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” ...

Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere review – solid biopic both embraces and avoids cliche

New York film festival: Jeremy Allen White is a convincingly tortured rock star in this smartly narrow and specific look at a particular chapter of music history

The genre of the musical biopic is one that, as Timothée Chalamet acknowledged while accepting a Sag award for playing Bob Dylan earlier this year, “could be perhaps tired”. The beats of the genre – the initial obstacles, the double-edged sword of success, the actors’ pursuit of industry awards for spirited impersonation – are by now so familiar that you’re almost expected to enter with more than a bit of skepticism, even when the artist at hand is one as widely beloved as Bruce Springsteen.

Like A Complete Unknown, in which Chalamet portrayed Dylan from 1961 until his pivot to electric in 1965, Deliver Me from Nowhere, Springsteen’s authorized biopic starring Jeremy Allen White, tries to thread a difficult needle between offering the standard treats and subverting expectations, between narrativizing genius and resisting hagiography. This may be an impossible task, given that the magic and cliches of popular music often go hand in hand, and Deliver Me from Nowhere certainly has its spoof-worthy moments. I went in braced for success montages, leaden flashbacks and capital-R Realizations, and at times met them. (Though to be clear, the expected treat of watching White, of the Bear and Calvin Klein underwear ad fame, tear up the stage as The Boss is still exactly that.) But more often I was won over by its diversions in form – its specificities, its smallness and its portrait of mental fragility.

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