New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

By the time the tennis game rolls around, it is best understood as a culmination of forces more powerful than either of them, almost as if they were forced to play that game to satisfy the unfortunate gender stereotypes that both had to grapple with in the 1970s. And the overwhelming feeling of joy, realization, and inspiration that one gets from the entire exercise cannot be denied. Stone is arguably better than in La La Land, for which she won the Oscar.

Battle of the Sexes turns out to be a surprisingly political movie, and some have noted it is the movie about feminism and equal rights that we need today. That is both true and also perhaps a problem for it. And it remains to be seen whether the overall simplicity of the film is unsatisfying for the ever-more-sophisticating Academy. But it is a crowd-pleaser, so I would not discount it as of yet.

Oscar potential: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress (Stone), Best Supporting Actor (Carell), Best Score, Best Screenplay, Best Editing, Best Costumes

Lady Bird: The Indie Spot

Greta Gerwig has been around, it seems, forever, but it seems impossible to imagine that we really first learned of her with the indie hit Frances Ha only about four years ago. Now, the young, talented actress/writer has turned to directing, and has made it a successful debut at that.

In her film Lady Bird, which had its world premiere at Telluride, she threads ground that is familiar both to her and, most obviously, to movie audiences. It is a sort of coming-of-age story centered around Saoirse Ronan’s Christine, who has rebelliously renamed herself Lady Bird, as she navigates her fraught senior year in high school. Boy anxieties aside, it does not help that she has a sort of insane, definitely overbearing mother, played by an absolutely brilliant Laurie Metcalf.

The story is definitely familiar in some senses (teenage anxiety, sexuality, friendship), but the sincerity with which Gerwig paints her canvass and the difficult daughter/mother relationship make it stand out. The question is honestly whether the movie is “too female” to resonate with the broader Academy. On the other hand, movies like An Education have found space, and this could be the one that takes up that slot that now seems reserved for much smaller films.

Oscar potential: Best Picture, Best Actress (Ronan), Best Supporting Actress (Metcalf), Best Screenplay

The Shape of Water: The Only Potential Frontrunner

If there is an Oscar frontrunner at this point, after Telluride, it has to be Guillermo del Toro’s sci-fi love story The Shape of Water. I don’t want to spoil too much, but Eliza (Sally Hawkins, in what surely will be a nominated if not winning role) is a mute working girl who cleans a top-secret government lab in 1950s Baltimore. One day, a mysterious, amphibian-like creature is brought in by a military strongman played by a devilish Michael Shannon. Owing in part to her solitude and saved only at times by her older next door neighbor (played by a moving Richard Jenkins), Eliza develops a rapport and then some with the creature.

Continued:       1       2       3       4