Happy Thanksgiving – Much to Be Thankful For

Don’t worry, I’m not going to do what I usually do this time of year: single people out by name on this site. It’s too cringey, of course. Thanksgiving is always a good time of year to thank the staff here at Awards Daily who keep this site running smoothly. We have quite a team of writers on both the film and television/streaming side. We have far-flung film critics who attend festivals and write reviews for us on occasion. Hopefully, there is enough diversity of viewpoints that there is something for everybody. At least it’s more like that now than it ever has been.

I will say thank you to everyone who works for, reads or writes for Awards Daily. It’s not a perfect site, to put it mildly. But, damnit, we’re still here.

The film industry is struggling. It’s experiencing a major transition in how people watch movies, or whether they watch them at all (most people in this country don’t). Some franchises are breathing their last breaths. While the strikes might protect actors and writers for a while, their jobs don’t seem any more secure than any other jobs in America.

There is no good reason to make movies anymore. They cost too much. Hardly anyone shows up (except in the rare meme-driven instances when they do). The whole thing has been swallowed up by an internet hive mind that gives a movie a score and measures it for worth as to its “Oscar chances,” then disappears into the ether, never to be seen or heard from again, or maybe showing up on the podcast This Had Oscar Buzz.

But there is an upside. By some miracle, there are still people who burn with the desire to create, tell stories, reach people, and say something. There are so many films this year that do just that. Some succeed, some don’t. Some will be seen and remembered, but most will not. But that they’re doing it at all, that this crazy industry of Oscar-watching helps them survive, is something to be grateful for.

Why would Alexander Payne make The Holdovers at all, if audiences would not be compelled, for any reason, to show up to watch such a great story? Because for Payne, not making it at all is the far worse fate, for him and for humanity. That the story was told at all is a miracle. That anyone thought about these wayward characters whose life struggles might matter to someone, somewhere, is the basis for all of it. Bringing together Paul Giamatti and Alexander Payne was a gift for those of us who dearly love Sideways. But it’s more than that.

The themes of The Holdovers are not that different from David Fincher’s The Killer. These are films about characters who have built for themselves cages that protect them from the chaotic nature of life, but also prevent them from participating in the best things about life. Life is chaos. Life is unpredictability. But trying to control it will mean a life of emotional paralysis. Is that any way to live? The Killer shows us what it takes to be the one in charge. It takes separating yourself from messy people and their messy problems. It requires you to eliminate who you really are because you could be anyone without knowing you were there.

In The Holdovers, Paul Giamatti’s character has, like The Killer, built a fortress that protects him from the kind of risk-taking most people do just living their lives. They risk marriage. They risk a job. They risk a friendship. They even risk a chance encounter with a stranger because of all of it represents a potential freefall, a loss of control. In both The Holdovers and The Killer, the protagonist is confronted with chaos. They deal with it in different ways, of course. The Killer will always have to be the guy who knows where all of the button holes are. But in The Holdovers, the opposite is true. It’s the attempt to control life for a favored outcome that must be abandoned if that life is to be lived.

Why would Christopher Nolan attempt such a mighty feat of bringing Oppenheimer to IMAX, using film made especially for this movie? Why would he want, NEED, people, to see it on the big screen? Why this story? Why this man? Why now? Because creativity burns so bright it snuffs out any good reason not to. Or, as climbers would say, “Why attempt to climb Mount Everest? Because it’s there.” Nolan, like Oppenheimer, does not have a mind at rest. He has a mind in motion. What if he told THIS story, the story of a Jewish man whose life had been spent pursuing physics, poetry, sex, love, and trying to help humanity, who was tasked with building a nuke to drop on Hitler and the Nazis? And what if that same man was then hunted down like an enemy of the state a few years later because of his former ties with Communism in a country crippled by mass hysteria? It is about the CINEMA of it, but it’s also about this moment in history when we are once again faced with rising Jew-hatred. Call it what it is. It wasn’t a coincidence that Jews were hunted as Communists more than any other group. The book and the film bring us back to a time we should do everything we can not to repeat.

Why would indie princess Greta Gerwig take on the challenge of Barbie? Why would she “sell out,” as some have accused her of doing, to work with a big budget to essentially help Mattel rebrand with a whole new generation? Because it’s there. For Gerwig, it represented a challenge — how to make art anyway? Barbie could have been disposable trash, but there is so much beauty in it, from the production design to the costumes to the entire concept of why Barbie doesn’t want to be Barbie anymore. It’s too easy to write it off as a female empowerment movie, even if that’s what I thought it was when I first saw it. Barbie is a “I want to join the world of humans because even if it isn’t perfect, even if you have thoughts of death, even if you are depressed a lot — look at everything else we can do. We can have babies. We can fall in love.” It’s quite a beautiful message, and it’s one that resonated with me after a few viewings. The more you watch it, the more of Gerwig’s vision shines through (I think).

Why would Cord Jefferson decide to tell the story of American Fiction? Why now? Maybe because Jefferson himself has felt the flattening in the past few years as Hollywood made the unilateral decision that Black artists can’t ever really achieve what white artists can in a “systemically racist” industry, so instead, they implemented DEI mandates across the board, from BAFTA to the Oscars, not to mention the horror of “gender-neutral” voting categories at the Gothams. Why though?

American Fiction’s main character, Monk, slices right through the bullshit like a hot knife cutting a frosted cake. It is so refreshing, so revelatory to hear such a strong voice call out what everyone knows is happening yet so few have the nerve to actually say. We’ve been living through the Emperor’s New Clothes for too long, and it’s only hurt the people it claims to rescue. But here, we have all of it. Calling out the virtue-signaling whites for being more offended by racism than Black people. We have a main character who is complex, flawed, even unlikable, certainly not virtuous, and a cast of real characters living out their lives. It’s shocking in its refusal to condemn its characters to a doomed fate in a country so many have written off as irretrievably, systemically racist.

And again, The Holdovers has that in common with American Fiction. Da’Vine Joy Randolph’s character is given the room to be a person, a whole person, with a whole life beyond being categorized as the “Black character,” having to carry the weight of her people on her shoulders. American Fiction drives a spike through the heart of modern-day Hollywood in its stubborn refusal to put its main character into any box. He is a man. A writer. A critic. A satirist. He is all these things, and what a revelation to behold.

Why would Martin Scorsese feel compelled to tell the story of Killers of the Flower Moon? He didn’t plan on telling that story right now, but it somehow landed at exactly the right time. Scorsese is driven to make movies, and to always challenge himself with difficult material, even if — especially if — it’s not in his comfort zone. To tell this story, he had to tweak the formula of bad guys doing bad things to a love song to the Osage people. And that subtle shift has made all of the difference. Even if most people want him to return to form, he resisted the urge to send a message about our history. No, not the history of the FBI, but the history of a people nearly wiped out by violence and greed.

There are so many films that have resonated with people for different reasons. It’s a shame that these movies aren’t going to land with the culture the way they should. Audiences were motivated to turn out for Barbenheimer, but the rest will be spread out over a vast digital landscape that exists beyond the right now, with stories drifting into the laps of people at various points in their lives.

Watching a movie with everyone at once is mostly a theatrical experience. But it can also be a digital one, as we saw with The Killer’s release, and as we’ll likely see with Maestro. Netflix has the advantage of being able to simply show the movie to the widest audience possible, where other streamers require a second step of people deciding whether or not to buy the movie. Apple comes in right behind Netflix as it tries to build a more competitive subscriber base.

I don’t know what to tell you. The future waits for no one. What I can say is that every so often I feel a wave of gratitude that I got to do this job, that I’ve seen so many great movies this year and every year, and that I work with people who are just as passionate about movies as I am: Ryan, Clarence, Mark, Marshall, Joey, Megan, Jalal, David, Tony, Ben, Matt, and Frank, and that so many readers have been coming back for two decades to check things out over here. Thank you.

Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate, and here’s to the movies. “Now, more than ever.”