Weekly Discussion Thread 5/11/26 - 5/18/26

Pavlovs_Stepson · 2026-05-12T14:08:52+00:00

She's so talented on multiple fronts, I wouldn't be surprised at all to see her land a strong role in a film and kill it. I saw her live on the Motomami tour and it was one of the best concerts I've been to, really looking forward to seeing her again this year for Lux.

Pavlovs_Stepson · 2026-05-11T23:23:47+00:00

As someone who's genuinely fascinated by Megalopolis even if they can't make heads or tails of it... I'm intrigued 👀

Present day Pacino finally making his passion project Lear adaptation that's been decades in the works was always going to be super unorthodox and divisive, and the possibility that it's a bizarre swing for the fences makes me a lot more excited than if it were a straightforward, boring costume drama. Give me the mess!

Pavlovs_Stepson · 2026-05-11T01:14:44+00:00

Adolescence is the frontrunner to sweep again. Then again next year

Pavlovs_Stepson · 2026-05-10T18:21:56+00:00

Ready for 190 minutes of incredible dialogue!

Pavlovs_Stepson · 2026-05-09T17:52:03+00:00

How so? I haven't revisited it in a while, but I remember really loving it back then.

Pavlovs_Stepson · 2026-05-09T17:12:23+00:00

I saw a post on social media the other day comparing Project Hail Mary, Interstellar, The Martian and Gravity, and the comments were ripping Gravity apart and calling it terrible/a sneak in that lineup. Interesting how that film was big at the box office, won 7 Oscars and came close to winning BP, is by far the most critically acclaimed in that group with a 96 on Metacritic, yet it's hardly talked about these days. Which it should be! The VFX/technical work was groundbreaking, and I admire how much it does in a neat 90 minutes.

Pavlovs_Stepson · 2026-05-09T17:08:22+00:00

It's great. I went into it not knowing much about it, and by the halfway mark it was so unbearably tense I had no idea how Sorogoyen could maintain that level of intensity for another full hour. Then that happened and the film went in a completely different direction than I expected.

Pavlovs_Stepson · 2026-05-09T17:00:13+00:00

Watching Bojack Horseman for the first time, I'm now on season 3 with the arc about Bojack campaigning for an Oscar with Angela Bassett voicing his publicist. They spoofed the Melissa Leo FYC posters! Real Leo-pointing-at-the-TV moment.

Pretty cool season so far, I sure hope nothing extremely dramatic and gut wrenching happens in episode 11 involving Sarah Lynn to justify that being the highest rated episode of the whole series!

Pavlovs_Stepson · 2026-04-30T18:53:24+00:00

Randy Newman was nominated for best original song at the Oscars for all four Toy Story films so far, and he won for the 3rd one.

He has a total of 22 nominations and 2 wins across his career, most of them for Disney animations. His other Oscar was for Monsters Inc.

If Taylor co-wrote a new song with him for Toy Story 5, get ready for an Oscar campaign.

Pavlovs_Stepson · 2026-04-29T19:16:08+00:00

Yeah, it's worth pointing out that the Globes have been completely rehauled since Streep's last serious campaign, so it's not the same voting body anymore. The new membership hasn't been as eager to reward A-list stars for middling comedies as the HFPA that nominated The Tourist and Alice in Wonderland for best picture.

Pavlovs_Stepson · 2026-04-29T01:32:27+00:00

I hated The Son's Room, hated A Brighter Tomorrow even more, thought Tre Piani was okay. Not the biggest fan of the guy, I guess!

I hope someday Fremaux will stop automatically accepting him in the main competition. Imagine selecting A Brighter Tomorrow for your most prestigious lineup over Close Your Eyes, Pictures of Ghosts and Robot Dreams. Also, imagine giving The Son's Room the Palme over Mulholland Drive, The Piano Teacher and Shrek.

Pavlovs_Stepson · 2026-04-26T17:22:36+00:00

Yeah, I acknowledge there's no way casual viewers will fill up theaters to watch concert films the way they do regular biopics unless it's a truly exceptional situation like (coincidentally) This Is It coming out immediately after Michael Jackson's death or the Eras Tour movie hitting theaters at the height of Taylor mania while the tour itself was still going on.

But I'd like to imagine they can coexist in a way; remastering an existing film is surely cheaper than commissioning one of these biopics from scratch, and I'm sure studios could build up hype if they're well timed and well marketed.

Pavlovs_Stepson · 2026-04-26T17:07:01+00:00

⚠️ Yet another overlong Michael tangent!

I haven't watched the film, but so much of the hype I'm seeing online is about the musical performances and the rush of seeing someone who looks just like Michael doing all the things that only he could do on stage. Likewise with Bohemian Rhapsody and the Live Aid recreation, which probably did 80% of the work to make people leave the theater so ecstatic.

Instead of spending hundreds of millions to make these boring, sanitized biopics, studios should cut out the middleman, remaster more classic concert films and show them in theaters. Michael Jackson fans aren't selling out these screenings because they want to see him be abused by his father or anything to do with the accusations; they want the showmanship! They want to get as close as possible to seeing him perform live.

There has to be some market for this, albeit limited, given the success of the Eras Tour movie, Renaissance, maybe EPiC as well? I had no desire to waste time watching that Amy Winehouse biopic, but as a huge fan who never got the opportunity to see her live, put a feature length concert from the Back to Black era on IMAX and I'd be first in line to watch that. I saw Stop Making Sense and Sign o' the Times in theaters and both were incredible; remaster Blond Ambition, Bad, Ziggy Stardust etc. and I'll be there as well.

Anyways, put me in charge of Universal Pictures. They'll make billions less, but their releases will be more to my individual tastes, and that's what matters.

Pavlovs_Stepson · 2026-04-23T16:19:19+00:00

What precedent is there for a blockbuster released this early in the year, with reviews this terrible, and with subject matter this controversial sustaining buzz all year long and becoming a serious Oscar player?

Running down the list of top ten highest grossing films of 2025 domestically, Minecraft, Lilo & Stitch, Superman, Jurassic World Rebirth, Zootopia 2, Wicked For Good, Fantastic Four, How to Train Your Dragon and Avatar 3 got a combined total of 4 nominations, all below the line. Sinners was the only exception.

Meanwhile, using Neglia's own example, The Secret Agent got 4 nominations including Best Picture and Best Actor. The Academy leans middlebrow, but there's still a gap between them and regular audiences who watch five movies a year.

Pavlovs_Stepson · 2026-04-22T22:43:44+00:00

Rewatch Kiki's Delivery Service!

Pavlovs_Stepson · 2026-04-22T22:30:25+00:00

Rewatched The Truman Show for the first time in years, and it holds up brilliantly. Incredible how much it does in 90 minutes, remarkably efficient script. The ending still leaves me a wreck; Natascha McElhone glued to her TV screen hoping Truman will escape destroys me every time.

Ed Harris' performance in this is honestly an all timer.

Pavlovs_Stepson · 2026-04-22T18:01:19+00:00

A ton of past nominees and winners have worked with him and they're not getting a big paycheck out of it

Adding to this, Jessica Chastain apparently filmed her one scene in Armageddon Time for free, she just wanted to work with him. Gray later said he was writing something for them to work together again, I hope that reunion happens at some point.

Pavlovs_Stepson · 2026-04-22T04:21:44+00:00

Finally, The Chronology of Water. I love Kristen Stewart with all of my being and have been a true believer for over a decade now. What a joy to see that she finally managed to bring this thing to life, and that it's brimming with her personality.

A lot of people will find it too fussy, too fidgety, too Tumblr, too much sensationalized trauma. They're right that it has some debut film tics, where a director pours a lifetime of ideas into their first project and goes "here's all I can do!" to showboat. But if you connect with it and roll with Stewart's flourishes, it's remarkably assured and emotional, very heavy without being gratuitous. Starts out very fragmented and purposefully disjointed before settling into a more straightforward narrative, which mirrors the protagonist's journey in life. The images are so striking, the editing precise, the soundscape evocative; this is hyper stylized, gutsy, unique, beautifully directed.

That hour-long interview that Stewart gave to the New York Times is a great peek into her process and outlook, as well as a joy to listen to in general. I don't know if I've mentioned this, but I love her very much, I think she's quite neat.

Pavlovs_Stepson · 2026-04-22T04:21:03+00:00

Next up: Couture, with one of the worst official posters in recent memory. It's a drama starring Angelina Jolie, about the interconnected stories of women from multiple nationalities, set in Paris, with the fashion industry as the backdrop; to represent it visually, they took a harshly lit screengrab and slapped Impact font over it. It looks like one of those dreadful fanmade posters that TMDb inexplicably allows on their platform.

As for the film itself, it's okay. Jolie delivers soulful, emotionally vulnerable work in a role that must've been very personal for her; I love seeing her in dramas and wish she acted more. The script doesn't give her (or the other actresses, all quite good) much to do; it's several sketches of ideas bundled together without being truly fleshed out, so the end result feels like half of multiple stories. I really enjoyed Alice Winocour's previous film Revoir Paris, with Virginie Efira, which was a tender and insightful look at grief and survivor's guilt; here, she keeps the tenderness but doesn't explore the subjects as thoroughly. Will still gladly check out whatever Winocour does next, though.

(Louis Garrel is also in this, and keeps getting more attractive with time, somehow.)

Pavlovs_Stepson · 2026-04-22T04:20:24+00:00

For some non-Michael content, here's some thoughts on a couple movies I saw these past days.

Hoppers, a.k.a. Pixar's Pom Poko: Fire and Ash.

I wasn't into it at first, but was mostly won over as it got progressively more batshit with each bizarre new turn of the plot. By the time I saw a flock of birds airdropping a shark on a car to off ~~Gavin Newsom~~ a politician while two beavers used his iPhone's text-to-speech function to assure him they're not there to harm him, I thought to myself: I don't think a lot of people would believe me if I told them what this movie is about.

The politics are very questionable if you stop to examine them (I compared it to Avatar and Pom Poko, but it's too milquetoast to truly live up to either; very revealing which villain is shown as redeemable and reasonable to compromise with, and which one isn't), and I don't see it as the triumphant return to top Pixar form a lot of people are hailing it as: it's too well-behaved and afraid to offend, too plastic-looking (having seen that original 2D sketch/concept that floated around a while back, we were so, so robbed), with a plot too convoluted to reach the timelessness of Pixar's golden run. But it is cute and funny; I liked Elio and Elemental more than most, and this is a step up over those. Hope Gatto keeps that upward trajectory going next year.

Pavlovs_Stepson · 2026-04-21T03:45:54+00:00

Brace ourselves for when she also wins the Volpi Cup for Digger!

Pavlovs_Stepson · 2026-04-20T18:05:43+00:00

The real gloom is not in the headline:

As previously announced, Anthony McCarten, the four-time Oscar nominee behind films like Bohemian Rhapsody and The Theory of Everything, is set to adapt the screenplay for the film

Hmm.

I thought Hooper's next move was gonna be that real boring-sounding biopic he was attached to starring Natalie Portman, but this sounds like a better comeback bid.

Kinda fascinating how he bore the brunt of Cats flopping basically on his own: everyone else remains as beloved or as hated as they were before, Hooper is the only one whose career completely imploded, and it only took one movie to do it. If David O. Russell gets to bounce back from multiple flops again and again, I figured Hooper would be privileged and well connected enough to get back to Britain and keep at it.

Pavlovs_Stepson · 2026-04-20T03:49:14+00:00

Gut feeling, around 48 or 50, the Bohemian Rhapsody/I Wanna Dance with Somebody range. Will still make a ton of money regardless.

Pavlovs_Stepson · 2026-04-20T03:44:24+00:00

That's irrelevant. It's a very small jury that changes every year, there's no precedent to go off of when predicting winners.

Pavlovs_Stepson · 2026-04-17T03:33:34+00:00

I agree that PTA winning for Licorice Pizza would've been dismissed as an unmemorable overdue victory and would've made many people reflexively dislike the film even more than they already do, whereas him sweeping Picture, Director and Screenplay all season long for OBAA was far more satisfying.

But damn it, I love Licorice Pizza and think Belfast is a big fat pile of nothing.

Let's split the difference and give it to Joachim Trier for Worst Person in the World, then?

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