Oscar Noms! Plus 'Back in Action,' 'Wolf Man' Usher In Genre SZN
#305: Oscar Nominations, "Back in Action," "Wolf Man," "L'avventura," "The Agency"
Edition 305:
Hey movie lovers!
This week: A truly awful heist movie, a slow burn Irish drama, an ode to David Lynch, and finally my thoughts on the new Squid Game. In this week’s trailer watch, Robert De Niro plays two roles and they’re both gangsters.
Back In Action / Wolf Man
It’s the middle of January. One side of the country is on fire and the other side of the country is freezing their you-know-whats off. At the movies, we find ourselves in the midst of a very specific time in the movie calendar.
I’ll call it Genre SZN (joining “Movie SZN” from Oct-Dec, “Spooky SZN” in Sept-Oct, and “Blockbuster SZN” June-August). The only movies coming out in January, February and March are action, horror, thrillers, comedies and rom-coms — or some hybrid of those (Den of Thieves 2, Love Hurts, Novocaine, One Of Them Days, Presence, Flight Risk etc.).
Why?
I don’t think people realize the extent to which these movies dominate the streaming and VOD markets. I’m currently working on a story for Forbes that has put me in touch with a lot of indie producers and financiers, and the general feeling is that if a movie ISN’T hard genre, it’s close to impossible to find funding, distribution and audience. Even if you’re a studio, and have those things built in, hard genre movies are 1) cheaper to make, 2) going to get a baseline audience of fans in that genre and 3) do well as back library properties on streaming.
I think that No. 3 point is the most important one, because it acknowledges that when most people are doing the doomscroll on a streamer looking for something they haven’t seen before or heard of, they’re way (WAY) more likely to pick an action movie or a comedy than a quote-unquote serious drama or something more amorphous.
The reasons for this are pretty obvious — it’s a known quantity. Take, for instance, a heist movie. That’s what we’d call “hard genre,” because every heist movie is going to include certain elements: assembling the team, discussing how impossible the job is, talking through the plan, breaking into the vault…you get the point. Even if a movie is bad, a viewer can feel satisfied knowing they’re going to get some things that they like.
Basically, Netflix has built their entire original movie strategy around this premise. Back in Action is a classic trashy action B-movie, supercharged with a budget that can carry Jamie Foxx and Cameron Diaz in the lead roles, plus Glenn Close, Kyle Chandler and Andrew Scott supporting. This movie is seemingly crafted for the almighty algorithm, with obligatory action sequences every 10 minutes so you keep watching and dialogue so predictable you can look at your phone or do chores the entire time and never lose the plot.
Foxx is one of the most charismatic performers on the planet, and to my eye completely outclassed Diaz (who admittedly hasn’t appeared on screen in 11 years, a wild stat, but never had a ton to offer even back in the day). Their repartee is basically bad joke about parenting→bad joke about being old→bad joke about being uncool→slow-mo spy stuff, and the only note given to the other three over-qualified actors seemed to be, “is there any way you can play it bigger and more ridiculous?”
Wolf Man serves its horror/thriller audience equally well, but in a completely different way. People might remember 2020’s The Invisible Man, another Universal monster movie, as a gritty metaphor for a toxic, abusive relationship. Well look no further this time for a gritty metaphor for toxic masculinity passed down from fathers to sons. (Look at The Iron Claw for a non-genre version of this same theme.)
Christopher Abbot (my guy!) plays a father who gets infected at a cabin in Oregon and turns into the titular beast, making it hard to love his semi-estranged wife Julia Garner (who plays…wait for it…a journalist! Why?) and their daughter. The situation gets scarier and more dire until it reaches a bloody climax.
I think in general, and especially in the horror genre, too many movies have become anchored down by the weight of past trauma, which is the quickest way to zap any fun out them. That burdens Wolf Man a bit, though it is a perfectly competent execution of a known quantity.
Is it too much to ask for a middle ground between the abject mindlessness of Back in Action and the over-intellectualization of Wolf Man? Thankfully I’ve got another two-plus months of Genre SZN to find out.
Something New
2025 Oscar Nominations: The nominees for this year’s Academy Awards got announced on Thursday morning — delayed two weeks by the L.A. fires, which continue to rage. I thought jot down a good ol’ fashioned list of takeaways I had when I saw the list.
Netflix is always the bridesmaid, never the bride. Whatever movie The Big Red Machine gets behind, it’s going to get a lot of nominations. They run a great campaign — Emilia Perez leads all movies with 13 noms. But traditionally, they have a harder time taking home statues (famously, The Irishman went 0 for 10). I’m hoping for the same this year, because I did not like that movie at all.
Is The Oscars for normies or nerds? The Academy can’t make up its mind. A Complete Unknown and Wicked in Best Picture are such obvious appeals for populism, while Nickel Boys and I’m Still Here are movies no one has seen. It seems to me the ceremony can’t quite accept the fact that this show is only for the die-hards in 2025.
The #Resistance is reporting for duty. Sebastian Stan and Jeremy Strong both getting nominated for The Apprentice after not really being mentioned all awards season feels very much like a reaction to Trump’s election and inauguration. Doesn’t mean they aren’t two very worthy performances!!
Step aside, olds. Denzel, Nicole Kidman, Angelina Jolie, Amy Adams, Kate Winslet, Daniel Craig and Stanley Tucci were all “snubbed,” as these things go. Guess you can’t just go big on the campaign trail and expect a legacy nod like in years past.
Lisan al-Gaib!! Pleasantly surprised that Dune 2 found its way into Best Picture after looking dead in the water for the past few months. Well deserved.
Something Old
L’avventura (1960, Max): There simply would be no season two of “The White Lotus” were it not for this black-and-white Italian classic directed by the great Michelangelo Antonioni. I did not realize, until I watched the movie this week, that there is multiple references to this Sicily-based psychodrama (and one exact shot-for-shot recreated scene) in the HBO show.
Luckily, the same streaming service that has that show also has a beautiful, immaculate (not exaggerating!) high-definition restoration version of this movie, which was honestly stunning to watch. Those 1960s Italian vistas and towns, not to the singular beauty of Monica Vitti, are mesmerizing in that quality.
That’s helpful, because as this Criterion Collection essay explaining the movie admits, “What L’avventura showed was that films do not have to be structured around major events, that very little drama can happen and a film can still be fascinating to its audience.”
A group of rich, young Italians take a pleasure cruise to an island Sicily, where one of the women goes missing. Her boyfriend and best friend search for her, but fall in love. Or is it love? What is love? What is life?
It’s pure cinema in that way, making you question all of those things, including the very contemporary feeling that the so-called Old World has passed you by the New World that’s taken its place doesn’t seem as grand or fulfilling. Anyway! You’ll never see me miss a chance to pump Italian cinema.
Something To Stream
The Agency (Paramount+/Showtime): A couple of years ago, an international espionage TV show starring Michael Fassbender, Richard Gere, Jodie Turner-Smith, Jeffrey Wright, and other recognizable faces would’ve been a can’t-miss event. But these days I feel like it’s come and past without much fanfare — probably because it ended up at Showtime, a streaming service that very few people have. I bought it just for this show, and let me tell you, it’s so worth it!
This is an American adaptation of a widely-acclaimed French show, adapted to fit modern sociopolitical conflicts (Russia-Ukraine, threat of China etc.), and just like all good spy shows/movies/books, it’s very complicated with lots of moving parts.
Fassbender plays a spy who’s come in from the cold, so to speak, and can’t quite check his field agent alias at the door. That gets him good and twisted up in matters both personal and professional, with the seeming brink of world conflict in the balance in pretty much every episode.
The show has endlessly enjoyable displays of spycraft, character intrigue and twisty plots. The season finale comes out today (Friday), and I’m eagerly counting down the hours to be able to watch it. This will end up being one of my favorite shows of the year, I know already.
Trailer Watch: Opus
We’re going to get our first real look at Ayo Edibiri as Movie Star in March, when she stars as a journalist (for an industry that’s dying, we are so over-indexed on the silver screen!!), and in this case a MAGAZINE journalist (I’m already sold), assigned to write a profile of a pop star slash cult leader played by John Malkovich.
It’s got all of the creepy, A24 vibes and what appears to be real commentary on celebrity, fandom, and the very particular experience of immersive reporting where you through yourself into another person’s world and try to suss out what’s actually sus (as the kids say) and what’s normal. Needless to say I’m incredibly excited for this.