Best Pictures #109: 2024 (97th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee: A Complete Unknown

 by A.J.

Best Pictures #109: 2024 (97th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee

A Complete Unknown

“Don’t think twice, it’s alright.”

If I wanted to show someone a movie that captured the appeal of the enigmatic and mysterious and prickly person of Bob Dylan, beyond just the songs he wrote and sung, I would show them Todd Hayne’s 2007 non-biopic I’m Not There, in which six different actors played Bob Dylan-like characters in different stories (Cate Blanchett as the sunglasses hipster Dylan who goes electric is the stand out of the film and received a Supporting Actress Oscar nomination). Director James Mangold’s Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, based on the book Dylan Goes Electric by Elijah Wald, is a very well-made and entertaining, if standard feeling, film about the musician. This is technically a biopic, but it is less a biography than a dramatization of some of the events in Bob Dylan’s career from his beginnings in 1961 through the infamous and consequential Newport Folk Festival in 1965 where Dylan famously, or notoriously, “went electric.” 

Young Bob Dylan (Timothee Chalamet) arrives in New York to meet the legendary Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy) at a hospital so empty and bleak it reminded me of the hospital where Michael Corleone had to save his comatose father from hitmen in The Godfather. (Guthrie had Huntington’s Disease but I don’t remember if this is mentioned). Guthrie’s regular visitor Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) is there and offers the young musician a place to stay and introduces him to the burgeoning folk music scene. There is nothing of Bob Dylan before he arrives in New York. This isn’t an attempt to explain or understand Dylan—neither the real Dylan nor fans then or now would want that because the mystique, the poetic enigma, is the appeal of not Bob Dylan, but “Dylan.” They’re right of course. There are no scenes showing how or why he came up with his songs; such scenes would be hacky and feel blatantly false. A true feeling moment happens when Dylan confesses that he hates talking about his music because when people ask “where do your songs come from?” they’re really asking, why didn’t they come to me? An annoying moment comes when Sylvie (Elle Fanning, playing a composite character) finds a scrap of paper with lyrics from The Times They Are A Changin’ and recites them to a bashful Dylan. 

Whether he’s an annoying jerk (if you don’t want to be recognized then maybe comb your distinctive hair differently when you go out?) or a brilliant, innovative musician, Timothee Chalamet gives a great performance. He performed all of the songs live to camera, at the urging of co-star Edward Norton, and does a great job sounding like Bob Dylan, speaking and singing, without approaching parody. More importantly, he is believable as the kind of person who other people project their desires and aspirations onto and made people want to collaborate with him, be his mentor, his friend, his lover, even if he treated them poorly. Chalamet’s Oscar nomination may have been a foregone conclusion before the movie was even released, but it is still deserved. 

As good as Chalamet is, the real standouts are his co-stars, specifically Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez and Edward Norton as Pete Seeger, both of whom have also received Oscar nominations in the Supporting categories. Barbaro’s performance is especially noteworthy because this movie is so harsh to her character. In their scenes of conflict, as lovers or collaborators, the movie is firmly on Dylan’s side; after all he is the musical genius and she is just a singer (the movie’s sentiments, not my own). 

Norton’s great success with his portrayal of Pete Seeger, more than performing the music, also live, is in making his unbelievably kind and positive version of Seeger believable. Norton hasn’t played a character this optimistic and positive since Sheldon Mopes in Death to Smoochy, where he played another kind character who believed that music could change the world. 

James Mangold also directed the great Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line (2005), a film so good that it could only be topped by the brilliant music biopic parody to end all music biopics, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, but the problem is that Hollywood kept making music biopics, A Complete Unknown included. As a Johnny Cash fan, the moments that made me perk up were the scenes of Dylan exchanging letters with Cash–I immediately recalled the scene in Walk the Line where Cash can’t remember what he did with the letter to that “young folk singer” because he wrote it on a paper bag because when he was drunk. I nodded approvingly. Much easier to notice is Mangold recycling an entire scene from Walk the Line in which Cash and June Carter play Dylan’s It Ain’t Me Babe while Cash’s wife Vivian looks on with heartbreak and anger. Here Dylan and Baez sing It Ain’t Me Babe while Elle Fanning’s Sylvie looks on, but emotions just aren’t there. Another element of Walk the Line that Mangold reuses, but to positive effect, is shooting concert scenes from the stage or backstage allowing for the spotlights to create brilliant silhouettes. 

Johnny Cash shows up at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival where Dylan is about to displease the organizers and most of the audience when he “goes electric” and changes music history. Boyd Holbrook gives a great performance as Cash, playing him somewhere between comic relief and as an alternative mentor–someone who also bounced between genres while maintaining a rebel persona. He holds out his guitar to Dylan and Dylan taking it won me over. So Dylan wins again.

Dylan sours on Seeger and Baez because he has outgrown the whole folk scene, but no explanation or catalyst is given, just a jump in time and change of clothes and hair. The unknowability of “Dylan” becomes like a crutch because any flaw in Dylan’s character or change in behavior can be chalked up to the “unknowable genius” angle. Yes, no one can pin down why a creative person is creative, but at a certain point that becomes a cop out. You can probably guess what the final image of the movie will be; Mangold tries to draw it out and then, yes, it happens, epilogue cards and all.

Nominees: Fred Berger, James Mangold and Alex Heineman, Producers

Director: James Mangold

Screenplay: James Mangold and Jay Cocks; based on Dylan Goes Electric! by Elijah Wald

Cast: Timothée Chalamet, Edward Norton, Elle Fanning, Monica Barbaro

Production Companies: Searchlight Pictures, Veritas Entertainment Group, White Water, Range Media Partners, The Picture Company, Turnpike Films

Distributor: Searchlight Pictures

Release Date: December 25, 2024

Total Nominations: 8 including Best Picture

Other Nominations: Director-James Mangold; Actor-Timothée Chalamet; Supporting Actor-Edward Norton; Supporting Actress-Monica Barbaro; Adapted Screenplay-James Mangold and Jay Cocks; Sound-Tod A. Maitland, Donald Sylvester, Ted Caplan, Paul Massey and David Giammarco; Costume Design-Arianne Phillips

Best Pictures #105: 2023 (96th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee: Oppenheimer

by A.J.

Best Pictures #105: 2023 (96th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee

Oppenheimer

“Who would want to justify their whole life?”

A drama about the life of a scientist that is one of the biggest box office hits of the year. One of the greatest accomplishments in science that is also one of its worst. A story that is full of wonder and excitement and also dread and doom. A story about the past that feels like it is about today. A work of commerce that is also art. These things seem paradoxical, but as J. Robert Oppenheimer explains to his lone student about the new science of quantum physics, “It’s paradoxical, and yet, it works.” This is also true of Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan’s 3 hour epic biopic of the “father of the atomic bomb,” which is indeed a heavy drama but also very entertaining. From start to finish it is a completely engrossing film that leaves a lasting impression on its audience. Nolan has made excellent films before (Memento (2000), The Dark Knight (2008), Inception (2010), Interstellar (2014) Dunkirk (2017)), but Oppenheimer feels like a crowning achievement; it is easily the best movie of 2023.

This epic historical film features one of the most impressive ensemble casts in recent memory, and yet, at the center is a brilliant performance by Cillian Murphy as Oppenheimer. Murphy, a longtime favorite of Nolan, finally gets a starring role in one of the director’s films, and not only that but one upon which the entire film depends. He captures the unlikely charisma of Oppenheimer–or “Oppy” as he affectionately called–and complexities and conflict that he tried to keep hidden. Oppenheimer was an unlikely choice to head up the Manhattan Project, especially given his left wing tendencies (an intellectual interest in communist ideas but not politics, and associations, including romances, with known or former communists), but the man in charge of the secret government nuclear bomb project, General Groves (Matt Damon), knows that “Oppy” is the right man for the job. 

Damon seems like he should be the antagonist; he is a pragmatist concerned with getting the project done and Oppenheimer is the creative idealist, but this actually makes them allies. Damon, who looks quite natural in a general’s uniform, also serves as the film’s sort of comic relief, or at least as a tension breaker. He is like the principal to Oppenheimer’s cool teacher, actually giving him a lot of leeway while keeping the higher ups off his back. Likewise, Emily Blunt as Oppenheimer’s wife, Kitty, is also a pragmatist which also makes her a good partner for him, though they clash just like Groves and Oppenheimer clash. She too is a scientist, a biologist and botanist, but is relegated to the role of wife and mother. “Oppy” is most alive when doing theory work, managing Los Alamos, or talking about science and theory. This is fine for friends and fellow scientists but perhaps it explains why his relationships with his wife and on-again-off-again girlfriend turned mistress, Jean Tatlock (Florence Pugh), feel very important but not very intimate and is the cause of the discord in each relationship. Both Blunt and Pugh give great performances as strong minded women who find happiness and strife with Oppenheimer.

Oppenheimer’s true antagonist is admiral turned bureaucrat Lewis Strauss—pronounced “straws”—who Oppenheimer thinks so little of that he doesn’t even register as a rival. Robert Downey Jr., an immensely talented actor, gives his best and most complex performance in years. Strauss brings Oppenheimer to Princeton, where Einstein already works, seemingly to add to his collection of famous scientists. In interviews, Downey Jr compared his character to Salieri, the composer desperate for acknowledgment and so jealous of Mozart that plotted to kill him in Amadeus. He does a wonderful job playing a modern Salieri, a petty and frail ego, and his Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor is most deserved. 

Strauss’s scenes, set in the 1950’s and shot in black and white, deal with his senate confirmation hearings for Commerce secretary in Eisenhower’s cabinet, but his questionable past treatment of Oppenheimer becomes the focus of the hearings. These scenes are intercut with a different timeline, shot in color, of Oppenheimer technically not on trial but in a hostile hearing to restore his government security clearance, though it is clear to all that the verdict is a foregone conclusion. He reads his life into the record and we see story of his early life and work at Los Alamos in flashbacks. Jumping from timeline to timeline sustains a steady momentum for each story and gives us a fuller understanding of events and the state of mind of the characters. It is also one of the things that keeps Oppenheimer from being a just straightforward biopic.

The supporting cast is a treasure trove of familiar names and faces including: Josh Harnett, Kenneth Branagh, Jason Clarke, David Krumholtz, Rami Malek, Alden Ehrenreich, and the list goes on and on. No matter how big or small the role, each cast member gives a great performance. Nolan and casting director John Papsidera wisely chose performers with distinctive and memorable faces, so even if you don’t remember every minor character’s name you still don’t lose track of them. 

The score by Ludwig Göransson is ever present but not intrusive. It is dramatic and abstract as needed and enhances the emotions and situations on film instead of cuing the audience on how to feel. The cinematography by Hoyte Van Hoytema is impressive not just because it utilizes the IMAX format to capture the vistas of New Mexico and the stunning splendor and horror of the clouds of fire of the first nuclear test, but also because of how it captures the actors. IMAX cameras lose focus easily, but Nolan and Van Hoytema turned this into an advantage by making great use of close ups–and performers like Murphy, Downey Jr, and Blunt know how make the most of a close up without overacting.  

At times Oppenheimer feels like a heist movie: a couple of characters have an impossible task to achieve in little time and must assemble a team and work out a practical plan. This is where the excitement comes in as Oppenheimer recruits scientists, many of whom are famous in their own right and have theories, equations, and labs named after them. They are in a race to beat the Nazis, who have a two year head start. They are also driven by the thrill of discovery and doing something that’s never been done before. Yet, over every moment looms the weight of the very real and terrible death and destruction of the atomic bomb. There are no scenes of carnage, no real life documentary footage or photos of the effects of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but Oppenheimer, and the audience, fully understand the horror of what has happened. “I have blood on my hands,” he says to an unmoved President Truman and his concerns about the consequences of the atomic age fall of deaf ears.

Nolan focuses the last hour of the movie on what is behind Oppenheimer’s haunted face. His masterful use of filmmaking leaves the audience haunted too. Nolan’s screenplay is based on the biography by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin titled American Prometheus and that is a perfect title for the story of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Niels Bohr (Kenneth Branagh), the Danish physicist who proved Einstein wrong about quantum theory tells Oppenheimer, “You are an American Prometheus. A man who gave them the power to destroy themselves.”

Best Pictures #99: 2023 (96th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee: Maestro

by A.J.

Best Pictures #99: 2023 (96th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee

Maestro

“The other night I drifted nice 

continental drift divide

Mountains sit in a line, 

Leonard Bernstein,”

–It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine), REM 

From working in the classical department of Tower Records across from Lincoln Center in Manhattan I learned that Leonard Bernstein was a famous, loved, and revered conductor and composer. The DVD box-set of his Young People’s Concerts, so expensive it had to be kept behind the counter, sat on a shelf over my shoulder during every shift. I already knew that he was the only lyric anyone could anticipate in REM’s song “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine).” Even if I hadn’t worked in the classical department I would have learned about Leonard Bernstein from his music for movies like On the Town and, most famously, West Side Story. But what exactly was it about Bernstein that separated him from other prestigious conductors and composers? I did not learn that from the Leonard Bernstein biopic Maestro, which is technical and even artistic achievement but unfortunately lacking as an engaging biography.

Bradley Cooper’s directorial follow up to his excellent remake of A Star is Born begins in black and white in Academy ratio (a square frame) like a movie made in the 1940’s and 50’s would have been, but the style of this portion of the film is its most unconventional. It's also the liveliest portion. These scenes mix Bernstein’s music with moments of his life in exciting ways. One scene begins at an outdoor lunch where Bernstein (Cooper) is advised to change his name to Burns if he ever wants to lead an orchestra. Bernstein and his wife, Felicia (Carey Mulligan), decide to do things their way and walk from the outdoor lunch table right into the balcony of a theater where On the Town is being performed and end up on stage. When the movie switches over to color it drops its heightened style and becomes a fairly bland biopic. 

Cooper long ago proved himself to be a great actor, capable of comedy or drama or a little bit of both simultaneously depending on the script, and here he turns in a solid performance. The prosthetics and old age make-up are actually very well done and are not distracting (or potentially offensive) as early publicity photos led many to fear. He captures Bernstein’s accent and manner of speaking without feeling like he is showing off. Carey Mulligan also gives a solid performance, likewise capturing a very mannered accent and personality without drawing attention to herself. Mulligan and Cooper are great together in their fun romantic scenes and later dramatic scenes. 

In the black and white portion of Bernstein’s early career we see his relationship with a clarinet player, David (Matt Bomer), but without much detail. It’s the performances of both actors that let us know how meaningful the relationship was. Their farewell is the movie’s emotional apex. In a later scene we see Bernstein caught with a younger male admirer in a hallway of the family apartment at a party. Bernstein is embarrassed because he should know better. Felicia scolds him, “You’re getting sloppy.” We learn little else of whatever understanding or agreement they may have had regarding Bernstein’s sexuality.  

Cooper the director once again works with cinematographer Matthew Libatique, who earned an Oscar nomination for A Star is Born and now has earned an Oscar nomination for his work here. They make a great pair. In the black and white scenes the camera glides and even seems to fly in a way that captures Bernstein's excitement about music. That lively movement is lost when the film moves to the color era and the cinematography becomes much more conventional though still well shot. 

Most of Maestro consists of domestic scenes that should feel intimate: a day in the park, preparing a guest list, a doctor’s appointment, a dance. However, instead of feeling like a fly on the wall, it felt like I was at a museum trying to understand an exhibit I’d been assured was meaningful art. Instead of building relatability and fleshing out the characters these scenes feel flat, and therefore, unfortunately, so does the rest of the movie. It's clear that Bradley Cooper, who in addition to acting and directing also produced and co-wrote the screenplay, loves and reveres Leonard Bernstein. The problem is that Cooper's film assumes we already feel the same and are here to revel in Bernstein’s greatness instead of seeing who the man was as a person, the impact he had on his field and the wider culture, and why we should feel what the filmmakers feel for the subject.

13 Nights of Shocktober: Gothic (1986)

 by A.J. 

Night 6: Horror Origins Night/Julian Sands Memorial Night

“As long as you are a guest in my house you shall play my games.”

Gothic (1986)

I have long been fascinated by the “haunted summer of 1816,” when Percy and Mary Shelley, her stepsister Claire Clairmont, Lord Byron, and his traveling companion Dr. John Polidori challenged each other to create ghost stories over an unnaturally dreary and stormy summer at Byron’s vacation villa on the shores of Lake Geneva. Byron wrote only a fragment of a story, Polidori wrote the short story The Vampyre, and Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein. Adding an extra layer of eerie lore to this true story is that their “haunted summer” was caused by the “Year Without a Summer,” when a volcanic eruption from the previous year threw so much dust and ash into the atmosphere that all over the northern hemisphere of the globe summer never really happened. Temperatures were far cooler than average, even frosty and winterlike, and storms and cloudy days were more prevalent. Ken Russell’s film Gothic is a speculative exploration of what inspired those young poets and authors and what ultimately inspired Mary Shelley to create Frankenstein and change the literary world forever. 

Ken Russell is perhaps the only filmmaker who could give John Waters a run for his money in terms of works of sincere camp, and sincere sleaze for that matter. His films are often broad, range from mildly to especially ridiculous, are highly sexual, blasphemous, and explore the origins of myths, as well as the psychological effect of imposed norms on complex persons. In Gothic, the characters grapple with their inner demons and fears, enhanced by cabin fever, until everyone reaches a psychological, nightmarish breaking point during one especially stormy night. With its strange sights and not so subtle subtext, this film might be hard to take seriously, but Ken Russell is perhaps the only filmmaker not afraid to indulge the at times outrageous nature of these characters. 

The cast is great with performances to match. The less famous figures of the bunch, Polidori and Claire, have the most memorable performances by Timothy Spall and Myriam Cyr. Lord Byron is well played by Gabriel Byrne as a sinister but alluring and magnetic figure. Julian Sands as Percy Shelley is perfect as an “artist” type. He is obsessed with his own death, completely overtaken by the wonders of nature, and still is believably worthy of the affection and care of Mary Shelley. Natasha Richardson is great as Mary Shelley–actually Mary Godwin since she and Percy were not legally married at this point–who seems like the only normal or sane person on this vacation filled with eccentrics. She may also seem like the most boring character, but she is not; she is just the best at hiding her neuroses. She may also be the only character with the greatest reason for anxiety and introspection and despair: the recent loss of her newborn baby. Her complexities are buried deep and as the film goes on they rise to the surface. 

Surreal sexual images abound: a woman whose breasts have eyes instead of nipples, a suit of armor with a pointed codpiece, and the anthropomorphized image of an imp, a miniature humanlike demon, sitting on the chest of a woman in her bed–a recreation of the famous painting The Nightmare by Henry Fuseli. There is palpable homoeroticism between Byron and Polidori, and also Bryon and Percy Shelley. Polidori’s story The Vampyre is about a vampire disguised as an English gentleman who drains the life of a young woman–Byron had an affair with Polidori’s sister that proved ruinous for her, a mere incident for him. Bryon is more than hinted at as being a vampire, living off attention and lives of those around him. Claire Clairmont is obsessed with Bryon and pregnant with his child; Percy and Mary go to visit him essentially as an excuse for Claire to see Byron again. Since her and Polidori’s affections have been already won, Bryon has little interest in them and makes advances on Mary. 

The climax is a great psychological symphony of horrors. Every character is on the brink of madness or beyond. Gothic is about people that created works of horror, who are themselves haunted by fears and anxieties that come to the forefront of their psyches during one dreary and stormy summer. In a wild, swirling sequence the characters are each confronted with their own fears. 

This is a period movie that does not feel like a period movie due in large part to the style of Ken Russell and his willingness to actually depict fantasies and nightmares for more than pure sensation. All of these characters are young, free thinking Bohemian individuals who act like young Bohemian individuals so they do not seem to belong in the costumes we associate with a time of reserve and manners. These elements give Gothic an incongruous but lively feeling. This is a strange movie but for their time these were strange people.

Gothic is currently streaming on Tubi.

Best Pictures #94: 2022 (95th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee: The Fabelmans

 by A.J. 

Best Pictures #94: 2022 (95th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee

The Fabelmans

“Movies are dreams, doll, that you never forget.”

It might seem odd to say that Steven Spielberg has never made a movie like The Fabelmans before. Yet, there are no aliens or dinosaurs or anything supernatural or futuristic, it is a period piece but not about a major historical event, nor is it an adaptation of a prestigious work. It is a family drama and a coming-of-age story. It is as though those superb, intimate moments of family life at the beginnings of JAWS, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Poltergeist (co-written and produced by Spielberg), or Catch Me If You Can get to play out in full. This is not precisely a biopic but it is a dramatization of Spielberg’s childhood and teenage years. Spielberg, of course, embraces sentiment but avoids schmaltz and solipsism and self-indulgence in both story and style to the betterment of his picture. Most importantly he also avoids false humility. Autobiographical aspects notwithstanding, only a master filmmaker like Spielberg could have made a movie as good as The Fabelmans, his best film in twenty years.

This story begins in 1952 in New Jersey as Burt and Mitzi Fabelman take their young son, Sammy, to the movies for the first time to see The Greatest Show on Earth (winner of the Best Picture Oscar that year). It is a life changing experience for Sammy. He is so affected by that movie’s incredible train crash scene that he has to recreate the moment, with the help of his understanding mother, with his toy train set and father’s home movie camera. Thus begins Sammy Fabelman’s life making movies, not as a hobby but because he has to. As time passes and the family moves first to Arizona then to California and Sammy becomes a teenager, and prefers to be called Sam, making movies allows him to see his family and his world in unexpected ways.

Michelle Williams receives top billing as Mitzi Fabelman, whose life is thrown off by the moves the family must make from one state to the next because of her husband Burt’s career. Williams is eccentric but not exactly over the top—a full blown over the top mother would feel too much like a Hollywood contrivance—though she seems to be channeling Liza Minnelli even in her less frantic moments. This is not a fault against her or the movie; her character carries the emotional burden that drives most of the story. Sam’s inner conflict comes in part from learning about his mother’s secret while editing a home movie. The Academy likes performances that it can “see,” so it is no surprise that she earned a Best Actress nomination. Paul Dano is cast perfectly as Burt Fabelman, an engineer working in the new field of computers who connects best with his loved ones when he is talking about technical things. He is a kind, gentle father and there is something of Christopher Walken as Frank Abagnale, Sr. from Catch Me If You Can in Dano’s performance. As lovable “Uncle” Benny, Burt’s best friend and colleague, Seth Rogan gives a career best performance, though he is still playing a comic relief character. Benny is not just Burt’s best friend but also Mitzi’s best friend and confidant and perhaps the audience, like Grandma Fabelman (Jeannie Berlin), will pick up on what only Sammy’s camera sees.

Like a whirlwind, Judd Hirsch, funny, exciting, a little frightening, and unforgettable, enters the movie as Uncle Boris only to exit as unexpectedly as he arrived. He talks to Sammy about being an artist, about having to choose art over family, about how Sammy loves that (the editing machine and film) a little more than his family. Hirsch’s screen time is limited, but memorable enough to have earned him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination. Of course, the real star of the movie is Gabriel LaBelle as teenage Sam Fabelman. He does a great job as a teenager who feels out of place in his new home and at his new school. He also has to deal with two kinds of bullies: Logan, the blond “all-American” boy who singles him out because he is new, and Chad, who singles him out because he is Jewish. The antisemitism he experiences in the early 1960’s southern California feels like a real threat (Logan really is no better than Chad); at best his Judaism makes him a fetish object for Monica, his Jesus obsessed high school girlfriend. The final confrontation between Sam and Logan is one of the most interesting bully-victim interactions I’ve seen on film. In a different film, this antisemitism would be the focus of the movie; here co-writers Spielberg and, recent favorite collaborator Tony Kushner, present it as an unsettling part of everyday life.

Composer John Williams, Spielberg’s favorite collaborator for 50 years now, turns in his most memorable score since Catch Me If You Can. Williams has long favored big brass focused scores composed in the key of G, like his themes for Superman or Raiders of the Lost Ark, but his score for The Fabelmans is piano based and gentle. Janusz Kaminski, Spielberg’s favorite cinematographer for decades, tones down his ostentatious style from last year’s West Side Story remake to create a memorable but not distracting visual style.   

At times The Fabelmans feels episodic, as any life story or memoir would, but it does not feel disjointed. It is a long movie but I do not think I would want anything cut. The small idiosyncratic moments that seem disposable are what create an authenticity that turn these characters into people.

This is not a love letter to movies, though it is filled with an unparalleled appreciation for the craft of making movies. I must admit that watching Sam figure out filming techniques reminded me of my own time at film school. I remember the excitement that Sam felt being able to film for six minutes without changing reels or the possibility of using a 16mm Arriflex camera, which I never got to do. For these reasons, the movie hit me in a certain way that I know will not work for everyone else. However, the emotions and themes at play throughout the story of the Fabelman family are universal and what really make it a great movie; it allows for a personal connection. In the final shot, Spielberg shows a playfulness and sense of humor that I have not seen in any of his other movies and that has endeared him to me most unexpectedly. Previous Spielberg movies have played with my heartstrings to great effect, but none have felt as close to my own heart as The Fabelmans. 

Nominees: Kristie Macosko Krieger, Steven Spielberg, Tony Kushner, producers

Director: Steven Spielberg

Screenplay: Steven Spielberg & Tony Kushner

Cast: Michelle Williams, Paul Dano, Gabriel LaBelle, Seth Rogan

Production Companies:Amblin Entertainment, Reliance Entertainment

Distributor: Universal Pictures

Release Date: November 11th, 2022

Total Nominations: 7, including Best Picture

Other Nominations: Actress-Michelle Williams; Supporting Actor-Judd Hirsch; Director-Steven Spielberg; Original Screenplay-Steven Spielberg, Tony Kushner; Production Design-Rick Carter, Karen O'Hara; Original Score-John Williams