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    Does the Academy Hate Movies? Our Critics on the 2022 Oscars.

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    Whatever you make of the slap, the telecast as a whole was a frustrating night of television that seemed based on a misunderstanding of what makes films great.Our chief film critics reflect on an Oscar night that went pretty much as expected — until it didn’t.A.O. SCOTT “The greatest night in the history of television,” said Chris Rock, a few seconds after Will Smith slapped him. Not a bad off-the-cuff punchline (so to speak). But until that moment — and Smith’s tearful, unrehearsed acceptance speech when he won best actor a short time later — it had been a dull and frustrating evening of television. Few surprises in any category (except maybe when “Belfast” won for original screenplay). Sentimentality triumphing over craft (except when Jane Campion won best director). A gnawing sense that the academy doesn’t understand movies, and maybe even hates them.MANOHLA DARGIS Bingo! Mind you, I don’t think the academy and its roughly 10,000 members hate movies; they just sometimes have really terrible taste, like everyone else, except you and me. But I think that as a TV show, the Oscars absolutely have contempt for the art, as the unfunny jokes about the hosts not finishing “The Power of the Dog” underscored.SCOTT The slap did not dispel any of that, but it did distract Twitter, which convulsed with takes about what it meant. We can get to that (or not!), but for the moment I want to stick with the question of what kind of television this was. American viewers did not actually see it on their screens. When the image froze, I thought my laptop had crashed, and it was only when people started posting uncensored video from Australian and Japanese broadcasts that anyone here knew what had happened. During Smith’s speech, the cameras cut away to Venus and Serena Williams, and then to the Oscars logo. Here was a spontaneous, complicated, emotionally intense moment — serving up more raw and painful human drama than “CODA,” “Belfast” and “King Richard” combined — and ABC just could not deal with it.DARGIS To be uncharacteristically fair about my favorite hate-watch, ABC wasn’t alone in not being able to deal. Initially, when ABC cut off Smith’s rebuke to Rock, I thought that the janky antenna that I use the rare times I watch broadcast TV had failed. Like a lot of people, I don’t watch as much traditional TV as I once did, which is part of the show’s and ABC’s intractable problem. That the network or the Oscar producers, or both, lost their nerve wasn’t surprising given that they’d already failed by not presenting some of the essential awards live.Will Smith’s slapping Chris Rock clearly overshadowed the evening.Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesSCOTT The way the “below-the-line” awards were banished to an earlier, pre-broadcast ceremony and then spliced into the main event was nonsensical. Are the acceptance speeches of cinematographers and costume designers inherently more telegenic than those of composers and editors? As it happens, Jenny Beavan, winning her third costume Oscar (for “Cruella”), was glamorous and genuine and funny, and her celebration of craft and professionalism represents the best of the Oscars. So do the honorary awards, which were held Friday night and featured Denzel Washington and Samuel L. Jackson hugging and cracking each other up as Washington presented Jackson with his trophy. Why wouldn’t the TV audience want to see that?DARGIS Even so, this year’s event started off pretty OK, particularly given horrific world events. One of the three hosts, Regina Hall, deftly handled the bit about administering faux Covid tests to some of the men in the room, even as the camera focused on her rear. It was stupid Oscar shtick — surprise — yet as it went on (and on), I kept thinking about the fact that the United States alone is approaching one million pandemic deaths. I’m not sure how the show could have addressed Covid’s grievous toll, but asking for a moment of silence, of all things — as it did with Ukraine — might have been worse.Of course now all the focus is on the slap, which was embarrassing and very sad. Smith seems to be going through something deeply complicated, to the point that he sabotaged his own triumph. As for the rest of the show, it lacked dramatic shape and momentum, partly because those canned awards would have given the live event more tension and emotion. There was no buildup, just bits … and an obituary musical number. Among other things, the show didn’t give viewers a coherent point of focus, the way it has when Jack Nicholson or Meryl Streep sat front and center representing the art and industry, a place that this year should have been reserved for Denzel Washington, who looked mighty uncomfortable in that chair.SCOTT The endless pre-Oscar hand-wringing about how to shore up ratings and make the show more relevant demonstrates a lack of confidence that was very much in evidence last night. The hosts were fine. The movies that won were fine.Except for those idiotic “fan” awards. They were, somewhat hilariously, hijacked by the Zack Snyder Twitter militia. The most memorable movie moment (of all time? of the century? it was hard to tell) is supposedly that scene from “Justice League” when Flash enters the Speed Force. And the most popular movie (of 2021) was “Army of the Dead,” which beat other curiosities like “Cinderella” and “Minimata.”Is this the death of cinema?DARGIS LOL. (Also: Did you see “Minimata”?) The Oscars are a TV show, and while they reflect certain industry trends, like the transformation of the big studios, they don’t have much to do with cinema, which is doing just fine, as you and I keep saying and writing and muttering. The Oscars generated lower ratings and angry snark when independent films like “Breaking the Waves” and “Secrets & Lies” received nominations in 1997 — “The English Patient” swept, winning best picture — only to rebound with “Titanic” the next year.SCOTT The more things change, the more they stay the same. One thing that has gotten worse is the unfortunate journalistic habit of equating the state of the Oscars with the state of movies. Even when television is great, the Emmys are terrible. Nobody seriously thinks that bad Grammy Awards spell the death of pop music, or that a given year’s National Book Awards reveal much about the health of literature. But movie journalism has elevated the Oscars to a position of absurd importance.“CODA” was the first Sundance premiere to win best picture.Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesDARGIS As an epic-sized commercial for movies, the Oscars just don’t often make good television. That’s kind of funny-strange given how many movies look like TV, which means it’s time to bring up Apple TV+’s “CODA.” It’s hard to believe it would have won best picture if voters had been forced to watch it on the big screen, though maybe it would have. It’s a nice, little, pedestrian heart-tugger, so it fits perfectly on TV. It’s the kind of movie that we’ve seen repeatedly at Sundance; but it isn’t the kind that inspires colleagues to proselytize about it the way they did with, say, “Beasts of the Southern Wild.” But that’s the Oscars, right? One year, “Moonlight” wins; two years later, “Green Book” does — and then, boom, “Parasite” wins.SCOTT “CODA” is the first best picture winner to premiere at Sundance, as well as the first to be distributed by a streaming service. It also won all of the three categories in which it was nominated, none of which were for lead performances or technical achievements, making it a fascinating outlier. Its victories — especially Troy Kotsur’s supporting actor win, a wonderful Oscar-night moment — are part of the academy’s continuing efforts to present a more diverse, inclusive face to the world.And it’s worth pointing out that the 94th Oscars were not so white, or so male, as most of their precursors. For the second year in a row — and the third time ever — the best director is a woman. The best picture was directed by a (different) woman. The best documentary feature is the work of a Black filmmaker, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson. The best supporting actress, Ariana DeBose, is the first openly queer woman of color to win an acting Oscar. You and I have been covering Hollywood long enough to be wary of overstating its progress or believing its promises, but I also wonder if the defensiveness and insecurity that surround the Oscar broadcast amounts to a form of backlash.DARGIS Both Kotsur’s and DeBose’s acceptance speeches were lovely, and each offered moments of grace during an otherwise often awkward, poorly paced slog of three and a half hours, plus change. As to your wondering if the increasing diversity of the awards winners has provoked a backlash — well, yeah, I bet! The movie industry is changing and is no longer the citadel of white male power that it once was. At the same time, the old guard is holding strong and the Oscars often seem more like aspirational visions of the industry rather than its reality.SCOTT Aspirational and also, as we saw last night, wildly dysfunctional. That’s entertainment! More

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      2022 Oscars Nominations: Snubs and Surprises for Lady Gaga and Jared Leto

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      “The Power of the Dog” led the Oscar nominations on Tuesday, but plenty of other high-profile contenders fell short. Here, the Projectionist muses on the morning’s most startling surprises and omissions.Kristen Stewart gets the royal treatment.Kristen Stewart’s role as Princess Diana in “Spencer” is the sort of thing Oscar voters usually rush to crown: It’s a juicy, transformative lead in a biopic, performed by a famous actress who has successfully leapt from blockbusters to prestige films. Then came a shocking snub from the Screen Actors Guild, followed by another shutout from BAFTA, and pundits worried whether she’d get nominated at all. Still, Stewart was game, continuing to do press and awards-season round tables, and the 31-year-old actress was rewarded Tuesday morning with her very first Oscar nomination.Lady Gaga and Jared Leto are shut out.“House of Gucci” was stripped to its studs Tuesday, as former winners Lady Gaga and Jared Leto were both snubbed by the academy. Few performances this year were talked about more — both by audiences and by the two actors themselves — and the red carpet will be a little lesser for their absence. (Hey, nobody said the Oscars were particularly ethical … but they are fair.)‘Drive My Car’ overperforms.Coming out of last summer’s Cannes Film Festival, no one had tagged Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s “Drive My Car” as a major Oscar spoiler: Instead, films like Asghar Farhadi’s “A Hero” and Julia Ducournau’s “Titane” had all the buzz. But a funny thing happened on the way to the Dolby Theater: A year-end surge from critics’ groups put Hamaguchi’s contemplative three-hour drama in the thick of the awards conversation, thanks to high-profile best-film wins from the critics in New York and Los Angeles. Off that momentum, “Drive My Car” managed an astounding four Oscar nominations, with citations in picture, director, adapted screenplay and international film.‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ is snubbed.There was no bigger film last year than “Spider-Man: No Way Home” — in fact, with a domestic gross of more than $748 million so far, there are only three other films that have ever been bigger. As the superhero movie kept raking in cash, the drumbeat grew louder that if the Oscars really wanted to reflect the year in film, they should honor one of the few movies that kept theaters open at all. And the academy did … but only with a nomination in visual effects. A best-picture nomination proved well outside the web-slinger’s reach.The director of ‘Dune’ goes missing.The academy’s directing branch is often dazzled by technical achievement, and a filmmaker who can wield blockbuster scale in the service of a soulful story usually has a leg up over more intimate fare. That’s why it’s startling that this year’s best-director race didn’t make room for Denis Villeneuve, especially since his sci-fi film “Dune” did score 10 nominations in a host of categories. But history was made elsewhere in that category, as Jane Campion became the first woman to earn two directing nominations (for “The Power of the Dog” and 1993’s “The Piano”) and the “West Side Story” filmmaker Steven Spielberg became the first person to be nominated in that category in six different decades.Two couples were nominated.Not only did the real-life partners Kirsten Dunst and Jesse Plemons score their first Oscar nominations this year for “The Power of the Dog,” so did Penélope Cruz (“Parallel Mothers”) and Javier Bardem (“Being the Ricardos”), the rare married couple to have already won before. Even better: It’s a four-category split, as Cruz and Bardem were nominated in the lead races while Dunst and Plemons continued the spread in the supporting categories. Talk about a double date!Kenneth Branagh makes history.Even before “Belfast,” Branagh was an Oscar favorite, collecting five nominations over the course for his career in categories as varied as director, actor, supporting actor, adapted screenplay and live-action short film. But Tuesday morning’s collection of nods for the black-and-white film “Belfast” vaulted Branagh to a surprising Oscar record: He is now the first person to be nominated in seven different categories, having added citations for best picture and original screenplay to his haul. (Hopefully that makes up for a few surprising “Belfast” snubs in editing and cinematography.)‘Flee’ scores the hat trick.Look, it’s hard enough to earn just one Oscar nomination, as so many of the morning’s snubbed artists can attest. That makes what “Flee” just accomplished all the more remarkable: This animated documentary about an Afghan refugee is now the first film ever to receive Oscar nominations for documentary, animated film and international film all in the same year. A win in any of those categories seems unlikely, but at least when the makers of “Flee” claim it’s an honor just to be nominated, you’ll know that they mean it. More

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      BAFTA Nominations List: ‘Dune' and ‘The Power of the Dog’ Lead Awards

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      Dennis Villeneuve’s sci-fi epic and Jane Campion’s western secured the most nominations in a lineup notable for its diversity.Benedict Cumberbatch in “The Power of the Dog,” which was nominated for eight BAFTA awards on Thursday.Kirsty Griffin/Netflix, via Associated PressLONDON — The unpredictability of this year’s award season continued on Thursday when the nominees were announced for this year’s EE British Academy Film Awards, Britain’s equivalent of the Oscars.Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi epic “Dune” was nominated for best film at the awards, commonly known as the BAFTAs, as was “Don’t Look Up,” the climate change satire starring Leonardo DiCaprio, and Jane Campion’s tense western “The Power of the Dog.”Those films will compete against “Belfast,” Kenneth Branagh’s black and white movie based on his childhood in Northern Ireland, and Paul Thomas Anderson’s ’70s coming-of-age romance “Licorice Pizza.” But of those movies’ directors, only Campion and Anderson were also nominated for the best director prize. They will compete in that category against several directors lesser known in the United States: Aleem Khan, the director of the British movie “After Love”; the French director Julia Ducournau for her Cannes-winning horror movie “Titane”; Ryusuke Hamaguchi, the Japanese director of “Drive My Car”; and Audrey Diwan, the French director of the abortion drama “Happening,” which was the unexpected winner of the Golden Lion at last year’s Venice Film Festival.The BAFTA nominations, which were announced in a YouTube broadcast, are often seen as a bellwether for the Oscars, because of an overlap between the voting constituencies for both awards.Learn More About ‘Don’t Look Up’In Netflix’s doomsday flick, Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence are two astronomers who discover a comet headed straight for Earth.Review: It’s the end of the world, and you should not feel fine, writes the film critic Manohla Dargis.A Metaphor for Climate Change: With his apocalyptic satire, the director Adam McKay hopes to prompt the audience to action. Meryl Streep’s Presidential Turn: How the actor prepared to play a self-centered scoundrel at the helm of the United States.A Real-Life ‘Don’t Look Up’ Moment: The film revives memories of a nail-biting night in the Times newsroom two decades ago.“Dune” secured 11 BAFTA nominations, the most overall, although many are in technical categories like costume and production design. “The Power of the Dog” secured eight nominations, the second highest, with three of those in the acting categories.This year’s list also includes some acting nominees that may not be to be on the Oscars’ radar. The nominees for best actor, for instance, include Stephen Graham for “Boiling Point,” a British movie set behind the scenes in a restaurant, and Adeel Akhtar for the British romance “Ali & Ava,” as well as big names like Will Smith (“King Richard”), Benedict Cumberbatch (“The Power of the Dog”), Leonardo DiCaprio (“Don’t Look Up”) and Mahershala Ali (“Swan Song”).The nominees for best actress similarly include the British actress Joanna Scanlan for her role in “After Love,” about a white Muslim convert who uncovers her husband’s secret past, as well as Lady Gaga (“House of Gucci”), Alana Haim (“Licorice Pizza”), Renate Reinsve (“The Worst Person in the World”) and Tessa Thompson (“Passing”).Amanda Berry, the chief executive of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, which gives out the awards, said in an interview that the diversity of this year’s nominees was partly down to changes introduced in 2020 to encourage voters to watch more widely among the nominated movies. Before they cast their ballots, voters must now watch a random selection of 15 films via an online portal, to ensure they don’t just focus on the most-hyped movies, Berry explained. How much overlap there is between the BAFTAs and Oscars nominees will soon become clear. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science is scheduled to reveal the nominees for this year’s Oscars on Tuesday.The winners of the BAFTAs are set to be announced on March 13 at a ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall in London, and Berry said she expected the event would return to its usual, pre-pandemic format. Last year, nominees attended via video link, but Berry said she expected the awards to be given out in person in March, and that the glamour of the red carpet would be back. More

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      Quiet Awards Season Has Hollywood Uneasy

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      LOS ANGELES — Steven Spielberg directing a dance-filled musical through the streets of New York. Lady Gaga channeling her Italian roots. Will Smith back on the big screen. This year’s award season was supposed to celebrate Hollywood’s return to glitz and glamour. No more masks, no more socially distanced award shows or Zoom acceptance speeches, no more rewarding films that very few people had seen.Now, between the Omicron spike and NBC’s decision not to televise the Golden Globes on Sunday because of the ethical issues surrounding the group that hands out the awards, Hollywood’s traditionally frenetic — and hype-filled — first week of the calendar year has been reduced to a whisper. The AFI Awards were postponed. The Critics’ Choice Awards — scheduled to be televised Sunday night in hopes of filling the void left by the Globes’ absence — were pushed back. The Palm Springs Film Festival, an annual stop along the awards campaign trail, was canceled. And most of those star-driven award favorites bombed at the box office.The Academy Awards remain scheduled for March 27, with nominations on Feb. 8, but there has been no indication what the event will be like. (The organization already postponed its annual Governors Awards, which for the past 11 years have bestowed honorary Oscars during a nontelevised ceremony.) Will there be a host? How about a crowd? Perhaps most important, will anyone watch? The Academy hired a producer of the film “Girls Trip” in October to oversee the show but has been mum on any additional details, and declined to comment for this article.Suddenly, 2022 is looking eerily similar to 2021. Hollywood is again largely losing its annual season of superficial self-congratulation, but it is also seeing the movie business’s best form of advertisement undercut in a year when films desperately need it. And that could have far-reaching effects on the types of movies that get made.Many were hoping to return to an awards season this year like those of the past, but Covid continues to upend major events.J. Emilio Flores for The New York Times“For the box office — when there was a fully functioning box office — those award shows were everything,” said Nancy Utley, a former co-chairman of Fox Searchlight who helped turn smaller prestige films like “12 Years a Slave” and “The Shape of Water” into best-picture Oscar winners during her 21-year tenure. “The recognition there became the reason to go see a smaller movie. How do you do that in the current climate? It’s hard.”Many prestige films are released each year with the expectation that most of their box office receipts will be earned in the crucial weeks between the Golden Globes and the Academy Awards. The diminishing of the Globes — which collapsed after revelations involving possible financial impropriety, questionable journalistic ethics and a significant lack of diversity in the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which administers the awards — had already hobbled that equation. If the Hollywood hype machine loses its awards season engine, it could prove devastating to the already injured box office. The huge audience shift fueled by streaming may be here to stay, with only blockbuster spectacles like “Spider-Man: No Way Home” drawing theatergoers in significant numbers..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“The movie business is this gigantic rock, and we’re close to seeing that rock crumble,” said Stephen Galloway, the dean of Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts and a former executive editor of The Hollywood Reporter. “People have gotten out of the habit of seeing movies on a big screen. Award season is the best single tub-thumping phenomenon for anything in the world. How many years can you go without that?”William C. Demille, the president Of The Academy Of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences, handing the Oscar for Best Actress to Mary Pickford for her role in “My Best Girl” and Best Actor to Warner Baxter, right, for “Old Arizona,” in 1929. Hans Kraly, left, received the award for Best Screenplay for “The Patriot.”Keystone-France/Gamma-KeystoneThe Academy Awards were created in 1929 to promote Hollywood’s achievements to the outside world. At its pinnacle, the telecast drew 55 million viewers. That number has been dropping for years, and last year it hit an all-time low — 10.4 million viewers for a show without a host, no musical numbers and a little-seen best picture winner in “Nomadland.” (The film, which was released simultaneously in theaters and on Hulu, grossed just $3.7 million.)Hollywood was planning to answer with an all-out blitz over the past year, even before the awards season. It deployed its biggest stars and most famous directors to remind consumers that despite myriad streaming options, theatergoing held an important place in the broader culture.It hasn’t worked. The public, in large part, remains reluctant to return to theaters with any regularity. “No Time to Die,” Daniel Craig’s final turn as James Bond, was delayed for over a year because of the pandemic, and when it was finally released, it made only $160.7 million in the United States and Canada. That was $40 million less than the 2015 Bond film, “Spectre,” and $144 million below 2012’s “Skyfall,” the highest-grossing film in the franchise.Well-reviewed, auteur-driven films that traditionally have a large presence on the awards circuit, like “Last Night in Soho” ($10.1 million), “Nightmare Alley” ($8 million) and “Belfast” ($6.9 million), barely made a ripple at the box office.And even though Mr. Spielberg’s adaptation of “West Side Story” has a 93 percent positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes, it has earned only $30 million at the domestic box office. (The original grossed $44 million back in 1961, the equivalent of $409 million in today.)According to a recent study, 49 percent of prepandemic moviegoers are no longer buying tickets. Eight percent say they will never return. Those numbers are a death knell for the midbudget movies that rely on positive word of mouth and well-publicized accolades to get patrons into seats.Some believe the middle part of the movie business — the beleaguered category of films that cost $20 million to $60 million (like “Licorice Pizza” and “Nightmare Alley”) and aren’t based on a comic book or other well-known intellectual property — may be changed forever. If viewing habits have been permanently altered, and award nominations and wins no longer prove to be a significant draw, those films will find it much more difficult to break even. If audiences are willing to go to the movies only to see the latest “Spider-Man” film, it becomes hard to convince them that they also need see a movie like “Belfast,” Kenneth Branagh’s black-and-white meditation on his childhood, in a crowded theater rather than in their living rooms.“All of this doesn’t just affect individual films and filmmakers’ careers,” Mr. Galloway said. “Its effect is not even just on a business. It affects an entire art form. And art is fragile.”“Dune” was the only likely best-picture contender with a major theatrical release to gross over $100 million at the box office last year.Chiabella James/Warner Bros.Of the other likely best-picture contenders given a significant theatrical release, only “Dune,” a sci-fi spectacle based on a known property, crossed the $100 million mark at the box office. “King Richard” earned $14.7 million, and “Licorice Pizza” grossed $7 million.“The number of non-genre adult dramas that have cracked $50M is ZERO,” the film journalist and historian Mark Harris wrote on Twitter on Thursday. “The world of 2019, in which ‘1917’ made $160M, ‘Ford v. Ferrari’ made $120M, and ‘Parasite’ made $52M, is gone.”Still, studios are adjusting. MGM is slowing down its theatrical rollout of “Licorice Pizza” after watching other prestige pictures stumble when they entered more than 1,000 theaters. It is also pushing its release in Britain of “Cyrano,” starring Peter Dinklage, to February to follow the American release with the hope that older female moviegoers will return to the cinema by then. Sony Pictures Classics is redeploying the playbook it used in 2021: more virtual screenings and virtual Q.&A.s to entice academy voters while also shifting distribution to the home faster. Its documentary “Julia,” about Julia Child, hit premium video-on-demand over the holidays.Many studios got out in front of the latest pandemic wave with flashy premieres and holiday parties in early December that required proof of vaccination and on-site testing. But so far in January, many of the usual awards campaigning events like screenings and cocktail parties are being canceled or moved to the virtual world. “For your consideration” billboards are still a familiar sight around Los Angeles, but in-person meet-and-greets are largely on hold.Netflix, which only releases films theatrically on a limited basis and doesn’t report box office results, is likely to have a huge presence on the award circuit this year with films like “Tick, Tick … Boom,” “The Power of the Dog” and “The Lost Daughter” vying for prizes. Like most other studios, it, too, has moved all in-person events for the month of January to virtual.“Last year was a tough adaptation, and it’s turning out that this year is also going to be about adapting to what’s going on in the moment,” Michael Barker, a co-president of Sony Pictures Classics, said in a telephone interview last week. He spoke while walking the frigid streets of Manhattan instead of basking in the sunshine of Palm Springs, where he was supposed to be honoring Penélope Cruz, his leading lady in the Oscar contender “Parallel Mothers.”“You just compensate by doing what you can,” he said, “and once this passes, then you have to look at what the new world order will be.” More

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      A Guide to What Is Happening With the 2022 Golden Globes

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      A guide to everything we know about the 79th annual Golden Globes on Sunday night.First, the Golden Globes were going to go toe-to-toe with the Critic’s Choice Awards on Sunday night. Now, after the critics’ ceremony was postponed amid the Omicron surge, the Globes will have Sunday night all to themselves for a big, splashy …… audience-less, glorified PowerPoint presentation. Which may or may not be livestreamed.After NBC bowed out as the broadcaster for this year’s event over ethical missteps and a lack of diversity at the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the group of journalists that puts on the Golden Globes, the ceremony on Sunday will be decidedly low-key. A small number of vaccinated, boosted, masked, socially distanced H.F.P.A. members and other guests will attend the 90-minute event, kicking off at 9 p.m. Eastern time (6 p.m. Pacific) in the ballroom of the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills. There will be no red carpet or outside media covering the night in person. It seems the event will be more like a graduation ceremony than the freewheeling party of years past.Muted format aside, there are still some names to watch: Jane Campion is the favorite to take home her first Golden Globe in the best director category for “The Power of the Dog,” Will Smith and Kristen Stewart could build Oscar momentum with wins for “King Richard” and “Spencer,” and “West Side Story” could score big with wins in several categories..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Here’s a recap of how we got here and what to expect.What exactly is the controversy surrounding the Hollywood Foreign Press Association?In February, The Los Angeles Times published an investigation that uncovered infighting, possible financial missteps, questionable journalistic ethics and a jarring lack of diversity in the H.F.P.A.’s ranks. (Not a single one of the organization’s 80-plus voting members, the paper found, were Black.) A New York Times article published a few days later explored the finances of the group, a tax-exempt nonprofit, and reported that it had paid more than $3 million in salaries and other compensation to its members and staff, and that a tax filing showed it had paid $1.3 million in travel costs one year.The scandal-ridden group also came under scrutiny after reports revealed that more than a third of the H.F.P.A. members had been flown on a luxury press trip to the French set of the Netflix series “Emily in Paris” in 2019, after which the critically panned comedy picked up two Golden Globes nominations.How has the H.F.P.A. responded?During the 2021 Golden Globes telecast last February, leaders of the group committed to diversifying their membership — a vague, underwhelming overture that fell flat in Hollywood. Then, after NBC announced in May that it would not air the 2022 ceremony, the H.F.P.A. released a statement that said it was working to reform itself with “extreme urgency” and offered a timeline for changes. In the months since, the H.F.P.A. has hired its first chief diversity officer, adopted new rules that prohibit members from accepting gifts from studios and added its first outside board members. In October, it added 21 new journalists to its ranks, 29 percent of whom it said identified as Black.How has Hollywood responded?Celebrities like Scarlett Johansson and Mark Ruffalo criticized the H.F.P.A. for its proposed changes, arguing they fell short, and a timeline they felt was too long. Tom Cruise returned his three Golden Globes in protest. More than 100 P.R. firms threatened to boycott the H.F.P.A., and Netflix, Amazon, WarnerMedia and Neon cut ties with the organization. NBC still isn’t airing the awards but left the door open for them to return in 2023 if the H.F.P.A. could demonstrate “meaningful reform.”Oh, right, there’s also an award ceremony! What should I watch for?On the film side, “Belfast” and “The Power of the Dog” dominated the nominations with seven each, with the latter’s director, Jane Campion, favored to win her first Golden Globe. “King Richard,” “Don’t Look Up,” “Licorice Pizza” and “West Side Story” followed with four apiece. On the TV side, “Succession” received five nominations, followed by four for “Ted Lasso.” There’s a large crop of first-time nominees among the performers, including Ariana DeBose (“West Side Story”) and Kristen Stewart (“Spencer”) in film, and Jeremy Strong (“Succession”), Jean Smart (“Hacks”), Jennifer Coolidge (“The White Lotus”), and Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany (“WandaVision”) on TV.The field is more diverse than in years past, when artists of color were often overlooked: The best actor in a drama category features three Black contenders, Will Smith (“King Richard”), Denzel Washington (“The Tragedy of Macbeth”) and Mahershala Ali (“Swan Song”).Wait, but can I even watch the Golden Globes?No. A representative for the H.F.P.A. said the ceremony would be private and would not be livestreamed. Instead, real-time updates will be provided on the Golden Globes website and on social media. More

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      The Oscars Want Crowd-Pleasers, but Where Are the Crowds?

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      As contenders like “West Side Story” and “Belfast” struggle for audiences, can a blockbuster like “Spider-Man: No Way Home” swing into the Oscar race?After last year’s Oscar ceremony honored a group of small, challenging movies and tanked in the ratings, you can bet that this year, the academy is eager to nominate films that audiences can get excited about. Indeed, this year’s crop of awards movies includes several old-fashioned crowd-pleasers to choose from.There’s just one problem: The crowds are remaining stubbornly hypothetical.Just look at “Belfast.” The Kenneth Branagh-directed family drama, considered a top best-picture contender, has petered out with a domestic box office gross under $7 million. Best-picture winners usually hail from far more successful stock: Among recent winners, only last year’s “Nomadland” made less, and it was released at a time when vaccines were scarce and theaters were just barely beginning to reopen.“King Richard” hasn’t fared much better: Though it was released simultaneously on HBO Max, you’d still expect stronger box office results for an inspirational drama that stars Will Smith as the father of the tennis legends Venus and Serena Williams. Instead, “King Richard” has made just $14.7 million in North American theaters, the lowest gross for a Smith movie in decades.And then there’s Ridley Scott’s “The Last Duel,” which feels like it could have been the biggest hit of a bygone Oscar season. This medieval drama boasts huge stars (including Matt Damon, Adam Driver and Ben Affleck), weighty themes and top-tier production values. Now that it’s available on demand, not a day goes by without someone on my Twitter timeline discovering the film and announcing, “Hey, this is actually pretty good!” Maybe they’re surprised because “The Last Duel” famously bombed during its wide release in October, earning only $10.8 million domestically.Adam Driver, left, and Matt Damon in “The Last Duel,” which in a bygone era might have been the hit of Oscar season.Patrick Redmond/20th Century StudiosIt’s true that many of these Oscar contenders are aimed at older moviegoers, who have proved difficult to lure back to theaters during a prolonged pandemic. A smaller film like “Belfast” used to debut in a handful of cities, carefully building word of mouth with that core demographic as it expanded to new theaters every week. Now, distributors are so skittish about the absence of older audiences that many specialty films are shoved into hundreds of theaters right off the bat, expected to draw huge crowds from scratch.Still, the underwhelming performance of these movies can’t be blamed on older moviegoers alone. Over the past few weeks, “Spider-Man: No Way Home” has earned a staggering $621 million domestically, a total you simply can’t reach without every available demographic turning out in record numbers. If older adults are willing to go see “Spider-Man,” it becomes harder to make the argument that they can’t be wooed at all.Marvel’s rising tide, though, has not lifted any boats: Instead, every other title is drowning. Are audiences really so skittish about seeing the most acclaimed films of the year? Or have these movies simply struggled to make the case that they’re worth watching?I believe the latter issue bedeviled “West Side Story,” which seemed to have so much going for it when it debuted in December: Directed by Steven Spielberg, the movie received rapturous reviews and is adapted from one of the most famous stage musicals of all time. Though “West Side Story” was originally intended to come out last winter, Disney executives delayed this exhilarating film a full year, expecting a four-quadrant smash.They didn’t get it. “West Side Story” made just $10.5 million in its opening weekend and has struggled to reach $30 million in its first month of release. For a movie from Hollywood’s most reliable hitmaker, that is a disastrous result: You’d have to go all the way back to “Empire of the Sun” from 1987 to find a Spielberg movie that did this poorly, and that film didn’t cost north of $100 million, as “West Side Story” did.The usual suspects have come in for blame — the pandemic’s winter surge, the paucity of older moviegoers — but I lay this failure squarely at the feet of the marketing campaign, which missed crucial opportunities. The posters for this romantic musical were oddly grim, and the trailers and TV spots remained way too bashful about selling Spielberg, the movie’s biggest name. The trailers should have emphasized his iconic films like “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial,” “Jurassic Park” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” positioning “West Side Story” as part of an impressive theatrical lineage: The obvious message being, “Those were events worth leaving the house for and this will be, too.”Tom Holland as Spider-Man. Will the box office success of his new film matter to Oscar voters?Sony PicturesUltimately, that may prove to be the most significant lesson of this awards season: If you can’t make your movie feel like a big event, people simply won’t go. It’s clear that the only film this winter that has really managed that feat is “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” and because its astonishing box office returns dwarf everything else in theaters, power players involved with the Marvel-Sony movie have begun making the case that it should be nominated for best picture.Does Spidey have a shot? I’m not so sure: Oscar voters have shown they’re willing to nominate a big blockbuster, but they prefer the kind of impeccably crafted tentpole that can compete in a host of categories: Think of “Black Panther,” which won Oscars for its score, production design and costumes; or “Mad Max: Fury Road,” which prevailed in just about every tech category it was nominated for. This year, “Dune” will be a major player in those below-the-line races, boosting its ultimate bid for best picture, but the flatly shot “Spider-Man: No Way Home” is more of a storytelling and scheduling feat than some sort of artistic stunner.Still, there’s no denying the movie’s huge box office success. If adult dramas continue to underperform as the pandemic sprawls into its third year, they may vanish from cinemas entirely, and the theatrical experience will simply become a high-end way to watch Marvel movies. The Oscars are supposed to forestall that sort of thing: They lend buzz to the smaller, artier films that desperately need it. But if all these nonfranchise crowd-pleasers can’t manage to entice people into theaters on their own, the movies have a bigger problem than just another low-rated Oscars show. More

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      Five Child Stars of 'King Richard,' 'Belfast' and More

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      Five children winning acclaim for their roles in “Belfast,” “King Richard,” “C’mon C’mon” and “The Tender Bar” talk us through their starring turns.Jude Hill, clad in a white button-up shirt with a cheeky grin, is just as charming in real life as he is in “Belfast,” Kenneth Branagh’s new autobiographical film about an Irish boy growing up amid the Troubles in the title city in the 1960s.“I had the time of my life doing this film,” the 11-year-old actor from Northern Ireland, who stars as Buddy, the young Branagh stand-in, said in a recent video call from Los Angeles.He’s one of several youngsters winning praise for their starring turns in prestige dramas this season. They include Saniyya Sidney and Demi Singleton, who play Venus and Serena Williams in “King Richard” opposite Will Smith as their father; Woody Norman, who tag-teams with Joaquin Phoenix in “C’mon C’mon”; and Daniel Ranieri as a boy learning about life from a bar-owning uncle (Ben Affleck) in the George Clooney-directed drama “The Tender Bar” (due Dec. 17).In phone and video calls this month — Hill, Norman, Sidney and Singleton from Los Angeles, and Ranieri from Brooklyn — the five actors shared what it was like working with stars of the screen and court, behind-the-scenes stories and how they reacted to seeing their faces on posters for the first time. These are edited excerpts from the conversations.Jude HillThe 11-year-old plays 9-year-old Buddy in “Belfast.”Jude Hill in a sunny moment in “Belfast.”Rob Youngson/Focus FeaturesOne morning I woke up for a normal school day, and my mum showed me an email. I only read about two words of it before I started running around the house screaming that I got the role, and I was going to get to work with all these amazing people — Jamie Dornan, Caitriona Balfe, Ciarán Hinds, Judi Dench.Me and Buddy aren’t that different — we both love football [soccer] and films and have the same personality. Every second the cameras weren’t rolling, I was playing football with the other actors.Judi Dench is very, very funny, and sometimes very inappropriate. To have her play my grandma is insane. We bet two pounds to see who could guess the number of times it would take to film a scene, and I ended up winning. I’m keeping that money in my memory box forever.I’m definitely not a ladies’ man. All the scenes with that girl [whom Buddy has a crush on] were very, very awkward!The first time I saw my face on a poster I thought, “That’s not real.” I’m still just a normal kid, and this is my first film, but I think if you work hard, then you can achieve anything.I learned so many things, but the biggest was to have fun with acting. My little sister, Georgia, who’s 9, has also started acting. Maybe she’ll become an actor, too.I cried the first time I watched the film. And I still get really emotional every time I see it.I’d love to play one of the Avengers in a Marvel film. It’s between Thor and Iron Man. That’s No. 1 on my bucket list.Demi SingletonThe 14-year-old plays a young Serena Williams in her formative years in “King Richard.”Demi Singleton as Serena Williams, left, and Saniyya Sidney as Venus Williams in “King Richard.”Warner Bros. I came to L.A. from New York City, and once I got here, Saniyya came over, we hung out and we’ve been friends ever since. We recently went to Halloween Horror Nights together, and while we were filming, we’d go to The Grove [an outdoor mall] every other weekend.Venus and Serena surprised us with a visit to the set. We spoke about everything except tennis. It was great to see their sisterly bond firsthand and really helped me and Saniyya as actresses.The tennis training was intense. I was expecting it to be so easy because I’ve been dancing for my entire life and thought it’d be much more similar to choreography. The hardest thing to master was the serve. You can be great at every other shot, but if you don’t know how to serve, you’re unlikely to win.Mr. Will was hard to take seriously in those short shorts! We would make fun of him, but we also really admire him — he’s so kind, so humble and was always teaching us something. One thing he told Saniyya and me was to be very selective about the roles we choose because they can define who you are for the rest of your career.Aunjanue [Ellis, who plays Venus and Serena’s mother] taught me how to speak up for myself and my character. There were one or two scenes where I read it and didn’t feel like Serena would react that way, and you feel like you’re so young and aren’t supposed to say much, but she showed me it was OK to talk to the director and come up with different ways to do things.Any role that highlights how powerful women can be is a role I want to be in. I also really want to do an action movie like “Wonder Woman” or “Black Widow,” because that’s been my dream ever since I was a little girl.Saniyya SidneyThe 15-year-old plays Venus Williams as she’s first winning tournaments in “King Richard.”When Venus and Serena came to set, what I took away was how close the family was. They told us, “Yeah, we all shared rooms and did talent shows together; we were so close that there was never a day we weren’t together.”When you create a character from someone else’s imagination, you have the freedom to create emotions and traits, but with a real-life person, you want to make sure you’re portraying them the best you can. I spent lots of time studying videos of Venus and Serena when they were younger.The tennis training was quite intense. The way Venus and Serena play is so unique, and I worked on Venus’s serve every day. My coach, Mr. Eric [Taino], and I were both so proud the day I got the serve down. I’m left-handed, but I had to learn to play right-handed for the movie.Mr. Will is the funniest person ever. It was amazing to watch him create Richard. He inspired me to push myself because he would come to work each day better than yesterday.My family is like, “Oh my goodness, we know you as Saniyya, and now we’re going around town and seeing you on a billboard — that’s kind of crazy, girl!” They’re so proud.I hope families all go see this movie and feel like they’re represented. I also want young girls who may be seeing themselves onscreen to know that it’s important to stay humble and keep your head up. Make sure to take care of yourself.I’d love to do an action film. A Marvel movie star that plays tennis would be hilariously cool.Daniel RanieriThe 10-year-old plays the writer J.R. Moehringer as a boy in “The Tender Bar.”Daniel Ranieri in a scene from “The Tender Bar.”Claire Folger/Amazon StudiosMy mom filmed me cursing about the lockdown, and a couple of months later it went viral. Jimmy Kimmel wanted me on his show, and right after we got done with the interview, George Clooney’s casting director contacted my mom and said George wanted me to be in his next movie. I was like, “Wait, what?!”Ben was so nice to me — me and him have a connection now. The last day of filming, he got me like 10 PlayStation games, with a headset. I keep asking him, “When are you coming to New York?”Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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      ‘Belfast’ Review: A Boy’s Life

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      In this charming memoir, Kenneth Branagh recalls his childhood in Northern Ireland through a rose-tinted lens.Romanticism reigns in “Belfast,” Kenneth Branagh’s cinematic memoir of his childhood in a turbulent Northern Ireland. From the lustrous, mainly black-and-white photography to the cozy camaraderie of its working-class setting, the movie softens edges and hearts alike. The family at its center might have health issues, money worries and an outdoor toilet, but this is no Ken Loach-style deprivation: In these streets, grit and glamour stroll hand-in-hand.So when Ma (Catríona Balfe) sits in her doorway to peel potatoes for dinner, what we notice is the soft afternoon light dancing on her luminous skin and brunette curls. And when Pa (Jamie Dornan), square of jaw and shoulder, strides toward home after a spell working in England, the camera shoots him like a returning hero. Which, of course, he is, at least to his younger son, Buddy (a wonderful Jude Hill), a smart, cheery 9-year-old and a fictional version of Branagh himself.Viewed largely through Buddy’s eyes, “Belfast,” which opens in August, 1969 (after a brief, colorful montage of the present-day city), is about the destruction of an idyll. Mere minutes into the film, a hail of Molotov cocktails ignites the friendly neighborhood where Catholics and Protestants live amicably side-by-side. A swirling camera conveys Buddy’s confusion and terror; yet, even as the barricades go up and the local bully-boy (Colin Morgan) tries to draw Buddy’s Protestant family into his campaign to “cleanse the community” of its Catholic residents, the movie refuses to get bogged down in militancy.Instead, we watch Buddy play ball with his cousins; moon over a pretty classmate; watch “Star Trek” and Westerns on television; and spend time with his loving grandparents (Judi Dench and Ciarán Hinds). Drawing from his own experiences, Branagh crafts nostalgic, sentimental scenes suffused with some of Van Morrison’s warmest songs. Family visits to movies like “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang” (1968) add wonder and fantasy to Buddy’s life and a clue to his future career. They also offer an escape from a conflict he doesn’t understand and his director refuses to elucidate. Snippets of television news play in the background, but the growing Troubles that would tear the country apart are not the story that Branagh (whose family moved to England when he was nine) wants to tell.So while “Belfast” is, in one sense, a deeply personal coming-of-age tale, it’s also a more universal story of displacement and detachment, located most powerfully in Balfe’s fierce, shining performance. Her authenticity steadies the heartbeat of a film whose cuteness can sometimes grate, and whose telescoped view offers little sense of life beyond Buddy’s block. Branagh’s remembrances may be idealized, but with “Belfast” he has written a charming, rose-tinted thank-you note to the city that sparked his dreams and the parents whose sacrifices helped them come true.BelfastRated PG-13 for loud bangs and angry bullies. Running time: 1 hour 38 minutes. In theaters. More

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      This Movie Season, It’s a Black-and-White Boom

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      “Passing,” “The Tragedy of Macbeth” and “Belfast” are just a few of the movies that forgo color for a more classical approach.Do not adjust that dial. Over the coming months, whether you’re watching new films on a streaming service or at the multiplex, more than a few of those movies are likely to be in black and white.Films as varied as “The French Dispatch” and “Being the Ricardos” employ several black-and-white sequences, while “Passing,” “Belfast” and “The Tragedy of Macbeth” are shot almost entirely without color. These are all period movies that use the old-fashioned format to evoke a bygone era, but even “C’mon C’mon,” which takes place in contemporary times and has Joaquin Phoenix as a radio journalist crisscrossing the country with his nephew, was filmed in monochrome.Is this all a coincidence, or a natural next step after recent black-and-white stunners like “Roma” and “Cold War”? To understand why everyone is going grayscale, we talked to the cinematographers behind three of the season’s most striking black-and-white features.‘The Tragedy of Macbeth’Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand set against the film’s austere atmosphere.A24For his new spin on Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” the director Joel Coen wanted to strip the play down to its barest essence. The result is a fast and ruthless reimagining leached of all color, shot not in wide-screen but in a claustrophobic 4:3 aspect ratio rarely used since the 1950s.“It’s meant to bring theatricality, and to lose temporality,” the cinematographer Bruno Delbonnel said. “It’s not about the 1700s, and it’s not about Scotland, either. We’re giving an abstraction, but a very creative one.”For Delbonnel, the creative limitations of black-and-white proved intoxicating. “I pushed the envelope even more,” Delbonnel said. “I said we shouldn’t have any furniture, and we pushed this very far: There is only one bed and a couple of tables, and there is no practical light.”All that austerity makes a striking visual impression, but Delbonnel said it was simply in service of the play’s language. The same creative rules applied to the actors Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand, who could tackle their roles as Shakespeare’s most fearsome power couple in the most unadorned fashion.As Delbonnel put it, “You say, ‘Denzel, this is the room. There is no place to sit because there is no chair. There is no glass, so you can’t drink. There is nothing you can do, so it’s all about your body language and the way you deliver the lines.’”Still, don’t get the wrong impression: Though this “Macbeth” was made in the spirit of minimalism, Delbonnel often brought in the boldest lights he could muster.“The whole movie is lit with theater light, like you’d see at a Beyoncé concert, which has very, very hard shadows,” he said. “In color, it would be unbearable, but in black-and-white, it looks amazing.”‘Passing’Negga, left, and Tessa Thompson are framed in a boxy aspect ratio for “Passing.”NetflixWhile he shot Rebecca Hall’s “Passing,” the cinematographer Eduard Grau was so committed to the film’s monochrome aesthetic that he took all the color off his iPhone, too..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-m80ywj header{margin-bottom:5px;}.css-m80ywj header h4{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:500;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.5625rem;margin-bottom:0;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-m80ywj header h4{font-size:1.5625rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“Even when I was taking photos, they would be in black and white,” Grau said. “You do things like that to see the world without color, to train your brain to forget about that green or pink wall and only look at the level of brightness or darkness.”Based on the 1929 novel by Nella Larsen, “Passing” is about two light-skinned Black women: Irene (Tessa Thompson), a well-respected but restless doctor’s wife, and Clare (Ruth Negga), her childhood friend who has been passing for white. A chance meeting in a hotel tearoom reunites the two after years spent apart, and Grau chose to flood that initial encounter with a striking amount of white light.“This is the brightest I’ve ever done a scene in my life,” Grau said. “You don’t see that a lot, especially in dramas, to have such a bright scene without a lot of detail in the whites. It also came from the fact that we didn’t want to clearly show to the audience at first whether our characters were white or Black or mixed race. Everything is so bright that it’s difficult to tell.”Like “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” “Passing” is filmed not just in black and white but also in a boxy aspect ratio that recalls some of Hollywood’s earliest feature films. (It may also remind the viewer how limited those movies were when it came to race, a thorny topic that the color scheme of “Passing” serves as a meta comment on.)Grau couldn’t have foreseen similarities with other current films when he made “Passing,” but he said he welcomed this winter’s bounty of black-and-white stories.“I think it is a coincidence, but this is also about love of film, and they are all true filmmakers,” Grau said. “It’s a strong starting point when a director chooses that, a good indication. Strong, powerful visions from directors make for good movies.”‘Belfast’The new film “Belfast” is about Buddy, played by Jude Hill, a young Irish boy coming of age in the turbulent 1960s.Rob Youngson / Focus FeaturesOver 15 years of shooting movies with the director Kenneth Branagh, the cinematographer Haris Zambarloukos has come to see color as both a blessing and a curse.“Color is so brilliantly descriptive in film, and even the color of someone’s eyes gives you so much information,” Zambarloukos said. “But I often find that when I’m making films with Ken, we’re trying to remove information for the audience and present them with what we want them to see.”Their new film, “Belfast,” about a young Irish boy coming of age in the turbulent 1960s, doesn’t eschew color entirely: It’s bookended by two color montages of modern-day Belfast, and whenever our young protagonist, Buddy, goes to the movies, the films he watches come to life in vivid color.But for the most part, whether Buddy is wooing a girl at school or trying to make sense of the conflict that grips his parents (Jamie Dornan and Caitriona Balfe), “Belfast” is shot in shimmering silvers.“In this case, I think we’re using a strength of black and white, which is not to tell you how a person or place looks but how they feel,” Zambarloukos said. “It has a transcendental quality to be of the past and the present. It’s realistic, but it has a certain magical sense to it as well.”Zambarloukos cut his teeth on the format while shooting Branagh’s long-delayed “Death on the Nile” (due in February), which opens with a 10-minute sequence in black and white. But now, after having filmed all those “Belfast” close-ups without color, he admits it will be hard to go back to reds, yellows and blues.“If I saw the same portrait of a person in color and in black and white, most of the time, I would tell more about that person from black-and-white,” Zambarloukos said. “It doesn’t create anything that isn’t there, but whatever is there is so amplified!” More