2022 Awards Season

There’s a rich, exciting and extremely versatile slate of films this year – it’s certainly a more mainstream crop than last year’s muted, movement-conscious affair, whose BAFTA members snubbed everyone from Gary Oldman to David Fincher – I’ll never understand what they had against the magnificent Mank.

This year there’s the divisive but incredibly sharp Don’t Look Up, Del Toro’s magnificent referential noir pulp Nightmare Alley, Aaron Sorkin’s languid but terrific and very underrated Lucille Ball biopic, Being The Ricardos, with Nicole Kidman’s committed (if not entirely aesthetically uncanny; or nearly as hilarious as the real Lucille was), and Javier Bardem magnificent as her increasingly persecuted husband and collaborator Desi Arnez. Both are Oscar nominated – neither will win – the film proving either critically divisive or just middling. There are two more excellent powerhouse performances, from Jessica Chastain and Andrew Garfield in the beautifully costumed, fascinating vitally beguiling, and equally divisive The Eyes Of Tammy Faye. There’s also Wes Anderson’s delightful ode to anthropological journalism, in the idiosyncratic oddity that is The French Dispatch. It seems didactic to say, but it once again exercises a truly unique clockwork precision, that is inimitably him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Though inexplicably not nominated for playing Tammy’s morally duplicitous husband Jim Bakker, Garfield is also a little bit of an outsider’s favourite, to win the best actor Oscar on 27^th March, for his full throttle performance as creative whirlwind Jonathan Larson in Lin Manual Miranda’s musical on Netflix: Tick, Tick, Boom.

I’ll discuss who might win, who should’ve been nominated - and the reasoning behind Hollywood’s biggest night’s continuing decline in popularity, both critically and with its viewership.

 

 

Supporting Actress – The 3 That Got Away.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Matrix Resurrections and Eternals – The snubbed blockbusters.