I AM GENERALLY a pretty competent Oscars prognosticator. Not great, not terrible. But this year I find myself at a loss in several of the major categories. Some of them feel pretty obvious: Jessie Buckley is a stone-cold lock for best actress in Hamnet; if anyone beats Sinners writer-director Ryan Coogler for best original screenplay, I’ll eat my Oasis-fonted Bulwark hat.
That said: A lot of the big races feel weirdly close! Maybe it’s a mirage brought on by a too-long campaign season, I dunno. Even at the top of the ticket, though, it’s felt all year like One Battle After Another is the film to beat, and maybe it still is, but I get the sense that maybe, somehow, Sinners is going to best it? There’s precedent for Oscar forecasters underappreciating films aimed at African-American audiences, most recently with Moonlight and La La Land. One Battle After Another remains the movie of the moment, for obvious reasons, and I don’t think a Tourette’s-inspired controversy is going to shift the momentum enough. But you never know.
It’s too bad, as Sinners really is the best movie of those nominated, and the sort of movie the Oscars really should be celebrating: It’s not just a marvelous artistic achievement, it’s also the highest-grossing nominated film of the year, at least domestically. Yes, yes: Box office doesn’t matter! We don’t care what the plebs like; all that concerns us is The Art, man! And I am not only happy to admit that the tastes of the Academy and the audience have diverged over the years, I have made this argument myself: A film should not be honored solely because it made a lot of money, as lots of middling to bad movies make lots of money. But if you want people to watch the Oscars, they need to think the movies they love at least have a chance of winning.
I firmly believe we should want people to watch! Every year I say the same thing and every year it’s true: The Oscars don’t matter at all as a measure of quality. But they do matter as a way of highlighting lesser-seen, lesser-known projects. Maybe someone will see that the Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi earned a best foreign language nomination and be tempted to seek out his picture, given the war in Iran. Maybe Sirāt will win best sound like it should and folks who thought F1 was a shoo-in will consider checking it out. Train Dreams isn’t going to win best picture but it’s one of the best movies of the year and I hope someone somewhere might be inspired to check it out on Netflix.
So yes, the Oscars are silly and they don’t matter and the best movie never wins, etc., etc., etc. That’s all fine. But I will never stop believing that it’s good to remind the casual film fans out there of the breadth and depth of the cinematic experience.
Project Hail Mary review
I TRY TO PUBLISH reviews of movies the week they come out, but I didn’t want to wait on this one: Project Hail Mary is one of the most crowd-pleasing movies I’ve ever seen in my entire life. Directors Christopher Lord and Phil Miller just push all the buttons like maestros making the film sing. A quick snippet of my (unusually gushing!) review:
Project Hail Mary, from Goddard and the directing team of Christopher Miller and Phil Lord, is a little like Interstellar but with the Spielbergisms turned up to 11. It is the most perfectly crowd-pleasing movie I’ve ever seen in my life: the comedy is carefully calibrated to generate laughs on demand; the emotional well it draws from is deep and produces tears with precision; and it’s smart without feeling preachy or condescending. Indeed, it’s so successful I almost dismissed it as manipulative while I was watching it. And then I realized that if I was being manipulated, I didn’t really care.
Project Hail Mary is, in short, a masterpiece of pop filmmaking.
In a just world, this movie would be a huge hit. We’ll see how things shake out. But I think audiences are going to adore this movie and I really hope folks give it a shot.
The art and science of movie testing
SPEAKING OF AUDIENCES: I talked to Kevin Goetz this week about his recent book, How to Score in Hollywood. Kevin is the screen-testing guru, the guy behind Screen Engine/ASI, the guy who helps filmmakers fine-tune things to make sure audiences have as good a time as possible. I would’ve killed to have sat in on the test-screenings and focus groups for this movie; I bet it crushed with test audiences.
Anyway, listen to our chat and buy his book! Both this and his previous effort, Audienceology, are pretty important books to understand what’s getting made in Hollywood and how it’s getting made:
‘Big Screen or Stream?’
The folks at Open to Debate were kind enough to have me on as a guest questioner this week for their debate between Hawk Koch, film producer and former president of both the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Producers Guild of America, and Chris Aronson, formerly head of domestic distribution at Paramount. Hawk was arguing for the primacy of movie theaters; Chris for accepting the future of streaming. I could’ve listened to them go all day, I almost felt bad jumping in with my own question.
Anyway, it was a really interesting debate, and I hope you check it out:
Assigned Viewing: Interstellar (Paramount+)
Project Hail Mary is a lot like Interstellar so you should watch Interstellar. I would’ve picked The Martian here, based on an earlier novel by Andy Weir, but The Martian isn’t streaming for free anywhere. So if you don’t want to rent The Martian and you already subscribe to Paramount+, watch Interstellar.
Sonny, it’s a trade show
Sorry, Sonny, I'm not going to watch Interstellar (again) on Paramount because I canceled Paramount. I am looking forward to seeing Project Hail Mary.