Certified Oscar Bait

Award Season’s over and the dust has settled but let’s all take a moment to appreciate what brought all the beautiful people to one place in the first place. Movies, and how awesome they are.

Kieran Culkin earned his first Nomination and win as a supporting actor in “A Real Pain” alongside Jesse Eisenberg. The movie follows the pair as cousins on a holocaust roadtrip together dealing with the grief of loss, and a bunch of weed. The comedy drama earned a 96% on Rotten Tomatoes and it was absolutely clear from release that Culkin was cooking with gas on this one. Punters picked his Oscar nomination a mile away. In his speech Culkin mentioned a bet he and his wife had. “And she turned to me — I swear to God this happened, it was just over a year ago — she said, ‘I will give you four when you win an Oscar. I held my hand out, she shook it, and I have not brought it up once until just now. You remember that, honey?”

“No pressure,” he continued. “I love you, I’m really sorry I did this again, and let’s get cracking on those kids — what do you say?”

Adriene Brody picked up his second Best Actor Oscar award for his role in the low budget film, The Brutalist. The last time he picked up an award was back in 2002 for his career defining role in The Pianist, where he became the youngest Best Actor winner. The Brutalist follows a talented architect leaving postwar Europe, riddled with PTSD, but slowly picking himself up, it earned rave reviews and a 93% on Rotten Tomatoes. It turns out playing sad World War II guy is Brody’s calling in life, cause it keeps delivering the goods. Personally I liked him in Predators. There was some odd symmetry to his awards show this year. The first is that The Brutalist is the longest running film that was up for an award, clocking in at 215 minutes. Perhaps a reflection of this his award speech stretched for 5 minutes and 40 seconds, the longest since 1943. The music tried playing him out but he wasn’t having it. Meanwhile Halle Berry was plotting her own revenge. Earlier in the evening she spotted him on the red carpet and grabbed him for a kiss, recreating the one he unexpectedly landed on her on his first Oscar night. “I had to pay him back”. In 2017 she had discussed it a little “I was there the year before and I know the feeling of being out of your body, I just fucking went with it. But I was like: ‘What the fuck is going on right now?’” she said on Watch What Happens Live.

Demi Moore was widely expected to pick up yet another award for her standout performance in The Substance, a film I’m still incredibly upset I didn’t go to the media preview for. The Substance is a horror scifi which somehow managed to also be a meta-narrative Moore’s own career. It hit close to home about the grim realities of what we expect from actresses and the impossible mission of being young and beautiful forever.

While she wasn’t technically a winner at the Oscars, she was still a winner, and her hard work has finally payed off. In her Golden Globes acceptance speech she made headlines for how inspirational it was.

“Thirty years ago, I had a producer tell me that I was a “popcorn actress” and, at that time, I made that mean that this [award] wasn’t something that I was allowed to have. That I could do movies that were successful, that made a lot of money, but that I couldn’t be acknowledged, and I bought in and I believed that.”

“In those moments when we don’t think we’re smart enough or pretty enough, or skinny enough or successful enough, or basically just not enough. I had a woman say to me, ‘Just know, you will never be enough. But you can know the value of your worth if you just put down the measuring stick.’

The Substance has been met with critical acclaim and if you haven’t seen it yet you’re robbing yourself.

Edward Norton was nominated for best Supporting Actor, while his co-star Timothée Chalamet was nominated for Best Actor for their respective roles in A Complete Unknown, a Bob Dylan biopic. Chalamet admits he knew very little about Dylan other than his status as an American musical icon, but he was eager to tackle the role. You could say, that like the Movie, he went in “A Complete Unknown”. Ok I’ll stop.

“There are two versions of a Bob Dylan movie you could make,” Chalamet says. “You’ve got a version that is a behavioral master class on a guy who didn’t really make eye contact that often and the mystery that surrounded him, or you do something that could be disingenuous to his life and work, a greatest-hits compilation that sort of ignores the fact that his career wasn’t a straight trajectory. Jim was quick to walk a fine line between demystifying Bob and not doing a sycophantic thing.”

Chalamet had his work cut out for him. For Mangold, there was no version of A Complete Unknown that didn’t feature actors doing their own singing. Mangold built off the rapturous response to the real vocals of Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon as Johnny and June Carter Cash in Walk the Line as performers whose on-screen portrayals were steeped in the authenticity of live recordings. After all, A Complete Unknown would be a movie about music that is unadorned and authentic. Mangold knew that as a spectator, feeling could best come through live performance in the way that Dylan himself won over his fan for decades on the road.
“I didn’t want Timmy

to disappear. It’s a performance.” Says Mangold. “I wanted Timmy to bring who he is to Bob. If it becomes just a series of mannerisms and vocal impressions, there is no one really there.”
But you know what, If I was going to pick a musical biopic to actually watch I have to go with Robbie Williams ‘Better Man’, The one where he’s portrayed by a CGI monkey. It rated better with critics, and was the first musical in a while that’s had the ability to deliver me a gut punch. I’m not even a Robbie Williams fan and fairly unfamiliar with most of his music. But it’s criminally underrated in my opinion, and is willing to confront it’s subject with a rawness A Complete Unknown was unwilling to do, making it ironically a much more human film. It’s alive and kinetic While Bob Dylan’s movie is stale in comparison (although still good, just not much fun). Skip A Complete Unknown, watch the monkey one instead if you had to pick one.
Although I just remember, Kneecap released in 2024 as well… This is going to be a tough one.

Penélope Cruz already has an oscar tucked away alongside her four nominations. This year she was mostly just looking incredible in her Chanel silk chiffon gown. Her last nomination for Best Actress was in 2022 for her part in Parallel Mothers, a spanish drama about two new mothers, one middle aged and ready, the other young and terrified. Alternatively it is also a reflection on Spains sordid past, it’s civil war, and the search for the bodies it left behind. It earned a 96% on Rotten Tomatoes and is an engrossing narrative. For award further afield she has also picked up nominations for her supporting role in the recent Ferrari movie, although that was received far more middlingly.

Our man Ralph Fiennes was nominated for Best Actor for his part in Conclave, a dramatic thriller mystery about the vatican after the pope has died. Fiennes character is charged with overseeing the processing of electing the next pope. Unfortunately the best candidates don’t run, the people who want to be the leader are always the most dangerous. The situation he’s found himself in is a potentially lethal snake pit of battling clergy. Based on a best selling book of the same name it’s directed by Edward Berger, who also made All Quiet On The Western Front. He’s backed up by Stanley Tucci, and it’s hard not to see John Lithgow on a movie poster and assume it isn’t a comedy. The film landed with a 93% on Rotten Tomatoes and will leave you on the edge of your seat, despite all the skulking around hallways and letter finding.

Dave Bautista has worked hard to become a Hollywood heavyweight after a career spent in the WWE world. He’s been mindful that he could easily be pigeon holed as another 80s style meathead action hero. “I didn’t leave wrestling to become a movie star, I left to be an actor. I’ve worked really hard to prove myself and earn the respect of my peers and audiences.” He told Sports Illustrated.

“This has not been the path of least resistance, it’s been a tough route. I’ve really pursued roles that are the actor’s pieces, and I’ve turned down a lot of roles that would have been better suited for me as an ex-wrestler.

“Those are the roles most people expected me to take, but I’ve chosen to go the unexpected route to prove myself as an actor. I feel like people expect less from a wrestler-turned-actor, but I’ve always wanted to be a serious actor.”

Perhaps his best serious role was as Sapper Morton in Blade Runner 2049. Although he’s going to have a hard time getting out from under the long shadow his Marvel Guardians Of The Galaxy role has cast. While he wasn’t up for any awards for himself, instead attending the Oscars as a host, Dune: Part 2 which he starred in did earn two Oscars for Best Visual Effects and Best Sound.

Willem Dafoe likewise wasn’t up for any awards this season, as per usual, despite putting out stunning performances… As per usual. but damn he put in the work. Surely at some point it turns into a numbers game, in 2024 he was in five films, the demented Kinds of Kindness by Poor Things director Yorgos Lanthimos followed by the new Beetlejuice flick. He played the voice on the phone in the action comedy Zero, and was part of the ensemble cast for Saturday Night which chronicles the first on air performance of Saturday Night Live. Finally we can’t forget Nosferatu a remake of the horror classic.

If anyone was made for that movie it’s Willem Dafoe and Bill Skarsgård.