The Big Picture · Discussion · Review · Rankings · Interview
January 11, 2024/ 140 min/ Sean Fennessey · Amanda Dobbins
Sean and Amanda sort through the week's guild nominations, dig into Yorgos Lanthimos's 'Poor Things,' rebuild their Best Picture top 10, and Sean talks to Julianne Moore and Todd Haynes about 'May December.'
30 films across 4 segments.
AI-generated This episode was transcribed and analyzed with AI models. The matches aren't perfect — expect the occasional misheard title or a link to the wrong film.
The week in awards newsdelays, the Annies, the DGA, and SAG
Sean's most-anticipated 2024 movie, now undated by Warner Bros. He talks himself off the David Zaslav ledge: March never fit a Bong Joon Ho / Robert Pattinson tentpole, and WB had already parked Dune 2 there. A Cannes or fall festival launch would be fine; a shelving-for-a-tax-write-off would not.
Its shift to March 2024 is, in hindsight, the tell that WB wasn't going to release two big swings the same month.
Amanda saw it, alone, in a theater. She liked the grannies and found it beautiful, but 'not for me.' Sean, its Annie front-runner, says it's the leader in the clubhouse for the Oscar.
The Blank Check crew's pick led the Annies with nine nominations.
Among the Annie feature nominees; the one Sean and Amanda saw together.
An Annie nominee Sean rates as 'great stuff.'
Rounds out the Annie best-feature five.
Disney Animation missed the Annie feature slate for the first time ever. It's still on heavy rotation in Sean's house though; his daughter has befriended the protagonist Asha.
Pixar also missed the Annie feature five. Sean expects the Academy's Pixar loyalty to nominate it anyway; if it doesn't, that's an earthquake.
Penelope Cruz's SAG nomination, in Sandra Hüller's expected spot, was the surprise Sean was happiest about. Michael Mann's most-American direction of an Italian story; the movie doesn't work without her.
Andrew Scott missed a SAG nod, but he's been out on the circuit having a great time. Sean's still rooting for a groundswell and teases a full episode on it next week.
One of five boutique-studio titles shut out at SAG. A 'borderline masterpiece that 180 people have seen'; both expect it to win International rather than break into Best Picture.
‘Poor Things’the deep dive
Lanthimos's eighth feature and second with Emma Stone: a steampunk-Victorian fable of Bella Baxter, a suicide revived by Willem Dafoe's mad-scientist 'God' with her unborn child's brain. Amanda calls it great, no argument; Emma Stone is 'lights out,' the costumes (Holly Waddington) and production design 'out of control.' Both agree the middle stretch (the ship, Alexandria, the CGI) stalls, and Nathan Fielder… er, Jerrod Carmichael is miscast against the Tony McNamara register. They read it as Lanthimos's warmest movie: agency, second chances, and whether Bella is Victoria reborn or a genuine blank slate. Ruffalo (as Duncan Wedderburn) and Dafoe steal scenes; Mark Ruffalo's broad comic turn is the one they'd most like to see rewarded.
Best Picture Power Rankingsas of January 11, rebuilt from the December 7 list
No. 1 and the great tiebreaker: old-guard and new-Academy appeal at once. On preferential ballots almost nobody ranks it below 7, which is most of the ballgame.
Tied for 2/3 with Poor Things ('2A and 2B'). The classical, made-in-the-'70s movie for nostalgia voters; secretly quite sad.
The other half of the 2/3 tie. Strong technically and visually, and the pick that skews younger and newer in the Academy.
Down to 4 from an earlier 2/3. Leo's SAG snub is a blow, but 'it's a masterpiece. We know that.'
SAG's big winner, three nominations including a surprise Sterling K. Brown, after coming up empty at the Globes. Vaults to 6.
Held at 7 with 'a massive asterisk' after Bradley Cooper missed the DGA and things trended down fast.
New to the top 10, landing at 9: the international film they felt was missing, buoyed by its Globes win and critical support.
Kept on at 10 but waning; Melton, Portman, and Moore all missed SAG. Sean argues it's more widely seen than Zone of Interest or Past Lives, which cuts both ways on a preferential ballot.
In conversation
Their fifth collaboration. Moore built Gracie around a lisp, a child's tell, to give Natalie Portman something concrete to mirror. Both on the 'is it okay to laugh?' question: the humor is embedded in how these people armor themselves, and the film leaves you 'on an inhale,' the truth shifting with whoever controls the narrative. Haynes set it in 2015 mainly to keep it out of the partisan Trump-era frame.
Where they met, at Moore's audition. Told 'she won't read,' Moore offered to read three scenes; the camera's autofocus never found her, an accidental statement on Carol White, who can't find herself in the story.
An original story that still draws on Douglas Sirk melodrama, a language Moore says they'd absorbed 'watching all those movies on TV' without knowing it.
The Bob Dylan film, Haynes's example of a real-person project with 'a plethora of incredibly specific histories' to transform, using the most artificial, multi-voiced language available.
Cited alongside the Dylan film as full-artifice storytelling about real(ish) figures.
Sean's example of the rare Haynes film where the moral truth is comparatively clear-cut.
The one real person Moore has played, Sarah Palin, built not from Palin but from a book about the campaign: 'so many layers of storytelling,' a facsimile inside someone else's narrative.
Also mentioned raised along the way
Paul Thomas Anderson's next movie, and his back catalog Boogie NightsPhantom ThreadLicorice PizzaPunch-Drunk Love
Lanthimos's other films The FavouriteThe LobsterDogtoothThe Killing of a Sacred DeerAlpsKinettaMy Best FriendKinds of Kindness
‘Poor Things’ influences and touchstones FrankensteinBride of FrankensteinThe Tragedy of MacbethMean GirlsMigration
In the awards chatter The Color PurplePriscillaThe Iron ClawBabylonThe Good NurseNightmare AlleyLa La Land
Kubrick, and other passing gags The ShiningEyes Wide ShutKiller's KissFear and DesireWitnessThe Da Vinci CodeStillwater
Not films filtered out: TV, games, ads
TV RamyAbbott Elementary
Ads Stick the Landing (podcast promo)