⭐️ Happy (post-Oscars) Monday!
Today’s recommendation is for another big winner this weekend — taking home Best Feature at the Independent Spirit Awards — that will be streaming on Prime Video tomorrow.
Plus, a recap and my thoughts on this year’s Oscars. Spoiler: I’m freaking out about Parasite’s sweep!
Today's movie //
Streaming on Prime Video
The Farewell
After finding out her grandmother — who she affectionately calls Nai Nai (Zhao Shuzhen) is terminally ill, Chinese-American writer Billie (Awkwafina) travels back home to China to say goodbye. Instead, though, her family hides the diagnoses from Nai Nai and creates an elaborate fake wedding to keep it from her. [Trailer]
Why you should watch it: The Farewell is a movie of dichotomies — Chinese culture and American culture, parents and children, mourning and celebrating, youth and old age — that appropriately straddles the line between drama and comedy. Even during dramatic moments, it seems that there’s always something fun going on in the background to remind us that everything in the movie is based in love.
It’s so difficult to make the exploration of emotions and family strife entertaining, but director Lulu Wang was able to pull it off by avoiding the melodramatics and instead focusing on the characters, their experiences, and their relationships to each other. [Full review]
Directed by Lulu Wang
Runtime 100 mins
Year 2019
Genre Comedy Drama
📺 Buy or rent: Prime Video // iTunes // YouTube
State of the (Oscar) race
2020 Oscars wrap-up
The 92nd Academy Awards ended with one of the greatest Best Picture wins, in my opinion, of all time.
The actual telecast felt long at some points, especially as it became more clear that the winners were going to be as expected. However, I literally said “these winners are boring” right before Best Director was announced. Talk about speaking too soon.
Check out my full take on this year’s awards.
Here’s a quick recap of what happened:
Parasite was the big winner of the night winning four awards including a history-making win in Best Picture. After 92 years, it is the first film not in English to win. It’s also just the second time this decade my favorite movie of the year won.Most notably, though, director Bong Joon-ho pulled off a massive upset in Best Director over 1917’s Sam Mendes.
Despite coming in with the best track record, 1917 lost in every major category. It still took home three awards for Sound Mixing, Cinematography, and Visual Effects.
Laura Dern (Marriage Story), Brad Pitt (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood), Joaquin Phoenix (Joker), and Renee Zellweger (Judy) completed their sweeps of award season. They all won the Golden Globe, Critics Choice award, Screen Actors Guild award, BAFTA award and now the Oscar in their respective categories.
Netflix had a bad night with just two wins. Marriage Story took home one award for Dern and American Factory won Best Documentary Feature. Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman didn’t win a single award.
Greta Gerwig (Little Women) losing Best Adapted Screenplay to Taika Waititi (Jojo Rabbit) was historical in a good and bad way. Waititi becomes the first Indigenous person to ever win a competitive Oscar (yay!). However, the 2010s now become the only decade to never have a female screenwriter win an Oscar (boo!).
Hildur Guðnadóttir is just the third woman to win Best Original Score. She and Phoenix were Joker’s only two wins of the night.
Leaderboard: Parasite — 4️⃣ // 1917 — 3️⃣// Ford v Ferrari, Joker, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood — 2️⃣
Thanks for reading! Do something nice for someone this week.
See you next Thursday!
Karl (@karl_delo)