I wish they had put a Godzilla walking by the windows in just the last two seconds.
I know I’m in the minority, but I thought Killers of the Flower Moon was just okay, and so I would have been perfectly happy seeing Margot Robbie nominated in place of Lily Gladstone.
The first 2-3 minutes of this latest Big Picture were hilarious thanks to the Hillary tweet above.
Wouldn’t agree at all on bumping Lily Gladstone, but Greta Lee from Past Lives would also like a word. Just a crazy strong Best Actress year, and some strong performances were going to be left out. To me, it was Stone, Gladstone, and Huller in the “you have to nominate this” bucket, and then two spots left for more than two worthy performances.
I haven’t seen Nyad, but it seems like people have the strongest opposition to Bening’s performance taking one of the spots.
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I haven’t seen it either, but I can maybe imagine it from Annette’s prior films, who can be among the best when she’s great but isn’t great every time.
Idk I sort of felt like my biggest criticism for prior noms was when an award went more to the people who deserved the award than the film, cast, or crew themselves, but this year I find myself thinking Greta Gerwig absolutely deserves a nomination both for the work and for the significance of her career to date.
Margot Robbie will for sure have more work to produce a nomination in the future. Really stunning diversity of performances from her to date. I, Tonya is about as far from Barbie as Earth and Pluto, and further still from her breakout role in Wolf of Wall Street.
I’m not as hard over on Margot Robbie for best actress, but I’m definitely a bit upset about the Greta Gerwig snub.
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Same. It’s a huge snub for Gerwig. I think in part because while a single person can deliver a great performance, it’s a million times harder for one woman to bring together a cultural phenomenon in this industry. Greta brought the goods and then some. Barbie is impressive on every level.
For sure. That whole movie came right from her mind and she and Robbie willed it into existence. It’s a singular vision and easily the most “directed” movie of the year.
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Watched Barbie and anatomy of a fall tonight
Barbie feels like Elf, but with Barbies. It’s about as subtle as Crash
AoaF was incredible.
I don’t think that is a fair criticism. The lack of subtly i n Barbie is by design. In crash it was just bad writing.
A “singular vision” where for every decision they had to get the green light from the toy megacorp, wtf are you talking about
It’s one thing that not only we have a movie landscape filled with huge cash machines for children but on top of that we have cinephiles on leftist message boards explaining that this is actually high art…depressing
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You obviously have not followed the film press or listened to any interviews with Gerwiig or Robbie.
They spent years pressing for their vision against a ton of opposition. It was incredible artistic vision and perseverance that resulted in the film.
It’s ok to dislike it. It’s ignorance to dislike it for being some kind of commercial sell out.
Your comment that it “is for children” makes me seriously question if you even watched it.
Maybe the fact that most cinephiles love the film should make you question your opinion, not the other way around.
All this to say, it didn’t make my top ten of the year but I can’t stand the current pushback that it was some kind of sellout. Gerwig came from the most gorilla independent film world of the last 20 years. She is arguably among the best working writer directors and an important voice in cinema. She is not some Micheal Bay hack.
Here is an interview referencing all the film history in it.
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Honestly, I have the same reaction when you say it has a “singular vision” when what I’m seeing is a pretty standard Hollywood narrative film, which has a few funny jokes but ultimately is so predictable that it gets pretty boring in the third act, has characters which are mostly there to perform a function (Ken is the only one who actually gets a little more than that, makes sense why Gosling is getting the nod), and obviously nothing against the feminist sentiment but the preachiness of it gets to be a bit too much (you’re telling me the AF speech is not meant for children or teenagers ? idontbelieveyou.jpg)
all this while being actually endorsed by the Mattel corp (trying to sell the woman who created Barbie as some kind of feminist icon is ugh) which ensures you’re going to get something with as little political insight as possible (obviously this is fine, not all movies need to have one, but it’s how it’s trying to sell itself).
And yes this is obviously a sellout, you can argue that there’s nothing wrong with that if that’s the direction she wants to take her career towards (sure, why not idk, I’m not a mumblecore purist or anything). But it is (very obviously) what it is. I don’t see how her being talented (I don’t disagree, although I don’t love her other work as much as you) changes that.
(Also I would disagree with the notion that “most cinephiles love the film”. Had a quick look at lb, the average grade given by ppl I follow is around 3/5, which seems about similar to what I’d give it.)
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Your definition of sellout seems oddly 90s. It seems to mean anything that makes money.
A sellout would have been an abc Barbie film (see super Mario film) not a huge budget film with deep cuts about 1930 cinema, 18th century philosophers, and 20th century feminist thinkers.
largely disagree with most of your points, and thought this was an especially bad argument. what you’re describing here is not new. for years, significant talent from the “independent film world” has been running headlong to work on huge Hollywood IPs (the Marvel universe is loaded with examples) and it hasn’t meant much for quality or success of the project. Greta’s CV isn’t relevant to what this project is.
loved Barbie btw. thought it was great fun and very entertaining and would not have been surprised to see her get a director nom, but (as Amanda from the Big Picture pointed out) I’m not sure who you’re taking off the list to replace her with.
Yeah, I mean I certainly wouldn’t take out this year’s efforts from Nolan and Scorsese. Would be inclined for Triet over Gerwig this year too. I could maybe get behind nominating Gerwig over Lanthimos? Glazer TBD. But there isn’t an easy way in.
It does feel like the notion of a snub has to be paired with the naming of a nominee who clearly deserved it less. At this point I think there’s a clearer case to be made that Gerwig should have been nominated over Todd Phillips four years ago for her work on Little Women than what happened this year.
In any case, I’m glad the conversation is getting more focused to Gerwig rather than she and Robbie both. Robbie is great, and did a nice job in this movie, but I don’t think I’d have voted for her to be nominated either if given a vote this year (entirely based on how stacked the Best Actress field is). She would have gotten my vote for the outright win for her performance in I, Tonya though.
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The difference is Gerwig made a wholly original film with deep ideas not the next atrocious marvel pile of mindless streaming manure.
It’s just not the same thing.
Deep ideas? The ideas seem to be more or less the incorporation of Feminism 101 ideas. That’s not even a criticism, it feels like the right choice for this movie, but if there was a novel thought offered up at any point then I missed it.
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Barbie isnt really any different from Top Gun last year. A pretty shallow concept executed nearly perfectly for a wide audience. Made tons of money. Not the best film in either year although id say Top Gun was well closer than Barbie.
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this is also lol worthy considering the spine of the narrative revolves around an irl 60+ year old toy and company
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