Hollywood has a storytelling problem. The culprit is two-fold. The rise of the writer/director and studios too willing to give over everything to indulgent filmmakers. I had a feeling Digger would be a disaster because I knew that Alejandro G. Inarritu would want to do what so many in Hollywood do now – treat people they don’t know like insects in a jar. This might have always been a problem, but in the old days filmmakers had to answer to the box office numbers and we know this isn’t true anymore.
How to tell stories about people and worlds you do not know? Well, good luck with that. You’ll be seeing a lot of it this year because politics has swallowed up Hollywood and celebrities. I am always relieved when one of them emerges as neutral, preferring instead to let the work speak for itself. Ah, but the work! Therein lies the problem. There is too much of a need for total control and power over the country and its politics to allow Hollywood to aim its films at everyone.
Hollywood needs to bring back the screenwriter and the screenplay. The people reading them should not be looking to “tick the boxes” to satisfy the woke. But instead, to find great stories. This is not rocket science. It’s something they used to be able to do in their sleep.
So Digger looked to me like a movie pointing the finger, yet again, outward, when it is so much more interesting when the finger is pointed inward. Write what you know. Why were Fellini’s films so great? Because he didn’t make films about other people. He held himself to account and he made films about his own folly. Birdman is one of those. I wasn’t much of a fan at the time (I preferred Boyhood) but looking back on it now, it’s practically a masterpiece. When was the last time Hollywood turned the camera around like that?
True, the ultimate result was to celebrate art and actors and condemn superhero movies but at least we got a flawed hero. I expect Digger is not that but I will withhold judgment until after I see it.
According to the many reviews, Digger is trying to be Dr. Strangelove, like One Battle After Another was supposed to be like Dr. Strangelove. Memo to Hollywood: You will never be Dr. Strangelove. That movie was funny because it told the truth. It was pure committed satire where no one was spared. It didn’t tell a story from inside the doomsday cult about all of those bad people out there. It told the story from INSIDE the doomsday cult and that is why it is so genius.
Hollywood couldn’t write a screenplay that good now if their lives depended on it. It’s not possible. They couldn’t get near making a movie that good because to them satire is just pointing the finger at the bad people and that ain’t satire, friends.
Yes, of course it’s told from the point of view of anti-war leftists, but you’d never know that watching it. It came from the counterculture. Hollywood is not the counterculture anymore. It is THE CULTURE. So they’ll have to learn how to satirize themselves. Come on, guys. You can do it. Grow some courage.
The reviews are trickling in and it’s not looking good.
There is no point in going over them. You can read them for yourselves.
Some good ones:
The problem here is clear: discipline. Filmmakers need constraints. They need budgetary constraints. They need constraints when it comes to storytelling — the flyover states? They also need, I think, decency constraints. They aren’t pushing against anything. They control everything. That’s the problem here. They still need to see themselves as the rebels and the underclass when in fact they are anything but.
Sigh.
The question is, will Tom Cruise get in for a nomination or not?
I think the Best Actor race is crowded. Let’s start with this. How may Best Actors have been in Best Picture in the past 10 years?
Let’s do the list:
2009 – 2/5 (not in a Best Picture nominee)
2010 – 4/5 (along with Best Picture winner)
2011 – 4/5 (along with Best Picture winner)
2012 – 3/5 (including winner)
2013 – 5/5 (including winner)
2014 – 4/5 (including winner)
2015 – 2/5 (including winner)
2016 – 4/5 (including winner)
2017 – 4/5 (including winner)
2018 – 4/5 (including winner)
2019 – 2/5 (including winner)
2020 – 3/5 (including winner)
2021 – 2/5 (including winner)
2022 – 2/5 (not in a Best Picture nominee)
2023 – 4/5 (along with Best Picture winner)
2024 – 3/5 (including winner)
2025 – 4/5 (including winner)
The winner is most likely in a Best Picture nominee and sometimes in a winner and rarely in a film not nominated. So it makes sense to sometimes track Best Actor with Best Picture. To that end, we’d go:
Andrew Scott, Elsinore (maybe it gets in for Best Pic)
Matt Damon, The Odyssey
John Malkovich, Wild Horse Nine (benefits with Tom Cruise out)
Ryan Gosling, Project Hail Mary (who benefits if Tom Cruise is out)
Brad Pitt, The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth (although admittedly I’m the only one bullish on this)
Anthony Ippolito, I Play Rocky (never bet against Rocky)
Seth Rogen, The Invite (purely a great performance in one of the best films of the year)
Sebastian Stan, Fjord (We’ll have to see how this one goes)
Robert Pattinson, Primetime (stands out)
Pedro Pascal, Behemoth!
Jaafar Jackson, Michael (You never know)
Andrew Garfield, Artificial (a new bump with AI fears of late)
You’ll have to decide for yourselves whether Tom Cruise can still crack the five if people are not so pleased by the film, to put it mildly.
In my opinion, this is a systemic problem with Hollywood. You can’t tell me the Paramount/WB merger will make things worse. They can’t possibly get worse. They don’t know their audience anymore and they are strictly prohibited when it comes to tell the truth about themselves, which would be so much more interesting than insects in a jar on repeat.
