2022 SAG Awards Picks/Recommendations (1 Viewer)

[Pnochichi]

Wasn't sure if this fit better in Movies or TV, but I'll drop it here since I love the movie part of this. We just started getting our SAG screeners for this year's awards, so I've got a lot of watching to do. Wondering if anyone has picks or strong recommendations from the list here"

The 28th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards | Screen Actors Guild Awards

www.sagawards.org

I've seen a bunch of them but not all, and I want to prioritize my viewing based on the best liked and most likely to win. This group seems like a perfect group to get some recommendations to. I'm more interested in your favorites over the ones you think will win if those differ.

Have at it!

Brian.

 

[Pnochichi]

Just starting at the top of the list and working my way down and watching everything. Starting with;

Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture

Watched the first two tonight. So early thoughts until I get through the rest.

Belfast - Excellent start. I'm a sucker for these kinds of movies where kids have the innocence to not completely get whats going on around them during world events. The Jojo Rabbits and Life is Beautifuls of the world. Solid performance and writing and a very compelling story of the struggle over the choice to stay or go in difficult situations. Always good to throw in a little love of cinema (Cinema Paradiso) if you want the votes to give you some extra love. 3.5/5
CODA - Just wow. I loved everything about this movie. It's exactly what I want to see in a film like this. Very compelling story, excellent, natural performances all around, great music, funny, tear jerking, etc. It funny that my favorite movie last year was Sound of Metal and not CODA is going to be hard to beat for me. I told my wife that watching them back-to-back made the cast in Belfast look like they were acting which is not a good thing. But it says more about CODA than it does about Belfast. My wife and daughter went to a screening of this one with a Q&A after and said that the cast and director conversation after was amazing, and after seeing this one, I'm sad that I missed that. 4.5/5
Don't Look Up Meh. My favorite thing about this one was someone saying that it will do well in the sag awards because most of saf is in it. 3/5
House of Gucci
King Richard

 

[Pnochichi]

House of Gucci - This one was fun. Lots of scenery chewing (certainly by Leto) but it was very entertaining and had some solid performances as well. I don't really know anything about the real story, so I can't really comment on that part of it. Felt shorter than its nearly 2.5 hr runtime, which is a good thing. Had a little bit of a European Succession vibe to it. Same family stuggles but a bit more dignified on the surface at least. Overall entertaining and well done, but nothing I'd want to revisit. 3.5/5.

 

[Pnochichi]

King Richard - I liked this one way more than I expected to. I wasn't even really planning on watching it until it got the nomination, so maybe my low expectations made it seem better than it was. I wasn't blown away by Will Smith in it. I thought he was good, but maybe I'm just too familiar with him at this point to buy him in this role. I thought everyone else did great. It was cool to see the real people in the end and see how good they did with the casting. Serena was actually played by a girl in my oldest's acting class, so it was cool to see her work. It would be cool to see her up on the stage accepting this group award, but I don't think it's going to happen. 3/5

Best Cast in a Motion Picture:
I'm really pulling for CODA.

On to Female Actor in a Leading Role Motion Picture.
Nicole Kidman - Being the RIcardos
Jessica Chastain - The Eyes of Tammy Faye
Olivia Coleman - The Lost Daughter
Lady Gaga - The House of Gucci
Jennifer Hudson - Respect

 

[Pnochichi]

Best Female Actor in a lead role in a motion picture.

Finished the last of these tonight:

Jessica Chastain - Eyes of Tammy Faye - This one is very interesting and maybe the opposite of Will Smith in King Richard. If I didn’t live through this one, I might have thought this was a bit of overacting. Because I did see some of this with my own eyes, I think it was an amazing performance that really transformed Jessica into a pretty close version of what I remember Tammy Faye to have been. I didn’t know a lot of the story, and I’m glad I watched this one. Solid performance. 4 / 5

Olivia Coleman - The Lost Daughter - I love Olivia Coleman, and this performance was no different. I love her naturalistic style even with a character like this one. The movie overall was a little oddly paced for me. It felt like watching a Jarmish flick. That doesn’t take away from the performance, so I’d call it a near tie with Jessica Chastain at this point. I did love Ed Harris and the actress that played the younger version of Olivia Coleman's character as well. 4 / 5

Lady Gaga - House of Gucci - Same as I said for the ensemble, I didn’t love Gaga in this one. I thought she was brilliant in A Star is Born, but I just never really connected with her here. There were some scenes that were much better than others, but overall, it still felt a little too much like a caricature for me to really lock into. I think maybe this just wasn’t the right role for her and I’m still looking forward to seeing what’s next for her. 3 / 5

Jennifer Hudson - Respect - This was way more a Jennier Hudson concert than an acting performance. That’s a not bad thing, since I like Jennier Hudson, but it makes it really hard to judge it as an acting performance. What little acting we did see was overshadowed by the singing which was excellent. But even then, it wasn’t Aretha. If I compare this to Bohemian Rhapsody or even Ma Rainey from last year, I feel like we got a lot less of a biopic where an actor could really show something. And seeing a clip from a 70-something Aretha at the end really showed the difference in the music as well. I was happy to see a pic from the Blues Brothers at the end since I still think of here from there as one of my first memories of her. 2.5 / 5 mostly just duke to lack of anything to measure.

Nicole Kidman - Being the Ricardos - Meh. I like the movie more than I expected, but I didn’t love nicole kidman in it. I usually like her work but I think there were two things going against her here. First, she was playing an icon, and I never got the feeling of Lucy from here. Maybe a couple of glimpses here or there, but never a real connection. Second, I’m a fan of Sorkin’s writing, and there were a few laugh out loud lines in this one for me, but an actor is either a Sorkin actor or they are not. Nicole Kidman just wasn’t for me. JK Simmons is a Sorkin actor, but we’ll talk about him in a different category. 3 / 5

Some good stuff here and a couple that surprised me. I know that Kristen Stewart pushed really hard for a nod and did a lot of screenings for SAG members with Q&A sessions and some really excellent cupcakes according to my wife. I think she probably could have been here over a couple of people along with a few others.

That said, if I had to pick right now, I think I'd go with Jessica Chastain over Olivia Coleman, but I'd be happy with either one.

One to male actor in a lead role in a motion picture.

 

[Pnochichi]

Best Male Actor in a Motion Picture:

Javier Bardem - Being the Ricardos - I really enjoyed this performance. It was a little big, but it seemed like it fit better than Nicole Kidman’s in the same film. He seemed to capture a lot more of what I remember about Desi, and bring it home in a more real way. He also delivered a bit better on the difference between Desi on set and Desi at home IMO. 3.5/5

Benedict Cumberbatch - Power of the Dog - For some reason I can’t explain, a part of me wants to dislike Benedict Cumberbatch, but despite that, I always find myself drawn to his performances. This one was no different. I came away impressed with most of the cast here to the point I can’t explain why the ensemble wasn’t nominated as a group. Lots of slow burn movies this year overall, but I thought this was an excellent performance by a very strong actor who seems to disappear into his roles in a way that I really love. 4 / 5

Andrew Garfield - Tick, Tick…Boom - Just wow. This was an amazing performance. I’ll admit that my love for musical theater probably influences my position here, but I think even without that, this is a pretty outstanding performance from Garfield. It’s very interesting to compare this against Jennifer Hudson in Respect. Maybe it’s just the two people involved, or maybe it’s the difference between a singer learning to act and an actor learning to sing, but this was so far beyond Jennifer Hudson’s performance to me. I really can’t believe it was actually him singing, but it looks like he really put in the time to learn to do what he needed to do in this one. The acting was as good as the singing, and I loved them both. This whole movie is now in my top two for the year next to CODA. I still have one more to go in this category, but I can’t imaging it beating out this one. 5 / 5.

Will Smith - King Richard - I covered this one in the ensemble category, but I just didn’t really but Will Smith in this role. I think that’s in part due to being familiar enough with him that I didn’t buy the differences between him and his character and partially because he didn’t sell it in the way some of the other actors did this year. Jessica Chastain and Benedict Cumberbatch both played roles that seemed very different from their true self, but I bought it in both of those cases. I think Will Smith is a fine actor in the right roles, but this wasn’t one of them. It felt like he was playing a version of Mr. Williams that was intended to teach a lesson and not to most accurately portray the character, and that distinction made the performance fall a little flat for me. 2.5 / 5

Denzel Washington - The Tragedy of McBeth - I love A24 and what they have been doing the past few years. Especially in the horror space like the blackcoat’s daughter, the witch, the lighthouse, midsommar, hereditary, etc. I also love the Coen brothers and their work. I love Denzel when he’s playing the right role for him. I think Man of Fire was perfect for him. I’m always at a bit of a loss for how to rate plays turned to film in ways that are more play than film I had the same struggle last year with Ma Rainey. I would rate it one way seeing it on stage and quite another on the screen. This was a very interesting telling of MacBeth, but it didn’t really work for me on all levels. The performances were a bit too modern IMO for such a classic telling. There was the smallest disconnect between the two in Denzel’s performance that did enough to knock this one down for me. It was so close to working, but just missed the mark and in doing so maybe even hurt more than a bigger miss as I could see the potential that was there. Almost, but not quite. 3 / 5

This one is easy for me. Andrew Garfield by a mile.

 

[Pnochichi]

Best Female actor in a supporting role in a movie:

Supporting Actress:

Ariana Debose - West Side Story - Nothing in this movie improved on the 1961 version for me, so I’m sure that colored by impression. I thought she was good but not great with what she had to work with. I think she is the odds-on favorite to win this category, but a few of the others stood out more to me. It’s very hard to tease apart the performance from the role in these cases. Comparing someone who does a lot with a small role vs someone who does a bit less with a more complex role. I think that’s where a lot of these will boil down to in this space. 3.5 / 5.

Catriona Balfe - Belfast - One of the best performances in this one for me. I thought it stood out as being very natural which I tend to prefer. There was some real meat to the performance in the third reel which I was very impressed with. The arc of the character was very well played and the change as her world view expanded and shrank at the same time was very solid acting. 4 / 5.

Ruth Negga - Passing - I was very impressed with this one. There was quite a bit of meat in this role, and I think she did quite a bit with it. I wasn’t a chewing the scenery type performance, but it was more layered than some of the others were for me. I think that’s what I liked about the performance in Belfast as well. It was a much bigger role than some of the others as well. I didn’t know much going in, so expectations were pretty low, and she exceeded them quite a bit. 4 / 5.

Cate Blanchett - Nightmare Alley - Similar to some of the other roles in this category, there wasn’t much to this role and Blanchett didn’t do a ton with what was there in my opinion. There was a real chance to make it a little more special at the turn, but that chance felt more or less wasted. Always hard to tell what was on the actor and what was on the director, but either way this performance was flatter than it needed to be and that hurt things a little too much for me. 3 / 5.

I’d give this one to Balfe.