Give Emma Stone (La La Land, Battle of the Sexes) this year’s Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role. This category is going to be STACKED for 2023-released, eligible movies. With six weeks left before the nominations, I have seen all films perceived as frontrunners. Lily Gladstone (Kill of the Flower Moon) was the thought-to-be shoo-in for most of the year heading into the fall. Gladstone delivers an award-deserving performance. However, I would rather see her considered in the Best Actress in a Supporting Role category, where I think that performance fits better (at the time of this post, it is still being determined which category Gladstone will be submitted for. The others expected to be in consideration for Best Actress in a Leading Role are Greta Lee (Past Lives), Carey Mulligan (Maestro), Margot Robbie (Barbie), and Sandra Hüller (Anatomy of a Fall). Each is deserving of a nomination. No one in this group has a chance to beat Stone or Gladstone. Stone is my pick to win.
Category Archives: Margaret Qualley
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is arguably my favorite Quentin Tarantino’s (Inglorious Bastards, Django Unchained) movie. However, that isn’t saying a lot since he is not one of my favorite directors out there. I admit that there is an audience for his movies. I’m just not a part of that audience. For me, his films are too often over the top, are loaded with extreme and unneeded violence, and contain the foulest language you’ll hear from a big-budget movie any year that one of his movies was released. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was FAR different than his previous eight films. The story was not over the top. The cursing, while present, was used to accent a verbal exchange rather than serve as the root of it. And outside of a 10-15 minute sequence, there wasn’t any over-the-top violence. This movie was long and a bit boring, but it wasn’t bad. It also had excellent acting performances.
The Nice Guys (2016)
“Nice Guys Finish Last.” That’s a saying we’ve all heard before. The grunge band Green Day wrote an iconic song about it in the mid-1990s. I’ll alter the quote a little in saying that The Nice Guys finishes last. This was not my favorite movie. I knew that I would probably feel this way going into the film, but I was willing to sacrifice the two hours because it starred two of my favorite actors in Ryan Gosling (Blue Valentine, Drive) and Russell Crowe (Gladiator, A Beautiful Mind). Despite its 90% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, I had no faith in this movie. Its style wasn’t my favorite. Shane Black (Iron Man 3, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang) style for directing this movie was similar to that of Joel and Ethan Coen in that it blended comedy, drama, action, dark comedy, crime (both organized and unorganized), and even small bits of horror to try to come up with a unique idea. Was The Nice Guys a unique idea? No, not really?
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