Oscar Nominations 2022: 2 of 9

This year's nominees:

The Fabelmans

7 Nominations

• Picture
• Director: Steven Spielberg (West Side Story, Lincoln, Munich, Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List, E.T.: the Extra-Terrestrial, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Close Encounters of the Third Kind)
• Actress: Michelle Williams (Manchester by the Sea, My Week with Marilyn, Blue Valentine, Brokeback Mountain)
• Original Screenplay: Tony Kushner (Lincoln, Munich) & Steven Spielberg
• Supporting Actor: Judd Hirsch (Ordinary People)
• Production Design: Rick Carter (Lincoln, War Horse, Avatar, Forrest Gump) & Karen O'Hara (Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, Alice in Wonderland, The Color of Money)
• Score: John Williams (Star Wars: Episode IX – the Rise of Skywalker, Star Wars: Episode VIII – the Last Jedi, Star Wars: Episode VII – the Force Awakens, The Book Thief, Lincoln, War Horse, The Adventures of Tintin, Munich, Memoirs of a Geisha, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Catch Me If You Can, Artificial Intelligence: A.I., Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, The Patriot, Angela's Ashes, Saving Private Ryan, Amistad, Sleepers, Nixon, Sabrina, Schindler's List, JFK, Home Alone, Born on the Fourth of July, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, The Accidental Tourist, Empire of the Sun, The Witches of Eastwick, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, The River, Return of the Jedi, E.T.: the Extra-Terrestrial, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Empire Strikes Back, Superman, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Jaws, The Towering Inferno, Tom Sawyer, Cinderella Liberty, Images, The Poseidon Adventure, Fiddler on the Roof, The Reivers, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Valley of the Dolls)

Director: Spielberg

Cast: Williams, Paul Dano, Gabriel LaBelle, Seth Rogen, Hirsch, Mateo Zoryan, Keeley Karsten, Julia Butters, Alina Brace, Birdie Borria, Robin Bartlett, Sam Rechner, Oakes Fegley, Chloe East

This is a very strange movie. Obviously Spielberg understands that some wonderful directors – Paolo Sorrentino, Alfonso Cuarón, Paul Thomas Anderson, James Grey – are mining their own childhoods for important stories right now, and so Spielberg tries his hand at this too. Except that he co-wrote the story of his own childhood with Tony Kushner. The thing is that Spielberg isn't really very good at mining anything for meaning or nuance. He's very good at a particular kind of movie shallowness. The Fabelmans is, accordingly, a very shallow exploration of something that might perhaps have deserved depth. What we come away from this film with is something like "the power of film" or "the magic of a boy and his camera" or somesuch business. Platitudes, in other words, rather than depth; clichés rather than insight. I was skeptical, as soon as I saw the trailer, of Michelle Williams' questionable accent, but the performance is actually so much worse. It's just an odd, odd, performance for which I don't really have words. I am not sure what she's doing or why anyone let it continue without talking to her about it. Mind you, now she has been nominated for best actress, so... I guess it was successful? I loved Paul Dano in this movie, though. I will say that. And Gabriel LaBelle and Judd Hirsch are good too. One more thing to say about Michelle Williams: props to her for not committing category fraud like Ke Huy Quan and so many other actors. They could easily have run her as a supporting actress, since she's a mother character, but she chose to run in the lead category, and she's top billed. So that's exactly what should have happened.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #33 out of 63

Tár

6 Nominations

• Picture
• Director: Todd Field
• Actress: Cate Blanchett (Carol, Blue Jasmine, Elizabeth: the Golden Age, I'm Not There., Notes on a Scandal, The Aviator, Elizabeth)
• Original Screenplay: Todd Field (Little Children, In the Bedroom)
• Film Editing: Monika Willi
• Cinematography: Florian Hoffmeister

Director: Field

Cast: Blanchett, Nina Hoss, Noémie Merlant, Sophie, Kauer, Sylvia Flote, Mark Strong, Zethphan Smith-Gneist, Nicolas Hopchet 

I loved this. I've written about it here, so I won't say too much more about how exquisitely crafted this film is, but it is worth repeating how finely made Tár is, how haunting and difficult and mysterious. It's a gripping modern Greek tragedy, and it works beautifully (at least until the very last sequence). I'm betting against Blanchett here. She already has two Oscars (this is her eighth nomination) and Michelle Yeoh doesn't have any. To me, that means that Michelle Yeoh deserves the Oscar no matter how good Blanchett is. Blanchett will be nominated many more times. She gives Oscar-worthy performances every year (last year she was the best thing about Nightmare Alley). My prediction means that I'm suggesting that Tár won't win any awards, though, and that doesn't seem right. So if you're filling out your own Oscar pool at work, you might still want to bet on Blanchett.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: Director, Actress, Original Screenplay, Cinematography
My Rating: #5 out of 63

Top Gun: Maverick

6 Nominations

• Picture
• Adapted Screenplay: Christopher McQuarrie (The Usual Suspects), Eric Warren Singer (American Hustle), Peter Craig, Ehren Kruger & Justin Marks
• Film Editing: Eddie Hamilton
• Sound
• Visual Effects
• Song: Lady Gaga (A Star Is Born, The Hunting Ground) & BloodPop

Director: Joseph Kosinski

Cast: Tom Cruise, Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Val Kilmer, Bashir Salahuddin, Jon Hamm, Charles Parnell, Monica Barbaro, Glenn Powell, Ed Harris, Lyliana Ray, Jay Ellis, Lewis Pullman, Danny Ramirez, Jack Schumacher, Manny Jacinto, Greg Tarzan Davis, Kara Wang, Raymond Lee, Jake Picking

This movie saved theatrical distribution. Everyone says so. Steven Spielberg said it to Tom Cruise at the Academy nominees luncheon just this week. This is because it's true. So, you know what? Throw every Oscar at this thing. I mean it. It does not deserve its adapted screenplay nomination – that is absurd – and I wouldn't have nominated it for best director either, but it definitely deserves its best picture nod, and it probably deserved more than this: score and cinematography; I wouldn't even have been mad at best actor. Cruise is great in this. His scene with Val Kilmer is incredible. Jennifer Connelly is great. Miles Teller's star is undimmed. The whole thing is wonderfully made and it fucking delivers. The screenplay bugged me throughout, and it unnecessarily repeats one of its third-act moves, but other than that, this movie is completely good fun. I expect it to win many Oscars.
Will Win: Film Editing, Sound, Visual Effects, Song

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #20 out of 63

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

5 Nominations

• Supporting Actress: Angela Bassett (What's Love Got to Do With It)
• Costume Design: Ruth E. Carter (Black Panther, Amistad, Malcolm X)
• Visual Effects
• Make-up & Hairstyling
• Song: Ryan Coogler, Ludwing Goransson, Rihanna & Tems

Director: Coogler

Cast: Letitia Wright, Lupita Nyong'o, Danai Gurira, Winston Duke, Bassett, Tenoch Huerta Mejía, Dominique Thorne, Martin Freeman, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Michaela Coel, Michael B. Jordan

This is a pretty good action movie with a superb villain, wonderfully played by Tenoch Huerta Mejía. There is a trouble at the center of this Black Panther sequel, however. It's a bit more self-important than it needs to be; it lacks the fun and discovery of the first film. This is, of course, demanded by the loss of Black Panther's magnetic and brilliant star, Chadwick Boseman, and it's dealt with very smartly by Ryan Coogler. But the film positively dwells in its frustration and difficulties. This is, in fact, a plot point: who will be the next black panther is the film's central question. Unfortunately, the answer is a grim one. The next black panther is T'challa's sister, played by Letitia Wright, and Wright is not a movie star. She's outshined by everyone else in the movie, and she looks small next to all of the other actresses in the movie – Angela Bassett, Lupita Nyong'o, and Danai Gurira. Things get better in her scenes with Huerta Mejía, but she's just not up to carrying a movie this big on her shoulders. As for Oscars, Bassett is going to win, hands down, and I'm happy about it. She's a superb actress, and she's overdue for an Oscar. I expect Ruth Carter to win too, and she deserves it. But I do wish the Academy would start paying attention to Carter's design work in non-Marvel films. She should have been nominated for last year's Coming 2 America and the fact that she wasn't nominated for 2019's Dolemite Is My Name is a crime. We should all be banging the drum for Ruth Carter. Her work is incredible every time she makes a movie. 

Will Win: Supporting Actress, Costume Design

Could Win: Visual Effects, Make-up & Hairstyling, Song
My Rating: #32 out of 63

1. Everything Everywhere All at Once, The Banshees of Inisherin, All Quiet on the Western Front, and Elvis

More posts coming soon:

3. Avatar: the Way of Water, Triangle of Sadness, The Whale, and Babylon
4. The Batman, Women Talking, Living, and Aftersun
5. Blonde, To Leslie, Glass Onion, and Causeway
6. Argentina, 1985, Close, Eo, and The Quiet Girl
7. Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, Pinocchio, Puss in Boots: the Last Wish, Turning Red, and The Sea Beast
8. Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths, Empire of Light, Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris, RRR, and Tell It like a Woman

Check out my new book Love Is Love Is Love – out March 24!

Tár (2022)

Tár kind of blew me away. This movie jumps right into the story it's telling with almost zero exposition. And its characters are throwing around terms related to conducting and Gustav Mahler and Edward Elgar and the Berliner Philharmoniker without bothering to explain any of it to us. We have to learn the power structures in this movie while we watch, and we have no one to help us understand them. This is entirely appropriate, to my mind, but it creates identification problems – who are we here to love and like and whose side are we on, after all? I know that many of my friends experienced a great deal of distance from this movie, despite how beautifully made it is and how intriguing the story.

What we wind up watching with Tár is a Harvey Weinstein story – although I don't even need to watch the upcoming She Said to know this is very different from that narrative. Still, it is that to a certain extent. It's also not. For me, Tár follows precisely the structure of an Athenian tragedy, and it carried with it all of the aspects that attend one of those ancient plays. In other words, we are waiting for violence throughout the narrative. We know we are leading up to violence – this is how an Athenian tragedy is structured: we move toward atrocity, and we all know it is coming. This creates an enormous amount of tension in Todd Field's movie, and I watched Tár mostly in terror at what was coming. (Enjoying every moment.) It's worth noting that this film, like a Greek tragedy, is deeply haunted, as if there are ghosts around every turn, others watching, mysterious forms coming to get the characters and make them pay for the things they know they've done. I loved that about Tár.

The other thing to say about this ancient Athenian structure is a question of character. No one learns things in Athenian tragedy. That isn't the point of them. They're not teaching tools: they're ideological propaganda for the Athenian city-state. But often a character in a tragedy will do something that he or she feels he can get away with. To do something as if no one will punish you, to dare others to punish you just to see them cower, the ancient Athenians called this hybris. Lydia Tár, this film's central character, acts as if she can simply get away with anything she chooses to do. It's terrifying because for the whole film it feels as if we know retribution's coming but she doesn't see it. 

I want to say one more thing about Tár and character and identification. I know folks who have objected to the way this movie treated its central figure, punishing her, destroying her. And it is a dubious move to translate a sexual exploitation narrative into a story about a lesbian instead of telling this story about a man. (It's always made me very mad that Arthur Miller's The Crucible transferred the hysteria of the House un-American Activities Commission to the little girls in his play. It was grown men, in fact, who were hysterical fascists. And he made a play about little girls being hysterical fascists. Let's place the blame where it belongs.) Anyway, this film punishes her and brings her low. This was a problem for a few of my friends. It wasn't a problem for me, and I realized the reason while I listened to them speak about the movie. We had watched it very differently. They weren't identifying with Tár's main character while they watched. The distance and difficulty of the film meant that they did not see themselves in the main character. While I watched Tár I identified with her completely. This film made me think about my own hybris, the decisions I make out of ego and the things I believe I can get away with doing because of privilege. This is why, I in fact, loved the film. It's a difficult piece, and she's a difficult character to love, but I identified with her very fiercely, and I didn't feel self-satisfied by her punishment at the film's end; I felt unsettled and accused. For me this is what makes the film so great.

The Nominees: Part III of VIII

LITTLE CHILDREN

3 Nominations:

Best Actress: Kate Winslet (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Iris, Titanic, Sense and Sensibility)

Best Supporting Actor: Jackie Earle Haley

Best Adapted Screenplay: Todd Field (In the Bedroom) and Tom Perotta

Director: Todd Field (In the Bedroom)
Cast: Patrick Wilson, Kate Winslet, Jennifer Connelly, Noah Emmerich, Jackie Earle Haley, Phyllis Somerville, Jane Adams

This movie was predicted as one of the big prestige pictures of 2006. A screenplay nomination is a very big deal, so it still looks as though a lot of people paid attention to and liked this film, but it seems like reception to the film is overall more cool than anything else. This is to be expected for a film that worked hard to create distance from its audience. Still, three nominations is a lot of love and the Jackie Earle Haley nomination was a welcome surprise on nomination morning. This is Kate Winslet's fifth Oscar nomination. Make a note. She has yet to win.
Will Win: N/A
Might Also Win: Best Supporting Actor
My Rating: #51 out of 69

CHILDREN OF MEN

3 Nominations:

Best Adapted Screenplay: Alfonso Cuarón (Y Tu Mamá También), David Arata, Mark Fergus and Hawk Otsby

Best Cinematography: Emmanuel Lubezki (The New World, Sleepy Hollow, A Little Princess)

Best Film Editing

Director: Alfonso Cuarón (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Y Tu Mamá También, Great Expectations, A Little Princess)
Cast: Clive Owen, Michael Caine, Julianne Moore, Claire-Hope Ashitey, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Charlie Hunnam, Pam Ferris

This is my favorite movie of the year. Blame its weak showing at the Academy on a too-late release date (this is Universal's fault) and on subject matter (sci-fi is not usually their thing.) But a film this good doesn't need a whole lot of Oscar nominations. People are going to be talking about how great this movie is for years to come. At any rate, Emmanuel Lubezki deserves to win in his category hands down. Hopefully by then, members of the Academy will all have seen this gem.
Will Win: Best Cinematography
Might Also Win: Best Film Editing
My Rating: #1 out of 69

APOCALYPTO

3 Nominations:

Best Sound Mixing

Best Sound Editing

Best Makeup

Director: (Crazy) Mel Gibson (The Passion of the Christ, Braveheart, The Man Without a Face)
Cast: Rudy Youngblood, Dalia Hernandez, Jonathan Brewer, Morris Birdyellowhead, Carlos Emilio Baez

This is a good movie, for the most part, though its subject matter and director obviously make it a tough pill for Hollywood to swallow. Still, The Passion of the Christ got Oscar nominations and so did this film. Winning anything is a different story altogether, and the presence of Pan's Labyrinth in the makeup category means Apocalypto will go home with nothing on Oscar night. That said, the makeup in this film (as in Gibson's last film) is extraordinary and the nomination is well-deserved.
Will Win: N/A
Might Also Win: N/A
My Rating: #26 out of 69

UNITED 93

2 Nominations:

Best Director: Paul Greengrass

Best Film Editing

Director: Greengrass (The Bourne Supremacy, Bloody Sunday, The Murder of Stephen Lawrence, The Theory of Flight)
Cast: David Alan Basche, Cheyenne Jackson, Christian Clemenson, Trish Gates, Khalid Abdalla, Lewis Alsamari, Omar Berdouni, Jamie Harding

These nominations are a big surprise. Critics loved this film, and clearly so did the Academy's director's branch, which is—in general—more discriminating than the body as a whole. But audiences didn't seem to take notice of this movie, despite critical enthusiasm about it. I personally loved the film and it sat at my number one spot for almost the entire year. It's a superbly directed film. I can't wait for Greengrass's next offering: The Bourne Ultimatum.
Will Win: N/A
Might Also Win: Best Film Editing
My Rating: #2 out of 69

THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA

2 Nominations:

Best Actress: Meryl Streep (Adaptation., Music of the Heart, One True Thing, The Bridges of Madison County, Postcards from the Edge, A Cry in the Dark, Ironweed, Out of Africa, Silkwood, The French Lieutenant's Woman; she has Oscars for Sophie's Choice and Kramer vs. Kramer but hasn't won in 24 years.)

Best Costume Design: Patricia Field

Director: David Frankel (Miami Rhapsody)
Cast: Anne Hathaway, Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, Stanley Tucci, Adrien Grenier, Simon Baker

The Best Actress nomination was a given, but the Best Costume Design nomination is a big surprise. The Academy usually likes to nominate period films and fantasy films in this category. Contemporary costume work usually gets left behind. This bodes well for the future. Streep hasn't won an Oscar since 1983. It is time to hand her another trophy, people! Her work is always stellar, never even slightly sub-par, and it always feels like you never knew her before when she's onscreen.
Will Win: N/A
Might Also Win: Best Costume Design
My Rating: #47 out of 69

Formal Exercises

Last night I saw Little Children, the new film from In the Bedroom director Todd Field. I loved In the Bedroom, as you might recall, but Little Children I found difficult, distanced, overly formal, and nowhere near as good as John Curran's We Don't Live Here Anymore. The actors are wonderful, particularly Jackie Earle Haley, Patrick Wilson and Phyllis Somerville. Actually, I loved the entire cast, with the exception of Mary B. McCann's ridiculously played one-note performance as a suburban mother. The film exercises a formal device, namely voice over intended (I assume) to distance the film's viewers from the action of the film, as though the entire thing were an elaborate case study—some kind of microcosm of Americana. The device works if this is the intended effect, but it also put me off the film entirely. I felt far removed from the characters, their petty, suburban problems, and I felt ridicule rise in my gut whenever they expressed any kind of pain. The voice over, by distancing me from the characters' lives, made me think their lives ridiculous. When the final horrifying reveal occurred at the end (a Caché moment like nothing else this year) the whole thing seemed even clearer to me: how dare these happy, gorgeous suburbanites complain about anything when there are people with real problems, real pain, living just next door.

Patrice Chéreau's Gabrielle uses an even larger number of formal devices in its exploration of marital unhappiness at the turn of the twentieth century, but this film I responded positively to. Chéreau (whose work I almost always admire) uses black-and-white as well as color photography throughout the picture as well as the astonishing convention of title cards in key emotional moments. It's an incredibly intriguing choice with the resulting creation of very real intimacy with the characters. The film, which is based on The Return, a short story by Joseph Conrad, mines the depths of a relationship's failure after a woman leaves her husband and then returns, incapable of her act, four hours later. Isabelle Huppert (always brilliant) and Pascal Greggory are fantastic as the couple in question and the film is painful, beautiful and, at times, truly disturbing. The score, by Fabio Vacchi, which sounds more than anything like Igor Stravinsky, is passionate, enormous and unquestionably modern. It's a fascinating film.