Predictions Friday: Three Best Picture Contenders as We Barrel Toward Telluride

There are three solid Best Picture contenders right now. I define those in terms of which films have moved the needle for the public or the critics. First: The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All At Once has captured the hearts of nearly every critic who has seen it, which means it will probably be one of the films that dominates their awards by year’s end. It is inventive, original, clever, moving, and unpredictable. The next film I consider a major contender is Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis. A triumphant performance by Austin Butler and a profitable biopic of a beloved American icon makes it the perfect fit for the Oscars.

And finally, we return to Top Gun: Maverick, which should be a contender if the Oscars still existed in what we used to define as the general population. You all know I could write thousands of words on this subject (and I have), but to make a long story short, Top Gun has done what almost no movie in the past few years has been able to do: make $600+ million and not be a superhero movie. How does that happen?

Well, for one thing, it’s wildly entertaining and pitch-perfect storytelling. For another, it features a bona fide movie star in the lead: Tom Cruise is another American icon, going strong for four decades now. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, word got out early that this movie was non “woke” and didn’t try to lecture its viewers to “do better” (thank the Holy Lord in Heaven Above for that).

Is it a good movie? Yes. Is everyone talking about it? Yes. Did it make a lot of money in movie theaters, thus making a strong case that movies that aren’t superhero movies in movie theaters aren’t dead? Yes. Will it get nominated? Of course not.

The reason is that we’ve become extremely divided. Not Left or Right particularly, not Blue State or Red State, but really, the division is between people who are inside of the cultural bubble — which includes the film industry and the Oscars — and people outside of it. The people outside of it no longer matter — only people inside of it do. Those inside of it are policed in their tastes, in their casting, in what kinds of films they put out. This is especially true of the gatekeepers: the critics, who really do thin the herd of potential nominees before industry voters ever get a crack at it.

I was thinking about Yellowstone and why it was shut out of the Emmys. Its season finale had nine million views. No other show is going to have those kinds of numbers for the season finale. But it’s blue collar. It’s working class. It has that old masculine Western ethos. Whatever it is that has happened to film and film coverage, it has become disconnected from people more broadly.

In other words, it’s all starting to look a lot like 1984.

The only way to arrive here is if you can contain and control the participants. In 1984, Orwell makes it clear that the Proles are outside of the Outer Party, and that means they live the hard lives of the working class poor, but it also means they are free in their minds. The protagonist, Winston Smith, is a member of the Outer Party, so he must comply ideologically. That means whatever the rules are, even if they make no sense (“2+2=5”), he has to go along with them. By the end, they’ve taken everything from him that matters — language, history, love — and forced his head into a cage, to be eaten by rats before he finally gives himself over to them.

Obviously, this was written about the Communist regimes in Russia and Spain, and America is still free, but when we have given ourselves over to these enormous social hiveminds like Twitter or Facebook, we are now in a situation where we must follow those rules or we will be exiled or shunned. But I’m here to tell you, it’s far better to live as a Prole than it is someone in the Outer Party. I agree with Orwell on that one.

The thing about the Oscars and the film industry today is that they are very much the Outer Party in 1984 in that they adhere to a strict doctrine, follow strict guidelines, and make sure everything they do, every single hire signals their allegiance to the new way of seeing things. They wanted to fix it all at once, to solve the problem of the industry being so white, so male-driven. However, to most people on the outside looking in, it looks like Hollywood is destroying itself:

If someone destroyed Twitter tomorrow (which would be the greatest gift to humanity), I think we could get back to the art of storytelling, the fun of going to the movies, and the majesty of the Oscars, instead of it all being one rigid bummer. Not entirely, of course. It is not all bad by any means. It’s just a little … safe for my taste.

But as long as there is Twitter, it serves as a panopticon that keeps everyone in line. No one wants to be “it.” They don’t want to be dragged into the public square for shaming. It’s just something we have not yet evolved to survive. It feels awful. But we have to find a way to get over it sooner rather than later.

Losing access to the truth isn’t just a problem when it comes to being out of touch — it’s also a problem for great writing or directing. Most of the journalists who write hard truths have either been fired or disappeared. This is mostly true in the mainstream, but even in film coverage, content across the board has that same veneer of panic and fear that the studios have. That leads to a ridiculous alignment of thought where there should be more critical thinking and courageous writing. There isn’t.

We don’t have many daring writers anymore, and if we did, they’ve long since disappeared. David Mamet has been disappeared, and he was once among the best there is.

Without access to the truth, it’s impossible to tell great stories, stories that last. While reading Don DeLillo’s White Noise (which is has been adapted into a movie this year by Noah Baumbach), I was struck by how good it is. How free it is. FREE THOUGHT, imagine that. He had no fear of Twitter. No fear of being called out by Rob Reiner or Ken Olin on Twitter. He was just writing brilliantly, telling a story brilliantly. That is gone.

Audiences aren’t the problem — the gatekeepers are. Having the balls to stand up to Twitter isn’t easy, but it isn’t impossible.

There is a new comedy show being released by a comedian named Andrew Schulz who appears on Bari Weiss’ podcast and Megyn Kelly’s podcast today. He was told that he would have to cut out some of his offensive humor; instead, he decided to release it on his own. You can pre-order it here.

THAT is the kind of courage we need more of. But try telling that to Twitter. You will be shouted down, humiliated, and forced to apologize.

I think often of David Mamet. Why isn’t he allowed to work in Hollywood anymore? We need that kind of wisdom and talent. But since he non-compliant ideologically, they have exiled him to the land of the Proles. I’m sure to him that’s fine. He has freedom of thought and that matters to him more. I understand that completely and I’m the same way.

Okay, I’ve done enough ruminating for the day. Let’s get to predictions. Moving on…

We’re not that far away from the Venice/Telluride two-step, which happens at the end of August. Michael Patterson has been busy collecting his expected potential gets for Telluride, as he always does every summer.

His predictions very much reflect what has come to be the Film Twitter ethos. That means lots of movies with female directors, themes that reflect the ideology of the hive mind. You can always tell because they’ll be very highly rated on Rotten Tomatoes, but mostly likely middling to lower-rated with audiences. Not always, but this is what we’re seeing more and more.

1) One Fine Morning/Mia Hansen-Love — played at Cannes. “Sandra, a young mother who raises her daughter alone, pays regular visits to her sick father. While she and her family fight tooth and nail to get him the care he requires, Sandra reconnects with Clément, a friend she hasn’t seen in a while. Although he is in a relationship, the two begin a passionate affair.”

2) The Son/Florian Zeller — part of a loose thematic trilogy with also includes The Father and The Mother.

3) Close/Lukas Dhont — “Léo and Rémi, two thirteen-year-old boys, have their close friendship suddenly thrown into disarray as the prospect of adolescence looms. Trying to understand what has gone wrong, Léo seeks comfort and grows closer to Rémi’s mother, Sophie, as the boys pursue forgiveness and reconciliation to try and get their friendship back together.”

4) Women Talking/Sarah Polley — “A group of women in an isolated religious colony as they struggle to reconcile their faith with a string of sexual assaults committed by the colony’s men.”

5) Aftersun/Charlotte Wells — “Sophie reflects on the shared joy and private melancholy of a holiday she took with her father twenty years earlier. Memories real and imagined fill the gaps between as she tries to reconcile the father she knew with the man she didn’t.”

6) Bardo/Alejandro G. Inarritu — “A nostalgic comedy set against an epic personal journey. It chronicles the story of a renowned Mexican journalist and documentary filmmaker who returns home and works through an existential crisis as he grapples with his identity, familial relationships, the folly of his memories as well as the past of his country. He seeks answers in his past to reconcile who he is in the present.” [Deadline]

7) TAR/Todd Fields — “I play a conductor of a celebrated German orchestra, and my name is Lydia Tar. It’s about, a sort of fall from grace, a come to Jesus moment and about the creative process, and about power, so it’s really interesting.” – Cate Blanchett

8) Armageddon Time/James Gray — “A deeply personal coming-of-age story about the strength of family and the generational pursuit of the American Dream.”

9) The Pale Blue Eye/Scott Cooper — “Follows a veteran detective who investigates the murders, helped by a detail-oriented young cadet who will later become a world-famous author, Edgar Allan Poe.”

10) The Master Gardener/Paul Schrader — “A meticulous horticulturist who is devoted to tending the grounds of a beautiful estate and pandering to his employer, the wealthy dowager.”

Others Possibilities: Broker/Kore-eda, Showing Up/Reichardt, Tori and Lokita/Dardennes, Holy Spider/Abbasi,  The Forger/Peren, Babylon/Chazelle, She Said/M. Schrader, Tuesday/Oniunas-Pusic, The Fire Within/Herzog, The U.S. and the Holocaust/Burns, The Wonder/Lelio

Meanwhile, Gregory Ellwood has laid out quite an elegant and informative list of Best Picture contenders for The Playlist that is worth checking out. I will probably keep referring back to it since it’s listed by studio, which is helpful. It also includes some of Gregory’s own commentary on the reception of some of the movies.

It is just way too early to be laying out any predictions, but I’ll give it a shot since I have you here.

So we have three films that are potentially Best Picture contenders:

Everything Everywhere All at Once
Elvis
Top Gun: Maverick

We think, but don’t know for sure, we’re possibly adding from Telluride:

Bardo
She Said
The Son

That leaves three potential slots open if all of these make it in.  Skipping fall festivals would probably include:

Babylon
White Noise
Killers of the Flower Moon
The Fabelmans
The Menu
Empire of Light
The Banshees of Inisherin
The Greatest Beer Run Ever
Don’t Worry Darling
The Pale Blue Eye

There are so many movies coming this year, which is the very best thing about July 2022. We have three in the can already that might make the cut. Who knows, maybe this will be the year the Oscars really are everything everywhere all at once.