Why F1 the Movie should win the best picture Oscar

It may not be in pole position, but Brad Pitt and director Joseph Kosinski’s sleek, technically inventive ode to motor racing definitely qualifies for the Academy podium Could, should, would F1 the Movie win the best picture Oscar? Well, we have to be realistic here: F1 is currently a massive outsider, at 200-1 along with The Secret Agent , which has no chance either but for very different reasons. It’s not hard to see why: this is a swaggeringly mainstream film, where tech and branding dwarf the human input, with the film itself acting as a front-end battering ram for a sports organisation desperate to break into the promised land of the US auto racing circuit. (I mean it’s right there in the title.) So even the most reactionary, conservative Academy voter is going to find it hard to mark F1 with their tick. So no, I don’t think it could win. That’s not to say F1 doesn’t have quite a bit going for it. The Oscars, as we know, have historically had a problem with so-called “popular” ...

Sick of Myself review – like-chasing narcissist is focus of online fame horror-satire

A strong lead performance can’t save this unsubtle Norwegian film about a woman who goes too far in chasing social media clout

Kristoffer Borgli’s body-horror satire has had some enthusiastic reviews since it premiered at Cannes last year; I found the Norwegian film unsubtle and unrewarding, exhaustingly implausible on a basic realist level, and containing a jarring obviousness which makes its supposed commentary on society and celebrity all but valueless.

It does, however, have a strong lead performance from Kristine Kujath Thorp, who plays Signe, a young woman in Oslo who is in an uneasy relationship with Thomas (Eirik Sæther), an insufferably conceited conceptual artist creating sculptures from stolen office furniture. In her peevish and snippy way, Signe is toxically jealous of Thomas’s status and prestige; she resents her own subordinate position in their friend group as his girlfriend and her humiliatingly lowly job as a coffee shop barista. There is a weird echo here of Joachim Trier’s incomparably superior The Worst Person in the World, and Sick of Myself features a droll cameo from Trier’s key player, Anders Danielsen Lie.

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