What's your Oscar deep cut this year?

A man in gladiator dress in "Gladiator II"

Nov. 15, 2024 6 AM PT

If you heard knocking beneath the floor of your home, how long would it take you to call the police?

A week? A day? An hour?

After reading that story, I’m going to be jumping out of my skin the next time somebody merely knocks on my door. I guess it could have been worse. It might have been these guys bedding down for the night, looking to save on hotel costs.

I’m Glenn Whipp, columnist for the Los Angeles Times and host of The Envelope’s Friday newsletter. Why is this song going through my head right now?

Oscar pickings aren’t slim, provided you know where to look

“Gladiator II,” the enjoyably dumb sequel to the brawny Ridley Scott epic that won the best picture Oscar nearly a quarter-century ago, has just finished its premiere screening on the Paramount Pictures lot. Paul Mescal, the actor charged with donning a breastplate and replacing Russell Crowe, is mingling with the crowd, who, given the movie’s length and dinner-hour start time, are almost too busy scarfing down pizza and pasta to notice.

I’m talking with a Paramount publicist who is giving me a history lesson on how the Romans filled the Colosseum with water in order to stage a naval battle. Scott orchestrates something like this in the movie, pitting the crews of two ships, one manned by Roman soldiers, the other by gladiators, against each other. Only, this being a Ridley Scott movie, he adds an extra element — sharks.

“There’s no way they used sharks in real life,” I say. The publicist protests, and another studio rep joins the conversation. “Someone asked Ridley about that and he answered, ‘Sharks are cool. Did the Romans actually use them? Who the f— cares?’”

Who the f— cares? It is a question both specific to the scene we’re discussing and, let’s be real, to the awards season in general, an overlong marathon of nonsense and vanity that ends with Oscars usually being handed out in ways that infuriate us. Which, to be clear, is a reason the Oscars remain so much fun, not to mention a valuable snapshot of what movies and performances academy voters deem worthy at a specific moment in time.

So, for the moment, let’s put aside what just happened in this country (though that may have an impact on what prevails at the Academy Awards next year), and let’s table the debate about sharks swimming around the Roman Colosseum. Actually, indulge me one last time as I note Scott’s response to that question in a recent interview: “Dude, if you can build a Colosseum, you can flood it with f— water. Are you joking? And to get a couple of sharks in a net from the sea, are you kidding? Of course they can.”

I would not include Scott as one of the year’s best directors for “Gladiator II.” But I’d be sorely tempted to include him just for that quote. Is that any worse than voting to give Brendan Fraser an Oscar because you watched “George of the Jungle” on a loop when you were a kid? I’ll leave that up to you. Like I said, the Oscars can be exasperating.

The conventional wisdom has it that, thanks to production delays caused by the 2023 writers’ and actors’ strikes, the pickings are slim this year, which is true provided you adhere to a narrow parameter of what defines a movie or performance being “Oscar-worthy.”

But who wants to do that? In a recent column, I tried to take a more expansive view, stumping for some movies and performances that should be considered. Give it a look. Maybe one of your favorites is there. If not ... what did I leave out?

A man and a woman sit facing each other over a restaurant table, eating lunch

Payal Kapadia arrives with ‘All We Imagine as Light’

While we’re on the subject of films that most definitely should be considered ...

Have you ever watched a movie and been so enveloped by its world that you wanted to live in it?

Indian filmmaker Payal Kapadia remembers seeing Wong Kar-wai’s “Chungking Express” as a teenager and adoring its dreamlike vibe of romantic longing so much that she wanted to hop on the next flight to Hong Kong so she could get lost wandering through the city’s neon-lit streets.

“I was really into that movie,” Kapadia says. Years later, when she finally made it to the city, she went straight to Hong Kong Mansions, the sprawling shopping and restaurant complex prominently featured in Wong’s film.

And, of course, it underwhelmed.

“Because how could it not?” Kapadia says, laughing. “It’s all Wong Kar-wai. But it did make me think about subjectivity and all the feelings that can be infused into a movie’s setting to make it so much more delightful.”

Kapadia took that lesson and what she learned at the Film & Television Institute of India, along with the expertise gained making two shorts and her award-winning 2021 documentary, “A Night of Knowing Nothing,” and funneled it into her striking feature film debut, “All We Imagine as Light,” which opens today at the Laemmle Royal.

The movie does for Mumbai what Wong did for Hong Kong, conjuring the precarious chaos of the city by day and the haunting stillness of its rain-soaked streets at night. It’s centered on the friendship among three women: two roommate nurses, the serious Prabha (Kani Kusruti) and the youthful Anu (Divya Prabha), and Parvaty (Chhaya Kadam), a widow and activist, recently forced out of her home by property developers.

There are men too, but it’s complicated. Prabha’s husband, from an arranged marriage, works in Germany and his return is uncertain; Anu has a devoted boyfriend, Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon), but because he’s Muslim and she is Hindu, they must keep their love secret due to societal constraints.

Depicting the uncertainty of their lives with a truthful tenderness, “All We Imagine as Light” makes the personal political. It was the first Indian feature invited to compete at Cannes in nearly three decades and went on to win the festival’s Grand Prix prize when it premiered in May. A gorgeous, generous portrait of a city and its people, it more than earns the accolade. You may want to book a ticket to Mumbai after seeing it.

Kapadia and I enjoyed a Sunday brunch together not long ago, talking about her movie, sampling the caviar served on a tiny pancake but passing on the bottomless mimosas. I hope you have the chance to watch her film in the coming weeks.