We did a thing! P.T., Antonio, and I were fortunate enough to attend three screenings as a part of the Newport Beach Film Festival: Steve McQueen’s Blitz, Mike Leigh’s Hard Truths, and Malcolm Washington’s adaptation of August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson. Meanwhile, Antonio and P.T. got to see an early screening of Edward Berger’s Conclave, hosted by USC’s School of Cinematic Arts in collaboration with Outside the Box [Office] and Focus Features. Great times were had by all; seeing so many films before they come out in theaters made us feel like real film critics for once.

In this episode of The Long Take Review, we reflect on our experience at these screenings and then give our spoiler-free thoughts, ranking the four films against each other. We round out the episode by checking in on awards season in general, speculating about which films are the most likely to be in the Best Picture 10 and which actors could have a shot at a nomination. Who needs to campaign hard to get voters’ attention? Who’s a shoe-in? Who’s a complete unknown (besides James Mangold’s Bob Dylan biopic)? Listen to find out!

This ENTIRE episode is spoiler free, so have at it regardless of whether or not you’ve seen the films mentioned above.

Notes:

We make a lot of references to the promotional materials used during The Newport Beach Film Festival, so checking out these trailers/ads first might help you appreciate our discussion even more. Thank you again to the Newport Beach Film Festival for showing us such a great time! (An especially big thank you to all the volunteers who helped run the screenings.)

Newport Beach Film Festival trailer

An ad for visiting Newport Beach (which everyone should do!) that played before each screening.

This star-studded highlight reel for the Newport Beach Film Festival will give you a sense of the party scene that the three of us largely missed.

Image Credit: Variety, Indiewire, and LA Times

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