, we take a look at this year's nominees and the stories they tell with the help of one of the best film critics working today who's also the awards columnist for Deadline.

He's Pete Hammond, this week on "Story in the Public Square."

(inspirational music) (inspirational music continues) (inspirational music continues) Hello and welcome to a "Story of the Public Square" where storytelling meets public affairs.

I'm Jim Ludes from the Pell Center at Salve Regina University.

- And I'm G. Wayne Miller, also with Salve's Pell Center.

- This week we're joined by a great friend of the show, Pete Hammond is the awards columnist and chief film critic for Deadline and our ticket to understanding this Year's Academy Award nominees.

He joins us from California.

Pete, welcome back.

- Hi.

Happy to be back.

- Well, it's great to have you back on the show and to get your thoughts about this year's best films and performances.

And we wanna note right out of the gate that the Academy Awards will broadcast on Sunday, March 12th, 2023 at 8:00 PM Eastern, 5:00 PM Pacific on ABC.

So we've got a ton of things that we want to talk to you about, so I'm just gonna dive right in.

Before we talk about the films though, how is the film industry doing?

It seems like it was as impacted as anything by the lingering effects of the pandemic.

What was 2022 like for Hollywood and the film industry?

- Well, I think one movie changed everything in terms of optimism that maybe the theatrical movie going experience would be coming back.

And there was evidence of it just recently at the Oscar nominees lunch where I was where Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise also were and Steven Spielberg was caught on camera telling Tom Cruise, "You saved Hollywood and maybe the future of theatrical movies."

It was quite the moment, but I think a bit of the truth, "Top Gun: Maverick" really showed you could bring audiences back in a big way.

It became Tom Cruise's biggest movie ever.

Well over a billion dollars and people kept coming back there and then by the end of the year, "Avatar: The Way of Water" even topped that and proved that with the right movies and things, we could get audiences back into theaters.

I think that was the significant development.

It's still very difficult though with these so-called Oscar movies, these smaller movies like "Tar" and "Banshees of Inisherin" and things to really get that adult audience back and keep them from maybe watching these movies on their couch at home, get them back in the theater which is what this Oscar season might be able to help because people are talking about these movies now, there's curiosity and we want people to see 'em.

And you can see them on VOD, video on demand and streamers and different ways.

But the theatrical experience is what Hollywood's concerned with and they're hoping to use the Oscars now to really ramp that up as we go into 2023 and get back to some sense of normalcy.

I do notice though, that here in town, the Oscars season, the campaigning, everything, is back in person, all the award shows and things and there aren't so many Covid restrictions anymore on it.

So there is a difference, we are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, we hope.

- So Pete, we're gonna get into the specifics of the Best Picture nominations in just a moment but what is your overall assessment of the field this year?

- I think considering when you talk to filmmakers, every one of these movies for the most part had to be made under these tight restrictions of Covid production where one person who might test positive can shut down a whole production.

It is a very tricky proposition for many of these movies.

And on the other hand, I mentioned "Top Gun," you know, "Top Gun" had five different release dates due to the pandemic and they kept moving it.

And so there was those problems too of just getting these movies out into theaters.

But I definitely feel this lineup of 10 is pretty remarkable considering the mountains some of these people had to climb.

And it's a varied list of the Best Picture nominations.

For the first time in a long time, we have some blockbuster audience pleasing movies in there like "Avatar" and "Top Gun."

"Elvis" was a very big box office hit in the summer for Warner Brothers and we have that.

And even a movie, a smaller movie from an independent like A24 called "Everything Everywhere All at Once" made over a hundred million dollars and really brought an audience that wasn't going to movies into theaters when that opened all the way back last spring and has been the leading film here in terms of nominations.

And then there are just the normal, kind of really good movies from great filmmakers, I think on the list, such as Martin McDonagh's "Banshees of Inisherin," the return of Todd Field after 16 years to filmmaking with "Tar" with Cate Blanchett in that movie.

And I think the list is good.

There's a really good film called "Triangle of Sadness" that I'm glad to see got in.

Last May it won the Palme d'Or at Cannes and has come all the way to getting a Best Picture nomination here at the Oscars.

Then there is, every now and then you get an international movie, a foreign language film and we have "All Quiet on the Western Front" in the race this year for Netflix.

I don't think they were expecting this would do as well as it did at the Oscars with nine nominations.

It's up for International Film but it's also up for Best Picture and that's pretty remarkable for this movie as well.

And if that were to win, it would make Oscar history because no remake of a Best Picture winner has ever gone on to win.

And the original "All Quiet on the Western Front" won Best Picture in 1930.

So it's a real mixed bag, but it's an interesting thing and hopefully it'll get an audience ratings for the Oscars this year as well.

- Well, let's go through some of these in a little bit more detail.

So you've mentioned "All Quiet on the Western Front."

I watched this and I have an affinity for war films.

This is a decidedly anti-war film and it is graphic, it is violent, but it is incredibly powerful.

- Yes, "All Quiet on the Western Front," for the first time tells the story from the German point of view.

So it is all in German.

It comes from a director Edward Berger, who I just interviewed a couple of days ago.

He is busy making another movie in Rome right now so he's had little time to get to LA but caught up with him.

And this movie was made for under $20 million.

So you say you've seen it, that's extraordinary.

- [Jim] The battle scenes alone seem like this should have been a much bigger budget than that.

- [Pete] Huge.

I said it looks like a hundred million.

And also I thought the battle scenes were uncommonly realistic in this film.

You see these fires and things on the battlefield.

I haven't quite felt myself thrust in to the center of the front lines as it were in a long time in a war movie like this and we've seen so many war movies.

Not as many set in World War I as in World War II.

And this one obviously is set in World War I and is, from the book obviously, the Erich Remarque book, the ultimate anti-war story.

But it has real resonance right now and Edward Berger feels like he didn't know this when he was making the movie that the war in Ukraine would bring the war in Europe back here and back into a situation we haven't been in in a long time and that uncommonly you look at his film and you look at the images of Ukraine on the news and you see a lot in common there and a lot in common about the nature of war and all the tragedy that goes with that.

- So we're going in alphabetical order here.

"Avatar: The Way of Water" from Disney.

And we could have a whole separate conversation about Disney, all the changes they're going through.

This is a long awaited film from James Cameron.

And finally there it is.

Talk about that one.

- Well, it's been a long awaited series of films because James Cameron said about following the success of the 2009 movie "Avatar," which by the way, was nominated for Best Picture also at the Oscars and several others and won three technical awards.

But it has been 13 years before we've gotten the sequel.

The first sequel, because this is the first of four sequels coming for this movie.

Or they were hoping to come for this movie, hoping that people remembered the film and big enough numbers because James Cameron said that this needs to be one of the top four grossing movies of all time to break even.

That's a tall order to fill and guess what?

It is.

So (laughs) we are going to get 3, 4, and 5.

In fact, I was talking to the producer, Jon Landau, and it's nominated for Best Picture obviously, he's nominated and they have already completed a principle photography on 3 which will be out in two years and even part of 4.

All the actors and everybody have read the scripts for all of the four sequels as well so they know exactly where the story's going and that's interesting.

So this is a huge project, but because of the success of this movie, not only at the box office but here at the Academy Awards as well, they are going ahead and Disney is thrilled because they have a new franchise which basically they bought into because they bought 20th Century Fox, merged it, this original movie obviously is 20th Century Fox.

And so this joins their Marvel franchise and the Star Wars franchise of George Lucas.

And this is very important for Disney.

You were talking about Disney, we could go on and on but at this moment in time they are thrilled to have "Avatar" there.

And so this huge blockbuster will really help the Oscars just in interest from the audience and seeing it in 3D, it's a magnificent movie.

It really is beautiful.

And obviously people can't get enough of Pandora and the Na'vi and the whole world that James Cameron created.

The guy's a genius.

He now will have three of the top four grossing movies of all time.

The two "Avatars" and "Titanic," which was just re-released, talking about Best Picture Oscar winners, just re-released in 3D as we speak.

- And so next on our list is "The Banshees of Inisherin," which is about as different from "Avatar" as we could get I suppose.

(Pete laughs) But this was a powerful story about friendships collapse, but also about undiagnosed mental illness, I think.

- Oh yeah, this is hard to describe this movie, but it is essentially centered on the friendship of two men here in Ireland.

And this is a return for Martin McDonagh who wrote and directed it to his Irish roots.

He's done "Three Billboards Outside of Billings, Montana," and "Seven Psychopaths" and "In Bruges," other movies not set in Ireland even though he's English but he started out writing these Irish stories.

This is a return to that area.

Beautifully made right there on location.

And it is about this friendship, Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleason, longtime friends in this village there.

One day, Brendan Gleason says to Colin Farrell's character, "I don't wanna be your friend anymore.

I don't like you, I don't like you anymore."

And it's this thing going on between these two and it's almost very sad to watch it and then he says, "Stay away from me."

and he says, "Don't come near me anymore and I will cut off my fingers one at a time unless you listen to me."

And boy does he do it.

I mean, I can't think of another plot like that but it is dealing with mental illness in many ways.

Barry Keoghan, who also is in the movie plays a young man in town who is suffering from some problems as well and really loves Colin Farrell's sister here, played beautifully by Kerry Condon.

All of them have been nominated for Academy Awards, all these actors and they're all terrific in it.

It's got that Martin McDonagh touch, you know, he's a great playwright.

He's done several plays and things and he really gets the essence of humanity in a oddball kind of way, not an expected way.

And also this has irresistible donkey named Jenny.

(all laugh) And I have to say, this has been a great year for donkeys in movies because we not only have Jenny here, we have the star of "EO," which is nominated for Best International Film from Poland, which is all about a donkey.

We have another Best Picture nominee we'll talk about, "Triangle of Sadness," which has a scene involving a donkey as well.

And a wonderful movie that's not nominated for anything from France that I just loved called "My Donkey, My Lover & I," which I highly recommend if you can find it.

(laughs) - [Jim] It's the year of the donkey.

(all laugh) - Yeah.

- So that brings us to "Elvis" and you were talking about the acting and the acting in "Elvis" is phenomenal as well, with Tom Hanks and especially Austin Butler, who, I mean he was Elvis, there's just no other way to describe it.

Extraordinary performance and for a relatively young actor.

Anyway, talk about "Elvis."

- Yeah, well, Austin Butler seems to be still Elvis 'cause he's still talking like Elvis when you see him around town.

He's a very nice guy.

Relatively new, like you say, he was one of the Manson clan in "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" and actually was a Disney channel, Nickelodeon star.

That's how he broke into the business doing those kind of shows like "iCarly" and things.

He's terrific here.

And want to know something interesting?

Elvis Presley was never nominated for an Oscar and neither was Marilyn Monroe.

And we have Ana de Armas nominated for Marilyn Monroe in "Blonde" this year.

And Elvis and Marilyn are going to the Oscars for the first time in a kind of weird way.

But the Academy can't resist stories about people like themselves, famous people.

People they recognize, and Elvis coming from the master from Australia, Baz Luhrmann, of course, "Mulan Rouge!"

and "The Gatsby" and the movie "Australia" and "Romeo + Juliet," has done all these kind of big scale movies that we instantly know what they're about just by the titles.

And so we knew this one "Elvis," but he took a different tact and I thought it really worked in making it about Elvis and the story between him and his manager, the man who discovered him, Colonel Tom Parker, who was anything but a colonel in real life.

But he took that honorary title for helping somebody.

Played by Tom Hanks, who got a lot of criticism for his performance because of his accent, which is kind of a weird accent.

But Tom Parker was from the Netherlands and he reinvented himself here.

And if you listen to him at different points in his life, he did have those weird accents.

I thought Hanks was really terrific in it.

I'm on the pro Hanks side here, but he didn't get nominated.

The movie is really well made.

They did it, again, the pandemic, talk about a pandemic affecting a movie.

Most famously Tom Hanks had to announce he had Covid.

The first celebrity, right?

We heard about that.

Completely shut down this production before it got going.

They thought they might not even get it up again.

They got it going again and got through it.

And now here they are, eight Academy Award nominations including Best Picture and Actor.

And I think he's got a good shot here in the acting category.

- Let's talk about "Everything Everywhere All at once."

Speaking of films that are hard to categorize.

- (chuckles) Yes, this movie showed up in the spring at South by Southwest Film Festival which is not considered a launching pad if you want an Oscar nominated film.

It's more commercial oriented and it's earlier in the year.

It came in and critics loved it immediately.

It became a surprise hit, a big surprise hit.

And it is a very hard movie to categorize, in some ways it looks like a Jackie Chan movie.

There's a lot of fighting and different things going on but it is about family and it's about this wonderful kind of family dealing with their tax problems and all of that.

And the person at the IRS, Jamie Lee Curtis got her first Oscar nomination for this too but this is a primarily Asian cast, all Asian cast.

Wonderful Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan, one of the great stories of this Oscar season.

He's going to win Best Supporting Actor.

He was out of the business in terms of acting after being successful as a 12 year old in "The Goonies" and in "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom."

You know, basically gave it up, got this role years, years, decades later and look at him now.

I mean, all these stories here.

Stephanie Hsu is nominated as well.

It is a movie that may be not for everybody, they may not be able to follow it, but I'll tell you, I saw it in the theater when it came out and the audience was wrapped and it was a mainly younger audience, it really spoke to them.

Dealing with multiverse where they're traveling to different versions of themselves, that's the complication here from a couple of directors, young directors we affectionately call the Daniels 'cause both their first names are Daniel, Scheinert and Kwan.

But it's the unique one here and it is leading in terms of nominations and many people are favoring it to win.

- So talk about "The Fabelmans," a Spielberg film and a fictionalized account essentially, of his childhood and coming of age.

- Hey Pete, I'm gonna note too that we got five more films to hit in about six minutes, so.

- Will do.

(all laugh) "The Fabelmans" is Steven Spielberg's movie that he waited his whole life to make.

It's his story, even though the names on screen aren't him.

Michelle Williams plays essentially his mother.

She's nominated.

It is his most personal film ever.

He co-wrote it.

First time he's got a writing nomination.

He's so proud of that.

I talked to him the other day.

He said, "Look at that.

I've got a writing nomination."

But it really is telling his story growing up in Arizona and wanting to become a filmmaker and how that happened.

But it really is about family and diving into the family story.

And so it goes in unexpected ways.

And it came out of the gate at the Toronto Film Festival winning that audience award and it's up for Best Picture and several other Oscars as well.

And Steven Spielberg's no stranger to Oscars.

He already has three but maybe he'll get another one.

Who knows.

- All of these films had such real emotional impact for me.

One that I was surprised by was "Tar."

A deep dive into the world of philharmonics.

- Right.

Lydia Tar, this is such a character-driven movie for Cate Blanchett who's just impossible to give a bad performance as anything, but she just dominates this as Lydia Tar, this uber successful conductor and composer.

And she just has the world until she runs into cancel culture and gets in trouble and this is really about her downfall, as it were.

And it brought Todd Field back.

You might know "In The Bedroom," movies like "Little Children."

But that was 16 years ago, his last movie.

And he came back and has taken all this time and "Tar" has won several critics groups awards for Best Picture.

It is not a success at the box office, but definitely one I would say Cate Blanchett's a front runner in actress for this.

- So "Top Gun: Maverick," saw this in the theater and literally was blown away.

I mean, it was just an exciting film.

The cinematography was amazing.

Tell us about "Top Gun: Maverick."

- You know Pete, we both were saying we went back to the movies for the first time to see "Top Gun: Maverick," first time back in the theater.

- And that's what I told you at the top of this that this has saved Hollywood (chuckles) and theaters 'cause you are a prime example of that.

But 36 years later, after the first "Top Gun" movie, there's only been one previous "Top Gun" movie with Tom Cruise.

He revisits his character.

Along the way they wanted to do it and it never happened and all of that, it just came together but what it has is emotion.

A strong emotional hook.

Val Kilmer, despite his cancer and unable to really talk is back in it as well in a very poignant scene.

But the action, the way this movie has improved the technology from 36 years ago with "Top Gun."

The story, no one was expecting it to be like this, to be a Best Picture nominee.

In fact, Jerry Bruckheimer who's produced blockbuster after blockbuster is going to the Oscars for the first time.

This is his first nomination as a producer.

Unbelievable.

- That's super.

All right, so "Triangle of Sadness."

My wife and I watched this and I described this as "Lord of the Flies" meets "Below Deck."

- (laughs) It is.

I saw this in Cannes.

It premiered in Cannes in May.

And I gotta tell you, I have never laughed so much in a theater in a long time at certain scenes.

There's a scene on a boat in the middle of a storm where all the people in this fancy restaurant get very sick shall we say, that's right out of "Monty Python" but the tone of the movie goes from kind of a satire about the modeling industry to this very rich yacht with all these people to a desert island with these survivors basically and the tables turned in terms of class.

The toilet manager in this movie becomes key.

(laughs) That's all I can say.

The wonderful Dolly De Leon here steals it but Ruben Ostlund who did "Force Majeure" and "The Square" is making his English language debut.

He's Swedish.

And I really think he did great.

When I wrote about it, I said Billy Wilder would've loved this movie.

The satirical level of it is unmatched.

I'm happy to see it among the group here.

- And so the last one is "Women Talking."

Briefly give us that take, give us your take.

- Well, I think the title says it all.

It is women talking.

(laughs) And I thought it was magnificent.

Sarah Polley wrote and directed it.

It's about a group of Mennonite women set in around 2010.

There's been an act of sexual violence against them and the men have left to actually go take care of the guy and protect the guy, or the guys that did it.

It's based on a true story that happened in Bolivia, but it's taken to a further degree.

These women meet in a barn and decide will they stay, will they go, will they fight?

What will they do together as a unit?

And it really deals with a lot of interesting issues.

Magnificent ensemble cast here.

And it was produced as well as has a featured role in it for Frances McDormand, who's up for an Oscar here as Best Picture.

This movie, "Women Talking," you know, the title really, like I said, says it all.

- Pete, we could talk to you for another 30 minutes or three days about this stuff.

We wanna know- - Okay, let's do it.

- I know, right?

(all laugh) The Academy Awards will broadcast March 12th at 8:00 PM Eastern, 5:00 PM Pacific on ABC.

But that's all the time we have this week.

Pete, thank you so much for being with us.

You can find him at Deadline regularly.

But if you want to know more about "Store in the Public Square," you can find us at pellcenter.org where you can follow us on social media.

I'm Jim, that's Wayne.

We look forward to seeing you again next time for more "Story in the Public Square."

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