This Had Oscar Buzz

This week, our Patreon Selects episodes continue and they’re staying in Europe! One of our sponsors has selected for us an Oscar nomination follow-up star vehicle for the divine Diane Lane, 2003’s Under the Tuscan Sun. Loosely adapted from Frances Mayes’ memoir, the film follows Lane as a new divorce gifted a Tuscan vacation who decides … Continue reading "273 – Under the Tuscan Sun (Patreon Selec...

Our Patreon Selects series continues with another dive into French cinema! In 2002, director Francois Ozon delivered an actress bonanza with 8 Women, an homage of Douglas Sirk and Alfred Hitchcock that’s also a musical and also murder mystery and also a celebration of the biggest French actresses of the moment. Set at Christmas, its titular … Continue reading "272 – 8 Women (Patreon Selects)"

Our Patreon Selects episodes continue this week with a pick from Audrey: the beloved 2019 lesbian romance Portrait of a Lady on Fire. The film launched at the Cannes Film Festival, winning the Best Screenplay prize and skyrocketing director Céline Sciamma to the names of most beloved contemporary directors. However, when the Oscar race began, France … Continue reading "271 – Portrait of a Lady on...

All January we’ll be doing a series we call Patreon Selects with episodes chosen by members of our sponsor-level tier on Patreon (and they’ll be sharing their Oscar origin stories too)! First up is 1992’s megasmash musical comedy Sister Act! Originally designed as a showcase for Bette Midler, the film became a starring vehicle for Whoopi … Continue reading "270 – Sister Act (Patreon Selects)"

Listeners have been asking for this episode for years and today, Santa is bringing it to you! Happy Holidays, it’s time for Eyes Wide Shut! In 1999, the film was hotly anticipated for many reasons: it starred Hollywood’s most famous couple, it was the final film of master of masters Stanley Kubrick, its very long … Continue reading "269 – Eyes Wide Shut"

Hayden Christensen arrived seemingly out of nowhere to land the role of pre-Vader Anakin Skywalker, becoming one of Hollywood’s hottest stars overnight and largely untested as a screen presence. After a respected turn in Life As A House(see previous episode!), the Attack of the Clones reviews soured audiences on this brand new star. The very next year, he … Continue reading "268 – Shattered Glass...

This week, our first film selected by one of our sponsor-tier Patreon subscribers arrives, and we brought back Vulture’s Roxana Hadadi to celebrate. In 1995, audiences were hyped to finally see an onscreen showdown between Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro in Michael Mann’s Heat. But what promised to be a standard actioner on paper (on top … Continue reading "267 – Heat (with Roxana Hadadi!) (Patreon Se...

We who loved his debut Martha Marcy May Marlene (see previous episode!) waited eagerly for director Sean Durkin’s follow-up feature while he worked in television and produced other films. That sophomore feature came almost a decade later with The Nest. Starring Carrie Coon and Jude Law, the film follows a married couple who move to England to follow … Continue reading "266 – The Nest"

We all know that Oscar fawns over costume dramas of literary adaptations… or so we tell ourselves when forming predictions and one with a whiff of prestige arrives. In 2008, director Julian Jerrold delivered a new adaptation of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited with an up-and-coming young cast paired with Dame Emma Thompson as the devoutly religious Lady … Continue reading "265 – Brideshead Revi...

Following Thanksgiving tradition, Katey Rich returns to This Had Oscar Buzz to discussant film with indistinguishable white male actors, and this year we have chosen 2015’s Everest. Directed by Baltasar Kormákur and featuring a massive cast led by Jason Clarke, Josh Brolin, and Jake Gyllenhaal, the film follows the true story of a disastrous trip … Continue reading "264 – Everest (with Katey Rich!...

After the Oscar and box office success of Gladiator, director/star duo of Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe decided to reunite in 2006 for a very different kind of film, A Good Year. Starring Crowe as a finance bro who returns to the French vineyard of his beloved but estranged and now deceased uncle (played by Albert Finney), … Continue reading "263 – A Good Year"

We return to the filmography of Spike Lee this week with his biggest box office success, 2006’s Inside Man. With a star-packed cast led by Denzel Washington as a hostage negotiator, Clive Owen as the bank robber opposite him, and Jodie Foster as a nefarious fixer, Lee took a standard crime thriller and made it his … Continue reading "262 – Inside Man"

Happy Halloween, listeners! Naturally, this week we are returning to the shallow well of horror films that made it into the Oscar hunt with a recent highly debated and lauded terrifier. In 2018, Ari Aster made his feature debut at Sundance with Hereditary, the story of a family invaded from within by a demon worshipping cult. … Continue reading "261 – Hereditary"

A few weeks ago, we lost the great and greatly undervalued filmmaker Terence Davies, who listened have heard our love of on our previous episode for The House of Mirth. In 2011, Davies adapted the play The Deep Blue Sea for the screen, with Rachel Weisz taking the role of a post-WWII married woman devastated by a failed … Continue reading "260 – The Deep Blue Sea"

After Francis Lee’s celebrated queer debut God’s Own Country, the director leveled up with another gay romance Ammonite, this time with Oscar-pedigreed stars. Kate Winslet stars as 19th century paleontologist Mary Anning opposite Saoirse Ronan as Charlotte Murchison; the two develop a seaside romance of opposites between the gruff Anning and the unfulfilled Murchison. But Lee’s follow-up, … Contin...

Last week we celebrated the 20th anniversary of Kill Bill – Vol. 1, so naturally we had to bring you Vol. 2 this week! Six months after the release of the original (and its shafting at the Oscars), The Bride returned to finish her vengeance list and kill that Bill. Surprisingly, the finale earned stronger reviews and earned … Continue reading "258 – Kill Bill – Vol. 2"

We’re here celebrating a 20th anniversary for a beloved film this week, listeners! After his longest break between movies to date, Quentin Tarantino delivered a samurai epic while trying to crack the script for another epic, Inglourious Basterds. That ultraviolent actioner, Kill Bill, would also reunite Tarantino with his Pulp Fiction star Uma Thurman, given a major showcase as … Continue reading...

This week, we’re bringing you an episode to make you yell “YA BURNT!” Back in 2015, Bradley Cooper was to headline an ensemble dreamed about an unruly addict chef trying to earn his third Michelin star. Switching from the anonymously titled Adam Jones to the equally anonymous Burnt, the film had already earned a little bit of punchline … Continue reading "256 – Burnt"

We’re back from our annual trip to the Toronto International Film Festival! Once again, we’ll be dissecting our festival experience, the films we saw, and what lies ahead for the season. We discuss the Peoples’ Choice Award winner American Fiction and its chances in the awards race, several International Feature contenders at the festival including Perfect Daysand The Teachers’ … Continue reading...

Before Tom McCarthy would deliver an Oscar triumph with Spotlight (and a bomb with The Cobbler), his critically beloved films centering on everyday people culminated in Win Win. The film starred Paul Giamatti as a lawyer and wrestling coach who takes in the grandson of an elderly client, one who he has taken guardianship of solely to alleviate his … Continue reading "255 – Win Win"

Some might call Yorgos Lanthimos’ Oscar ascent an unlikely one, given the oddness at the core of his films. But with the Foreign Language Feature nomination for the explicit Dogtooth and the Original Screenplay for The Lobster, the Greek auteur cemented his status in the Oscar club. A victory lap of sorts came with The … Continue reading "254 – The Killing of a Sacred Deer"

We’re going back further than ever before this episode and we’ve got writer/critic/author Emily St. James along for the ride! After a consecutive run as an Oscar favorite in the late 1940s to early 1950s, director John Huston gave us 1956’s Moby Dick, an adaptation of perhaps the greatest novel of all time and often … Continue reading "253 – Moby Dick (with Emily St. James!)"

Ahead of this season’s Nyad, we are looking back at the Oscar history of Annette Bening and 2017’s Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool. One year after missing out on a nomination for 20th Century Women, Bening returned with this film, starring as actress Gloria Grahame . Told from the perspective of actor Peter Turner … Continue reading "252 – Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool"

Are you loving our new original intro music, listeners? We’re joined this week by its composer and our friend Taylor Cole to muse on the genre musical biopic with 2015’s Love and Mercy. The film follows different chapters of Brian Wilson’s life and mental wellness journey, with Paul Dano taking on Wilson’s life as he … Continue reading "251 – Love and Mercy (with Taylor Cole!)"

We’ve come up on another anniversary episode of This Had Oscar Buzz, and we’ve got another favorite that long-time listeners have heard us praise before: 2019’s Her Smell. Debuting on at TIFF 2018, the Alex Ross Perry film is a daring and ambitious take on the riot grrrls of the early 1990s. Starring Elisabeth Moss … Continue reading "250 – Her Smell"