Meanwhile, ‘Fabelmans’ just had its first screening in Los Angeles for Oscar voters. Obviously, it was a resounding success, the industry is going to eat this one up. Standing ovations at an Academy screening are rare, but that’s what the film got last night. The industry as a whole will eat this one up. I recommend David Poland’s Substack column, “The Hot Button.” David’s been in the game for a few decades now, he knows how it all works....

The obvious front-runners are “Free Solo,” “Minding the Gap,” “RBG,” “Three Identical Strangers,” and “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” The dark horses that could squeeze in a nomination are “On Her Shoulders,” “Crime + Punishment,” “Shirkers,” “Hale County This Morning, This Evening,” and “Dark Money.” I’ve honestly never heard of “Charm City,” “Communion,” “The Distant Barking of Dogs,” “Of Fathers and Sons,” and “The Silence of Others.” All of these docs must just be very happy to have made it this far in the race....

Joel Coen’s “No Country For Old Men” 2) Martin Scorsese’s “The Departed” 3) Steve McQueen’s “12 Years A Slave” Then there’s the highly respectable winners, movies that may not have been my first choice, but deserved the recognition: Peter Jackson’s “The Return of the King” 5) Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s “Birdman” 6) Kathryn Bigelow’s “The Hurt Locker” 7) Bong Joon-ho’s “Parasite” The next category is the admirable crowd-pleasers: Ridley Scott’s “Gladiator” 9) Danny Boyle’s “Slumdog Millionaire”10) Tom McCarthy’s “Spotlight”11) Guillermo del Toro’s “The Shape of Water”12) Ron Howard’s “A Beautiful Mind”13) Peter Farrely’s “Green Book” A special category should go to (14) Barry Jenkins’ “Moonlight,” which didn’t deserve the top prize....

It turn out that TÀR’s Cate Blanchett is no longer a shoo-in to win the Oscar. Deadwyler has come out of nowhere to challenge her in this category. That has now made the stacked Actress field one of the more fascinating ones of the 2023 Oscars. If Deadwyler were to win the Oscar then she’d become the first black actress since Halle Berry (Monsters Ball) in 2002 to win the category....

Now Almodovar is confirming that the film will start production early next year. Before that, he’ll try to flex his US production muscles with an experiment: a short Western-set film starring Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal. ‘Manual’ is a collection of author Lucia Berlin’s short stories and Almodovar has managed to adapt five of them into one linear narrative. Almodovar created a single character out of the five stories with Cate Blanchett set to play the lead....

What I’m most curious about is which films will squeeze into the final two spots available. Right now, we have Nightmare Alley, Licorice Pizza, The Tragedy of Macbeth, House of Gucci, Being the Ricardos, Spider-Man: No Way Home, and Tick, Tick … Boom! all vying for the 9th and 10th spot. Can “Drive My Car” maybe get a shocker nomination? As far as sure-bets go, can we safely say that The Power of the Dog, Belfast, King Richard, Dune, CODA, West Side Story and Don’t Look Up will get into the final ten?...

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This being Riley’s first feature, an outrageous vision of political and societal resonance, “Sorry to Bother You” can be quite a mess at times, but that’s part of its brilliance. Riley has his young, unemployed Oakland protagonist Cassius (“Atlanta” scene-sealer Lakeith Stanfield), living with his girlfriend, Detroit (Tessa Thompson), an artist, political activist, in his uncle’s minimalist garage. There literally is no room in there for more than two people....

According to Deadline, “The Northman” has caught the attention of a few noteworthy actors, including Nicole Kidman, Alexander Skarsgård, Anya Taylor-Joy, Bill Skarsgård, and Willem Dafoe — all are currently in talks to star in Eggers’ upcoming project. No word yet on what “The Northman” is going to be about, and I doubt we will get much plot detail, but I have been a major advocate of Eggers’ filmmaking skills ever since I saw “The Witch” at Sundance 5 years ago....

Supposedly, all of Miller’s financial issues with the WB have been resolved. They want more “Mad Max.” They see how excited people are with his upcoming “Furiosa.” Miller has dabbled in non-Mad Max fare all throughout his career, “Babe: Pig in the City,” “The Witches of Eastwick,” “Happy Feet,” and this year’s “Three Thousand Years of Longing.” However, Miller isn’t getting any younger either. He’ll be 79 by the time ‘Furiosa’ is released in 2024 and concentrating the twilight of his career on more “Mad Max” is what he wants to do....

Thanks to a report from THR, it seems as though the script was severely altered and the role that DiCaprio was supposed to play got switched around. DiCaprio was set to play the role of the hero of the film, who worked for the just-formed FBI, but then Scorsese had a change of heart, took another look at the script and made revisions, turning DiCaprio’s role from the good guy to the nephew of Robert De Niro’s villainous character....

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Eric Kohn has decided to get a head-start of what we might see pop up at next January’s edition and it looks fairly grim, that is if you want the big names to show up. Then again, that’s never been the lure of Sundance — it’s first and foremost a place for cinematic discovery. The best films this year will probably again come from newcomers since the A-List directors tipped to premiere new films at Sundance next year amount to ZERO, unless you count Ira Sachs, Rebecca Miller, Dave Franco, and Brandon Cronenberg as maestros....

Right now, Sundance is headed into its 44th edition, which begins on January 20th, with barely any buzz-worthy titles. Even worse, I haven’t even heard of any standouts yet from colleagues who are also rummaging through screeners themselves. The only title that’s been mentioned by a few people is the John Boyega-starring “892.” This time last year we were already hearing great things about Rebecca Hall’s “Passing” and Jonas Rasmussen’s “Flee....

The big winner of the Grand Jury Prize in the Narrative Feature Competition for the 2020 edition of the fest is “Shithouse,” from director Cooper Raiff. In a statement, the jury said, “Imbued with the sweet, heart-on-sleeve sensibilities of ‘Before Sunrise,’ triple threat writer/director/star, Cooper Raiff’s earnest portrait (and directorial debut) of a lonely college freshman and the girl he forges a magnetic connection with is refreshing and winningly sincere....

“Family,” which premiered at the SXSW Film Festival last year, was directed by Laura Steinel and is the sort of makeshift family romp that could only work if its lead character is interesting enough to be followed all the way through. That’s the case here, as “Family,” tackling everyday working-class America’s struggles to cope with mixing business and relationships, stars the-always-wonderful Taylor Schilling as a self-centered workaholic tasked with taking care of her eccentric outcast of an 11-year-old niece for a week....

No, Malick is just taking his sweet, sweet time, trying to find the perfect mood and mold for his latest creation. The above photo is a snapshot of the latest update on Malick’s film. As you can see we might have to wait a little longer to finally watch “The Last Planet,” but I’m not throwing the towel either on it being released sometime this year. I had reported in late December that Malick and Cannes boss Thierry Fremaux were engaged in serious discussions to finally have “The Last Planet” premiere on the Croisette this coming May....

I saw about a quarter of the selection and although I wouldn’t ever say it was “weak”, there was a lot of mediocre stuff people were over-anticipating. My hunch is next year will be better. The looser the Covid restrictions become, the more flexibility filmmakers will have. It’s really tough to get a movie made right now for the usual reasons and more. With that said, these were the highlight of TIFF ‘22....

Ever since #OscarsSoWhite happened, maybe the most influential movement in American movies since the ‘70s maverick phase, young and promising black filmmakers have emerged from all parts of the U.S. with unique styles all their own (Boots Riley, Ryan Coogler, Barry Jenkins, Jordan Peele). In trying to assemble the 12 best movies by and/or about African-Americans, it was important to spread out the wealth. Half this list could have solely been Spike Lee movies, alas, the rule was only two entries for Spike....