Cinema and Popcorn

The "supporting" categories are extremely co-related with the Best Picture race in the way "supporting players" tend to coattail with the movie's campaign for that category, but this year there are many buzzy acting turns that are buzzy on their own. Oscar trivia shows the most usual number of Best Supporting Actress nominees from a Best Picture contender is... 3! But sometimes they are only 2 (88th Oscars), sometimes they can even be 5 (89th Oscars)! So, with the end of the strikes on sight, we should start seeing the actors and actresses doing some press and attending some events and it will give us a better perspective about the campaign that are set to start. Still, a big question mark still is The Color Purple - will it be good? The trailer seems to put on a big show and the Broadway musical was pretty successful, but will it be a good cinematic adaptation? I feel people still have a lot of love for Spielberg's adaptation starring Whoopi Goldberg and I...

I took a lot of time putting some thoughts about Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress races, because I feel they are extremely competitive this year, specially in the leading actress field. There's also the case of Lily Gladstone for Killers of the Flower Moon, which I feel that might flip category, but the first promotional material suggest they will push her in Best Supporting Actress race, despite her being a central character AKA co-lead in the movie's narrative. Still, while I believe Gladstone would have no problem getting in Best Actress, she received the kind of reviews that elevate her to "potential Oscar winner" category and, in this way, Best Supporting Actress feels safer for Apple's search of gold. Still, I have to accept category fraud does exist and it's likely Gladstone will be one of those cases. UPDATE : Lily Gladstone will be campaigned in Best Leading Actress! Directly from the Best Supporting Actress category, Lily Gladstone entered ...

Venice International Film Festival has always been one of the most prestigious cinematic events of the year, but it has become the very first stop for the pre-awards season. Ever since 2017, when Del Toro's The Shape of Water won the Golden Lion for Best Film that the festival's top prize winner has been a major Oscar player: 2018's Roma , 2019's Joker and 2020's Nomadland ended-up getting a Best Picture nom (with the last one winning); 2021's The Happening didn't get major award love in the US (mostly because it didn't get a major distributor able to handle an awards campaign); and 2022's All the Beauty and the Bloodshed ended-up nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. So... the Jury for the main competition named Yorgos Lanthimos ' Poor Things the Best Film of the festival, while Hamaguchi's Evil Does Not Exist (the director of Drive My Car ) took home the Grand Jury Prize. A note about Cailee Spaeny ( Priscill...

With the delay of Dune: Part II release, I had to re-do my Oscar predictions in all categories. The thing is: I wasn't able to re-think and re-write that fast and I failed my personal deadline (before Fall film festival season) and one thing that I noted was how influenced my last predictions changes were because of the reactions coming from Venice and Telluride. TIFF remains the biggest test for most Fall Oscar hopefuls since it's the biggest festival happening in American/Canadian soil, which means it will be attended by many critics from critics associations in US, the ones who are actually responsible for the start of the awards season (and for the Oscar buzz-creation process). Personally, I consider Oscar predictions folks tend to overestimate the Fall film festival buzz - we are in that time of the year where EVERYTHING is crowned an "Oscar player", but if we recall the recent previous years, early releases can do really good in the awards trail (and even bett...

TALK TO ME I followed a tip: don’t watch the trailer and just go watch the movie. I did it. And I liked it a lot. While it doesn’t offer the same level of satire as Jordan Peele’s Get Out , Talk to Me is a commentary about Gen Z’s TikTok and social media culture and how things derailed because of the need of being cool, the need of being seen and universally accepted. Sophie Wilde delivers an outstanding breakthrough performance here with an unsympathetic character she approaches with sensibility – even for those who never felt any warm towards Mia, there’s no way to deny her ability to carry the whole movie – and the young Joe Bird excels in some of the most terrifying scenes. As an horror piece, Talk to Me is never too scary, but it is chilling and it features some very graphic visual horror elements that can make you look away for some bits. It is never surprising, but it can cause nail bites. The makeup team’s work should be highlighted and so does the sound department. Consideri...

TIFF and Venice are coming soon and it's time to line-up the first serious Academy Award nominations predictions. As I said in a previous post, all comes around which movies the studios/distributors are determined to promote and build an awards campaign around - and aspects like box-office performance and critical reception are key factors in the decision process, but they are not the only ones. Considering the cultural impact of the internet, social media and niche target audiences are also valid points when start predicting - Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic scores might indicate the general reception, but if a movie is truly loved, even for a smaller group of moviegoers, then it might score enough #1 votes in the Best Picture ballot. Basically, you must know the Academy members and you must sense which movie might target a certain group of Academy members better. That said, I believe this year can be one of the most diverse in terms of cinematic offer for voters. Of course, there ...

Genre: Drama Director: Christopher Nolan Writer: Christopher Nolan Starring: Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr., Matt Damon, Josh Hartnett, Emily Blunt, Kenneth Branagh, Florence Pugh and Benny Safdie Oppenheimer is good... in fact it is quite good! I believe it is the most assured movie Christopher Nolan has ever made in his career. It doesn't mean it is my favorite movie of his, but here you feel he is in full control of every dimension of his movie at the same time: narrative, style, acting and technical aspects. Technically, this movie seems perfect - everything is in perfect harmony with everything - but there's a lot of information going on-screen and it is a movie that demands you to be focused. The movie switches from a narrative line to another: the central storyline, which tells the story of Oppenheimer and how his personal and professional life have led him to the creation of the atomic bom; then there's Lewis Strauss' public hearing (the black and white par...