While I wouldn’t go so far as to say that The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences did him a solid by selecting him as a Best Actor nominee, it does feel, in a way, that Bill Nighy (Love Actually, Notes on a Scandal) was chosen for a remarkable lengthy career rather than his performance in Oliver Hermanus (Moffie, The Endless River) underwhelming Living. While it scores high on Rotten Tomatoes (critics: 96%, audiences: 86%), the film has a more realistic 7.5/10 on IMDb and an 81 Metascore. Even those marks seem high for a mostly unremarkable movie. It earned just $2,000,000 domestically, which isn’t necessarily bad for an independent film but is relatively low for a movie with multiple Oscar nominations (Best Adapted Screenplay was the film’s second nomination category).
Category Archives: Drama
Babylon (2022)
Love it or hate it. There isn’t much middle ground or neutrality regarding Damien Chazelle’s (La La Land, First Man) divisive Babylon, a fantastical look at the rise and fall of the Hollywood movie industry during the 1920s. While some might believe its 56% /52 % scores on Rotten Tomatoes suggest it’s an ordinary movie, those average scores may result from people either loving or hating it. I enjoyed the movie. It is far from being in my top ten of the year. With only a couple of 2022 films left to watch, Babylon sits at #16 (out of the 74 2022-released films I’ve seen). It’s a fine film worth viewing.
The Inspection (2022)
Heavy military boot camp movies cannot help but draw comparisons to Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket. The groundbreaking drama showcased the lengths to which the United States Military Academies sometimes go to “break” their recruits. Another great example is the under-appreciated but long-remembered G.I. Jane. Both films featured recruits who were not wanted (Full Metal Jacket with the obese, dimwitted Leonard “aka Gomer Pyle” Lawrence, played fantastically by Vincent D’Onofrio, or Demi Moore as the lone trial candidate in a U.S. Navy female integration program in G.I. Jane). A similar example is Men of Honor, the story of Carl Brashear (Cuba Gooding Jr.), the first African-American U.S. Navy Diver.
Close (2022)
While the lock for this year’s Best International Feature Film appears to be the fantastically made All Quiet on the Western Front (it’s the only international film nominated in the Best Picture category), 2022 has a slew of movies that may have had a chance to win the category in recent years. Most notable on the list are Argentina’s Argentina (1985), Ireland’s The Quiet Girl, and Belgium’s Close, director Lukas Dhont’s (Girl) on the loss of innocence.
The Son (2022)
Entering awards season two years removed from the success of his directorial debut, The Father, a film that was nominated for six Academy Awards, winning two, Florian Zeller’s follow-up, The Son, had some lofty, albeit slightly unrealistic expectations, if for no other reason than that some deemed it a continuation of the story. In contrast, others viewed its Christmas Day limited release as indicating that the production company believed the movie would likely receive the same critical acclaim (98% critics, 94% audience) as The Father and wanted to keep the film fresh in voters’ minds as much as possible. Sadly, the film failed to resonate with either group (a paltry 26% among critics and a lukewarm 67% among audiences). As a result, the film will fail to reach $1,000,000 at the box office despite a star-studded cast that flanked (and outmatched) the relatively unknown Zen McGrath (Dig), who played the title character.