Viola Davis – This Had Oscar Buzz

You asked for it and it’s finally here! To close the year, we are doing another Listeners’ Choice episode and the landslide victor is 2018′s Widows. The follow-up to Steve McQueen’s Best Picture winning 12 Years a Slave, Widows places Viola Davis at the head of a group of Chicago women caught in the middle of political corruption when their husbands all go down in a heist gone wrong. Highly received by early critics (including your hosts), the film disappointed at the box office and stumbled throughout the precursor season. Now and forever, Justice For Widows!

This episode, we go into the film’s mixed receptions by audiences expecting something more in line with traditional heist fare and 2018′s disconnect between the films that emerged most victorious and the film’s left on the outside. We also discuss the film’s incisive look at Chicago, Brian Tyree Henry’s incredible 2018, and how Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox left this film underserved by its studio.

Topics also include Robert Duvall yelling “I’m old!”, the Bird Box phenomenon, and what other contenders came close in your Listeners’ Choice votes.

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After following up his 2000 Oscar triumph with audience favorite Ocean’s 11, Steven Soderbergh pivoted into a different mode in 2002, doubling up with the low-fi Full Frontal and the subject of this week’s episode: Solaris. A revisit of Stanislaw Lem’s novel (previously canonized by Andrei Tarkovsky), the film follows George Clooney as a therapist called to a a space mission on the titular planet, only to find a ghost of his dead wife among the planet’s strange happenings.

But audiences were expecting an epic romance in space thanks to a misleading marketing campaign, turning the film into a box office bomb with an F CinemaScore. In the years since, the film has gained a reputation as Soderbergh’s misunderstood masterpiece – and we agree! This episode, we look at Soderbergh’s career of making multiple films in one year and Clooney’s rise from television star to movie hunk to prestige director with uneven returns.

Topics also include a deep dive into our 2002 personal awards ballots, Viola Davis’s underrated supporting performance, Jeremy Davies as Jeremy Davies, and, of course, Clooney’s butt onscreen.

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Tag: Viola Davis

125 – Widows

119 – Solaris