In advance of this upcoming 96th annual Academy Awards ceremony — which begins at 4pm this Sunday, an hour earlier than usual — please find trailers for the ten 2023 films garnering recognition in Hollywood as the best films of the year.
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#Oscars 2024 | Best Actress / Actor +++ More Academy Predictions
Ah, the glitz, the glamour, and the relentless buzz surrounding the Oscars!
As the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences marches towards the 96th annual Oscar ceremony on Sunday, March 10th 2024, the speculation over potential nominees for the most coveted categories – Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Director – has reached a fever pitch.
Here’s a glance into the crystal ball to discern who might grace the esteemed list of nominees. Oscar nominees will be announced on Tuesday, January 23rd at 5 a.m.
Best Picture
As we wrote yesterday, the leading contenders for the Best Picture Oscar are: Christopher Nolan’s hard-hitting biopic Oppenheimer; Greta Gerwig’s pastel-pink Mattel extravaganza Barbie; Martin Scorsese’s western gangster epic, Killers of the Flower Moon; Yorgos Lanthimos’ fantastical coming-of-age tale, Poor Things; Alexander Payne’s Christmas dramedy The Holdovers; Bradley Cooper’s biopic of composer Leonard Bernstein, Maestro; Cord Jefferson’s feature directorial début, American Fiction; and, writer / director Celine Song’s feature directorial début, the American romantic drama, Past Lives.
After that, who knows who will fill the 9th and 10th spots?
Best Actor
The Best Actor category often shines a light on performances that redefine the craft. Names already swirling in the Oscar conversation are …
Bradley Cooper. Maestro. Cooper’s portrayal of the sexually conflicted composer Leonard Bernstein in a film he wrote, directed and stars in, offers a performance poised to bring him his fifth acting Oscar nomination.
Leonardo DiCaprio. Killers of the Flower Moon. DiCaprio is in the running for his sixth performance under the direction of Martin Scorsese, in which he plays a simpleton who becomes part of a scheme to kill and rob the Osage community.
Colman Domingo. Rustin. In his first lead role, the Emmy-winning star of Euphoria has won universal raves. Domingo brings heart, mind and soul to the part of Bayard Rustin, a Black and gay civil rights activist who organized the 1963 March on Washington.
Paul Giamatti. The Holdovers. This veteran could land a Best Actor nomination — and at this point is actually the odds-on favourite to win Best Actor — 19 years after his prior collaboration with Alexander Payne in Sideways. He again plays a snob, this time a crusty boarding school instructor forced to stay on campus during Christmas break.
Cillian Murphy. Oppenheimer. The Irishman best known for the TV series Peaky Blinders has been doing notable work in film for more than 20 years. But never before has he played a part as widely seen or praised as that of J. Robert Oppenheimer in Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster biopic.
Jeffrey Wright, American Fiction. One of the most revered screen actors who’s never received an Oscar nomination, this Emmy winner arguably gives the performance of his career as a cranky college professor who writes books that nobody reads — until he writes one, of a very different sort, under a pen name.
Best Actress
Competition is heating up for the Best Actress Academy Award at Oscars 2024, with several great performances vaulting women into the awards race.
Margot Robbie. Barbie. The shining star of the movie, perfectly capturing Barbie’s toy-like looks and evolving her performance to fit with the movie’s exploration of Barbie’s empowering arc, this two-time Oscar nominee could take home the big prize this year.
Sandra Hüller. Anatomy of a Fall. Cannes Best Actress winner Hüller — who attempts to prove she is not responsible for her husband’s death, in this courtroom drama — carries the film on her shoulders and delivers an exceptional performance.
Carey Mulligan. Maestro. Mulligan plays Leonard Bernstein’s wife Felicia Montealegre, chronicling their heartbreaking, decades-spanning love story through all the highs and lows, in a role that could win her her first Academy Award.
Lily Gladstone. Killers of the Flower Moon. Scorsese’s film is expected to be a massive hit with Academy voters. Gladstone’s role as Mollie Burkhart is at the heart of the movie, and is essential to the film’s emotional core. Thus far in the Oscar race, Ms. Gladstone has picked up all of the critics, and last Sunday the Golden Globe, Best Actress prize.
Emma Stone. Poor Things. Stone’s dazzling, revelatory performance as a Frankenstein creature brought to life is the expected winner of the Best Actress 2024 Oscar.
Best Supporting Actor
Ryan Gosling. Barbie. Gosling is definitely Kenough to run away with this whole thing.
Robert Downey Jr. Oppenheimer. On the campaign trail, Downey reminds voters of his outstanding work as Louis Strauss, transforming his appearance and affect.
Robert De Niro. Killers of the Flower Moon. De Niro’s villainous turn as William Hale is a lock for a nomination.
Mark Ruffalo. Poor Things. Ruffalo plays a promiscuous reprobate who can’t deal with a sexually empowered woman in Poor Things. Ruffalo is definitely in the mix, as is Willem Dafoe in that same film as a disfigured mad scientist/father figure.
Charles Melton. May December. Vaulting from TV’s Riverdale to a fascinating role as a man seduced by a married woman (Julianne Moore) when he was in middle school has picked up all of the critics awards thus far.
Best Supporting Actress
This category promises an array of talent.
Juliette Binoche. The Taste of Things. As Eugénie, Binoche plays the personal cook to renowned gourmet Dodin Bouffant in his country home in 1889 France, the French reverence for the art of cuisine serving to define the film.
Emily Blunt. Oppenheimer. A formidable contender, potentially signaling a promising awards journey ahead.
Danielle Brooks. The Color Purple. Brooks and Taraji P. Henson, the standouts from Blitz Bazawule’s daring re-imagining of Alice Walker’s beloved novel are both vying for recognition in this fiercely competitive supporting actress race.
Penélope Cruz. Ferrari. Cruz fuels Oscar talk with her extraordinary turn in Michael Mann’s Ferrari biopic, as the scorching, melancholic heart of the film.
Jodie Foster. Nyad. Could this be Oscar #3 for Nyad scene-stealer Jodie Foster?
Da’Vine Joy Randolph. The Holdovers. The odds-on favourite in this category, Randolph delivers a standout performance in as Mary Lamb, a cafeteria worker mourning her son’s loss.
Best Director
The visionary minds behind the lens are poised for recognition.
Frontrunners
Christopher Nolan. Oppenheimer.
Greta Gerwig. Barbie.
Martin Scorsese. Killers of the Flower Moon.
Yorgos Lanthimos. Poor Things.
Jonathan Glazer. The Zone of Interest.
Major Threats
Cord Jefferson. American Fiction.
Celine Song. Past Lives.
Bradley Cooper. Maestro.
Alexander Payne. The Holdovers.
Todd Haynes. May December.
Blitz Bazawule. The Color Purple.
Ava DuVernay. Origin.
#Cinema | Holiday Oscar Awards Season, Part 1 | The Streaming Oscars
The Oscars are just around the corner and Netflix is bringing its A-game, with a collection of movies released or soon to be released that are not only eyeing the top prizes and figure in the conversation, but may come out on top.
Here are Netflix’s Oscar hopefuls for 2022.
Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog (débuts on Netflix, next Wednesday, December 1st), a neo-Western that won the Venice Best Director prize for Campion, currently tops a raft of critics’ polls in major cities across the continent.
Demonstrating her own strong, clear vision — not to mention superb control of her craft — Campion once again proves her ability to illuminate hidden truths and let the viewer see what was hiding in plain sight all along. Her first film in 9 years is a contemporary Western masterpiece imbued with the same pacing and style of westerns of lore. Campion takes her time, letting the story, based on the 1967 novel by Thomas Savage, reveal itself in languid style. Kirsten Dunst has a lock on a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nod, if not an outright win.
After sending up the financial crisis (The Big Short) and Dick Cheney (Vice), in Don’t Look Up director Adam McKay — who makes no secret of his progressive politics — turns his satirical eye to a less serious target: a global catastrophe.
A thinly veiled allegory for climate change, critics who’ve had an early look at the film praised its humourous satirical flourish — comparing it to Stanley Kubrick’s classic, Dr. Strangelove. Even for those critics who weren’t entirely won over by Don’t Look Up, there was appreciation for a film most found to be incredibly funny — perhaps too funny to find itself in the Oscar conversation.
Jennifer Lawrence plays an astronomy grad student and Leonardo DiCaprio her professor in this broadly comic film, as the two try to alert the world to an approaching comet. The cast, including Meryl Streep as the President and Cate Blanchett and Tyler Perry as TV hosts, makes this Oscar contender the starriest Netflix film of them all. (December 10th in theatres, Christmas Eve on Netflix)
Maggie Gyllenhaal’s buzzed about feature directorial début, The Lost Daughter (New Year’s Eve), leads the Gotham Award nominations, and has an outstanding performance by Olivia Colman, making her a lock for a Best Actress nod.
Playlist critic Tomris Laffly opened his review of The Lost Daughter this way …
“With The Lost Daughter, director Maggie Gyllenhaal wears melancholy like a second skin. One of her generation’s most underrated actors, she moves through her films with a flicker of otherworldly woe; an organic ability that has routinely informed the highlights of her filmography, from the erotically manic ‘Secretary’ to the gritty ‘Sherrybaby’, and more recently, the wistful thriller, ‘The Kindergarten Teacher’. In other words, Gyllenhaal has always possessed an auteurial sway over the films she was in, putting on them her signature ethereal stamp.”
Gyllenhaal’s film is a story of self-ascribed transgression and of shame buried and turned bitterly inward, and it too, is made with such alertness to the power of cinematic language — particularly that of performance — that, according to the critics, even as you feel your stomach slowly drop at the implications of what you’re watching, you cannot break its spreading sinister spell.
A masterwork in perception and all that society places upon motherhood, what makes The Lost Daughter a rewarding picture, is in how the film shatters the binary distinction between a ‘good’ mother and the bad one.
There are 2 films already streaming on Netflix that are Oscar award worthy …
While some Netflix Oscar contenders, like In the Heights, have struggled, Tick, Tick…Boom!, helmed by Lin-Manuel Miranda, emerges with a terrific lead-actor performance delivered by Andrew Garfield, his performance so outstanding and affecting, Garfield seems a lock to sing and dance his way into the hearts of Academy voters, who will thrust him into the Best Actor Oscar race, an award come Sunday, March 27th, 2022 he might very well win.
Miranda, who starred as playwright Jonathan Larson in a theatrical performance of the Broadway play, directs Tick, Tick…Boom! with a deep understanding of the passion, struggle, and ebullience of an artist committed to an art form celebrating the power and the pressure of the world both artists love most. A must-see, Tick, Tick…Boom! is a heart-filling work showcasing two musical geniuses: Larson’s musical legacy, and Miranda’s unparalleled artistry.
And then, of course, there’s VanRamblings’ favourite indie film of the year …
In our November 5th review of Passing, British actress Rebecca Hall’s remarkable directorial début we wrote this …
“From the very first frame, Passing grabs your attention, in this piercingly sad story of characters who can’t escape the confines of their lives. The vulnerability of Irene and Clare’s smallest gestures and experiences, delicately conveyed by Tessa Thompson and Ruth Negga and magnified by Eduard Grau’s judicious close-ups — a tear rolling down a cheek, the slight bow of a hatted head in the presence of a white man, a stolen glance of desire — under the genteel mask these women show to the world lies a roiling unease about their true desires, their barely hidden secrets, and their place in the world.”
Tessa Thompson is a lock for a Best Actress Oscar nod, while Rebecca Hall will likely be nominated, and perhaps win, as Best Director & is a certainty to win the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar at the 2022 Academy Awards ceremony.
Neither Apple nor Amazon have any intention of being left out of the mix …
Apple has Joel Coen’s rip-roaring The Tragedy of Macbeth (débuts Jan. 14, 2022), starring Denzel Washington, as well as CODA, the heartbreaking Sundance sensation that could catapult newcomer Emilia Jones into the Best Actress — and Marlee Matlin, into the Best Supporting Actress — awards race.
One of Amazon’s choice Academy Award Oscar contenders is The Tender Bar, the new film directed by George Clooney, and starring Tye Sheridan as an aspiring writer with an absent father, with Ben Affleck playing the young man’s bartender uncle. The script, by William Monahan (The Departed), is based on the memoir by J.R. Moehringer. (December 17th in theatres for a brief run, then come January 7th, on Amazon Prime)
Amazon’s Being The Ricardos takes a chance on recognizable actors playing beloved Hollywood icons, but as Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem may very well overcome the enduring memories of generations of TV viewers. Aaron Sorkin wrote and directed this drama about the Ball-Arnaz relationship and the making of I Love Lucy. (December 10th in theatres, December 21st, on Amazon Prime)
For those of us older folks who grew up with Lucille Ball, who was the most beloved actress on television in the 1950s and 1960s, there’s a ready-made, built-in audience for Being The Ricardos. How the film does with the younger crowd we’ve yet to see — but word out of Hollywood is that Javier Bardem is a lock for a Best Actor nod, and in all likelihood Nicole Kidman has a Best Actress Oscar nod all but wrapped up. Aaron Sorkin will be up for an Oscar, too.
C’mon back next Thursday for Part 2 of VanRamblings’ Oscar / holiday season movie preview, when we’ll write about Steven Spielberg’s much anticipated new film, and Paul Thomas Anderson’s latest film — both of which are shoe-ins for Oscar attention. We’ll also write about a couple of under-the-radar international films that could feature in the main Academy Award categories.
#ArtsFriday | Passing | Searing, Heartbreaking, Tragic Cinema | #Netflix
Début film by Rebecca Hall (left), Passing, stars Tessa Thompson (centre) & Ruth Negga
A complex examination of race and sexuality set against the backdrop of a 1920s-era Harlem Renaissance that celebrated Black novelist Nella Larsen captured in her seminal 1929 novel, Passing, marks British actress Rebecca Hall’s assured feature directorial début — a certain 2022 Oscar contender, having taken New York by storm last month at their annual New York Film Festival, and already up for a passel of Gotham Awards — will be available on the Netflix streaming service this coming Wednesday, November 10th. “We’re all of us passing for something or other, aren’t we?” muses Tessa Thompson’s melancholy character, Irene Redfield.
Ms. Hall’s choice of material for her début as writer-director is elevated by her evident personal investment in the story, having learned years ago that her American maternal grandfather was Black passing as white for most of his life. That intense personal connection pervades every lovingly composed shot of a work that takes a subtle, unwavering approach to the film’s subject matter, that resonates at a moment Black Lives Matter has exposed the simmering racial divides within society.
The story takes place in 1929, as Harlem resident Irene (Thompson) carefully navigates her way through a sweltering New York City summer day, tucking her face inside her hat so as to all the better, well, maybe not hide exactly, but at least obscure her face so that her black skin isn’t as evident to the privileged white locals surrounding her. Feeling self-conscious about being out of place, she’s shocked to run into Clare (Negga), a school friend with whom she had lost contact, now married to a wealthy (and avowedly racist) white man, John (Alexander Skarsgård), who has no idea that his wife is black. Clare “passes” for white, allowing her entree into an upper-crust American society that contemptuously shuns people of colour.
Inviting Irene up to her hotel room, upon returning to her home, there’s a marked visual switch from Clare and John’s suite, an airy space drenched in white light, to the more textured look inside the Harlem brownstone where Irene lives with her doctor husband Brian (André Holland) and their two boys. The action flashes forward to the autumn, when a letter from Clare, postmarked New York, indicates she has moved back to the city as she had hoped. Irene is hesitant to open it, but Brian is more curious, arching his eyebrows at Clare’s florid description of “this pale life of mine,” as she gently chides Renie for exposing her “wild desire” for another life.
Shot in luminous black-and-white by cinematographer Eduard Grau (a choice that, given the material, might sound gimmicky, and is not), Ms. Hall also opted for a boxed-in 4:3 aspect ratio, all the better to heighten the film’s constant tension and the sense that its piercingly sad characters can’t escape the confines of their lives.
From the very first frame, Passing grabs your attention with its striking aesthetics. Most notably, as mentioned above, the desaturated black-and-white cinematography and 4:3 aspect ratio that recalls both vintage photography and classic cinema. The period-appropriate costumes and production design — stylishly rendered by the production designer Nora Mendism, and the costume designer Marci Rodgers — gives a strong sense of a time and place when flappers lived their best life. To add an elegant finishing touch, the intermittent piano refrain of Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou’s Homeless Wanderer, and the gorgeous score composed by Black composer Devonté Hynes, provides a further nostalgic nod to the Jazz Age.
Passing tingles through the vulnerability of Irene and Clare’s smallest gestures and experiences, delicately conveyed by Thompson and Negga and magnified by Eduard Grau’s judicious close-ups. A tear rolling down a cheek. The slight bow of a hatted head in the presence of a white man. A stolen glance of desire. Under the genteel mask these women show to the world lies a roiling unease about their true desires, their obvious and barely hidden secrets, and their place in the world.
And it’s through this discomfort that Passing transcends its mannered trappings to resonate with us as a poignant and powerful exploration of the human condition.