“Killers of the Flower Moon” surges, plus “Poor Things” director Yorgos Lanthimos
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We sit down for an in-depth chat with Lanthimos about his latest Oscar contender, starring Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, and Willem Dafoe.
After navigating some initial discourse about whether the movie does enough to honor the many in the Osage Nation who died at the hands of greedy white people in 1920s Oklahoma, discourse that could've derailed its Oscar chances, Killers of the Flower Moon is emerging as a strong contender with recent wins from critics and awards bodies.
The New York Film Critics Circle honored Martin Scorsese's latest film with Best Film honors, along with star Lily Gladstone for Best Actress — those after two tribute honors from the Gotham Awards. The National Board of Review also named the movie Best Film, along with top honors for Scorsese and Gladstone.
"These groups tend to coincide with the Oscars, not necessarily influence them," EW's Oscars expert Joey Nolfi says on the latest episode of The Awardist podcast, below. "These sort of highbrow critical lens, some of whom are also in the Academy — not the critics themselves, but people who have this similar sort of academic approach to film — we can sort of see what they're looking at and Killers, I mean who didn't see that coming, but Lily Gladstone is... storming in a very big way. She is on our scoreboard, the leader for Best Actress right now, technically on stats alone."
Some titles to keep an eye on: Ira Sachs' Passages, which received Best Feature, Best Lead (Franz Rogowski), and Best Supporting (Ben Whishaw) nominations from Film Independent's Spirit Awards, as well as Best Actor from the NYFCC; and All of Us Strangers, which received seven wins from the British Independent Film Awards (Film, Director and Screenplay for Andrew Haigh, Supporting Actor for Paul Mescal, Cinematography, Editing, Music Supervision), as well as Best Feature, Best Director, and Best Lead (Andrew Scott) nods from the Spirit Awards, and Scott is also a Virtuoso Award recipient at the Santa Barbara International Fim Festival.
"If All of Us Strangers was just showing up in the feature categories, I would say otherwise, but here it's in Best Director, Lead Performance," Nolfi observes, later noting, "We should be paying attention to the performers in All of Us Strangers. Andrew Scott could creep in."
Elsewhere, Poor Things director Yorgos Lanthimos sits down with The Awardist for an in-depth conversation about his latest film, starring Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, and Willem Dafoe. The movie is Lanthimos' second with Stone after The Favourite — he calls Poor Things, about a Victorian woman (Stone's Bella Baxter) brought back to life by a doctor who transplants a baby's brain into her body, a "natural continuation of our relationship."
"Apart from being a great actress, [Emma] is a very unique presence overall," Lanthimos tells EW's Christian Holub. "And as soon as I mentioned the story to her, she was immediately excited and just wanted to know everything about the world and read the script. I started discussing who else was going to work on it, how we're going to film it, like other actors. She just became very fascinated with every aspect of the film. So that's also how she ended up being a producer on the film, because she was onboard so early on and involved in every aspect of it that it was inevitable that she took that role on as well."
Listen to the podcast below for more analysis and the full conversation with Lanthimos, where he also discusses building the unique world of Poor Things, creating Bella's appearance, how the movie builds on his past work, the movie's approach to sex scenes, and more.
Check out more from EW's The Awardist, featuring exclusive interviews, analysis, and our podcast diving into all the highlights from the year's best in TV.
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