The Whale (Movie)

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    She’s Oscar-Nominated, but Hong Chau Hopes to Stay an Underdog

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    Though Hong Chau received her first Oscar nomination last month, for playing Brendan Fraser’s caretaker in the Darren Aronofsky drama “The Whale,” it took awhile for the accolade to sink in. In 2017, after a breakout role in Alexander Payne’s “Downsizing,” she’d been hotly tipped for a nomination that never came, the sort of anticlimax that can make you want to detach from the hubbub of awards season altogether.This time around, there was a better outcome, though she is still sorting out exactly how she feels about it. “My honest reaction to the nomination was just relief,” she said.The 43-year-old Chau didn’t dream of becoming an Oscar-nominated actress: Born in a refugee camp to Vietnamese parents, she grew up in New Orleans and majored in creative writing and film studies at Boston University. After she signed up for an improv class to cure her shyness, her teacher encouraged her to pursue performing, and Chau moved to Los Angeles to seek parts. But success initially proved elusive, and skeptical casting directors told her that booking anything more than a day-player role was beyond her grasp.“After a few years of trying, you think, ‘Is it really worth it to try to dedicate my life to this?’” Chau said. “But what kept me going was the delusional hope that I’d get to work on a cool, weird movie, because those were the movies that I liked. I just kept hoping that something would happen and, thankfully, it did.”After following her big-screen debut in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Inherent Vice” with “Downsizing,” Chau’s career caught fire: She’s been a scene-stealer ever since, in projects like HBO’s “Watchmen” and the recent culinary comedy “The Menu,” in which she plays a coolly hostile maître d’. Chau will next be seen in a raft of auteur-driven films that include Kelly Reichardt’s “Showing Up,” Wes Anderson’s “Asteroid City” and “And” from Yorgos Lanthimos, but in the meantime, audiences are still discovering her work in “The Whale,” in which her character, Liz, tends to Fraser’s 600-pound recluse with a whole lot of tough love.Chau is “a force of nature: titanium backbone, suffers no fools, has a bear trap of a memory,” Fraser told me. “Everything is an embarrassment of riches for whoever’s editing her work because of how varied and interesting she is. And she can say more in between lines of dialogue, in the pauses and the silences, than I can with dialogue.”Here are edited excerpts from our conversation.Chau in “The Whale.” She initially turned down the chance to audition.A24, via Associated PressNow that the dust has settled from your Oscar nomination, how are you feeling?The things that have touched me the most have been messages from people who have known me since before I wanted to be an actor. My friend from high school called from work and she was like, “Oh my God, I’m shaking right now. I’m hiding in the closet to talk to you because I can’t control my body right now.” I was like, “Why?” But she was starting to tear up on the phone, and it made me get emotional because she was like, “I remember all of those years ago when I went to your improv shows.” I hadn’t thought about that in so long, and stuff like that is meaningful to me. The rest of it, I don’t know. My whole career identity has been about being an underdog and trying to scrap my way into getting parts.Do you mean you were perceived as an underdog, or you felt like an underdog?I felt like an underdog, always really excited and grateful to be a part of things. Now it’s just a weird thing where I feel like, “Do I have to step up? Am I going to be considered a veteran now?” I still feel so new and I’m still learning, so I hope this doesn’t mean that people think I know what I’m doing. I really admire people who are pros, but at the same time, I hope I never become a pro, if that makes sense.You shot “The Whale” in early 2021, not long after you had given birth to your first child. Was it an easy yes?Interviews With the Oscar NomineesKerry Condon: An ardent animal lover, the supporting actress Oscar nominee for “The Banshees of Inisherin” said that she channeled grief from her dog’s death into her performance.Michelle Yeoh: The “Everything Everywhere All at Once” star, nominated for best actress, said she was “bursting with joy” but “a little sad” that previous Asian actresses hadn’t been recognized.Angela Bassett: The actress nearly missed the announcement because of troubles with her TV. She tuned in just in time to find out that she was nominated for her supporting role in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”Austin Butler: In discussing his best actor nomination, the “Elvis” star said that he wished Lisa Marie Presley, who died on Jan. 12, had been able to celebrate the moment with him.I was fully anticipating not working for the first year while I was a mother, so I was surprised when my agent sent me the script for “The Whale.” I almost didn’t want to read it, because I didn’t want to get attached, and then when I read the script, I felt even more strongly that this wasn’t the right time in my life to tackle something like that because it would take so much work. Also, everything that I’d done had been a specifically Asian character, and because this character wasn’t, I thought the casting net for it must be so wide. I just didn’t want to throw my hat in the ring.About a week passed and my agent came back to me and was like, “They really want to see you. Is this something you want to let go?” During that time, I had thought about it, like, “Oh my gosh, it is a really amazing story and script. I don’t know, can I do it?” They asked for three scenes on tape for the audition. I told my agent, “Here’s one scene. That’s all I had time to do. I think he should know after one scene whether I’m the right girl for him or not.”That’s a flex, Hong!“I don’t have time to do anything else! My baby is crying in the background” [she told the agent]. But Darren called me right after he saw it, somehow my baby cooperated, and we were able to put another scene on tape very quickly.Once you accepted the role, how did you feel?Honestly, I felt like I wanted to barf. I was thinking, “Wow, I’m so tired. How can I possibly be on set and say all these lines? Oh my God, this is more dialogue than I’ve had in all of the things I’ve done combined.” Thankfully, my husband really stepped up and took care of our baby while I was at work and allowed me to do it. And he was the one who also really pushed me to throw my hat in the ring and said that he would be there to support me.Brendan Fraser said Chau “can say more in between lines of dialogue, in the pauses and the silences, than I can with dialogue.”Justin J Wee for The New York TimesBefore shooting, the actors had three weeks of rehearsal. Is that the sort of thing that you spark to as a performer?I found rehearsals really restrictive, and I don’t think Darren will mind me describing it as that. He obviously knew what he wanted to do, so a lot of rehearsal from the get-go was spent on blocking, and it was so specific so early on. That’s what I had objection to because in my mind, rehearsal means that you just feel everything out without already knowing where you need to be.By the second or third day, I kind of tuned him out a little bit and was able to just focus on Brendan and trying to find those different moments with him. One of the functions of Liz in the script was to show the audience who Charlie was prior to us meeting him in this dire state, and finding those moments of joy and of levity needed to be worked out in rehearsal, because once we got on set, there wasn’t going to be time because of the limitations of the suit that Brendan was wearing. It was incredibly hot to wear silicone, so there wasn’t as much time to futz around.What do you think Liz is like outside the space we see her in during the movie?Well, when I was cast, my agents had thrown out some names of other people who were in consideration for the role. None of them were Asian, and the role wasn’t written specifically as Asian. So once I was cast, the writer Sam Hunter added the line about her being adopted. I think it was a useful bit of information in terms of picturing what it was like for her growing up in Idaho in this very conservative, religious family. That informed a lot of the choices that I made.I asked Darren if I could have tattoos and he said yes, even though you never see them on camera in the movie, because I was like, “Oh, I think she was a raver girl.” I could imagine Liz going to some warehouse parties and rebelling against her super-religious adoptive parents. But that was all just for me, and it felt luxurious, like, “Oh, this only happens on a Darren Aronofsky movie.” No other production would allow me to spend the time or the money on these tattoos.Maybe not, but on projects like “The Menu” or “Watchmen,” I’ve heard you had a lot of input into how those characters would look.Even though they’re limited in screen time, I want them to feel interesting. That’s part of the fun for me. I think a lot of people would maybe look at it in a more pitiful way, like, “Oh, why doesn’t she get to play lead characters? Why just supporting?” But I love supporting characters and I love doing that work to make them feel really full — it’s a little bit of a puzzle where you have to look for clues in the text. It’s not about jockeying for more screen time or more lines or anything like that. I’m usually more entertained or invested in whatever is going on with a supporting character than the lead character.In “The Menu,” Chau plays a stern maître d’ opposite Ralph Fiennes’s imperious chef.20th Century FoxIn past interviews, you’ve said that you don’t necessarily think of yourself as an actor. After a year like the one you’ve had, has that changed?When I say I don’t feel like an actor, it’s because typically whenever you read a profile of an actor, this is all that they’ve ever wanted to do. I don’t know if I could say the same thing, because I didn’t intend on being an actor. I didn’t go to school for it, and I only took improv classes as a way to break out of my shell because I was so introverted. I thought I wanted to be either a writer or an editor, something that was a little bit more solitary, and it’s just odd that I find myself in front of the camera.What do you get out of acting now that’s different than when you first began?I don’t know if I ever wanted anything out of it! I just wanted to be on set, to hang out with people, and to see the finished product. I could be on set all day if I didn’t have a family to take care of. I just love watching everybody work, not even just the actors — I love watching the grips move the lights, and the set decorators tweaking the little drapes. I also feel like my most relaxed and most confident self on set, too. I don’t know what to do with myself when I’m on a red carpet.Red carpets are terrifying! It’s a gantlet of flash bulbs and people shouting your name.It’s not even shouting my name — it’s more like whoever I’m talking to is looking past me to see if there’s somebody more famous coming up so they can quickly wrap up whatever they’re doing with me. That’s been my experience.You said that before “The Whale,” many of your parts were written specifically for an Asian actress. Is that still the case?“Showing Up,” no. Wes’s movie, no. “The Menu,” definitely not, because she was written as Scandinavian. But I never go into it with an agenda of like, “OK, I’m going to turn the stereotype on its head.” I’m always trying to service the script, and however people want to take it, I have no control over that. Even with Elsa in “The Menu,” I thought she was a very dominating character, but during an interview, somebody was asking a question about Asian stereotypes, and she was also Asian. She was like, “Your character reminded me of a maid.” I was like, “I’m sorry, what are you talking about?”It’s a shame, honestly, to always be viewing the world and looking for that. You can always bend things in that way if you want to, but it’s not something that I can really spend too much energy trying to anticipate. But I’m also a little hesitant to get on a soapbox about things. My goal is not to be president of the Asian American student body — I just want to do good work and just leave it at that. More

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      Making My Red (Well, Blue) Carpet Reporting Debut

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      When I covered my first movie premiere for The Times, I learned that there’s a casual art to a good carpet question.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.Last week, I found myself awake in the wee morning hours, anxiously Googling things like “what to wear to cover a movie premiere” and “red carpet question ideas.”Katie Van Syckle, a senior staff editor for The New York Times, had messaged me earlier that day with two questions: Was I free the following evening, and if so, would I be up for covering the New York premiere of “The Whale,” the director Darren Aronofsky’s somber new film about a reclusive gay man with severe obesity, for the Styles desk?The resulting article, which was published online last week, was the first in a new Styles column called Quick Question, which takes readers behind the scenes at red carpets, gala dinners and other star-studded events.In addition to my day job at The Times as a senior staff editor on the Flexible Editing desk, a pool of 18 or so general editors who edit copy from across the newsroom, I’m a frequent contributor to The Times’s Culture desk. Still, I’d never been to a party in New York quite like this one — and I had certainly never covered one.I accepted and asked Katie: What should I wear? How much time would I have to talk to each person? How long should I stay at the after party?Katie, who has covered at least a hundred of these events over her career, patiently answered all of them: “a look,” around three minutes each and until I’d captured the scene. She also added a bit of her own advice: Have three sharp questions ready to fire, plus a backup.After doing some research about the film, which is likely to win its star, Brendan Fraser, his first Oscar, I brainstormed a few: What did the movie’s cast and creators think was the value of films that challenged and pushed audiences in an age of Marvel ubiquity and sequel fatigue? Should the Oscars follow in the steps of the previous night’s Gotham Awards, whose acting prize categories are gender neutral?I Googled photos of the film’s cast and creators so that I’d quickly recognize them and finally, around 3 a.m., fell asleep.The next afternoon, I learned that I might have overprepared when something called a face sheet — a list of expected attendees with their roles and headshots, typically provided to reporters for premieres — arrived in my inbox from A24, the movie and television studio hosting the event. I also landed on an outfit: a black dress coat, green turtleneck sweater dress, black leggings and black heeled boots.Then: go time. I arrived at Alice Tully Hall at 6 p.m. for a 6:15 p.m. carpet — which was ocean blue, not red — and took my place among the reporters and the corresponding line of laminated cards on the floor: Variety, Letterboxd, W Magazine, and mine, The New York Times.The first to arrive of those on my “to interview” list was Samuel D. Hunter, the screenwriter. As he made his way down the carpet, stopping to pose for photos, I knew I would have limited time, but I was ready.“What was your own first experience with heartbreak, and what did you do?” I unexpectedly burst out when he got to me, without so much as a word of hello. “OK, then!” he said. I winced.From left: the actor Brendan Fraser, the director Darren Aronofsky and the screenwriter Samuel D. Hunter.Evan Agostini/Invision, via Associated PressThen I spotted Mr. Fraser. At 6 feet 2 inches, he towered over me — and caught me off guard by asking my name. After striking out on my first two questions (“That’s personal, so I’m not going to answer it,” he said to the heartbreak one, and “That’s interesting, I’ll have to think about it,” his response to combining the Oscars acting categories), I struck gold with my third: What had enticed him to take on such a physically and emotionally draining role? His answer, which lasted nearly two minutes, was the longest in my article.After the screening, I took the subway to the after party at La Grande Boucherie, an upscale French brasserie on West 53rd Street, where actors, producers and other celebrities mingled.I immediately spotted the comedian Jim Gaffigan, clutching a glass of wine as he stood talking to a man by a large Christmas tree. I hovered nearby, waiting for them to finish their conversation, but after five minutes, it became clear I was going to have to interrupt.Like Mr. Fraser, Mr. Gaffigan, who was not involved in the film, began by asking me a question: What had I thought of the film? (I redirected the question back to him; I generally refrain from offering opinions on work I report on.)This was not in my party playbook. But party reporting is a conversation, a verbal give and take — unlike, say, a feature interview of a lead actor. I could ask most anything, trivial or considered, without the pressure of a ticking clock.On the subway ride home around 11:15 p.m., I outlined my article on a blank page in my notebook. I could check the exact quotes later against the recordings on my phone, but I wanted to sketch my story while I still remembered the gist of what people had said.As much as I’d tried to prepare in advance, I realized that reporting for this kind of event should be somewhat off the cuff. I wasn’t reading from a list of questions, and I had to be quick on my feet. The article, and the column, aim to capture that spirit. More

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      ‘The Whale’ Review: Body Issues

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      Brendan Fraser plays an obese writing instructor reckoning with grief and regret in Darren Aronofsky’s latest film.Charlie is a college writing instructor who never leaves his apartment. He conducts his classes online, disabling his laptop camera so the students can’t see him. The movie camera, guided by Darren Aronofsky and his go-to cinematographer, Matthew Libatique, also stays indoors most of the time. Occasionally you get an exterior view of the drab low-rise building where Charlie lives, or a breath of fresh air on the landing outside his front door. But these respites only emphasize a pervasive sense of confinement.Based on a play by Samuel D. Hunter (who wrote the script), “The Whale” is an exercise in claustrophobia. Rather than open up a stage-bound text, as a less confident film director might, Aronofsky intensifies the stasis, the calamitous sense of stuckness that defines Charlie’s existence. Charlie is trapped — in his rooms, in a life that has run off the rails, and above all in his own body. He was always a big guy, he says, but after the suicide of his lover, his eating “just got out of control.” Now his blood pressure is spiking, his heart is failing, and the simple physical exertions of standing up and sitting down require enormous effort and mechanical assistance.Charlie’s size is the movie’s governing symbol and principal special effect. Encased in prosthetic flesh, Brendan Fraser, who plays Charlie, gives a performance that is sometimes disarmingly graceful. He uses his voice and his big, sad eyes to convey a delicacy at odds with the character’s corporeal grossness. But nearly everything about Charlie — the sound of his breathing, the way he eats, moves and perspires — underlines his abjection, to an extent that starts to feel cruel and voyeuristic.“The Whale” unfolds over the course of a week, during which Charlie receives a series of visits: from his friend and informal caretaker, Liz (Hong Chau); from Thomas (Ty Simpkins), a young missionary who wants to save his soul; from his estranged teenage daughter, Ellie (Sadie Sink), and embittered ex-wife, Mary (Samantha Morton). There is also a pizza delivery guy (Sathya Sridharan), and a bird that occasionally shows up outside Charlie’s window. I’m not an ornithologist, but my guidebook identifies it as a Common Western Metaphor.Speaking of which, Charlie is not the only whale in “The Whale.” His most prized possession is a student paper on “Moby-Dick,” the authorship of which is revealed at the movie’s end. It’s a fine piece of naïve literary criticism — maybe the best writing in the movie — about how Ishmael’s troubles compelled the author to think about “my own life.”Perhaps Charlie’s troubles are meant to have the same effect. He becomes the nodal point in a web of trauma and regret, variously the agent, victim and witness of someone else’s unhappiness. He left Mary when he fell in love with a male student, Alan, who was Liz’s brother and had been raised in the church that Thomas represents. Mary, a heavy drinker, has kept Charlie away from Ellie, who has grown into a seething adolescent.All this drama bursts out in freshets of stagy verbiage and blubbering. The script overwhelms narrative logic while demanding extra credit for emotional honesty. But the working out of the various issues involves a lot of blame-shifting and ethical evasion. Everyone and no one is responsible; actions do and don’t have consequences. Real-world topics like sexuality, addiction and religious intolerance float around untethered to any credible sense of social reality. The moral that bubbles up through the shouting (and the strenuous nerve-pumping of Robert Simonsen’s score) is that people are incapable of not caring about one another.Maybe? Herman Melville and Walt Whitman provide some literary ballast for this idea, but as an exploration of — and argument for — the power of human sympathy, “The Whale” is undone by simplistic psychologizing and intellectual fuzziness.Aronofsky has a tendency to misjudge his own strengths as a filmmaker. He is a brilliant manipulator of moods and a formidable director of actors, specializing in characters fighting their way through anguish and delusion toward something like transcendence. Mickey Rourke did that in “The Wrestler,” Natalie Portman in “Black Swan,” Russell Crowe in “Noah” and Jennifer Lawrence in “Mother!” Fraser makes a bid to join their company — Chau is also excellent — but “The Whale,” like some of Aronofsky’s other projects, is swamped by its grand and vague ambitions. It’s overwrought and also strangely insubstantial.The WhaleRated R for abjection. Running time: 1 hour 57 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘The Whale’ Premiere in NYC Inspired Strong Reactions

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      More than 100 actors, singers and creative professionals attended the New York premiere of Darren Aronofsky’s new film at Alice Tully Hall this week. Some of them shared their thoughts.The carpet was blue. The poster was blue. The suits were blue.That is, until the actor Ty Simpkins arrived at the New York premiere of “The Whale” at Alice Tully Hall this week — in a magenta suit.“I want the summer weather back,” Mr. Simpkins, 21, explained of his choice to break with the otherwise muted palette of the film’s cast and creative team, who arrived on the red carpet — well, oceanic blue carpet — in navy suits and black dresses.The moment of levity was at odds with the character Mr. Simpkins plays in the director Darren Aronofsky’s somber new film, adapted from the play by Samuel D. Hunter and produced by A24. The movie centers on Charlie, played by Brendan Fraser, a reclusive, morbidly obese gay man trying to reconnect with his teenage daughter (Sadie Sink) after the death of his lover. (Mr. Simpkins plays a young evangelical missionary who tries to convert Charlie — and wrestles with some of his own demons in the process.)“The Whale” has received rapturous reviews at film festivals — including a six-minute standing ovation in Venice — and has been hailed as a comeback role for Mr. Fraser, whose career faltered in the years after his success in the “The Mummy” (1999). Though Fraser is regarded as a front-runner to win his first Oscar for his performance, and the film will most likely be nominated for best picture, it has also been criticized for Mr. Aronofsky’s decision to put Mr. Fraser in a so-called fat suit rather than cast an obese actor. The director has said that doing so would have been difficult.When asked about his choice to use a “fat suit,” Mr. Aronofsky objected to the phrasing. “I wouldn’t use that word,” he said. “It’s prosthetics and makeup.”The film’s makeup artists, he said, “were able to create this incredible illusion that not only works with the audience but I think helped Brendan inhabit his character and bring it to life.“That you can be transported into the life of someone who seems incredibly different than you and still learn something about yourself is why I love movies,” Mr. Aronofsky continued.On the carpet and at the after-party, the film’s cast and creative team discussed the themes the film tackles, the emotions it raises and what they hoped audiences would take away.The writer and playwright Samuel D. Hunter, left, with the actor Brendan Fraser and the director Darren Aronofsky at La Grande Boucherie after the New York premiere of “The Whale.”Jackie Molloy for The New York TimesMitch Bukhar, left, a talent agent, with Ty Simpkins, who played a young evangelical missionary in “The Whale.”Jackie Molloy for The New York TimesMr. Fraser gained weight for the role, in addition to wearing the prosthetics, which added as much as 300 additional pounds to his frame. He has said that he prepared for the part by speaking with people who have struggled with eating issues, asking about their diet and the impact of their weight on their relationships.“Very often people who live with severe obesity are disregarded and shut away and silenced,” said Mr. Fraser, 53, who attended the premiere with two of his sons, Holden Fraser, 18, and Leland Fraser, 16. “So it was my obligation — my duty — returning dignity and respect and authenticity.”He continued: “The creative choices we made — the makeup, the elaborate costuming that I wore — with the help of the Obesity Action Coalition, I’m pretty sure that we came really close to creating a film with a main character who hasn’t been seen in this way, as authentically before, and I’m proud of that.”The film, which shows Charlie inhaling whole buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken and double-stacked slices of pizza — with ranch dressing added on top — and being subjected to relentless verbal abuse by his teenage daughter, can at times be hard to watch. But stories that push and challenge audiences remain essential, said Mr. Hunter, who wrote the film.“In academia, there’s kind of a push for no more trauma-based stories, and I struggle with that,” said Mr. Hunter, 41, after posing for photos next to his husband, the dramaturge John Baker, on the carpet. “Not only because that is discounting a broad swath of world literature — maybe the majority of it, certainly the Bible — but also because I think there’s utility in looking at dark things through the lens of fiction.”Mala Gaonkar and David Byrne at the after-party for “The Whale.”Jackie Molloy for The New York TimesBut Mr. Aronofsky wanted to be clear: The film is not meant to induce two straight hours of waterworks. “What’s surprising to many people is how funny it is,” he said. “I think when people see the heartfelt material, there’s a lot of laughs.”At an after-party at the heated outdoor atrium of the upscale French brasserie La Grande Boucherie on West 53rd Street, where sliders, artisanal cheeses and wine were served, David Byrne, the former Talking Heads frontman, said it wasn’t the humor that had surprised him, but the humanity.“It’s surprising, the amount of heart in it,” Mr. Byrne, 70, said.Over by a gleaming Christmas tree, the comedian Jim Gaffigan was still processing what he had just experienced.“A film that moves you that much, you want to give a standing ovation to,” Mr. Gaffigan, 56, said, clutching a glass of wine. “But I feel like the audience was so emotionally drained that we needed the walker.”“Darren always does that,” he continued. “He accesses emotions that are very credible, very personal. It’s going to take a while to process.”Quick Question is a collection of dispatches from red carpets, gala dinners and other events that coax celebrities out of hiding. More

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      The Eight Film Festival Movies That Got the Biggest Awards Boost

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      “Women Talking,” women fighting, a pair of Brendans and more: After Toronto, Venice and Telluride, here are the titles and performances in the conversation.Who are the front-runners, the dark horses and the long shots? After major film festivals in Venice, Telluride and Toronto, where most of the year’s remaining prestige films have screened, the awards season has finally begun to come into focus.There are still a few significant contenders yet to debut, like Damien Chazelle’s glitzy Hollywood drama “Babylon,” and the industry is buzzing that Apple will soon announce a year-end release for its big-budget slavery drama, “Emancipation,” even though the film’s leading man, Will Smith, was banned from attending the Oscars for the next decade. And some tantalizing questions from these festivals still linger, like whether “Glass Onion,” the rollicking sequel to “Knives Out,” can score the best-picture nomination that the first film missed out on.But in the meantime, here are the eight films that came out of the fall festivals with the biggest awards-season pop.‘The Whale’There are few things Oscar voters prefer more than a transformational role and a comeback narrative, and this season, Brendan Fraser’s got both. In Darren Aronofsky’s new drama, Fraser wears a prosthetic bodysuit to transform into a 600-pound shut-in named Charlie, who attempts to reconnect with his angry daughter (Sadie Sink) as his health falters. Interest is high in the 53-year-old actor’s return to the limelight, and every time a clip hit social media of the emotional Fraser soaking up applause in Venice and Toronto, a young generation raised on his heroics in “The Mummy” reliably made those videos go viral. Though some festival pundits have taken issue with the film’s depiction of an obese protagonist, awards voters will still be wowed by Fraser’s work, making him this year’s prohibitive best-actor favorite.‘The Fabelmans’Steven Spielberg’s new film about his own coming-of-age was warmly received in Toronto, where Michelle Williams won best-in-show notices as Mitzi, the theatrical mother of the movie’s young Spielberg stand-in. Expect the actress to pick up her fifth Oscar nomination and, if she is run as a supporting performer, her first win. Even before its festival debut, awards watchers thought Spielberg’s film would land at the top of their best-picture prediction lists, but the film isn’t juggernaut-shaped — it’s lighter, more intimate and an appealing ramble in a way that people might not have anticipated. That may mean that the field is still open for a best-picture favorite to emerge, or perhaps “The Fabelmans” could sneak its way there in the end without earning the resentment accrued by an early-season front-runner.‘The Woman King’ and the Art of WarViola Davis leads a strong cast into battle in Gina Prince-Bythewood’s action epic inspired by real women warriors.Review:  “‘The Woman King’ is a sweeping entertainment, but it’s also a story of unwavering resistance in front of and behind the camera,” our critic writes.Viola Davis: As our reporter visited her on the set, Davis spoke about how powerful it was to watch Black women transform into warriors.Director Q&A: In an interview with The Times, Prince-Bythewood explained how she went about tackling what would be, logistically, her biggest film yet.Anatomy of a Scene: Prince-Bythewood had the actors perform their own stunts in the film. In some cases, that meant pulling off flips to the dirt as well as wrestling scenes.‘Tár’It’s been 16 years since Todd Field last directed a film, but expect his third feature, “Tár,” to hit the Oscar-nominated heights of his predecessors, “In the Bedroom” and “Little Children.” It will certainly be one of the year’s most talked-about movies: The story touches on hot-button topics like cancel culture and #MeToo as it follows a famed conductor (Cate Blanchett) whose career begins to crumble when her past catches up with her. Blanchett earned career-best raves at Venice for the role — and taught herself German, piano and conducting to boot — so a third Oscar is well within reach. Still, a strong year for best-actress contenders will make Blanchett’s battle a fierce one.‘The Banshees of Inisherin’Five years after “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” earned Oscars for Frances McDormand and Sam Rockwell, the writer-director Martin McDonagh is back with a dark comedy whose cast could run the table, too. Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson are longtime friends whose relationship is severed in the most baffling way, and Farrell’s constant attempts to mend the rift push their petty grievances into the realm of tragedy. Both men are wonderful and will probably earn their first Oscar nominations, but if voters really flip for the film — and I suspect they will — then the supporting performers Kerry Condon (as Farrell’s sister) and Barry Keoghan (as a cockeyed friend) will be in the mix as well.‘Women Talking’This Sarah Polley-directed drama about Mennonite women in crisis was Telluride’s most significant world premiere this year, and in that Colorado enclave, which regularly draws a large contingent of Oscar voters, “Women Talking” did quite well. With a sprawling ensemble cast that includes awards favorites Rooney Mara, Jessie Buckley and Claire Foy — as well as three-time best-actress winner McDormand in a small role — “Women Talking” should nab several nominations, even though some of the male viewers I spoke to after the film’s Toronto screening proved surprisingly resistant to the film’s feature-long debate about sexual violence.‘The Woman King’Forget “Women Talking,” how about women fighting? This old-fashioned action epic from the director Gina Prince-Bythewood played through the roof in Toronto and stars Viola Davis as the leader of the Agojie, an all-female group of warriors defending their kingdom in 1820s West Africa. Davis is an Oscar winner (with three more nominations, too) who called “The Woman King” her magnum opus while introducing the film, and a performance this passionate and athletic should be in contention all season. But a notable box-office haul will be crucial to the film’s fate (it opens Friday), since even bigger action films like “Avatar: The Way of Water” and “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” are due at year’s end and will be following Oscar-nominated predecessors.‘All the Beauty and the Bloodshed’The expansion of the best picture race to 10 nominees has made room for all sorts of previously snubbed movies, from Marvel spectaculars to Pixar tentpoles. But when will a documentary be nominated for best picture? Laura Poitras’s new film, “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,” beat all fiction narratives at Venice to take the Golden Lion, the fest’s top award, and this portrait of photographer Nan Goldin as she protests the wealthy Sackler family’s role in the opioid crisis will be distributed by Neon, the company that managed an Oscar first with the Korean-language best picture winner “Parasite.” At the very least, “All the Beauty” will be a strong contender for the documentary Oscar that Poitras won for her 2014 film about Edward Snowden, “Citizenfour.”‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’This A24 film from the directing team Daniels opened way back in March, but you’d hardly know that based on the major festival tributes to its star, Michelle Yeoh, in both Toronto and Venice. A flag was planted in both places: This indie hit has now entered its awards-campaign phase, and since the fall festivals didn’t produce major front-runners in the picture and directing categories, expect “Everything Everywhere,” to gun for recognition in both races as well as the supporting actor category (where Ke Huy Quan could be this year’s Troy Kotsur), original screenplay and more. Yeoh’s best-actress nomination is almost certain, though she’ll face plenty of competition from Blanchett. Both women were handed dazzling signature roles this year, and their race should be the season’s most exciting. More