Sunday was the
76th Bafta Film Awards, with a new venue at the Royal Festival Hall and a new host in the charmingly British Richard E Grant (with contributions from a lively but distracting Allison Hammond). It was a star-packed event, with a glittering audience of nominees and special guests, which allowed for the usual offbeat presenting duos (Eugene Levy with Cynthia Erivo?). Among the winners, the biggest surprise was Austin Butler being named Best Actor, which bodes well for Oscar night. And Barry Keoghan was a popular surprise winner for Supporting Actor, although perhaps Ke Huy Quan has the edge for Oscar. And then there was
All Quiet on the Western Front with its unprecedented seven huge wins, including film and director over
Tár and
Everything Everywhere All at Once, top nominees that had to settle for just one prize each. But the issue of inclusivity still needs to be discussed, when awards like these (and the London Critics' Circle) opt for overwhelmingly white winners even with a superbly diverse set of nominees.
As for the movies I've been watching, the biggest one was a very late press screening of Elizabeth Banks' crazed action thriller
Cocaine Bear, a riotously grisly throwback to '80s nature-gone-wild mayhem movies. It took me awhile to catch up with Hirokazu Kore-eda's
Broker, another wonderfully humane drama that sympathises with people on the moral fringes.
How to Blow Up a Pipeline is an entertaining caper adventure about a group of young people taking on Big Oil. The twisty antics kind of overshadow the serious themes, but it's good fun. From Argentina,
Wandering Heart is a superbly naturalistic drama about a man trying to pull himself together after a breakup. And the Oscar-nominated doc
A House Made of Splinters highlights a situation in war-torn Ukraine with a hugely resonant kick.
This coming week I'll be watching Michael B Jordan's
Creed III, Lily James in
What's Love Got to Do With It, Michael Shannon in
A Little White Lie, the Aussie drama
Lonesome and the French drama
Love According to Dalva, plus a couple of theatre shows.
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