Monday Miniatures: Addictions, Accidents, and Actors

Welcome to Monday Miniatures, where I tell you about some of the stuff I’ve been watching in the past week that I wouldn’t otherwise get to share.

The week of Oct. 27-Nov. 2, 2025:

Ballad of a Small Player, directed by Edward Berger

How I watched it: In theaters (Landmark Pasadena)

After the back-to-back hits of All Quiet on the Western Front and Conclave, not to mention TV success with Your Honor and Patrick Melrose, Berger is playing with house money. So, he took all that capital and wagered it on a seedy little story about an addict who believes he can out-play his addictions. These stories are as old as time, cautionary tales about people who just need one more go at whatever it is that has trapped them. 

In this case, we are following Colin Farrell as Lord Doyle. His game of choice: baccarat. The city: Macao. If you’re not part of the gambling world, you may not know the associations with Macao, which I have read described by professional poker players as a literal hell on earth. Note that these poker players still willingly and often joyously travel to Macao, the lure of the payday worth risking damnation. It’s a wonderful setting for a movie about losing oneself, losing one’s soul, and the long road to redemption.

I like this movie. It is gorgeously shot, Farrell delivers a tremendous performance, and there is something morbidly fascinating in watching the slow-motion car wreck that is this character’s life. That said, I wanted more. The further I get from All Quiet, the greater it grows in my estimation. Conclave was an airport page-turner elevated to high art. Berger has greatness in him, but this movie – apart from a couple sequences, including a scene on a dock at low tide – falls short of its potential.

It Was Just an Accident, directed by Jafar Panahi

How I watched it: In theaters (Alamo DTLA)

This year’s Palme d’Or winner, I will have much more to say about this in the coming days, weeks, and months. This is a major work from a master filmmaker. It is both emotionally involving and intellectually challenging. It presents a number of ideas, then trusts the audience to come along as it explores each of those ideas in depth. It doesn’t condescend to the audience or offer any easy answers. Rather, it dives deep into the unknowable, the unwinnable, and the irredeemable. Love this movie.

John Candy: I Like Me, directed by Colin Hanks

How I watched it: Amazon Prime

I never really considered myself a John Candy fan. He’s in a number of movies I like and a number of movies I dislike. I find the “I like me” speech in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, which gives this doc its title, quite powerful while finding that film intensely irritating. From everything I have seen, Candy is best in small doses, lest his particular schtick grow tiresome. I am in the minority in this opinion, and John Candy: I Like Me makes a strong case for me to revisit the late actor’s work or dive deeper into some movies I have not seen.

This is a nice movie about a nice man, but it gets repetitive quickly. There are only so many ways to say that Candy was a charming, gregarious man who was comedically gifted but had a hole in his heart due to the death of his father at a young age. He tried to fill that hole with the love of the masses but found that love fickle, unsustainable, and unsatisfying. It’s a fairly classic Hollywood story. There are some good interviews here, and if you love Candy, you’ll love this movie. 

My five favorite John Candy movies, in alphabetical order: Brewster’s Millions, in which he plays Richard Pryor’s best friend who can’t fathom what Brewster is doing or thinking (he’s also a catcher, which was my position, so points for that); Cool Runnings, which is probably my favorite lead or semi-lead performance of Candy’s; Home Alone, in which Candy has two brief but pivotal and hilarious scenes; JFK, in which Candy matches the over-the-top nature of the film around him to a T;  Rookie of the Year, in which Candy takes the Bob Uecker role of sportscaster tasked with providing the play by play to absurd circumstances.

Haunters: The Art of the Scare, directed by John Schnitzer

How I watched it: Amazon Prime

Haunted houses terrified me as a kid. As much as I have always loved horror movies, it has never occurred to me that I might enjoy being the victim in one. I’m still not a fan of haunted houses, but I’m a big fan of people “puttin’ on a show!” so to speak. Half of Haunters is a wonderful documentary about the people who dedicate much of their lives to building the biggest and best haunts that they can, as well as the trials and tribulations they encounter.

It is undeniably endearing to watch people in their home garage, putting together plywood, paint, and a dream to bring joy through terror. Are they weirdos? Frankly, anyone who wears it as a badge of honor to make someone piss herself or pass out is a little bit of a weirdo. I’m not here to judge. People sign up for these experiences, and it’s not unreasonable to think that even in those cases, the customer goes home happy.

Now, that’s half the movie. The other half is about extreme haunts – one in particular – run by people the weirdos of the normal haunts might call doggone freaks. Hilariously, the people who run the extreme haunts think the other extreme haunters also are freaks. If you’re unfamiliar, extreme “haunts” (hard to call them haunted houses really; there’s nothing ghostly or spooky about them) often feature actual torture like waterboarding and electrocution, as well as sexual humiliation and all manner of psychological torment. Not my idea of a Saturday night, but again, no judgment.

Except for the folks at McKamey Manor. The movie offers the plurality of its screentime to proprietor Russ McKamey. McKamey Manor is considered the most extreme “haunt” in the nation. People come from all over the world to be brutalized by its wicked ways. The movie plays both sides a little bit, giving McKamey ample time to answer his critics, but McKamey’s own words are the most damning. People obviously want his services, but that doesn’t make the manner in which he provides them okay.

Overall, I like prefer the half of the doc that’s about mostly good-natured people (although, there’s still some troubling stuff in there, too) sharing their love of Halloween, rather than the half about borderline sociopaths who really don’t have a connection to anything except their own depravity.

Sisu, directed by Jalmari Helander

How I watched it: Disney+

I was aware of Sisu. I had heard it was a bloody good time, emphasis on bloody, from some action movie fans I trust. I just never felt a real push to prioritize it over anything else, but I caught the trailer for Sisu 2 (aka Sisu: Road to Revenge) before another movie in theaters and figured: If the sequel’s coming, I might as well catch up with the first one.

It is precisely the movie I assumed it would be, which is to say it is the Hobo with a Shotgun of World War II movies. I see why people had fun, I see what is supposed to be fun, but I can’t say I had much fun. It is perfectly competent at being the movie Helander wants to make. That’s not a type of movie that really appeals to me, except in as much as it might be fun to elbow your buddies, point at the screen, and say, ‘Woah, did you see that?’

The story follows a Finnish soldier turned prospector who discovers gold, then encounters Nazis going scorched earth on his country in their retreat. The Nazis try to steal the gold, and the man, Aatami (Jorma Tommila) goes full John Wick on them. We’ve seen it before, blowing up Nazis obviously never gets old, but the movie doesn’t have anything else to offer. Maybe that’s fine.

Goodnight Mommy, directed by Severin Fiala and Veronika Franz

How I watched it: Amazon Prime

As I mentioned last week, I figured I would pretty quickly catch up with The Devil’s Bath directors Fiala and Franz’s critically acclaimed Goodnight Mommy. It took me just a couple days, and here we are. This is an excellent film, supremely creepy, and I highly recommend it. If you have not seen it, I recommend skipping the rest of this piece until you have seen it because I intend to get a little spoilery, and the film is best seen blind.

Okay, warning over, now it’s on you. I generally try to avoid spoilers in my writing because I think people should have the opportunity to discover a film’s mysteries in the way the film intends. I am talking about spoilers with this film because I had the film’s twist spoiled for me before I saw it, and it is an interesting case study in how thrillers with big twists work and are constructed.

First off, the film is over a decade old, so I can’t be too mad about having it spoiled. I had 11 years to watch it. I didn’t. That’s my fault. However, I watched the movie with the twist in mind the whole time, and when you have it in mind, it’s impossible not to filter everything through that lens. It’s like the second time you watch The Sixth Sense. You’re looking for the clues. You’re trying to spot what you missed. Some things become incredibly obvious. Now, imagine that’s your first viewing of a film.

There is a debate online around spoiler culture and whether it has gone too far. And, there are people who believe that virtually any discussion of a movie beyond and sometimes including its mere existence constitutes a spoiler. Honestly, those folks just need to get off the internet. On the other hand, I am sympathetic to the desire to discover a movie while watching a movie. I prefer to know as little as possible going in, and I think we can all agree trailers are giving away too much these days.

Some folks argue that a movie should work whether you know the twist or not and that if it relies on a twist for its success, it is an inherently bad movie. I disagree. Is The Sixth Sense still a good movie on the 10th viewing? Absolutely, because it is an expertly crafted piece of cinema. However, it is a fundamentally different movie than the one the filmmaker intended.

That was how I felt watching Goodnight Mommy with the foreknowledge I had. It is fundamentally different. Character motivations are different. Story beats are different. Acting choices mean something else entirely. It is no longer the movie the filmmakers made, and that’s a bummer.

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

Countdown to the Oscars: Everything Everywhere All at Once leads with 11 nominations, Banshees and All Quiet right behind

As expected, Everything Everywhere All at Once led the way Tuesday morning with 11 Academy Award nominations, two ahead of The Banshees of Inisherin and All Quiet on the Western Front. That puts the Daniels’ (Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan) critical and commercial hit in the driver’s seat for Best Picture at this midway stage of the Oscars race.

Riz Ahmed and Allison Williams were up early to present the nominees, and the universe-hopping sci-fi dramedy from Scheinert and Kwan showed immediate strength, pulling in surprise notices for Costume Design, Original Score, and Original Song. It also nabbed two of the slots in Best Supporting Actress, with Jamie Lee Curtis getting her expected nomination and Stephanie Hsu making good on the buzz around her. Michelle Yeoh is firmly in the running for Best Actress, and Ke Huy Quan remains the frontrunner for Best Supporting Actor. The Daniels were also nominated for Director and Original Screenplay, while the film also picked up an all-important Editing nomination.

Joining Everything Everywhere All at Once, The Banshees of Inisherin, and All Quiet on the Western Front in the 10-film strong Best Picture lineup are Avatar: The Way of Water, Elvis, The Fabelmans, TÁR, Top Gun: Maverick, Triangle of Sadness, and Women Talking. Along with The Daniels, the Best Director lineup consists of Martin McDonagh for Banshees, Steven Spielberg for The Fabelmans, Todd Field for TÁR, and Ruben Östlund for Triangle of Sadness. Östlund was a surprise and a welcome one, probably bumping out one of James Cameron (Avatar), Baz Luhrman (Elvis), or Edward Berger (All Quiet).

Berger’s popular German-language adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front, which just recently dominated the BAFTA nominations, was a monster in the craft categories, making his missing out in Director a little more curious. Overall, All Quiet was recognized for Cinematography, Production Design, Makeup and Hairstyling, Sound, Original Score, Visual Effects, Adapted Screenplay, and Best International Feature, where it is the likely frontrunner. In addition to Director, the missing Editing nomination also suggests weakness for All Quiet, as that category is usually a bellwether of Best Picture strength.

This does not always hold true – and as recently as last year, this was not the case – but often a strong Best Picture nominee will have nominations for Picture (of course), Director, Screenplay (either Adapted or Original), and Editing. The only three films to be cited in all four of those categories this year are Everything Everywhere All at Once, The Banshees of Inisherin, and TÁR, meaning those are the films most likely to be battling it out for the top prize.

In addition to those four nominations, Banshees also picked up four acting nominations – Colin Farrell for Actor, Brendan Gleeson and Barry Keoghan for Supporting Actor, and Kerry Condon for Supporting Actress – and an Original Score nomination for my favorite working composer, Carter Burwell. Meanwhile, Field’s TAR picked up the expected Cate Blanchett nod for Best Actress and an inspired nomination for Florian Hoffmeister’s stunning cinematography.

Along with Farrell, Austin Butler (Elvis) and Brendan Fraser (The Whale) will battle it out as the three lockstep favorites for Best Actor, making this one of the more exciting acting races in years. Some of that excitement is likely to dissipate once we learn who wins the BAFTA and the SAG awards, so for now, let’s enjoy the mystery. Bill Nighy also made it into the lineup for the Akira Kurosawa remake Living, and Paul Mescal earned probably the biggest surprise nomination of the morning for his tremendous work in the critically beloved Aftersun.

Blanchett will have to fend off a strong surge from Yeoh in Best Actress, which also features Ana de Armas (Blonde), Michelle Williams (The Fabelmans), and Andrea Riseborough (To Leslie), whose late buzz caused quite a stir online but proved to be fruitful. This came at the expense of Danielle Deadwyler (Till) and Viola Davis (The Woman King), making this the second straight year and 83rd time in 95 years that no black performers are nominated for Best Actress. That said, Yeoh is the first East Asian actress ever nominated in this category, so we can rejoice in the breaking of that glass ceiling at least.

In Supporting Actress, Curtis, Hsu, and Condon are joined by frontrunner Angela Bassett (Black Panther: Wakanda Forever) and Hong Chau (The Whale). The surprise omission is that of Triangle of Sadness star Dolly de Leon, whose absence is made all the more shocking by that film’s apparent strength with voters.

Over in Supporting Actor, Judd Hirsh (The Fabelmans) and Brian Tyree Henry (Causeway) round out a lineup headed by Quan, Gleeson, and Keoghan. Hirsch probably took the Fabelmans spot from Paul Dano, while Tyree Henry earned the nod in a competitive race for the fifth slot, beating out Dano and Eddie Redmayne (The Good Nurse).

Just behind Everything Everywhere, Banshees, and All Quiet in the nominations haul were Elvis with eight and The Fabelmans with seven. As for the other Best Picture nominees, Top Gun: Maverick and TÁR each showed up strong with six, while Avatar: The Way of Water earned four, Triangle of Sadness three, and Women Talking two, with Sarah Polley receiving the film’s lone other nomination for Adapted Screenplay.

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever likely just missed out on a Best Picture nomination, earning five nods overall, the most for any non-Picture nominee. In addition to Bassett, the superhero blockbuster was recognized for Costume Design, Makeup and Hairstyling, Visual Effects, and Original Song for “Lift Me Up,” a collaboration among Rihanna, Tems, Ryan Coogler, and Ludwig Goransson. This gives Coogler one of the more fascinating Oscar resumés for a director – he is a Best Picture nominee for producing a film he did not direct (Judas and the Black Messiah) and now an Original Song nominee. 

Also strong below the line were Damien Chazelle’s Babylon and Matt Reeves’ The Batman, which each earned three crafts nods. Meanwhile, Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale also earned three nominations, being cited for its Makeup and Hairstyling, in addition to the two acting nominations.

So, how am I feeling? 

The good: Five of my top 10 films of the year are nominated for Best Picture, while three more were recognized in other categories (EO in International Feature, Bardo in Cinematography, and All the Beauty and the Bloodshed in Documentary). I am overjoyed at the nominations for Field, Östlund, and Mescal, as well as all the love for The Banshees of Inisherin.

The disappointing: I think I am going to have to resign myself to this being the year of Everything Everywhere All at Once. Everyone – critics, Academy voters, audiences, all the people I work with – loves this film. It truly did not work for me, and it will be difficult to spend this Oscar season watching it collect plaudit after plaudit. But, sometimes that happens. I am pleased for everyone who finds joy in this film’s success.

Beyond that, it is an oversight, plain and simple, that voters could not find one space for any of the remarkable performers in the Women Talking ensemble. Most likely, because all of the performances were so strong and there was not a single one for voters to rally behind, they all split the vote and missed out. But, that’s no excuse. Claire Foy and Jessie Buckley, in particular, will be coming for their makeup Oscars one of these days.

In addition to Polley missing in Best Director, there were no nominations at all for Till, The Woman King, or She Said, all strong films directed by talented women. And, though Mescal snuck into Best Actor, it is a bummer that Charlotte Welles got no recognition for her Aftersun screenplay, which tells her story so beautifully and truthfully.

What else? The producers of the Academy Awards had better be figuring out how to get “Naatu Naatu,” the nominated original song from RRR, on the broadcast because I promise it will be the highlight of the night. I am excited to catch up on some of the nominated documentaries and international features I missed this year, specifically Lucas Dhont’s Close and Shaunak Sen’s All That Breathes. 

A final note, in my pre-nominations piece yesterday, I requested the Academy spread the wealth. That didn’t happen. As mentioned, there were 41 feature nominees in 2021. This year, there are 40. That is not sustainable for the future of these awards. We need more films recognized, not fewer.

That said, this year’s broadcast is likely to be buoyed by the fact that two of the most successful and popular films of all time are nominated for Best Picture (Avatar: The Way of Water and Top Gun: Maverick). It will also be helped if producers can entice the nominated Rihanna and Lady Gaga to perform their respective songs. And, honestly, there will probably be some rubberneckers tuning in to find out what might happen after last year’s Will Smith fiasco.

As always, we will dive into all of this in greater depth in the coming weeks, so check back in this space for more Countdown to the Oscars coverage, as well as the rest of my Year in Review series and hopefully some new film reviews and other stuff soon.