An Oscars Grouch: Blurbing For The Weekend 1/23/26

The Academy Awards were invented to separate the stars from the workers in pre-union Hollywood, rewarding those that pleased producers and promoting competition rather than solidarity. In 2022, Best Picture went to CODA, a film Apple pointedly only released theatrically to the extent necessary to qualify for the award. They didn’t even report grosses! Between the ceremony’s origins and continuing fealty to powerful distributors (remember when Andrea Riseborough caused ruffles for an atypical PR campaign?), complaining that an actor or movie didn’t get a nomination or win is a rather neoliberal gripe. If you want to preserve the theatrical experience, or see cinema as an artform that should exist outside of Hollywood, appealing to AMPAS' better angels is a comical waste of time. I don’t know who said the Oscars are Hollywood's Employee Of The Year Awards, but they were right, with all upsets and disappointments turning logical accordingly once you grasp it.

Not that we don’t like to see cool people be appreciated at work! I’m genuinely happy Delroy Lindo received a nomination for Sinners, decades after his performances in Crooklyn and Clockers were ignored. I can name plenty of other nominations and wins over the years that made me smile. But as cause for critical handwringing and demands for reform, the Oscars are an inherent, and intended, distraction. Enjoy the pageantry, razz the foolishness, or ignore them entirely, but why bother wrestling with who gets a paperweight?

As the number of movies I see in theaters depends largely on who else wants me to go, or what's hailed as super-spooky, I haven’t seen the overwhelming majority of nominees this year. I still haven't seen any Best Picture nominees from last year. Even that pope thing! So take the following list of this year's big nominees, ranked from most likely to least likely I'll watch them, with a big grain of salt.

WEAPONS: Saw it! Loved it!

SINNERS: Saw it! Loved it!

ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER: This looks like a chore and a half in terms of a bubble-encased Gen X auteur airing his weird political, racial and sexual hangups. Plus, I like claiming I won’t watch anything starring the problematic cigarette butt named Sean Penn. But I’ve been told it’s enjoyably novel to watch Leonardo DiCaprio play a dad in a comedy, and Benicio Del Toro is always a hoot as somebody’s buddy. I certainly enjoy Leo's manchild Nicholson energy more than Joaquin Phoenix's anguished mugging, as far as artisanal blockbuster content goes. Battle is on HBO MAX already, and I might have a take on it in a week. Or four.

THE SECRET AGENT: People I respect liked this enough that I’m avoiding learning much before it shows up on Disney/Hulu. That’s where NEON-distributed titles appear first, right?

IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT: I’m always wary about “timely” movies. Who wants to say an Iranian film about torture and totalitarianism by a political prisoner isn‘t good? But I’m keeping an eye out and planning to give it a look.

BUGONIA: Yorgos Lanthimos directs like Michael Haneke, sharing a fondness for cold, brutally European wide shots. He also tells stories like Pixar, reveling in the grim specifics of a surreal conceit until it loses all metaphorical value. I saw and was disappointed by Dogtooth in theaters, so it’s been a real trudge watching others increasingly celebrate his tales of how much it would suck if you were literally dehumanized with age, or how much it would suck if victims of your negligence could force you to kill loved ones, etc, etc, until they gradually realized Lanthimos doesn’t have much to say behind the campy grotesquerie. Tired of grumbling, I've avoided him since The Favourite, a relatively whimsical period piece that was unsurprisingly his award season breakthrough. That said, I’ve loved Emma Stone since Superbad, and I’ll probably see their frantic collaborations where she dances, fucks and writhes like a lunatic eventually. Get it, queen!

IF I HAD LEGS, I’D KICK YOU: I dig Rose Byrne, and this tale of motherly anguish sure looks more grounded than the one where Edward & Katniss get their Cassavetes on. But a serious awards turn from great comedic actress is less exciting to me than a great comedic actress making a great comedy. The latter may be rarer these days, too!

MARTY SUPREME: The Curse aside, tempered by an actual comedian trying to be funny, I find the Safdies' whole "let’s zoom in on this dude’s wart while he talks about being a winner" aesthetic tiresome. Having a visible deformity myself, I‘m not fond of guys who seem like they’d hire me as an extra for it, eager to have audiences debate whether it’s right to flinch. I also don’t care about Timothee Chalamet, or any young actor who seemingly exists solely to navigate the four commercial quadrants with cool cachet intact. But Supreme sounds batshit enough I might give it a click and fifteen minutes. At least it doesn’t ask me to take Adam Sandler seriously!

F1: I haven’t managed to sit through the smug bravado of Ford Vs Ferrari, or even glimpse at whatever Adam Driver was up to in his classy car movie. If I see F1 before those, it’ll solely be due to my ongoing interest in Brad Pitt as the stealth beta-turned-alpha male.

SENTIMENTAL VALUE: I usually like Stellan Skarsgard. I usually don’t like movies about movies. Stories about people who can’t show love to people who deserve love will either make me cry or make me mad. The next Scandinavian movie I see will probably have a knife in it, and not be Sentimental Value.

BLUE MOON: Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater have made such hay with movies about swaggering, self-impressed, bohemian white men like Ethan Hawke and Richard Linklater, that it feels especially egregious they’d film a celebrity biopic outside their milieu, with Hawke walking on his knees and wearing a skull cap. Call Julie Delpy and get started on Before Brunch, assholes. Let short, sexually ambiguous musical lovers tell this story themselves. 

FRANKENSTEIN: To see this, I'd have to renew Netflix and begin work on a Do I Really Hate Guillermo Del Toro? post. No rush there.

SONG SUNG BLUE: Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson in Almost Famous II: Hot August Boogaloo. Any single ladies need a snarky man to keep them company on the couch for this one? After years of watching MST3K, I’m good at pacing my cracks between moments of dialogue. Otherwise, pass.

HAMNET: I love Jessie Buckley almost as much as I love Emma Stone, and regularly debate rewatching the jaw-droppingly dubious Men just to spend quality time with her. Paul Mescal seems fine if you're into that kind of thing, too. And, though I love the irony of Steven Spielberg producing a raw, earthy reboot of Shakespeare In Love thirty years after his raw, earthy WWII movie lost the Oscar to Shakespeare In Love, it’s not an irony I need to pay direct witness to. I also haven’t seen Chloe Zhao’s Eternals yet. If I love that, maybe I’ll watch this.

TRAIN DREAMS: A period piece about a destitute railway worker, starring Joel “Why?” Edgerton, with omnipresent narration? I’d need a big bag of money, or a lap dance throughout, to bother.

I finished a book last week! Two, assuming you count audio and print! On paper was Can’t Slow Down, a long look at the popular music world of 1984 by Michaelangelo Matos. Mini-me was confused when I told him the book ends with Live Aid, because that happened in 1985. I explained 1984 was more the center of Can't Slow Down's story than a tight parameter, but I respect his precocious, pedantic gripe. If pushed, I suppose I could offer my own. But the book has so many great anecdotes and details about the dawn of multiplatinum that I have no desire to complain. Recommended if you like pondering the imperial era of Phil Collins and Lionel Richie, but aren’t going to chase down original sources.

Audiowise, I enjoyed the Joe Hill short story collection Full Throttle, which features two stories co-written by his proud papa Stephen King, and opens with a foreword about life as King’s proud son (a parentage Hill only admitted after getting a book deal). I can’t speak to his novels (though I did watch both seasons of NOS4A2), but Hill’s short stories are informed by past masters of horror prose, without being either weakly beholden or desperate to stand out. A magic fairy world is discovered by a capitalist instead of a kid. Dazed and confused burnouts fuck with the wrong carny, the epic consequences not really fair but thrilling to read. An adult orphan who just wants to read finds out ghosts do too. Some stories I recognized from adaptations on Shudder’s Creepshow, but found improved here, thanks to darker, more ambiguous endings. There’s an impressive degree of perspective behind the confident craft, as if Hill knows he’s doing himself and everyone else proud, and that’s plenty. To put it cutely, Stephen King flew off a balcony (and survived!), so Joe Hill could run every morning and stay fit. 

If you miss when pop arthouse wasn't all Oscar bait or audition reels for superhero flicks, you might get a contact high from Psycho Therapy: The Shallow Tale Of A Writer Who Decided To Write About A Serial Killer. As the title suggests, it’s about a pretentious, struggling novelist in New York City, his exasperated, breadwinning wife, and a retired serial killer played by Steve Buscemi. The sense of locale isn’t as rich as it is in old NY-based indies featuring Steve Buscemi, and there’s third act problems. But Therapy is enjoyably small ball, centered on an anxious-avoidant romantic dynamic with no real hero or villain. Or maybe just villainy, depending where you’re at on former college sweethearts drowning in unchecked contempt or obliviousness after more than a decade together. And then there’s Stevie B, the ghost of jazzy VHS past, just glad to see overeducated neuroses, dimly lit rooms and gunplay can still co-exist in this town. FIVE BAGS OF POPCORN.

My popcorn ratings for movies are explained here. All other comments, questions, cries of contempt, and panting missives from weary divorcees begging me to watch Song Sung Blue with them in matching silk robes, can go to anthonyisright at gmail dot com. Stay warm, Minnesota. You rock.