It’s Oscars day, which is like the Super Bowl for film critics. The ramp-up starts way back in September when the fall festivals — Venice, Telluride, Toronto — all happen within a couple of weeks, and everyone starts talking about Oscar buzz. (Well, really, they start at Sundance, but let’s not go there.) By now we’ve been talking about the same movies for around seven months, and the best thing about today is that tomorrow we can finally start listening to people have opinions about something else.
Anyhow, it’s been a doozy of a week and I’m trying to save my energy, so I haven’t got much to say. But if you’re at all interested in the Oscars, or even if you aren’t particularly, perhaps you might be interested in reading me on some of the nominees?
CODA, a family drama that takes the deaf community seriously
What The Eyes of Tammy Faye captures about the history of the religious right
Belfast skirts politics with a child’s-eye view of the Troubles
Licorice Pizza proves Paul Thomas Anderson is the master of unexpected romance
In Flee, one Afghan refugee’s story comes to vibrant, animated life
Movies like Summer of Soul can reclaim America’s important buried history
Why the new West Side Story works, and the one thing that doesn’t
One of the year’s best movies is about the worst person in the world (kind of)
And here are a few pieces that help explain the Oscars, this year and all years:
The Oscars can’t quite decide if they’re about America or the whole world
For the third year, I regrouped with Slate senior editor (and my former editor) Allegra Frank and my colleague Peter Kafka — in the studio!! — for a chat about the Oscars on Peter’s Recode Media podcast. I get rather ranty.
We have a “One Good Thing” category at Vox — just little critical essays about stuff that’s good — and this month’s theme was “stuff that you should check out by this year’s Oscar nominees that have nothing to do with this year’s Oscars.” I wrote three of them:
Finally, it’s not strictly Oscar-related, but I recently guest-hosted the Vox Conversations podcast for a wide-ranging chat with my buddy Isaac Butler, author of The Method, about how acting has shaped what we think counts as “authentic” and a whole lot of other things, and I think it’s really good!
Also, totally non-Oscars-related, because of the newest spate of scammer stories (Netflix’s new Bad Vegan series, which is good; their Inventing Anna series, which is dreadful; and Hulu’s terrific The Dropout), I examined the possibilities and failings of the scammer show.
Back next week, hopefully with something new to say and maybe half my brain grown back.
Love your review of the Lost Daughter! I really adored it