If Quentin Tarantino says movies have been All Done since 2019, then who am I to contradict him? For that matter, who are you? I only wish I’d said it before he had.

Oh, wait…I did. Maybe not exactly in his words. But I have for a while been saying in this space that the movies have been over going back at least a couple decades, if by “the movies,” you mean the process of theatrical releases shot, cut, dried and shipped fresh to as many exhibitors as can take them, the popcorn blockbusters and the rom-coms, the tentpole franchises and the scruffy horror knockoffs, those that are Searchlights and those that are…Everything Else. The COVID lockdown only accelerated a steep decline in the picture industry’s conventional way of doing business. Once-thriving multiplexes were vanishing from urban and suburban territories as far back as the second Bush administration, if not sooner, making the theaters of the present and foreseeable future boutique businesses.
Oddly enough, none of these transitions seems to have adversely affected the Academy Awards. They’re still a TV show and TV, obviously, rules the culture from stream to shining stream. Oscars are a reality show, above all, maybe the very first. And the objective of all reality shows as far back as “Candid Camera” is to catch people in the act of Being Themselves, even in a roomful of people whose expertise is to pretend to be Anything But – unless, of course, somebody gets mad enough to slap somebody silly. And that only happens once in a century. Unless we’re lucky…

This year’s show might be suspenseful enough without meaningless violence. If last year’s Oscars were mostly chalk, this year’s competitions are wide-open…with, maybe, one or two exceptions. The BAFTAs and trade awards have been little help in pre-determining this year’s winners since the choices seem to change with each show…again, with, maybe, one or two exceptions.

So, I’m guessing there’ll be some uncertainty leading up to March 2. The larger uncertainty, however, is the extent to which anybody besides movie buffs and industry people will care up to that point. That’s the thing with TV shows. Doesn’t matter what the reason is for them to be on. They need to get eyeballs above all else and the Golden Globes was smart enough to get Nikki Glazer at the peak of her post-Tom-Brady-celebrity-roast moment to host their shindig. No shade on Conan O’Brien, at least from this corner of the room. But has he told enough short people jokes lately to meet the stringent expectations of a bloodthirsty mass audience needing to Feel Seen?
After all this time, the Academy still doesn’t have the guts to let Kevin Hart host their show after all his movies have done for Hollywood. And you have to hand it to Hart because he…never mind. You know the rest.

As usual, predictions are in bold and, whenever I think it’s appropriate, amended with a FWIW (For Whatever It’s Worth) comment.

Another note, now that I’ve got these all written out: I’ve seen way too many of these damn things.

Best Picture
Anora
The Brutalist
A Complete Unknown
Conclave
Dune: Part Two
Emilia Pérez
I’m Still Here
Nickel Boys
The Substance
Wicked

Anora swept up the producers, directors, and writers guild awards in this category, so you’d have to believe it’s All Over, right? But remember that this is the AMPAS and I worry there’s too much T&A from the jump in this movie to rub some older voters the wrong way. Then I think: well, what does “older” mean in an Oscar voter these days? Sixty-something? Seventy-something? I’m 72 now and what my late mother and her sisters would consider “too sexy” or “too racy” isn’t all that “too” for my unapologetically boomer sensibilities. Granted, there are others in my demographic group who feel otherwise, but then there are likely fifty-somethings, or even forty-somethings among Academy voters for whom some of the sequences in Sean Baker’s contemporary fairy-tale-with-toads would be excessively sordid. Assuming that’s the case, where else would these votes go? Early on, it was plausible to believe that Brutalist, Conclave or Complete Unknown would have led the parade, being paradigmatically “prestigious” or “serious” productions.

Consider also that comedies haven’t often won for Best Picture since the 1930s, especially romcoms, (Annie Hall, you say? Maybe the one exception that really makes the rule.) So, at the risk of further spoiling my recent record on this category, I’m taking a shot on a dark horse, even if dark horses have an even poorer track record in this category than comedies. (For rare exceptions, see Crash. Or don’t.)


FWIW: But is Anora a comedy? That’s what everybody’s labeling it, even though I happen to think (and I don’t think I’m alone) that Baker’s story all-too-perfectly captures what those with an overabundance of money and power do to those who struggle to survive along the margins. Of the other candidates on this roster, Nickel Boys may be its closest analogue in this arrogance-of-power thematic context and RaMell Ross’s adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer-winning j’accuse is the most artistically daring of the nominees here. If I’d been an Oscar voter and Kamala Harris had won last November, Nickel Boys would have gotten my endorsement. But because the Other Guy got his ticket punched again, I’d likely go for the one about the lap dancer from Brighton Beach who gets fucked (over) by a Russian oligarch prince. Gruesome as Nickel Boys’ true-life horrors were, at least there was a glint of hope at the end, however belated.

Also: You’d have thought, especially at the outset, that the two musicals on this roster would have garnered much more attention and anticipation by now because they’re, you know, musicals. Emilia Pérez did get a lot of attention, though by no means was it the kind it wanted. As for Wicked, the general suspicion is that Oscar’s withholding its love until the second installment drops next year. Which makes almost as much sense as there being two installments in the first place. The exhibitors likely made this call since the idea of a four-hour-plus musical lumbering through the marketplace seemed illogical given America’s fast-shrinking attention spans, especially the teen-girl target demos. I’m in agreement with those who believe that attention spans in general have two settings: forty seconds and three-to-four hours with nothing whatsoever in between. It could’ve been done for Wicked. But it wasn’t. So those witches will have to wait. At least, one of them may anyway. (See further down.)

Best Director
Sean Baker, Anora
Brady Corbet, The Brutalist
James Mangold, A Complete Unknown
Jacques Audiard, Emilia Pérez
Coralie Fargeat, The Substance

For a while, this seemed Corbet’s to lose and, despite Baker’s DGA and PGA wins, I think he still could win. His unexpected BAFTA win suggests as much. There’s also a slight chance that Mangold could sneak in from behind, given the good will his movie’s sustained throughout the season. But I’ll follow the producers’ and directors’ leads on this, even with my earlier misgivings as to whether Baker’s movie is too racy to be Best Picture.

Best Actor
Adrien Brody, The Brutalist
Timothée Chalamet, A Complete Unknown
Colman Domingo, Sing Sing
Ralph Fiennes, Conclave
Sebastian Stan, The Apprentice

Brody has been securely in front of the pack since his movie’s premiere last fall and there’s been little, if any indication that he’s lost any ground to the competition. Meanwhile, there’s genuine affection out there for Fiennes and his performance, which is one of the slyest and wittiest on-screen turns he’s had in a while. And Chalamet continues to ride a wave of good feeling over his Dylan portrayal, withstanding months of sniping from odd corners about whether his rendering, and the movie’s, are “accurate,” whatever that means. Still thinking it’s Brody’s.

Best Actress
Cynthia Erivo, Wicked
Karla Sofía Gascón, Emilia Pérez
Mikey Madison, Anora
Demi Moore, The Substance
Fernanda Torres, I’m Still Here

Moore’s moving  acceptance speech at the Globes helped raise her movie’s profile, making more people notice how much she went all out in a physically demanding – and distorting – role. The Academy loves it when attractive performers make themselves less attractive in whatever form and so this would seem locked up tight – except for Madison and Torres, the latter of whom has drawn rhapsodies from critics and audiences for her portrayal of a woman who lost her dissident husband in to a right-wing dictatorship in Brazil. Good as Madison is in her movie’s title role, the perception likely will be that her time will come sooner or later, leaving this to be pretty much a Moore-Torres duel to the end.

FWIW: As for Gascón, one wonders whether she’d still be in the hunt if those tweets about George Floyd, the pandemic, Muslims, and other volatile subjects from five years ago had never existed. Or, for that matter, if social media had never existed.

Best Supporting Actor
Yura Borisov, Anora
Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain
Edward Norton, A Complete Unknown
Guy Pearce, The Brutalist
Jeremy Strong, The Apprentice

An exceptionally strong field has been all but lapped by Culkin, whose performance is one of those ringers that dominate a movie so much that it may as well be a lead role but for the billing. Ignore those chirping sounds you’ve been hearing about Borisov being pulled ahead by Anora’s “momentum.” It doesn’t have that kind of pull and let me repeat, comedies don’t win Best Picture.

Best Supporting Actress
Monica Barbaro, A Complete Unknown
Ariana Grande, Wicked
Felicity Jones, The Brutalist
Isabella Rossellini, Conclave
Zoe Saldaña, Emilia Pérez

Apparently, Saldaña  got through the voting process without the Gascón tweets spilling all over her prospects. If so, this signifies Hollywood showing its appreciation to her for her diligence and energy in and out of the MCU.

FWIW: Grande, however, remains a factor. For whatever reason, she’s the one Wicked principal who’s getting a big push for recognition right now as opposed to waiting till next year. And she’s genuinely magnetic and charming in the movie. No one should be surprised if waiting till next year isn’t the move here.

Best Adapted Screenplay
James Mangold and Jay Cocks, A Complete Unknown
Peter Straughan, Conclave
Jacques Audiard (in collaboration with Thomas Bidegain, Léa Mysius, and Nicolas Livecchi), Emilia Pérez
RaMell Ross and Joslyn Barnes, Nickel Boys
Clint Bentley and Greg Kwedar; Story by Clint Bentley, Greg Kwedar, Clarence Maclin, and John “Divine G” Whitfield, Sing Sing

If my prediction for a Best Picture upset is realized, Conclave wins this one, too. It may win anyway. But if recent history is any indication, glory in this category has gone to the bold and the Black, and so, I’m going here with my gut – and personal preference. Which aren’t always the same thing.

Best Original Screenplay
Sean Baker, Anora
Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold, The Brutalist
Jesse Eisenberg, A Real Pain
Moritz Binder, Tim Fehlbaum, and Alex David, September 5
Coralie Fargeat, The Substance

Eisenberg’s excellent script notwithstanding,  the WGA’s move should get seconded here.

Best Animated Feature
Flow
Inside Out 2
Memoir of a Snail
The Wild Robot
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl

A superb field – with one clear winner, an immediate classic. As I’ve written elsewhere, you know a movie is great when, while watching it, you forget who, where and, at times (like this), even what you are. Flow is a great movie, pound for pound, the year’s best.

Best Documentary Feature
Black Box Diaries
No Other Land
Porcelain War
Soundtrack to a Coup D’état
Sugarcane

Against formidable odds, No Other Land, the collaborative portrait of Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham and Palestinian activist Basel Adra, has conducted a high-profile campaign for the Oscar despite its lack of a U.S. distributor, which has kept it virtually out of the running for trade awards. This is seen by pundits as an insurmountable handicap, though I’m going to make the archetypical leap-of-faith here and presume that surprises, if not necessarily miracles, can happen this year. The betting favorite, also hyper-charged with topicality, is Porcelain War, a much-decorated account of Ukrainian artists maintaining fidelity to their craft while doing what they can to resist Russian invaders. It’s a theme that sounds like an oozing honey tree for AMPAS voters. But what the hell, I’ll shoot the moon here.

Best International Feature
I’m Still Here
The Girl With the Needle
Emilia Pérez
The Seed of the Sacred Fig
Flow

Jacques Audiard’s musical gets its reward here, though as in the Best Actress competition, one shouldn’t underestimate the power of I’m Still Here’s theme. Especially these days.  I’d pick Flow for a two-fer, but that’s (literally) just me.


Best Cinematography
The Brutalist
Dune: Part Two
Emilia Pérez
Maria
Nosferatu

Vistavision! Still big! Still bright!! Still somehow Brand New after lo these many years!! Lol Crawley’s got this one sewed up tight.

Best Original Score
The Brutalist
Conclave
Emilia Pérez
Wicked
The Wild Robot
The one qualm about Daniel Blumberg’s chances here is that voters in this category don’t often go for “experimental” composers or, for that matter, the “slabs of sound” approach that sounds as brutalist as the architecture under examination here. But the music is an evocative artifact on its own and too insinuating to ignore, or bypass.

Best Original Song
“El Mal,” Emilia Pérez (Music by Clément Ducol and Camille; Lyric by Clément Ducol, Camille and Jacques Audiard)
“The Journey,” The Six Triple Eight (Music and lyric by Diane Warren)
“Like a Bird,” Sing Sing (Music and Lyric by Abraham Alexander and Adrian Quesada)
“Mi Camino,” Emilia Pérez (Music and lyric by Camille and Clément Ducol)
“Never Too Late,” Elton John: Never Too Late (Music and lyric by Elton John, Brandi Carlile, Andrew Watt, and Bernie Taupin)

“El Mal” is a stunning performance piece, the whole of Emilia Pérez compressed into one three-and-a-half-minute rant/lament “Mi Camino” also benefits from Selena Gomez’s wistful enactment. I’d like to be wrong, but neither seems like the kind of song Hollywood goes for – and I’ve been burned on this category enough not to trust my inclinations towards the “cutting edge,” no matter who’s won what beforehand. I’m guessing Sir Elton gets another one of these for his mantlepiece, assuming he has one. (A mantlepiece, not an Oscar.) 

Once again, as was the case eight years ago, I find this year’s list to be leaning heavily on women. This time, however, I didn’t plan it that way. It’s just how it happened to work out. I suppose that’s where I’ve invested whatever hope I have for the future, long or short-term.

Nothing else to add, at least for now, except that I couldn’t get to as much out there as I would have liked.

Oh and, as always, these are in no particular order:

Colored Television – Percival Everett’s James was the Novel of the Year on most lists and, at this writing, it’s nestling in the upper tier of the New York Times Best-Seller List. It deserves every accolade it’s gotten. But so does the latest novel by Everett’s equally accomplished wife, Danzy Senna, who has built her own impressive reputation for acerbic comedies-of-manners as they evolve – or don’t – in the expanding new world of multiracial diversity in the USA. The protagonist of her latest novel is, like its author, a mixed-race novelist and college professor. Her name is Jane Gibson who, with her bohemian artist husband Lenny and their two children, ekes out a life on relatively meagre resources by inhabiting borrowed homes in fashionable SoCal neighborhoods. She puts all her faith and ambition in what she is certain is the Great American Mulatto Novel. (Yes, she prefers “mulatto” to any other term. “’Biracial’ could be any old thing. Korean and Panamanian or Chinese and Egyptian. But a mulatto is always specifically a mulatto.”) When this sprawling tome is spurned by publishers, Jane decides she’s been wasting her energies on literature and, as was the case with generations of writers before her, dives into the gauzy maelstrom of Hollywood screenwriting, specifically by finding space at a writers’ table developing a TV “prestige” sitcom about the “mulatto” experience. The narrative twists, however clever and trenchant, aren’t what keep your head in the game; it’s the streams of zingers, aphorisms, and socio-cultural observations, whether its Jane’s withering assessment of her students’ reading tastes to the mores of hosting her daughter’s birthday party among the L.A. hoi polloi. As a bonus, Senna’s book also serves as a guide not just to navigating one’s way through a multi-culti life, but to writing itself. And, for that matter, teaching writing. (“You couldn’t teach a student by assigning Toni Morrison, it would only create bad imitations.”) Laugh, and learn.

Sally Jenkins – So many of my friends dropped their Washington Post subscriptions after Jeff Bezos’s non-endorsement for president. While understanding the impulse, I insisted that, however exasperating the Post’s direction on this and other matters, there were still people working there who needed and merited our abiding support. Without the Post, for instance, you’d deprive yourself of beholding a great American sportswriter in the midst of a ferocious hot streak. Jenkins has over decades sustained a level of performance as awe-inspiring as any of the superstar athletes she writes about, whether she’s unspooling long-form pieces like the panoramic, vividly rendered account of legendary bull rider J.B. Mauney’s decelerated-but-still-engaged life after a broken neck or firing column after column taking dead solid aim at Received Wisdom wherever it’s stinking up the joint. She places the blame for the hot mess college athletics have become on the institutions that forget or ignore their educational missions. She was laser-like in deconstructing police overreaction to a pregame traffic infraction by Miami Dolphins receiver Tyreek Hill (“…a needless escalation not because of Hill’s conduct, but that of those chesty cops, their belts jingling with tools of submission and voices that demanded bootlicks…”). While the Tom Brady roast delighted millions, Jenkins was decidedly not amused by the “hammy punchlines that fell like refrigerators hitting sidewalks.” And she was, as usual, smarter than almost everybody else in her field when assessing Bill Belichick’s decision to forsake the klieg-light glare of the NFL for the NCAA: “Belichick’s longtime permafrost barrier is less about aloofness than about his suspicion of the corrosive effects of popularity.” Jenkins has been a perennial finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and I thought her engrossing, deeply moving 2023 takeout on the bond between Chris Evert-Martina Navratilova should have finally put her over the top. Then again, she doesn’t need anybody’s prizes to certify her preeminence – not as much as you need to pay more attention to her day-to-day output.

Beyonce, Cowboy Carter (Parkwood/Columbia) – So who needs the CMA anyway? Those are for country-&-western albums, and this was the kind of pure pop product that took in too many multitudes to be contained by any genre. More than anything, as many others pointed out, Beyonce herself was, and is, her own genre. And whatever this album’s head-swiveling popularity and impact on the marketplace and its multiple platforms, I don’t think enough was made of Ms. Knowles’s valiant determination to declare that she, too, sings America – as if the opening track, “American Requiem” didn’t forcefully assert such intention. Nothing about this Mother of All Crossover Projects felt strained or overstuffed – except, maybe, for the Texas radio station motif that almost wore out its welcome. Overall, it’s a cordial, enthusiastic house party with an eclectic guest list (Miley Cyrus, Shaboozey, Stevie Wonder, Paul McCartney, Tanner Adell, Rhiannon Giddens, Willie Nelson, Jon Baptiste, Linda Martell, among others) and a generosity of spirit that makes the album’s nay-sayers seem even pettier — and more bewildering. The election results have too many convinced that the country’s regressing deeper into the swamps of polarization. But I think Cowboy Carter’s arrival is the clearest indication we have this year that the wider, more diverse world the reactionaries are so afraid of has already arrived – and isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Hacks – Somehow you knew that the perverse bond between Vegas standup comedy institution Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) and her on-and-off-again muse-for-hire Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder) was going to need more than just two seasons to evolve. And the third and best season of this series raised the stakes in bringing this oddest of odd couples back together after Deborah cut Ava loose (supposedly) for the latter’s own sake. And it seems, for a time, to have worked out, with Deborah riding a wave of popularity with newer younger audiences who’ve seen her unexpected Netflix hit and Ava scoring a dream gig writing for a satiric news digest. But when the late-night hosting job of Deborah’s long-deferred dreams suddenly becomes attainable, she decides that only Ava’s writing can deliver her to the finish line. So, for better and worse, they reconnect with their respective insecurities and unruly yearnings entwined once again in a fitful tango of codependence and ambition. The sometimes-sordid things they do along the way to get what they want smacks around our sympathies. But there are too damn many things in the culture that pander to simplistic good/evil dualities. Ava’s moments of insight and compassion may not always arrive in a timely manner, but when they do, you wish you could hire her for some odd jobs around the office. And it’s hard to stay mad at Deborah when she makes this rationale for her heat-seeking campaign: “Anything I want to do I have to do it now. Or else I’ll never do it. That’s the worst part about getting older.” No pathos here. Just another shot of raw, aching truth that’ll keep us coming back to these fascinating, damaged women.

Rebel Ridge – I started watching this on Netflix after several people I trust urged me to do so. When it began with an innocent, unarmed Black man on a bicycle getting rousted and harassed by small-town white men in uniform, I thought: Do I really need to go through this mess again (especially this year, or this decade?) But it didn’t take long for Jeremy Saulnier’s contemporary western to pull me all the way in. Which says a lot, given how totally done I’ve become with this kind of drama (especially in real life). The movie is not only smart about orchestrating its martial arts sequences and chase montages, but also about the jujitsu of legal procedure and the pressure points that won’t always, or easily, submit to the bully-bro tactics of overentitled cops. One more thing: Aaron Pierre, as the unstoppable marine vet kicking ass for justice, is a bona fide star and I hope the Green Lantern franchise, such as it is, treats him much better than it did Ryan Reynolds.

The Paris Olympics – They had me, literally, at hello with Celine Dion’s spectral performance of “Hymne a L’Amour” climaxing a moist, stirring opening ceremony. Dion’s spellbinding resolve was sustained in the steely “I’m Baaack!” sang-froid of Simone Biles throughout the women’s gymnastics competition, whether dispatching the competition or supporting her teammates. The men’s basketball competition honored the elder generation of superstars like LeBron James and Stephan Curry while also acting as a showcase for NextGen stars like France’s Victor Wembanyana and Japan’s Kawamura Yuki. Much was made of Katey Ledecky’s four-pack of swimming medals, and even more was made by the pool of local hero “King” (or is it “Roi”?) Leon Marchand. But as always, I was especially riveted to track-and-field, especially the American women sprinters. If there’s one YouTube clip that I never get tired of watching from the games, it’s of Sha ‘Carri Richardson’s come-from-behind anchor leg of the 4X100-meter relay. That millisecond before she breaks the tape is the best victory glance at the competition since Secretariat’s jockey Ron Turcotte sneaked an over-the-shoulder look at how far ahead they were in the 1973 Belmont Stakes.

Desi Lydic – The big story with The Daily Show this year was Jon Stewart’s return to the anchor desk, albeit in a more limited role. With characteristic generosity, Stewart’s still ceding lots of space to the show’s rotating anchors who have been doing just fine without him. They’re all great, but I think Lydic, who joined the franchise back in 2015, has become one of its stealth weapons. And it’s not just because she had the season’s single best zinger, aimed in Tucker Carlson’s direction the day he was dismissed from Fox News. I’m thinking of a relatively routine night for the show, when she surgically took apart what was supposed to be a major policy address by the once-and-future-president on health care and laid out its sloppy, threadbare components for all to see and hear. I turned on the radio and television the morning after waiting for somebody, anybody else to apply even a little of Lydic’s scorched-earth skepticism and deconstruction to this speech. Crickets. At least, that’s all I’d heard. This, by default, made her my favorite broadcast journalist of the 2024 campaign with no one else even close. I’m not expecting the next couple years (at least) to be fun. But I’m at least encouraged that Lydic will still be ready to apply the scythe and flares to Trump’s foggier rhetoric — if “rhetoric” is what you can call it.

The Sympathizer – The culture-at-large is in love with international intrigue to a degree that it hasn’t been since the mid-20th century days of Counterinsurgency, Sean Connery’s 007, and Mutually Assured Destruction. A partial, up-to-date list of global duplicity to be found on streams includes Black Doves, The Agency, Day of the Jackal, The Diplomat, Lioness, and Slow Horses, the latter of which I am so devoted to that I inhale the Mick Herron novels so I can stay out in front of whatever happens to its motley crew of misfits after each of the series’ four seasons. But even that show hasn’t messed with my head like the HBO adaptation of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s award-winning novel, set during and after the Vietnam War, about the perilous destiny of a double agent (a most excellent Hoa Xuande) spying for the communist North while serving as an officer with the South’s army. The novel claims both Ralph Ellison and John Le Carré as its guiding spirits and the series is more faithful to Nguyen’s dark seriocomic narrative than the agent, known only as The Captain, is to either of his warring masters. He carries his divided soul with him after the Fall of Saigon to late-1970s Los Angeles where the war goes on among his fellow refugees, notably his onetime general (Toan Le), now a liquor-store owner still dreaming of somehow reversing the war’s outcome. Robert Downey Jr., one of the show’s executive producers, plays (riotously) multiple roles as white men with undue, malign influence on The Captain’s life, including a sybaritic CIA cowboy, a doltish California congressman, and a megalomaniacal filmmaker using the Captain for technical advice on a Vietnam War epic. Some viewers complained about the story’s multiple time-shifts and how the narrative didn’t always play fair with the Captain’s motivations – and everybody else’s. All of which, of course, was what I liked most about it.

When The Clock Broke –John Ganz’s account of the 1992 presidential campaign was published three days before Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from the presidential race and declared support for his vice president Kamala Harris. The convergence now seems like ages ago, especially when one remembers how suddenly plausible it seemed at that moment that the election results would signal the end — or at least the beginning of the end – of the dismal era that Ganz contends was set in motion by the tempest of reactionary resentment and populist rage abetted by such luminaries of the era as Ross Perot, Pat Buchanan, David Duke, Daryl Gates, Rudy Giuliani, Rush Limbaugh, and others. So omnipresent was this force that even the election’s eventual winner Bill Clinton pandered to it by hanging Black rapper-activist Sister Souljah out to dry in public. Ganz’s mordant, thorough account spares no one in complicity and even brings in John “The Dapper Don” Gotti as a tabloid paradigm of the mob capo as authoritarian ideal. As I wrote this past summer, you’ll find just about everything there is to say about how we ended up in this perilous time for our democratic republic; everything, that is, except a clearly marked exit.

Zoe Saldana – As more than one of my friends insist, there’s nobody better than Saldana at evoking the state of being sick-and-tired-of-everybody-else’s-bullshit, especially when, as the CIA commando in Lioness known as Joe McNamara, she has to be Tough Mommy to her daughters in split-level Virginia and to the grimy, smart-alecky roughnecks she leads into morally ambiguous dark-ops missions. Her character in Emilia Perez is scarcely under less pressure than Joe; she’s a Mexico City lawyer recruited by a notorious drug cartel leader to help navigate his safe passage to a new life as a woman. In both cases, Saldana is a flash point, barely keeping rage and hysteria at bay. She not always at the center of things, but nothing consequential happens, good or bad, without her. While I yearn for the cooler, drier archetype of existential heroism I grew up with, Saldana’s mercurial, intense variation somehow feels closer to where our heads should be now: doing whatever it takes to get through whatever perils get dumped in our pathway

IMMEDIATE REACTION: I had a good time. I expected to. I needed more.

By now, unless you’re sticking your fingers in your ears and going “La-la-la-la” whenever somebody brings the matter up, you’ve probably heard that Star Trek: Into Darkness is supposed to be a riff on 1982’s The Wrath of Khan. Either I’m on the wrong meds or more senile than I imagine, but wasn’t its predecessor supposed to be a rejiggered version of Khan? And if so, is this how it’s going to be from now on, all these new actors in old roles and “classic” uniforms replaying variations on the same story (e.g. evil madman seeks apocalyptic revenge for real and/or imagined crimes)?

If so, then I guess nobody wants to make Star Trek movies any more. Because, let’s face it: Into Darkness isn’t a Trek movie. It’s got all the characters from Trek and the actors who play them are all very good; in one, maybe two cases, even better than their predecessors. But it’s more a movie about Trek than it is a Trek movie. It roots around the attic, appropriating old tropes and familiar names to make the devotees nod in recognition. But what I liked most about J.J. Abrams’s 2009 reboot was its impudent intent to make everything new while remaining attentive to the basic enthusiasm for human possibility that made Gene Roddenberry’s franchise linger for so long in the collective unconscious. (From one dedicated, mildly crazed TV show-runner to another…) Abrams’s follow-up, by contrast, seems content to use Kirk, Spock, Scotty and the rest as action figures that serve the corporate model for summer thrillers; most especially, the Great American Multiplex’s persistant yearning for revenge fantasies along with the attendant surges of explosions, kick-boxing, mass carnage and the obligatory, egregious deaths of beloved father figures. (Be warned: I’m going to respect the “NO SPOILERS” mandate only so much. If you care that much about what happens in this movie, you’ve had plenty of time to see for yourselves.)

True, I wasn’t bored. Which surprises me since there was so little about In Darkness that was new, either in the plot points germane to the Trek mythos or in the usual heavy machinery assembled for standard-issue popcorn phantasmagoria. In fact, I bet the hard-core Trekkers (sic) had themselves a fine time pointing out all the scenes, set pieces and dialogue that had some connection with any and all of the varied Star Trek TV shows and movies. I bet if they tried really hard — and, trust me, so many of them don’t need to try – the SF-movie savants could point out references to other big-ticket movies in their favorite genre. Independence Day cornered the market on such shamelessness, only no one to this day considers it shameless. (It’s a classic, doncha know?) Whatever you call it, this sampling would be barely tolerable if it weren’t offset by the pleasure you get from watching the cast settle into their retrofitted characters. Chris Pine’s Kirk, though properly brash and impulsive, doesn’t yet have the William Shatner strut, though he seems to be quietly assembling his own brand of hauteur to carry into future episodes. Zachary Quinto’s Spock here shows more of the character’s original diffidence;  of all the new actors, he’s the most thoroughly comfortable in his (tinted) skin. I still do not buy the office romance between Spock and Zoe Saldana’s Uhura for a nanosecond, but I am loving how she’s taking advantage of Trek 2.0’s greater breadth and depth of her character’s conception. I wish there were much more of John Cho’s rigorously circumspect Sulu, Anton Yelchin’s super callow Chekov and Karl Urban’s somewhat constrained Bones McCoy. I can’t yet tell whether Abrams and his team aren’t quite into the idea of McCoy, which would be a fatal mistake, or whether Urban doesn’t yet have a handle on him. The writers do seem very fond of the idea of Scotty rendered by Simon Pegg as a puckish grump with overcompensation issues. The revision plays to Pegg’s strengths and I’m guessing this series has bigger plans for him than they do for Urban – which would, again, be a big mistake since Trek’s classic verities are rooted in the tug-of-war between the hyper-passionate ship’s doctor and the coolly rational First Officer.

But I’m no longer sure Abrams really cares about the foundations of the old Star Trek as he does in critiquing, if not subverting Roddenberry’s vision. Let me put it another way: Why bother doing the Khan story, not once, but twice? Is it just to show how you can build a better Enterprise? As much as we love these characters in action no matter who’s playing them, it wasn’t just who they were or what they did, but what they represented to us back in 1966: Hope for the future. We’ve not only made it further out in space, but we seem to have managed to make ourselves better, smarter, more tolerant people. We figured out how to live together so well that we seem to be able to get along with people from other planets without being freaked out by the shape of their ears. Now what? That’s what we came for every week. What do we do with this wider perception of our own humanity as we head out yonder? Just as important, what DON’T we do? What is it about this expanded knowledge that keeps us from acting as stupid as some of the beings we encountered on this five-year mission, human or extraterrestrial?

These are the kinds of questions we counted on science fiction to engage, if not necessarily answer. And while we dug watching Kirk and the crew in all those cool martial-arts matches with Klingons and Romulans, the action sequences were access points for the question we knew Star Trek had to ask at some point every week: What does it mean to be human? Into Darkness is into the action sequences, but they seem placed there to sustain our thirst for retribution, which the movies seem to have been exploiting ever since (I’m going to say) 9/11. We no longer seem interested in seeking new life and new civilizations, but in kicking ass and taking names of those bullies who slaughter innocents and blow up our buildings. This yearning for the big win over terror may be who we are. But is it who we want to be? If Abrams and his co-writers are serious about this five-year mission the Enterprise is about to begin, maybe they’ll allow us to find out. But I don’t hold a lot of hope about this. Maybe that’s who I am.