The Projector #78: The Unforgotten (Patreon)

by Keith Phipps

This Monday, before the afterglow of the Grammys even has time to fade, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will announce the nominees for the 93rd Academy Awards. There will be surprises and disappointments and you’ll likely be hearing a few titles again and again and again. (Get used to the sound of Nomadland and The Trial of the Chicago 7.) It’s tough to get awards attention, tougher still when there’s not a lot of studio money providing a campaign to push for a nomination. As a kind of premature corrective/wishlist, I asked my co-hosts to suggest some nominations they hope to see on Monday (but fear they won’t).

Scott Tobias

The Assistant is a difficult movie, with a minimalist day-in-the-life style that owes a debt to the also famously difficult Chantal Akerman classic Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. Even though Hollywood might welcome an on-screen reflection of the #MeToo reckoning over Harvey Weinstein, Kitty Green’s approach to the subject is more about establishing a toxic ambience than developing anything like conventional drama. (The one big scene is a disappointing meeting with H.R.) Yet Julia Garner’s performance as a personal assistant for an unseen Weinstein-like executive suggests the extraordinary turbulence behind her professional reserve. She’s caught in a trap, tied to a job that might lead to a future in production but rendered utterly powerless by a company that will protect its leader. This is how people of conscience are silenced.

Tasha Robinson

The Oscars should probably have a special award for Best Ensemble Cast, to be used as a power move in cases where a particularly high-powered group of players risks splitting the Oscar vote. Line-ups like the one in One Night In Miami are exactly the kind of thing that lead producers to push one star arbitrarily over another as the lead, so they won't have to compete for Best Actor — but that tends to downgrade the "supporting" actors’ contributions. In the case of One Night In Miami, it seems like the attention is focusing more on Leslie Odom Jr. as Sam Cooke, and Eli Goree as Cassius Clay has a bigger and flashier role. But while they're both marvelous, and Aldis Hodge does tremendous work in his quiet and more distinctly supporting role as NFL star Jim Brown, I'd love to see Kingsley Ben-Adir get proper acknowledgment for his performance as Malcolm X. His character is the turning point of the film — the member of the group who's feeling the most pressure, who's struggling for survival and change as he's on his way down and the rest of them are arguably on their way up. He gives off palpable distress, determination, and need, even as he's pretending to a confidence he doesn't entirely have. He's mesmerizing. Failing the spontaneous declaration of that Best Ensemble Cast award, I'd love to see him get the acknowledgement he deserves.

Genevieve Koski

In the same vein of “things the Oscars don’t do but probably should,” the annual wish for more recognition of comedy looms larger than usual in a year with an overall dearth of the sort of prestige movies that typically dominate the nominations, particularly in the performance categories. I am not the first person to suggest that it would be a hell of a lot of fun to see Dan Stevens doing a Best Supporting Actor run for Eurovision, though I think that performance is ultimately just too darn silly to overcome the Oscars’ aversion to comedy. But I think Palm Springs, in particular Cristin Milioti’s performance, might have an out-out-outside chance thanks to some of the critics’ awards they’ve been picking up. And I’d love to see Milioti in the Best Actress mix (alongside Carrie Coon for The Nest, but that feels like a somewhat easier sell to Oscars) for playing Sarah, a performance that managed to score some big laughs while managing a delicate tonal balance when it came to what was motivating her behavior. It’s a character, and a performance, I’ve thought about often in the months since I saw it, and I just hope it’s had the same sort of staying power for Oscar voters.

As for me, I worry about Delroy Lindo, who once seemed like a shoo-in for his work in Da 5 Bloods, but whose name has largely fallen out of the conversation in recent months. It’s even possible that Chadwick Boseman could get nominated in the Best Supporting Actor category instead of Lindo. With all respect to the late, great Boseman, who’s terrific in the film, Lindo’s the one with the standout role (and Boseman will win for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, a deserved honor and an acknowledgement of a career cut short too soon). Lindo’s been great for a long time, but he’d also been a bit out of the spotlight until the premiere of The Good Fight (which he recently left) and Da 5 Bloods. It would be nice to see his standout work in that film acknowledged.

There’s no awards talk on our latest episode, the second part of our Jean de Florette / Minari pairing. But do expect to hear more about Minari in the awards discussion.

• Speaking of awards shows, the Golden Globes proved they can be tough to sit through during the pandemic. At the New York Times, Kyle Buchanan offered some suggestions about how to make them watchable.

• Are you watching Zack Snyder’s Justice League or Tom & Jerry? Per this Vulture piece by Jackson McHenry, the answer may surprise you.

• At Polygon, Petrana Rudolovic explores how Netflix is depicting its biracial characters.

• For Vulture, our pal Rachel Handler talked to Pedro Almódovar (!) about his new Tilda Swinton-starring short “The Human Voice.”

• Also at Vulture, Carey O’Donnell reconsiders Melissa Leo’s self-financed 2021 Oscar push.

• With Zack Snyder’s Justice League on the horizon, Keith Phipps looked at the past and future of the gritty reboot for GQ.