A note from Scott: As September comes to an end, the awards race is heating up. Numerous hopefuls are rolling out at the box office, with some soaring (DreamWorks’ The Wild Robot topped the weekend with a $35 million haul; Sony’s Saturday Night had the year’s second-best limited debut) and others failing to launch (Lionsgate’s Megalopolis generated a disappointing $4 million). Disney/Pixar’s Inside Out 2 had the biggest Disney+ premiere of the year. And Warners’ Joker: Folie à Deux is premiering in LA Monday night ahead of its theatrical release next weekend.
Meanwhile, the 62nd New York Film Festival kicked off last Friday with Amazon/MGM’s Nickel Boys, which was greeted with a lengthy standing ovation. Then, over the weekend, the fest continued with well-received screenings of Netflix’s Maria, with writer/director Pablo Larraín and Angelina Jolie in tow, and Neon’s Anora, supported by writer/director Sean Baker and lead actress Mikey Madison. Among the films that will screen there over the next week: Netflix’s Emilia Pérez, Neon’s The Seed of the Sacred Fig, Sony Classics’ The Room Next Door, Bleecker Street’s Hard Truths and Searchlight’s A Real Pain.
Additionally, a number of upcoming fall film festivals announced special screenings and honorees, including Newport Beach, SCAD Savannah and Middleburg. Dozens of countries determined their submissions for best international feature Oscar consideration ahead of the Oct. 2 submission deadline (they have been added to the charts below), with the most controversial pick coming from India — not for the first time — which entered Laapataa Ladies over Janus/Sideshow’s Cannes Grand Prix winner All We Imagine as Light. And contenders in the music categories are getting increasingly active, with Kristen Wiig performing “Harper and Will Go West” following a New York screening of Netflix’s Will & Harper on Sept. 24, and Hans Zimmer, composer of Warners’ Dune: Part Two and Apple’s Blitz, set to play the Crypto Arena on Tuesday night.
Please remember: You can bookmark this URL and return to it at any time to see my latest picks — I intend to update it once a week, usually on Mondays. Think of me like a meteorologist — my aim is to correctly predict what will happen, not to advocate for what I think should happen. My picks are arrived at by screening films, consulting with voters, analyzing campaigns and studying results of past seasons. I do not rank things that I have not seen, because doing so is just silly. And now for my current forecast…
