Horror among the elderly

 

If The Rule of Jenny Pen, a horror movie set in a nursing home, accomplishes anything, it's to convince us that John Lithgow can play an evil, sadistic villain. A tortured fellow who wanders through an elder care facility with a doll puppet on his right arm, Lithgow’s Dave turns the doll head into an ominous threat that might come crashing down on a vulnerable head. Director James Ashcroft focuses Dave’s cruel psychopathic tendencies on Stefan Mortensen (Geoffrey Rush), a judge who has been severely debilitated by a stroke. Arrogant and accustomed to getting his way, Stefan has difficulty accepting his new life in a wheelchair and limited use of his hands. He's been stripped of his power and doesn't like it. Ashcroft doesn't skimp when it comes to Dave's sadism; he pulls the catheter out of Stefan's roommate's body. He steals food from other residents and eats like a hog who hadn't found a place at the trough for years. Both Lithgow and Rush meet the story's challenges, but committed performances can't alleviate the feeling that the movie indulges in what can look like serial abuse of the elderly. And, yes, it's difficult to believe that the home's staff believes Stefan is fabricating. Ashcroft skillfully mounts some of the movie's wince-inducing bits, but when the movie reached its conclusion, I had little on which to reflect other than the sour aftertaste so much cruelty left.

Indie winds blow through Oscars

     Thank goodness it's over.

      Thanks to fire delays in Los Angeles, the 2025 awards season seemed interminable, but Oscar finally has spoken.

      Hollywood's big night marked a  strange evening for mainstream movies, if such things still exists. Anora, an independent film took best picture, best director, best actress, best original screenplay, and best editing. A $6 million production stomped big-ticket items such as Wicked and Dune: Part II.

       The irony emerged early on. The show opened with Ariana Grande singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow, a bow to Hollywood's fabled status as the nation's Dream Factory. But Academy voters this year had less interest in Oz than in Anora's immersion in Brighton Beach, a slice of New York where the dreams of a sex worker crashed on the shores of reality.

     I was mildly surprised that a poised 25-year-old Madison took best actress for her work in Anora. Some speculated that a late surge for Fernanda Torres of I'm Still Here cost frontrunner Demi Moore votes. Say this, though, Madison's victory gave the show a welcome jolt.

     Adrien Brody, this year's frontrunner for his work in The Brutalist, snagged an Oscar for best actor and refused to be played off the stage before he finished his acceptance speech. Good for him.

     When Sean Baker won best director for Anora, he made a plea for the importance of viewing movies in theaters. Baker said more than 1,000 theaters bit the dust during the pandemic, but it's difficult to think Baker's pitch will stem the tide.

      Netflix, the force behind Emilia Pérez, probably shed tears because the movie, which led the field with 13 nominations, won only two awards, one for an emotional Zoe Saldaña as best supporting actress and another for El Mal, which took best song. 

     Emilia Pérez couldn't even win best foreign film. That honor went to Brazil's I'm Still Here.

      So what about the rest of the show? Host Conan O'Brien's emergence from Demi Moore's body in a parodic reference to The Substance was imaginative. O'Brien has a mild-mannered delivery but hit hard with a joke about Karla Sofía Gascón, the transgender actress nominated for best actress for her work in Emilia Pérez.

     O'Brien said that Anora contained 479-uses of the "F''' word, four more than were uttered by Gascon's publicist, an imagined response to disparaging social-media posts by Gascon that probably halted Emilia Perez's Oscar march.

     Aside from speeches by the winning Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers for the best documentary, No Other Land, the evening was light on politics.  O'Brien did add some bite when he joked about Anora's triumphant night.

     "Americans are excited to see somebody finally stand up to a powerful Russian," he said. (See the movie to get the joke.)

      In what felt like a Grammys moment, Lisa, Doja Cat, and Raye sang themes from Bond movies in a tribute to Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson, the duo that's ceding creative control of the franchise to Amazon MGM Studios. 

     Old rockers -- or at least one of them -- had their moment, as well. Mick Jagger presented the award for best song after telling the audience that Bob Dylan had declined the job because he thought he was too old. 

       Maybe Dylan made the right decision. A Complete Unknown, a film about Dylan's 1960s transition from folk to rock, went home empty-handed after earning three nominations, including best picture.

       To catch all of this year's fashion statements, you would have had to watch the pre-Oscar red carpet telecast. One outfit, did, however, stand out for me. In a yellow suit with what I read described as a "cropped" jacket, best-actor nominee Timothee Chalamet looked like he was auditioning to play a bell hop in a Wes Anderson film.

      But, hey, I'm no fashion expert. I am, however, a Gene Hackman fan and was glad to see Morgan Freeman introduce this year's In Memoriam section with a measured tribute to the recently departed actor. A little dignity at the Oscars never hurts.

      

           

Oscar predictions 2025

      Predicting Oscar winners can be dicey. Prognosticators usually consider all the previous year-end awards: Critics Choice, Golden Globes, the British Academy Film Awards,  and -- more importantly -- the professional guild awards: producers, directors, actors, writers, etc. 

   Then there's the precarious art of anticipating the inclinations of the 9,375 voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. To further complicate matters, voting for best picture involves a preferential voting system that kicks in if no picture receives more than 50 percent of the votes in the first count.

       There may be surprises this year. Some Oscar observers think Conclave will win best picture because it's the most well-regarded movie among the so-called serious contenders. At one point, The Brutalist was considered a frontrunner. Not anymore. 

        Anora remains a favorite but not by a mile. Sean Baker won top director honors from the Directors Guild of America. A victory at the Directors Guild often signals that the director's film -- in this case, Anora -- will take best picture. The Producers Guild of America also awarded Anora its top prize. The last professional guild to weigh in -- The Screen Actors Guild of America -- bucked the trend and picked Conclave as its best picture.

        Here's the weirdest possibility: Emilia Pérez, which led the field of nominations with 13, could end up with only two Oscars, Zoe Saldana's for best supporting actress and El Mal's for best song.

      Much-admired, Emilia Perez took a hit when one of its stars, Oscar-nominated Karla Sofia Gascon, was tagged for old social media posts that were deemed racist and Islamophobic.

        So where does that leave us? I'd be lying if I said I knew what will happen when awards are handed out on March 2.

       Whatever transpires, the Oscars remain an important event for a tattered film industry, for the nominees and winners, for those devotes who participate in Oscar pools or have personal rooting interests, and for seasoned movie fans who, even if skeptical about Oscar, can't turn away.

       I approach Oscar predictions with a mixture of resignation and trepidation. It's an habitual critical exercise, but one that involves plenty of guesswork, informed I hope.

      In cases where I've named a movie that could win, it's because that particular race may be hovering close to a toss-up.

       So here are my predictions in the major categories:

Best Picture: Anora

Could win: Conclave. 

The Other Nominees:

The Brutalist

A Complete Unknown

Dune: Part Two

Emilia Perez

I'm Still Here

Nickel Boys

The Substance

Wicked

Best Director: Sean Baker, Anora

The Other Nominees:

Brady Corbet, The Brutalist

James Mangold, A Complete Unknown

Jacques Audiard, Emilia Perez

Best Actor: Adrien Brody, The Brutalist

The Other Nominees:

Timothee Chalamet, A Complete Unknown

Colman Domingo, Sing Sing

Ralph Fiennes, Conclave

Sebastian Stan, The Apprentice

Best Actress: Demi Moore, The Substance

Could win: Mikey Madison, Anora

The Other Nominees

Cynthia Erivo, Wicked

Karla Sofia Gascon, Emilia Perez

Fernanda Torres, I'm still Here*

*Dark horse, but not impossible

Best Supporting Actor: Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain

The Other Nominees:

Yura Borisov, Anora

Edward Norton, A Complete Unknown

Guy Pearce, The Brutalist

Jeremy Strong, The Apprentice

Best Supporting Actress: Zoe Saldana, Emilia Perez

The Other Nominees: 

Monica Barbaro, A Complete Unknown

Ariana Grande, Wicked

Felicity Jones, The Brutalist

Isabella Rossellini, Conclave

Best Adapted Screenplay: Conclave

The Other Nominees:

A Complete Unknown

Emilia Perez

Nickel Boys

Sing Sing

Best Original screenplay: Anora

Could win: A Real Pain

The Other Nominees:

The Brutalist    

September 5

The Substance.

Best Documentary Feature: No Other Land

The Other Nominees:

Black Box Diaries

Porcelain War

Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat

Sugarcane

Best Animated Feature: The Wild Robot

Could win: Flow

The Other Nominees: 

Inside Out 2

Memoir of a Snail

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Foul

 

Best International Feature: I'm Still Here

Could win: Emilia Perez

The other nominees:

The Seed of the Sacred Fig

Flow

The Girl With the Needle

    That's my take on the major categories: A few last, thoughts, though:  If Oscar wanted to endorse movies that meet its criteria for quality but also had broad appeal, Wicked and Dune: Part II would be the top contenders. 

   A bit of  Googling showed that to date, Wicked has grossed more than $727 million worldwide. Dune: Part II has grossed more than $714 million worldwide. By contrast, Anora has grossed around $37 million worldwide. Wicked’s budget was estimated at $145 million; the budget for Dune has been estimated at $165 million. Anora was made for $6 million.

     Gross receipts can be misleading, of course. Variables include the number of screens on which a movie is released; the amount spent on advertising; audience familiarity with the cast or with the movie’s source material; and possibly its rating.

     I'm not trying to equate money spent and money made with quality.  What I’m getting at is a way to estimate what moviegoers are watching and how it might align with the preferences of Oscar voters.

     I’d say that five of this year’s nominees (Anora, The Brutalist, Emilia Perez, I’m Still Here, and Nickel Boys) might be called “niche” movies with The Substance occupying a middle ground between niche movies and films with mass-market potential.

      It’s not a new idea, but one worth revisiting: Like most cultural preoccupations, movies have become fragmented, generating factional support. It’s difficult to imagine, for example, that Brady Corbet, the director of The Brutalist, thought his three hour plus movie would be a blockbuster.

     That doesn’t mean The Brutalist couldn’t be regarded as the best picture of 2024; rather it indicates that we’ve become an audience of segmented viewers with some crossover between what once was considered art house and mainstream fare.

      The results can be strange. I have friends who were open to experiencing what The Brutalist had to offer, but walked out of Wicked after the first 20 minutes. At a lunch with former co-workers, one expressed disdain for The Brutalist;  another thought it was the year’s best movie.

      Some filmmakers don't seem to be looking to make a box-office killing. Sean Baker (Tangerine, The Florida Project, Red Rocket, and Anora) has become an essential movie voice by looking at lives we often ignore: sex workers, uprooted kids being raised in motels, and Russian immigrants in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn.

       As Baker’s work suggests, strains of humanity — though sometimes as absurd as it is heartbreaking or inspiring — can be found in every subculture. 

       The point: We live in times when consensus is difficult to reach. That may be as true for the Academy’s voters as it is for the rest of us. That's why we should be careful about assigning too much meaning to Sunday’s awards. Maybe a pervasive lack of agreement is the meaning.

       The Academy doesn't disclose its Oscar vote count. But what would we conclude if we knew that Anora had surpassed the required 50 percent mark by beating Conclave with 500 or fewer votes. It might only mean that Anora won an Oscar for best picture and Conclave didn't. It wouldn't tell us whether anyone would be rewatching or discovering either picture 10 years from now.

       So, good luck in your Oscar pool, and let's hope that 2025 brims with stimulating, entertaining, and emotionally powerful movies -- whatever conclusions, if any, we'll be able to draw about the rest of the year.

Siblings struggle with life crises

 
   

       The Millers aren't a happy lot.

       One of the Miller sisters (Julianna Marguiles) writes novels that sell but she's frustrated by her husband's inertia. A once-successful author (Campbell Scott), he's currently unable to write. 

   Another Miller sister (Gretchen Mol) abandoned her career as a rising rock guitarist to raise her children and support the career of her rock musician husband (Patrick Wilson), a guitarist who spends most of his time on tour and who drinks too much.

    Andy Miller (Edward Burns), the third Miller sibling, recently was dumped by his wife (Morena Baccarin). An artist by trade, Andy is trying to find his footing in a relationship with a friend (Minnie Driver) of his soon to be ex-wife.

   Written and directed by Burns and featuring a strong ensemble cast, Millers in Marriage piles a lot on its plate, so much so that it often seems as if it's working through a checklist of 50something problems.

  Although he includes flashbacks to various pivotal points in the characters' lives, Burns doesn't do much to make the family background of three siblings part of the story. And putting each character at a major turning point feels a little too pat.

    Each sister looks beyond her marriage. 

Marguiles's Maggie has her eye on a local handyman (Brian D'Arcy James). Mol's Eve is tempted by a charming rock journalist (Benjamin Bratt).

    Despite a reasonable amount of conflict, the movie seldom catches fire, and its settings lean toward comforting affluence. Nothing wrong with that but it's almost as if Millers in Marriage is afraid to muss its hair. Too bad. More mess might have been what the movie needed. 

      

 

'The Monkey': Gore with a comic twist

 

Director Osgood Perkins won over horror fans (I wasn't one of them) with Longlegs, a 2024 movie that featured another unmoored performance from Nicolas Cage. Now Perkins returns with The Monkey, an adaptation of a 1980 short story by Stephen King. 

   Slickly realized and gurgling with blood-soaked humor, The Monkey focuses on twin brothers (both played by Theo James) who are tormented by a large toy monkey with a terrifying grin. When wound up, the monkey begins drumming ominously. Guess what? Someone is about to die. 

   Attempts to find laughter amid the gore meet with intermittent success; these include swarming hornets, a cobra that springs out of a hole on a golf course, and stampeding horses that turn a man's insides to mush. That's where we are, I guess. Inventive violence has become a measure of creativity. The fun -- if it's your cup of gore -- stems from the variety of ways Osgood and his team devise for characters to meet their ends.

   The Monkey reaches its finale when one brother (James's Hal) reunites with the teenage son (Colin O'Brien) he hasn't seen for years. Long divorced, Hal has kept his son at a distance to protect the kid from the monkey curse. 

  Despite antipathy between the two brothers and the burden of guilt one them carries, the movie can feel as if its marking time, offering bits of story until it's ready to serve up another piece of cleverly contrived gore.

   A final joke struck me as tastelessly cruel, but audiences can decide for themselves how far over-the-top they want to go with Osgood. I laughed some, but when I reflected on the movie, a lyric from an old Chuck Berry tune began to run through my mind. "Too much monkey business for me."

    

   

A disarming look at Iranians in Canada

 

    In his new movie, Universal Language, director Matthew Rankin, a Canadian with Iranian roots, turns the ordinary into a weirdly amusing norm as he transplants fragments of Persian culture into a frozen Canadian city.

   Rankin sets most of his movie in Winnipeg, which -- in the movie -- becomes an Iranian enclave resembling an arctic outpost. Beige, brown and grey apartment and office buildings create an impersonal  backdrop for a tapestry of storylines that appear, disappear, and ultimately converge.

     I've never been to Winnipeg. If you have, you may not recognize the city Rankin invents. The characters speak Persian -- with dashes of French adding fillips of cultural collision. Street signs are written in Persian, an ironic expression considering that Iranians make up less than one percent of Canada's population.

     A feeling of chilled sadness sometimes settles over the  proceedings, which are presented in such a matter-of-fact way, we’re knocked off our moorings. Rankins's characters, both children and adults, never act as if anything might be amiss; they don't rebel against the world in which they find themselves: They live in it.

     Sadness and humor become soul mates. We meet a woman who works as a lacrymologist. She collects tears at the local cemetery. At home, she keeps jars full of tears on her living room shelves. Were they shed over a lost homeland? Lost loves? The pain of living? You fill in the blank.

    The town's Kleenex repository staffed by a man dressed in a formal white suit supports the idea that the town's residents cry a lot. Rows of open Kleenex boxes line the shelves of what seems to be a quasi-official location.

    Rankin takes us to a store that sells only turkeys; the store's proprietor is bereft over a special turkey that got lost in transit to him. His love for turkeys runs deep, as must the town's love of turkey dinners.

    Strands of silliness lace through the movie's fabric. At one point, a character mentions an agency known as the Winnipeg Earmuff Authority. Many characters wear outsized earmuffs, colorful exclamation points in a desaturated world.

    The movie plays a neat trick. Instead of the emigres feeling misplaced; we do. There's nothing antagonistic about Rankin's approach; he embeds odd touches into the quotidian rhythms of his characters' lives.

    In Winnipeg, a tour guide moves through the city pointing out sites of preposterous insignificance, notably a parking lot where the Great Parallel Parking Dispute of 1958 occurred.

    Rankin leaves it to us to sort through the movie’s jests and conceits: a kid who attends school dressed as Groucho Marx, an attempt to retrieve money that has been frozen under ice, a late-picture identity swap involving a character played by Rankin,  a former government worker who travels from Montreal to Winnipeg to visit his aging mother.

    Those more familiar with Canada than I probably will appreciate more of Rankin's wry but gentle humor. Know, though, that Universal Language is the work of an artist with a keen appreciation for the absurdities that accompany displacement, as well as for the absurdities of the strange environment his characters inhabit. 

    Critics have pointed out that Universal Language contains trace elements of the cinema of Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami and of Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki. True, but Universal Language speaks its own disarming language.

   So what's the universal language to which the title refers? It's neither Persian nor French. It can't be found on street signs or at the local Tom Hollands restaurant where tea is served from a samovar. It may be found in the ridiculousness lengths some of Rankins's characters go for others. Better to be absurdly kind than absurdly cruel.

    Not everyone will want to make this trip to Winnipeg,  but those who appreciate the quiet audacity of Rankin's vision will find a movie that amuses and enriches as it mingles laughter and tears.

     Toward the end of the movie, the brother of the man who owns the turkey store sings a mournful Persian love song. The Canadian group The Guess Who's Those Eyes follows on the soundtrack. 

     "These eyes cry every night for you.'' So goes the opening lyric of Those Eyes. Universal Language echoes that plaintive sentiment while never forgetting to smile at the unspoken heartbreak that may have prompted all those tears.

Failures of ‘The Gorge’ go deep

 Billed as an action/romance, The Gorge is set to bow on Apple TV+. I’ve been hesitant about reviewing movies released exclusively on streaming services. My reluctance doesn’t necessarily speak to the quality of such films, but a lingering prejudice about the superiority of theatrical releases has proven difficult to shake, at least for me.

  I nonetheless opted to watch The Gorge. Given the chaos of the moment, I craved a diversion that might contain vertiginous thrills — no matter how obviously delivered. 

   Here’s the premise. Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy play two sharpshooters — one a former Marine, the other a servant of Russian overlords—who are assigned to remote posts in what appears to be an Eastern European wilderness. They are separated by a deep gorge that's home to an ominous threat. 

   Their job: Prevent the threat — dubbed The Hollow Men — from climbing out of the gorge, a task that requires ample amounts of ammunition.

   Don't get too excited. Sure, T.S. Eliot wrote a poem called The Hollow Men and the screenplay includes other erudite references but they play more like Post-it notes than deeply felt revelations.

    A simple story arc emerges. Independent sorts, the sharpshooters must bridge the physical gap that keeps them apart, join forces in a battle for survival, and, of course, fall in love.

   At first, I remained hopeful. Sigourney Weaver turns up as a no-nonsense official who sends Teller’s Levi on his mission. Of course, we don’t trust her; she’s too crisp, too smart to be straightforward. 

   After providing some background about Taylor-Joy’s character, director Scott Derrickson lands the two assassins at their outposts, towers flanking both sides of the wide gorge. They’ve been instructed  to communicate with each other, but Taylor-Joy’s Drassa makes signs for Teller's Levi to read through his high-powered binoculars. She invites him to help her celebrate her birthday.

    Derrickson doesn’t waste time revealing the danger,  mutant creatures that look as though they’ve been assembled from sticks, leaves, slime, and animal parts. 

     Joy-Taylor's boldness gives the movie one of its few highlights carrying us to the moment when the two killers wind up in the gorge. There, Derrickson and his team build a world shrouded in fog and populated by weird creatures.

   Considering that both characters are deadly shots at long distances, it's odd that the movie forces them into so much close-quarters combat, slathering the action with gook and gore.

    When our heroes find an abandoned laboratory, we learn how the creatures were spawned, another letdown. A film made by a long-gone scientist explains the whole movie, but not without a heavy reliance on devices that the scientist and her colleagues conveniently left behind.

   You'll have little trouble finding your own examples of contrivance, so I'll conclude by saying that The Gorge returned me unrewarded to the world I'd been trying to escape. 

A new Captain America hits the screen

 

  I'd like to talk about the ending of Captain America: Brave New World. It's borderline crazy, gratuitously overblown, willfully preposterous, and, perhaps, the most enjoyable thing about this latest edition to the MCU canon. 

  I laughed a lot as the movie smashed its way toward a Washington D.C.-based conclusion. The late-picture bombast struck me as amusing, although I'm not sure that was the reaction the creators were hoping for.

   Only the fear of spoilers keeps me from saying more. So on with the review: 

    Captain America: Brave New World spends much of its 118-minute runtime watching Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) justify his ascendance to the role of Captain America, a job once filled by Steve Rogers (Chris Evans). Although Mackie often appears in nicely tailored suits, he dons his uniform when it counts. Mackie earns his shield, which he tosses around like a lethal Frisbee.

   Director Julius Onah balances comic-book bravado and elements that sometimes resemble a conventional hunk of intrigue about how power should be wielded.

   In this outing, Harrison Ford takes over a role previously played by the late William Hurt. Ford portrays Thadeous Ross, a ruthless US president who wants to change his image from warrior to peacemaker. 

  To accomplish his lofty goal, Ross must arrange a treaty under which the world's powers will  agree to share adamantium, a much-desired substance that .... well ... who cares what it does?

   Looking older than he ever has on film, Ford appears throughout the movie; he seems committed to serving the story's serious side while not diminishing its comic-book clout.

    In the early going, President Ross invites Wilson to the White House in hopes that the new Captain America will bring the Avengers back to life. 

   Before an Avengers rebirth can occur, an aggrieved super soldier (Carl Lumbly) -- one of Wilson's warrior pals and a wrongly imprisoned victim of his own government -- takes a shot at the president. 

   The assassination attempt fails, but we're quickly assured that Lumbly's Isaiah Bradley is no revenge-seeking villain; mysteriously, he's being manipulated. Wilson pledges to clear his friend's name.

    Thematically, Brave New World touches on genetic engineering and mind control while making room for an aerial battle over the Indian Ocean when the US tries to prevent Japan from seizing control of the world's adamantium supply. 

    Plenty of well-played additional characters turn up. Shira Haas portrays a former Mossad agent who works as the president's top security aide. Giancarlo Esposito plays Sidewinder, a bad guy for hire. Danny Ramirez adds a welcome light touch as Falcon.

     Tim Blake Nelson does major bad-guy duty as Samuel Sterns, a biology genius with a grudge against the president and the need for a wig. Stern's hair has been replaced by the brain that grows outside his head. 

      The action sequences aren't exactly groundbreaking, and at times, the screenplay slows its roll so that various characters can deliver chunks of exposition.

      I have no idea how much of a splash Brave New World will make, but the movie flirts with topicality as it tries to keep the Marvel torch burning. Yes, the flame sometimes sputters, but like Mackie, Brave New World ultimately holds its own.

'Anora' earns Critics Choice best picture

 

   No single movie dominated the 30th Critics Choice Awards. Wicked, Emilia Pérez, and The Substance led the pack with three awards each. Anora won best picture, but earned no other awards. 

  Surprisingly, Jon M. Cho won best director for Wicked, beating directors I saw as frontrunners: Jacques Audiard (Emilia Pérez), Sean Baker (Anora), and Brady Corbet (The Brutalist). 

   The acting awards seemed to follow a more predictable arc with Adrien Brody (The Brutalist) and Demi Moore (The Substance) winning best actor and actress awards. Kiren Culkin (A Real Pain) and Zoe Saldaña (Emilia Pérez) scored victories in the supporting-actor category.

   The Critics Choice Awards sometimes have served as a bellwether for the Academy Awards. This year's awards may help you with Oscar predictions -- but not in the best-director category. Chu (Wicked) won the Critics Choice award for best director. Oscar snubbed him in its best-director category.

   I'll note that I'm a member of the Critics Choice Association and leave you to peruse the list:

Best Picture

Winner: Anora

The Brutalist

Conclave

Dune: Part Two

Emilia Perez

Nickel Boys

Sing Sing

The Substance

Wicked

Best Actor

Winner: Adrien Brody, The Brutalist

Timothee Chalamet, A Complete Unknown

Colman Domingo, Sing Sing

Daniel Craig, Queer

Ralph Fiennes, Conclave

Hugh Grant, Heretic

Best Actress

Winner: Demi Moore, The Substance

Cynthia Erivo, Wicked

Karla Sofia Gascon, Emilia Perez

Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Hard Truths

Angelina Jolie, Maria

Mickey Madison, Anora

Best Supporting Actor

Winner: Kieren Culkin, A Real Pain

Yura Borisov, Anora

Clarence Maclin, Sing Sing

Edward Norton, A Complete Unknown

Guy Pearce, The Brutalist

Denzel Washington, Gladiator II

Best Supporting Actress

Winner: Zoe Saldana, Emilia Perez

Danielle Deadwyler, The Piano Lesson

Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Nickel Boys

Ariana Grande, Wicked

Margaret Qualley, The Substance

Isabella Rossellini, Conclave

Best Director

Winner: Jon M. Chu, Wicked

Jacques Audiard, Emilia Perez

Sean Baker, Anora

Edward Berger, Conclave

Brady Corbet, The Brutalist

Coralie Fargeat, The Substance

RaMell Ross, Nickel Boys

Denis Villeneuve, Dune: Part Two

Best Original Screenplay

Winner: Caralie Fargeat, The Substance

Sean Baker, Anora

Brady Corbet, Mona Fastvoid, The Brutalist

Moritz Binder, Tim Fehlbaum, Alex David, September 5

Jesse Eisenberg, A Real Pain

Justin Kuritzkes, Challengers

Best Adapted Screenplay

Winner: Peter Straughan, Conclave

Jacques Audiard, Emilia Perez

Winnie Holzman, Dana Fox, Wicked

Greg Kwedar, Clint Bentley, Sing Sing

RaMell Ross & Joslyn Barnes, Nickel Boys

Denis Villeneuve, Jon Spaihts, Dune: Part Two

Best Cinematography

Winner: Jarin Blaschke, Nosferatu

Alice Brooks, Wicked

Lol Crawley, The Brutalist

Stephane Fontaine, Conclave

Greig Fraser, Dune: Part Two

Jomo Fray, Nickel Boys

Best Production Design

Winner: Wicked

The Brutalist

Conclave

Nosferatu

Gladiator II

Dune: Part Two

Best Editing

Winner: Challengers

Anora

Conclave

The Brutalist

Dune: Part Two

September 5

Best Costume Design

Winner: Wicked

Conclave

Nosferatu

Maria

Dune: Part Two

Gladiator II

Best Hair and Makeup

Winner: The Substance

A Different Man

Beetle Juice Beetle Juice 

Gladiator II

Wicked

Dune: Part Two

Best Visual Effects

Winner: Dune: Part Two

Gladiator II

Better Man

The Substance

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

Wicked 

Best Animated Feature

Winner: The Wild Robot

Flow

Inside Out 2

Memoir of a Snail

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl

 

Best Foreign Language Film

Winner: Emilia Perez

All We Imagine as Light

Flow

I'm Still Here

Kneecap

The Seed of the Sacred Fig

Best Song

Winner: El Mai, Emilia Perez

Beautiful That Way, The Last Showgirl

Compress/Repress, Challengers

Harper and Will Go West, Will & Harper

Kiss the Sky, The Wild Robot

Mi Camino, Emilia Perez

Best Score

Winner: Challengers

Conclave

The Brutalist

The Wild Robot

Emilia Perez

Dune: Part Two

Best Comedy Film

Tied Winners: A Real Pain, Deadpool & Wolverine

Hit Man

My Old Ass

Saturday Night

Thelma

Best Young Actor/Actress

Winner: Maisy Stella, My Old Ass

Elliott Heffernan, Blitz

Izaac Wang, Didi

Alisha Weir, Abigail

Zoe Ziegler, Janet Planet

Best Acting Ensemble

Winner: Conclave

Anora

Emilia Perez

Saturday Night

Sing Sing

Wicked