Jaws. Close Encounters of the Third Kind. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Raiders of the Lost Ark., Empire of the Son. Jurassic Park. Amistad. Saving Private Ryan. A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. Minority Report. War of the Worlds. Munich. War Horse. Lincoln. The Post. Ready Player One. West Side Story. This massive list of Steven Spielberg-directed movies can be rattled off easily by anyone over 35 who grew up in America. Spielberg could be a synonym for the term “movie director.” However, with 30 full-length featured directing credits already to his name, 2022’s The Fabelmans is the one that is being called, if not semi-biographical, at least his most personal. If that’s true, we get a pretty neat, though not overly sentimental, look at Spielberg’s early influences and how he began honing his craft before becoming the most distinguished director of the last 50 years.
Category Archives: Academy Award Nominees
The Banshees of Inisherin (2022)
Dark comedy is not a genre that was made for me. Though there are many exceptions to the rule, the comedies I most enjoy star actors such as Will Ferrell (Old School, The Campaign, Step Brothers, The Other Guys), Adam Sandler (Billy Madison, Happy Gilmore, The Waterboy), Jason Segel (I Love You, Man, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, The Five-Year Engagement, Sex Tape, or Ed Helms (The Hangover, We’re the Millers, Vacation). Some of my other favorite comedies are There’s Something About Mary, all three of The original-cast American Pie films, Meet the Parents, Daddy’s Home, Get Him to the Greek, Hall Pass, The Internship, and Long Shot. Some comedies I greatly liked from my adolescence include Uncle Buck, Parenthood, Father of the Bride, Three Amigos, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, The Money Pit, and A League of Their Own.
The Whale (2022)
Brendan Fraser has been the odds-on favorite to win this year’s Academy Award for Best Actor since reviews from the 79th Venice International Film Festival on September 4 started pouring in. This was when the first images of Fraser’s transformation into a 600-pound reclusive online English teacher began to surface. Suddenly, Austin Butler (Elvis), this year’s darling and thought-to-be shoo-in, had a serious contender for the top prize for acting. With a few more films still to debut at the time of this writing, this category is a two-actor race. However, having seen both performances, first Butler and now Fraser in Darren Aronofsky’s (Black Swan, The Wrestler) The Whale, there is a strong case for either man. These two performances transcend anything I have seen in a year that could be stronger in this category. However, Fraser’s redemption story of a once A-list actor who has fallen into almost complete obscurity for the last decade will undoubtedly play a significant factor in the voters’ minds. This performance lived up to its hype, and this award feels like Fraser’s to lose.
TÁR (2022)
Cate Blanchett is the female actor version of Daniel Day-Lewis. Daniel Day-Lewis is the male actor version of Cate Blanchett. Tomato Tomahto. While Day-Lewis may be a little more selective in his roles than Blanchett, resulting in fewer Oscar nominations (six – all in leading roles) than Blanchett’s seven (four in a leading role, three in a supporting role). Day-Lewis has won three Oscars, to Blanchett’s two (The Aviator and Blue Jasmine). Day-Lewis (65 years old at the time of this post) has said he is retired, finishing his career in 2016, carrying an Oscar nomination for Phantom Thread with him. However, Blanchett is anything but finished. In the discussion for the best in her craft, Blanchett is a sure-fire lock for her eighth Oscar nomination and the early leader for her role as Lydia Tar in Todd Field’s (Little Children, In the Bedroom) meticulous-crafted and timely TÁR.
Till (2022)
As I watched the beginning of Chinonye Chukwu’s (Alaskaland, Clemency) true story Till, my mind kept returning to two different thoughts. The first was the film’s timeframe, thinking about my grandparents and realizing that the film’s lead character, Mamie Till-Mobley (The Harder They Fall, The Devil to Pay), was about the same age as my grandparents when the film took place (mostly) in 1955. The second was how I thought Till felt like a stage play, as much as it did a feature-length movie. I pondered how a live experience might feel. Sadly and shamefully, I only became aware of Emmett Till’s story for the first time when I saw the trailer. While I knew there were parts that I knew would be brutal, it was it wasn’t until we got to the film’s second act that I truly began to understand the story’s magnitude and felt that this story would be nearly impossible to pull off as a stage performance because of how draining it might be for the actors to go through the experience repeatedly, as well as how a live performance might devastate unprepared attendees.