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Outtakes

First Reaction: 2025 Oscar Nominations

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Hollywood, hoping to find and spread a bit of cheer today, announced its nominations for the 2025 Oscars. We celebrate with them, because we’re thrilled for most of these nominees. Check out those Animated Features (once again, the best category in the lineup)! But, as usual, we have a handful of gripes.

Actress in a Supporting Role

Where is Danielle Deadwyler for The Piano Lesson? In fact, where is that movie? While we think it’s a contender for adapted screenplay (Virgil and Malcolm Washington), as well as perhaps lead actor (John David Washington), there’s no question Deadwyler (also snubbed for 2022’s Till—die she kick somebody’s cat or something?) should not only have been nominated but she probably should have won.

  • Monica Barbaro, A Complete Unknown
  • Ariana Grande, Wicked
  • Felicity Jones, The Brutalist
  • Isabella Rossellini, Conclave
  • Zoe Saldaña, Emilia Pérez

Actor in a Supporting Role

This is a strong lineup, but Clarence Maclin’s performance in Sing Sing is a painful oversight. As much as we loved Norton, Pearce and Strong, Maclin was better than any of  them.

  • Yura Borisov, Anora
  • Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain
  • Edward Norton, A Complete Unknown
  • Guy Pearce, The Brutalist
  • Jeremy Strong, The Apprentice

Writing (Adapted Screenplay)

The Piano Lesson over A Complete Unknown, but at least Sing Sing and Nickel Boys made the list.

  • A Complete Unknown: James Mangold and Jay Cocks
  • Conclave: Peter Straughan
  • Emilia Pérez: Jacques Audiard; in collaboration with Thomas Bidegain, Lea Mysius and Nicolas Livecchi
  • Nickel Boys: RaMell Ross and Joslyn Barnes
  • Sing Sing: Greg Kwedar and Clint Bentley; story by Clint Bentley, Greg Kwedar, Clarence Maclin, John “Divine G” Whitfield

Writing (Original Screenplay)

No real complaints, but grateful to see September 5 get some love. This is a stacked category and some real masterpieces are going to go home empty handed.

  • Anora: Sean Baker
  • The Brutalist: Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold
  • A Real Pain: Jesse Eisenberg
  • September 5: Moritz Binder, Tim Fehlbaum; co-written by Alex David
  • The Substance: Coralie Fargeat

Music (Original Score)

No Challengers?! Being the best score of the year, we’d have bumped any one of these guys to fit it in. (Nice to see The Wild Robot, though.)

  • The Brutalist: Daniel Blumberg
  • Conclave: Volker Bertlemann
  • Emilia Pérez: Clément Ducol and Camille
  • Wicked: John Powell and Stephen Schwartz
  • The Wild Robot: Kris Bowers

Music (Original Song)

Disappointed again not to see Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross get any love here. “Compress/Repress” would have been our pick. We’d probably have given it the Diane Warren slot.

  • “El Mal” from Emilia Pérez: music by Clément Ducol and Camille; lyric by Clément Ducol, Camille and Jacques Audiard
  • “The Journey” from The Six Triple Eight: music and lyric by Diane Warren
  • “Like a Bird” from Sing Sing: music and lyric by Abraham Alexander and Adrian Quesada
  • “Mi Camino” from Emilia Pérez: music and lyric by Camille and Clément Ducol
  • “Never Too Late” from Elton John: Never Too Late: music and lyric by Elton John, Brandi Carlile, Andrew Watt and Bernie Taupin

Documentary Feature Film

Great list of films here. Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat and Sugarcane are our favorites.

  • Black Box Diaries
  • No Other Land
  • Porcelain War
  • Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat
  • Sugarcane

International Feature Film

So happy to see Flow and The Girl with the Needle included here. Emilia Pérez is no doubt the front runner, but you should see all five of these.

  • I’m Still Here: Brazil
  • The Girl with the Needle: Denmark
  • Emilia Pérez: France
  • The Seed of the Sacred Fig: Germany
  • Flow: Latvia

Animated Feature Film

Brilliant films, top to bottom. Hard to even choose. The best thing you can do is to watch every one of them immediately.

  • Flow
  • Inside Out 2
  • Memoir of a Snail
  • Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
  • The Wild Robot

Film Editing

Challengers really needed to be on this list. We’d give it any of these slots except Anora.

  • Anora: Sean Baker
  • The Brutalist: Dávid Jancsó
  • Conclave: Nick Emerson
  • Emilia Pérez: Juliette Welfing
  • Wicked: Myron Kerstein

Cinematography

Finally, some love for Nosferatu. We’d liked to have seen Nickel Boys and The Bikeriders on here, probably instead of Maria and Emilia Pérez, although once again it was a remarkable year for cinematographers and all five of these films are gorgeous.

  • The Brutalist: Lol Crawley
  • Dune: Part Two: Greig Fraser
  • Emilia Pérez: Paul Guilhaume
  • Maria: Ed Lachman
  • Nosferatu: Jarin Blaschke

Actor in a Leading Role

Not a ton of surprises here. All solid choices.

  • Adrien Brody, The Brutalist
  • Timothee Chalamet, A Complete Unknown
  • Colman Domingo, Sing Sing
  • Ralph Fiennes, Conclave
  • Sebastian Stan, The Apprentice

Actress in a Leading Role

Thrilled for the Demi Moore nomination. There were so many exceptional lead performances this year by women, and the one woefully overlooked all season was Jodi Comer in The Bikeriders. We’d have loved to see her make this list against the odds, but it’s tough to say whose slot she should have taken.

  • Cynthia Erivo, Wicked
  • Karla Sofia Gascon, Emilia Pérez
  • Mikey Madison, Anora
  • Demi Moore, The Substance
  • Fernanda Torres, I’m Still Here

Best Director

Robert Eggers (Nosferatu) should have had James Mangold’s spot.

  • Anora: Sean Baker
  • The Brutalist: Brady Corbet
  • A Complete Unknown: James Mangold
  • Emilia Pérez: Jacques Audiard
  • The Substance: Coralie Fargeat

Best Picture

Nosferatu and Sing Sing instead of A Complete Unknown and Dune: Part Two. Thrilled to see The Substance and Nickel Boys recognized.

  • Anora
  • The Brutalist
  • A Complete Unknown
  • Conclave
  • Dune: Part Two
  • Emilia Pérez
  • I’m Still Here
  • Nickel Boys
  • The Substance

The 97th Academy Awards, hosted by Conan O’Brien, will air on ABC Sunday, March 2, live from the Dolby Theatre.

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A Friend Indeed

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Brave the Dark

by George Wolf

In just four years, Angel Studios has become a leader in the faith-based entertainment market. TV’s The Chosen and the feature films Cabrini and Sound of Freedom were target audience favorites, and garnered at least some critical acclaim.

Angel’s latest production, Brave the Dark, lightens the hands and the editorializing for a generically successful crowd-pleaser about the power of belief for a troubled soul.

Co-written and directed by Damien Harris, the film is based on the life of Nathan Williams, who overcame a traumatic childhood thanks to the mentorship of his teacher, Stan Deen.

In and out of Pennsylvania foster homes after the death of his parents, Williams (Nicholas Hamilton, It, It Chapter Two) robs a store with some friends and is convicted of burglary. He’s saved from jail under the guardianship of Mr. Deen (Jared Harris, Damian’s brother), who is seemingly a favorite of everyone in the community.

But Nate continues to act out at nearly every turn, and the message that he doesn’t believe in his own worth is delivered as clearly as Deen’s need to soothe his loneliness after the painful death of his wife. Hamilton echos the film’s struggles with nuance, while the veteran Harris brings enough endearing authenticity to help smooth the rough edges in their many scenes together.

The film is another blunt, save-the-children instrument for Angel Studios. And it’s needlessly overlong as it slogs through multiple flashbacks on its way to a fairly obvious reveal and an “it’s not your fault” breakthrough that should have tried harder to distance itself from Good Will Hunting.

But there is heart here, and the real Nathan’s closing credits plea to “pay it forward” is sweetly schmalzy. Even better, the sincere attempts at storytelling are just competent enough to reach beyond the choir.

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City Hands

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Into the Deep

by George Wolf

In the category of shark movie stunt casting, Into the Deep may have bagged the great white whale. Because for the first time since Jaws set the standard fifty years ago, Richard Dreyfuss is sharkin’ again (note: piranha movies don’t count).

Well, he’s not actively sharkin’, as Dreyfuss plays Seamus, whom we mainly see schooling his granddaughter Cassidy on how important it is to respect the ocean and everything in it.

“It’s their kingdom. You’re a guest.”

Young Cassidy (Quinn P. Hensley) learns that the hard way when a shark attack kills her father. Years later, adult Cassidy (Scout Taylor-Compton) is an oceanographer still haunted by the nightmares of her father’s death, but willing to put fears aside for a pleasure trip with her new husband, Gregg (Callum McGowan).

Old friend “Benz” (Stuart Townsend) runs a weathered charter boat on the coastline, so Cass and Gregg agree to join another couple for some wreck diving. But before you can bid adieu to some fair Spanish ladies, both sharks and pirates come cruising.

The evil – I mean c’mon, look at the scar on his face! – Jordan Devane (Jon Seda) and his gang of former Navy SEALs hijack Benz’s boat, forcing the tourists to dive the shark-infested waters and retrieve their stash of drugs waiting below.

The movie’s tagline is the shameless “under water no one can hear you scream,” which immediately sets a low bar of expectations that director Christian Sesma manages to hit. Flashbacks are juggled awkwardly enough to kneecap any sort of tension, and while the CGI sharks work well enough in dream sequences, the actual attack set pieces are embarrassingly weak. Screenwriters Chad Law and Josh Ridgeway provide plenty of Scooby-Doo style exposition that anyone not named Richard can’t come close to elevating.

It is, of course, a nostalgic treat to see Dreyfuss at least near troubled waters again, even though you can’t help but wonder why he agreed. The answer comes with the extended message on shark conservation he delivers over the closing credits.

Fair enough. At least no real ones died for this bloody mess.

New In Theaters, The Screening Room

Screening Room: Wolf Man, The Brutalist, Nickel Boys and Much More

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Wolf Man, The Brutalist, Nickel Boys, Unstoppable, The Room Next Door, Back In Action, Every Little Thing, Night Call

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By Design

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The Brutalist

by George Wolf

After a series of memorable supporting roles (including Thirteen, Funny Games, and Melancholia), Brady Corbet took a step toward filmmaking in 2012 as co-writer and star of the creepily effective Antonio Campos thriller Simon Killer. He moved behind the camera for The Childhood of a Leader (2015) and Vox Lux (2018), teaming with his co-writer and wife Mona Fastvold for two captivating features anchored in history.

But as impressive as Corbet’s filmography has been so far, the audacious scope (three and a half hours, with an intermission) and ambitious craftsmanship (Corbet and cinematographer Lol Crawley shoot in 70mm VistaVision – out of date in American since the early 60s) of The Brutalist arrives as an utterly shocking step forward. And even when it teeters on a late, self-indulgent precipice, the film heralds Corbet and Fastvold as filmmakers of impressive vision and skill.

Though their characters are again changed by history, this time they give those characters more of a chance to shape it. We arrive in post-WWII America with László Tóth (an astounding Adrien Brody), a Hungarian who has survived the Nazi concentration camps and come to work with his cousin Attila (Alessandro Nivola) in a Pennsylvania furniture store. Corbet’s gorgeous upside-down framing of the Statue of Liberty foreshadows both Tóth’s future in a new land and the nimble camerawork to come, with the memorable scale from Daniel Blumberg’s majestic score signaling the increasing stakes.

László has lost much to wartime trauma, and Brody makes the pain palpable. But as he waits for word as to when his wife Erzsébet (Felicity Jones, never better) and niece Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy) may join him in America, László holds tight to his pride from working as a celebrated architect in Budapest.

When local tycoon Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce, terrific as the film’s Daniel Day-Lewis) learns of László’s talent, he hires him to design a long desired community center. The project will come to consume László’s very existence.

Corbet assembles the saga in two chapters, and after a fairly straightforward setup in Act One, motives and messaging become more abstract. On the surface is an epic tale of post war America’s give and take relationship with its immigrants, of beauty and art surviving the worst of humanity and of the deep complexities within the American capitalist dream. And if it stopped there, The Brutalist would stand as a grand achievement. But László isn’t the only architect thinking very big here, and Corbet builds up Act Two (and the accompanying epilogue) with grand ideas on personal legacy, Jewish history, sexual repression, power and shame, and ultimately, more questions than he’s intending to answer.

Corbet’s direction also becomes more insistent, adding shots that move away from what his characters would naturally notice to stress elements for audience benefit. The gorgeous photography, muscular framing and powerful performances ensure nothing goes to waste, but a road to a grand and profound statement begins to gather some stones.

While the film does feel overlong, it is never boring, as nearly every frame contains something, or someone, intriguing. Zsófia’s arc – that of a girl rendered mute from wartime trauma who grows to reclaim her destiny – could fuel its own feature film, as could Attila’s path to assimilation, and any number of supporting characters adding memorable moments to the landscape.

And The Brutalist is nothing if not memorable. Though the sheer accomplishment may stand a bit taller than the final statement, it cements Corbet as a voice that cannot be ignored.

Fright Club

Fright Club: Frightful Homecomings

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They say you can’t go home again. Horror filmmakers are more apt to say that you shouldn’t. For our latest episode, we look at some of horror cinema’s most memorable homecomings.

5. Coming Home in the Dark (2021)

Making his feature debut with the road trip horror Coming Home in the Dark, James Ashcroft is carving out a very different style of Kiwi horror than the splatter comedy you may be expecting.

A family is enjoying some time alone in the countryside when approached by two armed drifters. A car passes without incident. Mandrake (Danielle Gillies, chilling) say, “Looking back on today’s events, I think this will be the moment you realized you should have done something.”

Riveting, tricky storytelling to the last shot keeps you on your toes.

4. Salem’s Lot (1979)

Novelist Ben Mears decides to focus his next book on that creepy old Marsten House from his hometown of Jerusalem’s Lot, Maine. At around the same time he arrives, townspeople start dying and disappearing. It could only be Ben, or the antique store owner Richard Straker, who bought the old Marsten hours in the first place.

Tobe Hooper’s miniseries version of the Stephen King novel is still the best retelling. So many individual images stand out: the kid at the window, the Count Orlock (original) style vampire, the always saucy James Mason.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLm0iGY7CiI

3. Possum (2018)

Sean Harris is endlessly sympathetic in this tale of childhood trauma. Philip (Harris) has returned to his burned out, desolate childhood home after some unexplained professional humiliation. His profession? Puppeteer. The puppet itself seems to be a part of the overall problem.

I don’t know why the single creepiest puppet in history—a man-sized marionnette with a human face and spider’s body—could cause any trouble. Kids can be so delicate.

Writer/director Matthew Holness spins a smalltown mystery around the sad story of a grown man who is confused about what’s real and what isn’t. The melancholy story and Harris’s exceptional turn make Possum a tough one to forget.

2. The Orphanage (2007)
Laura (Belén Rueda) and her husband reopen the orphanage where she grew up, with the goal of running a house for children with special needs – children like her adopted son Simón, who is HIV positive. But Simón’s new imaginary friends worry Laura, and when he disappears it looks like she may be imagining things herself.

A scary movie can be elevated beyond measure by a masterful score and an artful camera. Because director Antonio Bayona keeps the score and all ambient noise to a minimum, allowing the quiet to fill the scenes, he develops a truly haunting atmosphere. His camera captures the eerie beauty of the stately orphanage, but does it in a way that always suggests someone is watching. The effect is never heavy handed, but effortlessly eerie.

One of the film’s great successes is its ability to take seriously both the logical, real world story line, and the supernatural one. Rueda carries the film with a restrained urgency – hysterical only when necessary, focused at all times, and absolutely committed to this character, who may or may not be seeing ghosts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7FD6tR6zOc

1. Halloween (1978)

The night he came home.

No film is more responsible for the explosion of teen slashers than John Carpenter’s babysitter butchering classic.

From the creepy opening piano notes to the disappearing body ending, this low budget surprise changed everything. Carpenter develops anxiety like nobody else, and plants it right in a wholesome Midwestern neighborhood. You don’t have to go camping or take a road trip or do anything at all – the boogeyman is right there at home.

Michael Myers – that hulking, unstoppable, blank menace – is scary. Pair that with the down-to-earth charm of lead Jamie Lee Curtis, who brought a little class and talent to the genre, and add the bellowing melodrama of horror veteran Donald Pleasance, and you’ve hit all the important notes. Just add John Carpenter’s spare score to ratchet up the anxiety. Perfect.

We also want to thank Derek Stewart for sharing his short film Possum with us! If you didn’t get to join us for Fright Club Live, give yourself the gift of his amazing animated short:

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The Agony of Defeat

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September 5

by George Wolf

The crew of a live TV broadcast in the 1970s battles mounting pressure and a ticking clock, tensions rising while a well-known outcome is reimagined.

Saturday Night?

No, you’ll find precious few laughs in September 5. But director/co-writer Tim Fehlman and a terrific cast deliver a taut, precise and impressively constructed look inside the crew that found themselves covering terrorism at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Germany.

Members of the militant group Black September infiltrated the Olympic Village, killed two members of the Israeli Olympic team, and took nine others hostage. You may know how it all ended. And while Spielberg’s 2005 Munich masterfully deconstructed Israel’s plan for revenge, Fehlman (The Colony) puts us beside the souls unexpectedly tasked with broadcasting terrorism to 900 million people.

The news crew was actually from the sports department, and led by legend-in-the-making Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard). After a day covering another Mark Spitz gold medal, gunshots are heard outside. As events quickly grow dire, Arledge rebuffs any requests to step aside for more experienced reporters, leaning on ops director Marvin Bader (Ben Chaplin), producer Geoffrey Mason (John Magaro) and German translator Marianne Gebhardt (Leonie Benesch) to craft a broadcast plan that won’t impede any rescue effort.

Not one of these 95 minutes feels wasted – a necessity for a film steeped in souls with no time to spare. Fehlman weaves the tech details (Peter Jennings went live via telephone) and real archival footage in an impressively seamless fashion that fuels an authentic urgency that is relentless, apolitical and gripping.

And in a year of some f-ing great ensembles, the one here is right near the top. Sarsgaard, Chaplin and Magaro make an intense triumvirate of smarts, sweat and desperation, while Benesch (The White Ribbon, The Teacher’s Lounge) continues to be a master of understated gravity.

There are so many levels to these tragic hours in history, and Fehlman miraculously packs many of them into close, heartbreaking quarters. A tightly-wound account of one anxious search for the thrill of victory, September 5 is one of the year’s unforgettable thrillers.

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Life of Illusion

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All We Imagine As Light

by George Wolf

“It’s like this place isn’t real. You could just vanish into thin air and no one would ever know.”

“We would know.”

With All We Imagine As Light, writer/director Payal Kapadia creates a triumphant portrait of friendship and Indian womanhood. In her narrative feature debut, Kapadia unveils a wonderful voice, one full of clarity and grace, with an assured command of how to reach us through her characters.

Kani Kusruti is gently spellbinding as Prabha, a nurse in Mumbai who has not heard from her husband in over a year. After their arranged marriage, he has been working extensively in Germany, and when his unexpected gift to Prabha arrives in the mail, it only punctures her guarded routine.

Prabha’s roommate is Anu (Divya Prabha), a younger nurse who is resisting her parents’ desire for an arranged marriage by taking up with Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon). While the other nurses whisper about her “boy,” Anu and Shiaz look forward to finding a place to become intimate.

While Prabha advises Anu to be more responsible, the lesson is underscored by Prabha’s attempts to help Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam), who works as a cook in the hospital, stay in her chawl (tenement apartment). Parvaty’s husband has suddenly passed away, and now a developer wants to evict her to make way for a skyscraper.

As the lives of the three women intersect, Kapadia illustrates the struggle of Indian women to balance tradition with the desire to control their own destinies. And whenPrabha and Anu join Parvaty on a trip back to her village, separate events will push all three women closer to changing their lives.

There is a poetic nature to Kapadia’s storytelling. With only the most gentle of nudges, Kapadia speaks for the scores of Indian women who come to Mumbai for the promise of a better life in the city, only to be disillusioned. All We Imagine As Light draws its power from how clearly it sees them, and how real it makes them feel.

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Final Curtain

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The Last Showgirl

by George Wolf

They may be a universe of genres apart, but Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance and Gia Coppola’s The Last Showgirl breathe plenty of the same air, both on the screen and on the red carpet.

Like fellow 90s icon Demi Moore, Pamela Anderson squeezes every dramatic ounce from the role of her lifetime, reigniting her career with a performance steeped in the personal experience of hard truths her character is suddenly forced to confront.

Anderson is Shelly, a longtime showgirl at the Le Razzle Dazzle revue in Las Vegas. Shelly finds purpose in the garish glamour of feathers, sequins and skin, and in her small circle of backstage friends. Dismissing the labels of just another “nudie show,” Shelly will not be denied the dignity she brings to each performance.

But after a three-decade run, the show’s producers announce plans to shut it down, leaving cast and crew to ponder what comes next. The question hits hardest for Shelly, who will soon be left to navigate Las Vegas without the leverage of youthful beauty.

And as the days tick down to that final curtain, Shelly is also juggling a strained relationship with her daughter Hannah (Billie Lourd), mother figure advances from young cast member Jodie (Kiernan Shipka), and a complicated past with Eddie (Dave Bautista), the show’s stage manager.

In her feature debut, screenwriter Kate Gersten provides important moments of authenticity that are doubtlessly rooted in her research time spent with real showgirls in Vegas. Coppola (Palo Alto, Mainstream) showcases it all with subtlety and respect, letting each character-driven moment (including a priceless cameo from Jamie Lee Curtis) personify a longing to savor something that is already gone.

But like Moore’s desperate Elisabeth in The Substance, it is Anderson herself who provides this film’s most authentic layer. She has lived a life celebrated for her face and body, but often mocked when she tried to offer anything else. That hard-won wisdom grounds Anderson’s performance, and makes Shelly’s steadfast defense of her chosen art form anything but laughable.

Coppola’s camera comes in close, and Anderson does not flinch, letting every line on her face tell a story. She hits enough levels of honesty to prove just as vital to her film as Moore is to hers, bringing a clear-eyed engagement that gives The Last Showgirl its – yes I’ll say it – substance, and her career its own reason to be re-born.