Oscars Best Picture Race: Deadline’s Critics Compare Notes

I thought it was a really interesting movie, and it played very well when it played In Telluride, when they got it out there secretly. They were so nervous about letting anybody know, because it was, ‘what’s MAGA going to do?’ But I think MAGA would have no problem with this movie in most cases, except the rape scene, I would assume. They might not even care about the liposuction. Trump would though for sure.

WISE: What will Roger Stone think? He’s a kind of a pool boy in the movie, right?

HAMMOND: Roger Stone. Oh my god. All those people, they’re the really dangerous ones. The people around him, the Kash Patels, the Stephen Millers, the Roger Stones.

There’s a new book talking about the people that made The Apprentice, the TV show, and how they had to keep heavily editing the show because he would fire the best people in the first episode because he had no sense of anything. And so what they did is they just edited the hell out of it to make sense of it. But then they created him, just as Roy Cohn did. So there’s that.

Babygirl

Synopsis: A high-powered CEO puts her career and family on the line when she begins a torrid affair with her much-younger intern.
Director-screenwriter: Halina Reijn
Cast: Nicole Kidman, Harris Dickinson, Antonio Banderas, Sophie Wilde
Distributor: A24

WISE: I went into this with an open mind, which is just as well, because it confronts you from the moment you see Nicole Kidman having sex in the very first scene and then creeping off to watch some very weird pornography. I think if you make it past that, you’ve made a commitment. Is it worth it? Yeah, I think she holds it up — just. I had misgivings about it, certainly. I didn’t really think it worked. I didn’t really buy the idea that such a strong successful woman would crumble in front of the intern… Particularly this one! I just thought, well, who is he? He just didn’t have any kind of presence Also, it seemed to break its rules the whole time, in terms of their ‘contract’. He was in charge, then she was in charge, and whenever she gets confused and says, “Wait a minute, who’s in charge here?” he says things like, “Well, that’s all part of the fun, isn’t it? We’re just playing.” I found I was always being bounced out by the lack of rules. But then again, I was swept back into it by her.

If it was going to get anything awards-wise, I think she could be charming enough to make people want to go with her. And I think that’s where the film works, in that she sweeps you up in this kind of madness. As a thought exercise, it’s interesting, but as a film, it’s very, very unsatisfying. But I do think Nicole Kidman was great.

HAMMOND: Another thing that was in Venice was Disclaimer, Alfonso Cuarón’s television series for Apple TV+. And it made me think of Babygirl too, because it also gets into this very sexual need for this character who is supposedly happily married, but seducing this young guy because something is not fulfilled in her, and she knows it. You see Antonio Banderas in Babygirl as her happy husband, and it looks like everything’s great. In fact, I kept thinking, why did he take this role? He’s just this clueless guy in it. But then, oh boy, he sells it in the end to me, when you see that in the marriage there’s something false going on here and something needed.

With Nicole Kidman, I thought, as I always do, there’s nobody that takes bigger risks and she wants that, but I thought she was great. I understood that character: somebody who’s in total charge at work, tempted by this intern. If I had a problem with any character, it’s Harris Dickinson’s character, who really did not strike me as a guy in command of all of this stuff. It’s suddenly Last Tango in Paris meets 9½ Weeks and I didn’t see that coming with him. I think that character might have been a little bit contrived. Also, like Last Tango, it’s mostly dressed. I thought this was going to be this flaming-naked-bodies-on-the-screen kind of movie, from what I’d heard. I didn’t think it was that at all. It was a power trip. He says to her very early on in the movie, “You want to be told what to do.” And she succumbs to that. It is about power and relationships and it’s intriguingly directed by a woman. None of those other movies I referenced were, and for me that made it doubly intriguing, not the usual male-driven story we see in these circumstances.

The Brutalist

Synopsis: Hungarian-born Jewish architect, László Tóth emigrates to the United States of America in 1947. Initially forced to toil in poverty, he soon wins a contract that will change the course of the next 30 years of his life.
Director: Brady Corbet
Screenwriters: Brady Corbet, Mona Fastvold
Cast: Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, Guy Pearce, Joe Alwyn, Raffey Cassidy, Stacy Martin, Emma Laird, Isaach De Bankolé, and Alessandro Nivola
Distributor: A24/ Focus Features

WISE: I was very surprised to see The Brutalist popping, but it’s for all the right reasons. First of all, it’s long and it has an intermission, but actually it is a kind of ‘hangout’ movie, which I wasn’t expecting. I did actually enjoy spending time with the characters. I wasn’t so enamored of the second half, which makes some surprising choices, but I was never bored by it. In fact, I got impatient during the 15-minute intermission because I wanted to get back straight into the movie. And I think a lot of people when they see it will be surprised at how commercial it is. It’s actually very performance-driven. Adrien Brody—is it too early to say this is his best so far? I think it’s one of his best performances.

HAMMOND: I saw it in Toronto and all these raves were coming out of the Venice Film Festival. At Toronto, they had a special press screening early on. I said, maybe I should get there more than 15 minutes early if everybody’s suddenly going to this, based on what was coming out of Venice. I get there and there’s a line around the block. I was told by someone they’ve been standing here since 7am and it was raining, and it didn’t matter.

I was riveted by the film. I was surprised. 3 and a half hours, that’s a lot. Plus an intermission, which is so unusual these days, even if you’ve got a 3 and a half hour-movie, Scorsese did it, and other people, but they don’t stick in an intermission, so I thought that was good. The first half was better for me than the second half. I thought in the second half it got into a weird darkness, but overall, this is an epic you don’t see made anymore. And I would agree the performances are outstanding. Adrien Brody is just phenomenal in this throughout, and Guy Pearce just blew me away too. The Brutalist is one definitely worth seeing and I think it’ll play very well with the Academy. The Venice reviews helped I think, and set that movie up well. I do think it has a shot at Best Picture. We’ll have to see.

Conclave

Synopsis: Cardinal Lawrence must oversee the selection of a new pope. Surrounded by powerful religious leaders in the Vatican, he discovers secrets that could shake the foundation of the Roman Catholic Church. Adapted from the Robert Harris novel.
Director: Edward Berger
Screenwriter: Peter Staughan
Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, Isabella Rossellini, John Lithgow, Carlos Diehz, Lucian Msamati
Distributor: Focus Features

HAMMOND: Berger made All Quiet on the Western Front, which won an Oscar and the BAFTA, and what an amazing second film here, that in every way, exceeds my expectations. As a story of the election of the Pope, I’ve seen this kind of thing before, but this movie is riveting. You’re on the edge of your seat watching it, with an outstanding cast. Ralph Fiennes, I think, is going to be nominated, and I would also nominate Isabella Rossellini, who in a very brief scene just knocks it out of the park, along with John Lithgow and Stanley Tucci. This movie is a really thoughtful one and it also has great twists and turns and great crafts. That’s why I think it’s going to appeal across the board to the Academy voters.

WISE: What Berger has done here is he’s taken very successful book and found a very visual way to translate the way those kinds of densely worded page-turners are read, into a very visually-driven kind of thriller. When I was reading the book, I was thinking, how is this going to work as a film? But with this script by Peter Straughan, he found that way, particularly with using Isabella Rossellini’s character, to make it just more than a boys’ club, and to comment on not just the esoteric process of electing a new pope, but also the political machinations that feed into that. I think he’s such an intensely detailed director. He storyboards everything. I visited the set and saw that first-hand.

I think he’s really nailed in the film what the actual point of the book is, and I think that’s what people will respond to. To my mind, this is the kind of film that can redefine in a way what an Oscar movie actually is, because it isn’t an obvious blockbuster, but he’s taken a fairly commercial book and made a very arty and interesting yet surprisingly commercial thriller out of that.

HAMMOND: I would add, when it premiered in Telluride where I saw it, there were a number of Academy voters there and the talk on the street was about this movie, how it popped there. You can get a good idea from that that this is going to go all the way, at least to multiple Oscar nominations.

Emilia Pérez

Synopsis: Emilia, a cartel leader, enlists the help of unappreciated lawyer Rita to help her fake her death so she can live authentically as her true self.
Director-screenwriter: Jacques Audiard
Cast: Karla Sofía Gascón, Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez, Adriana Paz, Edgar Ramirez
Distributor: Netflix

HAMMOND: I saw this at the Cannes Film Festival, and I just thought it was such an original film, and unexpected from Jacques Audiard, the French director. There’s nothing French about this movie, but it is the French International entry. What Audiard did was he told a compelling story of the title character, Emilia Perez, played by Karla Sofía Gascón. You will be blown away. When I saw this movie, I came out of it and thought, ‘Wow, she’s amazing. I’ve got to find out who played the guy in the beginning of it too.’ I was blown away when I found out that the same actress played him. All of the performances are great by these women. That’s why they shared the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Actress. All four of them are great.

WISE: I was also just completely blown away by it. It’s surprising on every level. Again, talking about length, it’s around 2 hours, 10 minutes, which seems a bit daunting going in, but it flies by. As a musical, it’s hard to know where the drama ends and the music begins, because it’s a little bit like Annette, the Sparks musical—the singing and dancing is seamless with the action to the extent that you have no idea how he did it. How do you rehearse something like that? The way the dialogue just splinters into these songs, and then while you’re still trying to figure out how that worked, the story’s moved on and you are into another one. I think the lead actress, Gascon, is going to be the MVP of the season. I think she’ll be very much in demand everywhere. She’s very funny and personable and I think that will disarm a lot of people who might have preconceptions about the film and what it should and shouldn’t be doing.

HAMMOND: They might also have preconceptions about Selena Gomez. She is so popular now with Only Murders in the Building, and in her music career. And she’s a revelation in this movie too, in addition to Zoe Saldaña and Adriana Paz—all of them are great. You talked about the musical element, but Netflix is not hiding the fact that this is a musical, as other studios tend to hide their musicals as non-musicals. Take a look at the trailer for Folie à Deux, you would never know that’s a musical, but that’s a big blown-out musical. They think that’s going to turn people off, but Netflix is embracing the musical aspects of this movie too, and that makes it an original in every which way.

WISE: I think Audiard is reaching that point where he could easily pop into the Director category.

HAMMOND: And there are several International films in recent years that have been in the Best Picture race. Parasite was one that actually won, which was the first time, and it was the first winner at Cannes to win at the Oscars in 50 years. The Academy has become much more international in its membership now, and so more willing to do this. France has not had a winner since Indochine, I think, 30 years ago or so. And they haven’t had a nominee since around 2018. They’ve been on a cold streak when it comes to Oscars. So, it’d be ironic to see France finally win with a movie that is anything but French except for its director. We’ll see.

Maria

Synopsis: The tumultuous and tragic story of the life of the world’s greatest female opera singer, relived and reimagined during her final days in 1970s Paris.
Director: Pablo Larraín
Screenwriter: Steven Knight
Cast: Angelina Jolie, Pierfrancesco Favino, Alba Rohrwacher, Haluk Bilginer, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Stephen Ashfield, Valeria Golino
Distributor: Netflix

HAMMOND: I was really impressed with Angelina Jolie here. I think the movie itself is not going to be to every taste here. He has a certain style in this sub-genre with Jackie and Spencer which I thought was underrated, but it’s so nice for me to see her back doing a role like this. She’s quite impressive with her film career, but to get her teeth into a role like this is unexpected because she’s not really a singer, but it’s the best lip-syncing I’ve seen. And they say she actually did study for seven months. She does sing. She actually told me that at Telluride too. There’s a whole technical thing where her voice is blended in, and that’s why it’s so effective. But if you look at the end credits, every single song says, ‘performed by Maria Callas.’ So, I don’t know, there may be a technical thing there, but she did it and really was convincing to me. I had seen a play on Maria Callas years ago at the Mark Taper Forum Masterclass, and I was fascinated by Maria Callas. I’m not an opera fan at all, but that was a great play. That’s what I thought this was going to be, but this was more esoteric, and it was more about her end days and her life. And I thought for that performance, I really recommend it. If you want to see why Angelina Jolie is a great actress, this is a movie to see.

WISE: I am not a fan of the way Pablo Larraín has this kind of fetish for a certain kind of famous woman, and I thought this one was going be possibly the worst, actually. But I think it’s actually the best. He started with Jackie and then Spencer, and I think this one actually has the best idea and the strongest execution. And, as Pete says, it’s the best performance. I thought with Jackie and Spencer he was mostly working with impersonations and then just having those actresses kind of sleepwalk through a series of things that may or may not have happened. Whereas I like the more abstract nature of this one. It took on board the fact that she was a bit of a piece of work and it addressed her flaws perhaps more than the other films. Jackie bored the hell out of me. And Spencer. I’m in agreement with Pete on this one: It’s Angelina’s film. Callas is a much more complex character than the previous two. She was a much more active participant—in terms her own fame or even her own myth—than the other two, and I think Maria addresses those complexities. She’s very, very good in it.

Queer

Synopsis: Outcast expat American Bill Lee recounts his life in Mexico City. He pursues a young man named Allerton, a US Navy serviceman recently discharged from Jacksonville, Florida. Based on William S. Burroughs’ book.
Directo Luca Guadagnio
Screenwriter: Justin Kuritzkes
Cast: Daniel Craig, Drew Starkey, Jason Schwartzman, Lesley Manville, Henrique Zaga
Distributors: A24, Lucky Red

WISE: I have a very personal attachment to this. I visited Burroughs at his home in Kansas about 30 years ago for an interview. I’ve read a lot of Burroughs and seen the adaptations. I’m not a huge fan of Naked Lunch, even though I probably said I was when it came out [laughs], but I think Queer absolutely nails the essence of what Burroughs has written. It’s Burroughs’ most accessible book. It came out very late in his career, and so it made, retroactively, Burroughs’ writing make a lot of sense, because up until that point, his work was deemed to be very druggy and inaccessible, and people romanticized how incoherent it sometimes was. But when you heard more about his backstory in this book Queer, it began to make a lot more sense.

The film takes place in the year following an incident where he accidentally shot and killed his wife Joan, and if anything’s going to impede its Oscar chances, that could be it. That’s also where the film might not fly with a lot of viewers, because you maybe have to know the timeframe. So if you don’t know who she is, it could be confusing, since Joan turns up in Bill Lee’s dreams—where he sees her disembodied body—and the shooting is referenced very explicitly at the end. The first half of Queer is very straightforward, but the second half is much more of a stylized reflection of what his writing was trying to do, how he was trying to transcend all the regrets of his life and become something other.

If we’re going to stick to the performances, I think Daniel Craig really did a very, very good job of inhabiting a Burroughs-like character, without doing what Naked Lunch’s [Peter] Weller did, which was basically a very good impersonation. Daniel Craig does a lot with wardrobe and a little bit of the voice, and you can still hear a little bit of his English accent poking through, but for me it works. I thought it was one of the best Burroughs adaptations.

HAMMOND: This film wasn’t what I expected. I hadn’t read the book, so I’m going to talk as a person that hasn’t read the book, and in the middle of the movie, it turns into The Lost City of Z. I’m thinking, wait, I thought this was Death in Venice, where he becomes obsessed by a young guy. But it wasn’t anything that I expected it to be. It’s an exceptional showcase for Daniel Craig’s talents, which he doesn’t usually get credit for. I saw a movie years ago called The Mother and people don’t think he’s done anything but James Bond and so on. They should watch him in some of his earlier stuff. He’s a great actor, and this gave him the chance to show that. So I went with the character, if not the story.

It turns into this bizarre thing where they’re in the jungle and then it gets very obscure at the end. I don’t think it’s for everyone, and I wonder what’s going to happen with the Academy when they see this movie. I think it’s a very hard sell. I think Daniel Craig will bring them in and I think they’ll appreciate his performance and I think that’s about as far as it’s going to go.

The Room Next Door

Synopsis: Ingrid, a best-selling writer, rekindles a relationship with her friend Martha, a war reporter. The two women immerse themselves in their pasts, but Martha has a request that will test their newly strengthened bond. Adapted from the novel by Sigrid Nunez.
Director-screenwriter: Pedro Almodóvar
Cast: Tilda Swinton, Julianne Moore, Alessandro Nivola, Juan Diego Botto, Raúl Arévalo, Melina Mathews, Victoria Luengo
Distributor: Sony Pictures Classics

HAMMOND: The Room Next Door is Pedro Almodóvar’s first English-language film. He did an English language short a couple of years ago, but this is the first big feature. And I think you could just drop Spanish actresses into this and it would be the same movie. I mean, I did not perceive any sense that this was a director working in a language that’s not his own—an issue you often see with first-time English-language films. I thought Ingmar Bergman even had a problem with that at times. I don’t know, there’s often something missing. But in this case, I thought it was pure Almodóvar and just great. I think it’s one of his best movies. Thanks also to Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton proving there’s no better male director of female actors out there. I mean, he really is the George Cukor of his day—someone who can bring out these performances that he wants.

Both Swinton and Moore are terrific in this film and it’s an interesting subject too. She wants her friend to help her die. She’s ready to go. The Swinton character was quite intriguing and Moore’s character, you think at first, OK, well she’s sort of helping along. Then she knocks it out of the park in the second half, it really becomes that she’s the driving force of this film. Across the board, I thought it was terrific.

WISE: I feel like people want Almodóvar to stay who he is and what he is. So, I’m mixed on this, in terms of, why not make it with some Spanish actors? But these actresses are amazing, both of them. He has an easy ride to an Oscar. It’s his time, and so there may be a drive to take it to Best Picture. Saying that, it would be a shame if he won and then people said, “Well, it’s kind of a lifetime achievement thing.”

But as Pete says it, people underestimate him, as they don’t understand what a cineaste Almodóvar is. He’s done the work, he studied these films. He isn’t compared to George Cukor by accident. He knows those movies, he knows what Cukor did, he knows what John Ford did, or Anthony Mann. He’s a very widely read and very intelligent director. So, I have mixed feelings about it only because I’m being a bit of a film snob and worrying what other people will think about it, rather than enjoying the film.

HAMMOND: Well, I think it’s interesting too that it won the Golden Lion at Venice and he’d never won that top prize. He’d never won the Palme d’Or, he’s not won Best Picture at the Oscars, and this could be the thing that does it. The irony is, as it’s his first English language feature film, as you’re saying, maybe people will say, “Oh, it’s because of that,” but to me, it is seamless with his other work, and it shouldn’t be penalized or celebrated either way because it’s in English. Ingmar Bergman had a Best Picture nomination eventually for Cries and Whispers, but Almodóvar’s never had one.

WISE: Maybe he will now.

Saturday Night

Synopsis: Based on a true story, the film follows the humor, chaos and magic of what happened behind the scenes in the 90 minutes leading up to the first broadcast of Saturday Night Live.
Director: Jason Reitman
Screenwriters: Jason Reitman, Gil Kenan
Cast: Gabriel LaBelle, Dyan O’Brien, Willem Dafoe, J.K. Simmons, Rachel Sennott, Cory Michael Smith, Lamorne Morris, Matt Wood, Nicholas Braun, Finn Wolfhard, Jon Batiste, Ella Hunt, Cooper Hoffman, Andrew Barth Feldman, Naomi McPherson, Kaia Gerber
Distributors: Universal, Sony Pictures Releasing

WISE: Being British, I don’t really have any concept of Saturday Night Live. It’s weird, because in the U.K. we were saturated in its influence, we see it everywhere, but it never took off there. We tried to copy the “zoo” format. We actually did have a show called Zoo, I think. So, I thought, well, I don’t know if I’ll get this, but then I got into it. I like the madness of it all. I think everyone can relate to the idea of what Reitman wants to do, which is to articulate that chaotic moment before you’ve made your art statement, when you don’t still don’t know what it actually is and you’re still looking for it. I think he articulates that aspect of creation very well: They’re all working hard, but no one actually knows what they’re doing. And then, of course, everyone looks back and they can see exactly what it is. But I wish Willem Dafoe would take some time off, because one of the best things about the movie is Willem Dafoe. He plays hard-nosed producer David Tebet, who’s kind of the ‘axe’ that’s always about to fall on the show. [Laughs.] I’m almost a bit bored of William Defoe being brilliant in everything, because it takes the shine off it when you say, “William Defoe is really good in this,” because everybody knows that’s what you’re going to say.

The film did actually fill in a lot of gaps in terms of my Saturday Night Live knowledge, but I still don’t know who half of those people were. I think I’ll be interested to see whether it does gather any momentum, because if it does become a hit with the Academy, it’s more likely to be as a piece of filmmaking. So I don’t think it works as a piece of nostalgia necessarily, because I didn’t feel like I was left out of a big rose-tinted look back at a big piece of American cultural history.

HAMMOND: It was a huge success at Telluride on its opening night and of course they played it on Saturday. The person introducing it said, “Live from Telluride! It’s Saturday night.” And so there was such a want-to-see and I thought it played great. It’s comedy, and Jason Reitman who directed it and co-wrote it with Gil Kenan, I thought, had a great idea here and really executed it. At 90 minutes it moves with the clock going just as it did that night when they’re going to go live. And all of it is true, but it’s condensed. It’s things that happened, but not all in those 90 minutes and that’s what they have to do in a movie like that. But I thought that was brilliant the way they worked it in. I also think this is another case of a great ensemble cast, perfectly cast.

The casting director, John Papsidera, actually wrote me after my review and said, “Since you love the cast so much, I was the casting director.” I said, “Yes, I agree with you that you did a great job and right down the line with all of these characters.” Willem Dafoe as Dave Tebet was perfect. And for me, J.K. Simmons as Milton Berle, was so deliciously knife-cutting and on the edge—that performance of who Milton Berle was, the old NBC variety star, the last guy that did it live, facing a new generation. And I thought, that’s where the film took this concept and gave it a lot of gravitas with what it was really about and what was happening. I was an NBC page once, and Finn Wolfhard as the page was perfect. I will not wear a blue jacket to this day because of that job. I was in Burbank though, I was not in New York, but I started two days after Saturday Night Live began at NBC and I was involved in that whole thing, and even had a legendary experience with Gilda Radner and Chevy Chase coming out to LA that my fellow pages never stopped talking about. But nevertheless, I saw what Wolfhard did and got a kick out of it. The costume design was authentic.

In the same way that Damon’s looking at it from a British point of view and not knowing the show at all and still being able to see what a good job this was, whether it has any Oscar chances, I don’t know. Comedy is really an endangered species when it comes to the Academy. If they have a chance not to vote for a comedy, they generally do. They’ve nominated plenty of them, especially in screenplay, but I don’t know if it gets into Best Picture.

September 5

Synopsis: The ABC Sports TV control booth faces an ethical and nail-biting dilemma in covering the first televised act of terrorism when the militant Palestinian group known as Black September took the entire Israeli Olympic team hostage in Munich.
Director: Tim Felbaum
Screenwriters: Tim Felbaum, Moritz Binder, Alex David
Cast: Peter Sarsgaard, John Magaro, Ben Chaplin, Leonie Benesch
Distributor: Paramount Pictures