Matt at the Movies: The Oscar Push

Aftersun - 9/10; White Noise - 8/10; The Fablemans - 7/10

This week Matt went all out as studios are pushing their Oscar wares with three movies that could find themselves on the ballot. Two of the films are featured at the Independent Picture House, which is slowly becoming Matt’s second home.

Also added in this week is an “Oscar Bait” rating scored from one to five statuettes. One marks the lowest wannabe Oscar bait while five indicates “HOLLYWOOD” and an all out assault on the media trail the next four months.

Below are Matt’s reviews of Aftersun, White Noise, and The Fabelmans. Get out and support local cinema!

Aftersun

Overview: This movie is a visual memoir of a daughter looking back on the last vacation with her father as an adolescent.

On holiday, Sophie (a well measured child acting performance by Frankie Corio) spends time with her young father Calum (Paul Mescal) whom she admires but doesn’t understand as an adult. There is love and connection as they move through different seaside vacation activities, but she senses a sadness in him throughout.

Through Calum’s eyes his life choices and depression seep into his joy that he has being with his daughter. Loneliness, lost youth, money problems, and bad decisions all linger like a crushing weight on his shoulders. It seems his love for his daughter is the only thing letting him hang on.

Memories of vacations in the summer with my divorced father taking my brother and I to the Jersey shore came flooding in as I watched. He was around my age now and it’s very hard to fathom what things went through his head trying to enjoy life while keeping up with us. You never truly think of your parents as normal humans who can live messy and complicated lives. This movie hit me like a sledgehammer to the chest and will stick with me a long time.

Quick Notes: Young Scottish director Charlotte Welles goes for it on her first full length feature film. Paul Mescal, who was magnificent in the Hulu series Normal People (go watch it now), has been on a tear lately. The Irish actor appeared in last year’s The Lost Daughter along with this year's well acclaimed indie feature God’s Creatures. He is one of the most exciting young actors at a time where they can be hard to find.

Oscar Bait Rating: 3/5 - Independent film powerhouse A24 has put together an amazing slate this year. They’ll have Everything Everywhere All at Once, The Whale, and Marcel the Shell with Shoes On competing in Oscar categories alongside Aftersun. They’ll make their case and the movie speaks for itself, but it could also get lost in the shuffle. Aftersun is a dark horse nominee for Best Picture and Best Actor with Paul Mescal. 

Matt at the Movies Score: Recommend - 9/10 (“Under Pressure” will take different meaning after this viewing)

Breakdown: Pieces together the overall “vibe” this movie brings from other releases.

White Noise

Overview: Set during the mid 1980’s in a fictional Ohio college town, father Jack (Adam Driver) is a renowned professor of Hitler studies with an ego to boot. He and his wife Babette (Greta Gerwig) have a mixed family of six whose idyllic life seems too clever for their own good, reminiscent of the walk and talks of West Wing mixed with Growing Pains family values.

A freak accident creates an airborne toxic event that forces the family to evacuate the mundanity of their life. They work their way to a government refuge and Jack begins to evaluate his existence. Director Noah Baumbach makes sure there are many hilarious and ridiculous situations to keep us entertained.

As they eventually make their way home. Babette seems off. Their children and Jack set off to investigate what is happening to their normally cheerful mother. The movie goes off the rails in the third act as Jack dives deeper into his wife's transgressions while having an existential crisis of his own. This movie executes a fine line of absurd comedy and philosophical life questions with a full camp vibe.

Quick Notes: From Catch-22 to Cloud Atlas, some stories are considered unfilm-able due to the large scope, amount of inner dialogue, and limitations of screen time. Even Denis Villeneuve, one of this generation's most talented directors, required two separate films to adapt Dune (part two expected late 2023). White Noise falls into this same trap as Noah Baumbach works with an amazing cast to try and deliver Netflix an award worthy adaptation of the 1985 novel by Don DeLillo. Artistic choices were made to bring this story to life, but no one will be able to say it isn’t entertaining.

Oscar Bait Rating - 3/5: Netflix bet big with Baumbach after 2019’s Marriage Story. Even with all their advertising might, it probably won’t be enough to make a dent at this year’s Oscar ceremony. If you know anything about Ted Sarandos, they’ll have a strategy to keep trying for that elusive best picture that has come so close over the years (Roma 2018, The Irishman 2019, Mank 2020, and Power of the Dog 2021). 

Matt at the Movies Score: Recommend - 8/10 (enjoy a funny and weird night ahead) 

Breakdown: Pieces together the overall “vibe” this movie brings from other releases.

The Fablemans

Overview: The Fablemans is a coming-of-age story set in three phases of a young man’s life as he discovers his love for film in the backdrop of a complicated family. A young Orthodox Jewish family of five living in 1950’s New Jersey are led by their inventive engineer father Burt (Paul Dano) and emotionally fragile artistic mother Mitzi (Michelle William). Precocious youngster Sammy Fabelman (elder version played by Gabriel LaBelle) discovers a love of cinema after seeing Cecil B. DeMille’s best picture winner The Greatest Show on Earth with his parents. The special effects and storytelling left him in awe and chasing the thrill of movie magic as he ages.

As the family moves to Phoenix and ultimately northern California, Sammy must make a choice of going for his dreams while balancing the delicate nature of his parents' relationship. He matures as both a young man and filmmaker, but experiences the reality of being a fish out of water as a member of the only Jewish family in his high school. As his family dynamics become more complex with a workaholic father and depressed mother, Sammy needs to decide if his love of film will fill a void in his creative soul.

Quick Notes: This story is deeply biographical and seems to pull many cinematic elements from director Steven Spielberg’s previous classics. While names or events have been changed slightly, it closely resembles Spielberg’s own life. The film showcases what a prolific filmmaker he was for his age. He was creating small independent movies by the time he was a teen with full casts and battle reenactments.

Also notable was his mother, who was a concert pianist and put her life on hold to become a stay at home mother, while Steven’s father was a highly regarded computer engineer who helped create the first point of sale cash register.

Finally, this is the fourth film where Spielberg is joined by Oscar nominated writer Tony Kushner, most famous for Angels in America.

Oscar Bait Rating - 5/5: From a rare sighting early on at the Toronto Film Festival to long form chats with Terry Gross, Spielberg is all in on his semi-biographical story. We rarely see him campaign this aggressively. As an obvious passion project with cinema at its core, we’ll see a big play to push this towards the finish line on March 12th. I just hope he gets enough nominations so we don’t run into a Jaws 2.0 situation!

Matt at the Movies Score: Recommend - 7/10 (charming and whimsical in the most Spielberg way possible… we’ll miss him when he’s gone)

Breakdown: Pieces together the overall “vibe” this movie brings from other releases.