Sinners or One Battle: what can we learn from this year’s anonymous Oscar ballots?

While Academy voters are supposed to keep their picks secret, another batch of anonymous ballots have leaked – giving us some insight on a hard-to-call race Oscars 2026: how to watch, nominations, what to read and predictions It took a great deal of blood, sweat and tweets, but in 2016 the Academy finally took notice and started to embrace both diversity and modernity. The # OscarsSoWhite furore over two straight years of all-white nominees (Michael B Jordan’s Creed snub was in my opinion the cruelest) led to a dramatic shake-up and one that has continued ever since with more women, people of colour and international voters added to what had been an overwhelmingly homogenous base. It has all led to an Oscars race that is increasingly harder to predict using old-fashioned thinking in ways that have become rather thrilling over time, the idea of an “Oscar movie” now far more slippery. Films such as Parasite, Anora, Moonlight, Anatomy of a Fall, Nomadland, Get Out and The Zone ...

Gasoline Rainbow review – a free-ranging coming-of-age ode to the curiosity of youth

Billed as a gen Z road trip film, the Ross brothers’ first fiction feature offers more than you’d expect from the genre, with a focus on human interaction over plot

In the opening seconds of the Ross brothers’ new film, a teenager professes his hope to discover a place “weirdos” like him can call home. The opening raises doubts about the novelty of what might follow: the trope of the high school outsider has been endlessly revisited. Gasoline Rainbow – billed as a gen Z road trip movie – starts off by replaying familiar images. As new high school graduates Makai, Micah, Nathaly, Nichole and Tony hit the road across Oregon for one final adventure together, we see the usual trappings of the genre: sing-alongs, parties by the campfire, and leaning out of car windows to enjoy the breeze and sweet call of freedom.

We move into welcome new territory when a mishap leaves their van out of action, and the group are left in the hot desert trying to scrounge a path forward, meeting strangers along the way. Directors Bill Ross IV and Turner Ross are known for blending nonfiction and fiction, and their loose, free-ranging cinéma vérité style. While Gasoline Rainbow is their first fiction feature, there are elements that nod to their DIY sensibilities: the teenagers are first-time actors, share the same names as their characters, and scenes were partly improvised. The result is a movie in the tradition of “vibes” film-making, less interested in a propulsive plot than exploring the revealing and delightful moments that arise from spontaneous human interactions. The group tells onlookers that they have no plan for their journey. It is a fitting statement for the film itself, which ambles along gently, happy to be pulled in new directions, seeing what treasures emerge by chance.

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