Innholdsfortegnelse for Awards Special 9A March 2021 i The Hollywood Reporter

Come awards season, documentarians usually find themselves outside the rope line, on the periphery of the red carpet and tucked away in a neat little box marked “below the line.” This is, after all, a moment for designer dresses and million-dollar smiles, with only a token acknowledgment for foreign-language and nonfiction features. Not this year. Beyond the Oscar shortlist and the BAFTA longlist for best documentary, where one would expect to find them, nonfiction films have broken out into a variety of additional categories. With the Academy Awards, this year’s best original song shortlist — which occasionally features the closing theme from the odd documentary — boasts songs from four nonfiction features: John Legend’s “Never Break” from Giving Voice, Mary J. Blige’s “See What You’ve Done” from Belly of the…

STUDIO Focus Features • RELEASE DATE Feb. 21, 2020 CAST Anya Taylor-Joy, Johnny Flynn, Mia Goth, Bill Nighy TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Golden Globe nom for Taylor-Joy; three Critics Choice noms Emma, the story of an indulged but good-hearted young woman who relentlessly and wrongheadedly plays matchmaker, is a stalwart for the screen, from Gwyneth Paltrow on film and Kate Beckinsale on television in 1996 to a series starring Romola Garai in 2009 — and, of course, the classic contemporary spin on the character in Clueless (1995). It turns out there is room for another version, as long as you don’t expect anything radical. This latest rendition is the first feature for both director Autumn de Wilde, who has spent her career doing still photography and music videos, and screenwriter…

STUDIO Netflix • RELEASE DATE Oct. 9, 2020 CAST Radha Blank, Peter Kim, Oswin Benjamin, Reed Birney TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Gotham Award for best screenplay; Sundance directing award; National Board of Review top film Radha Blank’s coming-of-age-in-your-40s tale is a love letter full of more love letters. It’s a love letter to the people of pre-gentrified Harlem (she’s a New York native), to old-school hip-hop, to struggling artists, to young people with big dreams and to Black women who dare to live life out of the box. With a carefully crafted visual language, an inventive Greek chorus composed of characters who reflect New York’s diversity and a funny yet thought-provoking script, the film creates a world that you want to soak up frame by frame. Shot on black-and-white 35mm…

STUDIO Netflix • RELEASE DATE Nov. 11, 2020 • CAST Amy Adams, Glenn Close TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Golden Globe nom for best supporting actress; SAG Award noms for best actress and best supporting actress Arriving during an expectation-shattering electoral season, J.D. Vance’s 2016 book, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, hit a zeitgeist nerve. Against the backdrop of Donald Trump’s ascendancy, Vance’s story of his against-the-odds rise from Rust Belt poverty to the Ivy League was oft-cited in a hand-wringing national conversation (or shouting match) about the political establishment vis-a-vis the white working class. It offered a window into a world that most pundits knew nothing about. In many ways, the Netflix film adaptation is an American Dream saga we’ve seen countless times before,…

STUDIO HBO Max • RELEASE DATE Dec. 10, 2020 CAST Meryl Streep, Candice Bergen, Dianne Wiest, Lucas Hedges, Gemma Chan TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Two AARP Movies for Grownups Award noms Steven Soderbergh proves an excellent match for brilliant short fiction writer Deborah Eisenberg in her first produced screenplay. Much like the author, the main character here is a celebrated novelist who publishes infrequently and pays punctilious attention to every word, providing a succulent role for Meryl Streep. Her interplay with Candice Bergen and Dianne Wiest as the college friends she hasn’t seen in 35 years is enlivened by extensive improvisation, which gives it the enthralling spontaneity of vintage Robert Altman. It’s perhaps more satisfying on a scene-by-scene basis than it is as a conventional narrative, dropping references to a…

STUDIO Netflix • RELEASE DATE Nov. 25, 2020 CAST Viola Davis, Chadwick Boseman, Colman Domingo, Glynn Turman TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Golden Globe for best actor, drama (Boseman); AFI Awards movie of the year; three SAG Award noms; five Independent Spirit Award noms; Gotham Award nom Viola Davis burns a hole in the screen projecting the indomitable pride and hard-won self-worth of the legendary early 20th century blues singer named in the title. But it’s Chadwick Boseman as a cocky trumpeter brutally demeaned by the white recording industry who delivers the most explosive thunder and searing pain. The late actor pours every ounce of himself, emotionally and physically, into his final performance, breathing tragic grandeur into George C. Wolfe’s lovingly made, flawlessly cast film of August Wilson’s music-infused drama. Extensively…

STUDIO Netflix • RELEASE DATE Dec. 11, 2020 CAST George Clooney, Kyle Chandler, David Oyelowo, Felicity Jones TOP AWARDS AND NOMS National Board of Review top film; Golden Globe nom for original score Bringing Lily Brooks-Dalton’s 2016 debut novel, Good Morning, Midnight, to the screen, George Clooney pulls off a considerable leap in scope from his previous behind-the-camera projects while also transitioning in the lead role from matinee-idol charmer to weathered veteran, playing a visionary astronomer with a heavy heart. Shifting with grace and narrative equilibrium between the Arctic and a mission returning from Jupiter, this is a desolate elegy for a diseased planet and a prayer for the creation of life elsewhere in the universe. Flanked by a strong supporting cast, Clooney delivers a thoughtful reflection on the toll…

STUDIO Universal • RELEASE DATE Dec. 25, 2020 CAST Tom Hanks, Helena Zeng TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Two National Board of Review awards; two Golden Globe noms; two SAG Award noms; WGA Award nom The balm of the storyteller is central to the work of Capt. Jefferson Kyle Kidd, an ex-infantryman who travels from town to town in Texas five years after the Civil War, for a modest fee reading lively accounts of events from both nearby and far afield to people in need of healing. That same spirit informs Paul Greengrass’ News of the World, an epic Western with an intimate gaze that recalls The Searchers and True Grit, providing Tom Hanks with one of his best roles since the same director’s Captain Phillips. Adapted by Greengrass and Luke…

STUDIO Amazon • RELEASE DATE Dec. 25, 2020 CAST Kingsley Ben-Adir, Eli Goree, Aldis Hodge, Leslie Odom Jr. TOP AWARDS AND NOMS AFI movie of the year; Gotham Award for breakthrough actor (Ben-Adir); Independent Spirit Robert Altman Award; three Golden Globe noms; two SAG Award noms After notching up several years’ worth of solid TV directing credits, Regina King tackles her first feature with confidence in One Night in Miami, unsurprisingly coaxing full-blooded performances from her charismatic leads. While the film doesn’t entirely mask the stage origins of its single-setting core, this is a skillful adaptation of playwright Kemp Powers’ 2013 drama about a hotel room gathering of four famous friends on the night in 1964 when 22-year-old Cassius Clay took the world heavyweight title. Both entertaining and illuminating, the…

STUDIO Netflix • RELEASE DATE Jan. 7, 2021 CAST Vanessa Kirby, Shia LaBeouf, Ellen Burstyn, Molly Parker TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Venice Film Festival Volpi Cup for best actress; Golden Globe and SAG Award noms for best actress Hungarian director Kornel Mundruczo drills deep into the heart of family tragedy in his first English-language feature, about a couple (Vanessa Kirby and Shia LaBeouf) shattered by the loss of their newborn baby. Puncturing a brittle European veneer with spikes of more American emotional volatility, the drama wears influences from Ingmar Bergman to John Cassavetes — not always lightly. But despite some contrived script passages and unsubtle symbolism, the firstrate cast keeps it gripping. “We have seen so many deaths onscreen, we’ve rarely seen birth.”VANESSA KIRBY Written by Kata Weber, the director’s…

STUDIO Disney/Pixar • RELEASE DATE Dec. 25, 2020 CAST Jamie Foxx, Tina Fey, Daveed Diggs, Richard Ayoade, Questlove TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Two Golden Globes, best animated film and score; AFI movie of the year; National Board of Review top film and best animated feature Directed by Pete Docter (Up, Inside Out) and codirected by Kemp Powers (author of play-turned-film One Night in Miami), this densely packed, exquisitely executed and just a teensy bit batshit film is peak Pixar. It’s a vintage mix of the company’s intricate storytelling, complex emotional intelligence, technical prowess and cerebral whimsy on dexamethasone. The fact that it is also embedded in African American culture and features a diverse voice cast is another sparkling facet. But thankfully, Soul manages to avoid feeling tokenistic or patronizing. Indeed,…

STUDIO Netflix • RELEASE DATE Sept. 25, 2020 CAST Sacha Baron Cohen, Frank Langella, Mark Rylance, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Eddie Redmayne, Jeremy Strong TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Golden Globe for best screenplay; AFI movie of the year; four Globe noms; three SAG Award noms; WGA nom Throughout his career writing for film, television and the stage, Aaron Sorkin has shown a consuming fascination with the trembling institutions of American politics and justice. His powerful and timely second feature as writer-director shows Sorkin in his sweet spot, burrowing with needling curiosity, impassioned indignation and juicy oratory into the infamous six-month courtroom circus stemming from charges of inciting a riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. The film is as dense with witty dialogue, significant characters, factoids, time shifts and multiperspectivity as…

Supporting Actress Maria Bakalova Borat Subsequent Moviefilm The breakout star was elevated from supporting to lead in a comedy/musical at the Globes, which should have made a win easier — the HFPA loved her film (it won best pic and actor) and she was up against a thin field — but it was not her night. Jodie Foster The Mauritanian Forty-four years after her first Globe nomination for Freaky Friday, the HFPA is still enchanted with her, giving her a third competitive award (she also received 2013’s Cecil B. DeMille Award) for her portrayal of attorney Nancy Hollander. Documentary Feature All In: The Fight for Democracy The Producers Guild has given its PGA mark to Stacey Abrams, recognizing her work as a producer on this doc. If it progresses from…

STUDIO Amazon • RELEASE DATE Oct. 23, 2020 CAST Sacha Baron Cohen, Maria Bakalova TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Golden Globe wins for best picture, musical/comedy, and best actor; SAG Award and Globe noms for Bakalova The film — whose full title is Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan — falls short of its imperfect but zeitgeist-grabbing 2006 predecessor in several ways. Few if any of them can be blamed on director Jason Woliner, who has done excellent work with comic performers like Brett Gelman, Patton Oswalt and Aziz Ansari. The easiest (but incomplete) answer is that the George W. Bush era needed a Borat, and the Trump years make him painfully redundant. Amid the assorted tasteless gags, an…

STUDIO Sony Pictures Classics • RELEASE DATE Feb. 26, 2021 CAST Anthony Hopkins, Olivia Colman, Imogen Poots TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Three British Independent Film Awards; four Golden Globe noms; two SAG Award noms The best film about the wages of aging since Amour eight years ago, The Father takes a bracingly insightful, subtle and nuanced look at encroaching dementia and the toll it takes on those in proximity to the afflicted. Fronted by a stupendous performance from Anthony Hopkins as a proud Englishman in denial of his condition, this penetrating work marks an outstanding directorial debut by the play’s French author, Florian Zeller. Zeller has embellished his work with some keen visual elements that expand upon what was possible onstage and prove both disquieting and meaningful in conveying the…

STUDIO Sony Pictures Classics • RELEASE DATE Feb. 12, 2021 CAST Michelle Pfeiffer, Lucas Hedges, Valerie Mahaffey, Tracy Letts TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Golden Globe nom for best actress, musical/comedy; Independent Spirit Award nom for best supporting actress (Mahaffey) Playing a 65-year-old New York high-society widow who burns through her savings and moves to Paris with her son, Michelle Pfeiffer sucks the juice from each line like a Louisianan devouring a crawfish. It’s a full-on diva turn — a smorgasbord of side-eye and shade, of lacerating one-liners dispatched between drags on cigarettes and slurps of martinis. Fans of French cinema may feel they’re beholding an American grand dame worthy of comparisons to Isabelle Huppert or Nathalie Baye, while Sex and the City buffs will detect a bit of Kim Cattrall’s…

STUDIO Netflix • RELEASE DATE Sept. 4, 2020 CAST Jessie Buckley, Jesse Plemons, Toni Collette, David Thewlis TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Two Gotham Award noms Even when dealing with depression, despair and mortality, Charlie Kaufman’s more playful instincts have tended to ameliorate his obsessively cerebral side. But his third feature as writer-director is by far his bleakest, so steeped in suffocating anxiety it should come with a mental health advisory. Tackling Canadian author Iain Reid’s 2016 debut novel, Kaufman set himself another challenge that would defeat most screenwriters. Its baseline narrative is straightforward enough — a young man (Jesse Plemons) takes his new girlfriend (Jessie Buckley) to meet his parents at the remote farmhouse where he grew up. But its long stretches of nonlinear philosophical rumination, its enigmatic allusions to…

STUDIO Netflix • RELEASE DATE Nov. 6, 2020 CAST Sophia Loren, Ibrahima Gueye, Abril Zamora, Babak Karimi TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Golden Globe win for best original song and nom for best foreign-language film The Romain Gary novel that became the Oscar-winning 1977 French drama Madame Rosa gets relocated from Paris to a Southern Italian coastal town in The Life Ahead. Set in one of the hubs of the Euro-Mediterranean migrant crisis, the film reshapes the work as a vehicle for director Edoardo Ponti’s celebrated mother, Sophia Loren, back on the screen after a 10-year absence. Audiences will warm to the handsomely crafted Italian-language feature, a sentimental yet satisfying labor of love. Madame Rosa makes a modest living running her apartment as an informal refuge for the children of immigrant…

STUDIO A24 • RELEASE DATE Feb. 12, 2021 CAST Steven Yeun, Yeri Han, Youn Yuh-jung, Alan Kim TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Sundance audience award and grand jury prize; Globe for best foreign-language film; three National Board of Review awards; six Independent Spirit noms; three SAG Award noms Most immigration stories are similar in a broad sense but distinctive in the details, which is certainly the case with Minari. A rare look at a Korean family trying to adapt and make a go of it in, of all places, 1980s Arkansas, Lee Isaac Chung’s autobiographical feature is warmly observant, gently humorous in the vein of Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu and not shy about the awful strain the struggle places on the adults in the family. After having left Korea and then…

STUDIO Searchlight • RELEASE DATE Feb. 19, 2021 CAST Frances McDormand, David Strathairn TOP AWARDS AND NOMS TIFF audience award; two Golden Globes including best picture, drama; AFI movie of the year; two Gotham Awards; five Independent Spirit Award noms; SAG Award nom for best actress In her two previous features, Chloe Zhao established a spiritual connection to the American West, with its immense skies and wide-open landscapes that speak equally of desolate solitude and of freedom. Her new film is based on Jessica Bruder’s 2017 book, Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century, which explores the reality of transient older Americans living on the road in RVs and vans, picking up seasonal work where they can find it, much like the migrant laborers of generations past. Filmed over four…

STUDIO Netflix • RELEASE DATE Dec. 4, 2020 CAST Meryl Streep, James Corden, Nicole Kidman, Andrew Rannells TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Two Golden Globe noms, for best musical or comedy and best actor, musical or comedy (Corden) Meryl Streep is in delectable form as Dee Dee Allen, a Tony-winning stage diva who must unlearn years of celebrity self-absorption and take the unfamiliar step of putting other people’s needs first. Whenever she’s center-screen, this Netflix adaptation of the disarming 2018 Broadway musical sparkles with campy humor. Elsewhere, the starry casting and heavy hand of director Ryan Murphy do the featherweight material few favors, with inert dramatic scenes and overblown musical numbers contributing to the general bloat. The movie’s most undeniable value is in the representation it provides to LGBTQ teens via…

STUDIO Amazon • RELEASE DATE Nov. 20, 2020 CAST Riz Ahmed, Olivia Cooke, Paul Raci TOP AWARDS AND NOMS AFI movie of the year; National Board of Review top film, best actor and best supporting actor; Gotham Award for best actor; Globe and SAG Award noms for best actor; three Independent Spirit Award noms A film about the sudden onset of deafness that is too attentive to specifics of character and setting to ever feel like a rote disability drama, Darius Marder’s Sound of Metal stars Riz Ahmed as a man whose life, up to now, has revolved around music. Working through the stages of grief, Ahmed’s drummer gets stuck at Bargaining: Is there a way to undo the damage done to his ears, and return to life as he…

“I look at Billie Holiday’s voice as a scroll. And on her voice is written her entire history.”ANDRA DAY STUDIO Hulu • RELEASE DATE Feb. 26, 2021 • CAST Andra Day, Trevante Rhodes, Garrett Hedlund, Leslie Jordan TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Golden Globe for best actress, drama Andra Day gives a dazzling star turn in her first leading role, which establishes her as a screen natural with effortless command. She captures the bruising pain of the great jazz singer’s life onstage and off — not to mention the smoky vocals, the supple phrasing and intimate musical storytelling that made Holiday such a legendary talent. Daniels focuses more squarely on Holiday’s significance as a pivotal figure in the racialization of the FBI’s war on drugs. Screenwriter Suzan-Lori Parks’ principal source material…

Another Round DENMARK DIRECTOR Thomas Vinterberg TOP AWARDS Golden Globe nom, Four wins at the European Film Awards (including top film) Eight years after making the Oscar-nominated The Hunt together, Mads Mikkelsen and writer-director Vinterberg have reunited for Another Round, a tragicomic portrait of midlife crisis and alcohol abuse. The film is sweeter, lighter and more conventional than most of Vinterberg’s previous work, eschewing the bleak social commentary that underscored films like The Celebration, Submarino and The Hunt. It makes for an appealing ensemble piece overall, as well as a great vehicle for Mikkelsen’s vulpine beauty and nimble dance moves. — STEPHEN DALTON Better Days HONG KONG DIRECTOR Derek Tsang TOP AWARDS Eight Hong Kong Film Awards wins Tsang’s hair-raising tract against school gangs, whose vicious bullying drives one girl…

It’s fitting that a film that pays tribute to those who inspire and mentor was created through a program that aims to do just that for undiscovered talent. Taylor Meacham’s animated short To: Gerard — which made the Academy’s shortlist for this season’s animated short Oscar — was created through DreamWorks Animation’s Shorts Program, which was conceived to identify and develop emerging animation talent at the studio, and its score was composed by Layla Minoui, who came to the DWA program through Universal Music’s similar initiative for composers. But this story really starts with a father-and-son relationship, explains Meacham, a 2014 Emerson College grad who was working at DWA as a production coordinator on 2016’s Trolls when he began creating the moving story of Gerard, a mailman who once dreamed…

“We were shooting in the jungle. It was 100 degrees every single day.”SPIKE LEE STUDIO Netflix • RELEASE DATE June 12, 2020 CAST Chadwick Boseman, Delroy Lindo, Jonathan Majors, Clarke Peters, Isiah Whitlock Jr. TOP AWARDS AND NOMS AFI Awards movie of the year; three National Board of Review awards; three SAG Award noms; five NAACP Image Award noms Spike Lee, in addition to being among our most impassioned political filmmakers, is also a storyteller of uncommon vitality, fluent in the shorthand of forging connections between his audience and his characters. Even when this inventive Netflix feature gets messy and convoluted in the second half, with the director’s tonal control sometimes faltering, we are wholeheartedly invested in these men for the duration. In a theme broached by Malcolm X and…

STUDIO A24 • RELEASE DATE March 6, 2020 CAST John Magaro, Orion Lee, Rene Auberjonois TOP AWARDS AND NOMS National Board of Review top film; five Gotham Award noms; three Independent Spirit Award noms In a series of gorgeous scenes that punctuate Kelly Reichardt’s quietly penetrating account of life on the Oregon Trail in the pioneer fur-trading days, a diffident baker played by John Magaro speaks in soothing tones to the placid heifer that gives First Cow its title, establishing mutual trust as he extracts a pail of milk from her each night. Those clandestine encounters feed the gentle rhythms of this miniaturist Western, the latest entry in the narratively spare but volubly expressive filmography of a director who has often observed the unique connection between people and animals with…

STUDIO Apple TV+ • RELEASE DATE July 10, 2020 CAST Tom Hanks, Stephen Graham, Rob Morgan, Elisabeth Shue TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Two People’s Choice Award noms The theme of American valor and heroism has been a thread through many of Tom Hanks’ roles. So it’s no surprise that Hanks was drawn to adapt and star in a screen version of C.S. Forester’s 1955 historical maritime novel, The Good Shepherd. Roll your eyes about the return to familiar territory if you must, but Greyhound is a taut action thriller that exerts a sustained grip. Unimpeachable sincerity has long been a signature of the actor’s career, and that quality prevents Greyhound from ever slipping into the vanity-project trap. This is one of Hanks’ more subdued recent performances. But playing Capt. Ernest…

STUDIO Warner Bros. • RELEASE DATE Feb 12, 2021 CAST Daniel Kaluuya, LaKeith Stanfield, Dominique Fishback TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Golden Globe for best supporting actor (Kaluuya); AFI Awards movie of the year; National Board of Review top film The 1969 killing at age 21 of Illinois Black Panther Party chairman Fred Hampton wields proportionately explosive impact in Shaka King’s historical thriller with an urgency that speaks even louder more than half a century later. Led by sensational performances from Daniel Kaluuya as Hampton and LaKeith Stanfield as William O’Neal, the FBI informant who infiltrated his inner circle, this is a scalding account of oppression and revolution, coercion and betrayal, rendered more shocking by the undiminished currency of its themes. The film represents an impressive step up to weightier subject…

STUDIO Warner Bros. • RELEASE DATE Jan. 29, 2021 CAST Denzel Washington, Rami Malek, Jared Leto TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Golden Globe and SAG Award noms for best supporting actor (Leto) The psychological toll of investigative police work seeps into the bones of John Lee Hancock’s gritty neo-noir The Little Things, which captures Los Angeles County’s flat urban sprawl and snaking freeways to highly atmospheric effect. If the director’s generally taut original screenplay settles on an ending too cryptic to be fully satisfying, the performances of Denzel Washington and Rami Malek as cops from the old school and the new who end up having more in common than they anticipated supply enough glue to hold everything together. Add in Jared Leto as the taunting weirdo who becomes their prime suspect…

STUDIO Netflix • RELEASE DATE Nov. 13, 2020 CAST Gary Oldman, Amanda Seyfried, Charles Dance, Lily Collins TOP AWARDS AND NOMS AFI movie of the year; six Golden Globe noms; SAG Award nom for best actor When Gary Oldman staggers onto an MGM film set as hungover screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz and Louis B. Mayer asks who he is, Irving Thalberg replies dismissively, “Just a writer.” David Fincher’s forensic probe into the turbulent weeks Mankiewicz spent finishing his Citizen Kane script for Orson Welles aims to correct that slight and restore the reputation of an often overlooked architect of that 1941 classic, casting a jaundiced eye over 1930s Hollywood. Steeped in the inspirations behind Welles’ debut film and the bold stylistic tropes that made it such a landmark, the Netflix…

STUDIO Focus Features • RELEASE DATE Mar. 13, 2020 CAST Sidney Flanigan, Talia Ryder, Theodore Pellerin TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Sundance special jury award; two National Board of Review awards; seven Independent Spirit Award noms; three Gotham Award noms Never Rarely Sometimes Always should continue to widen the admiration for Hittman’s signature blend of unadorned realism with moody, melancholy dreaminess, while providing an impressive showcase for talented young screen discoveries Sidney Flanigan and Talia Ryder. The film also stands to earn attention for its candid and clear-eyed contemplation of abortion as a choice arrived at not with hand-wringing but with sobering pragmatism. Hittman’s script pares away all unnecessary detail, so we first learn of Autumn’s (Flanigan) pregnancy in a simple shot of her slight belly bulge before she confirms it…

STUDIO A24/Apple TV+ • RELEASE DATE Oct. 10, 2020 CAST Rashida Jones, Bill Murray, Marlon Wayans, Jenny Slate TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Golden Globe nom for best supporting actor It’s become unfashionable to express fondness for vintage Woody Allen films, but think back to how pleasurable they could be before all the off-camera baggage muddied those memories and you have some idea of the warmly satisfying experience of On the Rocks. Distinguished from those predecessors by its wry female point of view, Sofia Coppola’s smart, breezy comedy about a marriage that may be in trouble and a meddling father who steps in to save or destroy it stars Bill Murray in peerless deadpan form, bouncing off a superb foil in Rashida Jones. Oh, it’s also a sparkling ode to the…

STUDIO Searchlight • RELEASE DATE Aug. 26, 2020 CAST Dev Patel, Tilda Swinton, Hugh Laurie, Ben Whishaw, Peter Capaldi TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Five British Independent Film Awards; Golden Globe nom for best actor, musical or comedy A film to make some hypothetical, not terribly well-read movie critic wish he’d carved out time in his teens for Charles Dickens, Armando Iannucci’s The Personal History of David Copperfield turns the author’s well-loved autobiographical epic about a writer’s origins into a fast-moving yarn, sometimes hilarious and always entertaining. A break in more ways than one from his savage political satires — can the man behind The Thick of It really coexist with this much optimism? — the result is less jarring than Iannucci’s fans may expect. Certainly the most commercial of his…

STUDIO Focus Features • RELEASE DATE Dec. 25, 2020 CAST Carey Mulligan, Bo Burnham, Alison Brie, Laverne Cox TOP AWARDS AND NOMS National Board of Review top film and best actress; four Golden Globe noms; SAG Award nom for best actress; three Independent Spirit Award noms; WGA Award nom “Promising” is indeed the word for Emerald Fennell in the wake of her startling debut feature as a writer-director. Starting with what initially looks like a commonplace story of a 30-something woman who needs to get her act together and then taking it to entirely unexpected extremes dramatically and thematically, the British writer-director-actress shows real nerve and skill both as a storyteller and commentator on contemporary dynamics between women and men. First glimpsed in a dissolute state in a nightclub, Cassie…

STUDIO Warner Bros. • RELEASE DATE Aug. 26, 2020 CAST John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki TOP AWARDS AND NOMS Golden Globe nom for original score; two People’s Choice Award noms Like Xanax, the title of writer-director Christopher Nolan’s Tenet is a palindrome, spelled the same way backward and forward. That’s fitting for a story about technology that can “invert” people and things, making them capable of going back in time. And like Xanax, Tenet makes you feel floaty, mesmerized and, to an extent, soothed by its spectacle — but also so cloudy in the head that the only option is to relax and let it blow your mind around like a balloon. The idea is that this inversion tech was/will be invented by people in the future, but…

76 Days MTV DOCUMENTARY FILMS DIRECTORS Weixi Chen, Hao Wu, Anonymous TOP AWARDS AFI Fest audience award, 2 Gotham Awards noms In nearly every frame of 76 Days, most of the figures we see are covered head to toe in personal protective equipment. The verite footage was shot, heroically, in four hospitals in Wuhan, the Chinese city where the novel coronavirus was first identified. 76 Days is a work of true direct cinema, and its specifics make it, to use an overused word du jour, unprecedented: Its dispatches were captured within a whirl of emotional uncertainty and nonstop action at the epicenter of an escalating outbreak. — SHERI LINDEN All In: The Fight for Democracy AMAZON STUDIOS DIRECTORS Lisa Cortes, Liz Garbus TOP AWARDS National Board of Review top docs…

If Chloe Zhao manages to nab this year’s directing Oscar for Nomadland, she won’t be the first to win for a drama about down-on-their-luck itinerant workers making their way across the American West. John Ford was awarded the statuette in 1941 for his adaptation of the John Steinbeck novel The Grapes of Wrath, which sees the Joad family abandon the Oklahoma farm they lost to the Great Depression and Dust Bowl and head to California — a fabled promised land — in a broken-down 1926 Hudson Super Six sedan. Along the way, they are beset by all sorts of tragedy: the grandparents die, various relatives abandon them, they are stranded at a destitute work camp, and son Tom (Henry Fonda), who only recently got out of prison, accidentally kills a…