Watch scenes from the films nominated in the category of best picture at the 96th annual Academy Awards, as well as interviews with the filmmakers below. The 2024 Oscars will be presented on Sunday, March 10.
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“American Fiction”
Writer-director Cord Jefferson’s satire “American Fiction” (adapted from “Erasure” by Percival Everett) is the story of Black author Thelonious “Monk” Ellison (Jeffrey Wright), a struggling author who is frustrated with his failure to crack a marketplace seemingly enamored with stereotypical perceptions of Black life. He reacts by creating a fake writer, Stagg R. Leigh, an ex-con and fugitive from justice, whose fake life story accentuates every stereotype in the book, from profanity-laden dialogue and dysfunctional families to drugs and violence.
But to Monk’s shock, what was written as a protest becomes a cause-célèbre, when his manuscript is scooped up by a publishing house anticipating a bestseller (just in time for Juneteenth!).
In this scene, Monk asks fellow writer Sintara (played by Issa Rae) about the popular book that he has secretly written (whose title consists of an Anglo-Saxon term that must be blurred during television appearances). Her opinion matters: after all, she wrote a bestseller called, “We’s Lives in Da Ghetto”:
A former journalist, the Emmy-winning Jefferson’s credits include “Master of None,” “Watchmen” and “Succession.” In an interview with CBS Station WBZ, he reflected on how he was familiar with the attitudes about race that are explored in “American Fiction”: “I had an executive come up to me and tell me that they wanted a character that I wrote to be ‘Blacker.’ I asked them what it means to be ‘Blacker’ and sort of like if they could explain to me, and they didn’t want to answer that question. …
“All of us, everybody in the world – I think it’s particularly acute for people of color and women and queer people, of course – but everybody in the world can empathize with the idea that you know that you’re a unique individual with your own passions, ideas, hopes and dreams. At some point, the world tries to box you in and say that you are not a unique individual and in fact we’d rather think of you as being sort of like part of this monolithic culture and we can understand you based on stereotypes.”
Jefferson told “CBS Mornings” that he’d been frustrated in the industry by being asked repeatedly to write stories about slavery, about crack dealers, about Black characters killed by police – so much so that when he learned “American Fiction” was greenlit, “I started crying in the meeting.”
“American Fiction” represents Jefferson’s feature film debut, and he admitted to being intimidated by his actors. (In addition to Wright and Rae, the cast includes Oscar-nominee Sterling K. Brown, Tracee Ellis Ross, Leslie Uggams, Erika Alexander and Keith David.) “People keep asking me, ‘How did you get this tremendous ensemble for your first movie?’ And I say, look at what happens when you write real roles for Black characters.
“To me it’s very important to invite people to laugh sometimes. I think we have become a deeply polarized world – we’ve lost the ability to talk to each other. Everybody kind of exists in their own bubbles and their own fiefdoms and listens to their own news and watches their own movies. One of the greatest things about movie theaters is that they’re this cultural shared space. They’re this place in which you can come with people who are different from you and enjoy something and go on a ride together. And so, I wanted to make a movie that was about these serious third-rail issues, about race, about identity, about sexuality but that felt really inviting to a lot of different kinds of people.”
Uggams, who plays Monk’s mother suffering from dementia, told “Sunday Morning” that a movie like “American Fiction” would have been unthinkable when she started in show business seven decades ago. “When I was starting it was, like, maybe one commercial, and that was usually, you know, Aunt Jemima on the pancake box kind of thing.”
“American Fiction” is available to stream via VOD.
“Anatomy of a Fall”
Justine Triet’s courtroom drama “Anatomy of Fall” is an exceptional examination of the complexities of a marriage, and how some aspects of a relationship are ultimately unknowable to those on the outside. “I wanted to dive deep into the question of the couple, but through the perspective of the justice system,” Triet told The Guardian.
Sandra Hüller (who starred in the 2016 Oscar-nominated “Toni Erdmann”) plays Sandra, a German writer whose French husband, Samuel, has resettled their family in Grenoble, France. We learn that there have been tensions between the two — jealousies, disputes over money, anger over an accident that impaired the vision of their son, Daniel. So, when Samuel is discovered dead from a fall from the top floor of their chalet, it looks at first to be accidental, or possibly a suicide.
But then the police investigate it as a possible homicide — and Sandra is the sole suspect.
In this scene, Vincent (Swann Arlaud), an attorney and old friend of Sandra’s, discusses her options for defending herself from charges in the suspicious death of her husband:
In an interview with Vogue, Triet talked about her the character of Sandra, a novelist who borrows liberally from the lives of others, a trait that becomes a target for the prosecution. “She appropriates reality through her writing, and her mastery over narrative and fiction and language all coalesces to make her seem like a threat in the tribunal,” she said. “I was very interested in how, during the trial, all the things that constitute her as a person and a woman, her power and strength, become what she’s scrutinized for.”
But Triet was adamant to avoid the expectations of procedural films and courtroom dramas. Ambiguity runs throughout the film, and in an interview with Backstage, the former documentary filmmaker said she didn’t want to “play the game” of a genre legal thriller. “[I told Hüller,] ‘Don’t do some duplicity thing,'” Triet said. “In a lot of movies, you have … a woman who is like: I’m like this, but at the same time, I’m like that; but I could be like this. It’s an old-fashioned way of doing this kind of character. So I asked for her to just play it like a documentary. …
“She’s [not] trying to seduce the audience in the cinema, the audience at her trial, her lawyer, or the jury. That’s the most specific thing about her. … Nothing in her, despite the situation she’s in, is edging towards seduction of any kind. She’s not the perfect victim.”
“Anatomy of a Fall” is available via VOD, and will begin streaming on Hulu March 22.
“Barbie”
Making a movie based on an iconic doll represented a career-peak for Greta Gerwig, previously nominated as a writer or director for “Little Women” and “Lady Bird.” “You might as well take those big swings,” she told “60 Minutes.” I mean, literally, the worst thing that can happen is it’s terrible, (laughs) nobody likes it, and it bankrupts the studio.”
That would be the worst thing. Instead, “Barbie” went on to sell $1.4 billion in tickets worldwide, becoming Warner Brothers’ highest grossing film of all time.
Part of the film’s appeal was the way Gerwig and co-writer Noah Baumbach recognized both the aspirational appeal that Barbie dolls have for young girls, and critics who dismiss Barbie for projecting unrealistic images of women. “My feeling was people already know it’s a hornet’s nest. We cannot make something that pretends to be other than that,” Gerwig said.
In this dance scene featuring all the Barbies in Barbie Land, Barbie (Margot Robbie) is suddenly distracted by thoughts of death. Needle scratch!
The film’s comedy and tenderness comes when Barbie (Margot Robbie) leaves the feminist utopia known as Barbie Land and transforms into a “real” woman in order to explore the “real” world. There, she encounters Gloria (Oscar-nominee America Ferrara), a mother, wife and employee at Mattel, who performs this show-stopping monologue about the complexities, contradictions and social pressures women experience in a world where they must be all things to all people, and can’t just be:
Mattel, the toy maker behind the film, was surprisingly hands-off, according to Gerwig, leading her to “go for broke.”
Baumbach said, “One of the notes was, ‘On page 112, does a Mattel executive have to be shot?’ And I felt like that was exciting. We knew we were onto something.”
Watch “Greta Gerwig: The 60 Minutes Interview”:
“Barbie” is currently streaming on Max, and is available via VOD.
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“The Holdovers”
In director Alexander Payne’s “The Holdovers,” best actor nominee Paul Giamatti stars as classics professor Paul Hunham, who teaches at a New England prep school in 1970. As Christmas break approaches, Hunham finds himself responsible for babysitting a student who is not returning home for the holidays.
In this scene, Hunham has taken Angus (played by Dominic Sessa) to Boston, where he learns about Angus’ very complicated family history, which is torturing the boy. He offers the young man a lesson in self-awareness:
Payne very much wanted to replicate the feel of a 1970s character drama, as might have been directed by Hal Ashby (“The Last Detail”). “I was a little kid then and movies were really good then, and put a primary focus on human relationships and how messy life can be,” he told Vanity Fair.
He used techniques familiar from the period – slow dissolves, muted colors, zooms – and use period film company logos. [The copyright notice even spells out MCMLXXI.]
The film was bought by Focus Features after being screened privately at the 2022 Toronto Film Festival, but the company decided to wait a year to bring it out, which benefitted from the greater willingness for audiences to return to movie theaters in 2023. Payne told Vanity Fair he thought it was the right approach: “The thing, too, that I really insist on for a movie like this being in theaters is an audience. It’s not so much seeing the movie big, but it’s the presence of your fellow audience members, and having that community experience, especially with a comedy. A movie is really not complete without an audience. What finishes a movie is not the color timing or the final mix, but rather the presence of an audience.”
The response from many is that “The Holdovers” is a perfect Christmas movie. Payne bristled at that characterization: “I’m not trying to be disingenuous here. I just don’t see it as a Christmas movie. It’s a movie that could take place only at Christmas because of the nature of it, and it’s melancholy, in that, here are these boys who have nowhere to go at a time where you’re supposed to be with your family. Automatically, there’s a melancholy backdrop to it. The lovely part is how the three main characters find a way to be together during this time where they really should be with family. Within all of that, it just seems like a Christmas movie formula, but I just didn’t see it that way. I’m reading some early reviews like, ‘Oh, people will watch this every Christmas.’ I’m like, ‘Really? Great.’ But I didn’t think about that.”
“The Holdovers” is streaming on Peacock, and is available via VOD.
More on “The Holdovers”:
“Killers of the Flower Moon”
In the late 19th century, tribe members of the Osage Nation were herded onto a region of the Oklahoma Territory, rocky and infertile land deemed to be of little value — until it was discovered to contain some of the largest oil deposits in the United States. By the early 20th century the Osage were the richest people per capita in the world. Such wealth couldn’t fail to attract the attention of wolves in sheep’s clothing.
David Grann’s 2017 bestseller, “Killers of the Flower Moon,” told the story of the murder spree, and of the investigation by federal agents to brings the killers to justice. In tackling this story, director Martin Scorsese changed the focus from the FBI to that of an Osage woman, Mollie (played by best actress nominee Lily Gladstone) and her marriage to Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio). Many of Mollie’s family members had died either under mysterious or violent circumstances – and she may be next.
And it’s Ernest who is administering the slow-acting poison.
Scorsese told “Sunday Morning,” “The heart of the entire situation is love, the trust that goes with love, and then this extraordinary betrayal, and still [be] loving. Now, how do we do that?”
In this scene, Ernest receives a visit from a federal agent (Jesse Plemons) investigating the mysterious deaths of Osage, including family members of his wife, Mollie:
In an interview with “CBS Mornings,” Scorsese said, “What interested me in this story is that it wasn’t one specific massacre. It wasn’t one specific event. This is something more insidious. This is something that comes from the inside and it grows around you like a curse, or kind of a virus, or cancer. And the cancer is the settlers, the outsiders, the European Americans.”
Scorsese said the entire production worked to treat the Osage people’s history and story honestly. To that end, he hired as many Osage as possible, both in front of and behind the camera. “You deal with Native Americans and Indigenous people, you gotta make sure everything we do, everything we do, is as authentic, as accurate, or at least as reasonably accurate from what can be remembered, as possible, and respectful,” he told “Sunday Morning.”
“Killers of the Flower Moon” is streaming on Apple TV+, and is available on VOD.
More on “Killers of the Flower Moon”:
“Maestro”
In addition to co-producing, directing and co-writing, Bradley Cooper starred in this biography of conductor-composer Leonard Bernstein, who from the age of 25 was a boldfaced name in American culture — longtime conductor of the New York Philharmonic, TV personality, and creator of symphonies and landmark musicals, including “West Side Story” and “Candide.”
The film examines Bernstein’s musical prowess, as in this scene which recreates Bernstein’s performance of Mahler’s Second Symphony at England’s Ely Cathedral. “It took me six-and-a-half years of working on it for six minutes and 25 seconds of music,” he told “Sunday Morning.” “I’ve never experienced anything like it in my life, and I may never again.”
But the film focuses more on the relationship between Bernstein and his wife, Felicia Montealegre (played by best actress nominee Carey Mulligan). The film is both rhapsodic and ice cold in examining their marriage and the affection they share, their love story complicated by the fact that Bernstein also had affairs with men. “That’s the reason why I wanted to make the movie … I believe that they found each other’s soulmates,” Cooper told “CBS Mornings,” adding that he believes their relationship was both “complicated” and “universal.”
Though he’d never met Bernstein himself, Cooper reflected on the process of immersing himself in his life and music to become him: “It’s hard to even articulate … he was with me certainly, throughout the entire time. His energy has somehow found its way to me that I really do feel like I know him.”
“Maestro” is currently streaming on Netflix.
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“Oppenheimer”
Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” is a grand vision, filmed with IMAX cameras, of the life of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who conceived and constructed the first atomic bomb. The film is nominated for 13 Academy Awards, including best picture, director, adapted screenplay, cinematography, editing, sound, original score, production design, costume design, makeup and hairstyling, and for its performances by Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, and Robert Downey Jr.
The epic story traces Oppenheimer’s life from his early studies in quantum physics – seeing in his mind’s eye the power that could be unleashed on a molecular level – to martialing the army of scientists and engineers required to build the bomb test site at Los Alamos.
“I view Oppenheimer as the most important person who ever lived,” Nolan told “Sunday Morning.” “Oppenheimer’s story is one of the biggest stories imaginable. … By unleashing atomic power, he gave us the power to destroy ourselves that we never had before, and that changes the human equation.”
In this scene, Oppenheimer (best actor nominee Cillian Murphy), in a bunker more than five miles from the test site, prepares for the world’s first detonation of a nuclear bomb. (“These things are hard on your heart,” he says.) Music by Oscar-nominee Ludwig Göransson:
In this Variety video featurette, Nolan and his team describe how practical, in-camera methods, rather than CGI, were employed for the effects of “Oppenheimer,” including for the atomic test at Los Alamos:
As Nolan explained to “CBS Mornings,” “We knew the Trinity test had to be the showstopper. It’s the key thing in the film. It had to have incredible beauty and incredible threat. It’s difficult to make computer graphics threatening.”
In this scene, following the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that ended the war, Oppenheimer speaks to the staff at Los Alamos about their achievement. In the midst of a seeming warping of space, in his mind’s eye he sees the horror unleashed by nuclear weapons: radiation, fallout, an evaporation of human beings – the consequences of their invention.
That scene features a shot of a woman’s face melting away. The actress is Nolan’s own daughter. “For me, yes, it was about looking to people you love, looking to the things that you love, the world around you that you love and value and imagining the destructive force of these weapons,” Nolan told “CBS Mornings.”
As Nolan told “Sunday Morning,” “Oppenheimer was at the center of a set of events that changed the world forever. Like it or not, we still live in his world, and we always will.”
“Oppenheimer” is streaming on Peacock and is available via VOD.
More on the making of “Oppenheimer”:
“Past Lives”
In Celine Song’s “Past Lives,” Greta Lee stars as Nora, a playwright who left Korea as a child. Now living in New York, Nora reunites with her Korean childhood crush, complicating her relationship with her partner.
In this scene, Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) meets up with Nora (Greta Lee) in New York City:
In this scene at an East Village bar, amid awkward silences and language barriers, Hae Sung, meeting with Nora and her husband, Arthur (John Magaro), ponders what his life might have been like if Nora had not left Seoul:
Song told The Hollywood Reporter the film was inspired by a real-life meeting between her childhood sweetheart from South Korea and her American husband. “There’s a bar in the East Village that I ended up in because I was living around there. And I was sitting there with my childhood sweetheart who flew in from Korea, now he is a friend, who only really speaks Korean, and my American husband who only really speaks English. And I was sitting there trying to translate these two guys trying to communicate, and I felt like something really special was going on. I was sort of becoming a bridge or a portal between these two men and also, in some ways, these two worlds of language and culture. Something about that moment really sparked something, and then it made me really feel like maybe this could be a movie. So it started from a pretty real thing that happened to me. But then, of course, in making the movie, it comes from a subjective experience that sparks this whole story into an object, which is a script, and then from there, the movie. …
“My professor once said that if you make something that you yourself are so excited and enthusiastic about or something that you love yourself so much, that you believe in and you think is true, because you’re a person and not an alien, there are going to be other people who also connect to it as fellow humans. And I think that’s ultimately the thing that guides me through everything that I make. At the end of the day, I know that my standard for what is bulls*** and what is true is going to be higher when it comes to the things that I make. There’s no critic who could be better at knowing when I’m bulls***ting. So, in that sense, the only thing that I’m pursuing is something that I can be interested in or I can think is honest. Once you do that, you just hope that other people also see that and see that it’s not just a story of one person, but it’s also a story that can exist in their own lives, too. That’s what I can do as an artist.”
Song, who was a writer for the series “The Wheel of Time,” marked her debut as a feature film writer-director with “Past Lives.” She was Oscar-nominated for best original screenplay, received Golden Globe nominations for direction and script, and won the Film Independent Spirit Award for best director. She also won the Directors Guild America Award for first-time feature film. After its premiere at last year’s Sundance Film Festival, “Past Lives” won best film from the National Society of Film Critics.
Greta Lee, who was nominated for best actress by the Critics Choice Awards, said the movie has changed her life in ways she could only imagine before. “I’m having this experience now, where I’m connecting with audiences,” Lee told “Sunday Morning.” “I’m at the grocery store, I’m, like, picking out my cereal. And someone will stop me and say, ‘Oh, my gosh, I saw ‘Past Lives,’ and start to cry. And to receive all of that, yes, is entirely overwhelming.”
When asked if the film’s success has made her rethink her future, Lee – who has till now primarily appeared on TV and on stage in supporting roles – replied, “Yes, which is so exhausting at this point in my life! I had already made peace with, maybe, the fact that I wasn’t gonna have an opportunity like this, that it just wasn’t in the cards for me. And then, this happened. To have all of this happen has completely ruined everything!”
“Past Lives” is available via VOD.
“Poor Things”
Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos (whose eccentric, black-as-pitch comedies include “Dogtooth” and “The Lobster”), “Poor Things” is a “Frankenstein”-like tale of a mad scientist who plants the brain of a fetus inside the body of a woman dead of suicide (played by best actress nominee Emma Stone). Revived from the dead and possessing a new brain, Bella must learn from scratch such things as walking, talking, and having wanton sex. But she is also learning about empowerment, the cruelty of mankind, the boundaries of social behavior, and the vices of men.
In this celebrated scene, Bella revels in the joys of dance (though her coordination is not quite up to the task). Duncan (supporting actor nominee Mark Ruffalo), a cad pursuing Bella, tries to keep pace:
Stone’s performance in particular has been praised for the sheer uninhibitedness, which came about through her comfortable relationship with Lanthimos. The two had worked together on “The Favourite,” and have collaborated on other projects since.
Lanthimos told “Sunday Morning” he breaks down inhibitions by having cast members play theater games in rehearsals rather than just read through the script. And he likes to keep his set quiet. For instance, he never yells Action. “We like to ease into things,” he said. “In general, we try to create this atmosphere which doesn’t create tension.”
Lanthimos acquired the rights to Alasdair Gray’s novel “Poor Things” years ago, but when he tried to sell the idea to studios, he got the cold shoulder. So, then he made a slightly more conventional film, “The Favourite,” about the political and sexual battles behind the doors of Queen Anne’s palace. It earned 10 Academy Award nominations, and won the best actress Oscar for Olivia Colman. So, when asked about a follow-up film, Lanthimos put “Poor Things” in motion.
One of the nominated production designers, James Price, said that when he was hired onto the film, Lanthimos didn’t quite know what he wanted. “He wanted it to feel like a ’30s movie, like it was made in the ’30s … made with today’s technologies, and techniques from a bygone age,” he told Below the Line. “So you could use everything from miniatures and cutouts to LED screens. …
“He believed that by doing that, and using techniques – try to stay away from CG and green screen as much as possible – he believed that we would come up with a new aesthetic, so it wouldn’t be a pastiche of what it had been before,” Price said.
Price and fellow production designer Shona Heath, and set decorator Zsuzsa Mihalek, are nominated for best production design. This featurette from Searchlight Pictures illustrates some of their work:
“Poor Things” is streaming on Hulu, and is available via VOD.
More on “Poor Things”:
“The Zone of Interest”
British director Jonathan Glazer has used formalism to tells stories with remarkably subversive emotional impact, such as the 2014 science fiction tale “Under the Skin,” featuring Scarlett Johansson as an alien creature who abducts humans for some unexplained purpose. For “The Zone of Interest,” loosely based on Martin Amis’ novel, Glazer examines the home life of a Nazi officer and his family, ensconced in a comfortable villa with a beautiful garden. The domestic tranquility masks the horrors that are taking place unseen just beyond the garden walls: the extermination of Jews in Auschwitz.
Rudolf Höss (Christian Friedel), the commandant at Auschwitz, who had been helping develop more efficient ways to exterminate humans, is climbing up the ladder in the military, and is in line for a promotion. But his wife, Hedwig (Sandra Hüller, who is also nominated for “Anatomy of a Fall”), does not want to leave the home and garden into which she has put so much effort. She loves her home, and eagerly shows off her vegetables and flowers that are carefully tended to by Polish prisoners, who fertilize her garden with ashes.
To watch a trailer for “The Zone of Interest” click on the video player below:
Glazer’s film is one of the most emotionally-gripping films of 2023, all the more so because all artifice has been drained way. Unlike most dramas set during the Holocaust, which depict its violence and inhumanity, “The Zone of Interest” works precisely because most of its horrors remain out of view, mostly only evident through the dense soundtrack, in which we hear screams, gunfire, guard dogs, and the churning work of furnaces, while watching the Höss children at play and Frau Höss casually directing her household staff in preparations for a lawn party.
The lesson from the film: an entire swath of German society operated with complete indifference to what was happening within Auschwitz. Their quiet acceptance was complicity. And that same complicity can be seen today when social or political turmoil threatens to disturb people’s sense of security and comfort.
This fascinating, in-depth video featurette from the motion picture academy explores the making of the film. Glazer describes his method of filming using multiple hidden cameras [creating what he calls ” ‘Big Brother’ in a Nazi house”]; and the evocative use of sound to portray, but not show, the horrors of the extermination camp just over the Höss’ garden walls. [The film’s sound designers are also nominated for an Oscar.]
One of the film’s characters, Aleksandra, who worked in the Höss household, is based on a real woman whom Glazer met when she was 90 years old, who told stories of her time during the war helping the Polish underground, for example by hiding food for prison labor under cover of darkness, and transmitting messages smuggled out of the camp. [The film is dedicated to her memory.]
“There was a time when I really personally didn’t want to continue with this project,” Glazer told the Academy. “because of its perpetual darkness, of looking for something other than that. Because there is something other than that in human nature, even in these moments, in these contexts, there is goodness. [Aleksandra] presented that to me in a way that I felt blessed by, to be frank. And she was a force.”
The film won the Grand Pix at the Cannes Film Festival, and the BAFTA for outstanding British film of the year. In addition to best picture, “The Zone of Interest” is also nominated for best director, international film, and adapted screenplay.
“The Zone of Interest” is available via VOD.
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