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Did 'Barbenheimer' dominate the Oscar nominations? It's complicated

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Did 'Barbenheimer' dominate the Oscar nominations? It's complicated

Girl power may have bested atomic energy at the box office in last summer’s “Barbenheimer” showdown. But Tuesday’s Academy Award nominations morning flipped the script, with Christopher Nolan‘s “Oppenheimer” dominating the field of competition with 13 nominations while “Barbie” fell short of expectations with eight.

Forever linked in pop culture’s unlikeliest cinematic portmanteau, “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” were jointly credited with helping to boost the film industry out of its post-pandemic doldrums. As expected, Oscar voters rewarded each with best picture nominations, alongside a diverse pool of competition that ranged from Martin Scorsese‘s big-budget period epic “Killers of the Flower Moon” to smaller, more idiosyncratic fare like the searing Holocaust drama “The Zone of Interest” and the ’70s-set dramedy “The Holdovers.”

The kind of artistically ambitious, adult-oriented drama that has become as rare as uranium in today’s studio landscape, Nolan’s sweeping three-hour drama about the dawn of the nuclear age proved irresistible to Oscar voters, scoring Nolan his second directing nomination along with nods for lead actor Cillian Murphy, supporting actor Robert Downey Jr. and supporting actress Emily Blunt.

“Barbie,” last year’s biggest hit with $1.4 billion at the global box office, scored nods for supporting actress America Ferrera and supporting actor Ryan Gosling, who played Ken. But, in a pair of snubs that had many of the film’s ardent pink-clad fans seeing red, Margot Robbie, who played Barbie, missed the cut in the lead actress category, while director Greta Gerwig did not land a directing nod.

Yes, while the patriarchy may not exist in Barbie Land, here in reality, Ken was nominated but not Barbie.

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Still, coming in the wake of Hollywood’s bitter dual strike of writers and actors, which shut down the business for nearly six months last year, the film academy’s nominations provided a welcome reminder that 2023 was actually a strong year for movies, serving as a kind of collective pep talk for a weary industry.

The strong showing for Universal’s “Oppenheimer” comes after a string of years that saw Oscar voters favor smaller, quirkier fare like “Parasite,” “Nomadland,” “CODA” and “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”

Speaking by phone with The Times early Tuesday morning while readying his children for school, director Nolan — who has yet to notch a best picture win in his otherwise illustrious career — said the success of “Oppenheimer” proved audiences crave challenging stories on a big screen. After all, if a movie about a theoretical physicist can gross nearly $1 billion globally, who cares what the algorithms say?

Actor Cillian Murphy, left, and writer-director Christopher Nolan on the set of “Oppenheimer.” Both earned Oscar nominations.

(Melinda Sue Gordon / Universal Pictures)

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“I think there’s always a danger in assuming too much about what audiences want,” said Nolan, who also earned a screenplay nod for his work adapting the 2005 Oppenheimer biography “American Prometheus” by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. “I’ve always believed that when you’re working in the studio system you should never forget the audience’s desire for something new and different. I’m a big believer in the language of Hollywood filmmaking on a large scale. It allows you to reach a wide international audience, and that’s very valuable.”

That’s not to say releasing a drama dense with science and history as a summer tentpole was an easy choice, even after Nolan found success with 2017’s similarly weighty “Dunkirk.”

“It definitely wasn’t something we were taking for granted,” said “Oppenheimer” producer Emma Thomas, Nolan’s creative partner and wife. “One of the things that I love about what Chris does as a filmmaker is that he always has faith in his audience. He always challenges audiences and they rise to the occasion.”

Among this year’s acting nominees, 10 are first-timers, including Sterling K. Brown, a surprising supporting actor nominee for his turn in “American Fiction”; “Anatomy of a Fall” star Sandra Hüller; and Lily Gladstone, who, with “Killers of the Flower Moon,” became the first Native American performer to be nominated for a lead actress Oscar.

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Also among those receiving the nod from the academy for the first time, “Barbie” co-star Ferrera drew a supporting actress nod in part on the strength of the stirring monologue she delivers at the heart of the film, which instantly became a feminist rallying cry.

“I had a sense when I read the words on the page that it was a really moving and powerful moment,” Ferrera, who played a Mattel employee and mother, told The Times by phone following Tuesday’s nomination. “I knew that it was special but you still never know how that’s going to translate. So to see it really resonate with audiences and be redone all over TikTok just speaks to the message and how needed and desired that message was.”

That said, Ferrera was dismayed to see Gerwig left out of the directing race, even as Gerwig and co-writer and husband Noah Baumbach scored an adapted screenplay nod.

“Greta was the fearless leader who created something entirely unprecedented that smashed so many records and expectations,” Ferrera said. “It feels disappointing and a little bit unaligned that she wouldn’t be acknowledged. And the same for Margot. I’m in awe of what both of them accomplished, and I would have loved to see them acknowledged for the work.”

For all the nominations earned by bigger fare like “Oppenheimer,” “Barbie” and “Killers of the Flower Moon,” which netted Scorsese his record 10th directing nod (the most of any living filmmaker), smaller and more idiosyncratic movies also grabbed a significant share of the spotlight, suggesting that the academy’s increasingly international membership still has an appetite for films that fly under the mainstream radar.

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Emma Stone and director Yorgos Lanthimos on the set of “Poor Things.”

(Atsushi Nishijima / Searchlight Pictures)

“Poor Things,” a gonzo feminist twist on “Frankenstein,” scored 11 nominations, the second most of any film, including a directing nomination for Greek filmmaker Yorgos Lanthimos along with nods for lead actress Emma Stone and supporting actor Mark Ruffalo.

French filmmaker Justine Triet became the eighth woman ever nominated for director for her work on the riveting courtroom thriller “Anatomy of a Fall,” which also earned an original screenplay nomination for Triet and her co-writer and partner Arthur Harari. British filmmaker Jonathan Glazer also earned a directing nomination for “The Zone of Interest,” a chilling look at the banality of evil, along with a nod for adapted screenplay.

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The 96th Academy Awards will be held on March 10 at the Dolby Theatre and broadcast on ABC. For now, though, this year’s nominees, particularly those who have never heard their names read before, are just basking in the recognition from their peers in the industry.

“I grew up wanting to do nothing but act since I was 5 years old,” Ferrera said. “It’s still quite surreal to try to process that the academy, the people I grew up admiring, are acknowledging my work in this way. I don’t think it’s fully landed. I imagine there will be a number of tears between now and the big day.”

Asked how she planned to celebrate, Ferrera said, “I am still in my bed. I haven’t really been able to move since the nominations were announced. And I have a feeling I’m probably not going to get very much work done today.”

Barbie would surely understand.

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Movie Reviews

Roll On 18 Wheeler: Errol Sack’s ‘TRUCKER’ (2026) – Movie Review – PopHorror

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Roll On 18 Wheeler: Errol Sack’s ‘TRUCKER’ (2026) – Movie Review – PopHorror

I am a sucker for all those straight-to-video slasher movies from the 90’s; there was just a certain point where you knew the acting was terrible, however, it made you fall in love. I can definitely remember scanning the video store sections for all the different horror movies I could. All those movies had laughable names and boom mics accidentally getting in the frame. Trucker seems like a child of all those old dreams, because it is.

Let’s get into the review.

Synopsis

When a group of reckless teens cause an accident swroe to never speak of it.  The father is reescued by a strange man. from the wreckage and nursed back to health by a mysterious old man. When the group agrees to visit the accident scene, they meet their match from a strange masked trucker and all his toys with revenge on his mind.

Roll on 18 Wheleer

Trucker is what you would imagine: a movie about a psychotic trucker chasing you. We have seen it many, many times. What makes the film so different is its homage to bad movies but good ideas. I don’t mean in a negative way. When you think of a slasher movie, it’s not very complicated; as a matter of fact, it takes five minutes to piece the film together. This is so simple and childlike, and I absolutely love it. Trucker gave us something a little different, not too gory, bad CGI fire, I mean, this is all we old schlock horror fans want. Trucker is the type of film that you expect from a Tubi Original, on speed. However, I would take this over any Tubi Original.

I found some parts that were definitely a shout-out to the slasher humor from all those movies. Another good point that made the film shine was the sets. I guess what I can say is the film is everything Joy Ride should have been. While most modern slashers are trying to recreate the 1980s, the film stands out with its love for those unloved 1990’s horror films. While most see Joyride, you are extremely mistaken, my friend; you will enjoy this film much more.

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In The End

In the end, I enjoyed the entire film. At first, I saw it listed as an action thriller; I was pleasantly surprised, and Trucker pulled at my heart strings, enveloping me in its comfort from a long-forgotten time in horror. It’s a nostalgic blast for me, thinking back to that time, my friends, my youth, and finding my new home. Horror fans are split down the middle: from serial-killer clowns (my side) to elevated horror, where an artist paints a forty-thousand-year-old demon that chases them around an upper-class studio apartment. I say that a lot, but it’s the best way to describe some things.

The entire movie had me cheering while all the people I hated suffered dire consequences for their actions. It’s the same old story done in a way that we rabid fans could drool over, and it worked. In all the bad in the world today, and my only hope for the future is the soon-to-end Terrifier franchise. However, the direction was a recipe to succeed with 40+ year old horror fans like me. I see the film as a hope for tomorrow, leading us into a new era.

Trucker is set to release on March 10th, 2026

 

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Review: In ‘American Classic,’ Kevin Kline and Laura Linney deliver a love letter to theater

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Review: In ‘American Classic,’ Kevin Kline and Laura Linney deliver a love letter to theater

The lovely, funny “American Classic,” premiering Sunday on MGM+, is a love letter to theater, community and community theater. Kevin Kline plays Richard Bean, a narcissistic stage actor. He’s famous enough to be opening on Broadway in “King Lear,” but he has to be pushed onstage and is forgetting lines. After he drunkenly assails a hostile New York Times critic — caught on video, of course — he’s suspended from the play, and his agent (Tony Shalhoub) advises him to get out of town and lay low until the heat’s off, as they used to say in the gangster movies.

Learning that his mother (Jane Alexander, acting royalty, in film clips) has died, Richard heads back to his small Pennsylvania hometown, where his family — all actors, like the Barrymores, but no longer acting — owns a once-celebrated theater. To Richard’s horror, it has, for want of income, become a dinner theater, hosting touring productions of “Nunsense” and “Forever Plaid” instead of the great stage works on which he cut his teeth.

Brother Jon (Jon Tenney), running the kitchen at the theater, is married to Kristen (Laura Linney), Richard’s onetime acting partner, who dated him before her marriage; now she’s the mayor. Their teenage daughter, Miranda (Nell Verlaque) — a name from Shakespeare — does want to act and move to New York, as her mother had before her, but is afraid to tell her parents. Richard’s father, Linus (Len Cariou), is suffering from dementia, though not to the point he won’t actively contribute to the action; every day he comes out again as gay.

Across the eight-episode series, things move from the ridiculous to the sublime. Richard’s attempt to stage his mother’s funeral, with her coffin being lowered from the ceiling, while “Also sprach Zarathustra” plays and smoke billows toward the audience, fortunately comes to naught; but he announces at the ceremony that he’ll direct a production of Thornton Wilder’s 1938 play “Our Town” at the theater, to “restore the soul of this town.” (His big idea is to ignore Wilder’s stage directions, which ask for no curtain, no set and few props, with a “realistic version,” featuring a working soda fountain, rain effects and a horse.) Fate will have other plans for this, and not to give away what in any case should be obvious, the title of the play will also become its ethos, with a cast of amateurs, including Miranda’s jealous boyfriend, Randall (Ajay Friese), and ordinary people standing in for the ordinary people of Wilder’s Grover’s Corners.

The series has a comfortable, cushiony feeling; it’s the sort of show that could have been made as a film in the 1990s, and in which Kline could have starred as easily in his 40s as in his 70s; it has the same relation to reality as “Dave,” in which he played a good-hearted ordinary Joe who takes the place of a lookalike U.S. president. The town is essentially a sunny place, full of mostly sunny people, to all appearances, a typical comedy hamlet. But we’re told it’s distressed, and Mayor Kristen is in transactional cahoots with developer Connor Boyle (Billy Carter), who wants clearance to build a casino on the site of a landmark hotel. (Much of the plot is driven by money — needing it, trading for it, leaving it, losing it.) He also wants his heavily accented, bombshell Russian girlfriend, Nadia (Elise Kibler), to have a part in “Our Town.”

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As in the great Canadian comedy “Slings & Arrows,” set at a Shakespeare Festival outside of Toronto, themes and moments and speeches from the play being performed are echoed in the lives of the performers, while the viewer experiences the double magic of watching a fine actor playing an actor playing a part. Kline, of course, is himself an American classic, with a long stage and screen career that encompasses classical drama, romantic and musical comedy and cartoon voiceovers; the series makes room for Richard to perform soliloquies from “Hamlet” and “Henry V,” parts Klein has played onstage. He brings out the sweetness latent in Richard. Linney, who played against her sweetheart image in “Ozark,” is happily back on less deadly ground (though she’s tense and drinks a little). Tenney, who was sweet and funny on “The Closer,” and who we don’t see enough of these days, is sweeter and funnier here, and gets to sing. (All the Beans will sing, except for Linus.)

As a comedy, it is often predicable — you know that things will work out, and some major plot points are as good as inevitable — but it’s the good sort of predictability, where you get what you came for, where you hear the words you want to hear, ones you could never have written yourself. “American Classic” is not out to challenge your world view in any way but wants only to confirm your feelings and in doing so amplify them. Shock effects are fine in their place — and to be sure there are major twists in the plot — but there is a certain release when the thing you’re ready to have happen, happens, whether it brings laughter or tears. Either is welcome.

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‘Scream 7’ Review: Ghostface Trades His Metallic Knife for Plastic in Bloody Embarrassing Slasher Sequel

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‘Scream 7’ Review: Ghostface Trades His Metallic Knife for Plastic in Bloody Embarrassing Slasher Sequel

It’s funny how this film is marketed as the first Scream movie in IMAX, yet it’s their sloppiest work to date. Williamson accomplishes two decent kills. My praise goes to the prosthetic team and gore above anything else. The filmmaking is amateurish, lacking any of the tension build and innovation in set pieces like the Radio Silence or Craven entries. Many slasher sequences consist of terribly spliced editing and incomprehensible camera movement. There was a person at my screening asking if one of the Ghostfaces was killed. I responded, “Yeah, they were shot in the head; you just couldn’t see it because the filmmaking is so damn unintelligible.” 

Really, Spyglass? This is the best you can do to “damage control” your series that was perfectly fine?

I’m getting comments from morons right now telling me that I’m biased for speaking “politically” about this movie. Fuck you! This poorly made, bland, and franchise-worst entry is a byproduct of political cowardice.

The production company was so adamant about silencing their outspoken star, who simply stated that she’s against the killing of Palestinian people by an evil totalitarian regime, that they deliberately fired her, conflating her comments to “anti-semintism,” when, and if you read what she said exactly, it wasn’t. Only to reconstruct the buildup made in her arc and settle on a nonsensical, manufactured, nostalgia-based slop fest to appeal to fans who lack genuine film taste in big 2026. To add insult to injury, this movie actively takes potshots at those predecessors, perhaps out of pettiness that Williamson didn’t pen them or a mean-spirited middle finger to the star the studio fired. Truly, fuck you. Take the Barrera aspect out of this, which is still impossible, and Scream 7 is a lazy, sloppy, ill-conceived, no-vision, enshittification of Scream and a bloody embarrassment to the franchise. It took a real, morally upright actress to make Ghostface’s knife go from metal to plastic. 

FINAL STATEMENT

You either die a Scream or live long enough to see yourself become a Stab.

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