Oscar nominations: ‘Oppenheimer’ leads, ‘Barbie’ gets snub

“Oppenheimer” just seems like a winning movie.

With 13 Oscar nominations, it has the strength to win it all in many categories.

Its biggest competitor was expected to be “Barbie.” Despite eight accolades, Mattel’s revisionist take on dolls failed to win Best Director (Greta Gerwig), Best Actress (Margot Robbie), or Best Original Score. However, Ryan Gosling was nominated for Best Supporting Actor, America Ferrera was nominated for Best Supporting Actress, and Gerwig and Noah Baumbach were nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay. There are also two entries in the Best Song category (“I’m Just Ken” and “What Was I Made For?”), which could guarantee at least one trophy with “Barbie” in it. .

When writer and director Andrew Haig was working on the script for “All of Us Strangers,” he remembered his childhood, the people he’d lost, and the things he’d been through.

“This film is not autobiographical, but it’s certainly very personal to me,” he says. “People who know me can see themselves on that screen as if I were there.”

What’s even more surreal is that the film was shot in Haig’s childhood home, which holds many of his own memories.

To land the role in “May December,” Charles Melton spent six hours making a self-tape.

“We had probably seven days to make the self-tape, so we jumped right in,” Melton says. “I talked to my coach, watched film, talked to my therapist about human emotions…and I was completely exhausted.”

As a result, he was able to give a restrained performance that “felt like he wasn’t just saying the lines.”

Leonardo DiCaprio said he felt a huge responsibility to get Killers of the Flower Moon right.

“This was a very dark chapter in American history,” he says of the Osage Nation murders depicted in the film. “We needed to get the story right, and to do that we needed to listen.”

Before and during filming, DiCaprio, co-star Lily Gladstone, and director Martin Scorsese sought advice from the Osage community and pored over extensive research compiled by author David Grann.

“Osage people are still being influenced by this moment in history,” he says. “We knew it was our job and responsibility to listen to them and get their perspectives. Many of those meetings led to the film you see today.”

You’ll feel right at home when “The Marvels” comes out on DVD next month. Modern superhero movies are like TV shows.

The special effects are fairly simple, the plot is straight out of an after-school special, and the acting is, well, cable-level at best.

To make matters worse, there isn’t much to accommodate newcomers. This won’t help you if you don’t know the backstory of Carol Danvers (Brie Larson), her superfan Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani), or astronaut Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris).