So ... um ... who is going to win Best Actress?

by Nathaniel R

This is the way all awards seasons should be. Well, not the Zoom breakout rooms... but the uncertainty. There's no godly reason why sweeps should ever exist in awards season given that art is subjective. If you poll any group of people on anything you will see a vast array of opinions. Yet season after season there are sweeps wherein one performer snaps up every award in sight. It is extremely rare that this happens because the performer is miles ahead of their competition (like, say, a Blanchett in Blue Jasmine effect) or because the performance is gorgeous and it's also the very last chance (like say Ledger in The Dark Knight or Boseman this year). It is more commonly an effect of a lack of imagination and groupthink. If we ran the world every acting category almost every year would be like Supporting Actress was for 2007 and Best Actress appears to be for 2020. Each awards show that arrives throws punditry into disarray again and a season can close with joy knowing several actors were honored for great work...

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Oscar's complicated history with the "complicated woman"

by Matt St Clair

Remember when Maggie Gyllenhaal won a Golden Globe for her starring role in the miniseries The Honorable Woman? During her acceptance speech she spoke about not just the wealth of strong roles for women on television, but roles as complicated women, saying, “when I look around the room at the women who are in here and I think about the performances that I’ve watched this year, what I see actually are women who are sometimes powerful and sometimes not. Sometimes sexy, sometimes not. Sometimes honorable, sometimes not.” Complicated female characters on TV still receive more proper acknowledgement than those in the movies. 

While Carey Mulligan earned a recent Best Actress nomination for her role as the duplicitous avenging angel Cassie Thomas in Promising Young Woman, the Oscars have a historically spotty track record when it comes to acknowledging actresses for playing complicated, and sometimes calculating, women....

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The Furniture: Promising Young Woman and Set Decoration as Weapon

"The Furniture," by Daniel Walber. (Click on the images for magnified detail)

The best part of Promising Young Woman, aside from Carey Mulligan’s performance, is the look. It’s refreshing to see a comedy with so striking a visual sensibility, a neon nihilism that leaps off the screen. It’s certainly the first time I’ve ever seen coffee shop decor that I could describe as “snide.”

The work put in by production designer Michael Perry, art director Liz Kloczkowski and set decorator Rae Deslich is remarkable. Promising Young Woman has such a heightened visual sensibility, occasionally its own plot seems surprisingly tame in comparison...

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How Do You Solve a Problem Like Nina: The Ghost of "Promising Young Woman"

by Lynn Lee

Warning: MAJOR SPOILERS for Promising Young Woman. Do not read until you've seen the film.

Can we all agree that Carey Mulligan IS Promising Young Woman?  Not just that she’s sensational in it, though she is.  No, I mean she is the movie: her performance as the tormented and tormenting protagonist, Cassie, is what holds it together and propels it to its gut-punch of a conclusion.

That’s not to shortchange PYW’s solid supporting cast or writer-director Emerald Fennell, who brings impressive confidence and panache to her feature debut and whose razor-sharp script gave Mulligan a perfect opportunity to shine.  But what could have remained merely provocative on page really needed the right acting touch to sell the character’s complex blend of steeliness and vulnerability, wit and anguish, sexiness and inconspicuousness, icy calculation and seething rage, on screen.  Luckily for Fennell, and for us, Mulligan convincingly conveys all aspects of this unlikely avenging angel and fuses them into a cohesive, if conflicted, whole.

Well, almost all aspects...

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Carey Mulligan's Quest For Oscar Nomination #2

by Christopher James

Carey Mulligan patiently waits for her second Oscar nomination for Promising Young Woman.Carey Mulligan has repeatedly proved that she is one of the most talented actors in Hollywood. Yet, she has still not received an Oscar nomination since her breakout performance in 2009’s An Education. With great reviews and a Best Actress win from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, Mulligan’s performance in Promising Young Woman could (finally) be the ticket to a second nomination...

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