If you’re a movie fan, what occasion is as great as Christmas and better than the Super Bowl?! Oscar Night, of course! The 93rd Academy Awards will air this Sunday, April 25 on ABC and YouTubeTV and we can’t wait!
As for so many things, this past year has been unprecedented when it comes to movies and most definitely the Oscar Awards. Because of COVID, the process leading up to the awards has been a bit different. For instance, the awards are usually in late February or early March. But this year, the eligibility window for qualifying films was extended by a couple months. Hence, the late awards show.
Despite a strange movie year, many exciting milestones still bubbled up as Oscar nominations came out. For the first time, two women were nominated in the Best Director category (Chloé Zhao for “Nomadland” and Emerald Fennell for “Promising Young Woman”). Though there are many noteworthy stories to tell even before the awards, let us cut to the chase with our Oscar preview. We can’t cover everything, so we hope to hit a few highlights by predicting a few big categories, giving some recommendations and then including a few other tidbits towards the end.
We pick the winners
Best Picture– Bridget– Nomadland; Rob– Nomadland
Best Director– B– Chloé Zhao (Nomadland) ; R- Lee Isaac Chung (Minari)
Best Actor– B- Chadwick Boseman (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom); R- Chadwick Boseman
Best Actress- B- Carey Mulligan (Promising Young Woman); R– Carey Mulligan
Best Supporting Actress- B- Youn Yuh-jung (Minari); R- Youn Yuh-Jung
Best Supporting Actor– B- Daniel Kaluuya (Judas and the Black Messiah); R- Daniel Kaluuya
Best Original Screenplay- B- The Trial of the Chicago 7; R- The Trial of the Chicago 7;
Best Adapted Screenplay– B- Nomadland; R- Nomadland
Best Animated Feature – B- Soul; R– Soul
Our must-watch Oscar nominees. This year, seeing award-nominated movies has been a tough task. With not as many theaters open, streaming and on-demand rentals have been the way to go. Here are a few of our top recommendations among the award candidates and how you can access them.
Bridget’s picks
1. Nomadland- (Hulu) This movie has been racking up festival and award wins since it came on to the scene. Look for it to have several wins Sunday night. It follows ‘nomad’ Fran (played by Francis McDormand) as she navigates living on the road in the midst of tough economic times. Nomadland doesn’t really follow a traditional movie plot and it won’t be for everyone, but McDormand’s powerful performance and those of the other non-professional actors who are actual nomads is something special. The storytelling and beautiful cinematography pull you in.
2. Minari– (In theaters, premium $20 rental) A Korean-American family moves to Arkansas in search of their own American Dream. They struggle, oh how they struggle. The movie is a heartwarming portrait of love and loss with some great performances that were nominated. Luckily, there are enough moments of levity and laughs to make Minari a good watch for everyone, though you have to read subtitles occasionally.
3. Sound of Metal- (Amazon Prime) I don’t care for heavy metal, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying this movie. Metal drummer Ruben begins to lose his hearing and when a doctor tells him his condition will worsen, he thinks his career and life is over. Guess what! It’s not. Riz Ahmed who plays Ruben is terrific, as is Paul Raci, who plays the deaf leader of a rehab center. Though you probably have never heard of Raci and may only vaguely recognize Ahmed, they are amazing. Just watching them in the movie’s many quiet moments make it a worthwhile watch.
4. News of the World- (widely available on video) I actually saw this movie in a theater, which was a good choice. A western with sweeping panoramas, gun fights and horse chases must be seen on the big screen! America’s dad, Tom Hanks, plays a Civil War veteran who must return a girl who was taken in by the Kiowa as a little girl to her last remaining family. News of the World is mostly nominated for production awards (cinematography, sound, music), but it would be a good family movie if you’re looking for some traditional western entertainment.
Rob’s picks
(include movie title and where you can access the movie- on-demand, Netflix, Amazon, etc)
1. Judas and the Black Messiah (In theaters, premium $20 rental)- During press interviews, Director Shaka King has repeatedly professed his love of 1970s crime dramas like “The Friends of Eddie Coyle” and “Dog Day Afternoon” while recalling a pitch that compared “Judas and the Black Messiah” to “The Departed,” the 2006 Boston Irish mob epic that finally won Martin Scorsese his Oscar. These reference points are key to understanding the framework of this ostensible Fred Hampton biopic that ends up feeling more like an old school thriller and showcases perhaps the three best young actors in the business in likely best supporting actor winner Daniel Kaluuya, Lakeith Stanfield and Jesse Plemons.
Stanfield, as the infamous FBI informant William O’Neal, and Plemons, as a conniving FBI agent doing the bidding of J. Edgar Hoover (played by a particularly grotesque Martin Sheen), are both in thankless roles, but they shine alongside Kaluuya (as Hampton) and bring this true story of the Illinois Black Panther Party and a betrayal that left its leader dead to life.
The fact this film exists and was released widely on HBO Max during the pandemic is something of a miracle, and for my money, it’s the best of the nominees by a fairly wide margin.
2. Another Round (Hulu)- Amidst a remarkably downbeat batch of nominated films, Thomas Vinterberg’s Danish comedy-drama about a group of teachers who decide to perform an experiment that involves keeping their BAC at 0.05 every day feels downright joyous by comparison, despite its darker twists near the conclusion. Mads Mikkelsen, best known for playing Le Chiffre in the new Bond films and the notorious Dr. Lecter in “Hannibal,” sounds perfectly at home in his native language and pulls out some dance moves that no one could’ve seen coming. “Another Round” is a heavy favorite to win best Foreign Language Film on Sunday night, and Vinterberg’s surprise nomination for best director is well deserved.
3. The Trial of the Chicago Seven (Netflix)- I’m not an Aaron Sorkin devotee by any stretch of the imagination, so I was surprised by how much I found myself enjoying this retelling of an infamous court proceeding at the height of the civil unrest of the ‘60s from America’s pre-eminent liberal fabulist.
“Trial” features a massive ensemble cast that includes Sacha Baron Cohen as Abbie Hoffman, Jeremy Strong as Jerry Rubin, John Carroll Lynch as David Dellinger, Yahya Abdul-Mateen as Bobby Seale, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Richard Schultz, Frank Langella as Judge Julius Hoffman and my personal MVP, Michael Keaton as Ramsey Clark. It makes for an interesting double feature with “Judas and the Black Messiah” as there’s substantial overlap between the stories, and Kelvin Harrison Jr. even portrays Fred Hampton in this film.
If you were alive during the ‘60s, you probably have opinions about this case and these people, and rest assured, Sorkin does too. Is it 100 percent true to history? Probably not. Is it a great courtroom drama nonetheless? You bet.
4. Tenet (Rental, Video On-Demand)- It’s only nominated in a few minor categories, but I have a major soft spot for Christopher Nolan’s big, strange, globe hopping time travel spy thriller starring John David Washington, Robert Pattinson and Elizabeth Debicki.
This was the film that was anointed to save movie theaters at the height of the pandemic last summer, and by most indications, it resoundingly failed to do that. It also earned Nolan, the famed auteur behind the Christian Bale “Batman” trilogy, “Inception,” “Interstellar” and “Dunkirk,” perhaps the most lukewarm reviews of his career, with criticism aimed at the labyrinthine plot, the sound mixing and a somewhat stunted lead performance from Washington.
All that aside, “Tenet” isn’t like anything else you’ll see on this list, and it is undeniably exciting for its entire two-and-a-half-hour runtime. I can’t say the same for most of the Best Picture nominees.
Our biggest Oscar snub. Every year, there are performances or movies that get left out of the Oscar limelight. Our choices for noteworthy ‘snubs’ that the Academy forgot about:
Bridget– “First Cow”- I acknowledge that barely anyone will have heard of this one, but it’s worth your time. A quiet and beautifully constructed western/period piece, it is indeed about a first cow…the first cow in the Oregon Territory. Though it did well at a few festivals and critics loved it, I think it getting pulled from theaters after a very short run due to COVID killed its Oscar chances.
Rob- “The Way Back” – Films released in February or March are rarely if ever aimed at Oscar voters, and Gavin O’Connor’s “The Way Back,” starring Ben Affleck as a disheveled drunk and former hometown hero returning to his alma mater to coach the basketball team, had the unfortunate distinction of being released into theaters just before the pandemic shut them down completely.
Nonetheless, it’s some of Affleck’s best work, and he’s entered a phase of his life and career where he seems completely prepared to wrestle with the demons that have plagued him throughout adulthood. I don’t have much good to say about “Mank,” so if Affleck (or Delroy Lindo in “Da 5 Bloods,” perhaps the most widely cited snub) could’ve jumped into the best actor race over Gary Oldman, it wouldn’t have bothered me much.
Pandemic Pushback. Over the last year, dozens of movies were delayed or pushed back due to the pandemic. Here’s our guess for the ones that would have been contenders if they had come out on time.
Bridget– “West Side Story”- A new version of the classic Broadway musical, this film was supposed to have been released in December. It got pushed back a whole year and will now come out the end of 2021. Will it be good? Will it soar like “Hamilton” or crash and burn like “Cats”? Who knows! On it’s side is the fact that Steven Spielberg is directing. And the Academy occasionally falls in love with a musical!
Rob- “Dune” -Is Denis Villenueve’s long gestating two-part adaptation of one of the most beloved science fiction novels in history (which I happened to read during the pandemic) going to live up to its billing as a heady epic that’s both awards worthy and crowd-pleasing? Can the French-Canadian master finally wash away the stench of David Lynch’s butchered and disowned 1984 disaster? I’m not sure, but I know I want to see “Dune” on a massive screen more than just about anything else right now. With Timothee Chalamet, Jason Momoa, Javier Bardem, Stellan Skarsgard, Zendaya, Josh Brolin and sandworms all playing key roles, this space odyssey will bring the spice, big time.
