Jack is convinced that he can climb over a cliff and make his way to Heaven. Virgil assures Jack that many have tried but none have succeeded. Jack, of course, tries and, needless to say, he doesn’t make it. In the end, redemption is impossible and yet you wonder how, in a world with Heaven and, one assumes, God, Jack even came to exist in the first place. If Jack had channeled his sociopathic nature into something more productive than murder, would he have been allowed into Heaven?
As I said, it’s a well-made film but it’s also deeply unsettling. I’m probably going to be jumping at my own shadow for at least a week or two. At the very least, I’m not answering the door for anyone….
The 1995 satire, To Die For, is a very clever film about some seriously stupid people.
Of course, you could debate whether or not Suzanne Stone-Maretto (Nicole Kidman) is actually dumb or not. Suzanne may not know much about anything that isn’t on TV but she does have a natural understanding for what makes a good story. She knows exactly the type of story that the public wants to hear and she does a good job of faking all of the right emotions. As she proves throughout the course of the film, she’s also very good at convincing people to do stuff. Whether it’s convincing the local television station to put her on the air as a weather person or convincing two teenagers to murder her husband, Suzanne always seems to get what she wants.
Of course, what Suzanne really wants is to be a celebrity. She wants to be a star. As she explains it, that’s the greatest thing about America. Anyone can become a star if they just try hard enough and find the right angle. If the film were made today, Suzanne would be a social media junkie. Since the movie was made in 1995, she has to settle for talk shows and murder.
So maybe Suzanne isn’t that dumb but her husband, Larry (Matt Dillon) …. well, if we’re going to be honest, Larry’s more naive than dumb. He’s the favored son of a big Italian family and it’s obviously never occurred to him that a woman would possibly want something more than just a husband and a lot of children. He thinks it’s cute that Suzanne’s on TV but he’s also fully convinced that she’s going to eventually settle down and focus on starting a family. It never occurs to him that his wife would be willing to sacrifice him on her way to stardom.
Of course, if you really want to talk about dumb, just check out the teenagers who Suzanne recruits to kill her husband. They’ve been appearing in a documentary that Suzanne’s been shooting. The documentary’s title is “Teens Speak Out,” which is something of an ironic title since none of the teens that Suzanne interviews really has anything to say. Lydia (Allison Folland) is just happy that the “glamorous” Suzanne is pretending to care about her. Russell (Casey Affleck) is the type of grinning perv who drops a pen just so he can try to get a peek up Suzanne’s skirt while he’s on the floor retrieving it. And then there’s Jimmy (Joaquin Phoenix), with his flat voice and his blank stare. Jimmy is briefly Suzanne’s lover before he ends up in prison for murdering her husband. It doesn’t take much to convince Jimmy to commit murder, either. Apparently, all you have to do is dance to Lynyrd Skynyrd while it’s raining outside. Media interviews with Lydia, Jimmy, Suzanne, and Larry’s sister (Ileana Douglas) are sprinkled throughout the film and Jimmy continues to insist that he will always love Suzanne.
As for Suzanne, she’s got stardom to worry about….
Though the subject matter is a bit familiar and the film, made before the age of Twitter and Instagram, is a bit dated, To Die For‘s satire still carries a powerful bite. One need only watch A&E or the Crime and Investigation network to see that Suzanne was absolutely correct when she decided that killing her husband would make her a star. If To Die For were made today, you could easily imagine Suzanne leveraging her infamy into an appearance on Dancing With The Stars and maybe Celebrity Big Brother. At the very least. she could get her own house hunting show on HGTV. Delivering her often sociopathic dialogue with a perky smile and a positive attitude, Nicole Kidman is absolutely chilling as Suzanne. Meanwhile, Joaquin Phoenix’s blank stare will continue to haunt you long after the film ends.
And speaking of endings, To Die For has a great one. You’ll never hear Season of the Witch the same way again!
Here are some of the trailers that dropped last week.
First up, we have El Angel. This fact-based Argentine film is about Carlos Robledo Puch, a youthful criminal whose crime spree both stunned Argentina and turned him into a celebrity in 1971. El Angel premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and does not yet have an American release date.
Gilliam Anderson may be leaving The X-Files but, judging from this trailer for UFO, she’s not leaving the world of extraterrestrial conspiracy theories. UFO was filmed in Cincinnati last December and is scheduled to be released sometime this year.
Breaking and Exiting is a comedy about a thief (Milo Gibson) who breaks into the home of a suicidal woman (Jordan Hinson) and who, according to the film’s imdb page, “decides to save her from herself. Breaking and Exiting will be released on August 17th.
Am I the only one who can’t watch the trailer for The School without thinking of Silent Hill? The School will be released, in Australia, on July 27th.
Co-starring Ryan Potter, Matt Dillon, and Jim Caviezel, Running For Grace is set in Hawaii in the 1920s and is about a forbidden love affair between a mixed race orphan and the daughter of a plantation owner. Running For Grace will be released on August 1st.
As far as what’s happening in this trailer for The Immortal, your guess is as good as mine. This is a Vietnamese film that does not appear to have a release date yet,
Finally, we have the latest version of Jack London’s classic novel, White Fang. This animated adaptation is now streaming on Netflix.
Well, it’s that time again! It’s time for me to post my very early Oscar predictions. I do this on a monthly basis. I always make it a point to acknowledge that, this early in the year, this is something of a pointless exercise. We’re still not far into 2018 and but, surprisingly, several excellent films have already been released. Who knows what the rest of the year will be like!
So, as always, the predictions below are a combination of instinct and random guesses. This month, I’ve kind of let my imagination run wild. And you know what? That’s the way it should be. What’s the point of trying to predict stuff if you can’t have fun?
So, without further ado, here are my predictions for April!
Through the Shattered Lens 