The Film Verdict: 95th Academy Awards® Spotlight

95th Academy Awards Spotlight

95th ACADEMY AWARDS SPOTLIGHT

ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT

Film Festival Influence Grows

9 nominations including Best Picture

VERDICT: Edward Berger’s deeply disturbing anti-war film is an unforgettable adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque's literary classic, affording a visceral sense of life and death in the trenches of WWI.

Deborah Young, March 1, 2023

One of the most realistic and harrowing film experiences of the year, All Quiet on the Western Front (Im Westen Nichts Neues) takes the viewer into the infamous trenches of the First World War alongside an innocent 18-year-old German conscript, Paul Bäumer, who leaves school to participate in the great patriotic adventure. In the two and a half hours of almost unremitting warfare that follow, strewn with corpses and body parts, Full Review

After The Film Verdict focused on Academy Award submissions from around the world in our popular International Oscar issue last December, it’s now time to turn our attention to the general competition categories. We have reviewed the vast majority of finalists for one simple reason: they premiered at top festivals around the world, where they

stood out at once and won prizes. The significance of this is clear. The motion picture industry is a worldwide, interlinked affair where a win in Venice, Cannes or Toronto is as crucial as making waves in Sundance, SXSW or Telluride.Every nominee in the Best Picture category bowed at a festival except for Avatar: The (Continues page 4)

THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN

9 nominations including Best Picture, reviewed at Venice Film Festival, Sept. 5, 2022

VERDICT: The latest comedydrama from Martin McDonagh, which reunites the stars of 'In Bruges,' Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, is darkly entertaining but never quite believable.

Boyd van Hoeij

The stars of Martin McDonagh’s cult hit In Bruges, Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, reunite for McDonagh’s latest project, The Banshees of Inisherin. Set on a desolate island off the coast of Ireland in 1923, the film tells the darkly comic and at times quite bloody story of two friends whose friendship comes undone when one of them decides he doesn’t want to talk to the other again because his friend is “dull.” Though the film is very much in Irish English instead of a more universally accessible but also pretty flavourless — standard English, this could become a niche hit for Searchlight, especially since the reputation Full Review

8 nominations including Best Picture, reviewed at the Cannes film Festival, May 26,2022

VERDICT: Baz Luhrmann restores The King to his throne in this simplistic but generous, imaginative and visually opulent biopic.

Stephen Dalton

Everything about Elvis Presley was big: his hair, his voice, his appetites, his sales figures, his concert crowds and, in later years, his waistband. The King sold over 300 million records during his career and more than twice that since a drug-induced heart failure finished him off at just 42 on August 16th, 1977. In fact, Presley’s untimely demise only cemented his status as charttopping rock’n’roll deity. More than 40 years after his death, he remains huge. Yet strangely, none of the handful of scrappy biopics made about him have managed to even approach the monumental scale of his legend. Until now.

Australian auteur Baz Luhrmann’s maximalist take on Full Review

THE FABELMANS

7 nominations including Best Picture, reviewed at the Toronto Film Festival, Sept 12, 2022

VERDICT: Steven Spielberg solidifies his legendary origin story playing with truth, fiction, and the magic of moviemaking.

Kevin Jagernauth

“Film is 24 lies per second at the service of truth, or at the service of the attempt to find the truth,” Michael Haneke once said. This is the surprising dichotomy at the heart of Steven Spielberg’s semiautobiographical The Fabelmans. Presented with the director’s trademark warmth, courtesy of regular collaborators Janusz Kaminski’s brightly lit, comforting cinematography and John Williams’ twinkling score, the aesthetics are illusive as Spielberg presents the truth of his life, refracted through the lens of fiction.

The Fabelmans are the nom de plume for the Spielbergs, with Paul Dano and Michelle Williams in the roles of devoted and supportive parents Full Review

Way of Water (which had a London premiere) and Top Gun: Maverick, prescreened a month early at the Las Vegas industry event CinemaCon. All the others grabbed attention at a film festival. Audiences got their first taste of Elvis and Triangle of Sadness at Cannes in May 2022, where Triangle won the Palme d’Or. In September, The Banshees of Inisherin and Tár bowed in Venice to critical acclaim; they received 9 and 6 nominations respectively. All Quiet on the Western Front (9 noms) and The Fabelmans (7) soon followed suit at Toronto; Women Talking at Telluride; and Everything Everywhere All at Once, which ended up with a total of 11 nominations, at SXSW. If you had wanted to get your Academy screenings in early,

Venice was the place to see Brendan Fraser’s big-hearted performance at The Whale’s world premiere, Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe in Blonde and D.P. Darius Khondji’s dazzling cinematography on Bardo: False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths. The intimate drama Aftersun was launched in the Critics Week sidebar at Cannes (actor Paul Mescal is nominated), actor Bill Nighy bowed in Living at Sundance and actress Andrea Riseborough first appeared in To Leslie at SXSW. Another cinematographer, Roger Deakins, bowed at the London Film Festival with Empire of Light.

A big award can put a film in the spotlight. All Quiet on the Western Front won Best Film at BAFTA, Argentina 1985 took home the Fipresci critics’ award for Best Film at Venice, Close won the Grand Prix at Cannes and Eo the Cannes Jury Prize. Though Berlin is generally too early in the year to rock the Oscar selection, The Quiet Girl, which premiered in Berlin’s Generation K sidebar, came home with a Crystal Bear.

Finally, a glance at the five films nominated in the International Feature competition, which TFV has followed closely, shows how

This all goes to show that film festivals are playing an evergreater role in finding and highlighting award-worthy movies and, while they’re at it, changing viewers’ ideas about what cinema can be and what they want to see at their local multiplex. The festival-tomultiplex distance may still seem great, but here is the crossover potential.

The winners of the 95th Oscars will be announced on Sunday, March 12.

TOP GUN: MAVERICK

6 nominations including Best Picture, reviewed at the Venice Film Festival, Nov. 14, 2022

VERDICT: A finely controlled film about a woman of flawed greatness, portrayed by a rarely-better Cate Blanchett. – Boyd van Hoeij

Full Review

TRIANGLE OF SADNESS

VERDICT: Tom Cruise returns to his career-making role as a hotshot U.S. Navy pilot in this shallow but action-packed sequel. – Stephen Dalton

Full Review

THE WHALE

3 nominations including Best Picture, reviewed at Cannes Film Festival, May 29, 2022

VERDICT: PALME D'OR IN CANNES - Swedish social satirist Ruben Östlund returns to Cannes with another sprawling but roaringly funny attack on wealth, beauty and privilege. – Stephen Dalton

Full Review

3 nominations including Best Actor for Brendan Fraiser reviewed at the Venice Film Festival, Sept. 4, 2022

VERDICT: In a career-best performance, Brendan Fraser turns Darren Aronofsky’s apartment-bound drama about an unhappy English teacher crippled by obesity and his daughter’s distance into a classic piece of filmmaking whose emotions are truly immense. – Deborah Young Full Review

Steven Spielberg's The Fabelmans wins Toronto Film Festival's People's Choice Award

6 nominations including Best Picture

VERDICT: Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie lead a starry cast in Damien Chazelle's huge, ambitious but flawed love letter to Hollywood in the Roaring Twenties. – Stephen Dalton, Dec 17, 2022

Full Review

VERDICT: A masterful Bill Nighy, director Oliver Hermanus and writer Kazuo Ishiguro relocate Kurosawa's 1952 classic Ikiru to post-war London in this quietly powerful remake. – Stephen Dalton

Full Review

While, I can’t predict who will take home the Oscars this year, I do believe that the increased representation of international films in the Academy Awards categories is a positive trend and a testament to the growing diversity and impact of world cinema.

– Lorenzo Vigas, Venice Golden Lion Winning Director of The Box

Nominated for Best International Film, reviewed at Cannes Film Festival, May 29, 2022

VERDICT: CANNES GRAND PRIX, JOINTLY AWARDED - REVIEWED MAY 27 Lukas Dhont’s gutwrenching second feature is a stunning ode to adolescent same-sex friendship and a powerful critique of the ways society normalizes aggression while demonizing physical tenderness. – Jay Weissberg

Full Review

Nominated for Best International Film, reviewed at Cannes Film Festival May 19, 2022

VERDICT: Polish auteur Jerzy Skolimowski conjures a donkey of a film out of the promising premise of seeing a chaotic, cruel world through a braying animal's eyes. – Clarence Tsui

Full Review

3 nominations including Best Original Score for Justin Hurwitz

2 nominations including Best Actor for Bill Nighy, reviewed at Sundance, Jan 21, 2022

BARDO, FALSE CHRONICLES OF A HANDFUL OF TRUTHS

ICE MERCHANTS

Darius Khondji nominated for Best Cinematography, reviewed at Venice Film Festival Sept 1, 2022

VERDICT: Mexican master Alejandro G. Iñárritu ('Birdman’, ‘The Revenant’) takes time off for a very personal project with autobiographical and cinematic undertones. –

Full Review

Deborah Young

Nominated for Best Live Action

Short, reviewed at Cannes Film Festival, May 28, 2022

VERDICT: A father and son make daily parachute jumps from their cliffside home to sell ice in João Gonzalez’s gripping and poignant animation.

– Ben Nicholson

Full Review

It’s crazy to see how much effort goes into the Oscars campaign. You can clearly tell some territories have a stronger presence in terms of publicity, by looking at the ad space in the trades. Still, I think the current system, while having room for improvement, is a good one because it brings attention to films that wouldn’t be on people’s radar otherwise.

He

EuroPowersLook Inward to Secure Oscar Noms

As more and more international films gain popularity in various Oscar categories, it seems as though the once dominant Italian and French film industries are reexamining their approach to nominating their films. Italy hasn’t been able to take home an Oscar since 2013 when La Grande Bellezza (The Great Beauty) won Best International Feature Film, and France hasn’t won an Oscar since Régis Wargnier’s Indochine in distant 1993.

While Italy begins to have a national discussion on the nomination process, last summer France completely overhauled its nomination system and now requires a meeting with the US distributors of the nominees before making the final selection. “We did change the rules for this year, and I can assure you, it is very fair,” Daniela Elstner, Executive Director of Unifrance, told TFV. The French committee is organized by the CNC (Centre National du Cinéma et de L’image Animée).

In Germany the selection procedures are organized and implemented by German Films, which doesn’t sit on the selection committee. The German committee members are selected by the unions and the German FilmAcademy, who also have seats on the committee. German Films’ Simone Baumann told TFV in a separate interview that all of the nine committee members elected this year happened to be women. “This happened by chance,” she said. Their selection, All Quiet on The Western Front, ended up garnering nine nominations this year.

For Full Article, click here

–

Shumming, Director

Ruben Ostlund's Triangle of Sadness Wins the Palme D'or at the Cannes Film Festival

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Nominated for Best International Film, reviewed at Berlin, Feb 24. 2022

VERDICT: An emotionally fragile schoolgirl spends a revelatory summer with foster parents in director Colm Bairéad's haunting, prize-winning, Irishlanguage debut feature, 'The Quiet Girl'. – Stephen Dalton

Full Review

ARGENTINA, 1985

David di Donatello Gets Gender Equality Overhaul With Help From Netflix

Nominated for Best International Film

VERDICT: Santiago Mitre's drama about the Trial of the Juntas does this important milestone in Argentina's history justice. – Boyd van Hoeij, Dec. 8, 2022

Full Review

NETFLIX

Films produced, streamed, and distributed by Netflix have won 16 Oscars in 11 categories for 116 nominations

For full interview, click here.

TFV speaks with Piera Detassis

AFTERSUN

Paul Mescal nominated for Best Actor, reviewed at Cannes May 21, 2022

VERDICT: Charlotte Wells combines great performances, poetic visuals and bittersweet personal memories in this dazzling debut. – Stephen Dalton Full Review

GUILLERMO DEL TORO’S PINOCCHIO

FIRE OF LOVE

Nominated for Best Animated Feature, reviewed at BFI London Film Festival Oct. 15, 2022

VERDICT: Del Toro's first animated feature is a visually ravishing but dramatically wooden update of the muchfilmed classic fairy tale. – Stephen Dalton Full Review

Nominated for Best Dcoumentary, reveiwed at CPX: DOX, April 2, 2022, 2022

VERDICT: A phenomenal archive of cataclysmic imagery is the main attraction in Sara Dosa’s doc about star-crossed volcanologists, but it’s also imbued with their zeal.

– Ben Nicholson Full Review

Lukas Dhont will bring back the first Oscar to Flanders for Close.” And should it not happen this time around, it will only be a matter of time before he does with his third or fourth film.

– Koen Van Bockstal, CEO, Flanders Audiovisual Fund

NAVALNY

Nominated for Best Dcoumentary, reviewed at Hot Docs, April 9, 2022

VERDICT: Director Daniel Roher's gripping documentary about the poison plot against Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny gains extra urgency in the light of Vladimir Putin's brutal invasion of Ukraine.

– Stephen Dalton Full Review

Cate

Blanchette wins the Coppa Volpi for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festivals for her performance in Tár.

ALL THAT BREATHES

Nomnated for Best Documentary, reviewed at Sundance Film Festival, Feb 2, 2022

VERDICT: Shaunak Sen's Sundance World Documentary winner is a gorgeous portrait of two New Delhi brothers who look after the city's increasingly introuble kite population.

– Boyd van Hoeij

Full Review

ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED

Oscars are not predictable. Who would have thought Brokeback Mountain would get 3 except for Nicolas Chatier. Or All That Jazz, one of the most brilliant movies for me that most people forgot about it. For my German friends I cross my fingers for All Quiet on the Western Front for my Belgian friends Close, a brilliant movie and very touching, I’m happy for producer Dirk Impens. But hey there is Argentina, Banshees, Tar. What I really miss is seeing winners of Original score or animation, documentary, editor, costumes, production design… getting as much ovation as the big stars. It’s not only best movie and best actors its, the whole industry that is put into flowers … one realizes how many people are working on a movie when credits come in at the end.

Nominated for Best Documentary, reviewed at Venice Film Festival, Sept 3, 2022

VERDICT: Artist Nan Goldin’s activism in holding the Sackler family accountable for the opioid crisis is seen as a natural extension of her rebellious, freely lived and proudly messy life in Laura Poitras’ well-structured, powerful documentary.

– Jay Weissberg

Full Review

8 nominated films were shown at the 79th Venice International Film Festival, with a total of 24 nominations.

All

That Breathes wins L’OEIL D’OR for best documentary at the Cannes Film Festival.

Winning an Oscar is very important because it’s a great satisfaction for the producers, the directors, the actors, and everyone else involved in making the film. It’s the most important movie award in the world.

– Giampaolo Letta, VP & CEO Medusa Films, Producer of The Great Beauty, Italy’s last Oscar winning Movie

– Michel Vanderwalle, CEO, Atlas International

Ana De Armas nominated for Best Actress, reviewed at Venice Film Festival, Sept 8, 2022

VERDICT: Pre-release hype will be the biggest friend to this mess of a pseudo-biopic that reduces Marilyn Monroe to a disturbed child-woman with Daddy issues, never offering a glimpse of the screen magic notwithstanding Ana de Armas’ impressive recreation. – Jay

Weissberg

A HOUSE MADE OF SPLINTERS

Nominated for Best Documentary, reviewed at the Sundance Film Festival, Jan 4, 2022

VERDICT: A powerful documentary chronicle of children left abandoned by the conflict in Ukraine won the Golden Alexander at the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival. – Jordan Mintzer

Full Review

Full Review

The Oscars need to widen their categories as well. Several Spanish language films have been nominated both in the Best Film category and as Best International Film (Almodóvar, Iñárritu, Del Toro); Oscars need to rethink their rigid categories and be more flexible, even about genres, now that a film can be a combination across genres. We all need to think and work outside the box, beyond national borders and linguistic limitations.

–

Vigas,

Lorenzo

Venice Golden Lion Winning Director of The Box

Colin Farrell wins the Coppa Volpi for Best Actor at the Venice Film Festivals for his performance in Banshees of Ishinirin.

Alpha Film Festival

March 3 - 7

Join us in the MILC Metaverse

Friday March 3 18:00

PRESENT IS PROLOGUE

Panel Discussion

FILM 3

Jordan Bayne Filmaker / founder @ Film3Squad

Stephen Murray Founder, CEO Binegable.net

Genevieve Thiers CEO, Enterainmint.com

Miguel Faus Filmaker

Andy Salmen

Co-Founder, VP Distribution Enterainmint.com

Sherry McCracken

Producer / Director / DP

Moderated by Ben Nicholson AFF Artistic Director

Film Critic, The Film Verdict

FOLLOWED BY SHORTS FILM PROGRAM

Urth Scientists now discover new evidence to reconstruct the ecology of A.D.2021

Without Friction

Red Gaia

World of Tomorrow

The World After: Visions of the Deep Past

Saturday, March 4, 18:00

BEHOLD THIS STRANGE INTELLIGENCE

Panel Discussion AI

Sundog Multi-Disciplinary Creative

Derrick Shultz

Post AI Artist / Filmaker

Moderated by Ben Nicholson AFF Artistic Director Film Critic, The Film Verdict I

FOLLOWED BY SHORTS FILM PROGRAM Drone

Sunday, March 5, 18:00

KINGS OF INFINITE SPACE

Panel Discussion

Interactive

Storytelling

Haz Dulull Director / Producer Hazimation.com

Harry Chadwick

Writer / Director / Co-Founder Interflix Media

Sam Barlow Writer / Director Owner, Half Mermaid

Grace Chadwick Co-founder, CEO Interflix Media

Moderated by Daniel Gusinski Media Journalist, Writer The Film Verdict

FOLLOWED BY SHORTS FILM PROGRAM

Onlookers

All Her Beautiful Green Remains in Tears

The Voice in the Hollow 99 Problems [Wasted]

Counter-Charge

Rock, Star, North Heavy Thoughts

Martin Cries

Lukas Dhont, Director of Close, nominated for Best International Film was originally profiled in December, 2022

VERDICT: The celebrated Belgian director is once again representing his country in the Oscar race.

– Deborah Young

The Cannes Film Festival has a long history of fruitful connections with Belgian directors (most notably the Dardenne brothers), to the extent that in 2017, as part of the 70th anniversary of the event, the Cannes Classics sidebar hosted a documentary on that very topic. A year later, a young filmmaker named Lukas Dhont, then in his late 20s, made waves in the Un Certain Regard section with his feature debut Girl, loosely based on the experiences of transgender dancer Nora Monsecour. Dhont, who had befriended her a decade earlier, aimed to tell her story as truthfully as possible, avoiding the usual trappings of Full Review The Oscars need to widen their categories as well. Several Spanish language films have been nominated both in the Best Film category and as Best International Film (Almodóvar, Iñárritu, Del Toro); Oscars need to rethink their rigid categories and be more flexible, even about genres, now that a film can be a combination across genres. We all need to think and work outside the box, beyond national borders and linguistic limitations.

– Lorenzo Vigas, Venice Golden Lion Winning Director of The Box

Jerzy Skolimowski, Director of EO, nomingated for Best International Film was interviewed Dec, 2022

VERDICT: The Polish filmmaker discusses his bond with the animal star(s) of ‘EO’.

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THE FILM VERDICT: This is the second time, after 11 Minutes in 2015, that a film of yours has been chosen to represent Poland at the Oscars. Any lessons you learned during the last campaign that you’re applying to this one?

JERZY SKOLIMOWSKI: I didn’t actually take part in the campaign last time, probably because I was in the hospital. My health has deteriorated a lot in recent years I was also unable to attend Cannes this year for health reasons. I only went to the festival on the last day to accept my award. So, I’m getting used to not being personally present for the important moments of my so-called career.

TFV: You had the most memorable acceptance speech in Cannes this year because you thanked all the donkeys that played the main character. When you watch the film, can you tell who’s playing EO in each scene?

JS: I can tell you frame by frame, because sometimes we had multiple donkeys in the same scene. Tako, for example, was the one we used for the walks through the forest and running on the roads, while his partner Hola did all the close-ups. Her mug is very pretty, I would call her “Miss Donkey of the World”. She has those enormous eyes, with a melancholic look. But the audience can’t tell them apart because they’re all the same breed, Sardinian donkeys, and they look the same. Only I, Ewa [Piaskowska, the film’s co-writer and co-producer] and the animal trainers can.

TFV: 11 Minutes was a very ambitious film, with its multilayered plot and visual richness. Was it a conscious decision to do something more strippeddown this time? Full Interview

Max Borg