-Stephen Spielberg thanked Tom Cruise for saving movies with Top Gun. You can call the film over-rated due to how big it blew up but, by that standard, a lot of things are overrated. Think of how little you expected when you walked into that theater and think of how you (most likely) were moved; how well done all of the film's elements were. Moreso, think of how this was not a Marvel film and managed to rule the Box Office for 3 weeks in the middle of Summer. It was the top grossing film of the year in an age where the only stuff thriving is superheroes and cartoons.
-Best director is likely going to two guys named Daniel. Although I don't love Oscars being used as lifetime achievement awards (like Don Ameche in Cocoon or Lee Grant in Shampoo who were indistinguishable from the rest of their casts when they won Academy Awards; I'll go to my grave saying Al Pacino did a great job in Scent of a Woman if people stop comparing it to the 70s), I tend to think it's a little embarrassing to have people who aren't particularly accomplished in that category. More than any other award, we can't tell what a director does from a single film since he relies on various craftsmen and actors to create his vision. The best director award comes close to reflecting a list of the best, but when you have the guy who directed Rocky (can't remember his name), Delbert Mann or Tom Hooper, you run a risk that the award is diluted. I'd prefer if the award went to someone with somewhat of a track record for doing big things.
-We need to just collectively admit this was not a particularly good year for American films:
*Baz Luhrmann is an erratic and polarizing guy. Whatever your opinion of him or this movie is, we should recognize this was not something that all viewers considered a success. I found it to not vary enough from the typical beats of the biopic to merit any special recognition.
*Tar is 2 hours and 37 minutes long. My friend Khari typically avoids films over two hours and while I disagree with that method of film going, this was a film that could have easily been told in an hour and 45 minutes. It's set in a highly specialized world of orchestral conducting and does little to explain why waving your arms in front of a group of classical musicians merits millions of dollars
*The Whale was gross (although that was probably the point) and a bit heavy-handed in its metaphors (the guy loves in a city with more thunder than any other). It's interesting.
*The Banshees of Inisherin is about two people who are mentally off and the film doesn't acknowledge that. One person basically spends the whole movie whining that the other isn't his friend and the other responds in the worst way imaginable: Self-harm, not locking his door, etc. It's supposedly also about the Irish civil war and loneliness and coping, but all that stuff is muddled in the background. I could see someone reading it differently, but it didn't work for me.
-The result of the lack of decent films and the momentum behind films that were actually pretty good (at least in my opinion) like Empire of Light and Armageddon Time resulted in a bunch of foreign films like Everything Everywhere All At Once, RRR, Bardo, and Triangle of Sadness either getting nominated for BP or getting close. RRR and Triangle of Sadness I found to be terrific films but I also rarely add foreign films to my viewing diet so that was a positive effect on me.
-In spite of the Glass Onion's length, it worked as a critique of rich people. The Menu, Triangle of Sadness, and Death on the Nile also had this element which was a nice new direction. For films.
-Underrated films to me: Deep Water, The Bubble, Where the Crawdads Sing, Armageddon Time, Metal Lords, and Amsterdam
-Unfortunately, there is a sphere of entertainment-centered journalists who will always manufacture some controversy about how Hollywood doesn't properly honor people of color. They continue to attempt to drive headlines around this cause even when the facts don't support their case. This year, their double standard was highly evidence when Michelle Yeoh's broke existing campaign rules to knock down competitor Cate Blanchett.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/michelle-yeoh-deletes...
I don't think that Michelle Yeoh should be raked over the coals or even found guilty, but she violated a rule about campaigning by taking a potshot at a fellow nominee on social media.
There is no source that Andrea Riseborough directly marketed the film herself illegally (it was the director's wife who was under suspicion) and she investigated and found innocent, but her name will now be tainted because she's not really a name in the industry anyway.
That Michelle Yeoh gets all this support because of a strong double-standard here where if you're on the right side of what the identity politics crowd perceives to be social justice, you got cheered for getting on your soap box no matter what you say.
The more egregious thing here is that it's not even Andrea Riseborough's control that she was White when she had the greatest Cinderella story campaign in recent Oscars memory. The story doesn't matter: Just her skin color.
And I'm repeating myself here, but the absurdity of citing racism due to a (very probable, beforehand) snubbing of a four-time Oscar nominee dilutes the word beyond belief.
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