A Supporting-Actress Underdog: In “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” don’t discount the pivotal presence of Stephanie Hsu.Sundance and the Oscars : Which films from the festival could follow “CODA” to the 2024 Academy Awards.An Andrea Riseborough FAQ : Confused about the brouhaha surrounding the best actress nominee? We explain why her nod was controversial.The Tom Cruise Factor : Stars were starstruck when the “Top Gun: Maverick” headliner showed up at the Oscar nominees luncheon.Kyle Buchanan is covering the films, personalities and events along the way. The Projectionist Chronicles the Awards Season The Oscars aren’t until March, but the campaigns have begun. The brandished blade also suggests, simply by association, that Tomaz has something to do with the abrupt edits and destabilizing narrative fragmentation. When Tomaz takes out a straight razor to shave, the moment sets off Chekhovian-Hitchcockian alarms in one wittily economic image. Working with a crack team both in front of the camera and behind it, Garai teases the story slowly, sprinkling in sharp, resonant details amid wails from a banshee chorus (courtesy of the composer Sarah Angliss). That he’s a soldier without an obvious cause or country only adds to the spooky, anxious vibe.Ī malevolent fairy tale about men and women, violence and power (and things that go eek in the night), “Amulet” frays your nerves beautifully for its first creepy hour. The writer-director Romola Garai, though, keeps his background and the larger picture blurred, allowing your imagination to roam free as the trees rustle and the camera glides. My, what big eyes and brain you have, viewers may think, as they wonder where he is and what he’s doing there. The storybook setting makes a curious fit with his rifle, uniform and the roadblock he guards (sometimes while reading Hannah Arendt’s “On Violence”). Tomaz (Alec Secareanu) enters, wreathed in mystery and isolated in deep woods. The object here is worn and pale as bone, with breasts and a shell-like disc fanning above its head like a mantilla. Students of the cinematic supernatural will know better, given the fantastic objects scattered throughout the horror genre, with its demonic dolls, cursed videotapes and enchanted fetishes. When Tomaz digs a small figurine out of the rich, dark earth in “Amulet,” he has no sense of the trouble it will bring.
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