THB #610: Still 19 Weeks To Oscar... BP Charts!

It’s been a month since I offered an Oscar chart… has anything changed?

McDowell, McDowell, My Kingdom For McDowell

A few things. Gladiator II has landed in the ballpark. Wicked got shown to a few people - besides exhibition - and so far, has been crapped on by them. (Not Andy Cohen, who lurves it!) Netflix has worked Emilia Pérez hard, worldwide… harder than anyone else has worked anything… and thankfully, it is a strong movie and that early work is paying off. And Paramount has started pushing the September 5 button in earnest, starting a little behind everyone else and without a deep well of movie stars to sell the film.

big pile of dirt

The two films of the season that I find shocking, in terms of some of the media response, are Mousetrap on the Vatican Express and There Will Be Architecture… uh, sorry… Conclave and The Brutalist. Both are well made films with excellent actors. But both are also shadows of much better movies. I’m all for style exercises. For Edward Berger, it’s a lot of trying to ramp up the style to make up for the lame, repetitive storytelling.

For Brady Corbet, it’s super style from start to finish…. but it’s a film that offers an emotional journey with very little actual emotion, other than raw assholic behavior. For me, this is not good… but even read the Rotten Tomatoes positive pull quotes, most of which seem to equivocate after expressing how ambitious and well shot the movie is. I look forward to loving a Brady Corbet movie. My guess is that I will, eventually. But for now, the emperor has no clothes…. well, maybe not no clothes… a great shirt with lots of frills and a jaunty cap, but not a thing on from the hips down.

I am glad that Scotty Feinberg is embracing September 5 so tightly. I love it too. But having it as the #1 film on his charts is, well, idiotic. I think the film will get in. I think it deserves 4 - 7 nominations. And I think it can compete with the top group of films if Paramount can get enough voters to watch it. While it will play well on television, this is a movie you want people to see in a theater… not necessarily a huge theater, but on a screen with at least another 20 people. This is a movie, for older voters, that will inspire a lot of conversation, which is gold for awards.

I have at least liked an almost shocking number of the films that were released at the festivals and shown in L.A. and N.Y. since. But at the same time, they are all challenged in terms of Oscar, one way or the other. Nickel Boys is high art, touching on a familiar subject. Maria is the most complex of the Pablo Larrain iconic-women profiles with the best lead performance… but Maria Callas is the least pop of the women as well. Almodóvar delivers an instantly legendary turn by Tilda Swinton in The Room Next Door, but death scares people. The Piano Lesson is a rich, thought-provoking tapestry, but will probably be a bit too much of a lesson for too many. Walter Salles brings a power and intimacy for a family under the worst pressures for simply speaking truth in I’m Still Here, but it’s a Brazilian family and again, this demands more effort. Blitz is another beautiful piece of filmmaking by Steve McQueen, but its episodic nature and a surprising restraint undermines the big emotions that should wave through audiences. The Substance has been tagged with being Horror, which might have sold some more tickets, but undervalues the satirical film that it really is. And Babygirl offers up a stunning performance by Nicole Kidman, but really calls on the audience to wallow in the issues of power between people and sex without offering clear answers… and you know audiences that want answers.

We still have 6 movies that would, in theory, like to be in the Best Picture conversation that have not been widely screened. One, Queer, has been to festivals, but A24 seems to be tracking it for acting (Daniel Craig) only. The other 5 are A Complete Unknown, Here, Juror #2, Mufasa: The Lion King, and Nosferatu.

The silence on Here has been a bit deafening, so even with all of its pedigree, a week out from limited theatrical release with a wide release planned for 2 weeks later. If Sony believes in it, they are convincing everyone that they don’t. But Sony has been crowing compared to WB and Juror #2. It’s opening next Friday… no Thursday night shows. Yikes!

So that leaves The Dylan, The Dracula, and the The Lion Origin.

BEST PICTURE (at 11:30 pm, 10/24/24)

The idea of not including a movie you haven’t seen on your charts is both stupid and arrogant. It’s not about us. It’s about voters. And yes, we guessers risk being dead wrong when a movie that is expected to be good or great is not. But so what?

1. A Complete Unknown - Clearly the movie to beat. And yes, it could beat itself. But a quality director, a still-rising true movie star, and a great piece of history scored by some of the most memorable songs in the world? There is nothing in the line-up of films that offers this kind of awards promise. It’s not about the actual best movie, least of all my personal taste. It’s about the movie that fits best, by a bunch of spoken and unspoken criteria.

2. Emilia Pérez - The movie gets better the more times you watch it. The somewhat jarring nature of the music and dance moments become more natural when you know they are coming. There are all kinds of politics around the ideas in the film, which may or may not help or hurt. But the themes that Audiard is playing with are bigger than the specifics of the film, so in the least universal story imaginable, there is a bit of all of us to find in the film. Plus, Netflix.

3. Dune: Part Two - Warners has its hands full reminding everyone of this film being a major player, but they can do it… and this is a classic built-it-from-the-crafts-up play. There may be some trouble with the Acting categories, with TC playing Dylan elsewhere and Bardem now heavily associated with The Menendez show. But Rebecca Ferguson is a great interview and could be a surprise in Supporting Actress.

I can honestly say that these 3 are the only titles I think absolutely belong in the Top 5 of this list. There are other films that I think will get into the 10 for sure… but I believe they are in a different class of sureness than this trio.

The next 2 on the list are, I believe, too big to fail.