Hey Kids! Funtime 2023 Oscar® Predictions!

I haven’t been Film Babbling lately because I’ve been deep into working on a big book project (more on that later), but I felt like I just had to weigh in on the 96th Academy Awards®, which is going down this Sunday night at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles with Jimmy Kimmel returning to host for his fourth time. 

As I said in my Favorite Films of 2023 post, this last year was a much better one for film than the last several so there are a number of nominations that I’m seriously rooting for, but as we know with these predictions, one shouldn’t play favorites.

So here are my highly anticipated, not-thrown-together-at-all predictions:

1. BEST PICTURE: OPPENHEIMER

2. BEST DIRECTOR: Christopher Nolan, OPPENHEIMER

3. BEST ACTOR: Cillian Murphy, OPPENHEIMER

Yeah, an OPPENHEIMER sweep seems to be incredibly imminent. It will be surprising (but maybe more fun) if there are some upsets. Still don’t think BARBIE will win anything but best song though.

4. BEST ACTRESS: Lily Gladstone, KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

5. BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Robert Downey Jr., OPPENHEIMER

6. BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Da’Vine Joy Randolph, THE HOLDOVERS

7. PRODUCTION DESIGN: James Price, Shona Heath, Zsuzsa Mihalek, POOR THINGS

The upset could be BARBIE, but this should really go to the vivid imagery in Yorgos Lanthimos’ weird ass erotic black comedy.

8. CINEMATOGRAPHY: Hoyte van Hoytema, OPPENHEIMER

9. COSTUME DESIGN: Holly Waddington, POOR THINGS Again, take that BARBIE! (Kidding, I might’ve actually enjoyed BARBIE more than POOR THINGS).

10. DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: 20 DAYS IN MARIUPOL (Dirs. Mstyslav Chernov, Michelle Mizner, and Raney Aronson-Rath)

11. DOCUMENTARY SHORT: THE ABCS OF BOOK BANNING (Dirs. Sheila Nevins and Trish Adlesic)

12. FILM EDITING: Jennifer Lame, OPPENHEIMER

13. MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING: Kazu Hiro, Kay Georgiou and Lori McCoy-Bell, MAESTRO

Yeah, I’m predicting that 5-time Oscar nominee Bradley Cooper won’t win, and his MAESTRO will only win this category. That’s right.

14. VISUAL EFFECTS: Takashi Yamazaki, Kiyoko Shibuya, Masaki Takahashi, and Tatsuji Nojima, GODZILLA MINUS ONE

15. ORIGINAL SCORE: Robbie Robertson, OPPENHEIMER

16. ORIGINAL SONG: “What Was I Made For?”, Billie Eilish (The one bone the Academy will throw to BARBIE)

17. ANIMATED SHORT: WAR IS OVER! INSPIRED BY THE MUSIC OF JOHN & YOKO

18. LIVE ACTION SHORT: THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF HENRY SUGAR (Dir. Wes Anderson)

19. SOUND: Jonathan Glazer, OPPENHEIMER

20. ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Justine Triet and Arthur Harari, ANATOMY OF A FALL

21. ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: Cord Jefferson, AMERICAN FICTION

22. ANIMATED FEATURE FILM: SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDERVERSE (Dir. 

23. BEST INTERNATIONAL FILM: THE ZONE OF INTEREST (Dir. Jonathan Glazer)

As I usually say, tune in Monday morning to see how many I got wrong.

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Christopher Nolan's OPPENHEIMER Is Kind Of A Big Deal

Opening tomorrow at a multiplex near us all:

OPPENHEIMER (Dir. Christopher Nolan, 2023)

While there is visual splendor aplenty in this epic biopic of nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, played perfectly by a rail thin Cillian Murphy, the bulk of it concerns the 1954 security hearing, in which the scientist was grilled by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) over his communist leanings. But the good news is all that talk, largely in stark, but pleasingly sharp black and white, is just as compelling as the sequences involving the Manhattan Project, especially the recreation of the Trinity test, the first nuclear weapon detonation, in New Mexico.

 

Simply put, Nolan’s 12th film, and second to be based on real events after DUNKIRK, is a masterwork, a rich powerful portrait that somehow makes science exciting, and justifies every second of its three-hour running time. It doesn’t matter that a lot of its dialogue, that has our hero brainstorming with his colleagues, will go over the heads of many movie-goers because the urgency and flow of the film, aided by composer Ludwig Göransson’s striking score will still hold audiences in its grasp. 

Told largely in flashbacks that are conjured by the panel hearing, the film illustrates how during World War II, Oppenheimer was appointed scientific director of the top-secret Manhattan Project at Los Alamos by General Leslie Groves (a great, gruff Matt Damon) as part of the arms race against the Nazi regime. After the war, and the devastating bombing of Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, a guilt-ridden Oppenheimer went against the thermonuclear weapon (H-bomb), and campaigned for international control of these weapons.

One of the key figures in this story is AEC Chairman, Lewis Strauss, who suspected that the scientist was a Soviet spy, and was among those behind the revocation of Oppenheimer’s security clearance. Strauss is portrayed, in heavy aging make-up, by Robert Downey Jr. in a career best performance. 

The actor shakes off his Marvel armor to deliver an impassioned, and at times desperate performance that is sure to be noticed by the Academy. At the film’s UK premiere, Downey Jr. said that, “This is the best film I’ve ever been in,” and I highly agree.

 

The rest of the film’s cast is as impressive as the effects, which Nolan claims contain no CGI, including an emotional Emily Blunt as Oppenheimer’s communist wife Katherine (“Kitty”), a long-suffering alcoholic, who was such because of her husband’s affair with psychiatrist, and another communist, Jean Tatlock, who is played by Florence Pugh initially as a sexy shrink (not that I’m complaining). 

 

Well placed in the roles of celebrated scientist colleagues are Kenneth Branaugh (in his third film with Nolan) as Danish physicist Niels Bohr, Josh Harnett as nuclear physicist Ernest Lawrence, and David Krumholtz as Isidor Isaac Rabi, another Noble Prize-winning physicist, who has a stirring scene that enhances the film’s conscience.

 

In less lofty, yet still crucial, parts are Casey Affleck as snooping intelligence officer Boris Pash, and Rami Malek as David Hill, an experimental physicist, who doesn’t make much of an impression at first, but is vital by the end.

 

But it’s the centerpiece of OPPENHEIMER, The Trinity Test sequence, that might be the film’s biggest star. Director of Photography, and frequent Nolan collaborator, Hoyte Van Hoytema’s incredible IMAX cinematography gives us the world’s first-ever successful atomic bomb detonation in all of its scary glory, and it’s as stunning as it is profoundly unsettling.

 

In his telling of the story of the man credited as “the Father of the Atomic Bomb,” Nolan working from the 2005 bio American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, employs Oliver Stone-style cutting, and ominous framing to take us into Oppenheimer’s politically paranoid world, while switching back and forth from crisp color to start black and white throughout (so much you forget about it).

All of these strong elements – its narrative arc via its layered, engaging screenplay; its excellent cast headed by a dead-on, invested Murphy whose towering, tortured close-ups are really cool looking in IMAX; its practical effects adding up to modern movie magic in our current CGI oversaturated superhero era; Göransson’s tension-filled soundtrack (the only negative there is that it overwhelms the dialogue at times); and its emotional sense of both fear and amazement that science could cause the end of the world – all combine to make the first great movie of 2023, and an absolute must see on the biggest screen you can find.

 

I first questioned why Universal would release OPPENHEIMER in the middle of the summer, going up against BARBIE, MISSION IMPOSSIBLE, and INDIANA JONES, when it seems more like a better fit for the prestige Oscar season in December, but with all its explosive power it more than deserves a place among those blockbusters (or flopbusters), and I’m betting it be far from forgotten at the end of the year.

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The Sequel To A QUIET PLACE Is All Over The Place

 A QUIET PLACE PART II

(Dir. John Krasinski, 2021)

This was the first film I’ve seen on the big screen since March 2020, which is when it was originally scheduled to be released. Of course, you know why it was delayed, and why I went so long avoiding movie theaters. Now that things are getting somewhat back to normal, I caught up with John Krazinski’s sequel to his 2018 sleeper hit, A QUIET PLACE. I had enjoyed the first film, which depicts a family headed by the real life married couple Krasinski and Emily Blunt as Lee and Evelyn Abott trying to survive in a post apocalyptic world where tall, lanky blind aliens with multiple rows of sharp teeth will kill them if they make even the slightest sounds.

Although Krasinski’s character, Lee Abbott, was killed in the original, he appears here in a flashback opening which goes back to the first day of the alien attack. The scary creatures violently interrupt a little league game in an unspecified small town (somewhere in upstate New York), and it’s a thrilling sequence that I wish the movie stayed with longer. 

Instead we flash forward to Day 474, 385 days since the events of Part I, and we find Blunt’s Evelyn and her kids, Regan (Millicent Simmonds), who’s deaf, and Marcus (Noah Jupe), who’s main trait is that he’s very nervous, living on the same farm, but not for long as the Halpert, sorry, Abbott family sets on a supply run across dangerous, devastated terrain. Oh, yeah, there’s the baby that Evelyn had in the previous installment, but he mostly naps in a soundproof wooden crate, or sucks on an oxygen canister.

Presumably because writer/director Krasinski thought they needed a moody male presence since the Dad is gone, Cillian Murphy pops up as Emmett an old friend of the family. Murphy’s character is a little reminiscent of his role in DUNKIRK, as he’s also a traumatized solider.

Much of the movie is set at a compound, a former Steel Mill, where Emmett lives in an air-tight bunker. Some of these scenes drag, but there are enough jolts, and shocks to keep one engaged. The last third concerns Emmett and Regan finding themselves at an island colony of survivors who act as if things are getting back to normal. The colony’s leader, Djimon Hounsou credited as “Man on the Island,” brings the promise of a weighty note to the narrative, but he doesn’t last long enough for his part to have much impact.

The finale, of course, is the family/monster showdown, and there’s a clever element to how the humans attempt to take down their slimey tormenters (I won’t Spoil it). However, I liked PART II a lot less than PART I. It didn’t feel as grounded or as emotionally gripping, and a lot of its tries to mirror the beats and scares of the original I could really see coming. It’s fitting that the film skips from one location to another, as it often feels like it’s all over the place. Where is a quiet place anyway? Is it the farm from PART I and part of PART II? Is it at the top of one of those silos? Or is it somewhere inside of us all?

A QUIET PLACE PART II is a fair follow-up that will likely be most appreciated by fans of the first one. It does have the highlight of the performance by Simmonds, who could very be seen as the film’s lead protagonist. Blunt puts in a solid, intense turn too, as does Murphy, but Simmonds steals this sequel fair and square.

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Notes On DUNKIRK (Three Weeks Into Its Run)

It’s been three weeks since I first saw Christopher Nolan’s WWII epic DUNKIRK, but I wasn’t in a good headspace then. My wife and I were having some major work done on our house involving installing hardwood floors so I was exhausted from moving tons of books, CDs, DVDs, records, etc.

I had mixed feelings about the movie, but I recognized some greatness there so I decided to see it a second time. But this time was in the way Nolan intended it to be seen - in IMAX 70 mm. The visuals were indeed impressive and the story threads came together better than my previous viewing, but I still felt a disconnect.

The film, which Nolan wrote and co-produced in addition to directing, follows three narratives – “The Mole,” about the thousands of soldiers stranded on the beach of Dunkirk, France over the course of a week waiting for rescue boats over the course of a week; “The Sea,” concerning a civilian (Mark Rylance) sailing his boat with his son (Tom Glynn-Carney), and his friend (Barry Keoghan) to help with the rescue effort over the course of a day; and “The Air,” which involves three Spitfires piloted by members of the Royal Air Force engaged in dogfights over the course of an hour.

Nolan’s attention to detail in recreating the Dunkirk evacuation of 1940 is immaculate via the usage of restored boats and planes from the actual event, practical effects, and a minimum of CGI.

I’ve heard many folks complain that in the “The Mole” storyline the characters are hard to tell apart. Fionn Whitehead as a private named Tommy, who is pretty much the protagonist of the thread, and a fellow soldier played by pop singer Harry Styles do blend in with the masses on the docks, but perhaps that’s the point.

“The Air” narrative which has Tom Hardy, and Jack Lowden on a mission to take down German dive bombers over the infinite ocean may be the most exciting of the three intertwined scenarios, but several times Nolan cuts away right as the scenes are getting the most compelling. Lowden almost drowning because he can’t get his cockpit open after crash landing in the sea deserves to be seen in full, but Nolan can’t help but dive back into another thread, and the momentum gets lost.

The most emotionally grounded storyline is “The Sea” as a stoic Rylance holds steady to his goal to save as many men as possible, even when a shell-shocked soldier played by Cillian Murphy that his boat picks up violently tries to get him to turn his boat around. Murphy, a veteran of a few Nolan films (BATMAN BEGINS, INCEPTION), is only credited as “shivering soldier,” and that about sums up his role.

Kenneth Branagh, as a British Naval Commander, brings a touch of dignified gravitas to his part, but mainly just stands around on the pier watching what’s happening around him.

So basically, don’t go in expecting fully fleshed out characters. There may be precious little dialogue, but there’s plenty of genuine suspense, gripping action, and incredibly vivid cinematography (thanks to Hoyte van Hoytema’s 54-Pound IMAX Camera) to make up for it, and to make up for the failings of Nolan’s previous film, INTERSTELLAR.

DUNKIRK is engaging to a considerable degree, but not as immersive an experience as it could’ve been as its fractured narratives bog it down. Hans Zimmer’s intense score, which at times beautifully blends with the scary sound of attacking dive bombers, does a lot to tie together the three strands, but they still clash in ways that was at times frustrating.

I still would recommend Nolan’s work here because there is a lot of power in the imagery and the depiction of touching humanity, which, as I said before, is most present in Rylance’s storyline.

It may fall short of being a masterpiece, but it comes close – especially when seeing it a second time in IMAX 70 mm. Maybe the third time will be the charm?

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