Rise and Fall: The 10 Most Anticipated Movies of 2022

Cate Blanchett, in Todd Field's TAR.

There are a few basic truths when compiling a list of the most anticipated movies of the fall. Chief among these is that the director rules. Nothing is more exciting than a new feature from a brilliant filmmaker, and this year offers an embarrassment of riches. Next: All buzz is good buzz. Most of the films below have debuted at one film festival or another, and the first round of critical notices is in – some good, some bad. The good reviews just make me more excited, and the bad ones just make me curious. The anticipation remains.

Nevertheless, great filmmakers sometimes make terrible films or, worse, middling, unmemorable films. Looking back over my previous “Most Anticipated” lists, the movies run the gamut from my personal top 10 and Best Picture winners to pure trash and everywhere in between. That is what is so exciting about anticipation. Before the film starts rolling, it could be anything. There is virtually no chance the following 10 films will end up as my top 10 of the year and a similarly slim chance that all 10 will even be good. But, right now, we don’t know. There is only hope.

This year, more than most, my hopes are high for the final four months of the year to deliver great cinema. This is primarily due to the fact that the first eight months have been mostly disappointing, with just one or two movies I would consider truly great. We need greatness back on screen, and though not all of these movies are likely to deliver that, they are the best chance we’ve got.

Before we get to the list, five more films I am excited to see in the rest of 2022: Laura Poitras’ Golden Bear-winning documentary All the Beauty and the Bloodshed; Andrew Dominik’s already-controversial Marilyn Monroe biopic Blonde; Sam Mendes’ Olivia Colman-starring ode to movie theaters Empire of Light; Steven Spielberg’s memoir on film The Fablemans; and Rian Johnson’s whodunnit sequel Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.

Now, the 10 movies I cannot wait to be front row, center for this fall:

10. The Woman King, directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood

Release date: September 16

Viola Davis is such a tremendous actress, able to lose herself completely in characters, that I think we sometimes forget what a badass she can be on screen. But, if you look at her filmography, it is not short on action movies, thrillers, and good old-fashioned shoot-’em-ups. Steve McQueen’s excellent heist thriller Widows has probably been the shining example of this – until now.

With The Woman King, Prince-Bythewood appears to be unlocking the final level of Viola Davis Action Star. Based on the true story of a fierce band of women warriors in 1800s coastal Africa, Davis’ ascendance to the action throne is just one reason to be excited for this film. Beyond that, Prince-Bythewood seems to be telling a story of empowerment, determinism, and the eternal struggle to preserve one’s homeland, and there is never a bad time for this type of story.

9. White Noise, directed by Noah Baumbach

Release date: November 25

For someone of his stature, Baumbach’s resumé is quite a bit more uneven than it might seem at first. For every masterpiece like Frances Ha and The Squid and the Whale, there is a misfire or mediocrity like The Meyerowitz Stories or Mr. Jealousy. However, when he is on his A-game, there are few outside of Alexander Payne who can match his acerbic wit and dry, cutting observations on modern life. That said, White Noise is one heck of a curveball for the writer-director.

Starring Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig, both on their fourth collaborations with the director, this is Baumbach’s first adaptation, and he has picked a doozy. The film is based on Don DeLillo’s novel of the same name, which sees a college professor and his family facing down a potentially cataclysmic event. For a director who has always focused on smaller stories of human foibles and the like, it will be fascinating to see what Baumbach does with a story this grand and this strange. 

8. Avatar: The Way of Water, directed by James Cameron

Release date: December 16

What is there to say? We have waited 13 years for this, the sequel to the biggest movie of all time. Cameron is the king of spectacle, and of course, the first trailers are awe-inspiring, introducing audiences to previously unexplored parts of Pandora. There is no reason to believe the director of The Terminator, Titanic, and Aliens will not pull off something truly special here, and yet, that is what many people seem to believe right now.

Cameron faced similar doubt before he launched Titanic, formerly the biggest movie of all time before he topped it with Avatar, which faced even greater doubt. He works on scales few filmmakers could even imagine, both from a budgetary and a story standpoint. He is synonymous with success, innovation, and entertainment. To doubt him is to risk being made the fool, and that is a risk I am unwilling to take. Give me my popcorn, show me to my seat, and bring it on.

7. Decision to Leave, directed by Park Chan-wook

Release date: October 14

Admittedly, I had been a bit of a Park novice until last year. Of course, I had seen Oldboy many years prior, and I loved The Handmaiden when I saw it in theaters, and I enjoyed his section of the Korean horror omnibus Three … Extremes. But, I had only scratched the surface. Last summer, I finally caught up with the first two parts of his vengeance trilogy – Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Sympathy for Lady Vengeance – as well as his unique take on the vampire mythos, Thirst.

Each film was impressive, surprising, and invigorating. I look forward to diving further into his filmography and that includes my excitement for his latest feature, which has already been submitted as the Korean entry for Best International Feature at this year’s Academy Awards. It received widespread acclaim when it premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, and Park won his first best director award at the festival. 

6. Women Talking, directed by Sarah Polley

Release date: December 2

Polley’s last film was the excellent experimental documentary Stories We Tell, in which she examined the ways we alter and obscure our personal histories to suit the narratives we need to believe about our lives. It was raw, it was honest, and it was uncompromising. It seems likely all three of those words will be used to describe her newest feature, about a group of women in a religious colony who must reconcile their beliefs with the reality of their existence.

The subject matter is likely to be a major talking about around this film, which deals heavily with sexual assault, and it will almost certainly be a difficult sit for most audiences. But in her three previous features, Polley has proven herself uniquely attuned to the tone and purpose of her message, and there may be no working filmmaker more likely to treat the material with the care and consideration it deserves. All of this is not to mention a ludicrously stacked cast that includes Frances McDormand, Jessie Buckley, Claire Foy, Rooney Mara, and Ben Whishaw.

5. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, directed by Ryan Coogler

Release date: November 11

The original Black Panther film was a cultural force almost without equal. It became one of the highest grossing films of all time, it breathed fresh life into a stale genre of films, and it spoke to and for a massive and massively underserved filmgoing audience. It would be asking too much to expect the sequel to reach those heights, but if anyone can make it happen, it would be Coogler.

I do hope he gets away from the superhero genre sooner rather than later, and his historic Best Picture Oscar nomination last year for Judas and the Black Messiah suggests he has his eyes firmly set on the kind of stories he wants to tell. I hope Wrong Answer, his long gestating film about the Atlanta test score scandal, comes to pass. And, I hope he has a blank check to make whatever he wants forever on the back of his MCU success. But for now, superheroes or not, whatever Coogler makes, I am 100 percent in.

4. Bardo (False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths), directed Alejandro G. Iñárritu

Release date: November 18

Iñárritu’s past two films (Birdman and The Revenant) topped this list in their respective years, and there is good reason for that. No one is making films as interesting or as inventive on the same kind of grand scale Iñárritu does. Early reports suggest this is no less grand and no less inventive. And, honestly, it is evidence of the special fall ahead of us that this film clocks in at just No. 4 on this list. 

It should be mentioned that those early reports out of multiple film festivals have been scathing, at least on the critical side of things. Critics have labeled it a mess, a slog, and a self-important, self-indulgent disaster. However, Iñárritu’s fellow filmmakers have sung his praises, with luminaries such as Chloé Zhao, Barry Jenkins, and Lulu Wang declaring it a masterpiece. There was a similar split between artists and critics on the receptions for Birdman and The Revenant, which likely explains why Iñárritu won Best Director for both films despite critical misgivings. For me, Iñárritu has earned the benefit of the doubt.

3. The Banshees of Inisherin, directed by Martin McDonagh

Release date: October 21

McDonagh took a lot of flack for his last feature, Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri, and its handling of race in America. And though I liked that film immensely, it probably was ambitious for an Irish filmmaker, no matter how intelligent and talented, to try to tackle such thorny topics as police brutality and systemic racism in the rural US. With The Banshees of Inisherin, McDonagh is firmly in his own milieu.

Reuniting with In Bruges stars Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, McDonagh’s latest has received glowing notices out of the festivals, with some hailing it as the writer-director’s finest achievement yet. Considering In Bruges remains one of my favorite films of all time and the first trailer suggests something altogether strange and unexpected, it would be hard to imagine being more excited for a film.

And yet, there are two more features to speak of:

2. Triangle of Sadness, directed by Ruben Östlund

Release date: October 7

Only 10 filmmakers in history have multiple Palmes d’Or. Just three of those filmmakers won for consecutive films. Billie August won for Pelle the Conqueror in 1988 and The Best Intentions in 1992. Michel Haneke won for The White Ribbon in 2009 and Amour in 2012. And now, Östlund has won his second in a row, following up 2017’s The Square with this year’s similarly geometrically concerned Triangle of Sadness. Including his 2014 international breakthrough Force Majeure, it is safe to say Östlund makes event movies for the arthouse crowd.

Taking aim directly at the moneyed elite and the implicit contradictions and hypocrisies of the modern economic system, Östlund’s film takes places on a doomed luxury cruiseliner. The setting and story are ripe with possibilities for skewering the upper classes, and Östlund is a filmmaker who has never shied away from that kind of skewering, whether it be with a scalpel or a broadsword and often both at the same time.

1. TÁR, directed by Todd Field

Release date: October 7

The man. The myth. The legend. 

By coincidence, many of the filmmakers on this list are returning from extended absences. Neither Östlund nor McDonagh has made a film in five years. It has been seven years for Iñárritu between The Revenant and Bardo. Polley had not made a feature for 10 years before Women Talking, and of course, Cameron has been working for 13 years on his Avatar sequel. But, none has been gone as long as Todd Field.

An actor best known for a supporting role in Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, Field made his feature filmmaking debut in 2001 with the Best Picture-nominated In the Bedroom. He followed that up in 2006 with Little Children, to my mind, and without caveat or reservation, one of the finest films of the 21st century. In the 16 years since, he has not directed a single film, nor has he helmed an episode of television. He has simply been gone.

Sure, he has been attached to any number of intriguing projects over the years with big names such as Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonathan Franzen, Cormac McCarthy, and the like, but none has come to fruition. His explanation to the New York Times in an interview earlier this year: He often sets his sights on productions that are, by their very nature, difficult to get made. 

On paper, TÁR would also seem to be an inherently difficult-to-make project, yet here we are, less than a month away from the long-awaited return of one of my favorite filmmakers in the game. It does not hurt anticipation that the early reviews out of the festival circuit are raves or that star Cate Blanchett reportedly delivers the finest performance of a career filled with fine performances or that the exquisite trailer promises a psychological drama of the highest order. It all adds up to my most anticipated movie of the year – hell, of any year in a long time.

All Over But The Shouting: 2021 Oscars Wrap-up Part II

For an Oscars season and Academy Awards ceremony as strange and eventful as we just experienced, it felt necessary to break the wrap-up into parts. In Part I, we covered the actual award winners and their speeches. In Part II, we are talking about the ceremony itself. And, for Part III, the controversy around the Will Smith-Chris Rock altercation.

We are not going to talk about the slap here. We all know it happened, and that’s what the third part of this series is about. For this, I want to talk about the other three hours and 40 minutes of a broadcast that was, at times, embarrassing to watch but mostly just dull. 

It was always going to be bad. From the minute the Academy announced it would award eight categories before the show, it was clear this would not be an event for people who care about movies. That was further made clear by the decision to include two fan-voted “awards” on the broadcast – segments that went over about as well as you would imagine.

There was never going to be a version of this show for movie lovers. Still, I was unprepared for just how hostile it would be to the art of filmmaking and how insulting it would be to fans of that art.

Let’s start with the obvious and go from there: the eight awards presented prior to the broadcast. During the actual show, we got truncated clip packages for each category and edited speeches from each of the winners. Later, as the show was stretching well past the three-hour mark, it was reasonable to question why this even happened. The ceremony ran more than 20 minutes longer than last year’s show, which included all the categories and cut off no speeches. And, what did we get in trade? Nothing of value.

During the run up to the show, we said the calculus would be: If you are cutting eight categories from the show, every moment of the show needs to justify that decision. Otherwise, we loyal viewers will be left constantly asking: We gave up eight categories for this? I expected to ask that question, but I did not expect it to be the theme of the show.

Some culprits were clear and others more subtle. There was, of course, the excruciatingly long James Bond 60th anniversary package, introduced by three extreme sports athletes. I think Tony Hawk, Kelly Slater, and Shaun White are cool, but they don’t have anything to do with movies, and they certainly don’t have anything to do with 007. A 60th anniversary tribute is nonsensical in the first place, but if you insist on having one, perhaps invite one of the dozens of performers in the audience who has been involved in the series to introduce it.

Shockingly, that wasn’t even the worst “anniversary” tribute of the night. That would have to be the 50th anniversary tribute to The Godfather, generally regarded as one of the five or 10 best movies ever made. That was a Best Picture winner celebrating a milestone anniversary, so I at least get the thinking behind a tribute, but that seems to be the extent of the thought put into it. 

First and foremost, yes, The Godfather came out in 1972, and this is 2022, meaning it has been 50 years since the film came out. But, these are the awards for the films of 2021, and the ceremony at which The Godfather won Best Picture took place in 1973, meaning for Oscars purposes, this was the film’s 49th anniversary. But, maybe I am the only one who cares about that.

Second, like the extreme sports intro to the Bond tribute, why did Sean “Diddy” Combs introduce this tribute? There was not one performer or filmmaker available to talk about the influence of The Godfather on their work? We had to resort to a music artist?

Then, there was the clip package itself, which included scenes from all three Godfather films, the second and third of which were celebrating their 48th and 32nd anniversaries, respectively. I also didn’t see anyone else mention this, but the spoken dialogue in the package mostly came from the third film, generally agreed to be the worst of the series and also not the movie being celebrated.

Finally, there was the appearance of writer-director Francis Ford Coppola with legendary actors Al Pacino and Robert De Niro (who, of course, only appears in the second film of the trilogy). This should have been the biggest moment of the night, and it was positioned that way – a Godfather reunion taking place toward the tail end of the show. Some of this is not the Academy’s fault – the slap having taken the wind out the sails for everything to come after – but the shoddiness of this tribute was truly appalling. 

Coppola delivered brief, relatively perfunctory remarks, thanking author Mario Puzo and producer Robert Evans, and Pacino and De Niro didn’t speak at all. Why on earth would you invite two of the most legendary actors in Hollywood history onto the stage and not invite them to say even one word? It boggles the mind.

Now, those are a lot of words spent breaking down what was ultimately a pretty small part of the show – its smallness being problematic in and of itself – but that one segment was emblematic of the lack of care and consideration put into any part of the show. The producers wanted to give the appearance of loving movies without apparently loving movies.

That lack of reverence for the art supposedly being celebrated extended to what is usually among the most powerful moments of any Oscars broadcast: the In Memoriam. I have complained in the past when the Academy has prefaced the In Memoriam segment with a song performance, which is then followed by another song performance to accompany the tribute to the artists who died in the past year. I would take that presentation in a heartbeat over what we got.

We got dancing. A choir. Two relatively up-tempo music numbers. I understand the inclination toward a celebration of life rather than perhaps a quieter, more somber affair, but this I did not understand. It was tone deaf and sad in all the wrong ways.

The hosts were fine. Some of the jokes were okay, though the animation branch is right to be offended by the presenters positioning animated films as something only children enjoy – a particularly galling assertion in a year with Flee nominated. It is as though the folks writing the intros didn’t watch the movies – I would be very surprised if they did. Moreover, it felt like the producers did not watch any of the movies, or at least, they did not put on a show that felt like it cared about the nominated films.

Which brings us to the final point I want to make: the Twitter “awards.” Opening up anything of this nature to the wider world to vote on is generally a mistake. See the Boaty McBoatface saga. For the Academy – an organization that could charitably be described as “not tech savvy” – to jump into the cesspool of Twitter and think that anything good would come out of it was naive at best and self-destructive at worst.

First up was #OscarsCheerMoment, which for whatever reason seemed to cover all movies ever, not just films from 2021. This made an already inane exercise shockingly useless. To the degree the producers and ABC wanted this, they got what they wanted: about 2 minutes of out-of-context superhero footage, capped by the revelation that the most cheerworthy moment in the history of cinema was when The Flash entered the Speed Force in Zack Snyder’s Justice League, a movie that never actually played in theaters.

If that all sounds like gibberish, that is precisely what it felt like in the moment, and the most cheerworthy moment of all time was rightly greeted by icy silence in the room of mostly accomplished artists. Later, Snyder’s Army of the Dead, a zombie movie released and quickly forgotten on Netflix, won the #OscarsFanFavorite “award,” proving only that Snyder’s fans are the most obnoxious and well organized of fandoms on the internet. More silence in the room.

It is exactly this kind of lowest-common-denominator, squeaky-wheel-gets-the-grease thinking that is destroying the movie industry. That is why the box office results look the way they do. That is why the films nominated for the Academy Awards are so little seen. There is assumed to be no money in challenging the audience, in giving them something new and interesting. Great films are marketed like rare jewels, available only to the few, while the industry caters exclusively to those consumers who shout the loudest.

Ratings were up 6 million viewers from last year, a nearly 60 percent increase over the all-time low of the 2021 ceremony, which attracted just 10.4 million viewers. The Academy will likely tout the changes it made as a cause of the increase, but it seems unlikely ABC will consider the second-lowest ratings in the history of the show a win, leaving the future of the broadcast up in the air. This probably was not the end of the Oscars. But, it sure felt like the beginning of the end.

All Over But The Shouting: 2021 Oscars Wrap-up Part I

For an Oscars season and Academy Awards ceremony as strange and eventful as we just experienced, it felt necessary to break the wrap-up into parts. In Part I, we will cover the actual award winners and their speeches. In Part II, we will talk about the ceremony itself. And, for Part III, the controversy around the Will Smith-Chris Rock altercation.

Forgive me for being a little off my game on Oscars night. I think any of us who care about this organization and these awards – however silly and uncool it may be to admit that right now – probably was going through something inexplicable for the final hour of the show and the rest of the night. It is understandable. But, Last Cinema Standing exists to celebrate the art of film, and it felt that night like the art got short shrift. So, today, I want to talk about the winners, the speeches, and all these wonderful films.

Sian Heder’s CODA, purchased by Apple TV+ for $25 million at the Sundance Film Festival last year, won Best Picture. Heder also won for her adapted screenplay, and Troy Kotsur won Supporting Actor for the film. CODA is a lovely little film whose victory made a lot of history – first Sundance premiere to win it all, third Best Picture ever directed by a woman, and most importantly, first film from a streaming service to win the Academy’s top award.

I liked CODA a lot and recommend it to everyone, but there is a case to be made this Oscars triumph is probably the worst thing that could happen to it. The things we will discuss in Parts II and III of this series notwithstanding, the Academy Awards are a marker of quality for many people. They confer importance and imply a certain thematic heft, and not all films hold up under that weight. Green Book is a recent example that comes to mind, and CODA is miles better than Green Book.

It is ultimately a feel-good film, and these are definitely feel-bad times. No one can begrudge the Academy choosing a movie that made voters feel good for a couple of hours amid the events unfolding all around us. But, fair or not, the sober light of day and the slow passage of time are likely to cast a harsher shadow on this film because it carries a Best Picture badge.

Kotsur’s speech was probably the best of the night, especially with the context that last year’s Supporting Actress winner, Yuh-jung Youn, stood by his side, holding his Oscar statue so he could sign with both hands. The speech was smart, funny, heartfelt, and emblematic of all the reasons Academy voters felt compelled to vote for Kotsur and the film.

All four acting categories went to the expected winners: Will Smith for Actor, Jessica Chastain for Actress, Kotsur for Supporting Actor, and Ariana DeBose for Supporting Actress. Chastain’s speech was rambling and odd, but this moment has been a long time coming for her and she can be forgiven for feeling overwhelmed by it. I might have preferred Olivia Colman or Penélope Cruz, but that’s me voting with my head and not my heart. The heart says it was great to see Chastain holding an Academy Award.

DeBose’s history-making win was an early emotional moment in the show, as she acknowledged her queerness, shared her experience as a woman of color, and gave encouragement to people living in fear of putting their true selves out into the world. In a nice moment, she tipped her cap to Rita Moreno, who previously won the award for playing the same character.

Kenneth Branagh won his first career Oscar with an Original Screenplay win for Belfast. This is fine, and Belfast is a good movie, but it really makes you wonder if Paul Thomas Anderson is ever going to get up on that stage. He couldn’t get there for There Will Be Blood, an indisputable modern masterpiece. Phantom Thread and Licorice Pizza didn’t do it. What will it have to look like for PTA to clear this final hurdle?

Anderson was not the only person or company unable to clear the final hurdle, however. Netflix once again came up short of the top prize it so desperately desires as The Power of the Dog went an almost unheard-of 1-for-12. Jane Campion won Best Director, becoming just the third woman ever to win that award. This is the first time since 1967 that a film has won Best Director and nothing else – Mike Nichols and The Graduate managed to pull this same trick that year. Why did The Power of the Dog lose so many awards? I think it comes back to what we talked about – admiration vs. love. Voters just didn’t love it, and they rewarded the one person most responsible for their admiration, the director.

Dune won just about everything below the line, missing only Makeup and Hairstyling (which went to The Eyes of Tammy Faye) and Costume Design (which went to Cruella). I tried to get too clever in my predictions and outthought myself in Editing and Production Design. Voters clearly just checked the box next to Dune everywhere it made sense. As we said before, the road is now paved for Dune Part II – whenever it comes out – to sweep the Oscars in a fashion not seen since Slumdog Millionaire or The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

We correctly predicted Drive My Car in International Feature, Encanto in Animated Feature, and Summer of Soul in Documentary Feature, which taken together, means Flee was shut out. Hopefully, more people will discover that film in the years to come and its stature will only grow. We will get to Drive My Car director Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s speech in the next installment, when we talk about the show itself, but I felt bad for Amhir “Questlove” Thompson, who won his Documentary award in the immediate aftermath of the Will Smith-Chris Rock incident.

That is a terrible spot to be forced into. Summer of Soul was one of the best movies of any kind last year, and Questlove has been passionate about keeping the focus on the story and the people of Harlem and the wrongly forgotten events chronicled in his film. Then, to have the crowning moment of the film’s run spoiled by something completely unrelated, it’s just a bummer. Questlove’s speech was humble, gracious, and endearing, but of all the winners Sunday night, he most deserved better.

Billie Eilish and Finneas won Best Original Song for their No Time to Die title track, proving that the modern Academy just can’t stop awarding James Bond songs. At least this is not as bad as when voters awarded Sam Smith’s truly awful Spectre song, “Writing’s on the Wall.” Mostly, I am disappointed Lin-Manuel Miranda missed out on his EGOT yet again, but he will absolutely have other chances.

I missed all three of the shorts categories. Star power basically always helps because people tend to vote for their friends or, failing that, people they recognize. So, it is unsurprising that The Queen of Basketball won Best Documentary Short, produced as it is by NBA stars Stephen Curry and Shaquille O’Neal. Director Ben Proudfoot was nominated in the same category last year for the superior A Concerto Is a Conversation, but at 31 years old, he is clearly a talented filmmaker who is likely to be competing in the feature categories someday if he so chooses.

On the same “star power drives votes” note, Oscar-nominated actor Riz Ahmed won for his live action short The Long Goodbye, which is powerful and shocking but also a little underdeveloped. Definitely check out his related feature-length film, Mogul Mowgli, which is excellent but probably was hurt by comparisons to the previous year’s The Sound of Metal. Much as I love Ahmed and am pleased to see him with an Academy Award, I would have picked the devastating Take and Run or the good-hearted On My Mind.

Overall, it is hard to take issue with any of the winners. There is nothing egregious here in the way of My Octopus Teacher or “Writing’s on the Wall.” Unfortunately, there was nothing terribly exciting either. Most everything went as predicted, and that is problematic in its own way. To some degree, the cumulative blandness of the winners paved the way for the Will Smith-Chris Rock incident to dominate the conversation. There was just nothing else to talk about with this show, so rightly or wrongly, that stepped in to fill the void.

Next time: Part II – Can the show be fixed?

What Just Happened: CODA Sweeps, Plus The Slap Heard ‘Round The World At The 2021 Oscars

Well, this is awkward. I am at a loss for words, yet I find myself here needing to explain how I feel about what I just saw. Will Smith punched Chris Rock in the face on live television. I am not 100 percent convinced it was not a planned bit because nothing would surprise me about these Academy Awards, but all reports from those in the room suggest it was very real.

Forever, the 94th Oscars will be the Will Smith ceremony. There is no way around it. CODA won all three awards it was nominated for, including Best Picture, becoming the first Sundance film and the first streaming film to win the top award. It is a historic victory, but this is the Will Smith ceremony. Jane Campion became just the third woman ever to win Best Director, another historic victory, but this is the Will Smith ceremony. Dune was actually the big winner of the night, nearly running the table in the crafts categories in taking home six awards, but this is the Will Smith ceremony. And so on.

That was not the only thing to go awry, just the most prominent. Three hours into a show that lasted more than three and a half, I was pretty certain it was the worst Oscars ceremony I had ever seen. I have followed the Oscars closely for 20 years and have seen just about every second of every one of those shows, and the overarching feeling I had for most of this one was embarrassment for the Academy. 

It may have been either Al Jean or Mike Reiss, former writing partners and longtime writer-producers on The Simpsons, who said about network notes that they are a lose-lose proposition. If you listen to the network and fail, the network blames you anyway. If you listen to the network and succeed, the network takes all the credit. Better to succeed or fail on your own terms. The Academy bowed to network demands and delivered the show ABC wanted. Its failure will fall at the doorstep of the Academy, not the executives who told AMPAS to adapt or die.

The non-Will Smith lowlights: the pre-show ceremony of course, during which eight Oscars were handed out to filmmakers and craftspeople who deserved better; the strangely altered performance of “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” a song that had no place on the show to begin with; the upbeat choir and dance number to accompany the in-memoriam segment; the band playing off Ryusuke Hamaguchi during his International Feature acceptance speech. I could keep going, but you get the point.

Ultimately, this felt like an Academy Awards ceremony produced by people who hate the Oscars, and maybe there is some resentment among ABC executives who have spent hundreds of millions of dollars supporting this show, only to watch it hemorrhage viewers and rapidly lose whatever cultural cache it once held. Even if hate is a strong word, the show certainly was not produced by anyone who understands what people who love this show love about it.

Every single move by the Academy was a wrong one. The fan favorite “awards” went to two separate Zack Snyder movies, proving only that Snyder’s rabid fans have not lost their touch with a hashtag. The lack of applause in the room reflected what most of us felt: We cut eight awards from the show for this? Not to mention the interminably long 60 Years of Bond montage, which was shown during a portion of the show unrelated to Billie Eilish and Finneas playing their ultimately triumphant theme to No Time to Die. In essence, we got two 007 segments. 

We can talk more about the actual awards tomorrow once we have had some time to clear our minds. Overall, the winners were fine, if not terribly exciting. Only three films won multiple awards: Dune (6), CODA (3), and The Eyes of Tammy Faye (2). Three of the Best Picture nominees won nothing, while The Power of the Dog went 1-for-12, winning just Best Director, a feat not accomplished since The Graduate pulled that same trick in 1967. The predicted quartet of Jessica Chastain, Will Smith, Ariana DeBose, and Troy Kotsur won the acting categories.

My predictions were fine. I missed every one of the shorts categories, which is frustrating, and I would have done better had I gone with the conventional wisdom and predicted Dune just about everywhere below the line. I outthought myself. Oh, well.

The truth is I don’t feel fully equipped to talk about the show right now. There is plenty to say, but I need a night to sleep on it. So, I will leave it there. Let’s meet here tomorrow and try together to figure out what just happened.