‘Everything’ comes up roses: Everything Everywhere All at Once completes historic sweep

As forecast, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s comic sci-fi drama Everything Everywhere All at Once had an historic night at the 95th Academy Awards, winning seven statues, including Best Picture. It is the most awarded Best Picture winner since Slumdog Millionaire took home eight awards in 2008. The film also became just the third movie in history to win three acting awards, with Michelle Yeoh taking Best Actress and Ke Huy Quan and Jamie Lee Curtis winning their respective supporting categories. The Daniels, who also won for Original Screenplay, became just the third duo in history to win Best Director. The film also won Editing.

Brendan Fraser completed his comeback, winning Best Actor for The Whale and seeming genuinely overwhelmed by the moment. His speech, if we’re being quite honest, was a little rambling and incoherent at times, but it came from the heart, and there was no one watching who didn’t understand what he was feeling.

The loss for Austin Butler completed a shocking night for Elvis, which I and others had predicted would be a major winner. Instead, the Baz Luhrmann film was one of five Best Picture nominees to go home empty-handed, joining The Banshees of Inisherin, The Fabelmans, TAR, and Triangle of Sadness.

Another thing the Butler loss did was contribute to the end of the BAFTAs as an all-important bellwether. Long live the Screen Actors Guild. Every winner at the SAG Awards repeated at the Oscars this year, which meant not one winner at the BAFTAs pulled off the double. More shocking, perhaps, is that SAG and BAFTA did not align on a single award this year, but that’s a discussion for another time.

The one place BAFTA did end up having some predictive power was in the below-the-line categories, where Edward Berger’s All Quiet on the Western Front cleaned up. The powerful World War I adaptation won awards for Cinematography, Production Design, Original Score, and International Feature, making it the second-biggest winner of the night. Just an observation: The tradition is for the orchestra to play the score of the winning film to accompany the winners’ walk to the stage, and that now-famous three-note section of the All Quiet score sets quite the mood for an Academy Awards speech.

The Whale won for Makeup and Hairstyling, making it the only other multiple winner of the night, besides Everything Everywhere All at Once and All Quiet on the Western Front. The other below-the-line winners included Top Gun: Maverick for Sound, Avatar: The Way of Water for Visual Effects, and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever for Costume Design.

Original Song deservedly went to “Naatu Naatu” from RRR, and as predicted, the performance of that song was the high point of the ceremony. Kudos to the Academy for staging it well and putting it right in the middle of the show. It was a perfect burst of fun and energy at the exact moment the broadcast, which ran about 3 hours and 40 minutes, needed it.

Netflix had another fine night, with The Elephant Whisperers winning in Documentary Short, giving the streamer its third victory in seven years in that category. Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio triumphed in Best Animated Feature for Netflix, as well, becoming just the second non-Disney/Pixar winner in the last 11 years and the second stop-motion winner ever. Along with the four wins for All Quiet on the Western Front, Netflix walked away with a healthy six Oscars.

But, no studio could touch indie upstart A24, which distributed both Everything Everywhere All at Once and The Whale, giving it a haul of nine awards. The studio swept Best Picture, Director, Original Screenplay, and all four acting awards. Since its inception, A24 has catered to the cool-kid crowd, and the victory for this weird little sci-fi movie will only enhance that reputation.

My favorite win of the night came in Adapted Screenplay for Sarah Polley’s superlative work on Women Talking. The victory was well deserved, and hopefully, Polley will get as much money and freedom as she wants to make the next thing. At the very least, the best movie of the year is an Oscar winner.

Another of the night’s great, if somber moments, came in Best Documentary, which went to Navalny, a portrait of the jailed Russian opposition leader. Director Daniel Roher brought Alexei Navalny’s family on stage and gave up the last portion of his speech to Navaly’s wife, Yulia, who preached a message of resilience and perseverance in the face of fascism and oppression.

All in all, the speeches were powerful and poignant. The back-to-back victories for Quan and Curtis to open the night got the tears flowing early. Though they were not my picks, it’s hard to begrudge either a moment in the sun. A sweet moment came when An Irish Goodbye won Best Live Action Short Film, and the filmmakers informed the crowd that it was co-star James Martin’s birthday. The whole crowd joined in singing “Happy Birthday.”

The show itself felt stripped down to mostly nuts and bolts, which was a refreshing change from the maximalism of last year. Jimmy Kimmel delivered a solid monologue at the top, nothing groundbreaking but charming enough to get laughs and prime the audience for an upbeat evening. The show was given over primarily to the awards and to speeches, which is how it should be. Only a couple folks were played off. One wishes that never had to happen, but less is better.

The only missteps came in promoting a trailer for the upcoming live-action Little Mermaid remake and in presenting a package dedicated to the 100-year anniversary of Warner Bros. that curiously included a number of MGM clips. Warner Bros. owns the MGM library now, but the company sure as hell had nothing to do with The Wizard of Oz or a number of other classics included in the package.

Regarding the trailer for The Little Mermaid, presented by stars Halle Bailey and Melissa McCarthy, yes, it was self-serving and tacky to show an ad for a Disney movie on an ABC broadcast. But, the folks getting up in arms about it seem to forget that the whole origin of this ceremony is to promote the great product Hollywood is selling. To suggest it undermines the integrity of the awards or any such thing is to misunderstand what everyone is gathered to do in the first place. You have the largest single audience of movie lovers you will ever get at one time – by all means, sell ‘em some movies.

While still off from pre-pandemic heights, this was the second straight year of growth in the ratings, which has to ease some minds at Disney/ABC. It’s half of where the numbers stood in 2015, but 18.7 million viewers is nothing to sneeze at for a live broadcast that isn’t the Super Bowl. One has to imagine it helped having two of the highest grossing movies of all time (Top Gun: Maverick and Avatar: The Way of Water) in contention for Best Picture. If the viewership creeps back up into the 20 millions next year, there may be hope of saving this thing after all.

And, that’s it. A lot of folks in the industry and media are attempting to paint the victory of Everything Everywhere All at Once as some kind of sea change for the Academy and the industry at large. We’re a long way off from that, even if it were to happen, and I’m not buying it. Remember the last time these folks awarded Best Picture to a “weird” movie was as recently as 2017, when The Shape of Water triumphed. The next year, the top prize went to a Driving Miss Daisy retread.

Progress comes in fits and starts, and awards seasons come in cycles that loop back around on themselves. This year’s progressive pick can easily lead to next year’s bafflingly regressive choice. The good news is The Shape of Water is at least 10 times as transgressive as Everything Everywhere All at Once, so maybe the pendulum won’t swing back as hard next year.

On a personal level, one frustrating year can’t sour my love of this show and its place in movie history. I’ve been pretty spoiled lately by Moonlight, Spotlight, Parasite, the aforementioned Shape of Water, and a bunch of other great winners. So, they get it wrong sometimes. If that bothered me, I’d have stopped tuning in after the second show I remember watching with any intent, when The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King swept everything. If that couldn’t stop me, nothing will. Let’s do it again next year.

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Actor

We’re counting down the days until the Academy Awards! We’ll be here, breaking down each of the 23 categories, talking a bit of history, and trying to figure out who is going to win all those gold statues. So check back throughout the next three weeks for Last Cinema Standing’s Countdown to the Oscars.

Best Actor

The nominees are:

Austin Butler in Elvis

Colin Farrell in The Banshees of Inisherin

Brendan Fraser in The Whale

Paul Mescal in Aftersun

Bill Nighy in Living

Though I feel pretty good about my prediction in this category, I cannot guarantee who will win. However, I can with a good deal of certainty guarantee none of the five nominees will rush the stage to slap a presenter during the show. Of course, I would have said the same thing before last year’s show, and I would have been wrong. So, let’s see what happens.

Austin Butler in Elvis – The Academy does not really deserve its reputation for being obsessed with performers portraying real people. Over the past 50 years of Best Actor and Actress, the Academy has handed out 100 statues. Exactly 33 of those have gone to performers playing real people, which means fully two-thirds of the time, the award goes to an actor bringing to life a fictional character.

The reputation persists, I think, because the ones we remember tend to be the most egregious examples, like Rami Malek in Bohemian Rhapsody or Eddie Redmayne in The Theory of Everything. No one complains when Daniel Day-Lewis wins for Lincoln or Will Smith (slap aside) for King Richard. Butler will slot pretty easily into the latter category for his full-bodied imitation of Elvis Pressley. It is an excellent performance and probably the saving grace of Baz Luhrmann’s otherwise mediocre Elvis. For a movie that goes wrong in so many ways, Butler is worth the price of admission.

Brendan Fraser in The Whale – If you follow this stuff at all, you know Fraser’s story. It has been written about extensively all over the place. In interviews, on red carpets, and in speeches, Fraser never comes off as anything but genuine and humble, grateful for the praise but a little bewildered by it all. His return to fame is one of the few positive things that has come out of internet nostalgia culture. Millennials who grew up on George of the Jungle and The Mummy have plastered Fraser everywhere on social media as a cause celebre. You may have seen the bumper stickers.

The lead role of Charlie in Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale is a fascinating part for the once-upon-a-time matinee idol. Buried beneath layers of makeup and CGI, Fraser brings you into the world of a morbidly obese man who cannot forgive himself for things he has done and has essentially decided to die. But even in that state, he seeks ways to connect to his daughter and pass along a message of hope, kindness, and generosity. Fraser plays this one for the people in the back row, but it is actually perfectly attuned to the frequency of the film around him. He’s back, like he never left.

Colin Farrell in The Banshees of Inisherin – This is the best performance of the year for me. The entire ensemble of The Banshees of Inisherin is doing tremendous work, but Farrell is transcendent. It would be condescending to suggest we didn’t know he was capable of this. He’s been great in plenty over the years, from Minority Report and The New World to In Bruges and The Lobster, but this is the best he has ever been. It’s a performance that proves his best is better than most.

Watch the way Farrell’s Pádraic reacts at the inciting incident of the film. Brendan Gleeson’s Colm tells him he doesn’t want to be friends anymore, and in two seconds, without saying a word, Farrell communicates everything – the pain, the incomprehension, the disbelief. It washes over in waves, and we feel it with him. The events of the film feel silly at first, but the movie works because Farrell never treats them as such. This is deadly serious for Pádraic. And as things get darker and darker, Farrell is already there, waiting for the audience to catch up to him.

Paul Mescal in Aftersun – When the Academy Award nominations were announced, Mescal was in London, playing Stanley Kowalski in a West End revival of A Streetcar Named Desire. That’s a great part for him, and it wouldn’t be too hard to imagine the young actor following in the footsteps of Marlon Brando in becoming one of the “It” actors of his generation. That’s a lot to put on a 27-year-old performer, but those are the kinds of comparisons you draw when you are Oscar nominated for just your second feature film.

Charlotte Wells’ elegant little coming-of-age drama follows young dad Calum (Mescal) and his 11-year-old daughter, Sophie (Frankie Corio), on their Turkish holiday. He is doing the best he can to be a father to this adolescent girl, but he is struggling, as he barely knows who he is, let alone how to understand his preteen daughter. Mescal brings depth and compassion to the role that would be difficult for a seasoned performer to convey. But, here he is in his first leading role, announcing himself as an actor to watch for a long time to come.

Bill Nighy in Living – On the flipside of that coin, we have the 73-year-old Nighy, who was 20 when he first performed Tennessee Williams on the British stage in 1969, some 53 years before Mescal got to it. His long film career has run the gamut from Shaun of the Dead to Love Actually to a key role in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. He has truly done it all, and yet, this is his first Academy Award nomination.

It would be easy to dismiss this nomination as a lifetime achievement nod, but that would be to ignore the work Nighy is actually doing in this film. It is no easy feat to step into the shoes of Takashi Shimura, the legendary Japanese actor, for a remake of one of Akira Kurosawa’s most revered films, about a dying bureaucrat looking to find some meaning in his final days. Nighy puts a uniquely British spin on the part while never losing the soul of the material. He carries the longing and regret of his years with him in everything he does, and in the film’s closing moments, borrowed from the Kurosawa film, we see that weight lifted and we finally view the man who once was.

The final analysis

Many Oscars prognosticators would have you believe this is a closer race than it is, particularly after Brendan Fraser’s triumph at the Screen Actors Guild Awards. But, if 2020 taught us anything, it taught us you can’t trust SAG when it comes to this one. That was the now-infamous Chadwick Boseman-Anthony Hopkins year. Boseman was a sure thing, especially after the posthumous recognition from his peers. And, that was true right up to the moment the 2020 Academy Awards ceremony ended with Hopkins’ name being read and Hopkins being prevented from accepting via Zoom call. It was a weird time.

In any event, Fraser has not received near the acclaim Boseman did in the runup to that ceremony. Butler won the BAFTA, he won the Golden Globe, and his rising star has shown no signs of slowing at any point this season. In my view, Butler is running away with this thing.

The only potential spoiler could come in the form of Colin Farrell sneaking up the middle if Fraser and Butler split the vote. That scenario is pretty rare, but many have used it to explain the 2002 Oscars when Adrian Brody won for The Pianist, beating out Jack Nicholson (About Schmidt) and Daniel Day-Lewis (Gangs of New York), who were considered neck and neck for the award. If it happens, it will make me as happy as anything else Sunday night is likely to make me, but I won’t hold my breath.

Will win: Austin Butler in Elvis

Should win: Colin Farrell in The Banshees of Inisherin

Should have been here: Felix Kammerer in All Quiet on the Western Front

A note about my favorite snub: All Quiet on the Western Front is entirely Paul’s story. He is our guide into the abyss. If that central performance doesn’t work, the whole thing falls apart. Luckily, Felix Kammerer is more than up to the task. Paul’s transformation from fresh-faced teen to shell-shocked vet is brutal, heartbreaking, and all too real, and Kammerer makes us feel every ounce of his pain.

Next time: Best Actress